Toes

That's the last I saw of her, those beautiful feet. My eyes were blurry with tears and my nose was streaming snot. My lungs hurt from the sobbing.

"It was a mistake, it was a mistake" was the only thing I could say.

I couldn't even look her in the eye. A tear splashed down on her middle toe. She took a half step back. Then turned and left.

It's been 20 years now. I never saw her again and if I try to remember her face, the face I fell in love with, all I see are those bright orange toenails.

Flickr story #3

I was four years old. I looked at the sign for a while, forming the sentence over and over in my head. Finally I decided on a course of action. I sat down and watched the step for more than an hour before falling asleep in the summer afternoon.

昨日の弁当

He looked down on on the perfectly formed Onigiri, the lotus root gently resting beside it. The croquette was crunchy when he tapped it with his chopsticks and he could tell that inside it would be soft and relenting. The sausage was an oddity, but even so he could smell that it would be completely flavorsome and juicy. Even the beans and the pickled daikon sat gently just waiting for him to eat them and he knew, he just knew, that these would compliment the other food in a way that would make him sigh with pleasure.

He reached down. His chopsticks wavered over the croquet, but instead he picked up the ume onigiri. As he bit into it the small rice ball the soft but sticky rice filled his mouth and the flavour of the ume was wonderfully sour. He began to cry as he ate. he couldn't help it. Once again the food was spectacular. His salty tears crashed down on the salmon onigiri. Strangely he hoped this would ruin the taste.

Flickr Story 1

As I said before we're doing this flickr story thing, here's my first one:



Muhammad sat in the dusty road. The afternoon breeze drifted past him, curling shapes in the brown earth.

He felt the warmth of the earth through his feet and the relative cool of the wall to his back. He closed his eyes and felt the wind caress his face like the girls had done years ago. While all was good now he knew this wind foretold a sandstorm that would soon envelop the city, as it did often at this time of year.

He opened his eyes again and spied the self-important business man; this man who had parked his car by Muhammad. Years ago, when the girls had caressed his face, he had also driven a car like this. Now he did little but sit and watch.

The man was a trader of some sort and argued over the price of his items with a storekeeper across the road. Muhammad quickly rolled to his left and, after deftly pulling a pair of cutters from his sleeve, pocketed the car’s Mercedes hood ornament. That might bring him enough for a small meal. He sat back and started to put his shoes on.

Sweet jesus balls!

Someone linked to this blog, now I'm gonna have to do some work!

Luckily Mike and I have just started another project so I'll have micro-ideas and stuff to put up here.

Also we're having a bit of fun with some friends doing some writing. One of the group picks a photo from Flickr's "interesting" page, and everyone has to come up with a brief (1-2 para) story.

I'll post my stories here.