Balanced on the line, he told her again, "Put it down!"
"Why?" She replied.
"Just do it," he said. Both of his arms were held out, his delicate fingers rigid, there was a blue tinge descending on his normally raspberry red lips.
"Just tell me, why," she repeated. She held it gently in her hands, loose fingers, loose wrists, around waist level. She held it as if it held even less importance to her than the stock she put upon his commands.
"Why can't you just do something because I've said so?" he said, and the chill in blood became...
Karen, Jersey girl extraordinaire, departed Manhattan for the left coast two years ago. She'd brought her big hair and big dreams.
After slim pickings and several waitressing gigs she knew that she'd arrived. Finally a part she could be proud of. She was playing the new mom on "I didn't know I was pregnant."
(To read Part 3, follow this link: http://sixminutestory.com/stories/somewhere-better-part-3.)
"Choose as you please," said Someone Good. "Surrender to the breeze, or fight for control. Which do you value: predictability, or potential. The known and the now, or the unknown, the good?"
As the air whipped in gusts around her, gripping her, twisting her, she struggled. Within herself, she wrestled for a choice. Would she allow herself to be carried up by these winds of change?
Somehow she knew that this was a defining moment. It was here, in the borderlands of Somewhere Better, that she could either fight her way back...
From the day the museum opened, the mammoth was the first thing every visitor saw. How could they miss it? It towered over the entrance when they came inside, rain or shine, its trunk high above their heads as though ready to trumpet. At least they assumed she would trumpet, but no one really knew or cared.
Designed to model a beast that lived ages ago, the poor thing stood and gathered dust on its bits that were too high for the cleaning staff to reach. So the witch, a neo-pagan from San Fran, took pity on the poor beast....
"The water was clear," he kept insisting.
We all had been there. There were pictures, and a video somewhere posted on youtube. The water had been far from clear. Anything but clear. It was thick almost to the point of gummy with chocolate brown sediment, and tiny detritus the likes of which I didn't want to contemplate.
"I saw it," he said. "Perfectly clear. Purified. He was standing in the middle of it, and he made it clean by his presence. I tell you I saw him!"
We all said we believed him. Some even went further than that.
"Yes,...
Massachusetts was beautiful; I was 5 years old, and it was summer. I collected wishbones, crab skeletons, a jellyfish in my shoe. I swam, played, and had the time of my life.
In 1991, at 4 years old, the carousel in Martha's Vineyard was my favorite place to be in the whole world. My dad let me ride it for what seemed to be 100 rides. The horses had those horns on the top that made them look like Unicorns. There was a game involved; the object, to collect a brass ring and place it atop your horse. I won....
Ill do anything to keep that pretty crooked smile on your face. I love the way your eyes twinkling when you laugh. We are so different. It such far away places and times. I can't imagine my life without you. I love your little round cheeks and bouncing brown curls. I love it when your hair is pulled tightly in a bun on top of your head with a big bow holding it in place. I admire your twirls and shasays as you dance about the house like you own it. "Sister" It'll never get old hearing you say it....
My mother toils under the assumption that she is beautifully imperfect but the world should be perfect. She reacts to news like a small child. Living in the moment with the belief that what is going on now will be what goes on forever. I am her child and I am the same.
We slump together from depression to remission, my mother and I. We stay on the couch for days at a time drinking wine, eating Oreos, and watching reality television. Then Mom gets an alimony check or I finally land a job interview and the fever breaks. We...
So. Where do I go from here? He's left me. High and pregnantly dry. Where's a Wal-Mart. No. Kidding,. I saw that dumb movie. Really, jump through a window? Keep track of what I use? I'd rather not, if it's all the same with you.
I'm not, if you are wondering, intending to keep this kid. I'm not one of those stupid girls who don't know they're knocked up, the ones that scream for days in a bathroom before the thing drops into a toilet.
They'll help me get rid of it. Someone will. Some do gooder will help me...
It felt like the last night on earth, the last day of the world.
The truth of it was simply that it was the last day for the two of them.
She wasn't certain she could really pinpoint the day they ended, nor that she could really work out why they ended. It was as if she'd woken up one morning, looked at him (his back, how long had that been the way they slept, not even touching, two bodies in the same bed, not two souls in the same space) and realised that she didn't love him.
It hadn't...