dreamszilla

A drunk driver kills a man with his car, but the man comes back to life. Image generated with OpenAI Navigating through a mental fog created by a surfeit of bourbon, I tore around a winding Texas wooded road and triggered my worst nightmare. A guy suddenly appeared on a blind curve. Although I swerved, slamming on my brakes, I heard the thud of my bumper smacking into him. "Oh, shit." My eyes riveted on the rearview mirror and revealed the crumpled heap of a man lying on the asphalt beyond the car's skid marks. He didn't move, and my angst spiked. Swallowing, my mouth suddenly dry, I reluctantly left the car, approaching the body on shaky legs. Standing over him, I almost retched. I prayed even for a groan of pain, some indication that he was still alive, but no. Fear chilled my heart. What was I going to do? Blond, likely in his forties, the guy's bloodstained body was folded at the waist like a jackknife. I crouched down and placed my fingers...

In a time when Arab slavers were plundering African coastal towns, Nasieku is captured by a rival tribe. Image generated with OpenAI The night was quite aged but Nasieku was wide awake on her mat of straw. She was too excited to sleep. In two days, she would be leaving her mother's hut for her own. In the morning she was getting married to Kamande. And how lucky she felt, as far as arranged marriages go. She liked him and he seemed smitten by her. Kamande's family had finally completed paying the agreed upon dowry of a hundred goats, ten cows and several gourds of honey and beer, according to Sambara customs. She lay awake on her mat thinking of her life as a married woman. As the night was quite advanced, Nasieku was thus deeply alarmed when she heard the rumble of the village drums. At this hour it could only mean bad news! She listened more keenly to the drums and frighteningly understood their beat - the village was under attack! Panicking, she shook her mothe...

In Tokyo's entertainment district, a wealthy man passes the pachinko parlour every day and gives money to addicts. Image generated with OpenAI There is a Japanese proverb that says: Nana korobi ya oki . Fall seven times, stand up eight. It's the kind of phrase that appears on motivational posters, in graduation speeches, on those ceramic mugs people buy at airports when they don't know what else to give. What the proverb doesn't mention - what no motivational poster dares to say - is what happens when someone helps you up every time you fall. What happens when that outstretched hand is not salvation, but a sentence. Kenji Nakamura knew. He knew with the clarity of a scientist and the patience of a sculptor. Because Kenji Nakamura had turned that help into an art, into a science, into something that had no name in any language but which he, in the privacy of his mind, called simply: the experiment . Kabukichō, Tokyo. Midnight. Asia's largest enter...