My husband and I never thought much of it. Just sort of figured our little girl would grow out this phase and in a few months, her closed laptop would gather the dust her dolls, her princess costumes, and her boy-band CD’s have been gathering for years. It never happened though, and each day she’d spend hours and hours staring blankly into the bright white of the screen, “liking” and commenting her Facebook statuses with increasing persistence. I got myself a Facebook, and saw that she was literally narrating every detail of her life with status updates like “Just brushed my teeth, time for floss,” followed by, “Done flossing, but my hair looks a little messy today. Blow drier? Yep.” It got worse and worse until she started carrying her laptop with her wherever she went, telling the world when she was “on her third forkful of lasagna” or “about to go make a number two!”
One day she woke up and her wrists had fused themselves on either side of the laptop’s touchpad. The worst part? She didn’t even mind. Do you understand? Her wrists—the soft, flexible skin of her wrists had somehow become welded to the black plastic of the computer. She had become part of the machine.
My husband couldn’t handle it, and to cope, he just started eating. I couldn’t make much sense of it, as what our daughter was doing had nothing to do with food. But he would walk in from work, see our girl lying on her back with her arms and opened laptop above her, and he would b-line to the refrigerator. He’d open the door and begin devouring everything he could, emptying the fruit drawer, the vegetable drawer, leaving pits and stems in a heap on the hardwood floor. He even began squirting full bottles of ketchup and squeeze-mayonnaise into his mouth and swallowing. Sometimes he’d be crying, his eyes dripping and turning fire-red. But he’d shovel through it all, glancing over occasionally to our little girl, letting out a moan and reaching for an unopened bag of multi-grain bread or the meatloaf I'd been defrosting for dinner.
The woman sat outside of the gas station watching men pass by as she breathed in the smoke of cars’ exhaustion pipes and the cigarettes still somewhat lit in the outdoor ashtray. She rubbed her nose with her hand, feeling globs of snot stuck to her skin and saw in the car mirror reflection that her mascara had bled into the old crusty purple eye shadow. She wanted to do something about it, to grab the makeup that sat around in the store and reapply everything. Maybe even brush her knotted blonde hair so that when men entered the store they would smile at her instead of looking away. Then she could enter the dating world again after her husband divorced her for reasons he didn’t want her to know. Her break ended when a customer entered the store at the gas station and she instantly became the cashier, constantly scanning items and looking at the window to make sure that no one with gun and a mask enters. The cashier walked back facing the woman with her fluffy winter coat and red formal dress. She slammed a couple of Twinkies, a bottle of coke, and asked for a carton of cigarettes. The cashier looked at the woman to see her crying as well. Her makeup was starting to bleed down her face and she kept sniffling and breathing rapidly. “You know what sucks is that he didn’t even let me know. All this time and he could have fricking call me to let me,” the woman cried, pulling out another tissue. The cashier looked up from her register and bit her lip unsure what to say next. She wasn’t good at being the one to comfort those unfortunate, which is probably why her marriage failed. “I mean what am I supposed to do now? I can’t take care of him like this when I’ve got others to feed. I bet he is just doing this to get back at me for catching him with another woman. I should have divorced his ass a long time ago,” the woman continued. “That will be---” the cashier began. The woman looked up waiting for the cashier to speak but then a small child wearing her Sunday best walked in with vomit all over her coat. “Daddy threw up again,” the child cried. “Gosh darn it, not again. All right Elle Jean go to the bathroom and wash up. I’ll clean it up,” the woman said. The child nodded her head and went to the ladies’ room as the woman paid for her cigarettes, Twinkies, and coke.
*This post is actually a lot longer, not what I intended it to be.
