"The key to the door is lying on the floor, a meter and a half to your right," it instructed. The more it spoke, the more unnatural it seemed to Jolene, the more artificial. Synthesized.
Slowly she followed its directives, feeling along the stone-cold floor in the dark. "Be quick," it admonished her tonelessly.
Finally her fingers brushed it; her pounding, she seized the key and stumbled her way back to the door. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to be calm, and carefully inserted the key into the lock. To her relief, it turned, and the door moved...
"2070. 2071. 2072..."
Abe sighed, noting down the number and position so that he could start again later. He couldn't imagine starting again later, picking up the count, forcing himself to mouth the numbers, let the numbers run through his mind and out of his mouth.
But it would happen. Eventually. But at the moment, he could take a break, relax in a place where the numbers had no meaning.
Sometimes, he felt like the numbers he was counting were his own regrets and mistakes. 148, that he never asked out Jenny Mare three years ago, that he watched her...
"I hate you! Get out of my face!"
Wow. That's just the way any teenage girl wants to start her day: the most popular guy in school declares in front of the entire gym class that he hates her guts.
Well, that's just the story of my life these days. Everyone who's anyone hates me. As if to emphesize that point, a red ball crashes into my face, knocking off my glasses.
"Simmons! You're out!" the gym teacher's voice echoes though the gym.
So, I go settle on the bleachers with the rest of the people out of the most...
Malcolm's coo became a cry.
The child peeked into the cardboard box, vexation clearly etched etched upon his face. "What's the matter, little bird?" he asked, reaching down to stroke the wounded pigeon. His mother had warned him to stay away, that sometimes birds would bite and a wild bird like Malcolm could carry diseases. He didn't care. He wanted to stroke his back feathers, far enough back that the bird's beak couldn't reach his pudgey fingers... just in case.
"David! Stay away from that bird!" his mother called.
The boy yanked his finger back just as the pigeon lunged...
They gathered in the woods. Huddled together, shoulders pressed against each other for warm and support and that deep basic desire for some sort of human contact.
"It's good to see you again John," an unclean, wirey man nodded to his fellow and they clapsed hands.
"You too. Have you news?"
"None. There hasn't been much activity the past month." The man nodded grimly as he listened.
"One of our nests got hit, we lost a few, but the rest of us are fine."
"How about the rest of you?" The other members of the circle, three men and one...
Shannon sat up, her eyes wide open. She wasn't sure if she was awake or asleep. She looked around the room (dirty socks, cat puke in one corner, empty Miller cans, a laundry basket filled with clean clothes) and wished it was all unfamiliar. She looked at the man next to her. His back was smooth and tanned. A tiny mole winked at her from his left shoulder blade. She wished he was a stranger.
Shannon lay back down. The pillow was damp with sweat, her sweat. Had she been dreaming or coming out of a fever?
"Where are you...
My father and I were lying on the beach wondering why the moon looked larger than usual. My father argued idly--something about the flat terrain and the empty skyline. "If we could see a house, or a tree, or a traffic light, it wouldn't look so big."
It was a stupid explanation, but we are not the kind of people who carry iPhones, and whip them out to settle any debate. We hate those people. They ruin everything.
We'd been drinking wine from the motel's paper cups. We'd run out of wine a long time ago, but occasionally we still...
The lamp wouldn't turn on. That was really the least of his problems. It meant the electricity had finally been turned off. So had the water, the cable, and the gas. At least they had waited until the spring. It was warm enough to not risk freezing that night.
Jacob wondered through his house, filled with useless possessions. He touched the television and the fridge as he walked by them, exiting the house and into the beautiful April morning.
The birds were chirping and a steady drone of cars racing down the highway filled his ears. He took a deep...
I had a dream the other night. We were sitting alone in our rooms, all of us, every single one, when suddenly —
The walls just fell away. There was no sound, no pyrotechnics; with a quiet resignation, all the matter in the world, except for our warm, breathing bodies, fell down into the void, leaving us floating purposelessly, naked.
And we all looked at each other, as the psychic frameworks that we etched into the streets, into our homes – our routines, our beaten paths, all the conventions that existed not in the world, but in the world as...
"Constellation of freckles."
I made a face. "Oh, that's going on the list."
She nodded with a degree of authority - she hadn't needed me to tell her it belonged on our list of paticularly purple prose, our list of phrases that were to be avoided at all costs.
"Can you even get a constellation of freckles?"
"Well, of course you can, it's an arrangement - it's the implication I resent. That freckles are like stars - who'd have starry freckles? You can't wish on a freckle."
"You could. I think that could be quite a romantic scene."
"Depends on...