a vignette
She was crouched, one knee resting on the asphalt and the other drawn to her hunched shoulders. Faint wisps of dark hair wavered languidly in the shadows of her face. Her gray eyes were lowered and she was absent-mindedly chewing the corner of her lower lip, jaw working slowly, mechanically. Her blunt fingers toyed with the edge of a once-neon flip-flop.
It was a muggy night, too oppressive for even the flickering cheer of fireflies. Crickets chirped happily in spite of the humidity. A distant puddle of orange-hued light rippled as bats wove around the last functioning streetlamp.
The air was still.
I too felt no particular inclination to move. I stood beside her, watching the empty cul-de-sac and waiting. She continued to chew her lip quietly. Every time I glanced down over her shoulder she was in the same position, still ...
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This is an old piece of mine, from back in April. It's fairly surrealist gonzo fiction, so dive in and have fun.
Attack of the Real World:
I’ve heard it said by a friend that any graduate student is actively avoiding the “Real World”. And by “avoiding”, said speaker made it seem that grad students think of that place the way a cat thinks of a bath; that we’re dragged in, clawing and screaming obscenities. She could also be saying that we’ll look like wet rats when we’re done – I can never be sure with Sue.
Is she a graduate student herself? Of course not. She’s an atypically uneducated angry feminist. She doesn’t believe in higher education; only righteous fury, drugged up croissants, and tit-thumping. The last thing is her masochistic way of bringing equality to the hyper-masculine – and until you’ve seen somebody like Sue beat her chest like a silverback gorilla, you haven’t lived. Or feared. It’s a bit of both.
Up until a month ago, I deigned to ...
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