The fat pools began when I was 12. It was almost like looking at oil in a parking lot but a lot chunkier. It was like when milk curdles. I wasn't sure what it was when I was younger but now I know. As America has been on a diet these pools have gotten larger. The chunks mingle with leftover rain water or get eaten by the feral cats in the neighborhood. The other day I went to the local Stop and Shop for a tuna steak and I saw the pool actually form. The woman in front of me was quite literally waddling into the store and her hips must have been just as wide as she was tall. Her tight black pants did not do her justice either, and you should have seen the shoes. The little sandals were actually buried under what should have been a foot. That's when I saw it though, right when I was looking at her foot. It squirted out, clear water mixed with those little white chunks.
After this I noticed it everywhere. Every woman wearing those black pants always had the trail of ooze down on their puffy bloated ankles. I used to avoid them, walk out of the Stop and Shop or ask to be seated at another table, but I started getting used to it. I am actually thinking about buying a pair of the black pants. I wonder what it would do to me. If it makes them look skinny would it turn me into a model? Or is there a limit. I wonder sometimes what the cats will eat when all of America has lost it's lard out their ankles. I guess they'll survive.
“Competition” – By Ryan Wilk When Vinay and Matt started their racquetball game everything was completely normal. The score was when Vinay and Matt started their racquetball game everything was completely normal. The score was 0-0, Matt hit the ball down to the wall multiple times and Vinay couldn’t return his shots. 4-0 Matt was winning. As Matt began to serve, Vinay prepared himself to in the shot. I’m not letting him win another shot. After the serve, the ball bounced down just out of Vinay’s reach. Vinay’s anger grew. A flame burst from his shoulders. For a split second Vinay’s entire body was emitting a flame upward. The flame rose upward and was burning on his body, but it didn’t burn him. Vinay lunged forward at superhuman speed, and returned the ball to the wall, and rolled off it, impossible for Matt to return. The flame over Vinay disappeared. That’s right. Release your anger. This is where the real game begins. Matt thought. It was Vinay’s serve. Vinay served the ball. Matt returned it. Vinay returned it so the ball was low to the wall, and it would be extremely difficult to get. Matt lit on fire. He dove towards the ball and returned the shot with equal difficulty for Vinay to get it. Vinay lit on fire; he ran up to the wall and returned the shot with extreme power. Still burning Matt ran over to the ball at lightning fast speed to return the shot which still burning Vinay managed to return. As the heated rally grew longer, the flames burning over Vinay and Matt grew larger, and hotter. Soon the whole room they were playing in was a blazing inferno that didn’t affect the ball or the racquets. When the rally finally ended, all the flames disappeared. When the next rally started, the flames of their competition grew even larger, and hotter.
We found the creature in the alley way behind our apartment, under the rotting wooden stairs. We weren't sure what it was -- a dog, maybe a cat, probably something in between. It had large eyes. It made chirping sounds like a bird. It had fur and four tiny little legs, but it sat on its haunches in a very human-like way, the two front feet clasped in front of its chest almost as in prayer. Most importantly, it was dirty and little and alone. I looked at him with with the same look it gave me, the large, watering eyes. I almost made the mewing sound, but left it in the back of my throat. Of course, we brought it inside. I carried it; he looked on with disgust as he held our back door open. The creature was surprisingly heavy, like a small bundle of bricks, and by the time I got to the top of the seventeen rotting steps, I was practically panting. He just looked on. After I had given it a bath, its mewing stopped, and it sat in its queer way in our tub, blinking up at me. "It can be ours," I whispered, knowing he was standing behind me. "It can be like a baby." I felt the ache in my stomach. I felt the weight of insufficiency. And from behind me, I could practically feel him nod.
