Humor
Great Waste
I never really knew my father. My first memories of my siblings are fraught with conflict. And mom? She was so busy with her own life, we were left to fend for ourselves at a pretty young age. Perhaps that’s why swimming in the ocean alone feels like home to me. I find solidarity in the solitude of the deep, blue waves. With years of practice, I’ve learned to listen to the waters around me, noticing the subtle shifts of currents carrying relief in the form of warm patches. My warm blood can only do so much as the water conducts heat from my body at a rate 25 times faster than in air. I take a breath and dive deeper.
By Bethany Gaffey5 years ago in Fiction
Astral Man of La Mancha
Nicole looked at me and asked, “Are you coming tonight?” I fidgeted about in the recliner that I had just sat down in, giving a blatant display of discomfort in the question, knowing that what I would say could cause a bit of resentment. I picked up the book lying on the nightstand next to the chair and held it up.
By Chris Rohe5 years ago in Fiction
A Void of Anticipated Silence
Innately, children have a poor sense of fashion. For years, Vern watched as student after student paraded around proudly in too small t-shirts spotted with the latest fad driven superhero team, sweatpants a shade of brown not completely known to Vern, and dark blue Bills jerseys whose fit better resembled a thigh high skirt than an actual, acceptably sized top.
By Matthew Agnew5 years ago in Fiction
Marigold
At the far edges of the void, far from most living eyes, leviathans—behemothian creatures from the darkest abysses, and made of the clay from broken worlds—swim through seas of lost starlight. In the seamless bowels at the iron roots of broken mountains, serpents studded with thousands of lidless, sightless eyes coil through warrens carved by their insatiable maws, leaving only obsidian, thrumming with power in their wake. In the vaults of a necropolis forgotten by the souls of its makers, an ocean pours out of a jar that flows, eternal, from a plane of endless water, brimming with life and magic of every kind. Endless are the places in which life thrives, and a scant few of them are the simple fields and valleys in which surface civilizations thrive. While the surface-centric mind might stoop to believing that the machines of Reality had been hewn for them, life is unstoppable, varied, and wonderous, and touches every corner of the universe in equal measure.
By Shiv MacFarlane5 years ago in Fiction
Sharks of the Seas
"Wow! I can't believe we've gone this far. We've already gone farther than we should have gone. It's not as if we weren't warned. They told us to be wary at all times and to only venture forth when the coast was clear. Will they give us trouble?" Echo mused.
By Thomas Durbin5 years ago in Fiction
Marilyn's Inferno.
Marilyn felt oppressed. The heat in London was suffocating. So much so that Marilyn felt it was positively infringing on her human rights. A respectable woman, such as she, should not have to suffer the indignity of having to hang out of her second-floor window trying to catch a breeze.
By Caroline Jane5 years ago in Fiction
INTERVIEW WITH THE MAKO
Okay, I’m ready. Which… Which camera? Right here? Ehem… Oh, hi, there! Yeah, I’m… pretty much a shark. Shortfin mako species. Yeah, nothing too fancy. I’m blue-gray and white. I have these gills right here on my side, they’re pretty useful. I swim around, find some squid, eat it. That’s my life, in a seashell.
By Karilin Berrios5 years ago in Fiction
Angelica's Shark
“There’s nothing like the sea for soothing sore nerves,” I thought to myself as I sipped a strengthening cup of morning tea. I was relaxing on the veranda, or is it a balcony? Raised type of thing, you know, full of outdoor lounge furniture and overlooking the beach in a menacing sort of way. Well, as I say, I was relaxing myself in said furniture and with said beach view, puffing away at one of those disposable flavored hookah pens, pineapple or mango or something fitting my locale. Absently observing the bathing suit clad strollers and swimmers this lovely A.M. and rather enjoying a much needed bit of respite from ye ol’ nine to five prison sentence, I interested myself in the conversation of a young couple, carried upon the breeze as it were, to my resting spot.
By Haleigh Overseth5 years ago in Fiction
Mischief and Mayhem
My name is Katherine and while visiting my cousin Edward at his cattle ranch in Texas several years ago, my four children and I enjoyed the change of pace from our busy lives back home in Florida. We learned about how much work it takes to care for horses, as well as the joy of riding, which I was glad my girls found out so they will stop asking Santa for a real pony. Riding is reasonable to do because there several stables around our home that provide trail riding. Because Cousin Edward also had chickens, a few cows and pigs, not to mention at least a dozen barn cats and their kittens, my kids and I had a wonderful time experiencing country living, as it were. The main rule is 'if you don't work, you don't eat' so everyone does something if they want to eat, so we planned to help as much as possible, even though this was supposed to be a vacation! A rooster woke us at early dawn, we had to get used to that, then we rose, dressed in 'work' clothes and helped gather the eggs from the hens. The eggs were still warm and the hens didn't seem to mind us reaching underneath them. We learned how to milk the cows and tasted fresh milk before it was pasteurized. It was an odd taste, but at the same time good.
By Merrie Jackson5 years ago in Fiction
