Anomaly

The first time, it was an anomaly. Eddie was a good boy, he liked to play with Lincoln logs and Lite Brite, he didn't hurt other children. Mrs. Jenner thought the other boy was lying, taking advantage of her son's shyness, his inability to speak up for himself. The teacher made her take Eddie home, but she couldn't make her punish him.

The second time, there were more witnesses, and Mrs. Jenner was forced to concede that perhaps Eddie had--accidentally, of course--pushed Kerry Woods off the swing. But she'd asked him to propel her, hadn't she? Silently Mrs. Jenner wondered if maybe the Woods girl had even demanded it, as if Eddie were a stupid mindless drone, or a slave. She probably deserved those skinned knees.

The third time, Mrs. Jenner was there. She watched in horror as Eddie ran red-faced right into old Mrs. Gallagher's visiting grandson, knocking the small boy headfirst into a mailbox. Panicked, Mrs. Jenner glanced right and left down the street to make sure no one else had seen. Then she crossed the yard and yanked Eddie away.

"What did you do that for?" she demanded. Her fingers worked in a furious blur, but she knew Eddie could still understand.

He just shrugged in response, as if he had no idea why he was in trouble. She shook him--not hard, but perhaps a bit more roughly than she had intended.

"Don't give me that. Explain yourself. What happened?"

Again, he shrugged. She shook him once more.

"Edward Michael Jenner," she spelled out, her hands shaking almost too badly to be legible. "Say something. Say something right now!"

For a moment, he stared at her. Then he opened his mouth and said, "Mnuuuh."

She exhaled frustration. "That's not what I meant and you know it," she signed sharply. But now the little Gallagher boy was stirring, and she rushed over to pretend she had been attending him all along.

"Eh... Eddie?" the boy asked groggily.

"Shh, sweetie, don't talk," Mrs. Jenner said. "Eddie can't hear you anyway. He's deaf."

Maelstrom

A maelstrom blustered through Carraway County one Wednesday morning, relocating cows, trees, cars, and the small ramshackle shanty of a post office. Everyone including Postmaster Muddle, whose mustache was the only bit of hair on his head still brown, hoped that the rickety wooden structure would collapse, and they watched through their basement windows as the storm pushed it around like a playground bully: hard enough to make a point, but just shy of getting in trouble with the teacher. Little did this bully know that the teacher--the whole town, in fact--was on its side.

Fulminate

My mind, I'm told, issues forth the same safe ideas day after day. How am I supposed to react? (I like that we could move away from a rupture with such ease.) She constantly tells me what to do, and it's my least favorite thing about her. (I said you two were similar.) I know you're both trying to help, but perhaps it is you, then, who need to think in a new way.

Canard

She spins lies about me in her head, and I don't know why. There is no mutual enmity. There was no warning sign. All I ever saw coming were the tears in my eyes.

Sotto voce

He felt as if his entire brain were underwater; all his thoughts were muted, spoken in an undertone that he could barely hear much less comprehend. He blinked once, twice, and shook his head, but nothing cleared out, everything between his ears still felt like cotton candy. He growled in frustration.

"I hate being sick."

His mother emerged from the kitchen with a steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup. "I know, baby, I know."

Gadzookery

"I have to confess; I'm in awe. The way you plan these stories, the action, the puzzle pieces that fit together so perfectly. Is it something you worked at? Were born with? Can teach?

"I don't want to be you, or just like you, but I think there's a lot I could learn from you. I think my writing would improve a lot. It's very important to me, you know?"

But the woman did not answer, for she was not actually there.

Ziggurat

She climbed to the top of the ancient stone steps, her rapid breaths keeping pace with her feet. she doesn't know what awaits her at the top: her father, missing for the past 6 years; the secret to the curse that has besieged her village of late; or the most valuable jewel in the world. But the seer said it was one of those three, and no matter what it cost, she must be the first to retrieve it. If not... The seer had set his mouth in a grim line.

If not, all is lost.

Pillory

His mind was his pillory. He was shackled, guilt-bound, unable to escape the humiliation. Memories cuffed him, ran around freely as if mocking him. He didn't know how long his sentence was, but he feared it would last his whole life, and he was quite sure that he could not bear. "Leave me be," he begged in a whisper each night before he surrendered himself to sleep, to his subconscious. "Plesae, let me be this time."

