Lange onboard sweating it out, Lange onboard getting cold grits, Lange in his bunk in those pitiful few hours to himself when he could think on his home, on the vast seas between him and it. Reciting lines--fragments--from those books his sister Rachel used to read aloud. The carousing above over and only flatulence angry growling left over.
And when the crew came alongside the _Steadfast_, and murdered the husband in plain sight of the wife and the girl, whom they took below, Lange mopped blood and chummed the sea with the husband's body for the sharks. It was then...
I'd had so many plans, just before I went back. I was prepared to an insane degree. I'd spent days camping in the wilderness, gathering enough iron to create a goddamned magnet. I'd memorized the fundamentals of aviation, chemistry, nuclear physics. I knew all there was to know about rebuilding civilization.
And it had all slipped away, one memory after another, fading into a blur, after I'd fallen through the time vortex.
So here I am, trying to explain to some neolithic ignoramus how to make gunpowder. The most I can remember is that it requires a mixture of sulfur,...
Good night…
Good morning…
Good afternoon…
Chet had to find his own fun while working as a department-store greeter. Sometimes he said “Good evening” instead of “Good night” to the fancier-looking customers. Sometimes he said it to the disreputable customers, too, but a bit sarcastically, to see if they’d pick it up on it. They usually didn’t.
Every now and then Chet would greet someone with the wrong time of day. “Good afternoon, sir,” he’d say, as the sun was peeking over the mountains. “Good night, ma’am,” while the sun was burning hot overhead. And usually people just continued on...
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up.
"I must protest!" she shouted, above the din of the room.
The man at the other side looked at her quizically. "Miss Whitely, would you please sit down? You're not allowed to speak out until it's your turn in the witness stand."
"But this man is slandering me! I never did any of those things!"
"Miss, that's how court works. They tell their story, and you tell yours."
"But it's wrong!"
The prosecutor sighed. This was going to be a long...
He sat in the truck parked on the gravel drive, his arm hanging out the window, a cigarette dangling from his finger. The radio was on and Bon Jovi's Bed of Roses was blaring.
She watched him from the behind the closed screen door.
He lowered the visor so she wouldn't be able to see his reddened eyes. Def Lepard's Pour Some Sugar On Me came on next, and he tweaked the volume nob. He could tell she was still looking at him.
He finished his cigarette and flicked it out the window. He took a long drink from the...
"And these words were brought to you by..."
Remember hearing that at the end of the six o'clock news? Elise wasn't sure if she were actually old enough to have heard it. Somehow though it had found its way into her vernacular. Wondering about paid endorsements seemed to be a much better topic then men lately. However the concept of the phrase was soon to bring on a revelation.
Later that night Elise met up with the girls to blow off some steam. After a few drinks a tall, gorgeous guy who went by, "Nick" approached. And as she half-heartedly...
"She'd have preferred the electric chair," Melanie said.
A half grin sat on her lips as she stirred the crinkle fry in the ketchup far longer than anyone stirs crinkle fries in ketchup.
"You know when they were discovering the electric chair, they would like pay kids to bring in stray dogs and cats to electrocute to get the voltage just right," Beloved said.
"That's horrible," Melanie replied and she dropped the crinkle fry. "Why would you say that?"
"They finally tested it on an elephant!" Beloved said.
"Wait, who is they?" Melanie asked. She lifted her nose in the...
Absent.
He sat right at the front, but would never once look up at the board all while knowing full well the snippy teacher would think him rude. He would only doodle inside his beat-up notebook he'd kept since seventh grade, and I would never know what exactly it was he was so intent on drawing.
It's a project, he would say.
He is not here today. He and I do not interact much, but I know he is beautiful. He is beautiful and I have loved him since I laid eyes on him. I have loved him and loved...
The border. He had. To find. The border. He'd made this trip a hundred times before and each time the damn thing moved. When he thought of it - if he thought of it at all - he imagined it as some kind of mystical shimmering veil. Except you couldn't actually see it. Couldn't map it. It might be there with the next step or it could take a thousand more and he never knew which it would be. He was pretty sure he'd been walking straight for it but... had he just been circling? Was he even heading in...
Raisins are evil. They just don't belong... anywhere really. They're grapes that couldn't make it and have a second chance as rai-sins... that's right. Sins. You read it right. You have to admit that it's pretty strange that sins is right there in raisins. They're evil little wanna bes that wreak havok on all things good and wholesome. Cinnamon buns for instance. What's worse in a cinnamon bun than raisins? Nothing! Raisins are the poops of the fruit world! And they end up in your cinnamon bun like little turds. Little fruit turds that have to be picked around and...