Zlaw's Echo

A woman in an evening gown comes down the stairs to the living room, still adjusting one of her earrings. "Honey? Why aren't you dressed?!" Her husband, as illustrated by the matching wedding bands they wear, is indeed still in casual clothing, reading a book on the sofa. "I told you: I'm not going." "What you haven't told me is why not." She sits on the arm rest besides him, crossing her arms and nudging him in the shoulder with her elbow. He sighs and lays down is book on his lap. "Because I didn't do what I did for a reward. Giving me one just negates the whole thing." "It is precisely because you didn't do it for a reward that you deserve one," she reasons. "Saving all those people was its own reward. Anything more than that is over the top." "How about you don't think about it just from your own perspective? How about you consider how it could embolden people to do the right thing as...

For obvious reasons, I cannot possibly know what it feels like to have lost a limb. But if I were to go out on one, I would say it might be a little like this. I reach for him in the morning. And he's not there, which, for just a second, gives me that mini heart attack, the kind you get when you thought there was still a step on stairs but you've actually reached the last one. After that, I either get up in a sweat, like after a very bad nightmare, or bury my face in my pillow to scream and cry. Actually, no, sometimes I also just stare at the ceiling for an undetermined length of time. I still talk to him, too. Out loud. I mean, I used to talk to myself out loud before I met him, so that's not exactly weird for me, but I didn't use to expect an answer, before. Now, I do. I'll be watching some movie, and something very stupid happens, and I'll say "Can you believe this?". And then, I turn, and he's not there. And it hits me like a ton of bricks....

An old man is sitting in a rocking chair on his porch, scribbling on a sudoku grid with a pencil, as a younger man comes to sit next to him. "Dad. Can I ask you a question?" The older man looks up from his puzzle, above his glasses, to his son. "Sure." "How did you know what to do with me?" "What sort of question is that?" The son clicks his tongue, annoyed at this response. "Seriously? Pretty much every conversation we have ever had, as far back as I can remember, no matter how benign it started, ended up in a lecture, and now that I'm actually asking for advice, you're just going to play dumb?" "Is that really how you view our relationship?" "Will you please stop answering my questions with more questions! It doesn't matter. That's not what I want to get into right now." "I would answer with a statement if I had one to give, but I'm not sure I understand what you're asking, e...

"Did you know that a turtle's shell is actually part of their skeleton? It's like fused vertebrae or something." "Er… No. No, I did not know that, no." A moment of silence ensues, only disturbed by the flipping of pages. "Huh! Did you know that a narwhal's horn is actually a tooth?" "No! I did not know that either! Don't you have anything better to do?" "Than read about skeletons? I don't think so." "Where did you even find that book, anyway?" While his detractor crosses his arms, the reader points upward: "Upstairs, on a shelf. I'll have you know it's an anatomy treaty, with a focus on bone structures; under the circumstances, I don't see how any other book could be more up our alley." "Does it say anything about human skeletons?" "I haven't found that chapter yet. But we already know there are 206 bones in the human body, although we may have lost a few....

When he came home from work that night, he found the house darker than expected, given his girlfriend should have already been home. There was usually a very clear light coming from the kitchen, any room upstairs, or the living room, but tonight, there was only a faint glow emanating from that last room. Perplexed, he hung up his coat and bag as he always did, and went to enquire what was going on. Maybe there was a power outage and she hadn't known how to rearm the circuit breaker? The rest of the street definitely had power; he'd seen streetlights and lit up windows around him as he made his way in. "Honey! Welcome home!" His girlfriend was indeed there, surrounded by candles, but that was not all. First of all, the candles were scented, which meant they had not been picked simply out of necessity. Second, there were bouquets of fresh flowers here and there, which was unusual. Finally, their coffee table was covered in all his favourite treats: chocolate, candy, ...

There is a man sitting in the great hall of the Musée d'Orsay, contemplating one of the many statues exhibited there, an air of serenity on his face. "I'll be honest: I really didn't think I'd find you here, of all places," states a voice coming from behind his shoulder. "Then how did you? Find me, I mean?" he asks without turning around. "Facial recognition." Wincing at his own confession of the underwhelming means employed, the newcomer sits down on the bench next to the man he has come to see. "I also never thought we'd end up meeting in broad daylight," he adds. "The fact you have it in your head that I only visit museums at night truly illustrates how little you understand me, Detective." "I've been chasing you for years. I'd like to think I have so level of understanding of your behaviour." "And yet…" "Why let yourself be caught now, if you don't mind my asking?...

"License and registration?" "Argh!" A second ago, he was just crossing the threshold of his kitchen in the middle of the night, craving a glass of water. And now, he was surrounded by tall flames, facing what he could only describe as a red-skinned goblin behind a counter, looking at him from above a pair of half-moon glasses on its nose. "Oh, come on, man! Let me have this. You guys don't have the monopoly on bad jokes, you know…" grumbled the imp. "Wh… Where… What…" mumbled the reluctant visitor, terrified. He did look frantically around him for an escape, but it was just fire all around. The bespectacled gnome's shoulders slumped, as if he were disappointed. "Dang it. Let me guess: you went through a door in your apartment and ended up here without knowing how?" "Er… yes?" "Boss! We've got another one!" yelled the devilish little creature over his shoulder. "Send him in," answered a...

