Lies that Bind Us

by Andrew Hart

But then that’s how you get by sometimes, isn’t it? By deploying those little half-truths that keep the world rosy enough to live in.

I didn’t want to say anything. I wanted to keep it to myself, the thrill, the surprise, the simple pleasure of it.

It was different for us, at least, because we were different.

You remember them usually because you didn’t really know what they were till they happened. They open up a rush of new thoughts and sensations, like you’ve stumbled on a world you hadn’t believed in till you found yourself in it. The feelings that come with that new world may be the beginning of a long sequence that eventually becomes familiar and staid, but they begin as surprise.

She’s a gaunt, ravenous thing, starving to gobble up that crumb of the world that someone tried to take from her.