Big Stories in Two Little Sentences
“Ahhhh, I feel sooooo good,” slurred the wife before she and her husband passed out from the pills, too drugged to notice the ones that had spilled on the floor.
Their toddler’s funeral that week from an accidental overdose of OxyContin somberly disabused them of that mindset.
G.W. sat on the floor that last night in his round room wearing his flag patterned flannel pajamas, playing soldier with his green plastic army men, lost in the pretend battle game while the real world outside his door crashed.
Daddy George came in scolding briskly in his gentle dignified twang,” G.W. it is time to pack your toys away now and get to bed so the new kid moving in will have a place to set up his own games.”
He was only four feet shy of the air conditioner when he fell to the floor suffering from a heat stroke. It was that exact second in time that he realized he had wasted too many precious moments in his short thirty years of life.
Is it right to protest? Is it right to progress?
The heat was unrelenting, beating down on baked grass that can’t lose anymore color as the illusion of trees shimmered in the background. I was on my knees with a trickle of sweat trailing down my spine even though my body wouldn’t quit shivering and I slowly looked up through the barrel of a gun.
Omg one day i was going to eat lunch at school(i was really hungry) and i was like third in line and i was putting food on my tray{it was my turn to pay the lunch lady} and i gave her my money and she looked on the computer and was like you already ate lunch[ remember i said this was first lunch that day] and i was like no i didnt( i was third in line) so the lunch lady{in her hair net, with grease and lord knows what else all over her apron} got up and snatched the plate of food out of my hands! My lunch was repo-d that day.
Stare into the haunting green ocean, now imagine the green was red. Look disgusted at the sharp red blood, now imagine the red was green.
Passing the gelateria I notice the chairs have taken their winter position upside down on top their tables. The chairs remind me that summer has faded, in fact long gone, and that I too should have faded from Rapallo.
She paced the floor over and over, cursing his very being, dreaming of how many ways she would tear him apart for putting her through this misery again, when he arrived home, which he always did, with a stupid look on his face and a lame excuse emanating from his lips.
No matter how much she loved him, she would teach him a lesson this time she vowed, until the knock on the front door accompanied by the two uniformed police officers, brought her world to a crashing halt.
The fish swished and twirled,twisted and whirled ,whenever you came near. He wiggled and jiggled trying to bust out as though your lips on the glass just weren’t enough.
She slapped him across the face and he quickly turned white as a ghost. She said “I’m so sorry,” then he said “so am I.”
Phoebe – a small dog who wasn’t known for her jumping abilities – wasn’t allowed on the furniture but after begging every night, her female owner finally said, “OK, Phoebe, if you can make it onto the bed by yourself, then I’ll let you stay up here.” Moments later Phoebe used all her might and jumped on the bed; her female owner turned to her husband and said, “See, I told you she speaks English.”
She could eat the heart right out of a victim, tearing the flesh, wounding to the bone, and devouring the soul.
Who said all weasels had to have four legs?
Jane looked down from the open door of the plane, her heart beating like a bass drum, and her hands grasping the sides of the doorway for dear life while the wind tried to suck her out before she could jump.
“I can’t do it” she screamed above the roaring in her ears and looking back at her jump partner, but it was too late, when she looked back her foot slid over the side and she was sucked out of the plane.
That morning was like all the other mornings, sludgy and automatic, nothing different about it at all. It wasn’t until he was at work, until the man across the counter raised the gun, that he even realized he’d woken up dead –had always been waking up dead — and that the frozen moment of watching the bullet barrel toward him was going to be the extent of his very short life.
Poised on the brink, muscles taut, back straight, Carol dives into history. Slicing the water cleanly, no ripples present, she emerges to eruptions from the crowd and the announcer proclaiming a new record set.
Her love for him was as strong as an ocean current, like a riptide pulling her farther away from him and then bouncing her back, only to have him break her heart again with all his infidelities, until she could no longer take it and in a sudden burst of clarity knew what she had to do to inflict an equal, if not greater, amount of pain on her beloved.
So on October 15th, she married him!
As the sun set on Jacaranda St, Mrs Jones cut sponge cake into squares and dipped each piece carefully into thick chocolate paste and rolled through the coconut, just as her mother once taught her. But as the shrill of the kettle peaked to a new high, Mr Jones collapsed in his chair, his biscuit falling into his coffee: he was gone at last.
With all the grace of a dying nation, she dismantled his machines and tore down his monuments. The scars, the fear, the damage he did, they will haunt her forever.
“I’m going to do this and finally show the world what I am capable of, go against all odds and get that elusive prize I keep reaching for that they keep putting out of my reach,” she said in an incomprehensible grumble as she geared herself for the brave attempt.
Lynn was on the phone ten minutes later exclaiming to her husband Ivan,” Yeah and you know what she went for when she just took her very first steps, not mommy no, the cookies up on the coffee table!”