"What is it you have to do again?"
Richard pointed at the screen. "You have to get the butterflies to land on that tree."
"Which one, the one on the left?"
"No," he said, "the other one, the little one."
His son crossed his arms. "Dad, this game is so lame! I don't see how you could have played this thing. The graphics suck!"
"Hey, this is 16-bit resolution! You should have seen some of the old 8-bit side-scrolling games. The graphics on them were even worse, but they were all we had. And do you hear those sound effects?"...
Did you hear what happened to Ol' Morlane? Word got around, I mean, I heard it from Skeets who heard it from Fuller but I checked around with some other people and they all heard the same so it's true I guess. You didn't hear this? I mean, I don't know where you been you didn't hear this. Once Skeets told me I musta heard it nine-ten-twenty times in the past few or four days. You been out somewhere? Somewhere secret? Rustlin' up something good for the rest of us? Don't worry about it. Anyway, before you go in there...
Through the veil she was almost as pretty as I'd wished she would have been the first time we met for real, in real life, in person on the street. The love of my life.
I remembered that in certain photographs she had this quality, like an angel or maybe just someone who thought they were one, so strung out they could touch the sky. She wasn't that pretty, no pixie dust queen, just another girl who liked to make faces. But I think I love her.
You hope that, and I hoped that, the love of my life--because that's...
There was blood on my pillow and when I woke up the right side of my mouth was swollen and swore. I rushed to the bathroom and rinsed the dried blood from my mouth. It came out in thick clumps at first, and then ran quickly as the crimson liquid. I pulled my cheeks wide and saw that three teeth were missing.
I ran back to my room, my jaw aching and throbbing with the intensity of a fire alarm. I lifted the blood stained pillow and saw three dollar bills lying there. They were crumpled and crimped but someone...
I clutched onto the flowers. Today was the day. I am only 19 but I am getting married right now. My father was a rich businessman and my mother died when I was very young. My father than re-married and she married a beautiful Parisian woman. You may think she is a beauty but she is a pain in the arse. She treats me like rubbish. "Go fetch me my earrings," she would call out. But one year later after marrying my father she died suddenly.
My father couldn't bear this again, so he sent me to an orphanage. I...
I walked along the flat stones that made up the busy road and let the bustling crowds swallow me whole. My heart pounds in my ears. I hear a sharp shout from behind me and instictively dive over the bright green barrier. I press my body into the lush grass and take shallow breaths. The sound of thousands of footsteps set my nerves on edge. For a moment, my mind wanders to the many times my friends and I used to play hide and seek in this garden when we were younger. Children squealing in delight and running in circles....
Her cheeks were as pink as her dress, blotched with red that matched the little bows that tightly held her blonde hair up in two ridiculous pony-tails that resembled palm trees. Her mother did the dog's hair like that as well. Jonathan always wondered how someone could want a second Maltese instead of a daughter.
Was he being unfair? Probably. It was something he slung at Marie as their last fight as a married couple wound down. That fight he'd carried on with such spirit convinced there would be break-up hate sex, but that shot at her parenting skills effectively...
Norman was a doctor. He was a doctor because he was good at fixing things, and at some point in his life he determined that the most important things that needed fixing were human beings. So he became a doctor.
He looked rather doctor-ish, in his trenchcoat, his traveling case of medical supplies and his pattern baldness. He was friendly, having the bedside manner that everyone expected of a good doctor.
The day that the sun became sick, people all over the world panicked. Some rioted, looted, killed one another, for in a world that was nearing its end, one...
I love you.
The last thing he told her before taking a drink from his soda, setting it down, taking a deep breath and then wandering straight into the traffic that killed him. Family legend says that he'd lost a lot at the tracks that afternoon and then on the final race, he'd won the mother load.
Happiness like that for a compulsive gambler can be too much. The take was huge but the win was too much and he went out on the highest of notes. Plastered to the front of a dump truck.
The newspaper clipping has it...
"It's gorgeous." breathes Nora, enchanted by the dress in the window.
"That's as may be," mumbled her husband, "but we can't afford it."
Nora sighed deeply; it was always the same story. Whatever she wanted, they couldn't afford. It was a different matter, when he wanted to go to the Working Man's Club, or whatever he got up to. Money just appeared out of nowhere for that.
Begrudgingly, she followed him as he walked off, hands in his pocket as usual.
"Just going to find a newsagents." he announced, barely waiting for a reply.
Fine, she thought, knowing that he'd...