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he was one of those dick-faced kids in shades of bright polyester salmon who seemed to always be laughing or looking at me. an ambiguous-named, feminine-famed all-school american douchebag in those quality leather sandals in the wintertime and golf-green shorts. ta give you some background i'm about as far away on the social scale from him as one can get. you know how all the little groups overlap and flap together, pushed around in the wet sand like wave-rivulets blending little facets of stones together until it makes a dune? well our groups---they didn't even touch. i mean you could go from pop-jock to lacrosse to dipper to weed-dealer to

The Troubles of Dating (and Time-Travel) I suppose she was the first girl I fell in love with because of something other than a nice pair of breasts, and therefore, the first girl I fell in love with whom I actually succeeded in asking out on a date. More than anything it was her hair, the way it was neither curly nor straight, but wavy, and in a dark and dreamy shade of red that nearly seemed black. It reached down beyond her shoulders, and I could find myself staring at the back of her head for hours during our classes, mesmerized by it. Breasts weren't half-bad either though. And she was a nice person. At least, that was the impression I

"You ready to go?" It's with sodden hands and soaked-through boots that he climbs into the back of the faded old pickup.  Red paint's peeling off everywhere, but he barely cares.  Bullet holes and scattershot clusters show every few feet, but he still loves his ride.  Despite the shattered world and slightly shattered rear-view mirror, it still takes him places. He's got a gruff voice; his baritone erupts from his throat like gunfire or gravel across a chipped highway.  Torn rubber boots slosh in the highway's broken shoulder.  A burning wind catches his hair, runs through his stubble and down his open shirt.  Runoff from the road splashes

 The sooner this was over, the better. Getting shipped out into the middle of nowhere during the wet season like a bunch of cargo was hardly what most of them had in mind, judging by the looks on their faces. Well, the faces of those more like him, Pebble thought. The soldiers in this particular caravan seemed a little bit too eager to rejoin their fellows on the marshy battlefield, their helmets tipped low, their eyes focused on the dirty metal floor of the vehicle, and their hands firmly clasped around the handles and barrels of their rifles. It made him uneasy. He tried to hide that to the best of his ability, but the veterans would pick u

'Mother, tell me again about the sun.' She pauses scraping the stretched hide, thinks. So many images she could give, in words he wouldn't understand – golden, sunrise, light. Her son was born to cold darkness, has never seen the sun, animals in clouds, gods in the midnight sky. Some days, what she misses most is the sky, more than electricity, than fresh tomatoes, than sun- shine. The white tails of planes created scenes of foreign adventure, when only thunderheads could hide the horizon and the day produced its own light. Now the horizon chokes on ash and she on useless words. She never lets him see her cry when her words

 The air was wet and heavy and it stuck in her throat; she thought of the smell of rotting gardens and coughed until scarlet blood hung from her lips and stained the moss beneath her cheek. She couldn't groan, couldn't even voice the pain. And her body was too dry for crying. All Andra could do was lay crumpled, her very self fighting her with the sickness that tore through her insides like a lash, the last vestiges of her strength being fed to her twitching limbs for shaking and spasming. There were ants crawling over her fingertips. Flies at her mouth, the corners of her eyes. She shifted her head, weakly, desperate to drive them off whil

With the last hieroglyph finished, Wati set aside the scroll he had been working on. He closed The Book of the Dead and ran his hands along the cover. Despite the fact he wrote these words on a regular basis, never had it been so hard. Ra had long since disappeared for his usual voyage, and the wick of his lamp was nearly burnt to the end. As the flame died its orange glow was replaced by the ghostly light of the moon filtering through the linens that covered the windows and door of his small hut. On either side of the doorway, stood the shadows of two pots. It had been many days since Tiankhit had left him, but still the barley continued to

98.00 Autumn is the season when everything dies. The leaves shrivel up and your lungs go with them, tiny dejected organs drying out inside your sternum, crinkling under our footsteps. The doctors pronounce their diagnosis as the leaves fall, listing medical terms and percentages and something about medication options. The disease is metastatic: it has bored its way out of your lungs and into your bones. Dissatisfied, it's going for your organs, your liver, your heart. The prognosis says Christmas is a pipe dream, likely as the sun ceasing to set. You promise it anyway. 94.00 November comes and I am a fish, breathing through makeshift gi