He had to get out. That thought came through louder than what he had done last night, louder than the anxiety over another day in the office with a hangover, louder than the uncertainty over whether he had been smart enough to use a condom with the girl that lay next to him. Chop. Louder than the rain pelting down on a grey Brooklyn day, louder than the ambulance outside his window, louder than the sound of his roommates busting each other’s balls over who was most fucked up last night. Chop.
I have this fantasy for the future. It involves moving far, far away from the city, dropping my job as a writer and ditching my musical career. I keep my husband though... My fantasy for a rural, simple future is considered grossly basic in my peer group, because educated, feminist women like myself are supposed to want more.
I’ve been obsessed with psychics since I can remember. I don’t know what it is. Tea leaf readings, the magnificent tarot, exalted ghosts of the past, peculiar mediums – you name it, I find it enrapturing. I’m so preternaturally drawn to these themes that I’m developing a television series about them. A fascination so poignant and deep, I can daydream scenarios for hours on end.
An empty bottle of 94-point Napa Cabernet sat next to the bed. He had purchased it through a collector. They were not alcoholics, but at a bottle plus per night, she supposed they were falling into that class of lush who wrap self-medication up in exquisite packaging. He thrust on top of her.
In the dream, Charlotte was laying on her right side on the bed, with her arm propping up her head. Wade was flat on his back. White blankets were ruffled between their bodies. Charlotte could feel all her clothes, but it was a dream feeling so she could not tell if she actually had any clothes on. Wade was shirtless. She could see his upper half, stocky and soft.
Satan came in the night, through a temporal gateway in the ozone layer. He had been nurturing the hole for years, reflecting the sun’s rays towards the Earth’s protective shield. Raising the planet’s temperature to be more agreeable whenever he would have to visit.
They told me there were three phases to go through. The first three months, everything is new and inspiring, a holiday under the guise of a new life. At six months it starts to sink in – this is for the long haul, and you’ll begin to notice things that you don’t like. Minor irritants, as well as bigger and until now unimaginable, differences. After a year, you’ll just stop comparing it to home.
F: hey Me: hey man!!!! F: how’s u Me: just chilling, watching Newsnight in my pants lol, u? F: what Me: if I were a woman I would want to look like Emily Maitlis what about you? Me: i already do quite a bit and im a man! Me: hey, remember when Paxo went on a rant about M&S pants a few years back and how they don’t make them supportive enough and he was pissed off because you couldn’t get good pan.
She didn’t grow up going to church. Raised in the Caribbean, by parents who went on vacation to the islands to escape “Reagan’s America” and never left, Sasha’s higher power was the sound of waves crashing against the rocks of the cliff that supported her childhood house. It was the feeling of warmth rising in her chest as the sun dried salty water off her skin.
In the lunch break of a soul-sapping temp job, I typed my own name into a search engine. Travelling back a few pages into the sticky ‘ooooo’ of Google, I found a review someone had written of a film I had acted in when I was a child. I was struck by the author’s tone.
