The voiceless aberration toiled within his thoughts. Where was he? What purpose? Why? The words seemed to jumble within his mind as he gazed out of the tank his eyes out upon people that seemed blurred. He could hear them speak but could not understand as a young girl walked towards the tank her small frilled white gown running to the marble floor. She seemed to smile at the aberration and lifted her small hand up to the glass and smiled even wider seeing it turn to face her. "Da what is that?" The young girl asked innocently staring at...
The noises that, at first, filled every pocket of air, immediately and harmoniously silenced. The overcast sky of smog and gas cracked open like chick which has been waiting weeks to hatch, the yellow feathers shined through. And all was quiet. The men did not speak, they dropped their arms, but their guns' falls were muted by this minute of peace. Even the men dared not to speak. Enemies were no longer so, there was no definition between men, just as there are no barriers between the birds which were the first to make a sound. A song which awoke...
The lamp wouldn't turn on.
Strange, she thought, I just changed the bulb yesterday.
Feeling her way through the dark living room, Camille passed into the dining area and saw the stairs leading to the second floor were lit with tiny tealights. Following them up, she called out, "John?" No answer. A little louder, "John, are you home?." At the top of the landing, more candles lit a path from the stairs and into the hallway. Camille started down the hall but paused when she passed the closed bathroom door. Thinking John might be inside the bomb shelter-like walls, she...
The day had dragged on. Lari looked around the street as she left work. She felt as if she had just ran a marathon with cement shoes on. You wouldn't think that being a marketing assistant would make someone so tired.
The street was full of the regular faces. People that she saw everyday, but never really looked at. Lari sighed as she waited for her bus. I need a vacation, she thought.
A young girl walked by, licking a dripping ice cream cone and holding a large red balloon. The girl didn't care that she had dripped chocolate down...
I couldn't sleep with her next to me. I knew what she had done. It was despicable; it made my stomach churn. But there she was, next to me, sleeping soundly, like a baby without a care in the world. Her breathing came in short shallow gasps. Her snores got on my nerves and as I try to sleep all I can think of is what she's done. What I've done, now that I know. I'm part of it. A romantic evening, a shared bottle of Merlot, shared secrets; too much. A night of passion, a night of disgust. Now...
There is a crow somewhere in the trees, unseen but seeing all. There are a million tiny eyes beneath the grass that feel our footsteps and send out warnings.
Somewhere in the world is a man who would do us harm if we were to cross his path at this moment. It's midnight. A few cars drive past us, and each might contain a demented murderer.
The moon shows its bellyful of craters, and some of the stars are planets. There are a million tiny eyes up there somewhere looking out at us.
This is the eve of something momentous....
"The river's on fire," said my son. The river did seem to be on fire, if you were only looking at the river.
"No, the sky is," I told him. A reflection from above. He shrugged his shoulders.
He didn't ask why the sky was on fire, just bowed his over over the rowboat's side and continued looking for fish. Small, darting, the color of the river bed, the fish beneath the fire, the river beneath the fire.
My eyes toward the sky, waiting for the fire to come down.
"I feel boxed in," she said.
"I'm sorry?" he replied, not quite understanding.
"Well, the basic thing is this: the image is quite boring, and the color scheme is obnoxious, a weird, misguided attempt at the painterly surrealism that Richard Linklater's Waking Life first presented in film. Add to that two gigantic butterflies, and the whole thing just falls apart. But despite the silliness of the painting, however, there's really no room for absurdity. Characters can't wave pistols around or smoke cigars or get hit in the forehead with boards. I'm boxed in. I have nowhere to go. It's too...
Waves.
When I opened my eyes the image faded, something from a dream. The waves were pink, lapping against the beach and around my ankles. The pink was tinged with pale green, and the forms in the distance, all of them waist deep in the water were the last to delete from my waking memories.
I only remember one of the forms with clarity. One shoulder higher than the other, arms dangling at the sides, a feeble attempt to wave with the shorter arm.
There were tears in my eyes, and I ran my fingers through my hair, and I...
She heard it calling out to her. Her clearing in Yellowstone -- it was whispering that it longed for her presence. And on this day, when she felt like the world was collapsing around her -- its edges bent and frayed and its fringes burning up in smoke -- she dragged herself there up winding paths and wild trees.
While most people saw Yellowstone as a national park, she saw it as her backyard, her sanctuary, her refuge. She had a clearing there, all her own, that bears in the hundreds of years they'd been there hadn't even found. But...