Having spent 25 years running a quarter-scale steam engine, I’m only a tiny bit shocked to find myself sitting in one, steam rising from the hot boiler, my hand on the brake, ready to release it.
I try to piece together why I’m here, hard due to my failing memory—part of the natural progression they say, which is no comfort, believe me. The black, belching and drifting coal smoke, choking to most, is more nostalgic to me than disturbing.
This is not the first time I’ve forgotten where I am and why. I used to panic, running aimlessly, calling for help. But I’ve now come to treat it, after a moment’s fear, like a chronic sleepwalker must feel upon waking. All the other times, however, I was somewhere on the nursing home grounds, often looking for my wife, Janet, who nurses remind me has passed away.…
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I wandered the streets in a haze. For the first time in many months I moved about directionless, and without idea of where to find a cause to travel. So I simply moved, passing under street lights and swimming in the cold haze of night between their islands of effervescence. I glided through Shibuya, through Akihabara, and eventually into Minato. All the while awaiting a reason to move, a definable destination. Finally, I reached the Minato train station.
It was then that I saw the woman.
She had been standing by one of the pillars outside the terminal. She was dressed quite smartly, with a long brown coat opened to reveal a form fitting office skirt and a little crossover tie. She looked like she had dropped straight out of an eighties flick about some aspiring young girl who goes to the big city and meets the man of her dreams.…
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My daddy didn’t teach me how to hold my keys between my knuckles or scare off a cat-caller. Coming from the country, I never had to worry about them; strange men didn’t make a habit of lurking out in our woods. We did have chickens, though, and they were high on the menu for a lot of mean critters. So, my daddy saw it fit that my self defense lessons consisted of which color of bear to run from, which snake bites will send you to the hospital, and how to fight off a coyote.
Thumb in the eye, grab the muzzle, knee on the throat.
Once I loaded my life into a u-haul, I didn’t think I’d need those lessons anymore. But I was gonna have to learn all the standard stuff that girls my age had years of practice with– how to use pepper spray and not get it in your eyes, how to break free when someone grabs you from behind, that you need to yell “fire” instead of “ help” when someone assaults you.…
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It’s mid-May, and after a long slog of last-minute client requests and petty politics in the office, tax season is finally over. Tomorrow is my chance to fly away to a five-day vacation with no schedule and no responsibilities. Double tall mocha in hand (including whipped cream), I find my gate and practically dance down the concourse to board a late morning non-stop, Seattle to Philly. Tonight, I’ll meet my friend Louise and after visiting overnight with her husband and twins, the two of us are off to a three-day splurge in New York: museums, a play, window shopping, bargain hunting, and dinner with an old friend in Brooklyn.
Puffy white clouds suffuse the sky as I settle in next to a middle-aged man and his cute, pig-tailed daughter, who clutches a well-worn teddy bear and rests sleepily against his shoulder.…
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After a record-breaking season of rain, the five-year mega drought in California was over. Atmospheric rivers and bomb cyclones rolled inland, brought steel gray skies, charcoal clouds, and torrents of water. Snow wrapped mountaintops, and for a brief moment, it seemed all would be well. But the relentless sun grew hotter than ever before. The snow melted and the streams, rivers, and waterfalls gushed to the valley below.
And there emerged a ghost lake, Tulare Lake, once the largest lake west of the Mississippi. Even as the rain poured and the snow melted and the valley filled with water, Chris’s dad’s memory receded, plunged beneath his own opaque waters, the twists and cascades of plaque crusted amyloids and neurofibrillary tangles. Each day, his personality dulled into a blurrier shadow of who he had been.…
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It would be love after a few sights. Last Tuesday, she caught my eye again, and I caught hers back. I’ll probably ask her to prom – betraying the pact made with my two closest friends, to go together rather than with dates – but I need the confirmatory third or fourth sight of her. Then I’ll tell her that I fancy her.
With the frenzy of two months before prom dominating classroom and corridor conversation, our minds are occupied. We’re unusually busy. Much to our teachers’ dismay, we’re organising the detail of prom night – the before, the during, and the after; the whos and the wheres – rather than revising for our GCSE exams.
Most of us will be fine. The majority will pass or excel, then join chosen sixth form colleges, well on the way to university then career then retirement.…
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I was running in Central Park at midnight, so fast that if anyone saw me, they would think someone was chasing me. But I was alone. There wasn’t any other person in the park. Not even a car. My chest hurt and my ankles throbbed, but I ran and ran, past Belvedere fountain, past The Bandshell. My father, who was away on a business trip, would have a heart attack if he knew what his fifteen-year-old daughter was doing that cold November night. Someone could murder me. Just a few years ago Son of Sam was shooting girls with long brown hair like me. “Fifteen-year-old girl found dismembered in park bushes” could be the headline in The New York Post. Maybe my father would blame himself.…
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