Susan hopped onto the train headed to San Francisco. She was running from her fears, reality, and the one she loved the most, Sal.
As the train made it's loud whistle, and started to leave, Sal came running out of the train station door. He looked up and saw his Susan leaving.
He went running after the train. He jumped down onto the tracks and ran as fast and hard as he could until he was finally able to grab ahold of the railing.
He pulled himself up onto the train, hanging by one arm and a partial foothold....
The tracks screeched as the train hurtled through the curve. "Is this normal?!" she screamed, "Are we going to die?"
"It's looking likely!" he shouted back as he tumbled into the roomette. Crawling on his knees, panic leapt into his eyes. He scanned the floor, sweeping his hands over the carpet, under the seats.
"What are you looking for?" she shouted as she braced herself in the hallway.
"Nothing. It's nothing. You know, at times like these, when disaster looms, we must ask ourselves what motivates us, what grand ideas guide us in our illusory walks towards our certain doom....
My name is Sal. I work in a box factory in Manhattan. When I first got here, this city seemed sane to me. Now -- I'm not so sure.
A woman walked into my office the other day wanting records of her company's invoices. She was stunning. I offered her coffee while she waited for me to look up the records, and we really hit it off.
Her name was Darla. I asked her to dinner that night and, much to my delight, she accepted.
We met at a cozy little Italian place for wine and pasta. Things went...
She is running down a long road that she is not sure where it leads. It's a road deep in the country, there are tall dark tree's that surround her. Her heart is pumping through her chest, she can barely catch her breath. She tries to turn around to see if he is going to catch her, but she doesn't know where he went. The fear of him catching her keeps her going. She hears the sounds of the tree's leaves rustling in the wind and this sound alone makes her heart pump even harder. In her mind she...
Chaz and Elinor tear-ass through the forest, hands raised ineffectually above heads, sodden shoes slapping on undergrowth, alternately laughing and yelling "Ow. Ow. Ow!"
The hailstorm pelts them from above, chunks of ice the size of large coins, not nickle-and-dimeing today but quartering and Susan B. Anthonying. Chaz gets a Kennedy fiftycent piece to the top of the skull and takes a header, facefirst into the soggy pine needles below.
"I think that one actually trepanned me," he shouts.
"What? Get up!" Elinor hauls him to his feet and they keep running.
The tent, they're sure, is just over this...
With fifteen minutes until the start of the hearing, a bagel stop was inadvisable. The queue for the espresso machine was exactly as long as usual, and the trainee behind the counter should have stuck with the chai order. His bladder screamed in that unmistakably shrill screech added urgency to an already pressing situation. "Ignored again! Be better if I was free trade, huh" When an onion bagel and a cafe con leche appear on the counter there is only one choice to be made. As he pays a skinny fallow skinned sidles up to him and opines, "You was...
I wanted to give him everything I had. He was my love, and I knew, at long last, what I wanted out of life.
I wanted him.
Foolishness, of course. We couldn't have been more different if we had been created that way. Still, I tried. Someone once told me that you should always reach for the stars. Whether you catch one or not, at least you will have risen above the mud for a while.
That's why I ran for Congress, because I thought that was where my destiny lay. When the corruption scandal was laid at my feet,...
Sam pulled the tuque tighter around his ears and hunched into the wind. Spring, hah! With no snow to melt, there was no way to tell the difference between today's nasty wind and yesterday's blistering sun.
He banged his way into Tim's and leaned a little too close to the muscle mass in front of him, seeking warmth, if not comraderie. The dude turned, looked down into Sam's wrinkles and coughed. Once. With phlegm.
Sam stood firm and bumped into the plaid workjacket when the line shuffled forward.
When he heard the words, "Large double double...and a Boston Cream for...
Marvin's head jerked up from the desk when he heard that ring. It was an awful ring - one that he should have been used to, and probably would have been, under normal circumstances. But the reason why this ring was so horrendous and annoying was because Melinda accompanied it, with her terrible voice, saying "Marvin! Pick up the damn phone!"
Marvin wanted to go back to sleep, but he knew that he shouldn't have been sleeping in the first place. And that voice, "Marvin, Pick up the damn phone!"
The trouble, of course, was that the phone had been...
Freewrite had been studying the whole damned week.
It was a chaotic week, filled with dark-roast coffee and cotton sweaters, self induced wakefulness like a ritual. Now, it was Thursday, and Freewrite still hadn't completed his research. He sat groggily, frustrated, hunched over a dark cup of coffee with a pen in his hand and a book to his left.
On the other side of the desks were threescore discarded books that had offered little relevance to him. Friday was tomorrow. Freewrite looked at his wristwatch. It was already 9:58 pm.
Freewrite realized that his thesis was due the morning...