It's an old building - for sure. Yes, I work on the top floor alright, and the view is great - when I bother to look at it at all. There is a medium sized potted rubber plant in one of the elevators. I timed it. It takes exactly 3 minutes, 31 seconds from lobby to the top, or vice versa - assuming no stops on the way. They need a faster one. It's a...
Any pop psychologist knows of the catch phrase, "The broken wing complex." It refers mostly to a man who will go out and shoot quail, pheasant, ducks and geese, never giving a thought to the pain and death of the bird's experience. But if the same man comes across a bird with a broken wing, out of pity and compassion, he may very well nurse the bird back to...
It was late getting to Deborah. I'd been away for three months reporting the mess we are making in the Middle East. That's what I do, I am a journalist/reporter but the job wrecks one's social life. I have already gone through two broken relationships, being away for so long. It is understood, who would expect a woman to be that patient in putting up with...
"A story for my love." A bell chimed loudly in the cold afternoon air, harkening the time at 3:15pm. The train station upon which this exquisitely ornate clock-tower stood had been rather slow as of late. As the industrial age had dawned, swiftly reaching its peak, there was far less reason for people to visit such a small country village. Valhaven had all...
I wasn't sure about this, but as I wrote it, it began to make sense. I do not condone heavy drinking, but I have done it. ********* I couldn't believe it. I'd only been gone a couple of hours and he was part-way drunk. I'd not seen Dave like this for a long time. I was disappointed and I told him so. That upset him and we argued, culminating in him telling...
The Market of Nishapur swirled and moved in eddies and streams as the merchants and their customers danced their way through the buying and selling of that day. Their haggling forming a general buzz that became an orchestra in this part of the city. Yet there was one part of the market where many stood or sat in the shade waiting on a non-descript old man wh...
My brother and I have always resented the term "halflings". We're proportioned just as we should be, and it doesn't make us any less than ordinary humans. We didn't hear the term too often growing up, in a small community of our own kind. We've had to get used to the term though, since we've been on our quest. I was awoken by my brother Matin's hand on my...
Darrin loved her lavender scent. It was that same scent that first attracted him to her, an illustrious perfume that enlivened his imagination with wild thoughts. It was a curse, he knew, to love that unreachable. He could still picture her face, each contour shaped by the hands of the Gods. To love. That's when the ache would kick in. No matter what his fri...
I had been on campus for barely a week when I first visited Alpha Omega. I never had any intention of joining a sorority but Tammy, my roommate at Lincoln Hall, was curious and insistent. What could it hurt she pressed? Well, that was my fear. That it would hurt. I had heard the stories and seen the movies. The initiations. The paddlings. I wanted nothing to...
The pounding Jamaican sun loomed over James Bond, just obstructed enough by the shade of the palm tree under which he rested to give him a moment's reprieve, his sweaty, tanned frame resting against the torso of his lover Charlotte. James was fond of women of all kinds and shapes, as they were equally fond of him, and yet Charlotte struck a special chord in...