Medusa's Web

I owe a fortune in student loans, and after I got my degree in education and tried to apply it, I caught on that the emperor had no clothes—

“Did he say who he was?” asked Scott.

“I asked him,” said Ariel. “He sort of laughed and said he was between names.”

“Doesn’t she read chicken entrails?”

“Oh! No, astrology.”

“Same sort of thing.”

“I’d offer you a drink,” he said, “but all I have is the good stuff.”

“I got to missing her, the way things used to be here, the past. The past,” she repeated. “It’s always out there, isn’t it? I hate now. I hate that whenever you look at a clock, it shows a different time. What’s the use of knowing what time it is, if it’s always changing? And it’s always later!”

When my mother told me the meek would inherit the earth, I told her all I wanted of it was the shovelful that would cover my cold face.

“She did love us. Does.”

“She loves you the way a drowning person loves somebody they can push down and climb on top of.”