8220;What color would you say, Aggie? 8221; Martha asked. She wiped some sweat from her chin with the back of her hand. From her purchase she could see clear to the inlet, blue as the lapis on her finger. Never seen anything like it. 8220;No wiggling out of this.

Mr Fletcher arrived on time, dressed in a pale blue suit, clutching a handful of Polaroid pictures. There was just the thinnest little layer of sweat on his upper lip and near his temples. Hers was a low, jazzy tone that made Mr. Fletcher weak at the knees. She flicked her cigarette past him, a perfect red ring at the filter from her lipstick. 8220;Please, take a seat.

8220;Can you hear me? Its grip strengthens on your arm. It is eleven twenty-six am and everyone you know is two thousand miles away and thinks you died seven years ago.

Heaven in a Drop of Water. Like dancing spiders, streams of water course vagrantly along my arms and chest until they converge, cascading and disappearing into the drain. At first I resisted the transition of my father but then I remembered a moment long ago as a child when he explained to me his preferred way of dying.

She took two sugar cubes in chemistry. We saw her in the halls for the rest of the school day, but we were invisible. We offered consoling smiles met with a blank stare, a flutter of the eyelashes. I found an Ann Beretta poster for free on South Street and brought it home on the train that weekend. I wrote her a letter on the back of it.

Alexander Yosif Ivanovitch shuffled unsteadily across the worm-eaten floor of his dilapidated dacha. His calloused feet scraped along the warped boards to the kitchen, picking up splinters as he went. Already the sun had set and yet Mila had not woken. Taking up the spoon, he rapped the egg soundly. Then, peeling off the shell, he dug in the spoon and pulled up the first bite. What was this? Mila, what nonsense is this? He demanded, my egg has no yolk! No answer, eh? Ivanovitch tore .

And the donations, well, the smile and pat on the head was like gold coming from the old man. That was when it was fun, while it was harmless.

It is phosphorescent white, muscling into the darkness, pushing it out of view, out of consciousness. Reality is now the stuff of pigments and photons and nothing more. As he searches through the lit maze for reason, for a meaning that he believes will rest on the crux of his being, all this perfection moves further and further away. The moment passes and is gone.