They were listening. From somewhere distant, came the familiar sounds of gunshots, stone-throwing, angry slogans. But here it was quiet- deserted streets, shut down shops, boarded windows and houses so dead that they wouldn't be out of place in a graveyard.It was safe to be here. Nobody would mind, nobody would bother. They flitted out in the glorious sunshine of a bright day, trying to ignore the smell of dried blood mingled with the fragrance of the lake, the trees and the mountains. The pigeons of Srinagar were not worried about the curfew.
In these parts, they could not afford trains. Instead, they strapped the Jews and leftists and gypsies and cripples and social undesirables onto sleds on the back of a Volkswagen and hauled them to the camp, which was really a slapdash cardboard affair. The guards were lazy and disinterested. They really didn't see a point in the whole thing, but they did their jobs nevertheless, smoking cigarettes with the more gregarious prisoners. They resented the prisoners and beat them - After all, they thought, why should I have to waste my life standing around guarding these people that the Reich...
"Well, if you don't feel like telling me her name, at least tell me what she looks like."
She's perfect. Skin as unblemished as the first snow fall, dark blue eyes that always dance when she sees me, brown hair that shines in the moonlight when we meet in the garden behind her house. Her voice is smooth, young, and playful and I love her. But if they knew who she was... Who knows what they'd do if they knew that the one I love is a Capulet? I'm Romeo, for goodness sake! The son of Lord Montague, enemy of...
The cold bit at her toes. Pulling them to her body, she peered over the top of her blanket. The world was beginning to come alive. People hurried on there way to work, lights flickering on across the pale grey skies.
It was an odd time of day; it brought with it relief and pain. She was glad of the sound, the sights of other people. The nights grew monotonous, full of nothing. Every minute seemed like hours, every hour like days as nothing but black emptiness stretched out before her. As day broke, cutting through the darkness, she often...
"She'd have preferred the electric chair," Melanie said.
A half grin sat on her lips as she stirred the crinkle fry in the ketchup far longer than anyone stirs crinkle fries in ketchup.
"You know when they were discovering the electric chair, they would like pay kids to bring in stray dogs and cats to electrocute to get the voltage just right," Beloved said.
"That's horrible," Melanie replied and she dropped the crinkle fry. "Why would you say that?"
"They finally tested it on an elephant!" Beloved said.
"Wait, who is they?" Melanie asked. She lifted her nose in the...
With fifteen minutes until the start of the hearing, a bagel stop was inadvisable. The queue for the espresso machine was exactly as long as usual, and the trainee behind the counter should have stuck with the chai order. His bladder screamed in that unmistakably shrill screech added urgency to an already pressing situation. "Ignored again! Be better if I was free trade, huh" When an onion bagel and a cafe con leche appear on the counter there is only one choice to be made. As he pays a skinny fallow skinned sidles up to him and opines, "You was...
"Wait! Wait!" Sam huffed and ran.
There was a red light, which finally made the huge white vehicle stop. It's lights weren't flashing, so Sam was sure the driver wasn't too busy.
He banged on the door only stopping when the window rolled down.
"Yeah?"
"Please!" Sam pulled in huge gulps of air. "I really could use a ride to the-" gulp, "-nearest gas station."
Blankly, the driver stared. "Seriously, dude?" the man chuckled. His deep blue eyes looked amused. "Does this look like a taxi to you?"
"No, of course not, and I completely understand!" Sam raised both hands...
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...
Now, supposedly, if I start out a hundred meters ahead of Achilles, and Achilles is travelling five times faster than me, when he has covered that hundred meters, I will nevertheless have travelled twenty. And when he travels twenty, I will have travelled four. And when he travels that four, I will have traveled .8 meters, and so on and so forth, such that Achilles will never reach me. I win.
But Zeno, the cur, says that, eventually, Achilles overlaps me. "We know it from experience," he tells us. God damn experience! I know that if Achilles is continually arriving...
In the harsh twilight, he knelt and dug.
In the bottom of the phoenix-grave, he spread the spores that would feed on and support the beginnings 0f all life.
In the sharp, glassy soil, he placed the seeds of a new planet.
In the unmeasured, empty space of an hour, he changed the course of the universe.
In the flat gray expanse of weathered silicates, three thousand potatoes rested.
In the dead methane-carbon dioxide atmosphere, the harsh actinic sun slanted down, undimmed by ozone.
In the cool, moist air of his time machine, he left the dawn of the world,...