Weeks went by, and then months, then a year. The thing never grew, never made much noise, never moved much (but when it did, it would stand up on its back two legs and lope short distances). But he fell in love with it like I had. At first, I was overjoyed. We took it to the park. We fed it grapes (its favorite) on a white and red checkered blanket under a shady willow on sunny days. On rainy days, we tucked it between us and watched foreign films I never quite understood. When we slept, we kept it on a little canopy bed at the foot of our own bed. It slept soundly every night. I'm not sure if I can pinpoint a certain time when things changed. Maybe we went to bed one way and woke up the next. Maybe it took months to happen. But he started loving it more than I did. He would give it baths, he would brush its fur laboriously, for hours. He quit his job just to sit with it, the damn creature which never even did anything except make a little noise once in a while, move from one position to another. When it would adjust a foot, when it would make a little sigh, you think it would've told him the secret to life, the way he squealed with joy. Slowly, I was pushed out of his life to make room for the creature. The creature needed more space between us on the rainy, movie days. The creature needed more space on the picnic blanket, so I had to bring my own towel to sit on, a couple feet away from them. Last night, he looked at me, our bed, it, its bed, and I knew. He laid it on my side, tucking it in with my blankets, letting it rest its ugly strange little head on my own pillow. I used its miniature bed like a pillow that night, and in the morning when I woke up, the creature and my husband had already gone out for a picnic.
Last week, the volunteer fire department pulled a woman out of the apartment next door who had fused to her couch. She was honest-to-god skin and fabric fibers intertwined, and they had to cut through the couch ends and carry her out still attached. The local newspaper reported that she was taken away in an ambulance, and the fire fighters and EMTs all wore protective clothing commonly associated with chemical spills to avoid the human waste, and gas masks to avoid the smell. Doctors at St. Ambrose Hospital are working around the clock to cut her out, but it’s like taking seam rippers to skin and scalpels to tacky curtains. It’s all jumbled up, and no one really knows how to handle the couch lady, or what to say to her when they break her free.
It was hard being raised by wolves. Abandoned by my family at a young age, I was left in the woods where a pack of wolves found me and took me in as if I were their own. But when it was time for me to move on and go to school and get a job, I had no idea what to do. I didn't know how to speak or read and write. I had no people skills. I was a complete outcast. The kids at school would make fun of me for walking on all fours and call me Wolfman. It took me years to get hang of being a human. But the worst part was the fact that wolves have no manners. We never close the door when we walk in some place. Wear hats in the house or in church. Don't cover our mouths when we cough. "What were you raised by wolves?" people would ask. It was hard.
He jumps... A great skydive, off a great cliff. He feels the cool air rush past his face, his arms, his legs. He's wearing a spedo, it's quite chilly as he descends. I wonder why he wears so little, isn't he cold? He falls faster than ever, through the clouds. Did he even once think about how he would land? The moisture in the thin air clings to his body as he plummets ever closer to the cold, dry earth. He strikes it an epic fashion, a split second before he splats. His soul leaves his body as he thinks why he jumped in the first place. It was an adrenaline rush that lasted the final two minutes of his life. He has a time machine though, and he goes back in time. He is alive and standing atop a great mountain. He is wears a fleece shirt with a parachute firmly strapped to his back. He looks down, and becomes excited for his jump. His feet leave the rocky cliffside as he once again falls earthward. He feels the cool air coarse across his face, but alas... he forgot his pants.
My neighbor's house was in flames the other day when I came home from work. I stopped by after made dinner, when the flames were mostly extinguished. There was my neighbor and his wife, and I guess you could call it their child. It had hair everywhere, bulging out of the sleeves of his short-sleeve t-shirt and poking out between the bottom of his jeans and his sneakers. The eyes were permanently crossed, and the arms stopped way before the waist, his hands falling at the bottom of the ribs. I had never seen such short arms on anyone. I asked them if they needed a place to stay for a couple of days, while they tried to get their bearings and find a new house to live in. They had no belongings left as most of it had been burnt in the fire, so we just headed to my house, diagonally across the street. For the first couple of days, everything is fine. My neighbor and his wife are pleasant enough, helping out with the chores, and the child stays out of the way. But more and more I realize the little animal dropping all over my house, in the basement and behind the TV, like there's a deer living in my house. I find hairballs on the bathroom floor, but I am allergic to cats. The child never eats with us at dinner, but I'm finding more and more that my garbage can is overturned at night, and there's something eating all of my trash and thrown out leftovers. The child starts to look more and more suspicious. I can hear it growling sometimes, quietly to itself, as it stares at a mirror. It's amazed by the sight of itself, doesn't understand what it is I think. I have to get these people out of my house. But the neighbor and his wife are so nice, and they act like the child isn't there. The ignore the growling, the droppings, everything. But then I wake up one morning, and it's all gone. The house is too quiet, it smells to nice, and I get a swooping feeling in my stomach when I go outside and the garbage is standing straight up, no sign of animals. I go back inside and stare at myself in the mirror, amazed at what I'm seeing.
