Velvet looks horrified. “If you are fool enough to address King R’jan, you will do it thus and in no other manner! ‘My King, Liege, Lord, and Master, your servant begs you grant it leave to speak.’” “Wow. Totally delusionary there.” “...
When you’ve had a psychotic breakdown it’s always so difficult making that decision. You meet someone new and you wonder how much you should tell them? You wonder what that person’s threshold of ‘strange’ is, and at what point in my story w...
Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information. I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely ...
I can't give up on anyone either, even someone who's burned every bridge like Drake Schultz. Getting him to deal with his insecurities and whatever it is he's trying to hide. It's this never-ending cycle of self-hatred that I have to address before I...
I felt myself begin to slide down into that recognizable abyss, down and down, where I knew it would be cold and dark, but which had become more familiar to me than my face in the mirror. I knew I should instead be grateful for this time with my two ...
Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what's wrong, because they'll look sentimental and naive to all the we...
Had the common man in (first century) Palestine thought about it at all, he would have considered the world flat, with land riding on and surrounded by water below and above. Keeping water up there was the “firmament” – a great, canopy-like dom...
Does it go away?" she asks. "Missing each other?" I think about how much I missed Maman. I still do, though it isn´t as acute as it once was. "A little bit," I whisper. "Enough so that life continues. In a year you won´t even think about me. " She ...
That was . . .” I trailed off trying to find the proper adjective. “Long overdue?” “Long overdue? You’re the one who got skittish when I mentioned how I felt and backed away when we almost kissed.” “You call me on all my crap, don’t y...
I told her that I can't be doing with the Wonder part of these trips, but she said it should be the icing on the cake... I've never liked wedding cake due to the amount of icing, but then imagine a wedding cake without it; just a dark, stodgy, horrib...
Our house was littered with books- in the kitchen, under the beds, stuck between the couch pillows--far too many for her the ever finish. I suppose I thought if my grandmother kept up her interests, she wouldn't die; she'd have to stay around to fini...
I recognized it instantly. It was a made-up story, a fantasy, the tale of four kids who went through a magic wardrobe and found themselves in a strange new world. I'd read it more times than I could remember, and although I sneered at the thought of ...
Adrian suddenly glanced up at me. Our gazes locked, and I felt like he could read my mind. How often did he think about that kiss? And if he really was crazy about me, did he imagine more than just kissing? Did he fantasize about me? What kinds of th...
Looking back, I wish that everyone could have that sort of moment: a moment where you realize that your hands are so impossibly small and this world is so impossibly big. And the two don’t seem to add up. Maybe recognizing the smallness of your own...
You do not know your vampire nature. You are like an adult who, looking back on his childhood, realizes that he never appreciated it. You cannot, as a man, go back to the nursery and play with your toys, asking for the love and care to be showered on...
I said out loud, "Damn you for saving yourself. How come you left me with nothing but to love you and hate you, and that's gonna kill me, and you know it is." Then I turned round, went back to the cellar room, and picked up the sewing. Don't think sh...
There is something called the rapture of the deep, and it refers to what happens when a deep-sea diver spends too much time at the bottom of the ocean and can't tell which way is up. When he surfaces, he's liable to have a condition called the bends,...
He weighs the volume in his hand; this one has been the center of the whirlwind. Then DRUMMOND notices the Bible on the JUDGE's bench. He picks up the Bible in his other hand; he looks from one volume to the other, balancing them thoughtfully, as if ...
Kids don’t act right. Sure it’s embarrassing when it happens but any reasonable person won’t fault a parent when a kid throws a fit. However, when a child doesn’t act right and a parent doesn’t act at all then we’ve got a problem. Parents...
He shook off the thoughts—that wasn’t anything he needed to worry about tonight. Any second now, he was going to hear the chime of a new text message, the chime that signaled the demise of rich, slick Maybe-next-time-we-can-meet-for-more-than-two...
This was when I learned that you have to give up your life as you know it to get a new one: that sometimes you need to let go of everything you're clinging to and start over, whether because you've outgrown it or because it's not working anymore, or ...
