The city was empty. It was early Saturday morning, the sky was grey and rain fell lightly. Almost imperceptibly. This was his favourite time. It felt like the entire city belonged to him. He would wander down abandoned streets, look into windows of the closed shops, sometimes he would even sing out.
He started humming loudly as he walked. A pigeon heard him and thumped his wings and took off, landing a few feet away.
He hopped over a puddle next to the curb and sang out load. "They call me mister Pitiful, baby that's my name."
This is freedom,...
"I'll be 69 this year."
I lifted my eyes from my book, struggling with my irritation. Across from me sat a woman, her eyes clouded with reflection as she stared over my shoulder. "Forty years I could have spent with someone who adored me if I hadn't have been so blind."
I blinked. I couldn't quite tell if she was actually speaking to me. I folded my book around my thumb and waited. The ache in her voice spoke to the same in mine and I refused to look at my phone that had hummed more than once, someone far...
If your parents are going to name you after a song, there are a few things they should think about.
For a start, it needs to be a good song. Actually, no, it needs to be an actual name. Nobody wants a kid called "You know what they do to guys like us in prison."
But it still needs to be a good song. A really good one. Not some one-hit-wonder.
And it should be subtle. I mean, "Penny Lane" - that's obvious. "Layla"? Not so much.
Maybe I'll change my name to Layla, when the forms come through. Or...
They say that I come from a family of heroes. And I suppose that is true. Uncle George, who rescued an entire family from a burning building. Cousin Bethany, the dashing soldier. Cousin Allister, who sailed his boat up river and discovered the Lost Tribe of Allawak. My father, the boxer and revolutionary. Great Aunt Marya, who sang so sweetly that she brought down the Monster Carescu, him and his entire government. Great great great Gramma Florence and Granpa Sidney, who together fought brigands for some queen in some other country. They were quite dashing I am told. As others...
"Aim for the torch."
"I'm trying!"
"We're gonna miss it."
"I know! I said I'm trying!"
"Ok, forget the torch. Try to land on, uh, her shoulder or something."
"The wind's too strong."
"How about her feet? The balcony? The plaza? ...The field?"
"This isn't my fault. No matter what happens, this isn't my fault."
"We're going to end up in the ocean, aren't we?"
"Probably. No, wait! I could just... Hmm. Yep. We're gonna land in the ocean."
"I don't like the ocean. It's wet."
"Shut up and deal with it."
"Plus all the cash in my wallet is...
In hindsight, the solution was obvious.
Anyway, that's what I thought when I awoke, face and hands already sweaty, the dark and humid air beginning already to claw at my face.
There was no light. I didn't have one on me. Didn't think I'd need a phone, with no reception. No, that wasn't part of the plan. And I don't smoke.
So, unlike the movies where there is in-scene lighting when the hero is trying to claw his way out of the coffin, it was nothing. It was dark and moist and stiflingly, oppressively silent.
The plan had been easy:...
They were trapped for seven days, four storeys down, in a subway car.
Just the two of them.
Midfight, mid-breakup, mid-life-altering-altercation, the lights had flickered. Then gone out.
In the darkness Jake had offered a tentative "Hello?" and chuckled quietly.
Cooper had shouted back. At the moment they realized the darkness would not abate, that help would not come, that they were trapped, they'd retreated to opposite ends of the car.
Cooper flipped the emergency switch and forced open a door. A rotting stench flooded the car.
Doors shut again they studied the opposite end of the car.
On the...
The Potentate surveyed his creamsicle tower cooly.
"Were my instructions not clear," he asked in the calm manner so many of his associates found so frightening. "Was the language I was speaking truly so difficult to decipher?"
Nobody spoke up at first, though everyone knew two things: the longer he went without an answer, the angrily the Potentate would get. The second fact, whoever spoke first stood a good chance of receiving the brunt of his displeasure. As was often the case, everyone opted for an intense anger spread over the whole group, then face being a direct target of...
The shipwreck was catastrophic -- the kind where the powder magazines fireballed into the sky. Wood and masts and sails and all that turned into a bunch of toothpicks even Dennis Hoffman couldn't count.
Only Dark James Jameson survived, catapulted as he was from the plank he'd been stumping down as he crossed himself and wished the darling world goodbye. He landed in the evian blue water with a sploosh, swam about in a silent camera shot and bobbed to the surface for a breath -- upside down. His leg was the only bouyant bit about him.
He hung upside...