It approached. Winter came quickly... I thought of ending it then, but I couldn't. I couldn't say goodbye right before Christmas, and then I needed a date for New Years Eve, and then I didn't want to spend Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, or even Memorial Day lonely. Then I guess he grew on me. I guess. Then came July 4th, September, Halloween, and then Thanksgiving. Then Christmas again. On Christmas he asked me to marry him and I felt that I owed it to him. It was our 3rd winter, 3rd Christmas, and I couldn't say goodbye again. Who...
Sadie didn't believe Mother when she told her it would be a greater adventure than the ones she entertained in the garden. Mother squeezed her, kissed her cheek, and they all laughed once upon the summit. The air was so cold and dry it cracked the skin of her cheeks and it chapped her lips, yet it felt thin and clean, like the waters from the stream.
The ladies breathed heavily, hands on their lower backs, stays pinching them into a dazed sort of happiness. The men gallantly offered arms for them to lean on.
They lingered a bit longer...
The first few days she hadn't noticed the bars. She'd noticed very little about her surroundings other than that they were wrong. As her head became less fuzzy and she began to understand why they were wrong, that this wasn't where she was supposed to be she tried to learn everything there was to learn about this unfamiliar environment.
It was on the tenth day that she'd counted, that the sun shone for the first time. Whereas it had looked grey and dreary outside, the glowing sunlight made it look full of possibilities. The bars were on the inside of...
She cradled the faun's head. She listened to its soft breath, listened to its complaint, listened its petition. But what could she do? What judgment could she give that would hold in the face of her ever-shrinking kingdom. Every year she shrunk, every year there were more men, and every year there was less.
At night under the moon she called her sisters, who had all once been close, close enough to be one, but now far and spread. They came if they could, sent emissaries if they could not. They talked until the edge of the sun, bloated and...
Time stopped the moment I recognized the driver. I clenched my fists and stepped back onto the curb but the car screeched to a stop and I knew he'd recognized me.
I could have run back into a building, found an exit into an alley. Instead I bolted into the middle of the street and froze on the crosswalk. My eyes met the driver's and I heard as if from a distance the honking horns and screams of cars and people.
My throbbing pulse sent cold pumps of blood through my body and my skin prickled, and my clothes dampened...
Please do not ask me to write some fluffy SciFi romance. Nothing will have changed by 2070. I will probably still be alive, I will probably still have this fucking job.
Remember when you hired me, based on the screenplay in my application? I worked hard on Zilly and Jack. For years, my every step was fueled by the thought of Zilly and Jack seamlessly executed on a Broadway stage. (A production, I mean, not a beheading.)
"Such wit!" you exclaimed. "Such cutting-edge quirks! We love the way Zilly listens to movie soundtracks while she studies BioChem! Dun Dun DUN!"...
I woke up hung over, my head throbbing. It felt like mini-jackhammers were destroying my frontal lobe, something I am sure the Scotch took care of last night.
The room was unfamiliar, but I had seen it plenty of times laid out in some IKEA or Sears catalog. I was on the bed with an Oak, maybe Maple, night-stand next to it. The room smelled, not good or bad, just different from my bedroom. Clothes covered the floor in front of the closet, where I suddenly saw my pants. A desperate roll to my side brought back the mini-jackhammers.
The...
Sometimes, the best cure for loneliness is to actually be alone. Which is actually kind of hard to do, considering there are something like 6 bills people on the planet. You have to actually try.
Alone is different from lonely. Alone is a choice. Lonely is a sickness. My sickness has lasted two years, six months, eleven days, and I'm to the point where I must get better, or die. So I put on my black "fuck off" jacket, and put my headphones in my ears, and I made a choice to be alone. And I walked. I walked all...
Our eyes locked right before she went for the stuffed duck. I watched her bite it with resolution, shake her head back and forth like a dog. Her eyes met mine again with a clear and concise message: "My duck."
The duck became her best friend. I hardly talked to her unless she was eating my food. Then I yelled. It probably wasn't the most mature thing to do.. but what the hell. I fell in love from afar. I fell in love with her maple brown eyes, with her glistening nose, with her adorable whimper. She didn't know it...
She blew out the candles on her birthday cake, and the world we knew was extinguished. The next day, streamers and half-deflated balloons still taped to the walls and ceiling, Dad came home and pulled Mom into the kitchen and they spoke in whispers.
Jenny looked at me and snuck up to the television and turned down the volume, so we could hear was they were saying, but Mom knew and stuck her head in and told us to go down to Grandma's for the afternoon.
We walked down the block, turned right at the corner store, left after two...