Waking up was not an easy thing to do. There are stages to waking from a drug-induced sleep. First, I could hear. Then, I could feel. Then, I could see. And, then I could think. I remembered the dream and cried a little, just a whimper that turned into the moaning sound.
In the minutes before reaching the summit hut, the snow had been coming at them sideways. Still now they could hear it piling on outside.
Aton’s head began to thrash. His mouth burned fiercely and he needed a drink of water. He gulped his drink. He left an ice cube in his mouth which began to melt instantly. Aton saw a singular pale light atop a cave in a dark desert.
The father's hair thinned out, pulling away from his forehead. The children stretched and hardened. Then, suddenly, the mother vanished.
The older man shook his fingers toward the terrace, like he was ridding them of excess whiskey.
She nods, blushing, and – her stomach clenching again – she hurries herself out of the café. Back across the street, Minnie lets out a high, squeaking bark when she sees Janice come out of the coffee shop.
He was certain that he was heading for another ulcer to match the one that he'd gotten twenty years ago for bottling up his emotions. No more anchovies or beer for me, he told himself. Doctor's orders.
Years later, Team-O still doesn’t remember who knocked first, but he remembers the sound: light, sharp, slow, a clack...clack...clack.
“Before you were born,” her mother told Adira, “your Aunt Sophie was inventive and beautiful, like a movie star, until the rockets ruined her.
Dean reaches into his belt, his hand fumbling there for a second, and then he pulls out a gun, a little pistol. His breath billows out in front of him.
