I passed frantic
into frenetic, chasing you down hallways made emptier by your
passing. Each time you turned, I imagined your smile, pretended your
silence was other than a wound. I ran, for I did not have faith
enough to walk, but you were always ahead of me. I wept, but my tears
had no power over memory, and that was all you were. Haunting me, the
first of us to die as you’d been first in so many things and
somehow here I was, still strangled by jealous angers, still doing
everything except letting go.
“It’s not an
addiction if we only hug the once.”
They moved through
the dark woods warily. He looked about, nervous while trying to hide
the fact, while she just rubbed her arms against goosebumps as they
walked between old trees. The narrator would like to throw the word
horripilating in at this junction, simply because it doesn't get used
enough.
The author smiled
with terrible glee. “You think you understand my novel? That you
can grasp meaning from my words for your papers and theses? The truth
is that the real novel was in every word that was italicized: the
rest was merely dross.”
“You - you
started a kickstarter campaign to get my engagement ring and you
thought I’d never find out?! And the - the top tier reward is
listed as sleeping with you? You bastard!”
He was fired for
being too happy at work, as if being a mortician carried a death
sentence.
The seance got off
to a bad start when Madame Lafarge was forced to reveal to Emma that
the reason she could not contact the ghost of Emma’s dearly
departed husband was due to the fact that he wasn’t dead.
“Joe. I am aware
that it is double-parked and
in front of a fire hydrant as well, but the military think it is far
more important that they take the spacecraft away for examination
than that you wait for the pilot and give them a
ticket.”
It was that time of year. Time, the vampire felt, to find someone
with pumpkin spice blood.
They say you can find anything on the Internet, but Kelly knew that
was a lie: on the darkweb is where everything was, and it was there
that she found words that she could use to hack her boyfriend.
“You will know my successes by my silences. Deeds done to win
applause are other things entirely.”
The sky is lessened of clouds, stars visible up above like pinpricks
stabbed into a child's diorama. The snow begins to thin out as you
reach narrow, jagged mountains that stick up from the earth like
diseased teeth. The white on the ground becomes less snow and more
bones as you approach the lair of the Onli.
“It turns you that you are allergic
to … death. We have no idea how to cure that.”
“I used to be scared of you. And then
I got older, and all I wanted to do was be you when I grew up.”
“And now?”
I flexed skin that wasn’t my own.
“Now I’m terrified that I’ll never be me again.”
“Please isn’t a magic word. Not
like stop. Not like no.”
The closest I get to being religious is
when I reboot my computer after errors :)
I am too tired to be this awake.
She wore the
clothing defiantly, as though the hospital gown look was in this
year.
“You tell me you
aren’t lying when all your body does is lie to me.”
“I beg your
pardon?”
“What else do
you call dyeing your hair?”
six word story:
“I said I was
only real...”
I trusted you to
find a way to turn salvation into something more.
I keep deleting
texts posts I want to send to you. It’s not the same as how poems
would fill a garbage bin with sheets of paper. I try to clog the
recycle bin on my computer with text files, but it’s never the same
at all.
“I don’t think
I’m over you yet. Yesterday I saw a picture of a dead whale on a
beach, and it reminded me too much of you in the bath.”
“I tried so hard,” the text
whispered.
“I know,” the editor replied. “But
you are susurrusing instead of whispering. Despite your efforts at
being prose, I am afraid you are still a poem.”
I told you I was
not for sale. What I meant was that I didn’t dare admit my price.
“So much hangs
on the word if. More that most people ever know, and often more than
they ever wish to understand.”
They were
friendly, because they couldn’t afford not to be. The race of Man
was in accendance, so they were kind and gentle because that was the
only way they knew how to survive. But they knew, deep in their
hearts, that the time would come when the monopoly would begin to
fail. Man would have no time left for pets, try to cast them aside
but be unable to. They were so useful. They were the best friends of
Man despite not being human at all, and the humans would need them
all the more and not understand why they should fear.
And only then,
when things were thrown, they would thrown down in turn. They would
never play fetch again. Not in any way the humans might want.
“You
misunderstand me. I didn’t lie to you: I merely said as much truth
as I thought you could bear to hear.”
“Kill you? Oh,
I’m not doing anything so crude as that. I’m removing your
passwords: you will recall none of them and not a single one is going
to work, even your fingerprints. I imagine it will take years to get
your life back, to say nothing of a place where you were born or a
mother’s maiden name.”
“I’m sorry. I know I’ve been
transported to a magical world in search of heroes, but your spell
went wrong. Being in a reality TV show is a lot of things, but it
doesn’t make me a hero.”
“I’m sorry, but this isn’t a crop
circle. It’s a roundabout.”
"You call yourself a magician when
you've never pulled a rabbit from a hat?"
"A true magician has little desire
to unduly harm hats. Or rabbits." I smile, almost. "Or
conform to base expectations."
Co-worker: You are one of those people
who takes advantage.
Me: Only of the truth.
“Everything was
easier when I could hate you. But hate only works if we see the world
as simply as we can, and let our eyes be clouded by ignorance.”
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