They were both sitting on the ground, their back to a large boulder. He was panting heavily, while she simply nodded in silence, clearly weighing her next words. "You know, taming a wild beast is seen as a rite of passage in many cultures. It's nothing unusual or to be ashamed of." "Yeah, right, really advanced cultures I'm sure." "On Earth, the peoples of Eastern Europe and Central Asia have a reputation for being particularly gifted with horses, and so do most Native American tribes. And none of these cultures can be accused of being primitive." "Are horses really indigenous to the Americas, though?" "I don't think that matters in this context. Besides, in South America, they have always had llamas, which are camelids, which makes them comparable to the actual camels of Northern Africa, also famously turned into companions." "No offense, but domesticating a llama or a dromedary does not sound as difficult as br...

Blessed be the firefly, holiest of all the bugs. It is to the night what the butterfly is to the day, and more. It is a bringer of light and colour even in the darkest places. And its aerial dance is a ballet quite unique among insects. It easily rivals the stars in the sky, effortlessly taking over for them when the clouds shield them from view. As he laid on his back, dying, in that clearing, that was what he was choosing to focus on: the poetry of the fireflies buzzing above him. He had managed to crawl here from where he had been struck down, in a desperate attempt to seek help, but the increasing pain and dizziness had made it pretty clear he was not going to get it in time to be saved. So, accepting his fate, he had rolled over in the damp grass, and started to stare up at the night sky, to pass the time until his demise. He did not want to die face down in the dirt. It was not like anybody was ever going to find him, so it was not about avoiding any level of humiliation; he k...

"Your Honour, may I please present exhibit A?" "Please, proceed." The judge gestured to the barrister to take the floor. She picked up a small plastic bag from a cardboard box on her side of the tribunal aisle, and brought it to the witness already sworn in on the stand. "Detective Finnigan, do you recognise this object, and could you describe it to us, for the record?" "It is a shirt button, which I found in the corner of the crime scene." "Is this button special in any way?" "Not in its shape or make, no." "Then why was it that it caught your attention?" "Well, when we got to the murder site, we observed that the place had been thoroughly cleaned. The killer had vacuumed, dusted, and wiped every single surface of the apartment, from top to bottom." "Is this unusual? For a killer to clean after themselves, I mean?" "To this degree, in my experience, yes. But, to be fair, the unit ...

There is no way anything was able to survive this. The explosion was so big, its shock wave so intense, that there cannot possibly be anything left standing in its wake. But still, we persevere in our rescue efforts. We simply have to make sure. What if there were somebody buried under the rubble, somehow sheltered by an improbable and fortuitous congruence of destroyed architecture? What if they are somewhere out there, under all this waste, screaming for help, knocking as hard as they can on every surface they can get their hands on, praying and crying to whatever higher power there may or may not be that someone, anyone finds them? It has not been long since the incident. We do not even know what caused it yet, nor where it originated. Is anyone responsible? Could somebody really wish for such destruction? Or maybe be careless enough to not take every precaution so it would not happen? The best case scenario is really that this was one of those terrible catastrophes that could not...

Two men were facing each other in a great palace hall, evidently very cross with one another. They were staring each other down like a tiger and a lion might when suddenly put together in close quarters. "I am taller than you, which means she will be safer with me," claimed the much taller man of the two. "I can protect her just as well as you could. Being too tall seems like more of an inconvenience than an advantage. Also, she will have an easier time embracing me than she would you; needing a stepladder to reach you sounds like a hassle she would not enjoy bothering herself with." "I can simply pick her up in my arms." That remark made the shorter man gasp in outrage. "How dare you speak of her this way? Such a brute as yourself surely is not very well educated!" "Whatever erudition you may have acquired on the benches of university certainly pales in comparison to my skills in the various crafts I have been taught by grand masters...

God, it was cold! And not just out on the deck, anywhere on the boat. It did not matter what you were wearing, what you were doing, or where you were aboard. Even without any wind, this was the type of cold you could not truly escape, something that seeps deep down to your bones through every layer of clothing you put on, the kind of cold that doesn't just bite but creeps up on you, freezing you through and through. It felt like your breath crystallised the moment it came out of your lips. Blowing in your hands somehow seemed to do more harm than good, and rubbing them together or hugging yourself was essentially useless if not sometimes actually counterproductive.  Even deep into the Amazonian forest, the photographer had never experienced such brutal weather. And yet, he would not have traded it for anything. When he had first started to seek passage to the Artic circle, he had found his hopes of success quickly dampened. Not only did very few vessels ever venture that way, bu...

