Polishing Floors Quotes

I walked across the polished marble floor and sat on a red velvet lounging couch. I idly wondered how exactly one was supposed to lounge. I couldn't remember ever doing it myself. After a moment's consideration, I decided lounging was probably similar to relaxing, but with more money in your pocket.

Joan of Arc came back as a little girl in Japan, and her father told her to stop listening to her imaginary friends. Elvis was born again in a small village in Sudan, he died hungry, age 9, never knowing what a guitar was. Michelangelo was drafted into the military at age 18 in Korea, he painted his face black with shoe polish and learned to kill. Jackson Pollock got told to stop making a mess, somewhere in Russia. Hemingway, to this day, writes DVD instruction manuals somewhere in China. He’s an old man on a factory line. You wouldn’t recognise him. Gandhi was born to a wealthy stockbroker in New York. He never forgave the world after his father threw himself from his office window, on the 21st floor. And everyone, somewhere, is someone, if we only give them a chance.

He had never looked forward to the wisdom and other vaunted benefits of old age. Would he be able to die young—and if possible free of all pain? A graceful death—as a richly patterned kimono, thrown carelessly across a polished table, slides unobtrusively down into the darkness of the floor beneath. A death marked by elegance.

Today Today I am not in my skin. My body cannot contain me. I am spilling out and over, like a rogue wave on the shore. Today I can't keep myself from feeling like I don't have a friend in the world. And no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to pick myself up off the floor. My demons are lying in wait, they are grinning in the shadows, their polished fangs glinting, knowing today, it will be an easy kill. But tomorrow, tomorrow could be different, and that is what keeps me going today.

The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the sixth Reich. The ground floor is full of gambling tables, like all the other casinos... but the place is about four stories high, in the style of a circus tent, and all manner of strange County-Fair/Polish Carnival madness is going on up in this space.

Finding The Man. Keeping The Man. Not scaring The Man, building up The Man, following The Man, soothing The Man, flattering The Man, deferring to The Man, changing your judgement for The Man, changing your decisions for The Man, polishing floors for The Man, being perpetually conscious of your appearance for The Man, being romantic for The Man, hinting to The Man, losing yourself in The Man. 'I never had a thought that wasn't yours.' Sob, sob. Whenever I act like a human being, they say, 'What are you getting upset about?' They say: of course you'll get married. They say: of course you're brilliant. They say: of course you'll get a PhD and then sacrifice it to have babies. They say: if you don't, you're the one who'll have two jobs and you can make a go of it if you're exceptional, which very few women are, and if you find a very understanding man. As long as you don't make more money than he does. How do they expect me to live all this junk?

For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs. The beautiful supermachinery opening a new life for innumerable mankind. Would you deny them the right to exist? Would you ask them to labor and go hungry while you yourself enjoyed old-fashioned Values? You—you yourself are a child of this mass and a brother to all the rest. or else an ingrate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, thought Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs.

He crossed the floor to start rifling through one of the supply chests, pulling free a small silver bottle and ripping open the top. "Is this liquor? Because I want to be completely intoxicated when Abba gets wind that his children are plotting a coup in a fucking closet." "That's weapons polish," Ali said quickly

Lord, if I thought you were listening, I'd pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except that of love. That it should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive. That it should be not like a palace with marble walls and polished floors, and guards standing at the door, but like a tree with its roots deep in the soil, that shelters every kind of bird and beast and gives blossom in the spring and shade in the hot sun and fruit in the season, and in time gives up its good sound wood for the carpenter; but that sheds many thousands of seeds so that new trees can grow in its place. Does the tree say to the sparrow, 'Get out, you don't belong here?' Does the tree say to the hungry man, 'This fruit is not for you?' Does the tree test the loyalty of the beasts before it allows them into the shade?

The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts. The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed trough the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with coversation and laughter, the clatter and clamour one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of the night. If there had been music…but no, of curse there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained. Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. they drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing these they added a small, sullen silenceto the lager, hollow one. it made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint. The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone heart that held the heat of a long-dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. and it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a strech of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight. The man had true-red hair, red as flame. his eyes was dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things. The Waystone was is, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wapping the other inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.

I wanted a reminder that things can still grow out of emptiness. I wanted a reminder that things can still grow in this small, yellow room even though you’re not in it. And I keep buying books even though nothing holds my attention anymore. I have them stacked up to the ceiling. I have them stacked up to the moon. I broke a bottle of red nail polish all over the kitchen floor, but it almost all came up with just a little remover. It looked like cleaning up after a crime scene. It felt like cleaning up after you left me. Just takes a little elbow grease. Just takes a little time.

Come out, come out, little Harry!" she called in her mock-baby voice, which echoed off the polished wooden floors. "What did you come after me for, then? I thought you were here to avenge my dear cousin!" "I am!" shouted Harry, and a score of ghostly Harrys seemed to chorus I am! I am! I am! all around the room. "Aaaaaah... did you love him, little baby Potter?" Hatred rose in Harry such as he had never known before. He flung himself out from behind the fountain and bellowed "Crucio!" Bellatrix screamed. The spell had knocked her off her feet, but she did not writhe and shriek with the pain as Neville had -- she was already on her feet again, breathless, no longer laughing. Harry dodged behind the garden fountain again -- her counterspell hit the head of the handsome wizard, which was blown off and landed twenty feet away, gouging long scratches into the wooden floor. "Never used an Unforgivable Curse before, have you, boy?" she yelled. She had abandoned her baby voice now. "You need to mean them, Potter! You need to really want to cause pain -- to enjoy it -- righteous anger won't hurt me for long -- I'll show you how it is done, shall I? I'll give you a lesson--!

In the widely open cup of the armchair was I-330. I, on the floor, embracing her limbs, my head on her lap. We were silent. Everything was silent. Only the pulse was audible. Like a crystal I was dissolving in her, in I-330. I felt most distinctly how the polished facets which limited me in space were slowly thawing, melting away. I was dissolving in her lap, in her, and I became at once smaller and larger, and larger, unembraceable. For she was not she but the whole universe. For a second I and that armchair near the bed, transfixed with joy, we were one.

And, Legolas, when the torches are kindled and men walk on the sandy floors under the echoing domes, ah! Then, Legolas, gems and crystals and veins of precious ore glint in the polished walls; and the light glows through folded marbles, shell-like, translucent as the living hands of Queen Galadriel. There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose, Legolas, fluted and twisted into dreamlike forms; they spring up from many-coloured floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them: a glimmering world looks up from dark pools covered with clear glass; cities, such as the mind of Durin could scarce have imagined in his sleep, stretch on through avenues and pillared courts, on into the dark recesses where no light can come, And plink! A silver drop falls, and the round wrinkles in the glass make all the towers bend and waver like weeds and corals in a grotto of the sea. Then evening comes:” they fade and twinkle out; the torches pass on into another chamber and another dream. There is chamber after chamber, Legolas; hall opening out of hall, dome after dome, stair beyond stair; and still the winding paths lead on into the mountains’ heart. Caves! The Caverns of Helm’s Deep! Happy was the chance that drove me there! It makes me weep to leave them.

She feels like the first drags of fresh cigaretter but last crunches of cherry suckers. She feels like final coats of nail polish. She feels like lines of coke. She feels like knuckles you crack after a long day. She feels like Miami rain. She feels like empty football fields. She feels like full stadiums. She feels like absinthe. She feels like dangling from a helicopter. She feels like classical music. She feels like standing on a motorcycle. She feels like train tracks. She feels like frozen yogurt. She feels like destroying a piano. She feels like rooftops. She feels like fleeing from cops. She feels like stitches. She feels like strobe lights. She feels like blue carnival bears. She feels like curbs at 2 am. She feels like Cupid's Chokehold. She feels like running through Chicago. She feels like 1.2 million dollars. She feels like floors. She feels like everything he's ever wanted in life. […] “I love you more than I planned.

Case shuffled into the nearest door and watched the other passengers as he rode. A pair of predatory-looking Christian Scientists were edging toward a trio of young office techs who wore idealized holographic vaginas on their wrists, wet pink glittering under the harsh lighting. The techs licked their perfect lips nervously and eyed the Christian Scientists from beneath lowered metallic lids. The girls looked like tall, exotic grazing animals, swaying gracefully and unconsciously with the movement of the train, their high heels like polished hooves against the gray metal of the car’s floor. Before they could stampede, take flight from the missionaries, the train reached Case’s station.

(Things don’t like me. Furniture purposely sticks out its leg for me. A polished corner once literally bit me. My blanket and I have always had a complicated relationship. Soup served to me never cools. Any little thing—a coin or a cuff link—that falls off the table usually rolls away under furniture that’s hard to move. I crawl across the floor and lifting my head I see the sideboard laughing.)

The palace smelled of stone and paint, of people and food and beeswax floor polish. The garden smelled only of flowers and earth.

While people in today’s affluent societies work an average of forty to forty-five hours a week, and people in the developing world work sixty and even eighty hours a week, hunter-gatherers living today in the most inhospitable of habitats – such as the Kalahari Desert – work on average for just thirty-five to forty-five hours a week. They hunt only one day out of three, and gathering takes up just three to six hours daily. In normal times, this is enough to feed the band. It may well be that ancient hunter-gatherers living in zones more fertile than the Kalahari spent even less time obtaining food and raw materials. On top of that, foragers enjoyed a lighter load of household chores. They had no dishes to wash, no carpets to vacuum, no floors to polish, no nappies to change and no bills to pay.

