meljoy68

They die too loudly here - a barking, trumpeting sound that keeps everyone else awake. Some say it is the salt in the water tickling through the IV or the televisions or microwaves talking in each room. I can hear the hum of metal each time the nurse shifts her skirt or leans over to tie her shoes. They come too close to us, afraid of camoflauge of the smell of orange and then pretend they did not mean it. Lunch is biscuits and rice pudding or green jello in a styrofoam cup and a straw puncturing a carton of milk. At night we play cards - spades or hearts or dominoes with tiles someone's uncle left behind or forgot to put away. And we will

The waste land behind the fire station is always silent. No birds sing there, and even the wild rabbits and feral cats avoid it. Weedy wildflowers nod their seasonal heads in the breeze. Lying fallow in the midst of housing developments, shopping malls, the new movie theater — the vacant lot stands out like a knife wound on a woman’s placid face, shocking, brazen, ugly. It is always empty. Except for one thing: a ragged heap of old trash, all nasty black tar paper and vicious snarls of rusted wire, car parts and broken glass and other junkyard jetsam. The embodiment of injury waiting to happen, an invitation to a tetanus shot...

Uncovered, his tentacles certainly were... flexible.