Sometimes when I fall asleep I see pictures moving across the back of my eyelids, strange pastel cartoons, usually, where a round-headed caricature of me is trying to escape from a cloud labelled “Future” or “Responsibility.”
My wife says that sometimes she can see the projector’s flickers behind my eyes.
Jennifer awoke in the lion enclosure, drowsy and confused.
She’d just rested her eyes for a few seconds in the library, awash in a sea of dull economics textbooks. How and why was she here?
She shrugged her new shoulders, flicked her tail, and padded softly out into the sunlight.
Jeremy is a shambling mess of unkempt hair and caffeine-induced twitches, currently based in Southampton in the UK. He doesn’t have a website of his own, but would like to direct people towards the band he’s involved with at http://www.thebluescreenofdeath.co.uk/ and their music video he starred in.
This shirt, this wonderful, beautiful shirt, has magic powers; its wearer, they say, will always gain his heart’s desires.
They also say that it’s invisible to those with evil in their hearts, but that doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t need to see it to know that it’s working.
Cynthia theatrically flung open the wardrobe. “Well?”
After an awkward pause, Greg said, “It’s…”
“I know! Isn’t it?” enthused Cynthia.
Greg paused. He wasn’t actually sure what he had been going to say. “It” was some kind of all-of-the-neons polka-dotted dress thing. “Yes,” he managed at last, “it really is.”
“You have been a great comfort to me, softening the hard times and cushioning the blows. Without your support, I would have found it much more challenging to sleep on so many difficult nights.”
With these words, and a waterfall of tears, I eulogized my dear, old friend, the sofa.
“There’s a monster under my bed!” whimpered Sophie.
“I know,” said Mom. “I put it there. It likes dark places.”
“Won’t it come out at night and eat me!?”
“No, it’s a vegetarian.”
Sophie put fresh heads of lettuce under her bed every day for the rest of her life.
“You are eighteen, Ahradok. Here is your sword. Come join the fighting men!”
“Father,” said Ahradok, “I wish to remain in the kitchens.”
“Son, men work with drawn swords, not wooden spoons.”
Ahradok honoured his father’s advice, but soon found that a sword is highly impractical for chopping and dicing.
Nights were the worst. Caffeine caught up, jittering his limbs, bulging his eyes as raw sewage gushed from metaphoric bowels, untreated memories he thought he’d repressed. Bloody flashes and screams kept any rest for the wicked far beyond his grasp.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
That would be the day.
Milo James Fowler is a teacher by day, writer by night. Stop by his blog any time: www.milo-inmediasres.com.
“I’m not going in there.”
The wind whistled through the looming trees at the forest’s edge.
“You’re just being paranoid,” scoffed Meltun.
Eadin protested: “No…”
“Then come on; follow me!” Melton plunged in. He never reemerged.
Eadin wondered, later, how much longer his story might have been if he’d followed.
This story is based on a title suggested by @TrueAntitonic.
“Who is that? Why are they treating her like a celebrity?”
“Maybe she is a celebrity.”
“I don’t think so. I read every gossipy blog and magazine out there, and I’ve never seen her in any of them.”
“Maybe she’s a really well-behaved celebrity.”
“Ha, like that’s even a thing…”