Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. The rain was falling around her and she looked out into the street, wondering when she should make her break for it. Sensing that the rain wouldn't let up for quiet some time, she dashed onto the streets holding her package close to her chest. Her eyes flitted from side to side as she transversed the narrow streets and alleys.
She saw the blue door ahead of her and pumped her legs harder, eager to reach her destination. She threw herself against the door with a...
I am breathless. My heart is in my stomach and pounding around like an indoor hockey match. Staring deep into the eye of my accuser I beg: "mercy!"
The clock ticks furiously past the minutes. One, two, suddenly five have passed and I am sure to pass out from the sheer weight of the moment.
Does Miranda find true love in those five minutes?
Oh curse you fickle fate, you demon of home electronics and urban sitcom.
My bladder yearns at attention but suppress its screams I must; the DVR needs repairing. The show must go on.
In streams and,...
It would be a long walk. To no where. Ending some where. A where long off. Tulle of mist. Footage of stage. A wide glow of white pixels condensing to green. Corridors of sparkling black. A long walk but he took it.
Tom said my neck tasted of honey. When I told Jasper he laughed hysterically, dropping the crystal glass of champagne onto the thick white carpet. Snorting like a horse, slapping his black Parisian jeans, contorting his face like a fairground mirror image. I didn't think it was so funny but didn't say anything. I laughed too.
One thing that Jasper would never know about me is how lonely and disgusted I feel with myself when I tell him about Tom.
When I walked away from the car, turned back and waved at Tom who had wiped the condensation from the...
She was a goddess.
Her sacrifices were mostly time; her father was procrastination, and through him most of her sacrifices were received. Her temple was the internet, the pub, every conversation which began "I read somewhere - ", or "I saw the other day - ", or "Am I right in thinking - "
Quizzes were her festivals. Celebrations of (arguably) useless knowledge. The glory of simply knowing something, with no comprehension of whether it was to be useful or not, the pleasure based in facts.
She was worshipped frequently, albeit unbeknownst to most.
I'm dead. It wasn't part of the plan, but I'm really dead. The plan involved Scotch tape, 10-gauge wire, and a grey kitten. It ended me, though. And I guess that means the plan didn't work. Because me being dead wasn't part of the plan.
I'm dead and it's no one's fault but my own. The bridge was a last minute addition to the plan. So was the kite. It was one of those kites from the drugstore--cheap plastic, make in China or Poland or somewhere. There were thin wooden dowels. Not quite strong enough.
I'm dead and I think...
It was the fall that surprised me the most.
The winter, she was fine. Spring, slowly getting sick, Summer, even sicker.
In fall, she fully recovered from stage 3 liver cancer. There was someone to thank. God or someone.
It could have been the praying, or just hoping we didn't lose her. She was only 7. 7-year-olds aren't supposed to just die from liver cancer. Ella's better now, though. It's easy to believe in something when a dying child makes a full recovery from something so evil as that.
So God, or someone, thank you. It was God or someone...
"Hey! You! Jackass!"
Geoff was trying to make eye contact -- or, failing that, ear contact -- with the ferris wheel operator below. Geoff and Jo had been stuck at the top of the ride for more than five minutes now. And the effort might not have been so much in vain were they not surrounded by a cage.
No response. Of course.
"Will you knock it off?" asked Jo. "He'll get to it when he gets to it."
"It's just. Gah!" Geoff started rocking the ride. Back and forth, back and forth, the range of motion increasing each time....
I sat there every day waiting. But nothing ever happened. I hoped if I sat there long enough that she would come back and everything would be back to normal. I knew that when she was pulled from the car that there was no turning back. I thought maybe if I had her in my mind, it could reverse that awful event that caused so much pain and grief. At least I am not alone on my journey back to recovery with my family and friends by my side hopefully I can move on. But I know truly that I...
My great-grandfather was an explorer, an occupation prevalent when one had more to explore. On the the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, he learned to speak Haush, a language near extinction since the 1920s. He taught the language to his son, who passed it on to my father. While we played catch on the front lawn, my father taught it to me, a word relayed with each pitch, returned with each throw.
Three generations dead, I exited the train at Buenos Aires.