Life is like the big wheel at Luna Park. You pay five francs and go into a room with tiers of seats all around, and in the centre the floor is made of a great disc of polished wood that revolves quickly. At first you sit down and watch the others. They are all trying to sit in the wheel, and they keep getting flung off, and that makes them laugh too. It's great fun. You see, the nearer you can get to the hub of the wheel the slower it is moving and the easier it is to stay on. There's generally someone in the centre who stands up and sometimes does a sort of dance. Often he's paid by the management, though, or, at any rate, he's allowed in free. Of course at the very centre there's a point completely at rest, if one could only find it; I'm not very near that point myself. Of course the professional men get in the way. Lots of people just enjoy scrambling on and being whisked off and scrambling on again. How they all shriek and giggle! Then there are others, like Margot, who sit as far out as they can and hold on for dear life and enjoy that. But the whole point about the wheel is that you needn't get on it at all, if you don't want to. People get hold of ideas about life, and that makes them think they've got to join in the game, even if they don't enjoy it. It doesn't suit everyone. People don't see that when they say "life" they mean two different things. They can mean simply existence, with its physiological implications of growth and organic change. They can't escape that - even by death, but because that's inevitable they think the other idea of life is too - the scrambling and excitement and bumps and the effort to get to the middle, and when we do get to the middle, it's just as if we never started. It's so odd. Now you're a person who was clearly meant to stay in the seats and sit still and if you get bored watch the others. Somehow you got on to the wheel, and you got thrown off again at once with a hard bump. It's all right for Margot, who can cling on, and for me, at the centre, but you're static. Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic. There's a real distinction there, though I can't tell you how it comes. I think we're probably two quite different species spiritually.

Uhhhhh." Without answering,I turned and hurried toward the back of the room, eaving around bodies on yoga mats in the center of the polished wood floor, thinking unkind thoughts about well-meaning old people who wanted to push me into being successful.

Can we talk now?” she asked. “Nay, we need to . . . load the dishwasher.” He padded into the kitchen and took his time rinsing everything in the sink before stacking it into the machine. He even scrubbed the pot he’d warmed the soup in. When he closed the dishwasher, she was waiting there, holding a mop. She offered it to him. “Do you want to clean the floors now? And sweep the porch? I think the antlers on the moose head need polishing.

I think—” Anakin kicked his heel against the polished marble floor. “I think I hate it when I can’t stop my men from getting hurt. From dying. I think—

So after some instruction, Joseph put on the apron and started carefully polishing the clean dishes even though it made no sense to him. Over the course of the day, he learned how to wash the floors and clean the windows and empty out the iron stove. Soon the kitchen smelled of lemons and spices, fresh bread and soap. There was a short break for lunch before resuming work. The light shifted during the afternoon and cascaded through the clean windows, burnishing the room with gold. Joseph was so focused on the work, on the patters of the silverware and the curve of the handles on the ancient pitchers and measuring cups, that he forgot for a little while about his parents, and St. Anthony's, and the fire, and losing Blink. He felt a kind of pride in being allowed to touch all the delicate glassware, plates, and bowls, and he hadn't broken a single thing.

The sand lay blue in the moonlight and the iron tires of the wagons rolled among the shapes of the riders in gleaming hoops that veered and wheeled woundedly and vaguely navigational like slender astrolabes and the polished shoes of the horses kept hasping up like a myriad eyes winking across the desert floor. They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing.

Sometimes I wait at the bottom of those dark stairs, I sit at the bottom of the stairs, I wait beyond the bottom of the stairs and listen to the sounds my wife and children make as they sleep, the sounds our animals make as they step carefully through our dreams and out the other side to polished floor and cold window. Sometimes I wait so long I become unsure if I am asleep, or awake, or dead.

After Laura and Mary had washed and wiped the dishes, swept the floor, made their bed, and dusted, they settled down with their books. But the house was so cosy and pretty that Laura kept looking up at it. The black stove was polished till it gleamed. A kettle of beans was bubbling on its top and bread was baking in the oven. Sunshine slanted through the shining windows between the pink-edged curtains. The red-checked cloth was on the table. Beside the clock on its shelf stood Carrie’s little brown-and-white dog, and Laura’s sweet jewel-box. And the little pink-and-white shepherdess stood smiling on the wood-brown bracket.

Too often we only identify the crucial points in our lives in retrospect. At the time we are too absorbed in the fetid detail of the moment to spot where it is leading us. But not this time. I was experiencing one of my dad’s deafening moments. If my life could be understood as a meal of many courses (and let’s be honest, much of it actually was), then I had finished the starters and I was limbering up for the main event. So far, of course, I had made a stinking mess of it. I had spilled the wine. I had dropped my cutlery on the floor and sprayed the fine white linen with sauce. I had even spat out some of my food because I didn’t like the taste of it. “But it doesn’t matter because, look, here come the waiters. They are scraping away the debris with their little horn and steel blades, pulled with studied grace from the hidden pockets of their white aprons. They are laying new tablecloths, arranging new cutlery, placing before me great domed wine glasses, newly polished to a sparkle. There are more dishes to come, more flavors to try, and this time I will not spill or spit or drop or splash. I will not push the plate away from me, the food only half eaten. I am ready for everything they are preparing to serve me. Be in no doubt; it will all be fine.” (pp.115-6)

Our story ends happily ever after. It has to. We escape Battle Creek, pile into the car, and burn a strip of rubber down the highway. Fly away west, to the promised land. Our rooms will be lit by lava lamps and Christmas lights. Our lives will glow. Consciousness will rise and minds will expand, and beautiful boys in flannel shirts will make snow angels on our floor and write love letters on our ceiling with black polish and red lipstick. We will be their muses, and they will strum their guitars beneath our window, calling to us with a siren song. Come down come away with me. We will lean out of our tower, our hair swinging like Rapunzel's, and laugh, because nothing will carry us away from each other.

There were books everywhere. Hundreds of books. Thousands of books. There were books of every size, shape, and color. They lined the walls from floor to ceiling, standing straight and rigid as soldiers on the polished mahogany shelves, the gilt lettering on their worn spines glinting in the soft light, the scent of supple leather and aging paper filling the air.

When he pursed his lips and dropped a hand into his coat pocket, the last thing Nur expected him to pull out was a cricket ball. "I'd hoped for a disruptor at least," she muttered reprovingly. The Doctor slipped three fingers around the ball and hefted it experimentally. "I thought we'd try something a little less excessive." He breathed gently on to the maroon leather and polished it on his leg as the Sontaran finally tossed the Kshatriya aside and stopped to pick up its fallen weapon. He stepped around the corner, sighting along his free arm as the Sontaran straightened, its back fully turned. The cricket ball flashed down the length of the corridor in the blink of an eye, punching into the back of the Sontaran's collar and ricocheting away. To Nur's astonishment, the alien spasmed and crashed to the floor like a falling tree. "Out for a duck," the Doctor commented, blowing across his fingertips. "I've never seen anything killed by a cricket ball before." "You haven't yet. He'll wake up in a few minutes.

She feels like the first drags of fresh cigarettes but last crunches of cherry suckers. She feels like final coats of nail polish. She feels like lines of coke. She feels like knuckles you crack after a long day. She feels like Miami rain. She feels like empty football fields. She feels like full stadiums. She feels like absinthe. She feels like dangling from a helicopter. She feels like classical music. She feels like standing on a motorcycle. She feels like train tracks. She feels like frozen yogurt. She feels like destroying a piano. She feels like rooftops. She feels like fleeing from cops. She feels like stitches. She feels like strobe lights. She feels like blue carnival bears. She feels like curbs at 2 am. She feels like Cupid's Chokehold. She feels like running through Chicago. She feels like 1.2 million dollars. She feels like floors. She feels like everything he's ever wanted in life. […] “I love you more than I planned.

I stepped inside the front hall and kicked off my snow boots. I slammed the door behind me, making the dark ruby and emerald glass shake in the small leaded panes. I slid purposely on the hall rug, causing it to bunch and crinkle on the slippery polished oak of the floor.

It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts. The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there had been music...but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained. Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. They drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing this they added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one. It made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint. The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. And it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight. The man had true-red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things. The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.

His eyes fluttered open, focused on me; it was how he had looked at me in all our time together, across the palace rivers, across the polished floors of his chambers, underneath the moonlight. no matter where we were, he was always the first one to spot me, always the last to look away. as if afraid that i would disappear at any moment, like smoke in the breeze. as if he knew that one day, he would run out of time, out of chance.

She had a vision of the work she had done on the house in the past few years, all the wooden floors and panels she had polished, all the glass, all the plate; and instead of resenting the fire for threatening to snatch these things from her, she wanted to give them all up in a sort of orgy of surrender.

afterlife, the space between earth and not-earth, world and not-world, highly polished floors and glass-roof cathedral echoes and the whole anonymous

This is exactly what he wanted: to have an apartment with high ceilings and bookcases going all the way up, the hardwood floors and the coffee table of glass and polished metal.

The air had that familiar tang of floor polish, socks and stale dinners that most schools share.