Around him, there was nothing but snow. He had given up all hope for survival by now, waiting to die in the frostbitten air of the mountains. How had he gotten here anyway? He had ventured into the woods one afternoon determined to find her. He had seen a girl dart behind the trees and knew he had to see her, talk to her if he could. He'd been here for days, drowning in sheets of ice and snow just beyond the ski resort he had abandoned to find her. He clung to a ridge, his hands nearly frozen solid as he attempted to hold his own weight against the weight of the ice. He saw her everywhere, her reflection in sheets of ice, her eyes in flecks of snow that fell in front of his eyes. He searched for days until he was too weak to go on any further. He set himself down beneath a tree, and as he began to shut his eyes, saw her in the tree he sat under.
I went to school on a Saturday and wondered when the world would end. Jack had said that the forecast called for sun for the next week, and had guessed that it would wait until sometime after that. There couldn’t be weather if there wasn’t a world. But I still remembered the forecast calling for sun when the last flood hit, so his predictions are worth less than the paper they’re printed on. I figured at the time that the end could come any damn well time it pleased, even if I didn’t bother to tell that to Jack.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I never thought much of it. Just sort of figured our little girl would grow out this phase and in a few months, her closed laptop would gather the dust her dolls, her princess costumes, and her boy-band CD’s have been gathering for years. It never happened though, and each day she’d spend hours and hours staring blankly into the bright white of the screen, “liking” and commenting her Facebook statuses with increasing persistence. I got myself a Facebook, and saw that she was literally narrating every detail of her life with status updates like “Just brushed my teeth, time for floss,” followed by, “Done flossing, but my hair looks a little messy today. Blow drier? Yep.” It got worse and worse until she started carrying her laptop with her wherever she went, telling the world when she was “on her third forkful of lasagna” or “about to go make a number two!”
ReplyDeleteOne day she woke up and her wrists had fused themselves on either side of the laptop’s touchpad. The worst part? She didn’t even mind. Do you understand? Her wrists—the soft, flexible skin of her wrists had somehow become welded to the black plastic of the computer. She had become part of the machine.
My husband couldn’t handle it, and to cope, he just started eating. I couldn’t make much sense of it, as what our daughter was doing had nothing to do with food. But he would walk in from work, see our girl lying on her back with her arms and opened laptop above her, and he would b-line to the refrigerator. He’d open the door and begin devouring everything he could, emptying the fruit drawer, the vegetable drawer, leaving pits and stems in a heap on the hardwood floor. He even began squirting full bottles of ketchup and squeeze-mayonnaise into his mouth and swallowing. Sometimes he’d be crying, his eyes dripping and turning fire-red. But he’d shovel through it all, glancing over occasionally to our little girl, letting out a moan and reaching for an unopened bag of multi-grain bread or the meatloaf I'd been defrosting for dinner.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe woman sat outside of the gas station watching men pass by as she breathed in the smoke of cars’ exhaustion pipes and the cigarettes still somewhat lit in the outdoor ashtray. She rubbed her nose with her hand, feeling globs of snot stuck to her skin and saw in the car mirror reflection that her mascara had bled into the old crusty purple eye shadow. She wanted to do something about it, to grab the makeup that sat around in the store and reapply everything. Maybe even brush her knotted blonde hair so that when men entered the store they would smile at her instead of looking away. Then she could enter the dating world again after her husband divorced her for reasons he didn’t want her to know.
