He likes his own room, but he likes mine more. He's five. Half the time, if he had his way he would climb back inside me. He can never get close enough. Half the time. The other half he's complaining. Scowling. "You're interfering with my personal space!" Like he's breaking up with me.
So when he stands there, waiting, in the corner, and he asks if he can share our room, our bed, our space, I do what any rational human would do. And that's to pick him up and hold him, smell his head, that getting-bigger head, and say,...
"I have something to tell you."
These are not words you want to hear from your girlfriend when you first walk in the door after a late night at work. Still, Lewis tried to stay calm, tried not to let his imagination get ahead of him. He sat down at the formica kitchen table, looking up at Sadie. She was actually wringing her hands. He thought that only happened in stories. A long pause...
"Well, honey? What is it? You're making me kind of nervous here."
"I know, I know. I'm sorry. I just... Ok. Here goes. I'm... I'm a...
You can count me out. In teaspoons if you wish, but it might take a while. I prefer metric, none of that standard or imperial nonsense, it's just not scientific.
You can count me out, I'm certainly in the process of it. Measuring it all, repurposing the materials to a better purpose. 3.7 litres of potable water, the rest bound up in organs or areas that I have not processed yet. 2.5 grams of iron, perhaps that will go to the electromagnet I am constructing, perhaps to the dynamo. But what am I saying? It will have to go to...
They gathered in the woods, but that was not enough to save them, as they were mistaken for trees, cut down and shipped to a lumber mill.
One of them was fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to be made into thick planks; most of the rest were sadly torn apart into sawdust and mulch. But that one continued to live, in great pain, as he was violently sawed and assembled into a large, polished grandfather clock.
They attached to him some cold, foreign bits of metal that moved jarringly. The ticking of the gears against his aching frame was unceasing; day...
She sang like a ghost in a fog.
Dew on the saxophones,
Rain on the drum kit.
The napkin read,
"Remember, it's the 1900's."
It was always almost dawn,
never fully light.
The fog never lifted,
the ghost always whispered.
There once was a house that no child or adult dared enter, the house was known to be haunted. Even though that the house was haunted, it always seemed to look neat on the outside but it was rumored that it was haunted inside. Everyone knew not to go into that house, except this one child, Annie. Annie was a young girl who had wavy brown hair and big eyes. Annie didn't believe that the house was haunted, so one day she set off to go look through the house, she knew if her parents found out about what she...
Pleasure. Burn. They're the only two words on the whole page - in the whole book if he was honest - that he had read and actually remembered. The rest was a jumble of names, bad descriptions, inplausible mixes of action and consequence.
Pleasure, the word just rolled off the tongue, almost like a cat unfurling itself and stretching lazily, purring as it spots some new distraction.
Burn, more akin to an explosion, though with the same purring quality, it flooded into his ears a lot more passionately than pleasure did, filled his mind with images, tortorous landscapes with dark...
What was that? I swear to god, something just went under the boat. I don't know what it was, but it was shiny, and it was fast.
Is it lunch time yet? I like lunch time. Everyone gathers near the front of the boat, eating their sandwiches and chips. Most usually share, at least a little bit. It's not like everyone can eat all of that. Most usually share, but you gotta watch closely. Gotta be vigilant. And be careful of the gulls. They'll sneak up on you in an instant. They scare easy, but man, are they sneaky.
I've...
"Because the game is all that matters, Father."
"I like to think it is my company that matters, my child."
A fire could be seen blazing in her eyes. He knew not to call her that. He knew better.
"I am not your child."
"All of you are, Lucifer, but your pride always stopped you from seeing that."
"My pride? It was my pride?"
The old man shook his head in affirmation.
"Father, your pride is what caste us from this place. You wanted to make room for these beings. So they could do what? Slaughter each other? Care only...
The anti-grav boots were worth every penny.
Shelly had saved for weeks, mowing lawns, delivering papers, collecting coins from every cushion in the house, to earn enough hard cash to buy them. Her mother had told her not to waste her money, that they were probably just galoshes with springs on the bottom, but the girl refused to be deterred. The magazine ad had proclaimed them anti-grav, and there was a Truth in Advertising law on the books, so they must be the real deal.
And she was right.
But not in the way she thought she would be.
Instead...