The drug hit him like an express train, a white-hot column of light mounting his spine from the region of his prostate, illuminating the sutures of his skull with x-rays of short-circuited sexual energy. His teeth sang in their individual sockets, each one pitch-perfect and clear as ethanol. His bones, beneath the hazy envelope of flesh, were chromed and polished, the joints lubricated with a film of silicone. Sandstorms raged across the scoured floor of his skull, generating waves of high thin static that broke behind his eyes, spheres of purest crystal, expanding...

A bemused smile crossed Cassandra's face as she saw Tom Severin kneeling on the floor with his thighs spread for balance, a steel pipe cutter in one hand. In contrast to his earlier polished elegance, he was in shirtsleeves with the cuffs rolled up over his forearms and the collar unfastened. A well-formed man, wide-shouldered and long in the bone. He was steaming in the residual heat from the range, the cropped hair at the back of his neck damp with sweat, the fine linen of his shirt clinging to a hard-muscled back. Well. This was an eye-opener, in more ways than one.

All the others had the wrong smell – floor polish for the Low, somewhat suspicious incense for the High. Deep in the leather armchair of his soul, Mr. Young knew that God got embarrassed at that sort of thing. But he liked seeing nuns around, in the same way that he liked seeing the Salvation Army. It made you feel that it was all all right, that people somewhere were keeping the world on its axis.

THE TRUTH IS BORN IN STRANGE PLACES Joan of Arc came back as a little girl in Japan, and her father told her to stop listening to her imaginary friends. Elvis was born again in a small village in Sudan, he died hungry, age 9, never knowing what a guitar was. Michelangelo was drafted into the military at age 18 in Korea, he painted his face black with shoe polish and learned to kill. Jackson Pollock got told to stop making a mess, somewhere in Russia. Hemingway, to this day, writes DVD instruction manuals somewhere in China. He’s an old man on a factory line. You wouldn’t recognise him. Gandhi was born to a wealthy stockbroker in New York. He never forgave the world after his father threw himself from his office window, on the 21st floor. And everyone, somewhere, is someone, if we only give them a chance.

As for sweeping the floor, polishing the windows, dusting, and general drudgery of that sort … well, if women’s work was never done, why trouble about how much of it wasn’t being accomplished at any given moment?

Jack hit the floor and fired off push-ups until he thought he'd pass out. The spinning behind his eyes felt good. He'd gotten by with a half grapefruit (35 calories) at breakfast, because his mom was such an emotional wreck before driving him to the hospital. She didn't argue over the half cup of oatmeal (110 calories), which he dumped in the sink before polishing off the last of his red M&Ms, his go-to food when life got sucky.

Despite his persistence, Trinity still fell short of mastery when tossing the cards. The most he could manage was four in a row. Inevitably, the fifth card would land on the polished linoleum floor of the CID office.

Annie Wilkes had her own interior set of rules; in her way she was strangely prim. She had made him drink water from a floor-bucket; had withheld his medication until he was in agony; had made him burn the only copy of his new novel; had hand-cuffed him and stuck a rag reeking of furniture polish in his mouth; but she would not take the money from his wallet. She brought it to him, the old scuffed Lord Buxton he’d had since college, and put it in his hands. All

Wood is an endlessly adaptive material. You can plane, chisel, saw, carve, sand, and bend it, and when the pieces are the shape you want you can use dovetail joints, tenpenny nails, pegs or glue; you can use lamination or inlay or marquetry; and then you can beautify it with French polish or plain linseed oil or subtle stains. And when you go to dinner at a friend's house, the candlelight will pick out the contours of grain and line, and when you take your seat you will be reminded that what you are sitting on grew from the dirt, stretched towards the sun, weathered rain and wind, and sheltered animals; it was not extruded by faceless machines lined on a cold cement floor and fed from metal vats. Wood reminds us where we come from.

The [ military ] lawyers I saw there had about as much in common with the man who had defended me at fifteen as automated machine rifle fire has with farting. They were cold, professionally polished and well on their way up a career ladder which would ensure that despite the uniforms they wore, they would never have to come within a thousand kilometres of a genuine firefight. The only problem they had, as they cruised sharkishly back and forth across the cool marble floor of the court, was in drawing the fine differences between war (mass murder of people wearing a uniform not your own), justifiable loss (mass murder of your own troops, but with substantial gains) and criminal negligence (mass murder of your own troops, without appreciable benefit). I sat in that courtroom for three weeks listening to them dress it like a variety of salads, and with every passing hour the distinctions, which at one point I'd been pretty clear on, grew increasingly vague. I suppose that proves how good they were.

You run off when things get a little more complicated than you'd like, and leave us to cover your tracks so the whole valley doesn't find out that Hytanica bloody lost its King-meanwhile, the Cokyrians are infiltrating our lands to the north, so it becomes entirely possible that you've walked right into their camp. We have men out there still searching for you,men who should be helping to barricade the northern border-to make sure that in a week you still have a kingdom to rule. And you have the gall to strut in here and be an ass! I swear, Steldo, if we didn't need someone to sit on that throne, I'd dispatch you with my own hands!" The two erstwhile companions stared at each other, Galen challenging Steldor to respond, and Steldor too staggered to do so.Eventually,the sergeant threw his hands in the air and marched into his office,slamming the door behind him. In the silence that followed Galen's departure, I came to appreciate the true meaning of the word awkward. Steldor did not rise to his feet, and his eyes were glazed. I felt un-needed,but there was no way for me to make a polished exit. The Palace Gaurds,bound by duty to remaind, searched the walls, the floor, the ceiling, for anything plausible in which to show an interest, not wanting to be caught gawking at their King.

Time and time again I am astounded by the regularity and repetition of form in this valley and elsewhere in wild nature: basic patterns, sculpted by time and the land, appearing everywhere I look. The twisted branches in the forest that look so much like the forked antlers of the deer and elk. The way the glacier-polished hillside boulders look like the muscular, rounded bodies of the animals- deer, bear- that pass among these boulders like loving ghosts. The way the swirling deer hair is the exact shape and size of the larch and pine needles the deer hair lies upon one it is torn loose and comes to rest on the forest floor. As if everything up here is leaning in the same direction, shaped by the same hands, or the same mind; not always agreeing or in harmony, but attentive always to the same rules of logic and in the playing-out, again and again, of the infinite variations of specificity arising from that one shaping system of logic an incredible sense of community develops… Felt at night when you stand beneath the stars and see the shapes and designs of bears and hunters in the sky; felt deep in the cathedral of an old forest, when you stare up at the tops of the swaying giants; felt when you take off your boots and socks and wade across the river, sensing each polished, mossy stone with your bare feet. Felt when you stand at the edge of the marsh and listen to the choral uproar of the frogs, and surrender to their shouting, and allow yourself, too, like those pine needles and that deer hair, like those branches and those antlers, to be remade, refashioned into the shape and the pattern and the rhythm of the land. Surrounded, and then embraced, by a logic so much more powerful and overarching than anything that a man or woman could create or even imagine that all you can do is marvel and laugh at it, and feel compelled to give, in one form or another, thanks and celebration for it, without even really knowing why…

The rock there is described as “blue-gray true unfading slate.” It is strong but “soft,” and will accept a polishing that makes it smoother than glass. From Memphis to St. Joe, from Joplin to River City, there is scarcely a hustler in the history of pool who has not racked up his runs over Martinsburg slate. For anybody alive who still hears corruption in the click of pocket billiards, it is worth a moment of reflection that not only did all those pool tables accumulate on the ocean floor as Ordovician guck but so did the blackboards in the schools of all America.

Hi, Dean,” Allie says breathlessly. “Hey, Allie.” His voice is like hot water sliding over a polished floor. “How’s that boyfriend of yours treating you?” Allie smiles, her face getting a little pink. “Really well, thanks.” “Good.” Dean reaches out to give my long ponytail a gentle tug. “And how’s that husband of yours treating you, Liv?” I meet his gaze, my heart thumping at the potent combi- nation of heat and tenderness in his eyes. “He does all right.” “Guess he’d better work harder, huh?” “Couldn’t hurt.” “God, you two. Get a room.” Allie fans herself with a magazine and rolls her eyes.

I’m certain I carry my mama and papa in my cells, but also the lavender, the orange blossoms, my mother’s sheets, my grandmother’s calculated footsteps, the toasted pecans, the clunk of the treacherous tile, the sugar caramelizing, the cajeta, the mad cicadas, the smells of old wood, and the polished clay floors.

As he came up Second Avenue, Henry saw that Jerry Lauterbach was again having trouble with the neighborhood psycho. It was natural, Henry reflected, that New York, being so well supplied with all the necessities of life, should not be lacking in persons whose mental furniture was sliding on the polished floors of their intelligence.

There was little sign of culture, and the luxury was senseless and haphazard, and was as ill fitting as that uniform. The floors irritated him with their brilliant polish, the lustres on the chandelier irritated him, and he was reminded for some reason of the story of the merchant who used to go to the baths with a medal on his neck. . . .

The floor consisted of the most colorful marble that is found in our mountains. The slabs overlapped so well that scarcely a joint could be seen; the marble was smoothed and polished very finely and the colors so arranged that the floor gave the impression of a lovely picture. Moreover it gleamed and shimmered in the light that was streaming in from the windows.

