We were in such good moods, we even decided to hit Todd's house for candy. Sam rang the doorbell, and when it opened, this hideous, rubber monster face roared at us. Sam screamed. Todd started laughing and took off the mask. I yelled, "Put it back on...
The Prodigal Dark morning rain Meant to fall On a prison and a schoolyard, Falling meanwhile On my mother and her old dog. How slow she shuffles now In my father’s Sunday shoes. The dog by her side Trembling with each step As he tries to keep up. I...
Though anger seems a pessimistic response to a situation, it is at root a symptom of hope: the hope that the world can be better than it is. The man who shouts every time he loses his house keys is betraying a beautiful but rash faith in a universe i...
...and Lucy." She looked like she might cry. 'What about her?' "Lucy smells like food." She nearly gagged saying it. 'Sol, all that's normal. Lucy smelled good before I turned, and now she smells even better. But I haven't tried to eat her face and n...
Currently, the Library of Congress houses eighteen million books. American publishers add another two hundred thousand titles to this stack each year. This means that at the current publishing rate, ten million new books will be added in the next fif...
The maid told him that a girl and a child had come looking for him, but since she didn't know them, she hadn't cared to ask them in, and had told them to go on to Mers. "Why didn't you let them in?" asked Germain angrily. "People must be very suspici...
Thanks, you guys." Fiona smiled. "I haven't been with anyone since Jackson and I split. I hate to act like such a hoochie mama, but---" "Hey. There's a little hoochie mama in all of us," Charli said. "Didn't I tell you how I finally got Reno to make ...
In the midst of aches in the joints, anxiety over the payment of bills, concern for the safety of those you love, envy of the rich, fear of robbers, dog-weariness at the end of a long day, and the unacceptable slipping away of youth, there does occas...
The fleeting systems lapse like foam,'" he mumbled what was evidently a quotation. "That's it—foam, and fleeting. All man's toil upon the planet was just so much foam. He domesticated the serviceable animals, destroyed the hostile ones, and cleared...
Viktor looked at the older man’s nightshirt, robe, and nightcap. His lips quirked into a smile. “The hour is late, and the household sleeps. How is it that you are still awake?” “I knew you would be knocking on the door sooner or later.” Pi...
Henceforth the crisis of urbanism is all the more concretely a social and political one, even though today no force born of traditional politics is any longer capable of dealing with it. Medico-sociological banalities on the 'pathology of housing pro...
The tyrant-father of Heaven, the one who created, hated and drove out the first woman, yoked men with a horrible curse, far worse than any imagined to have been handed down to Eve. Men were told they were masters of this world, of their mates, of the...
The name Kyirong means “the village of happiness,” and it really deserves the name. I shall never cease thinking of this place with yearning, and if I can choose where to pass the evening of my life, it will be in Kyirong. There I would build mys...
A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of h...
Amy hated--hated--the way the grown-ups her parents had surrounded themselves with were so quick to offer prayers and so low to actually do anything. Old women who barely left the house for anything but bingo and congratulated themselves on never dri...
The mornings were the worst. Roger told me this was Classic Depressive. He said that mornings were generally the most trying part of the day for a Classic. As Roger spoke, I would think of all the people everywhere, all over the world, who managed to...
I need a break after school," she told me later. "School is hard because a lot of people are in the room, so you get tired. I freak out if my mom plans a play date without telling me, because I don't want to hurt my friends' feelings. But I'd rather ...
Your Kentuckian of the present day is a good illustration of the doctrine of transmitted instincts and peculiarities. His fathers were mighty hunters, - men who lived in the woods, and slept under the free, open heavens, with the stars to hold their ...
I am made to think, not for the first time, that in my writing I have plunged ahead-head-on, heedlessly one might say-or 'fearlessly'- into my own future: this time of utter raw anguished loss. Though I may have had, since adolescence, a kind of inte...
Valkyrie Cain got out of the passenger side. She zipped up her black jacket against the cold, and joined Skulduggery as he walked up to the front door. She glanced at him, and saw that he was smiling. "Stop doing that,” she sighed. “Stop doing wh...
Of course there always will be darkness but I realize now something inhabits it. Historical or not. Sometimes it seems like a cat, the panther with its moon mad gait or a tiger with stripes of ash and eyes as wild as winter oceans. Sometimes it's the...
