Once in beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, studying the minute details of the back of her scull, while her mind twisted through the rails of reality.
One moment Beijing, 2010. The next moment Cairo in the 1940's, then London in the Victorian era, fast as electricity moved down her synapses and shattered through her mind, she was gone again. The great australian plains. The Transiberian Rail. The nineteen hundreds, the dark ages, the Triassic period, the great black wasteland that existed before existence, and in...
"Hmm, urg, turn down the heat," he thought to himself as his attention turned to the pain in his armpits and ankles. "Who jumped me?" He thought, before he realized he'd soon pry open the almost necrotic lids of his gummed up eyeballs.
it occurred to him that a lot had already transpired that day, and he was just getting started. He looked out the window and hurried to the kitchen, then started heating up some coffee. Then he rustled up the morning paper and, fuzzy eyed, stared at it without much comprehension.
His companion hadn't gotten up yet, so...
I took a ball, and threw it against the brick wall, to have it bounce back. I threw it again and again, to have it come back, back into my hands. I thought about my decisions, about how I threw away my future, and my life. He told me to do it. I know he did. I blame myself, not him. I threw the ball again, and heard the loud crack of it bouncing of the wall. When I hurled it the next time, I threw it as hard as I could, and rocketed back to me, through my legs,...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She held a bowl in one outstretched hand. Her eyes were studying the gravel on the road, not rising to the gaze of passersby who occasionally dropped a coin into her bowl. Her mother was dead, her father was missing, she had no siblings that she knew of, she had only a red gown and a bowl. When the bowl filled with money at the end of the day, as it often did, she would take it to a nearby shop and exchange it for rice...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
Another time, in Cincinatti, a small wire-haired dog sprinted across a parking lot.
Last week, a gigantic monster on a small planetoid in the vicinity of Proxima Centuri ate a ham sandwich at a local monster-cafe.
On a nuclear sub beneath the ice of the Arctic, a captain of Hungarian descent vomited up the contents of his stomach, ingested the night before at a going-away party for a member of the crew.
On Broadway, a dancer in a leotard nervously practices for an upcoming performance, her...
Once in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She hugged her hat to her chest, and lightly tapped on the door, and prepared herself for the worst. Her lips were chapped and as cold as icicles, because of the cold winter air. When there was no answer. A tear drop slid down her grimy, and filthy face. She knocked a little louder this time, and when now one replied. She slid down the wall, sitting on the pavement. A man walked by, and spit on to the step in front of her feet. She...
Maggie came to Heathrow airport on a white pony she had purchased along the Thames. She was hoping to board the next blind flight to Asia. Perhaps it might take her to Tibet, but you never know with those sort of flights. She had packed a variety of items in her wicker basket, which she always looped to the brass hooks above the seats on the plane. The basket had a vertical fold-out tray, where she had assembled her afternoon tea: a cup of Earl Grey and four cucumber cream cheese sandwiches.
She got in the security line at sector...
When I crossed the street, my mind was rapidly flashing with the dreadful information. I sprinted to the bus stop, and scowled, to find the bench, filthy, and obviously occupied by a sleeping homeless man. When the bus came, I boarded, along with a woman that had just walked by, her high heels clattering on the pavement. I observed the driver, as I always do, sitting in the front, and deciding if he has a criminal background or not. If he does, I'll get off at Washington, the next stop. I tapped my feet on the floor of the bus,...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
"Are you my mom?" she would ask to the passersby.
Some people would stop and inquire if she was lost, but she would just shake her head.
Some people would offer to take the girl with them to the police, but she would just run away down a narrow alley where they couldn't follow.
Most people would just ignore her and her perfect, shining red gown, taking her for some unlucky trickster.
But one day, a young woman came down the street, her eyes veiled in...
Dust obscured the dim lighting above. Clutching a paper bag, the girl lurched to the elevator. Old, worn doors opened, and she descended.
Outside the building her suitor waited wearing a tattered tweed jacket and chipped bifocals. In his hand, a pair of freshly cut daffodils.