Closing the door behind him, Macdonald stood still in the darkness, as he had stood so often in other buildings. Houses, barns, shops, flats, warehouses, all dark, as this passage was dark, but having in the darkness their own character because each had its own peculiar smell. Gramarye smelt of floor polish and carbolic and soap: something of the unwelcoming smell of an institution, but behind the overlay of modern cleanliness, the smell of the ancient house declared itself, of old mortar, of stone walls built without damp courses, of woodwork decaying under coats of paint, of panelling and floor boards which gave out their ancient breath as the coldness of the stone house triumphed over the warmth of the midsummer evening.

machines again, and radios, and the latest Chevrolet. General Electric flooded the country with luxury gadgets: food processors, toasters, floor-polishing machines, FM radios, electric blankets, and so on. These were all products promoted by that epitome of the television salesman Ronald Reagan, a popular actor whose work in advertising eventually taught him to sell himself, too. Traditional ideals were put on hold and ‘selling out’ became a catchphrase – you accepted a job that gave you no satisfaction because the pay was good. These were the months and years when British singer Vera Lynn touched American hearts with ‘A kiss won’t mean “Goodbye” but “Hello to love”’. Yes, that’s when it started, with that kiss on Times Square.

men worked fifty, sixty, even seventy or more hours a week; the women worked all the time, with little assistance from labor-saving devices, washing laundry, ironing shirts, mending socks, turning collars, sewing on buttons, mothproofing woolens, polishing furniture, sweeping and washing floors, washing windows, cleaning sinks, tubs, toilets, and stoves, vacuuming rugs, nursing the sick, shopping for food, cooking meals, feeding relatives, tidying closets and drawers, overseeing paint jobs and household repairs, arranging for religious observances, paying bills and keeping the family’s books while simultaneously attending to their children’s health, clothing, cleanliness, schooling, nutrition, conduct, birthdays, discipline, and morale.

I've got a couple of other ideas. For instance, about the viscosity of sound. Sounds spread over surfaces, slide across polished floors, flow in gutters, pile up in corners, snap on ridges, fall like rain on mucous membranes, swarm on plexuses, flame up on body hair, and flutter on skin like warm air over summer fields. There are aerial battles where sound waves bounce back on themselves, start spinning and whirl between heaven and earth, like the indestructible regret of the suicide, who halfway down from the sixth floor all of a sudden no longer wants to die any more. There are words which do not reach their mark and roll up into roving balls, swollen with danger, like lightning does sometimes when it fails to find its target. There are words which freeze...

There was no part of this house that felt inviting. Paul's cold, calculating hand could be seen behind every choice. The concrete on the entryway floor was polished to a dark mirror straight out of Snow White. The spiral stairs looked like a robot's asshole. The endless white walls made Lydia feel like she was trapped inside a straightjacket. The sooner she was out of here the better.

By the time James had dressed and made his way down to the Great Hal for breakfast, it was nearly ten o’clock. Less than a dozen students could be seen moving disconsolately among the detritus of the morning’s earlier rush. At the far corner of the Slytherin table, Zane sat hunched and squinting under a beam of sunlight. Across from him was Ralph, who saw James enter and waved him over. As James made his way across the Hal , four or five house-elves, each wearing large linen napkins with the Hogwarts crest embroidered on them, circled the tables, meandering in what at first appeared to be random paths. Occasional y, one of them would duck beneath the surface of a table and then reappear a moment later, tossing a stray fork or half a biscuit casual y onto the mess of the table. As James passed one of the elves, it straightened, raised its spindly arms, and then brought them swiftly down. The contents on the table in front of him swirled together as if caught in a miniature cyclone. With a great clattering of dishes and silverware, the corners of the tablecloth shot upwards and twisted around the pile of breakfast debris, creating a huge clanking bag floating improbably over the polished wood table. The house-elf leaped from floor to bench to tabletop, and then jumped, turning in midair and landing lightly on top of the bag. It grasped the twisted top of the bag, using the knot as if it were a set of reins, and turned the bag, driving it bobbingly toward the gigantic service doors in the side of the Hal . James ducked as the bag swooped over his head.

Allison made it to the bottom of the polished oak staircase before she had to sit on the last step to find a familiar point of reference. Saturated, she thought, that is a great word. Saturated with hope, love, sadness and happiness all at once. She stared down at her pink toes, curling them against the wood floors she and John had refinished so long ago, making sure she was conscious and alive.

It's been over a year since they've visited their son's market. As they walk through the parking lot they take in a number of improvements. Brian admires the raised garden beds made of cedar planks that flank the sides of the lot. There are stalks of tomatoes, staked beans, baskets of green herbs- oregano, lavender, fragrant blades of lemongrass and pointed curry leaf. The planter of baby lettuces has a chalkboard hung from its side: "Just add fork." A wheelbarrow parked by the door is heaped with bright coronas of sunflowers, white daisies, jagged red ginger and birds-of-paradise. Avis feels a leap of pride as they enter the market: the floor of polished bamboo, the sky-blue ceiling, the wooden shelves- like bookshelves in a library. And the smells. Warm, round billows of baking bread, roasting garlic and onions and chicken.

Do you really think my feet smell?” I don’t. I love the way he smells after a lacrosse game--like sweat and grass and him. But I love to tease, to see that unsure look cross his face for just half a beat. “Well, I mean, on game days…” I say. Then Peter attacks me again, and we’re wrestling around, laughing, when Kitty walks in, balancing a tray with a cheese sandwich and a glass of orange juice. “Take it upstairs,” she says, sitting down on the floor. “This is a public area.” Disentangling myself, I give her a glare. “We aren’t doing anything private, Katherine.” “Your sister says my feet stink,” Peter says, pointing his foot in her direction. “She’s lying, isn’t she?” She deflects it with a pop of her elbow. “I’m not smelling your foot.” She shudders. “You guys are kinky.” I yelp and throw a pillow at her. She gasps. “You’re lucky you didn’t knock over my juice! Daddy will kill you if you mess up the rug again.” Pointedly she says, “Remember the nail-polish-remover incident?” Peter ruffles my hair. “Clumsy Lara Jean.” I shove him away from me. “I’m not clumsy. You’re the one who tripped over his own feet trying to get to the pizza the other night at Gabe’s.” Kitty bursts into giggles and Peter throws a pillow at her. “You guys need to stop ganging up on me!” he yells.

Rich dark wood, polished by both time and careful hands, grew from the floor to the ceiling in perfect straight lines. In place of branches, shelves. In place of leaves, books. Oh, the books. I was light-headed from breathing in as deeply as possible, trying to absorb the knowledge here by sheer force of will. I trailed my hands along a row of spines, their worn leather bindings labels with gold because of the treasure contained inside" -Elizabeth

Shall I tell you about life? Well, it's like the big wheel at Luna Park. You pay five francs and go into a room with tiers of seats all round, and in the centre the floor is made of a great disc of polished wood that revolves quickly. At first you sit down and watch the others. They are all trying to sit in the wheel, and they keep getting flung off, and that makes them laugh, and you laugh too. It's great fun. It is very much like life. You see, the nearer you can get to the hub of the wheel the slower it is moving and the easier it is to stay on. There's generally some one in the centre who stands up and sometimes does a sort of dance. Often he's paid by the management, though, or, at any rate, he's allowed in free. Of course at the very centre there's a point completely at rest, if one could only find it. I'm not sure I am not very near that point myself. Of course the professional men get in the way. Lots of people just enjoy scrambling on and being whisked off and scrambling on again. How they all shriek and giggle! Then there are others who sit as far out as they can and hold on for dear life and enjoy that. But the whole point about the wheel is that you needn't get on it at all, if you don't want to. People get hold of ideas about life, and that makes them think they've got to join in the game, even if they don't enjoy it. It doesn't suit every one.

LONDON. TRINITY TERM one week old. Implacable June weather. Fiona Maye, a High Court judge, at home on Sunday evening, supine on a chaise longue, staring past her stockinged feet toward the end of the room, toward a partial view of recessed bookshelves by the fireplace and, to one side, by a tall window, a tiny Renoir lithograph of a bather, bought by her thirty years ago for fifty pounds. Probably a fake. Below it, centered on a round walnut table, a blue vase. No memory of how she came by it. Nor when she last put flowers in it. The fireplace not lit in a year. Blackened raindrops falling irregularly into the grate with a ticking sound against balled-up yellowing newsprint. A Bokhara rug spread on wide polished floorboards. Looming at the edge of vision, a baby grand piano bearing silver-framed family photos on its deep black shine. On the floor by the chaise longue, within her reach, the draft of a judgment.

The large drawing-room was an immense, long room, with a sort of gallery that ran from one pavilion to the other, taking up the whole of the façade on the garden side. A large French window opened on to the steps. This gallery glittered with gold. The ceiling, gently arched, had fanciful scrolls winding round great gilt medallions, that shone like bucklers. Bosses and dazzling garlands encircled the arch; fillets of gold, resembling threads of molten metal, ran round the walls, framing the panels, which were hung with red silk; festoons of roses, topped with tufts of full-blown blossoms, hung down along the sides of the mirrors. An Aubusson carpet spread its purple flowers over the polished flooring. The furniture of red silk damask, the door-hangings and window-curtains of the same material, the huge ormolu clock on the mantel-piece, the porcelain vases standing on the consoles, the legs of the two long tables

Doris was getting No. 4 ready for a new guest. The floor did not trouble her much, but she spent quite a long time on the taps and the veneered top of the dressing-table. Dusting and polishing she liked—things that showed—but those bits of fluff and dried mud at the bottom of the wardrobe she just pushed back into a corner. There was no means of getting them out, anyway, with that ridge at the front. Furniture was always made as inconvenient as possible. Doris was used to that.

