dreamszilla

Alison remembers a school exercise set while the PE teacher was playing substitute in her sixth-grade Composition class. Image generated with OpenAI At first bell, the door at the end of the hall swings open and I am swept in a crush of other middle-schoolers into sixth-grade Composition class. Room 11 is half the size of a normal classroom, like a stage magician's lovely assistant climbed into a box and was sawn in two, leaving us with the bottom. Presto change-o. I imagine the top half someplace else with the assistant smiling and waving at the audience. Elementary school has been disappeared and Language Arts divided into Literature and Composition. I greet the teacher and slip between rows of narrow half-desks bolted to plastic chairs just big enough to hold a sixth-grader and her black-and-white composition book. He looks up as I pass. "Good morning, Alison." I slide into my seat in the back just before second bell. We are twenty-four magician's rabbits back in ...

Susan and Don go on a double date with old friends who seem to be the perfect couple. Image generated with OpenAI The sun was setting behind the towering buildings as the street lights flickered on. Don and Susan sat in their small rented coupe, one of many cars lined up bumper to bumper in rush hour traffic. Don's eyes were fixated on the red lights in front of him as Susan glared down at her phone. They flew into the city the night before. Don had a conference to attend the next day, and Susan, having never been, wanted to come along to do some sight-seeing. Although Don was originally excited for the few days to spend by himself in a new city, he didn't want to come up with some excuse as to why she shouldn't come. In the days leading up to the trip, Susan posed the idea about reaching out to old friends of theirs, Ted and Minnie, who had moved to the city years ago. Neither of them had been in contact for some time, and Don agreed that it would be good for them to recon...

Medocea has decimated Kiri's tribe, but Kiri survives and dives deeper than anyone before into the watery caves to in an effort to find and kill the creature. Image generated with OpenAI Peace. She spoke without her voice, directly into my mind, indifferent to our cries. She made the stones grow within me. I felt I would rip open; it had happened too fast, and my skin stretched too tight, though I felt nothing, no pain. I couldn't move my head and neck. The only sensation was of the stones wriggling inside me; I could feel their dispositions as if they were my own, a whirlwind of feelings, the stones with minds I could sense. I was sick; if I were like the ones who went before me, I was dying. "You must feel guilt for what you do. You are a woman, are you not?" The bald creature walked over to me naked. They were always nude, as we all were now, indecent under our luxurious white sleeping skins. Never had I been so clean, never had I seen such white. She lowered her ...

A tall tale about Tommy O'Brien, who was so enamoured of limericks he could express himself no other way. Image generated with OpenAI My father told me about Tommy O'Brien. It was late one night and he'd been sitting in the dark in the kitchen, filling himself with whiskey, the Pierian springs of his wit. When the spirit was with and in him, he was the best of storytellers. He waved me to sit down and he slopped me a glass. Then he began. I can't say even half of what he said is true, but I'd like to think all of it is. Maybe Tommy's charm for me is only of that night, one of those rare times I could actually talk with my father; the sobriety of the day silenced us both, him in his hard world of hands and me in my books. I have, on more than one occasion, tried to look up Tommy in the Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador , hoping that one time I'd find what I know I hadn't missed, and renew that silenced voice. Tommy, I heard, was born about a hundr...