It wasn't so bad, the cancer, eating me from the inside out. Started with headaches, diagnoses, hopes and dreams dashed like fine china on the asphalt. My hands shaking, pillow wet in the morning, children gripping me, knowing without words that life was changing. Daddy is dying, mommy said. Like grandma. No, daddy isn't going to heaven. There is no heaven. Only the great void. Its nothing to be afraid of Sofie. Daddy loves you. More doctors and pills, and then pain and then...nothing. The desire to life squashed like a grape on the supermarket floor. Life itself spinning, a...
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 had a dream the other night. We were sitting alone in our rooms, all of us, every single one, when suddenly —
The walls just fell away. There was no sound, no pyrotechnics; with a quiet resignation, all the matter in the world, except for our warm, breathing bodies, fell down into the void, leaving us floating purposelessly, naked.
And we all looked at each other, as the psychic frameworks that we etched into the streets, into our homes – our routines, our beaten paths, all the conventions that existed not in the world, but in the world as...
They where here again, this phonebox that they grew up at. There youth had been spend trying to understand the system inside the box. Exploreing what a telephone is, how it work and how it charges you. Now they where back, Johan the older sibbling had decided he wanted to have this phone on exhibit in his new apartment.
So they went to work, together. He and his brother that shared that interest for technological system that was there childhood. Together they pried it off the wall at the same time talking about all the memorys of exploreing the telephone...
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...
Eternal life.
That's what he'd promised, wasn't it?
Jane didn't know the tall, dark-haired man who had approached her late that night. He appeared as if an apparition as she exited the lonely subway terminal on the way home from an excruciating double shift.
He had spoken just two words. Eternal life. It was a dreamlike declaration - not quite a question, not a statement, just a whisper. But that was impossible.
She had looked at him with a mix of fear and curiosity before shaking her head and walking briskly up the dimly lit staircase. Just before walking into...
I stopped running and gasped for breath. My brother caught up to me and dropped to his knees in exhaustion. My hand traveled silently to the weapon at my waist. I stood behind him breathing heavily.
"I'm sorry brother, but I can't share this time." In one swift motion, I brought the metal down on his head. His body crumpled in front of me and lay motionless.
The audience stared open mouthed at me. The thundering applause filled me and my brother sprang up from his crumpled heap on the stage floor and grabbed my hand for our final bow.
There's nothing like a few moments watching television while eating popcorn and drinking lemonade. Kelly absolutely loves watching television.
Unfortunately, she works second shift and misses a lot of her favorite primetime shows. Thank God for TiVo, right?
Right.
She can fast forward between comercials, record anything she likes and relive all her funny, tear jerking, pulse racing moments at the click of a button. So long as she has the room on her beloved TiVo, Kelly can rule the world.
Right now, she just wants to pause. All that lemonade and popcorn from the begining is starting to catch...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. The rain was falling around her and she looked out into the street, wondering when she should make her break for it. Sensing that the rain wouldn't let up for quiet some time, she dashed onto the streets holding her package close to her chest. Her eyes flitted from side to side as she transversed the narrow streets and alleys.
She saw the blue door ahead of her and pumped her legs harder, eager to reach her destination. She threw herself against the door with a...
"I think we need to take the Easter eggs back," Gerald said.
Louise looked up from placing an Easter bunny on a table. "Why's that?"
"Because one just hatched."
Louise frowned, crossing the room to where Gerald was coddling a small bird in his hands. She was hoping for some kind of explanation, which proved to be difficult to do when he looked more confused than she did.
"What do you mean," Louise said, rubbing the back of her head, "when you say that it hatched?"
"Well, I was getting some of the eggs out for the hunt, right? And...