Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up. Jerome, her uncle's brother, took no notice of her. Her hands were cold and shaking. He continued eulogizing. "He was a great man, and there's no denying. We all..."
"No."
That got his attention. All of them, really. She clasped her hands together tightly, willing her voice to be steady. Jerome raised an eyebrow at her. "Did you have something you wanted to say, Candace? Why don't you come on up here and say it?"
She swallowed, hard. The idea of...
The paradox was that while we had been sitting in a cafe in Paris, waiting for the kick, our future selves had reprogrammed the jukebox to play nothing but St. Etienne. So we sat and we drank our tea and slowly, little by little, we became our own dream. The future died there amongst the earl grey and gilt picture frames, and with it, so did she.
She wasn't more than 10 when the meteor struck Beijing, the meteor we should have been there to stop. Huddled in a doorway, she died wrapped in red silk and fire. She was...
I'm awake but my eyes are stuck closed. What times is it? 7:30, am I reading this right? I should't be surprised, I haven't been able to sleep past 8am since I turned 30. Suck.
It's a Tuesday, my Monday.
Two clients: one with big expectations and another with big confusions.
Trying to launch my first iPhone App as a side project.
Need to get back to working on my own startup company.
The ocean pulls me to surf, the rocks pull me to climb.
But today is a "work" day, which essentially means that it will be lumped into...
"It worked!" He stood, startled by the sound of his own voice. What had worked?
Looking around, he wasn't quite sure if he should be more worried that he didn't know why he had said something he didn't understand, or about the fact that he was in a place he didn't recognise with no memory of having arrived there. A word caught his eye. Phone. He rolled it around his head. Yes. He could make a call. He should make a call. A number emerged from his growing consciousness. Should he be worried about that feeling of expansion, as though...
A small office, four storeys up a marble staircase with an flowery ironwork bannister. Dark. Quiet. A light passes the window, shifting the shadows. There, in the darkness behind the desk, a face. An open mouth. Staring eyes. John's heart hammers in his chest so loudly. Can he here it? Can Adam see him? And the girl. The poor girl. Blood pools beneath the desk. And for what? A painting? Art from an artist centuries past. A dead work for dead people. His hand tightens on the suitcashandle. The Pelican. Is it worth this?
When you got home you found me in the back corner of our not-quite-walk-in-sized closet, surrounded by shoes I hadn't worn in years, clothes I should have given away long ago, and miscellaneous scarves and belts and things that I hardly remembered owning.
I hadn't planned on ending up there, but washing the dishes led to laundry, which led to vacuuming, which led to looking under the furniture, which led to me finding that pin you had given me. I wanted to see the other things you had given me. When I was beautiful and you were kind.
I'm not...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. Waiting, patiently. Hoping that he would answer. But, with her ear pressed up agaisnt the door, she heard nothing. No footsteps. No television blaring music videos. No german shephard barking incessantly. Her greatest fear had been realized. Yet at the same time, her wish had come true. He was gone. The man that lured her in some three ago, only to break her heart. The man she followed half way across the world to be with. The man she gave up her hope and dreams for....
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She was the last surviving member of the Yoshi Crew, a band who had until recently been quite the rage amongst the in-crowd of Berlin. Her devil-may-care attitude and foul mouth had won her a place in the hearts and minds of Berlin's anti-establishment, anti-casual, anti-everything crowd. In Beijing, things had gone more than a little wrong. Mechmal, the under-fed, over-exaggerated singer had found them a gig at a nightclub in the centre of Beijing's equivalent of Soho as they worked their way around the world....
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
An American girl, a lost girl. Separated from everything she had ever known in the world. Just 18, but young enough to be scared to death. Her bright blue eyes and mahogany hair were a dead giveaway that this girl didn't belong. Her eyes met mine and I motioned to her with my left hand. She was shocked, like a deer in headlights; I could tell she was thinking, "why me." The look on her face was one that was asking for help - when she...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She had just wrapped up a long evening answering the phone in her family's restaurant. She took the orders, and her brother and father cooked the food, while her mother ran the counter in the front of the neon food stall.
She was waiting for her best friend, but it looked like it was going to be a longer wait than usual. As she looked down at her red gown, she ran her hands over the cotton fabric and smoothed out some wrinkles, then created some...