rescoring

It’s hard to sweep something under the rug when you are raising a kid who is the namesake of the disgraced deacon. People told my mother to change my name, but she didn’t want to do that to me, as she said. I’m not sure that not changing it wasn’t doing something to me. But she told me I had to stake my own claim to that name, and make it mean something different.

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retrograde breeder

We planned to sell cement bricks from the demolished reactor as keepsakes or decorative items. We wanted some level of radioactivity to give them the cachet of authenticity, but obviously nothing dangerous. But we had trouble getting consistent readings from any of the blocks delivered to us.

sleeping memory

The headmistress wondered why the staff looked so worried when she told them about the dream she had of a student who died. Then the police came. She didn’t mention it but felt guilty about it. She tried hypnosis, against everyone’s attempted dissuasions, but still could remember nothing, though everyone else seemed to remember something, as reticent as they were to admit it. The dreams persisted.

dark horse

The horse not black, though dark enough for most to think so. He was cunning. He knew the value of money, and was filled with spite that he could do nothing with it. His owner, a literary man, was amused by his bad temper. He would go out to the pasture and read his new work to the horse, to see how it sounded.

delayed gratification

I watched the other child grow up happy, impaired as he was, but could not convince my wife to resuscitate ours until the procedure was proved painless.

offering unmade

The commemoration was complicated and darkened by the two vultures alighting on the statue during the speech. Nobody wants to admit they believe in augurs, but I mean, god damn.

peacock whine

His rants of complaint were very eloquent, especially when drunk. so he always had an audience at the bar. and in a hotel bar, he often could convince someone to follow him up to his room. But the weeping afterward, especially when he locked himself in the bathroom, was kind of a turnoff.

more suppressed

His curse was this: he could travel anywhere he liked, almost instantly, but the country between his home and his destination would be obliterated. He had put his wander-lust away and resigned himself to long-distance relationships. And then his girlfriend, far away, threatened to kill herself.

stage-phoner

He would walk by her desk and have fake phone conversations, using them as a flimsy cover for his lewd remarks. She positioned a camera to catch him on video, and calling his phone while he was talking into it.

enchanted standard

The new wristwatch reads your vital signs and automatically adjusts to your shifting perception of time. It can show you the quote, “objective,” unquote, time alongside your own personal or quote, “subjective,” unquote time if you wish.