Imagine a very tall building where the first few floors are ignored completely and are rarely maintained, while the top floors are glorified, swept, mended, and polished daily. The reality is that it doesn’t matter how beautiful the top of the building is if the lower floors are not given the attention they need: the whole building will crumble to the ground as the lower floors form the very foundation of the entire structure. The same goes with the work we apply to the chakras.

In two days they began to come upon bones and cast-off apparel. They saw halfburied skeletons of mules with the bones so white and polished they seemed incandescent even in that blazing heat and they saw panniers and packsaddles and the bones of men and they saw a mule entire, the dried and blackened carcass hard as iron. They rode on. The white noon saw them through the waste like a ghost army, so pale they were with dust, like shades of figures erased upon a board. The wolves loped paler yet and grouped and skittered and lifted their lean snouts on the air. At night the horses were fed by hand from sacks of meal and watered from buckets. There was no more sickness. The survivors lay quietly in that cratered void and watched the whitehot stars go rifling down the dark. Or slept with their alien hearts beating in the sand like pilgrims exhausted upon the face of the planet Anareta, clutched to a namelessness wheeling in the night. They moved on and the iron of the wagontires grew polished bright as chrome in the pumice. To the south the blue cordilleras stood footed in their paler image on the sand like reflections in a lake and there were no wolves now. They took to riding by night, silent jornadas save for the trundling of the wagons and the wheeze of the animals. Under the moonlight a strange party of elders with the white dust thick on their moustaches and their eyebrows. They moved on and the stars jostled and arced across the firmament and died beyond the inkblack mountains. They came to know the nightskies well. Western eyes that read more geometric constructions than those names given by the ancients. Tethered to the polestar they rode the Dipper round while Orion rose in the southwest like a great electric kite. The sand lay blue in the moonlight and the iron tires of the wagons rolled among the shapes of the riders in gleaming hoops that veered and wheeled woundedly and vaguely navigational like slender astrolabes and the polished shoes of the horses kept hasping up like a myriad of eyes winking across the desert floor. They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing.

For example, suppose you intend to clean your home. You normally need five hours to make it appear spotless. This allows for vacuuming and mopping the floors, cleaning the countertops, washing the dishes, dusting and polishing the furniture, cleaning the appliances, washing the windows, sweeping the patio, and more. Now, impose a challenging time limit upon yourself. For instance, rather than allowing yourself five hours, give yourself two hours. Then, get as much cleaning done as possible in those two hours.

Gina hoisted herself up onto her elbows and gaped at Spike. "So that's the famous Spike I've been hearing so much about from your brothers? Damn, he is ugly." Jesse, who'd stayed where he was, looked defensive. Spike was his baby, and you just don't go around calling Jesse's baby ugly. "He's not so bad," I said, hoping Gina would get the message and shut up. "Are you on crack?" Gina wanted to know. "Simon, the thing's only got one ear." Suddenly, the large, gilt-framed mirror above the dressing table started to shake. It had a tendency to do this whenever Jesse got annoyed - really annoyed. Gina, not knowing this, stared at the mirror with growing excitement. "Hey!" she cried. "All right! Another one!" She meant an earthquake, of course, but this, like the one before, was no earthquake. It was just Jesse letting off steam. Then the next thing I knew, a bottle of finger-nail polish Gina had left on the dressing table went flying and, defying all gravitational law, landed upside down in the suitcase she had placed on the floor at the end of the daybed, around seven or eight feet away. I probably don't need to add that the bottle of polish - it was emerald green - was uncapped. And that it ended up on top of the clothes Gina hadn't unpacked yet. Gina let out a terrified shriek, threw back the comforter, and dove to the floor, trying to salvage what she could. I, meanwhile, threw Jesse a very dirty look. But all he said was, "Don't look at me like that, Susannah. You heard what she said about him." He sounded wounded. "She called him ugly.

Holmes offered Julia a cheerful “Merry Christmas” and gave her a hug, then took her hand and led her to a room on the second floor that he had readied for the operation. A table lay draped in white linen. His surgical kits stood open and gleaming, his instruments laid out in a sunflower of polished steel. Fearful things: bonesaws, abdomen retractor, trocar and trepan. More instruments, certainly, than he really needed and all positioned so that Julia could not help but see them and be sickened by their hard, eager gleam

When we got back to my room, Gilda gave the dog a bowl of water and set some newspaper down in the bathroom for her to pee on. After that was taken care of, I ordered the cheesecake and coffee that Gilda said she has a yen for, and then we continues talking. Sparkle didn’t make a sound — no barking or winning or heaving breathing — she just sat on the floor and looked at the two of us. It must have been strange for her. She was a year old and had been taken from a farm by a stranger, put on an airplane, driven in a limousine, and then hugged and kissed by another stranger. Even when the doorbell rang, she didn’t bark. I thought perhaps she wasn’t able to bark. The waiter brought in the cheesecake and  poured out some coffee for us. When Gilda and I started eating the cheesecake, we heard a little peep form Sparkle. She sounded more like a bird than a dog — a very polite bird — but it was obvious that she wanted her share of cheesecake, which Gilda gave her. So the three of us polished off the cheesecake — “One piece, three forks, please.

He saw a chamber, broad and low, designed, in its every rich stain of picture and slumberous hanging, to appeal to the sensuous. And here the scent was thick and motionless. Costly marqueterie; Palissy candlesticks reflected in half-concealed mirrors framed in embossed silver; antique Nankin vases brimming with pot-pourri; in one comer a suit of Milanese armour, fluted, damasquinee, by Felippo Negroli; in another a tripod table of porphyry, spectrally repeating in its polished surface the opal hues of a vessel of old Venetian glass half filled with some topaz-coloured liqueur - such and many more tokens of a luxurious aestheticism wrought in the observer an immediate sense of pleasurable enervation. He noticed, with a swaying thrill of delight, that his feet were on a padded rug of Astrakhan - one of many, disposed eccentrically about the yellow tassellated-marble floor; and he noticed that the sole light in the chamber came from an iridescent globed lamp, fed with some fragrant oil, that hung near an alcove traversed by a veil of dark violet silk. ("The Accursed Cordonnier")

There are people, gentlemen, who dislike roundabout ways and only mask themselves at masquerades. There are people who do not see man’s highest avocation in polishing the floor with their boots. There are people, gentlemen, who refuse to say that they are happy and enjoying a full life when, for instance, their trousers set properly. There are people, finally, who dislike dashing and whirling about for no object, fawning, and licking the dust, and above all, gentlemen, poking their noses where they are not wanted. . . I’ve told you almost everything, gentlemen; now allow me to withdraw.

-and the house left its own echos in me. I carry them inside me still. I’m certain I carry my mama and papa in my cells, but also the lavender, the orange blossoms, my mother’s sheets, my grandmother’s calculated footsteps, the toasted pecans, the clunk of the treacherous tile, the sugar caramelizing, the cajeta, the mad cicadas, the smells of old wood, and the polished clay floors. I’m also made of oranges—green, sweet, or rotten; of orange-blossom honey and royal jelly. I’m made of everything that touched my senses during that time and entered the part of my brain where I keep my memories.

Maloney looked around my room and nodded like he approved of the extravagance surrounding him: the inch-thick carpet with its diamond designs, the half moon flock of the wallpaper, and the antique furniture, polished to a museum quality shine. The two goons he brought with him flanked the door, equally impressed, I could tell by their dropped jaws and roving, wanton eyes. One of them set a briefcase on the floor beside him. Finally Maloney’s eyes found me, and his expression turned from amazement to shock. “I didn’t expect you to be--” “A Vampire?” I asked, feeling the touch of a smile form on my lips.

Those girls have nothing on the March sisters,” Silas says, leaning in so close that I can feel his breath on my shoulder. A strange shiny feeling ripples through me and I wheel toward him, accidently ramming my shopping basket into Silas’s side. A few Ace bandages toppled to the floor and the girls looked up from their polish dilemma to snicker at me. Nice one, Rosie. I can feel the blush starting as I duck to grab the bandages, and when my hand brushes against Silas’s leg, the heat spreads down my neck. Calm down. It’s just Silas. I rise and force a smile that I hope doesn’t look as goofy as I suspect.

The floor was of warm, old oak planks, many of the individual planks extraordinarily long, as if sawn from the mast of a tall ship. There were two working tables in the middle of the room, and around the walls were located a binder’s press, with its tall screw; a camera stand; an industrial sewing machine; a gluing cabinet with exhaust hood; a guillotine table and cutting board; a TRS-80 computer and dot matrix printer on a narrow mahogany desk that might have come from a boat; a partner’s table topped in green leather and gilt edging on which resided no fewer than six typewriters, ranging from a 1920s Underwood to a very recent all-plastic Brother machine; a mid-eighteenth-century highly polished flame mahogany map cabinet of twelve drawers;

Then the door opened and Diana entered…with Prince Charles. I held my breath as she gave us a brilliant smile and briskly crossed the floor. The new Diana was truly breathtaking--beautiful, self-assured, polished, and stunning in her scarlet suit. She looked even more radiant in person than in her best pictures. She was absolute perfection, with her flawless complexion, starry blue eyes, and confident carriage. A remarkable and complete transformation from young nanny to global sensation--and she was only twenty-four! Before either one of us said a word, Diana and I exchanged glances for just an instant. I didn’t even try to hide my amazement and admiration. My eyes and smile said, “Wow! I’m speechless.” Diana’s impish grin replied, “Yes, I’ve done pretty well, haven’t I?” It was an unforgettable, private moment.