ReplyDeleteHer break ended when a customer entered the store at the gas station and she instantly became the cashier, constantly scanning items and looking at the window to make sure that no one with gun and a mask enters. The cashier walked back facing the woman with her fluffy winter coat and red formal dress. She slammed a couple of Twinkies, a bottle of coke, and asked for a carton of cigarettes. The cashier looked at the woman to see her crying as well. Her makeup was starting to bleed down her face and she kept sniffling and breathing rapidly.
“You know what sucks is that he didn’t even let me know. All this time and he could have fricking call me to let me,” the woman cried, pulling out another tissue. The cashier looked up from her register and bit her lip unsure what to say next. She wasn’t good at being the one to comfort those unfortunate, which is probably why her marriage failed.
“I mean what am I supposed to do now? I can’t take care of him like this when I’ve got others to feed. I bet he is just doing this to get back at me for catching him with another woman. I should have divorced his ass a long time ago,” the woman continued.
“That will be---” the cashier began. The woman looked up waiting for the cashier to speak but then a small child wearing her Sunday best walked in with vomit all over her coat.
“Daddy threw up again,” the child cried.
“Gosh darn it, not again. All right Elle Jean go to the bathroom and wash up. I’ll clean it up,” the woman said. The child nodded her head and went to the ladies’ room as the woman paid for her cigarettes, Twinkies, and coke.
*This post is actually a lot longer, not what I intended it to be.
The fat pools began when I was 12. It was almost like looking at oil in a parking lot but a lot chunkier. It was like when milk curdles. I wasn't sure what it was when I was younger but now I know. As America has been on a diet these pools have gotten larger. The chunks mingle with leftover rain water or get eaten by the feral cats in the neighborhood. The other day I went to the local Stop and Shop for a tuna steak and I saw the pool actually form. The woman in front of me was quite literally waddling into the store and her hips must have been just as wide as she was tall. Her tight black pants did not do her justice either, and you should have seen the shoes. The little sandals were actually buried under what should have been a foot. That's when I saw it though, right when I was looking at her foot. It squirted out, clear water mixed with those little white chunks.
ReplyDeleteAfter this I noticed it everywhere. Every woman wearing those black pants always had the trail of ooze down on their puffy bloated ankles. I used to avoid them, walk out of the Stop and Shop or ask to be seated at another table, but I started getting used to it. I am actually thinking about buying a pair of the black pants. I wonder what it would do to me. If it makes them look skinny would it turn me into a model? Or is there a limit. I wonder sometimes what the cats will eat when all of America has lost it's lard out their ankles. I guess they'll survive.
“Competition” – By Ryan Wilk
ReplyDeleteWhen Vinay and Matt started their racquetball game everything was completely normal. The score was when Vinay and Matt started their racquetball game everything was completely normal. The score was 0-0, Matt hit the ball down to the wall multiple times and Vinay couldn’t return his shots. 4-0 Matt was winning. As Matt began to serve, Vinay prepared himself to in the shot. I’m not letting him win another shot. After the serve, the ball bounced down just out of Vinay’s reach. Vinay’s anger grew. A flame burst from his shoulders. For a split second Vinay’s entire body was emitting a flame upward. The flame rose upward and was burning on his body, but it didn’t burn him. Vinay lunged forward at superhuman speed, and returned the ball to the wall, and rolled off it, impossible for Matt to return. The flame over Vinay disappeared. That’s right. Release your anger. This is where the real game begins. Matt thought. It was Vinay’s serve. Vinay served the ball. Matt returned it. Vinay returned it so the ball was low to the wall, and it would be extremely difficult to get. Matt lit on fire. He dove towards the ball and returned the shot with equal difficulty for Vinay to get it. Vinay lit on fire; he ran up to the wall and returned the shot with extreme power. Still burning Matt ran over to the ball at lightning fast speed to return the shot which still burning Vinay managed to return. As the heated rally grew longer, the flames burning over Vinay and Matt grew larger, and hotter. Soon the whole room they were playing in was a blazing inferno that didn’t affect the ball or the racquets. When the rally finally ended, all the flames disappeared. When the next rally started, the flames of their competition grew even larger, and hotter.
