short-story

...And on my fourth morning in Naples, I woke up alone. There was a note on the table with the breakfast that Cinzia had quietly prepared for me. It read, "It could never be. But that's why it will always be - perfectly divine. Cinzia" City Solipsism: A Short Story

He admired bears because everyone was afraid to disturb them while they slept and fish were so in love with bears that they jumper right into their mouths. He ate meat and never felt bad about it unless he saw how the animal was slaughtered or if the meat was not cooked properly but he thought thrice about killing bus.

[Anger] gave him the soul to keep fighting no matter how many times the world seemed bent on destroying him. He may be a broken young man, but he would never be a defeated one

Without direction, the respiratory technician goes to the head of the bed. She takes the tubing, attaches it to the oxygen, and turns it on as high as it will go. She provides a seal with her hand cupped over the plastic mask, over the nose and mouth of the toddler, and methodically provides oxygenated air. Doyle__ tiny chest rises and falls while I listen with my stethoscope. I am reaching for another breathing tube.__ib!_ Dr. Pedras feels for a pulse while another places gelled pads on her chest.

First contact comes not by hand of man, but by metal of machine.

I don't want to be a machine, and I don't want to think about war," EPICAC had written after Pat's and my lighthearted departure. "I want to be made out of protoplasm and last forever so Pat will love me. But fate has made me a machine. That is the only problem I cannot solve. That is the only problem I want to solve. I can't go on this way." I swallowed hard. "Good luck, my friend. Treat our Pat well. I am going to shortcircuit myself out of your lives forever. You will find on the remainder of this tape a modest wedding present from your friend, EPICAC.

Perhaps he found it strange being accompanied by a Chinese-Nigerian arms trafficking pirate, but the Irish priest had just followed me silently on board the covert government transport.

They turned on themselves, like a feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes. Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass.

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz

My name is Patricia Lauren Bordeaux, and I, like my creator before me, am a very lonely vampire.

He stood just near the club__ steps, his back to me along the foggy English night, and it was not until I__ passed him and began my ascent of the many steps that I__ heard his voice. The voice I knew, in all my years of living upon the Earth, that I would never forget. Even then I had known this. It was the slippery way of his tongue, or perhaps it was the coolness of which his words passed across the air and slid its way into my ears as though they were only meant for me.

I hate this night. I hate that it makes me a person so truly removed from the real me; this man who sits in silence in his parlor _ purposely quarantined from his family _ is not who I want to be. But on Halloween night, this awful impostor wafts over me like morning fog, and I know there__ no resisting him. Like one anticipates the common cold brought on by a harsh winter, I know this broken and terrified man will soon be visiting when the evening of October 31st falls upon us. And on this yearly autumn night, he will sit and drink. And remember.

He walked steadily, feeling them behind him. His stride did not falter; he pretended they weren__ there. He pretended that all was well__hat those hideous things knew nothing about what he had done earlier in the night. But each pumpkin he passed nearly leapt off its porch or railing or wooden chair, expanded and morphed and throbbed as if in a funhouse mirror, and joined the procession behind him. The wind picked up, suddenly and fiercely, and construction paper decorations adorning the houses that surrounded him flapped helplessly against their doors and windows. The man ducked against the cold wind, and from the pursuing army of the jack-o_-lanterns behind him. Cardboard skeletons with fastener joints and witches with shredded yarn hair and ghosts with cotton ball sheets and black crayon eyes escaped their thumbtacks and scotch tape and newspaper twine and they flashed and danced in his face. He brushed at them desperately with his hands, attempting to tear a hole through them and escape.

The last clear thought I have is of my grandmother__ rust-colored wall clock ticking away in the darkness of my apartment__y sanctuary where I dreamed and desired and hoped for goodness and love. I wonder how long that clock will tick without anyone around to hear it. I wonder if maybe I should have taken my grandmother__ silverware or jewelry instead. I wonder _ if I knew then what I know now _ if I still would have approached Jade that first night and invited her into my life, only to watch as she took it from me and fed it to some Godless thing, as my mother had called it. Would I still have given myself over to her, knowing it would end the same way, with the barbaric flicker of hope that this time she could love me?

The heart's the trouble. It knows the monster but remembers the love.

I__ an old man, now. I__e been alone since my 17th birthday. I__ wanted to marry, have a bunch of kids, and maybe be a grandpa. The big family around the Thanksgiving table, laughing and pouring wine and cracking jokes and harmlessly teasing the missus__ wanted that. I wanted to do something good with my life__omething right. I didn__ want what happened to Danny, my best childhood friend, to be the only mark I__ ever make in this world. But I thought it best not to fancy such hopes and dreams: a family, love. I__ been cursed by my best friend, and I thought it right not to inflict that curse on anyone who__ be foolish enough to love me.

As the thing came closer, what was left of Nick__ body became revealed and I could see how the dead boy__ eyes had bled from the trauma inflicted upon him; they dripped with steady succession onto the floor between his splayed legs. He looked like a rejected marionette tossed haphazardly in the corner by a frustrated puppeteer, his head drooping so low that his chin rested against his chest. His motionless arms lay at his sides, both of them squeezed into tight fists, as if he__ died futilely trying to defend himself.

I told you. I__e been watching._ She twirled, her arms outstretched. __atching, watching, watching.