Vindicate

He planned to get his. They thought it was so funny to play him this way, but what would they think when they learned he'd been playing them first? He grinned at the thought as he wiped blood from the corner of his mouth. Yes, he thought, this would be worth it in the end. So, so worth it.

Ashram

I left on this retreat a young man full of curiosity and hope. I wanted to find peace, with the world and with myself. I thought, where better than the mountains where Nature reigns? I sought to snatch my enlightenment, to grasp it if not by force, then by determination. But it doesn't work that way. Now I am old and I have lived and I have learned. Now I am at peace. And it has nothing to do with mountains.

Imbricate

The layers of silence create an intricate web over her heart, and it beats so softly, so sedately sometimes, that she barely knows it still works. When she lashes out, she is not surprised to find resistance, but how can she explain how desperately she needs to sever these binds? She is like the injured bird who has been touched by human hands. She is like the bird who fell from the next and survived. She is trying to fly back home.

Fiduciary

We hold one another in trust, and so I overlook my fitful dreams. They speak to me of repressed desires, friendships neglected, and horrors no one should witness or remember. What does it all mean? My guess is nothing at all. Not in this context, not in our picture. We hold each other in trust, and at the beginning and end of the day, that is all I need.

Mettlesome

I wish I could turn it off, that part of me I can't control. She cries and she feels irrationally, and she's been hurt so sometimes she hurts back. She interferes. She desperately wants, but she doesn't know how to be. She isn't me. I try to prove every day, she isn't me.

Subpoena

I wish I could see the look on his face, she thought viciously. Her mouth watered as she imagined how satisfying his apprehension would be. They'd spent days tracking and locating him, long days feeding only on hope, weak leads, and the desire for revenge. Now they would have him -- served -- on a platter, so to speak.

But what if it all amounts to nothing? a small voice asked inside her head.

Cerebral

Maybe I'm thinking this too much.

Hobbit

Maybe we all have someone small hidden inside us.

Maybe I let her out.

Promulgate

What have I done? What have I said? What does it mean to have traded roles with her? And how do I let go? How do I pretend it doesn't make me worry, doesn't make me sick? (What if it's an open declaration of war?) This is why I kept quiet. I don't want to be the bad guy.

Bedizen

Sarah and I were never little girls together. We never played dress-up, we never made believe. We never did each other's hair or whispered or giggled in each other's ears. We never slept over, and we never lent each other clothes.

I didn't meet Sarah until we were both old, but it was like a lifetime of recognition in the span of a few minutes. We wouldn't have looked much like each other when we were young, but with white hair, curved spines, and wrinkled smiles, we can be sisters. Sometimes it seems pointless, living this long. But then I look over at Sarah, and I realize it doesn't matter. At least I'm not alone.

Slantindicular

We used to lie in the slanted light that fell in through the blinds. We used to look at each other through slanted eyes, always watching, always wary. We used to tell each other slanted stories, favoring ourselves, forgetting we were both on the same side. We used to be such a slanted thing, but now we've found our balance.

Ambrosia

I wonder now if it's a metaphor, if in truth the most delectable treat is this, mortality, the lives we take for granted. We love and we fight and we explore and we unite. Our bodies slide off one another's, and we feel the sweat and taste the heat. There can be nothing else, I think. Nothing better, nothing more. This life is the food of the gods, it's what they long for.

Malinger

Her story doesn't fit with the others', but she has never lied before. The principal gives the whole line-up a once-over with his beady eyes, and their earrings, tattoos, and mohawks tell him that the girl must be in the right. Why would she ever join ranks with the likes of them? Even looks don't deceive that much.

Gallimaufry

"Not many left," he said with a frown.

"Well whadja expec'?" the man with the eye patch asked gruffly. "Come this late, yer boun' to get slim pickin's."

"Slim?" the other man echoed. "Downright emaciated, more like."

The man with the eye patch snorted. "Yer problem, lad. Not mine."

The first man sighed because he couldn't argue, and he continued to examine the stock. "There's almost nothing here I can even use."