We found the creature in the alley way behind our apartment, under the rotting wooden stairs. We weren't sure what it was -- a dog, maybe a cat, probably something in between. It had large eyes. It made chirping sounds like a bird. It had fur and four tiny little legs, but it sat on its haunches in a very human-like way, the two front feet clasped in front of its chest almost as in prayer. Most importantly, it was dirty and little and alone.
ReplyDeleteI looked at him with with the same look it gave me, the large, watering eyes. I almost made the mewing sound, but left it in the back of my throat.
Of course, we brought it inside. I carried it; he looked on with disgust as he held our back door open. The creature was surprisingly heavy, like a small bundle of bricks, and by the time I got to the top of the seventeen rotting steps, I was practically panting. He just looked on.
After I had given it a bath, its mewing stopped, and it sat in its queer way in our tub, blinking up at me. "It can be ours," I whispered, knowing he was standing behind me. "It can be like a baby." I felt the ache in my stomach. I felt the weight of insufficiency.
And from behind me, I could practically feel him nod.
Weeks went by, and then months, then a year. The thing never grew, never made much noise, never moved much (but when it did, it would stand up on its back two legs and lope short distances). But he fell in love with it like I had. At first, I was overjoyed. We took it to the park. We fed it grapes (its favorite) on a white and red checkered blanket under a shady willow on sunny days. On rainy days, we tucked it between us and watched foreign films I never quite understood. When we slept, we kept it on a little canopy bed at the foot of our own bed. It slept soundly every night.
I'm not sure if I can pinpoint a certain time when things changed. Maybe we went to bed one way and woke up the next. Maybe it took months to happen. But he started loving it more than I did. He would give it baths, he would brush its fur laboriously, for hours. He quit his job just to sit with it, the damn creature which never even did anything except make a little noise once in a while, move from one position to another. When it would adjust a foot, when it would make a little sigh, you think it would've told him the secret to life, the way he squealed with joy. Slowly, I was pushed out of his life to make room for the creature. The creature needed more space between us on the rainy, movie days. The creature needed more space on the picnic blanket, so I had to bring my own towel to sit on, a couple feet away from them.
Last night, he looked at me, our bed, it, its bed, and I knew. He laid it on my side, tucking it in with my blankets, letting it rest its ugly strange little head on my own pillow. I used its miniature bed like a pillow that night, and in the morning when I woke up, the creature and my husband had already gone out for a picnic.
Last week, the volunteer fire department pulled a woman out of the apartment next door who had fused to her couch. She was honest-to-god skin and fabric fibers intertwined, and they had to cut through the couch ends and carry her out still attached. The local newspaper reported that she was taken away in an ambulance, and the fire fighters and EMTs all wore protective clothing commonly associated with chemical spills to avoid the human waste, and gas masks to avoid the smell. Doctors at St. Ambrose Hospital are working around the clock to cut her out, but it’s like taking seam rippers to skin and scalpels to tacky curtains. It’s all jumbled up, and no one really knows how to handle the couch lady, or what to say to her when they break her free.
ReplyDeleteManners
ReplyDeleteIt was hard being raised by wolves. Abandoned by my family at a young age, I was left in the woods where a pack of wolves found me and took me in as if I were their own.
But when it was time for me to move on and go to school and get a job, I had no idea what to do. I didn't know how to speak or read and write. I had no people skills. I was a complete outcast.
The kids at school would make fun of me for walking on all fours and call me Wolfman. It took me years to get hang of being a human.
