Snow gently drifts from the gray sky. Last night the wind howled and the waves crashed on the beach below the cabin. Now it's calm. I make my way down the path, climbing over downed tree limbs. I reach the beach and climb over the collapsed breakwater. I make my way passed recently re-arranged driftwood, avoiding the muddiest spots of the tide ( Read more... )

John stood as far away from the casket as was possible in the small, overheated room. Yet the casket still loomed large in his vision. Three other people were with him in chapel of the funeral parlor, not including his dead father, making a total of six people who had paid their 'respects' in the past two hours. He wished more people had come. ( Read more... )

On one side of the street are two green Volkswagens, one a 1968 beetle, one a 1989 Golf. Standing between the cars are two men. One is wearing an orange beret, a yellow shirt, and black pants. The other is wearing orange pants, also a yellow shirt, and a black beret ( Read more... )

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Eight. Damn.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Seven. Damn.

Fifteen? That can't be right. Try it again.

One. Four. SHIT!

Ok. Think. You can figure out a method for this. Maybe alternating left and right. Yeah, try that!

One. Three. Two. Four. Five. Seven. Six. Eight!

And now the green ones.

In retrospect, agreeing Mary's suggestion had not been a particularly bright idea. And she now realized the idea was never hers in the first place. In the past three hours Brenda had gone over the sequence of events and was now fully aware of how her young charge had manipulated her into her current predicament ( Read more... )

Phil sat at his desk and nervously stroked his scraggly beard. The pencil in his hand trembled slightly and Phil looked at it accusingly. "I know you don't want to write this down," he said, "but I'm not giving you a choice." He bent towards the desk and his notebook and began to write ( Read more... )

It's behind you. No! Don't turn around! And keep your voice down. Do you want it to get you? Are you trying to let this beat you? Ok, then. Do what I say ( Read more... )

As the asteroid passed between the ship and the distant sun, the monitors spiked. A brief shelter from the solar wind was all it took for the ridiculously old sensor array to start recalibrating itself for some unknown scientific task. Phil pounded a fist on the armrest of his seat ( Read more... )

If I could find all the threads I've pulled out of sweaters over the years I'm sure I'd be able to knit a whole new sweater. If I could knit ( Read more... )

The band vamped. And vamped. The beat rolled across the valley as the singer turned his back on the audience. But the audience didn't mind. For those few minutes we were all audience, together watching the slow-motion ballet of the hot-air balloons slowly descending towards the stage ( Read more... )