Excerpt
The Enchanted Forest Adventure
Quite a long time ago, in a curious little town settled between moving slopes and lavish glades, there carried on with an inquisitive little youngster named Amelia. Amelia was known all over for her voracious hunger for information and experience. Her emerald eyes shone with interest, and her heart overflowed with benevolence.
By Annas Aslam2 years ago in Fiction
IMUETINYANOSA
WAKE UP! Sleeping on my bed, I heard my phone’s alarm buzz out so loud with the first few lines of the song: “my generation is waiting…”, Two of my friends were on their own beds too jumped off their beds to shake me off from sleep, “your alarm woke us up, this is the sixth time it buzzed yet you’re sleeping!”, One of them confessed how the words from this song had reshaped her thoughts and set her on her feet to become better… Yet there I am, the owner of the phone turning from one side to another, perhaps because it’s a Saturday and there’s no work but no it happens every time!
By Omolola Osunde2 years ago in Fiction
Daisy Chains
To me now, the image of a seven-year old girl as a stern and humourless technical instructor is comical. It’s an image that must have been purged from my memory shortly after experiencing it, only to be reconstructed when I reached an age where Catherine O’Reilly’s inscrutable withering glare was not so intimidating. At the time, I had assumed that she was as skeptical as everyone else of a boy wanting to learn how to make a daisy chain. But as I avoided eye-contact, instead watching her hands as she described the proper place to pierce the daisy’s stem (“here”, she said, tolerating no differing opinions about proper stem piercing placement), something in her voice told me that it was not my gender that bothered her. Daisy chains were serious business to her, not something for amateurs to trifle with, and artisans do not teach.
By Michael Atkins-Prescott2 years ago in Fiction
Into the rocks
The rocks had manifested themselves as shimmering blurs in the heat and he had had to convince himself that they were real before heading in their direction. It was slow progress, if it was progress at all. His legs were heavy, weighted with exhaustion and lack of hope and drained by the unending heat.
By Rachel Deeming2 years ago in Fiction
One Foot out the Door
I walk into the room mid conversation and there’s no recognition that I am there, a usual response to my arrival, but tonight it can be blamed on the music and the people that serve as more of a distraction than good company. I shrink past the crowd in the kitchen to the solo cups waiting to be filled with anything strong enough to empty you of emotions so well you’ll be convinced that you can feel again. I am drunk, I am high, and there was mention of Molly, but Hannah went upstairs with Brian 20 minutes ago and she’s the one who bought it off of her brother's roommates. I wonder if they already took it. Someone should warn them that sex on molly just creates an unrealistic expectation for how deeply you’ve bonded with the person, practically the birth right of a toxic relationship. I fill my cup to the brim and lift my head. I’m surrounded by strangers, less like the people you don’t know, and more like the familiar one you no longer recognize. I make eye contact with a girl I had biology class with in high school and I quickly look back down at my cup. After standing against the counter, trying to find my sober mind in an addicts body, I decide to refill my drink and step outside.
By TheLateBloom 2 years ago in Fiction
The Rain on Different Worlds
HOME-Chapter One Earth has its own senses. That which we observe every moment without a second thought. From the blood we taste in our dehydrated mouths to our food, the metals of earth readily reminds us of Earth. And that we shall embalm ourselves within Earth when we are done. When our bodies are readily old, worn out from the toils of labor and the tribulations of human error, nature beckons us home. Back to dust that enrichens the soil for new generations of reincarnated stardust. Through follies we learn all too quickly just how we aren’t so different from other life. That beyond our intelligence and honest curiosity-are we in fact, a higher order of being? Surely, we're still of flesh, bone, and mistakes. That we specks are simply aware of our accidental existence and that had we not existed, the universe would have merely shifted towards similar scholarly beings. But does that mean we are alone? Do our richly experienced selves have no equals? I refuse to believe that. We did not believe that for all our history having told stories of beings beyond reach either godly or of uncanny resemblance. Statistically it is highly unlikely. The human experience says otherwise. It is why I journal. To digest what occurs. There must be someone if not something beyond. Are cosmic sensories really so unknowable? Wet granulated sand freshly deposited amongst the slippery salty rocks. The cool breeze on a hot summer day. Humidity that covers you like a warm wet towel-heavy, heated, and moist. Surely these cannot be overly specific? Can they be repeatable experiences? Humidity exists elsewhere and surely breathable atmospheres. I suppose I will find out.
By Vaisa Haile2 years ago in Fiction
Lunchtime: Bread & Meat
[ An excerpt from a novel that's been in-progess for a while] On my lunch break from teaching. Strolling along industrial avenues, smelling, though never glimpsing, the (not so great) Salt Lake. Occasional gusts of wind blow dust from high-mountain desserts or smoke from a wildfire somewhere into the valley, which mixes with vehicular emissions to form the haze that those who live in the valley are asthmatically accustomed to. Nothing but fast food outlets, car dealerships, pawn shops, as parking lots —lots of parking lots— as far as the eye can see (through the haze anyway).
By Halston Williams2 years ago in Fiction