Vishous went to pull back one of the chairs. When it resisted, Butch sat forward and reached for his Phillips head. “Here, let’s unscrew the—” The brother yanked the thing up, the high-pitched whine of metal reaching and surpassing its structural integrity making Butch wince. As some of the screws bounced on the hard polished floor, V turned the chair around and inspected the mangled feet. “Didn’t think that one through,” he muttered. His solution to the inevitable instability was to pound those four feet into the concrete over and over again until the thing was somewhat level on its legs. “There,” he said as he parked his ass. “Fixed it.” The fact that he was sitting off-kilter and had made holes in the floor seemed petty to point out. “Good job,” Butch said. “I could do the other two?” “I think we’re okay. But thanks for the offer.

Dale, a Plutonian Dreg Bug, the kind with seventeen eyes and a bad temper, got nailed in one of his eyes by a wild dart. Fight broke out when he punched Earl in the nose. Earl’s nose is very sensitive, hell it’s how he sees, sort of. Earl plopped down on the floor crying when a Flying Mugwhap flew over and ate Dale’s eye. Dale grabbed the Mugwhap and squeezed a good deal of the life out of it before the bouncer stopped him. Karen, the bouncer, is a reticulated Hive Mother, and a mean mother when she’s pissed off. She walked over and flicked Dale upside his head. That flick knocked Dale out cold, and cost him two more eyes when he hit the wall. She helped Earl up and bought him a drink. A nasty drink by all the comments I’ve heard. Something between varnish and the stuff people get in the corners of their mouths with a nice aftertaste of silver polish. Earl seemed to like it though.

How I loved the municipal libraries of South Croydon. They were not child-friendly places; in fact, they were not friendly at all, to anyone. They were large, dark, wood-panelled rooms full of books, in which visitors were expected to be silent, and the only sound was the clicking of school shoes on polished parquet floor. The larger building in the town had its own children's library, accessible at one end of the hall via an imposing door, but what lay behind that door was not a children's library as we might understand it today, full of scatter cushions and toys and strategies of appeasement; it revealed simply a smaller, replica wood-panelled room full of books. And this - the shared expectation of respect, the solemnity, the shelves crammed end-to-end with books, no face-outs or yawning gaps - is what I loved about these places and what I found inspiring. The balance of power lay with the books, not the public. This would never be permitted today.

The somewhat dim coal-fire has an essential influence in producing the effect which I would describe. It throws its unobtrusive tinge throughout the room, with a faint ruddiness upon the walls and ceiling, and a reflected gleam from the polish of the furniture. This warmer light mingles itself with the cold spirituality of the moonbeams, and communicates, as it were, a heart and sensibilities of human tenderness to the forms which fancy summons up. It converts them from snow-images into men and women. Glancing at the looking-glass, we behold—deep within its haunted verge—the smouldering glow of the half-extinguished anthracite, the white moonbeams on the floor, and a repetition of all the gleam and shadow of the picture, with one remove farther from the actual, and nearer to the imaginative. Then, at such an hour, and with this scene before him, if a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.

We look amazing," I repeated, as if I could make up for our brother's rudeness. And we did look amazing. Käthe and I were dressed as an angel and a demon, but to my surprise, my sister had chosen to be the devil. She looked majestic in her gown of black velvet, her golden curls draped with black silk and lace, cleverly twisted together and pinned to resemble horns growing from her head. She had rouged her lips a bright red, and her blue eyes looked imperious from behind her black mask. For a moment, the image of moldering gowns on dress forms rose up in my mind, a polished bronze mirror reflecting an endless line of faded Goblin Queens. I swallowed. The dress my sister had made for me was nearly innocent in its simplicity. Yards and yards of fine white muslin had made a floating, ethereal gown, while Käthe had somehow fashioned a brocade cape into the shape of folded angel wings, which grew from my shoulder blades and cascaded to the floor. She had braided gold into a crown about my head for a halo, and I carried a lyre to complete the picture.

Our first stop was London, where there were a few competitions leading up to Blackpool. I had never seen this level of competition before. I was so excited by the energy and the feeling of being around all these amazing dancers. I wasn’t overwhelmed, just a little embarrassed. Everyone looked so polished, and they all smelled like fancy cologne. Comparatively, I looked and felt like the poor kid on the block. I didn’t own the proper costume (white tie, black jacket, and black trousers), so I’d rented one from a wedding store before we left home. It was baggy in all the wrong places, and I didn’t have the right shoes. Watching the dancers get ready backstage, we realized we were also completely unprepared. They’d put water or castor oil on the floor and rub the soles of their shoes in it. Then they’d scratch the soles with a wire brush, roughening up the suede to prevent slipping. As we stepped out for the first round, Autumn spit in the middle of the dance floor and rubbed her feet in it. She encouraged me to do the same, so I did--hoping that not too many people were watching. I remember thinking, Yeah, we are definitely from out of town.

Then I saw Vas, clutching a mug of tea with bleeding knuckles. When he noticed the blood, he dabbed at it with a handkerchief and stuffed it back into his pocket. “I know you can’t feel pain, Vas, but there is some value in taking care of your own body,” I said to him. He raised his eyebrows at me, then set his mug down. The others were gathered on the opposite end of the room, holding glasses, standing in small groups. Most had collected around Ryzek like debris around a drain hole. Yma Zetsyvis--white hair almost glowing against the dark backdrop of space--was among them, her body stiff with obvious tension. Otherwise the room was empty, the black floors polished, the walls just curved windows. I half expected us all to float away. “You know so little about my gift, for all the time we’ve known each other,” Vas said. “Do you know I have to set alarms to eat and drink? And check myself constantly for broken bones and bruises?” I had never thought about what else Vas had lost when he lost the ability to feel pain. “That’s why I let the little wounds slide,” Vas said. “It’s exhausting, paying this much attention to your own body.” “Hmm,” I said. “I think I might know something about that.

I thought of calling this piece “In Memoriam,” because “in memoriam” has always suggested a place to me—Memoriam, Oklahoma, say, or Memoriam, Tennessee—and because, to my tinker’s brain, “in memoriam,” sounds like “in memory am.” Which I am, now more than ever. Lost, basically, wandering that ancestral home, all polished wood and anecdote, wishing that I could unload it somehow, knowing I never will. Like it or not, I have an investment in Memoriam now. My father’s casket between the potted palms is the cornerstone. Welcome home, kid. It’s an odd, slightly ghostly predicament. Lacking brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, with my mother’s memory having long ago lost any trace of me, I find myself the sole surviving owner of ten thousand names, stories, jokes, associations—that time the raccoon reached up through the knothole in the cabin floor when I was four; those Friday nights when the three of us would watch “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”; that evening, a memorable night in 1966, when my dad, with his professorial air and his Czech accent and his horn-rims, put on my mother’s shoulder-length blond wig on a dare and went out to pick up the pizza—that mean nothing, except that they were the soil of our lives.

Maria managed to avoid Oliver for most of St. Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t difficult-apparently he spent half of it sleeping off his wild night. Not that she cared one bit. She’d learned her lesson with him. Truly she had. Not even the beautiful bouquet of irises he’d sent up to her room midafternoon changed that. Now that she was dressing for tonight’s ball, she was rather proud of herself for having only thought of him half a dozen times. Per hour, her conscience added. “There, that’s the last one,” Betty said as she tucked another ostrich feather into Maria’s elaborate coiffure. According to Celia, the new fashion this year involved a multitude of feathers drooping from one’s head in languid repose. Maria hoped hers didn’t decide to find their repose on the floor. Betty seemed to have used a magical incantation to keep them in place, and Maria wasn’t at all sure they would stay put. “You look lovely, miss,” Betty added. “If I do,” Maria said, “it’s only because of your efforts, Betty.” Betty ducked her head to hide her blush. “Thank you, miss.” It was amazing how different the servant had been ever since Maria had taken Oliver’s advice to heart, letting the girl fuss over her and tidy her room and do myriad things that Maria would have been perfectly happy to do for herself. But he’d proved to be right-Betty practically glowed with pride. Maria wished she’d known sooner how to treat them all, but honestly, how could she have guessed that these mad English would enjoy being in service? It boggled her democratic American mind. Casting an admiring glance down Maria’s gown of ivory satin, Betty said, “I daresay his lordship will swallow his tongue when he sees you tonight.” “If he does, I hope he chokes on it,” Maria muttered. With a sly glance, Betty fluffed out the bouffant drapery of white tulle that crossed Maria’s bust and was fastened in the center with an ornament of gold mosaic. “John says the master didn’t touch a one of those tarts at the brothel last night. He says that his lordship refused every female that the owner of the place brought before him.” “I somehow doubt that.” Paying her no heed, Betty continued her campaign to salvage her master’s dubious honor. “Then Lord Stoneville went to the opera house and left without a single dancer on his arm. John says he never done that before.” Maria rolled her eyes, though a part of her desperately wanted to believe it was true-a tiny, silly part of her that she would have to slap senseless. Betty polished the ornament with the edge of her sleeve. “John says he drank himself into a stupor, then came home without so much as kissing a single lady. John says-“ “John is inventing stories to excuse his master’s actions.” “Oh no, miss! John would never lie. And I can promise you that the master has never come home so early before, and certainly not without…that is, at the house in Acton he was wont to bring a tart or two home to…well, you know.” “Help him choke on his tongue?” Maria snapped as she picked up her fan. Betty laughed. “Now that would be a sight, wouldn’t it? Two ladies trying to shove his tongue down his throat.” “I’d pay them well to do it.

