"Can you kill me, please?"
I must have looked startled because her expectant gaze saddened a bit.
"I'm sorry. What?"
"Can you kill me?" Her face brightened as she repeated the morbid probe.
Confused, I couldn't help but notice her rather familiar clothes. Faded pink jeans, knock-off Converse shoes. Little black hoodie with a torn right sleeve.
"You just looked a bit angry and I figured you'd be the best person to ask."
I stood next to the bench. My backpack dug into my shoulder and I shrugged it off. It'd be awhile before the next bus came anyway.
"Why?"
She looked down the street. The dim lights barely revealed the closed shops and l
On Saturday the twenty-first of January, Elliot took a gun, pressed it to the strip of bone between his eyes, and shot himself. The bullet shattered the frontal bone of his skull, warping his features past recognition, and burrowed through his pre-frontal cortex into the midbrain. He died before the sound stopped echoing through his empty apartment.
This story isn't about that.
I worked with Elliot for only a little while—less than six months. Most of what I knew about him came from his desk. Unlike the smaller ones the secretaries and other reporters had, it was a stately, imposing thing. It would've been terrifying, especially to a
"End of the world?" Richard looked up from his newspaper. "Bollocks! The world will always be here. What you really mean is it's the end of humanity!"
Dumping the paper down on the curb next to him he got to his feet. "If the crazies with shotguns or the blasted zombies don't get us all, this waiting will! I say lets go out with a little style! What d'ya think, Mertle? Shotgun or chainsaw?"
Unfortunately for Richard, the voice he heard answer him was nothing beyond his own mind because Mertle was in fact, an old microwave sitting on the street, with a sm
When I was seven, I was diagnosed with emotions.
"Poor girl." I heard them say. "She'll never survive this one."
I laid with my face towards the ceiling on the cold examination table, listening to them discuss my fate. I felt something breaking in my chest and something burning inside my throat. A small tear slipped down my cheek.
"Doctor! Look at this!" Shrieked my mother, "Something is coming out of her eye."
The doctor rushed over to me and wiped the tear from my cheek. He touched the top of my head as he whispered, "I am so sorry." And then he turned to my mother. "It's a tear. It means that she is sad."
"Sad?" My mother asked inquis
Mine is an impossible existence.
Every day, I do the impossible. I get up, eat Cornflakes, go to work. I work in an office. It is quiet. I like that.
I walk through the park on my way home. The birds are singing. The boys are playing football between the trees. Brown, crackling leaves are thick underfoot.
When I get home, I kiss my warm, flustered wife as she hurries past me out the door. She is heading to her shift over at the hospital. She works the evening shift on Wednesdays. She does impossible things there.
The kids - Annie and Michael - are playing in and out of the hall, chasing each other. The TV is on in the front room. Tom is
A massacre of color, the red crayon marches along the paper and the green is over run, Childish red scribbles overtop crudely drawn stick figures with 'X's for eyes and tongues painted red, sticking out comically, a last laugh in the face of death. The water of a nearby pond is scribbled in brown and green, purple fish float on the top, with smaller 'x's for their own eyes and what could be a cat or a dog stands on four thin stick legs looking out to the pond with a comical forwny face. There is a lone tree in this picture, gray and straight, unnatural looking limbs clawing at the air unbending and uncompromising. These grey limbs carry a bro
Brother,
I'm writing to tell you I'm dropping out of college; I haven't told anyone. I'm twitching, Michael. The hunger came back a few weeks ago, and I'm not sure it ever left. Regardless, it's crying now, and I need to go. I need to keep moving on. I'm leaving for Chicago tomorrow. My train takes off in the afternoon, and when I get there, I'll leave again. I want to go somewhere new, Michael.
I want to go somewhere I have never seen before.
Now, I know you have to be worried, but don't, Brother. Don't you be afraid. I'll write
The Purpose-Driven Plot Pt. 1 by TheBrassGlass, literature
Literature
The Purpose-Driven Plot Pt. 1
Part I - The Big Four: Exploring Plot Types
Before we start, it will be prudent to know what kind of plot you seek for your project. There are four main types that we will explore here:
- The character-driven plot.
- The event- or situation-driven plot.
- The world-driven plot.
- The concept- or theme-driven plot.
The character-driven plot is employed in stories that are propelled forward by the learning, changing character or characters. Harry Potter is an example of character-driven plot. I have one friend who is absolutely certain that this is the future of literature, because of the way we view and understand the human psyche.
The
Elliot is four. He watches his grandfather breathe out cigarette smoke in his creaking armchair. The living room is small enough to be heated by the portable radiator near his grandfather's slippers. When the old man realises his grandson waits for him, he begins.
"This is a ruined world, son. Diseased with hatred and war before you were born." He takes a drag on his cigarette and Elliot breathes in the coming smoke. "This world is dead, but I know there's another. We could go to it if we only knew the way." Elliot's grandfather smiles at his thoughts. "There's another place put aside for us. I'll find the door one day."
The radiator splutt
I am a canary, trapped within a large bell jar. No matter how much I try to fly on my weak wings constructed from hopes and dreams, I always hit the cold glass of reality. It is then that I fall back down again to lick my sorry wounds. Failure tastes like neatly preened feathers.
And, despite the pain and the hurt, I always forget that the glass is there. Each day I start on a fresh wing, fresh flight, fresh ambition. But, every time, reality lurks with dark and bitter breath. Like countless days before, I fall. Like countless times before, I never learn. I never will.
I've seen other people, people who like me are birds