There is a visual suggestion. Not much more than an unexpected movement of the air, a fluttering in the corner of his eye.Perhaps not even that—it was more like a barky whisper as he strode past the old tree on his left, a gentle tap on his shoulder that didn't register for a few more steps: words, it said, words carved here in this bark.At that he stopped and turned. He looked back, then up; took the tree in. An oak it was, old and grand and mum, as if denying having said ...

Sussex nights in early July do not stay dark for long, and by four o'clock gray creeps up on you from under bushes and from behind walls and soon you can easily make out shapes and features again. Half an hour later, it's as good as day.We had stayed up talking right on through the night against a shared, and much enjoyed backdrop of Joni Mitchell, Stealers Wheel, Ralph McTell, and even some George Frideric Handel, sustained by deeply held and shared beliefs. It was timeless talk. ...

The warm March sun had shone all day. Although the air remained frigid in the many shadows, out in the open the surface snow was now melting in its glare. Then, as commonly happens in early spring this far north, when the sun began to set and the shadows to grow longer across the snowy field, the partially melted snow surface froze and soon the entire meadow was covered by a crust of icy snow thick enough in places to support a walking man, thick enough everywhere to support almost any chi...

I arrived in this Universe a while back.Initially, you understand, just to sightsee. You know, glide around a little, take in the milky ways and the dusty swirls, all these stars large and small, all these planets green and brown and blue, some with purple plains and sandy deserts, some with gray black mountains draped in trees some and capped in white others, some neither. Many frantic oceans, too, and many placid seas. All very varied and quite pleasing, I must say. Sightseeing.

She is angry sure with me.By now she knows sure I'm here. When she's looked in all the other places she always knows I'm here and this is where she looks next.But I'm here anyway. Here is out of her wayest. Here is not under her feet, making her mad at me, always under her feet is what I am when I'm not here or in some other hiding place where she usually looks first, before she remembers here and then looks here and finds me.I don't have many hiding places for our ...

Now that the Dark King had consolidated his hold on the land, he set about to remove all traces of light.For lights, even the faintest of them, caused him wounds—sores bristling with angry fire that would not let him sleep. Even the stars on a cloudy night were too bright and a constant source of pain and a gruesome barrier to a good night's sleep.As a result, his chambermaids and Keepers of the Dark Curtains now worked day and night to better cover his bed chamber windows,...

He knew by the cry of locked wheels on tarmac, by the sting of rubber smoke in his nostrils, by the core of silence in which he found himself despite the noise—and perhaps mostly by this stillness—that he was not going to make it.He knew as he rushed towards it, or it towards him—for he felt stationary; knew as he saw the number painted on the undercarriage and looked again to make it out, 486 it said, paint peeling, or fading, no, it was peeling; he knew then, in the near timeless...

The early sunlight struck the dead seal pup just so. It rendered the pattern of light and shadow unworldly and it made the sand sing.At first glance the dead seal looked nothing like what it was. Rather, it looked like a small, smooth, seal-shaped hillock of sand, a miniature dune lovingly sculpted and then abandoned by the tide. The retreating waters still licked its seaward edge now and then, as if not really wanting to let go, proud of its creation perhaps, touching it, retreati...

July 6, 1961What I dislike the most about electric shock is the smell. That, and the little sound it makes which I didn't hear at first. What with the humming of the machine, the doctors talking, and the patient moaning and even screaming sometimes, it was hard to hear, but once I did, once I did hear this sound, distinct from all the other sounds in the room, now I hear it all the time, I can't stop hearing it.What this sound is, is a tiny sizzle—as if you were frying a ve...

Before the beginning of time there was no such thing as surprise.By the way, by the "beginning of time," I mean the beginning of this time, the one that we're now busy living and dying and doing things in, the one we're currently complaining about. There may well have been other times, you understand—there quite likely were, in fact—with their own beginnings and endings and complaints, but our time, the one going on right now and the one we are concerned with here, knows nothing of...

The day before his execution, I saw my dad for the next to last time.I had never seen him this thin, nor this unshaven. In fact, I can't for the life of me ever remember him unshaven. Yet, here in his cell, with only a day to go—less than a day, now, more like twenty hours (not even that) till the blessed event, as he liked to call it—the gray stubble was probably a week old.It had been a while. For months, now, he had refused all visitors, and not even the Warden, apparent...

They say Jesus Kristus was untouched.You learn it in school, you hear it from parents, from grandparents—from them especially—from friends, and from preachers. You read it in the Bible: Jesus Kristus was the first to, and the only one ever to, escape, ascend, transcend, what have you, the Storm. He was the first ever to rise above it unscathed, as they like to put it on the late-night TV preacher-shows, especially now with a new Storm approaching, although unscathed means the same ...