dreamszilla

A girl foolishly takes the terrible risk of walking across a grass field barefoot. Image generated with OpenAI Maybe it wasn't a great reason, but it was the honest reason, nonetheless: I was curious. Simply curious. I had seen my brother go barefoot my entire life - had seen his summer-bronzed feet padding over soft grass, tip-toeing across hot asphalt, dusting through stick-strewn beaches - and the injustice of it all just suddenly hit me, on that summer day, all at once. Yes, I knew the risk. Every girl on the planet knows the risk. But it was a risk I was willing to take - at least for that day. That hour. That minute . And so I did it: I walked through a grass field - barefoot . And for a long time after, I thought I'd gotten away with it. I suppose every girl probably thinks the same... The stomachache isn't all that terrible, as stomachaches go. I'm not bedridden - nothing like that. It is more the kind of pain that makes you occasionally glan...

Inspired by the myth of Proserpina, Melissa decides to visit Rome on impulse, but she is accompanied by her truculent cousin. Image generated with OpenAI Melissa is leaning against the pool's edge, glancing out at the valley, about as alone as she's been in the past two weeks of traveling with her stepmother's family, when her body finds the jet. Nobody's here , she thinks as she moves over it. Everyone else - except cousin Phil who's been hiding in his room this whole trip - went to Florence for the day. It's nice, relaxing at first, sending a slight pulse vibrating down her legs. As her body tenses, her ass cheeks clench, she pushes her pelvis against the jet stream, remembering an old boyfriend. Press harder , she was always telling him. Don't move, hold it there, right there , like there was something she wanted him to press out of her, to squish her so hard against the mattress that she might disappear, until... starbursts explode behind h...

Curmudgeonly Quentin tries to sabotage his young neighbor Lucy's backyard concerts. Image generated with OpenAI Quentin pushed open the back door to the garden and threw out his arms to welcome the year's sunniest day. For an April day in Sussex, the sun shone proud, though it would not have inspired any Mauritians to leap out of bed. Still, Quentin's Grand Bay days were long gone. And best forgotten. But this rare sunshine reminded him of the Mauritian sun; how, out on the Bay Bar 's veranda, it pounded his mind into a soft putty of calm. The sound of waves would flap below the deck, a sweet, salt-infused prelude to the monstrous snores of his naps. Quentin cursed the back door for being too narrow and carried outside a tray with coffee, croissants, apricot jam, and a Proust reader. He sat on his wicker chair, humming Porter's Anything Goes , put on his tortoiseshell sunglasses and, as he offered his face up to the sun, something resembling a smile re...

On the way home from hospital, Erica stops off to buy a treat for her terminally ill daughter Amelia - and everything changes. Image generated with OpenAI The blinking, neon lights of the Gravity Café startled Erica out of her trance and drew her in like a magnet. She pulled her car into the driveway and read the small placard underneath the glowing sign; "There is nothing a great cup of coffee can't solve." Erica snorted at that ridiculous statement and almost turned away, but she really needed a cup of coffee and suspected her seven-year-old daughter Amelia might like to stretch her legs. She called into the backseat, "Hey, sweetie pie, how would you like a yummy snack?" "Okay, Mom," Amelia said in a small voice. She was a month into her treatment for a medulloblastoma and was feeling tired. The long car rides to the hospital and the terrifying treatments were wearing the tiny child down. Though she didn't have much of an appetite, s...

Ex-alcoholic Faye has a contented but directionless life with her third husband Owen, until he starts having troubling "incidents". Image generated with OpenAI Faye had no plan. She had never intended to have a plan. The universe aligned his illness to define the path she found herself following, each footstep planted more firmly than the last, the way a bear's paws tread their way into eternity by wearing the earth through sheer force of repetition. If anyone were to ask her - her daughter Kayla from her first marriage or her neighbor Edie from their dappled cul-de-sac - Faye would not be capable, certainly, of putting words to her intent. As unreflective as Faye was by nature, some days she found herself singsonging the phrase fast becoming signage on the bear trail: Till death do you part . She'd had one purpose when she'd found Owen again in their later years after Owen's beloved Sabra died and Faye's second husband reached his tipping ...