"Will ya be wantin' some cheese with that wine, sir?"

The first man glared but -- wisely -- held his tongue.

Divers

The attic was full of divers treasures that Caitlin had seen only once before. As she moved around the dusty space, ducking to avoid crossbeams and cobwebs, she wished her grandfather were here again to take her by the hand and show her each item he had collected. She recognized the porcelain gourd from China, the elephant tusk from Africa, the large hunk of Stone from Berlin. As a girl she'd been transfixed by her grandfather's wild tales of adventure and secret missions. And then she'd been heartbroken when he sighed at the end and said in a dull monotone, "Now, Catie, this is all make-believe, of course." She'd felt slightly betrayed, as if the stories were lies rather than harmless entertainment.

Only now, twenty years later, when two men in dark suits and darker shades showed up at her door with a carefully folded American flag, did she realize the truth. Her grandfather had lied, but not about what she had once thought.

Tsunami

Her body aches, but she hardly dares to move. Even now, even with the anger and the hurt, even now she doesn't want to disturb him.

Her eyes focus on the alarm clock. still almost half an hour of sleep she could get, if only her mind would quiet. But he doesn't seem to notice her silence, and she doesn't know any other way to make herself heard. So she loses yet another memory in the tsunami of frustrated desires.

Conciliate

The monster couldn't understand her words. "Please don't hurt me. I'm only looking for my friend." She may as well have been hurling the nastiest insults and meanest threats, from the way its enormous red eyes glared at her from across the cavern. She sidled along the cool wall of stone, keeping one eye on the best at all times, and the other on the small opening by his right hoof. If she could just make it to that hole...

Suddenly the monster charged. She abandoned the cave wall and screamed in terror. As she ran for her life, the contents of her pouch flew out, falling to the hard dirt floor. She thought about recovering the pendant... then she thought about Michael, lost, hurt and afraid. She ran for the hole and never looked back.

If she had, she would have seen the terrible beast rooting around on the floor with its great snout. He had discovered the chocolates among the stash she had lost. He was content to let her go.

Excursion

"Her new children's book is an excursion into a fantastical world where nothing is what it seems to be and everything appears to be what it is not."

And that's what the masses have fallen in love with. That's the kind of magic I want to create -- but not necessarily for children. Don't we all deserve an escape? All it takes is a little suspension of disbelief on your part, and a lot of planning, practice, and passion on mine.

Haywire

The first signs are a dull ache radiating from my temples and sudden dryness of the mouth. I lie back and try to wait it out. I think of you, of what you'd say to me if you were here. I wonder if you'd be concerned.

When the worst passes, I stand up and walk around, as if to assure myself that I still can. Maybe someday I won't be able to. Somehow I'm not sure you'd stick around for that, for me.

Aerodyne

He stood on the ledge of the roof staring down at his fate. There was no way around it: he had to jump. When he did, one of two things would happen, and either one would be the end of everything as he knew it.

Gravamen

There weren't specific signs she could point to -- no lipstick stains on the collar or strange panties on the bedroom floor -- but there were things that weren't. Silences. Distance. Darkness. He didn't shout or hit, but he never said nice things. He'd stopped laughing at her jokes. He'd started sleeping with his back to her. She missed his smile, his arms, his warmth.

She'd waited patiently, for a time. She had hoped for the best, though perhaps while preparing for the worst. She had grinned and beared and stared blankly through the nights at the ceiling fan as it turned overhead. But nothing had changed.

So now she was packing, and crying, and saying goodbye. She sighed as she drove away. The sun was in her eyes, but it felt so good to finally be back in the light. Lonely and painful, but good.

Per contra

You were always my opposition, the dark knight to my shining dais. Didn't you ever tire of our routine, of the tears and the fists and the frustrations? Didn't you ever wonder how I slept at night?

But I guess that's never really been your concern.

Quaff

In my dreams, Madrid was not as I remember. It was small and dirty and dangerous, and not the home I feel in my heart, though I desperately wanted it to be. I tried to drink in the language and the places, tried to dish them out carefully. But before I really got a chance, it was all over, and it left a thick sour taste in my mouth.