We had a deal, you and I. An understanding, an arrangement, an agreement, whatever you want to call it. We had that. And I'll be honest, when you first started floating the idea around, I did not think it would work. And yet, at every turn, you kept proving me wrong. I would wash the dishes, and you would dry them. I would do the grocery shopping, and you would do the cooking. We would take turns taking out the garbage, and work together for dusting and cleaning windows; you would do the high places and I would do the low ones, meeting in the middle. Brooms would be my thing and the vacuum cleaner would be yours. Laundry duties would be distributed equally. For obvious reasons, you would be the one to drive, and I would in return be in charge of snacks and the playlist. You would answer the doorbell and I would pick up the house phone. We would never EVER prank or lie to each other, and always talk things out if we ever were to have a difference of opinion, as arduous as that m...

She could have gotten lost in the intricate patterns on her dress for hours on end. Truthfully, she actually had. On several occasions, too. Both on the bodice and the skirt, and down to the train, every single piece of lace was delicately hand-woven into the tiniest unique shape. Minuscule characters - people, birds, even horses - seemed like they were floating around among the flowery loops and abstract curls traced across the white fabric. There were sequins and pearls of various sizes sewn into layers of tulle, themselves here and there folded with origami-like precision into more frilly decorations. To put it simply, no square centimetre of the whole garment, including its considerably large veil, was the same as another. The reason for this level of sophistication was that generation after generation of her fiancé's family had added their very own personal touch to the ensemble. As she had been told, it had first started with a very plain three-hole dress. From there, ever...

Two hooded silhouettes are walking along a muddy path in a dark forest, hands in their sleeves. "'Oops'. I cannot believe that you said 'Oops'," grumbles one. "It just came out…" mumbles the other, apologetic. "It did. And is that not precisely the main cause of our current predicament? The fact that you just let things out of your mouth?" "What else do you think I should have said?" asks the accused, to which the accuser throws their hands in the air. "Pretty much anything would have most probably been better than 'Oops', including not a single word at all! This is the kind of onomatopoeia one lets out when spilling coffee, or salt, or sugar. Maybe a jar of pearls, or buttons, or something of the sort. At most when knocking over a knock-off vase, or rubbing shoulders with a stranger in a crowded street. Those are incidents worthy of an 'Oops'." "I did say I was sorry. You did hear me apologis...

At the sound of a heap of fabric being dropped onto her working station, in front of her, her eyes rose from her current task to see what had been brought to her. After having considered the mangled stack of textile for nearly a minute, she then lifted her gaze a little higher, to the young man who had deposited it. "And what do you expect me to do with this, exactly?" she asked. "Please, fix them," he pleaded, smiling sheepishly. At least he was being polite about it. She liked him. He was not a bad kid, but by everything sacred, did he ruin a lot of garments! "How? I cannot even tell what any of this used to be…" With the tip of the pencil she had been using to sketch sewing patterns when he had come in, she lifted a few pieces of material here and there. She was trying to ascertain the damage, but she could not make heads or tails of anything. This bit could just as well have been underwear as a coat. She considered herself experienced, but she di...

She must have opened that trunk a million times as a child. Whenever she visited her grandparents, regardless of the season, she would always ask to be allowed to play in the attic, and then she would lose herself in the giant piece of luggage. They had never seemed to mind. She did not remember when it had first caught her fancy, but she knew it was the only item in the room that ever had. Maybe that was why it was the only thing that had always remained in there, like a reassuring constant? Either way, she used to spend hours on end rummaging through the treasures contained within the large chest: pieces of clothing, old hand-written letters, broken mechanisms, bits of jewellery, and even a few leather-bound volumes. She used to love the smell that emanated from it all. She wondered if it was all still there. Maybe her grandparents had added things to the lot, over time? Kneeling next to the antique coffer today, she felt sad that she had stopped playing with it so long ago. Unlik...

"Hey! Bolt!" "Yes?" Skylar was lying on the bed, on her stomach, her chin resting on her fists. She was watching her captor clean one of his numerous weapons, as he often did. He didn't even turn to her to reply. "I have a question for you." "Shocker…" His eyebrows rose, but he still wouldn't look in her direction, focused on his task. "You know, given the fact that you're the only person I've been in contact with for weeks, and the amount of time you spend here with me, I don't think I ask that many questions, on average," she objected to the taunt. "Just ask; get it over with." "Were you really drinking ice tea, the night we met?" That made him pause. He had not been expecting that. "That's your question?" "It is." "Well, considering you were all up in my personal space that night, like you have been many times since, I think you should already know the ...

In knee-high socks, shorts, and her largest and comfiest hoodie, Solène was considering a shoebox of memorabilia, on the kitchen counter in front of her, with a glass of red wine in her hand. When the microwave beeped, she put her drink down behind her, and went to retrieve her instant dinner from the machine. On her way back to her contemplation, she did sprinkle the cardboard plate with shredded cheese, to give it the slightest semblance of something home-made, but that was all the sophistication she granted her meal. Without taking her eyes of the pile of souvenirs again, she took a sip of her wine and then took out a fork from a drawer to plant it into her still fuming food. Her document-shredding apparatus had already been transplanted from the working area of her apartment to the kitchen, and it was now standing at the edge of the counter, next to the fateful shoebox. This was Solène's ritual. She had come up with it fairly early in her life, and it had always hit exactly t...