For most people moving is a tiring experience. When on the verge of moving out to a new home or into a new office, it's only natural to focus on your new place and forget about the one you’re leaving. Actually, the last thing you would even think about is embarking on a heavy duty move out clean. However, you can be certain that agents, landlords and all the potential renters or buyers of your old home will most definitely notice if it's being cleaned, therefore getting the place cleaned up is something that you need to consider. The process of cleaning will basically depend to things; how dirty your property and the size of the home. If you leave the property in good condition, you'll have a higher the chance of getting back your bond deposit or if you're selling, attracting a potential buyer. Below are the steps you need to consider before moving out. You should start with cleaning. Remove all screws and nails from the walls and the ceilings, fill up all holes and dust all ledges. Large holes should be patched and the entire wall checked the major marks. Remove all the cobwebs from the walls and ceilings, taking care to wash or vacuum the vents. They can get quite dusty. Clean all doors and door knobs, wipe down all the switches, electrical outlets, vacuum/wipe down the drapes, clean the blinds and remove all the light covers from light fixtures and clean them thoroughly as they may contain dead insects. Also, replace all the burnt out light bulbs and empty all cupboards when you clean them. Clean all windows, window sills and tracks. Vacuum all carpets or get them professionally cleaned which quite often is stipulated in the rental agreement. After you've finished the general cleaning, you can now embark on the more specific areas. When cleaning the bathroom, wash off the soap scum and remove mould (if any) from the bathroom tiles. This can be done by pre-spraying the tile grout with bleach and letting it sit for at least half an hour. Clean all the inside drawers and vanity units thoroughly. Clean the toilet/sink, vanity unit and replace anything that you've damaged. Wash all shower curtains and shower doors plus all other enclosures. Polish the mirrors and make sure the exhaust fan is free of dust. You can generally vacuum these quite easily. Finally, clean the bathroom floors by vacuuming and mopping. In the kitchen, clean all the cabinets and liners and wash the cupboards inside out. Clean the counter-tops and shine the facet and sink. If the fridge is staying give it a good clean. You can do this by removing all shelves and wash them individually. Thoroughly degrease the oven inside and out. It's best to use and oven cleaner from your supermarket, just take care to use gloves and a mask as they can be quite toxic. Clean the kitchen floor well by giving it a good vacuum and mop . Sometimes the kitchen floor may need to be degreased. Dust the bedrooms and living room, vacuum throughout then mop. If you have a garage give it a good sweep. Also cut the grass, pull out all weeds and remove all items that may be lying or hanging around. Remember to put your garbage bins out for collection even if collection is a week away as in our experience the bins will be full to the brim from all the rubbish during the moving process. If this all looks too hard then you can always hire a bond cleaner to tackle the job for you or if you're on a tight budget you can download an end of lease cleaning checklist or have one sent to you from your local agent. Just make sure you give yourself at least a day or to take on the job. Its best not to rush through the job, just make sure everything is cleaned thoroughly, so it passes the inspection in order for you to get your bond back in full.

Finally, he allowed me to turn the key in the lock and the front door, with its porthole-shaped window, swung open. I don’t know what I’d expected. I’d tried not to conjure up fantasies of any kind, but what I saw left me inarticulate. The entire apartment had the feel of a ship’s interior. The walls were highly polished teak and oak, with shelves and cubbyholes on every side. The kitchenette was still located to the right where the old one had been, a galley-style arrangement with a pint-size stove and refrigerator. A microwave oven and trash compactor had been added. Tucked in beside the kitchen was a stacking washer-dryer, and next to that was a tiny bathroom. In the living area, a sofa had been built into a window bay, with two royal blue canvas director’s chairs arranged to form a “conversational grouping.” Henry did a quick demonstration of how the sofa could be extended into sleeping accommodations for company, a trundle bed in effect. The dimensions of the main room were still roughly fifteen feet on a side, but now there was a sleeping loft above, accessible by way of a tiny spiral staircase where my former storage space had been. In the old place, I’d usually slept naked on the couch in an envelope of folded quilt. Now, I was going to have an actual bedroom of my own. I wound my way up, staring in amazement at the double-size platform bed with drawers underneath. In the ceiling above the bed, there was a round shaft extending through the roof, capped by a clear Plexiglas skylight that seemed to fling light down on the blue-and-white patchwork coverlet. Loft windows looked out to the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other. Along the back wall, there was an expanse of cedar-lined closet space with a rod for hanging clothes, pegs for miscellaneous items, shoe racks, and floor-to-ceiling drawers. Just off the loft, there was a small bathroom. The tub was sunken with a built-in shower and a window right at tub level, the wooden sill lined with plants. I could bathe among the treetops, looking out at the ocean where the clouds were piling up like bubbles. The towels were the same royal blue as the cotton shag carpeting. Even the eggs of milled soap were blue, arranged in a white china dish on the edge of the round brass sink.

The village square teemed with life, swirling with vibrant colors and boisterous chatter. The entire village had gathered, celebrating the return of their ancestral spirit. Laughter and music filled the air, carrying with it an energy that made Kitsune smile. Paper lanterns of all colors floated lazily above, their delicate glow reflecting on the smiling faces below. Cherry blossoms caught in the playful breeze, their sweet, earthy scent settling over the scene. At the center, villagers danced with unbridled joy, the rhythm of the taiko drums and the melody of flutes guiding their steps. To the side, a large table groaned under the weight of a feast. Sticky rice balls, steamed dumplings, seaweed soup, sushi, and more filled the air with a mouthwatering aroma. As she approached the table, she was greeted warmly by the villagers, who offered her food, their smiles genuine and welcoming. She filled a plate and sat at a table with Goro and Sota, overlooking the celebration. The event brought back a flood of memories of a similar celebration from her childhood—a time when everything was much simpler and she could easily answer the question who are you? The memory filled her heart with a sweet sadness, a reminder of what she lost and what had carved the road to where she was now. Her gaze fell on the dancing villagers, but she wasn’t watching them. Not really. Her attention was fully embedded in her heart ache, longing for the past, for the life that was so cruelly ripped away from her. “I think... I think I might know how to answer your question,” she finally said, her voice soft and steady, barely audible over the cacophony of festivity around them. “Oh?” Goro responded, his face alight with intrigue. “I would have to tell you my story.” Kitsune’s eyes reflected the somber clouds of her past. Goro swallowed his bite of food before nodding. “Let us retire to the dojo, and you can tell me.” They retreated from the bustling square, leaving behind the chaos of the celebration. The sounds of laughter and chatter and drums carried away by distance. The dojo, with its bamboo and sturdy jungle planks, was bathed in the soft luminescence of the moonlight, the surface of its wooden architecture glistening faintly under the glow. They stepped into the silent tranquility of the building, and Kitsune made her way to the center, the smooth, cool touch of the polished wooden floor beneath her providing a sense of peace. Assuming the lotus position, she calmed herself, ready to speak of memories she hadn’t confronted in a long time. Not in any meaningful way at least. Across from her, Goro settled, his gaze intense yet patient, encouraging her with a gentle smile like he somehow already understood her story was hard to verbalize.

Switching on the ground-floor lights, she checked the gas jet and the main gas plug and poured water over the smoldering, half-buried charcoal in the brazier. She stood before the upright mirror in the four-and-a-half-mat room and held up her skirts. The bloodstains made it seem as if a bold, vivid pattern was printed across the lower half of her white kimono. When she sat down before the mirror, she was conscious of the dampness and coldness of her husband’s blood in the region of her thighs, and she shivered. Then, for a long while, she lingered over her toilet preparations. She applied the rouge generously to her cheeks, and her lips too she painted heavily. This was no longer make-up to please her husband. It was make-up for the world which she would leave behind, and there was a touch of the magnificent and the spectacular in her brushwork. When she rose, the mat before the mirror was wet with blood. Reiko was not concerned about this. (...) The lieutenant was lying on his face in a sea of blood. The point protruding from his neck seemed to have grown even more prominent than before. Reiko walked heedlessly across the blood. Sitting beside the lieutenant’s corpse, she stared intently at the face, which lay on one cheek on the mat. The eyes were opened wide, as if the lieutenant’s attention had been attracted by something. She raised the head, folding it in her sleeve, wiped the blood from the lips, and bestowed a last kiss. (...) Reiko sat herself on a spot about one foot distant from the lieutenant’s body. Drawing the dagger from her sash, she examined its dully gleaming blade intently, and held it to her tongue. The taste of the polished steel was slightly sweet. Reiko did not linger. When she thought how the pain which had previously opened such a gulf between herself and her dying husband was now to become a part of her own experience, she saw before her only the joy of herself entering a realm her husband had already made his own. In her husband’s agonized face there had been something inexplicable which she was seeing for the first time. Now she would solve that riddle. Reiko sensed that at last she too would be able to taste the true bitterness and sweetness of that great moral principle in which her husband believed. What had until now been tasted only faintly through her husband’s example she was about to savor directly with her own tongue. Reiko rested the point of the blade against the base of her throat. She thrust hard. The wound was only shallow. Her head blazed, and her hands shook uncontrollably. She gave the blade a strong pull sideways. A warm substance flooded into her mouth, and everything before her eyes reddened, in a vision of spouting blood. She gathered her strength and plunged the point of the blade deep into her throat.

