Openings

I feel like being creative today. So here you go. Some opening lines/paragraphs. I may use these at another date, but for now, they'll just be seeds planted.

===

Nelson Reed's keys rattled in his hand, as he fumbled with the lock on his front door. Eyes darting left and right, he turned the handle and slid inside, closing the door behind. He left the lights off, and took out the paper-wrapped package from inside his long coat, under his arm. He gingerly set it on his kitchen table, as if it were bone china or nitroglycerin.

--

There's so much I want to say, but I'm sitting here, bleeding out of a few holes in my gut, so any unspoken thoughts may just have to stay that way. After 17 years of being "the strong, silent type," I feel the sudden urge to write volume upon volume about my life, my work. I guess that's how these things play out. I'm starting to lose feeling in my fingers. I tried wiping the blood off my badge, but it only smeared more. No fine-movement coordination. Not a good sign.

--

She didn't even say goodbye. I woke up, looked around, and saw that all of her things were missing. Not even a note was left to signify that she was there. The only artifact of her existence in my life was a half-empty gallon of soy milk in the fridge. After an hour of pondering the meaning of her absence, I numbly walked over to the kitchen, took out the soy milk, and poured it down the drain.

--

My coffee cup was broken. That's what set me off. A broken mug is no reason to murder, but it's a strong enough tap to send the other dominoes flying. What's a shame is that the poor sap didn't even see it coming. After all he's done to me this year, he should have, but sometimes a person's just blind to his own menace.

--

My daughter was brushing sand off of her clothes when she walked inside the house. "Outside!" I shouted, smiling. "Sorry, mama," she laughed, taking a backwards step onto the welcome mat. Through the open door, I saw my ex-husband watching from the car, making sure Sara got in the house all right. Our eyes met, he waved, and I nodded. Then he drove back down the street, and off to rejoin his other family--the one I'm not a part of.

--

When the odd girl spoke, only vowel sounds came out. Moaning, wide-mouth A's and E's and O's. She could understand speech--she was rather bright, truth be told--but the odd girl couldn't reply in kind. That's what the people in Crenshaw Township called her--the odd girl. Never by her name, which was Susan, nor by her family surname, which was Lowell, as in "Mrs. Lowell's daughter," nor even by her relation to certain members of higher society, as in "Savannah Lowell-Hudson's niece." They called her "the odd girl." Even her parents referred to her that way, at night, when they mistakenly thought she was sleeping. But she heard them every time.

--

When the end of the world came, no one was expecting it. The sky lit up like neon, and the last of the great glass monuments shattered and melted, sliding into the sea. At the end of this age of man, there was no one left who wondered at the sight of it. Man had seen too many movies to wonder at much of anything. The crowd of people waiting in line to by the newest gaming system simply stood, mouths gaping in stupor. No widened eyes, no voices raised, they simply stared dumbly, watching carnage and chaos with the disinterest of a cat inspecting the planting of a tree. The heat-flash disintegrated them instantly.