All he needed was one picture. That was it. Just one. Too bad for him it was a specific picture. But the Internet always had what you needed, right? Heck, he was willing to pay for it. The entire company was counting on him.
"I got this, guys," he said as everyone was leaving for the night. "We're gold come morning. The investers just want to see that view added to the presentation."
They believed him. Heck, he believed himself. And he succeeded. It took a chunk out of his boss's platinum card, but big deal. This merger would earn...
Penelope loved the fountain, loved the way the water sprayed, cooling her in the hot sun, making her clothes cling as she called her joy to the heavens.
"What are you doing?" asked the man in the blue uniform.
Some sort of park official, thought the girl. "Nothing. Just enjoying the water."
"This isn't a waterpark, you know," said the man, a note of disapproval hanging from his lips like a dangling cigar, ready to drop and burn.
"So?" she asked. She kicked up a fine spray as her feet pattered against the thin layer that had built up over...
I hated the fairy picture. Instead of feeling at peace, secure, happy I always had sleepless nights. Mom sleeping on the floor near my bed, comforting me when I cried out. No matter where she put the picture, in another room, even in the trash, it somehow once again appeared somewhere in my bedroom. Once it was inside my Nancy Drew book, another time under the mattress. The worst time was when it floated from the ceiling right onto my face! I screamed the house down even though I didn't at first know what it was.
The parish priest blessed...
I don't understand why it's so hard to lose weight. I know what I'm doing wrong but can't stop. Multi bags of potato chips, carrot cake with creamy frosting, sedentary lifestyle. I used to be such an active man, always playing some kind of sports, walking at least two hours daily as I hated driving in bad traffic to work. It's not as though I have a void to fill, like many other overweight people. I am happy.
So why on earth can't I change???
Martha, my slim wife doesn't even mind my protruding belly (or at least that's the...
The giant surveyed the landscape, wondering where all the people were. Truth was, he didn't know he was a giant. Everyone else he had ever come in contact with was a giant, so humans - the little people he had no knowledge of - didn't exist in his mind. Yes, he saw them, but they were nothing but insignificant little insects, ants, only there to annoy and crush.
He marveled at this world, so green and rocky, so unlike the limitless cloudy floors of his huge domain. He reached down and picked a few blades of grass, and at once...
For a change I was ok about Carl's clothes this month. Blue was perfectly acceptable compared to the horror of April - canary yellow. He's a bit weird, my fiance. It was a sort of take on color psychology but relating to months of the year, something he read in a kooky astroglogy book. My mother wouldn't let him into the house in February as purple reminded her of a childhood trauma she was still receiving therapy for.
Carl was also into UFO's, The Illuminati, Ley Lines, Quantum Jumping (he believed he had a double living in China who was...
The general stood in the grand ballroom, waiting for everyone to clear out. Yes, the guests had a great time at the victory party; the rebels had been routed, and victory for his king had been ensured. But no one knew the price better than him. As the upper class cheered him, shook his hand, and touted him as the grandest of the grand, he mourned for those on the side of so-called evil. He knew many of them, if not personally, then through family. He hadn't grown up in this environment, but in that of the rebellion. Sure, his...
In 1921, he flew from the Great Rift Valley, along the trails left by the ancient Martians, to find the Temple of the Sun. It was buried, like so much else on Mars, in red sands over the course of millennia, but that meant nothing when you had a native to escort you to their ancestral home.
"So, how can we breathe here?" Pete asked the small, silver creature before him.
It sat in the biplane, strapped in, looking ridiculously small in the pilot's seat. "Air bubble," it replied, fiddling with the dials.
Pete had never flown in a biplane...
"Of course, no one can make a unicorn," Pareth said, in that tone of voice he used when lecturing his students, "but you can take one apart." He stood, and I groaned inwardly.
He took the lecturing posture. "Of course, early giants of the field certainly tried. They glued the horn of a rhino to a horse, as if the mere simulacra of the thing could summon the real thing. Superstitious nonsense.
"Others tried grafting, and in more recent years we have seen specialized breeding, and even genetic manipulation. All abject failures. One cannot make a unicorn."
He smiled. "At...
That damn tree was going to fall on him, he just knew it.
What use was the open sky, the billowing waves of blue, or the sunlight streaking through the clouds to illuminate his path along the sandy shore, when as soon as he walked beneath that leaning palm, it would crash upon him like the hammer of fate.
Perhaps he would stay where he was. The water was cool, the breeze refreshing. If he traced his steps back, he might rediscover that berry bush and fill his belly with its sweet fruit.
But what was life without a little...