His parents continued to question him.

He didn't know what to say to them since they refused to

believe the truth. He explained again and again, and they dismissed his explanation as a figment of

his imagination. There was no way that grandpa, who had been dead for five years, could have told

him where the treasure had been hidden. Of course, it didn't help that grandpa was roaring with

laughter in the chair next to him as he tried to explain once again how he'd found it.

He sat across from her trying to imagine it was the first time. It wasn't. Had it been a hundred? It

quite possibly could have been. Two hundred? Probably not. His mind wandered until he caught

himself and again tried to imagine it was the first time.

There are only three ways to make this work. The first is to let me take care of everything. The

second is for you to take care of everything. The third is to split everything 50 / 50. I think the last

option is the most preferable, but I'm certain it'll also mean the end of our marriage.

There was something beautiful in his hate. It wasn't the hate itself as it was a disgusting display of

racism and intolerance. It was what propelled the hate and the fact that although he had this hate,

he didn't understand where it came from. It was at that moment that she realized that there was

hope in changing him.

He sat staring at the person in the train stopped at the station going in the opposite direction. She

sat staring ahead, never noticing that she was being watched. Both trains began to move and he

knew that in another timeline or in another universe, they had been happy together.

I'm going to hire professional help tomorrow. I can't handle this anymore. She fell over the coffee

table and now there is blood in her catheter. This is much more than I ever signed up to do.

There was a time when he would have embraced the change that was coming. In his youth, he
sought adventure and the unknown, but that had been years ago. He wished he could go back and

learn to find the excitement that came with change but it was useless. That curiosity had long left

him to where he had come to loathe anything that put him out of his comfort zone.

It was a rat's nest. Not a literal one, but that is what her hair seemed to resemble every morning

when she got up. It was going to take at least an hour to get it under control and she was sick and

tired of it. She peered into the mirror and wondered if it was worth it. It wasn't. She opened the

drawer and picked up the hair clippers.

It was difficult to explain to them how the diagnosis of certain death had actually given him life. While

everyone around him was in tears and upset, he actually felt more at ease. The doctor said it would

be less than a year. That gave him a year to live, something he'd failed to do with his daily drudgery

of a routine that had passed as life until then.

The words hadn't flowed from his fingers for the past few weeks. He never imagined he'd find

himself with writer's block, but here he sat with a blank screen in front of him. That blank screen

taunting him day after day had started to play with his mind. He didn't understand why he couldn't

even type a single word, just one to begin the process and build from there. And yet, he already

knew that the eight hours he was prepared to sit in front of his computer today would end with the

screen remaining blank.

Balloons are pretty and come in different colors, different shapes, different sizes, and they can even

adjust sizes as needed. But don't make them too big or they might just pop, and then bye-bye

balloon. It'll be gone and lost for the rest of mankind. They can serve a variety of purposes, from

decorating to water balloon wars. You just have to use your head to think a little bit about what to do

with them.
He was an expert but not in a discipline that anyone could fully appreciate. He knew how to hold the

cone just right so that the soft server ice-cream fell into it at the precise angle to form a perfect cone

each and every time. It had taken years to perfect and he could now do it without even putting any

thought behind it. Nobody seemed to fully understand the beauty of this accomplishment except for

the new worker who watched in amazement.

It seemed like it should have been so simple. There was nothing inherently difficult with getting the

project done. It was simple and straightforward enough that even a child should have been able to

complete it on time, but that wasn't the case. The deadline had arrived and the project remained

unfinished.

Greg understood that this situation would make Michael terribly uncomfortable. Michael simply had

no idea what was about to come and even though Greg could prevent it from happening, he opted

to let it happen. It was quite ironic, really. It was something Greg had said he would never wish upon

anyone a million times, yet here he was knowingly letting it happen to one of his best friends. He

rationalized that it would ultimately make Michael a better person and that no matter how

uncomfortable, everyone should experience racism at least once in their lifetime.

A long black shadow slid across the pavement near their feet and the five Venusians, very much

startled, looked overhead. They were barely in time to see the huge gray form of the carnivore

before it vanished behind a sign atop a nearby building which bore the mystifying information

"Pepsi-Cola."

Indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness,

filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her

soul's summer day. It was strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood. She did not sit there inwardly

upbraiding her husband, lamenting at Fate, which had directed her footsteps to the path which they
had taken. She was just having a good cry all to herself. The mosquitoes made merry over her,

biting her firm, round arms and nipping at her bare insteps.

Turning away from the ledge, he started slowly down the mountain, deciding that he would, that very

night, satisfy his curiosity about the man-house. In the meantime, he would go down into the canyon

and get a cool drink, after which he would visit some berry patches just over the ridge, and explore

among the foothills a bit before his nap-time, which always came just after the sun had walked past

the middle of the sky. At that period of the day the sun?s warm rays seemed to cast a sleepy spell

over the silent mountainside, so all of the animals, with one accord, had decided it should be the

hour for their mid-day sleep.

She had been told time and time again that the most important steps were the first and the last. It

was something that she carried within her in everything she did, but then he showed up and

disrupted everything. He told her that she had it wrong. The first step wasn't the most important. The

last step wasn't the most important. It was the next step that was the most important.

It was a weird concept. Why would I really need to generate a random paragraph? Could I actually

learn something from doing so? All these questions were running through her head as she pressed

the generate button. To her surprise, she found what she least expected to see.

The words hadn't flowed from his fingers for the past few weeks. He never imagined he'd find

himself with writer's block, but here he sat with a blank screen in front of him. That blank screen

taunting him day after day had started to play with his mind. He didn't understand why he couldn't

even type a single word, just one to begin the process and build from there. And yet, he already

knew that the eight hours he was prepared to sit in front of his computer today would end with the

screen remaining blank.