It occurred to me during our second date that Mike didn’t exist in real time.
When we first met, he was friendly—cruelty-free, like a human-sized rabbit. We ate at a sub shop, but first, he drove us backwards through the drive-thru of a shuttered restaurant. Big, white truck built for long hauls and first impressions. The perfect way to convey unspecified wants.
Ensign Ronda-12 tapped the door to the ready room as she entered. Her long, slender legs devoured the space to Captain Blade’s desk in five strides. The captain arched his eyebrows. “Sir,” she said, “you have to exempt Lt. Hickok from the Jalatis Large landing team.” More arching. She wondered if a human’s eyebrows could ever touch their hairline. “It’s too dangerous.”
Magnificently justified, she teeters on the parapet of her limestone tower. The herd lows below, and in the autumn air all stands still except for Tom, who has spied her from a distance and now is racing to her rescue. Her foot shifts and slips a bit, sending down a pebble cascade, but her heart is strong, and she refuses to be petrified. She stares straight ahead at the hillside, where leaves fall from their trees, drifting, dropping, like children’s valentines into makeshift paper-bag mailboxes taped to her classroom wall many years before. Cards of teddy bears with hearts, Hello Kitty with hearts, blooming flowers with hearts, circus lions proclaiming, “You’re purr-fect!” Suppressing squeals, children scurry. Others’ bags fill up. In hers, not one. Eyes anchored on the hillside, all she sees is disregard. That and the teacher frowning with pity for poor Samantha San Gabriel, so shy and so odd.
Muffy had a feeling her relationship with her boyfriend was on rocky ground when he professed he loved her with most of his heart.
“Come on now, darlin’. I gotta keep a little of myself in reserve. Who knows when the next Dolly Parton might show up looking for a guy like me? There’s not a single red-blooded American man worth his salt who wouldn’t want a piece of that action.”
Starry-eyed couples who take moonlight strolls along the Sea of Love do so at the risk of their hormone-driven happiness; for the beach along Sea Of Love is littered with “Globsters”–those unidentifiable, high smelling, amorphous sacks of putrescent goo–which, to paraphrase the words of the Munchkin Coroner, are not just really dead, but are most sincerely dead.
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Elmer Fudd’s laugh speeded up ten-thousand times comes close to describing the sound of a woodpecker beaking the holy hell out of a metal chimney cap. A pneumatic “uh-huh-huh-huh-huh,” with a little “phu-bub-buh-tuth,” thrown in for variety, gives you the soul of the thing. Wikipedia calls this behaviour drumming.
Continue reading “The Woodpecker Telegraph System by Leila Allison”
We live in Gino’s Café, Beaufort South Carolina, Minerva and I. Here’s the reason why I called her that, before you start a-wondering too: the moment she came out of me, she already had this face like she’s thinking about something all the time, so Gino said to call her Minerva – ‘Like the goddess of Wisdom,’ he says – and I did. It’s not like there was anyone else around to offer me a different name.
They never tell you how hard it is to love someone. Or how hard it is to be loved.
The first person you ever think you love is the shift manager of the restaurant of your first job. He’s twenty, four years older than you, and you don’t even know him. He doesn’t know you. All you remember about this first love, the one you aren’t ever supposed to forget, is that your first kiss was a shotgun hit of weed that turned into tongues and teeth mashed together, that later he vomited tequila in the sink and then you fucked in the spare room of your friend’s house. You were so drunk you didn’t realize you started your period and it looked like a crime scene, which seems appropriate now. Anymore, sex and love seem like crime.
Continue reading “I’ll Tell You Your History by L’Erin Ogle”
When I heard the front door close I dashed to the window. From behind the lace curtain I watched Lilly-Anne skip down the steps onto the street. Palpitations fluttered in my chest, my arrhythmia raced like a motor-cross Kawasaki skidding sideways across sand. She walked along the street in black low-heeled shoes, light blue stockings and her coat flapped with each step exposing her knees, her handbag hung over a shoulder. Those lips glistened with gloss; no colour, such a pale face. She looked ill. I groaned, perhaps her boss will give her the day off; I wished. She made her way along the road out of my view.
I sat down and began my breathing mantra; in for five seconds and out for five until I calmed myself sufficiently to let the pulsating surge in my groin subside. My hands no longer shook and I could pick up my coffee.
Hello there folks! Here we are at week 169.
I also see that we are close to 183 000 hits. C’moan guys, it will be brilliant to get to 200 000 as quick as possible. We could get there quicker if any of us had a kitten doing cute things or a fucking idiot singing ‘My Boy Lollipop’ at a graveside’ (Check it out on Facetube – It really does make me proud to be Scottish!
…Sarcasm is so under used these days!!!)
I think anyone who has read any of these posts will be aware that I don’t have much regard for romantic stories.
Continue reading “Week 169 – Romance, Realism And Spoiling The Moment”
literally stories 