I had always imagined blazing hot flames, whips and chains, and one hundred tons of pure, physical pain. But if I had known that hell was going to consist of watching over and over again the thing I did to you… well, this is far worse than the punishment I had imagined – and there’s no way to go back.
In Love with Yesteryear
“Please don’t break up with me,” Gary begged with big, brown puppy-dog eyes. “I love you.”
A part of Allison – however small – wished she had the capacity to love him right now while he was here with her to be loved, but she was well aware that her infatuation with all things past meant she would come to love him several years from now, by which time he would be completely out of reach.
Wife by Day
Tiffany slid off her ring and set it gently on top of the dresser every night just before going to bed. She was a wife by day; dreamer, by night.
Cool Torture
“You an advocate of slow torture?” Carol asked her son when she saw what was sitting in the refrigerator. “Next time you wanna play murderer why don’t you just get it over quick – stick the ice cream in the oven and blast the heat.”
Sell High
“Today was the best day of my entire life!” Glen exclaimed with the grin of a madman before stabbing the dagger straight into his heart.
We shouldn’t have been surprised; he had always preached a sell-high mentality.
Love Done Sour
There’s nothing in this world I want more than you. What a shitty world I must live in.
Who would have thought?
It began to snow, a rainbow peaked through the thick fog, and then a few porpoises splashed and surfaced briefly for air, all while the cruise ship slowly drifted by a huge glacier tucked in between two Chilean peaks. I had never thought a scene like this could exist, but then again, I had never believed in vampires either, and now I was sharing a cabin with one.
On this Path
After decades of intensive data collection, analysis and research, scientists have concluded that there are precisely seven quadrillion, nine hundred and sixty-six trillion, five hundred and thirty-eight billion, one hundred and seventy-two million, two hundred and eighty-nine thousand, five hundred and fifty-four different paths a human being can choose to go down. So now I really must ask myself, out of all those paths, what the hell did I do to end up on this one?
Home Sweet Home?
Without realizing it, he had grown to hate everything that he once so desperately missed. The home he thought he was at long last returning to proved to be nothing more than a rude awakening to the fact that this was no longer where he belonged.
Patience
“I feel like I’ve been looking for something that’s been missing in my life, but how am I supposed to find it when I don’t even know what it is?” Danny asked.
“I’m right here!” Bianca shouted in her mind and imagined pulling him close for a kiss, but she bit her tongue so hard it hurt and simply said, “I’m sure you’ll find it – whatever it is – when it’s meant to be.”
Recalling simpler times
“What happened to the good old days when you didn’t have to worry about reserving a spot in an underground vault to protect you from global super-tsunamis, zombie outbreaks and total nuclear fallout?”
“You mean the days when people pooped in a pot and flung it out the back window and then died in massive numbers from fecal diseases?”
My biggest problem, you
I must eliminate everything that is wrong with me. Please bid your final farewells and prepare to taste death.
What happened, my son
I took little satisfaction in watching the convicted murderer trail behind the guards as they led him away in handcuffs after being charged guilty and sentenced to life in prison, as there was nothing that could comfort the tragedy of my husband’s death, and there was nothing that could take away that painful familiarity in the monster’s eyes. I remember when he first blinked open those shiny little marble eyes to me and the world and my husband had looked at him real proud the way fathers do when they first realize their baby’s potential – a quarterback for the Eagles, a wealthy doctor or lawyer, the President; the possibilities were infinitely immense! – but alas, what had happened to this baby I had cradled in my arms thirty-five long years ago?
Invisible Chains
For years I dreamt desperately, passionately of escape. Had it always been as simple as just walking out the front door?
The Blow
Sometime in elementary school, as she was walking up a short flight of stairs, she realized that even if she began in that moment, she could not finish reading all of the books in existence before she died; and so she would have to make choices. And although it seemed, in a way, pointless to possess only in part what she had childishly, unthinkingly assumed would be hers in full, she carried on.
A Formal Affair
Okay so you’re married and I’m engaged, great. Now that we’ve got that straight – would you care to accompany me to my hotel room?
Uncommitted Sins
He could never forgive her. He could get past neither the Nothing she did nor the Everything she thought.
A little victory
“My mother wants to go see Tom Jones and throw her panties at him.”
“Why, so he can go sailing?”
The Truth
There’s nothing I want more than to tell you the truth.
There’s nothing I want less than for you to know the truth.
Hypothesis Denied
“You know, I was bothered by you at first, but then I thought to myself gee, if someone claims to hate me that much, well, then it must just be they’re intimidated by me, so is that it – are you intimidated by me?”
“No, trust me – honest to God, I just genuinely hate you.”