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...
He's as tall as the door, my obsession, and almost as wide. His shoulders hold the promise of strength and safety, his tapered torso slims to promising hips that I try hard not to stare at. His eyes look through my soul, piercing my resolve and dissolving my barriers until I can no longer bear to be in the same room.
He doesn't know this, of course. I smile and nod and grab my files as if I am incredibly busy, then walk to the end of the office. Even though my back is turned and I occupy my shaking...
The cool water soothed her. She had to get out of the stifling heat, and the stifling company. Why she had agreed to this trip she would never know, but he had insisted.
'It will be good for us,' he said.
No, it won't, she thought. It will be sheer torture, because we both know we're flogging this horse beyond it's natural lifespan. But she packed anyway, not realising that lying beside his sweaty body would be the final nail.
She floated for a while, staring at the stars. They were bright in the cobalt-blue sky, pin prinks of brightness...
”Beware the Bwgan Fawr.” the old Vicar sighed. “Every chapel has to have its ‘Ysbryd capel’…”
“Its chapel ghost?” the younger clergyman replied. His pronunciation was still more ‘gog’, more Northern, than the man he was replacing felt comfortable with. Too… foreign. If such a phrase could be used for a fellow Welshman.
A shame, his body was found the morning after his first Midnight Mass. Just outside the chapel door, lying as if it had carried a great weight across the threshold, and then collapsed with the release of his burden. A heart attack, they said. Strange in someone...
What do you make of the man who sells his muse?
It's what she wants.
It's what she asks for.
It's the active creation of a ghost, the planning for something that remains in verse and shadow long after the departure of the flesh.
It's the creation of memory and emotion that will remain fresh for the consumer, but will soon become the thorn for the creator
It's the serving of beloved as buffet.
It's what we need.
And ask for.
What do we make of the girl who sells her desire.
It's how she succeeds.
It's how she fails....
She'd have preferred the electric chair. Even torture, a little watter-boarding couldn't possibly hurt THAT bad. But this, this was the worst punishment she could ever imagine.
She sat in the church pew, holding the envelope in her hand. Yeah, the cops actually let her keep the bounty from the hit. The only catch was that she had to sit through the funereal.
She watched the man's wife comfort a six year old. She could've sworn she heard the words, "where's daddy?" No matter how hard she tried to convince herself that her mind was playing tricks on her, no...
"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...
They crouched to peer beneath the stairs. They were surprised by how small it was -- "I don't even think an adult could fit in there," he said.
"Sure, if it was an adult midget," she said.
"How big of a midget?" he said.
"We're not really going to discuss the relative sizes of midgets, are we?" she said, turning to look at him for the first time since they found the passageway.
"I think dwarf is the preferred nomenclature anyway," he said with a tired air, pushing the hair out of his eyes. His glasses had slid down his...
"This is it?" Leila said with a wrinkled nose, her hands were clasped behind her back as she slowly approached the animal.
Myron stared at the blue ribbon sitting in a bow on the back of her head, eclipsing her dark brown tresses like an enormous butterfly. His eyes traveled down to her feet and the way her calves flexed as she walked on her toes around the creature.
"I wasn't lying, was I?"
"Dunno," Leila replied, and she hopped on a crate, her lanky, boyish form backlit by golden rays. It shone through her hair, making it more like...
It was white. That was something that was abnormal about the entire situation. What was not something that one thought of when being beaten.
He wondered if perhaps it was heaven trying to tell him that he was closer than he though. He hoped that it was finally the light at the end of the tunnel, but when the next blow from the stick hit him across the back, he knew he had no such luck.
A small well of blood slowly came up his throat. It almost felt like a terrible hiccup to him. One of those hiccups that...