But the worst part was the fact that wolves have no manners. We never close the door when we walk in some place. Wear hats in the house or in church. Don't cover our mouths when we cough.
"What were you raised by wolves?" people would ask.
It was hard.
He jumps... A great skydive, off a great cliff. He feels the cool air rush past his face, his arms, his legs. He's wearing a spedo, it's quite chilly as he descends. I wonder why he wears so little, isn't he cold? He falls faster than ever, through the clouds. Did he even once think about how he would land? The moisture in the thin air clings to his body as he plummets ever closer to the cold, dry earth. He strikes it an epic fashion, a split second before he splats.
ReplyDeleteHis soul leaves his body as he thinks why he jumped in the first place. It was an adrenaline rush that lasted the final two minutes of his life. He has a time machine though, and he goes back in time. He is alive and standing atop a great mountain. He is wears a fleece shirt with a parachute firmly strapped to his back. He looks down, and becomes excited for his jump. His feet leave the rocky cliffside as he once again falls earthward. He feels the cool air coarse across his face, but alas... he forgot his pants.
My neighbor's house was in flames the other day when I came home from work. I stopped by after made dinner, when the flames were mostly extinguished. There was my neighbor and his wife, and I guess you could call it their child. It had hair everywhere, bulging out of the sleeves of his short-sleeve t-shirt and poking out between the bottom of his jeans and his sneakers. The eyes were permanently crossed, and the arms stopped way before the waist, his hands falling at the bottom of the ribs. I had never seen such short arms on anyone.
ReplyDeleteI asked them if they needed a place to stay for a couple of days, while they tried to get their bearings and find a new house to live in. They had no belongings left as most of it had been burnt in the fire, so we just headed to my house, diagonally across the street. For the first couple of days, everything is fine. My neighbor and his wife are pleasant enough, helping out with the chores, and the child stays out of the way.
But more and more I realize the little animal dropping all over my house, in the basement and behind the TV, like there's a deer living in my house. I find hairballs on the bathroom floor, but I am allergic to cats. The child never eats with us at dinner, but I'm finding more and more that my garbage can is overturned at night, and there's something eating all of my trash and thrown out leftovers. The child starts to look more and more suspicious. I can hear it growling sometimes, quietly to itself, as it stares at a mirror. It's amazed by the sight of itself, doesn't understand what it is I think. I have to get these people out of my house.
But the neighbor and his wife are so nice, and they act like the child isn't there. The ignore the growling, the droppings, everything. But then I wake up one morning, and it's all gone. The house is too quiet, it smells to nice, and I get a swooping feeling in my stomach when I go outside and the garbage is standing straight up, no sign of animals. I go back inside and stare at myself in the mirror, amazed at what I'm seeing.
Around him, there was nothing but snow. He had given up all hope for survival by now, waiting to die in the frostbitten air of the mountains. How had he gotten here anyway? He had ventured into the woods one afternoon determined to find her. He had seen a girl dart behind the trees and knew he had to see her, talk to her if he could. He'd been here for days, drowning in sheets of ice and snow just beyond the ski resort he had abandoned to find her. He clung to a ridge, his hands nearly frozen solid as he attempted to hold his own weight against the weight of the ice. He saw her everywhere, her reflection in sheets of ice, her eyes in flecks of snow that fell in front of his eyes. He searched for days until he was too weak to go on any further. He set himself down beneath a tree, and as he began to shut his eyes, saw her in the tree he sat under.
ReplyDeleteI went to school on a Saturday and wondered when the world would end. Jack had said that the forecast called for sun for the next week, and had guessed that it would wait until sometime after that. There couldn’t be weather if there wasn’t a world. But I still remembered the forecast calling for sun when the last flood hit, so his predictions are worth less than the paper they’re printed on. I figured at the time that the end could come any damn well time it pleased, even if I didn’t bother to tell that to Jack.
ReplyDelete