The view was stunning. Marie drew deep, ragged breaths and looked out over the valley below. The climb had been ardous but definitely worth it. The music was coming to a cressiendo and she instincively lifted the headphones a little as the sound got too loud for her. She sighed and smiled. Life was ok. The adrenalin from the climb upp the hill had settled her mind and she was ok. Even though there was only an empty apartment waiting for her back in town she was going to be ok. Life went on, the world still held beauty even...
"What is it you have to do again?"
Richard pointed at the screen. "You have to get the butterflies to land on that tree."
"Which one, the one on the left?"
"No," he said, "the other one, the little one."
His son crossed his arms. "Dad, this game is so lame! I don't see how you could have played this thing. The graphics suck!"
"Hey, this is 16-bit resolution! You should have seen some of the old 8-bit side-scrolling games. The graphics on them were even worse, but they were all we had. And do you hear those sound effects?"...
Drudgery of the everyday. There's really nothing else to explain it. Banality of sadism. John, standing at the dump, Alka Seltzer pill wrapped in a piece of bologna for the birds. Has he ever thought what a bird might feel while its innards explode? That's not really the point. He wants to know if it can work. If he can leave a wake of destruction with nothing but everyday objects.
He watches the bird gulp down the bologna and retake flight. He sees it hesitate, and pop, it falls from the air, guts hanging out of its mouth.
Adam, working...
A wolf was hunting her, for she was young and precious and delicious. She didn't remember her name, she had been running for so long; so, when she got up and went into the doorway, she was surprised at first. There was a picture of her on the wall. There was a picture of her with an old woman.
"What..." she mumbled, a breath barely traveling from her lips.
"Oh, auspicious granddaughter, you have finally arrived! Come in, come in, and give your dearest granny a kiss."
The girl looked towards the bed and there was a hairy, beastly old...
Of course, Heather was twisted. Everybody knew this except Gene, so of course he was the only one who ever professed his love to her. Except Heather wanted to leave him for just this reason; who would act unabashedly and intentionally weird if she did not want to be loved for it? Heather, certainly, wanted to be loved for who she was.
The two of them were watching TV. Good-natured, his loopy grin a chipper wave at the world, Gene turned to Heather and said, "Darling, I will make you a sandwich! Stay put, don't move a finger." She looked...
When I was in Beijing, my dear, I saw a small lass with an ape of a face crouched in an alley and weeping for who knows who. I noticed she was wearing the cheap red cape I bought for you in H&M. When I was in Istanbul I saw a knock-kneed street performer whose laugh was the same as yours. Some graffiti that I ran across somewhere on the east edges of Paris resembled your handwriting, when you scrawled notes left for me coming home legless and too late. I say this not to make you think there are...
Four beautiful years. She had sat at this dining room table, polished every day by ol' reliable Miss Hamm, when they ate their first dinner of lamb cutlet, squash, and fingerling potatoes. He was all razor sharp grins as she giggled at the pieces of potato that he purposefully left dangling at the side of his smile.
Next year, at Thanksgiving, they had had their newborn, squirming at the side of the table with all of his raw and tender newness. He and his mother rambled on about the beautiful, perfect baby boy as if the two of them had...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She had just made it home. It was 11:58 p.m. The night would end in a couple of minutes, and with it, her glittering ruby gown, the silken slippers, and the jade hairpins keeping her silken locks in its elaborate up-do. But for now, she would savor the evening she'd just had: eating the most sumptuous food she'd ever had, mingling with the guests she'd once called neighbors, and most of all, dancing in the yellow throne room with the prince's half-brother.
the pumpkin
A dry, sandy summer like this one. I had met him just a mile down, by the Shell gas station, his cowboy boots kicking up a torrid storm as he leaned against an electric pole and kicked a Pepsi can out of his way -- it rolled like a tumbling weed before coming to a halt at my sandal-wrapped toes.
I picked it up, sand and dust whirling around me, forcing themselves into the slits of my eyes. "Hey cowboy."
He looked at me and said nothing. He lured me in with absolutely nothing but an intense blue stare as...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She looked over her shoulder to peer at the mouth of the alley. Seeing no one, she ducked out of the doorway and ran towards the seeming dead end. Stepping onto the large crates piled at the end, she looked up at the rope that was starting to dangle down from the roof, 5 stories above her. Taking a firm hold of the rope, she hoisted herself up, hand over hand, until she made her way up to the roof.
"I have the key," she says...