I lost my grip on the wheel.
It was a dark night, yet the sky was completely clear. It was a tired night, yet there had been man cups of coffee. It was a restless night, though everyone was laying down. It was a night full of oddities.
I sat forward in the seat, trying hard to hold onto the wheel as the car began to skid around on the road. The longer I tried, the harder it became. I slowly began to lose my grasp, and I realized how all the events that had happened that night led to...
I lost my grip on te wheel. The snow on my windshield was blinding. The ice beneath my tires made my car skid into the guardrail in a sort of slow motion. I could see the front of my car hitting the railing and the hood folding back up toward me. The lights shattered and white and yellow fragments came flying up toward my windshield. The airbags inflated, slow motion, hitting my face, making my head turn sideways. My iPhone flew out of my hand and hit the passenger side window, then slammed to the floor. My dog, Erin, screeched...
I'd had so many plans, just before I went back. I was prepared to an insane degree. I'd spent days camping in the wilderness, gathering enough iron to create a goddamned magnet. I'd memorized the fundamentals of aviation, chemistry, nuclear physics. I knew all there was to know about rebuilding civilization.
And it had all slipped away, one memory after another, fading into a blur, after I'd fallen through the time vortex.
So here I am, trying to explain to some neolithic ignoramus how to make gunpowder. The most I can remember is that it requires a mixture of sulfur,...
The realization crept over me. My drugs are gone and my friends are few. How very insignificant we all are. Myself especially, I suppose.
He said I didn't deserve pleasure, in so many words. I refuse to agree with that. Everyone deserves pleasure, most especially those who are in such pain.
So now I am left to wonder where I will find relief. The day draws ever closer to my imminent withdrawal, and this one will be severe, of this much I am sure. This little stint has been, by far, the most consistent usage coupled with the most pure...
A breeze is a current of air
A portent that hasn't a care
For the cold that it causes
...
..
Please forgive me these pauses
The author was killed by a bear
Gavin was gloating. "Enjoy your final moments, Kevin ... maybe use them to wonder how I found you. Good-bye ..."
He dismissively gestured at Paul, his personal bodyguard and hitman. Paul, with an expression of a stone, drew a nine-millimeter out of his coat and pointed it at me.
I had to stop him. "Paul, I can give you two very good reasons not to pull that trigger."
Paul said nothing. But he also did nothing. "First: I know where Kendra is."
That got his attention. He still didn't move, though. "She's in China, which you probably already know, but...
"The sheep were at pasture," Daniel typed into his screen. Monica slinked up behind him, read the screen and mocked, "Wow Dan, that sounds like the beginning to a dirty joke, not a children's story."
"Thanks for the encouragement. Hey, I thought you were on your way to get your nails done?"
"I'm getting ready to go, I got stopped by a phone call from your mother."
"What did she want?"
"Nothing really. She just wanted to know if she could throw a surprise party for her little baby boy's thirtieth."
"Shit. I told you I don't want any of...
The sheep were at pasture.
It was 0300 and the troops were restless. They wanted action, not this placid chewing of grass. Every day was filled with nothing but chewing and the occasionally terrifying sheering.
The ones that came back from the shed came back wrong. Nude and shivering, wild looks in their eyes. Year after year. Jimmy couldn't take it anymore. When they came for him the last time, he ran for it. He chewed and bit and growled his sheep growl.
He didn't come back. That night they looked in when they saw the soft lights come on...
"So you can sell me anything I want?"
"No, no, you misunderstand me." He smiled a bit too broadly, his teeth white and sharp, his voice bearing an unplaceable foreign accent, slight but there just at the edges of his words. "I am a salesman of want." And with this, he hefted his large case onto the counter.
It was not without effort that he strained it up. Not that his face would betray this, but Jane could see the muscles straining under his beautiful black suit, perfectly tailored, at least to her untrained eye. The case seemed heavy, but...
The sheep were at pasture. They stood, milling, queuing, just waiting for someone to wake them up. To show them their own cage, to let them know that they didn't have to be sheep anymore.
Were there even sheep cages? Pens, it was pens, sheep were kept in pens. Pens writing the manifesto, no typing, that would have been too simple. Ideas should be dragged from your mind, panicked and screaming.
He shook his head. Sometimes it was hard to think straight, to keep everything in order in his head. That was the price to be paid for thinking with...