Ivy

The ivy, eaten by nighttime, crowded around the lamp post.  In the bluish light of the single bulb, the ivy looked like waves frozen in motion, suspended in a desperate reach toward their last saving grace.  I too reached with my eyes, slouched on a park bench.  I stared until I couldn't see the moths fluttering around the bulb, or the scalloped outlines of the waxy leaves.  Once the light went out, me and the ivy and the moths would lose each other, because only one thing connected us.  Night air pressed against my back.  I could feel its cold creeping along my shoulders and on my jeans through the bench slats.  I wanted to run up to the lamp and bury myself in the ivy, right smack in the whitewash of light.  But Alex was right.  I was just a prisoner, watching.

Hundred word stories - Sister

"We could've been friends if she weren't so darn pretty.  Everything she does is pretty."
"Bet surgery isn't pretty.  She does that."
"Probably turning people to butterflies." 
"I'd sign up." 
"I wish you were a man so I could ridicule you just now."  We stepped into the lunch queue, a line of blue collars. 
"Hot dogs.  Yum."  She handed me a tray.
"Smelled them from the parking lot."
"Maybe your sister could turn them into candy." 
"Or something edible. Like salad."
We took our food to a table by a window; a sheet of gray rain.
"Did she ever..do anything for you?" 
"Nothing cool.  Once she painted my room."
"Without touching anything?"
"Thought she was giving me a motorcycle mural.  No.  I got pink and purple butterflies."
"She painted those?  They look real."
"I can't believe I paid her for it."

Hundred word stories - Street

It was dawn but not morning. Everything in front of me was new and everything behind me was over. The air was damp and cool. There was no smell of food, no hot bread to share. No aftersmell of eggs. I could smell them anyway, as if we'd just had breakfast in his bright yellow kitchen.
Full green trees crowded along the street and obscured the sky. I passed parked cars in front of brick houses. My shoes, quiet rubber soles, made two lonely sounds against the blacktop.
This time of day made me feel like flying instead of walking, but I was heavy. My reflection moved against black windows. Every house was suspended in stillness as I went between them on the road, down the center where the rising sun through the branches cast a jagged river of light.