The last time I saw her, she had fire in her eyes.
That’ll teach her to play with matches!
The Balloon
I kept looking up at this giant Happy Birthday balloon floating above the cubicle next to me like it was a really tall person’s head staring back in disapproval. Finally I jumped at it with a letter opener and stabbed it to death and everyone though I was trying to stab Kelly until I explained everything to HR and the police and was fired, by not arrested.
Separate
Two of the art professors were married and could each (but never both of them together) be found at all hours of the day and night working in the studio on their own projects. The students could never decide if their marriage was really enviable, really unhealthy, or perhaps both.
Never Surrender
The waves never stop trying. Neither should you.
Vagueism
“Vagueism is a movement. The cosiness of vagueism is the warmth of gentle distortion; a harmonically rich patternhood…”
Haze
“Your logic concerning the cause of the haze was fuzzy and cloudy. Those said clouds and fuzzes -were- the cause of the haze.”
I Ain’t No Bird
It’s cold up here, but that’s my fault, really, for clippin’ my feathers so soon. The roof is a silly place to jump, anyway, since I’ll have to be able to fly my way down, and I ain’t no bird no more.
Super Music Attack!
His image repeated for two hundred projectors back, the conductor raised his baton, at which moment a sea of one point two million flutes, clarinets, oboes, saxophones, bassoons, French horns, trumpets, trombones, baritone horns, tubas, mallets, drumsticks and cymbals all lifted up, signaling their readiness to strike the first note. It was hard to believe that music, of all things, was the alien monster’s weakness, but they were ready.
Not Like You
Everything about her is beautiful. Everything about her is not like you.
Real Hell
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?”