He stared at it in utter disbelief while his secretary, Peters, who’d only been with him for a fortnight, muttered a silent prayer of gratitude for the break and continued scribbling as fast as he could, trying futilely to catch up with his employer’s dictation. “This,” said Ian curtly, “was sent to me either by mistake or as a joke. In either case, it’s in excruciatingly bad taste.” A memory of Elizabeth Cameron flickered across Ian’s mind-a mercenary, shallow litter flirt with a face and body that had drugged his mind. She’d been betrothed to a viscount when he’d met her. Obviously she hadn’t married her viscount-no doubt she’d jilted him in favor of someone with even better prospects. The English nobility, as he well knew, married only for prestige and money, then looked elsewhere for sexual fulfillment. Evidently Elizabeth Cameron’s relatives were putting her back on the marriage block. If so, they must be damned eager to unload her if they were willing to forsake a title for Ian’s money…That line of conjecture seemed so unlikely that Ian dismissed it. This note was obviously a stupid prank, perpetrated, no doubt, by someone who remembered the gossip that had exploded over that weekend house party-someone who thought he’d find the note amusing. Completely dismissing the prankster and Elizabeth Cameron from his mind, Ian glanced at his harassed secretary who was frantically scribbling away. “No reply is necessary,” he said. As he spoke he flipped the message across his desk toward his secretary, but the white parchment slid across the polished oak and floated to the floor. Peters made an awkward dive to catch it, but as he lurched sideways all the other correspondence that went with his dictation slid off his lap onto the floor. “I-I’m sorry, sir,” he stammered, leaping up and trying to collect the dozens of pieces of paper he’d scattered on the carpet. “Extremely sorry, Mr. Thornton,” he added, frantically snatching up contracts, invitations and letters and shoving them into a disorderly pile. His employer appeared not to hear him. He was already rapping out more instructions and passing the corresponding invitations and letters across the desk. “Decline the first three, accept the fourth, decline the fifth. Send my condolences on this one. On this one, explain that I’m going to be in Scotland, and send an invitation to join me there, along with directions to the cottage.” Clutching the papers to his chest, Peters poked his face up on the opposite side of the desk. “Yes, Mr. Thornton!” he said, trying to sound confident. But it was hard to be confident when one was on one’s knees. Harder still when one wasn’t entirely certain which instructions of the morning went with which invitation or piece of correspondence. Ian Thornton spent the rest of the afternoon closeted with Peters, heaping more dictation on the inundated clerk. He spent the evening with the Earl of Melbourne, his future father-in-law, discussing the earl’s daughter and himself. Peters spent part of his evening trying to learn from the butler which invitations his employer was likely to accept or reject.

The Monk in the Kitchen I ORDER is a lovely thing; On disarray it lays its wing, Teaching simplicity to sing. It has a meek and lowly grace, Quiet as a nun's face. Lo—I will have thee in this place! Tranquil well of deep delight, All things that shine through thee appear As stones through water, sweetly clear. Thou clarity, That with angelic charity Revealest beauty where thou art, Spread thyself like a clean pool. Then all the things that in thee are, Shall seem more spiritual and fair, Reflection from serener air— Sunken shapes of many a star In the high heavens set afar. II Ye stolid, homely, visible things, Above you all brood glorious wings Of your deep entities, set high, Like slow moons in a hidden sky. But you, their likenesses, are spent Upon another element. Truly ye are but seemings— The shadowy cast-oft gleamings Of bright solidities. Ye seem Soft as water, vague as dream; Image, cast in a shifting stream. III What are ye? I know not. Brazen pan and iron pot, Yellow brick and gray flag-stone That my feet have trod upon— Ye seem to me Vessels of bright mystery. For ye do bear a shape, and so Though ye were made by man, I know An inner Spirit also made, And ye his breathings have obeyed. IV Shape, the strong and awful Spirit, Laid his ancient hand on you. He waste chaos doth inherit; He can alter and subdue. Verily, he doth lift up Matter, like a sacred cup. Into deep substance he reached, and lo Where ye were not, ye were; and so Out of useless nothing, ye Groaned and laughed and came to be. And I use you, as I can, Wonderful uses, made for man, Iron pot and brazen pan. V What are ye? I know not; Nor what I really do When I move and govern you. There is no small work unto God. He required of us greatness; Of his least creature A high angelic nature, Stature superb and bright completeness. He sets to us no humble duty. Each act that he would have us do Is haloed round with strangest beauty; Terrific deeds and cosmic tasks Of his plainest child he asks. When I polish the brazen pan I hear a creature laugh afar In the gardens of a star, And from his burning presence run Flaming wheels of many a sun. Whoever makes a thing more bright, He is an angel of all light. When I cleanse this earthen floor My spirit leaps to see Bright garments trailing over it, A cleanness made by me. Purger of all men's thoughts and ways, With labor do I sound Thy praise, My work is done for Thee. Whoever makes a thing more bright, He is an angel of all light. Therefore let me spread abroad The beautiful cleanness of my God. VI One time in the cool of dawn Angels came and worked with me. The air was soft with many a wing. They laughed amid my solitude And cast bright looks on everything. Sweetly of me did they ask That they might do my common task And all were beautiful—but one With garments whiter than the sun Had such a face Of deep, remembered grace; That when I saw I cried—"Thou art The great Blood-Brother of my heart. Where have I seen thee?"—And he said, "When we are dancing round God's throne, How often thou art there. Beauties from thy hands have flown Like white doves wheeling in mid air. Nay—thy soul remembers not? Work on, and cleanse thy iron pot.

As he sat up, he heard soft dripping sounds from the bathroom, little plips like water slipping over the edges of the tub and into the floor. The hairs on the back of his neck rose as he realized where he‟d last heard that sound. His muscles tight with strain from his earlier exertions, he stood and walked warily toward the half open bathroom door and the tub beyond it. Slipping quietly past the door, he saw that the curtain was drawn, and again the shadowed figure lay behind it. One long, slim, leg dangled from the end of the tub, beads of water gliding down its length and off the polished toes. At the other end he saw a mass of auburn curls, matted deep red near the porcelain of the tub. It was the dream and the vision again, more real now, too strong to deny. Shaking, he moved toward the curtain, gagging on the sickly smell of rust and roses, feeling the thin nylon glide between thumb and palm as he pulled it back to reveal his darkest nightmare and deepest regret. He could see the crimson water now, blood bubbles gliding over its surface and clinging to the legs dangling over the tub‟s edge. When he‟d pulled the curtain completely away from the tub and around to its opposite side, he saw her face. Her eyes were closed and he saw that her lids were bruised and purple against the translucent paleness of her face, drained completely dead white under the makeup she‟d brushed on before she‟d died. Staggering by the sight of her, he knelt by the tub and extended one shaking hand to touch her cheek. It all seemed as if he‟d walked into a horror film and once again he needed to prove to his mind that this wasn‟t real. His hand shook as he lifted it nearer to her flesh, waiting for the corpse, the supposedly dead and buried to move. He touched his quivering fingers to her face, feeling its claylike reality. The sensation caused an immediate shudder of revulsion and he fought not to vomit. Even as the moment came, the sight of her moving in the water startled him and he jumped away from the tub. It wasn‟t an obvious movement at first, only soft breaths moving in and out of her nostrils, but then her chest rose and fell with it and he quaked, feeling unstable where he knelt on the floor. Her eyes opened next and he felt the blood fall out of his face, wanting to scream but too afraid he would cause her to take some action, to reach out and touch him, proving well and forever that he was indeed insane. Scream and you might as well slit your own throat. He swallowed the scream like a rock and stared as her eyes moved slowly in their sockets, locking on him. Slowly, as if she‟d lost control of her muscles, she rose from the tub and looked down at him, smiling. Blood water slid down her bare body, over her neck, down her back and the smooth ridges of her breasts, to slip slowly down her thighs and down over her calves. A puddle spread on the floor, and as it extended toward him he struggled to his feet, skittering away from it. As he watched it spread, he shivered, weak as he started to cry frantic, horrified tears. Breaking down, he looked back up at her face and slipped to the floor once more, his knees incapable of sustaining his own weight. The smile grew wider as she strode to his shivering form, thrown on his side and struggling to rise. The blood water seeped into his clothes, making him sick, a drop of it trickling along the lobe of his ear and into it. And then she leaned down, holding those dim, stained curls of auburn out of her face and tucking them behind her ear. Her lips parted, blue beneath the strong crimson red of her lipstick, and she spoke into his ear with the chill breath of the dead. His eyes grew wide and horrified as she spoke, the hair on his neck rising, sending a maddening shiver of fear through him. “I‟ve returned, Raven.” She whispered “And I want what is mine.” The last thing he saw before his mind, finally, thankfully, shut down was her face in front of his. They were pursed for a kiss.