Taste was one of those things that was meant to be very personal, and yet everyone seemed to recognise bad taste.

The joke may have been ill-timed, but she maintained that it wasn't in "bad taste" - soon finding herself in the minority (one, in fact).

Fine. Fine, fine, fine - he would've laughed, if he'd been there. Then again, him not being there was the entire point.

He would've laughed at that, too.

It was a nice, warm day, and that was ridiculous - funerals were meant to be full of rain and the dark and thunder and the...

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She didn't look at him as she gingerly opened the sketchbook he had laid in front of her. Carefully schooling her face into it's most neutral expression, just in case she didn't like what she saw.

She needn't have worried.

For as she opened the book and began to gaze over the imagery, the concepts, the scribbled annotations that sounded like he had been talking to himself as he wrote them, she became lost in the world he was describing.

She could feel him tense next to her. She understood that, by being shown his work it was like she...

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"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...

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Jesus, this guy. I only wanted a ride to the temp agency, and he was all, "sure, I got a sweet set of wheels in the parking lot." So after I finish up my application for the Donut Hut -- fucking powdered sugar in my hair, I'm not taking this hat off all day now -- we go out to the lot, and it's like, it's his GRANDPA's car right there, a Packard or some shit. The seats are made of red leather and they squeak like I've farted when I get in, and there's cigarette burns on the edge...

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Drip. Drip. Drip. The blood plopped to the concrete floor like a leaky faucet. He contemplated about the throbbing pain he felt with every plop.

He enjoyed that feeling. Concentrating so much on one pain over and over again. The first time he asked his boyfriend to blindfold him and punch in him the face - his boyfriend thought he was being dirty.

"You like it rough..." he had coyly responded.

The problem was it stopped being about the pleasure and more about the pain. He wanted to feel the warm liquid glop from his mouth and puddle to his...

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He hadn't wanted the light there.

She had insisted - there was light on her, light on her voice, lifting her up, letting them all see her. He was playing too (had a solo during one of the songs, actually) so why shouldn't they see him?

He'd tried to protest that it wasn't traditional, and she'd just given him one of those looks, the one that made him certain that if ever (...when) she did get signed the record label wouldn't be able to force her into one of those moulds they seemed so fond of.

He'd stood his ground,...

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"Which way to Omaha?"

Paint flakes blew in the wind. It smelled like gas. Anna's hair was matted; she could feel it knot further. She had nothing; the pockets of her pants were empty except for lint and paint flakes. And one quarter.

The men here knew nothing except that a woman, however unattractive and hagard, was standing in front of them. Who cared where Omaha was, anyways?

"You want some money, sweetie?" One of them whistled. "Ain't no one givin' you money in Omaha."

She rolls her eyes and walks away. Dust settles in the space above her clavicle....

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We are there. We are in the shadows, in the gaps, in the spaces between words. We are in every moment where you pull away, where discretion replaces narrative, we are there.

We are there in the knowledge that you do not write all things that happen, we are there, waiting in the wings, filling in the gaps, in the spaces.

You did not write us - you never write us, nobody writes us (and who would read us, who would read every banal moment, every second, what soul could stand the painful inevitability of one moment following the next...

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Sarah sat down on the concrete bench and stared at the couple locked in an embrace.The city lights across the water blinked glowed and highlighted them against the dark sky.
The light also highlighted what Sarah lacked.
"Lousy tourists," she said fumbling through her purse for her pack of cigarettes.
She found the pack and pulled one loose and lit it.Hoping to get the bitter taste out of her mouth.
The couple hugged and kissed each other's cheeks foreheads and ears. They whispered softly and then laughed.
They stared out at the city skyline, they hands searching desperately for the...

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The drugs were beginning to wear off. Minute by minute the butterflies, those glorious, evanescent, friendly butterflies, were fading. She pressed the earpiece of her headphones to her ear. Pink Floyd were sounding like a noisy nightmare. As she gazed out across the valley, with its endless vista of trees, trees and more trees, she came down to earth with a bump. She should get back to work - artificial props might give her a brief respite, but she had a deadline to meet and a quota to make. Sighing, she pressed stop and slipped her headphones down round her...

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