A Family Were Disappeared from Miami

by Mao Chinen 

A woman named Nancy was from Taiwan. She is the boss in the family. There are 3 people in her family. Her humorous handsome husband named Danny and her cheerful daughter Katy who is five years old. Nancy is half Taiwanese and half British. When she was a child, she lived in Washington D.C where her father worked as the head chef at the White House.

At eighteen Nancy was accepted to Harvard University where she studied Medical science and British literature. And Danny also majored in British literature. So she was getting along with him and they started dating.

After she graduated from the university, she worked as a doctor. On the other hand, Danny became a translater. When they were twenty-seven years old, they got married and lived in Washington D.C for five years.

Two months ago, they moved to Miami because they won the lottery. The family started living in a mansion. Miami is the best position for them.

However one night the Miami Beach midnight bash occurred. There was a twenty-meter tidal wave that killed everyone in her family. They were so scared for their lives, but it didn’t matter. They died. It was starting to snow in the background.

The police investigated the accident. It was normal except for one thing. There was poison detected in their bodies. The police suspect that someone killed the family. They decided to investigate the incident.

According to the police, murder suspects were narrowed down to three people. A first person is Hiro whose nationality is Japanese. He is thirty-three years old. He was a pianist. He was their friend and he loved Nancy. But his friend Danny proposed to her.  Second is Anita who is British. Thirty-two years old, she was the family’s neighbor. She was a writer. Unfortunately, It wasn’t going well and she broke up with her boyfriend who she had been dating for three years. She planned to marry him. Anita suffered from her misfortune. She had always envied the family.

Third is Pierre who was from France, and loved expensive candy. He is forty-five and also a friend of the family. He used to visit their house and played with their daughter. He was a job-hopper and lived in poverty. So he wanted a lot of money. After a while, he heard that they won the lottery.

Did one person of these three people kill the family? Or did the family commit suicide? Today, the police have been looking for the truth.

Medicine Woman Jane’s Odd Prediction

by Kumi Kobashigawa

Medicine Woman Jane told her good buddy Junko, “Tomorrow will be a beautiful new beginning for you,” when Jane was talking to Junko about her wildest dreams. It was a beautiful moonlit night. They were sitting under the shade of a tree in the backyard and eating juicy grapes and drinking excellent red wine with the roasted garlic chicken, jellyfish salad, and sugar-free dessert, which they had bought for a very low price at a local market.

“Listen to the voice of the heavens, open your mind and then you’ll land on your feet!” Jane cried in a quivering voice. “There she goes again,” Junko thought as Jane always talked about the purported predictions in her dreams even though her prediction had never come true.

Finally, Jane’s long talk finished, and they looked blankly for a short while at the beautiful full moon. The scent of the citrus fruits wafted in the air.

Then, some sweet music was heard from somewhere. Junko looked around and the crazy star-crossed lovers could be seen over the fence. The girl was sitting on a grand piano, and the boy was serenading her with a popular love song of the 1970s, and they began to dance under the moonlight.

“They’ve probably watched a few romantic musical movies too much,” Junko thought to herself.

After that, Jane began to talk again, but Junko was tired, so she said goodbye to Jane and walked home. As soon as Junko arrived home, she went to bed and, without remembering Jane’s prediction, fell fast asleep.

The next day, Junko arose and found the hands of the clock pointed straight to 9:00 A.M. “Oh, dear!” She muttered, remembering she had a job interview that day. She had decided to find a new job because the job of Medicine Woman, she felt, didn’t pay well enough.

She dressed in a hurry, spread sweet honey on burnt toast and got into her car. She hurried on her way to a company that she was going to interview for. When she made her way through the forest road, suddenly a deer leapt out from the right side of the trees. She turned the wheel sharply to the left but her car slammed into a tree!

Fortunately, she didn’t suffer any serious injuries. She called the police and the company, but her brand new car was wrecked completely, which caused her to cry uncontrollably.

Anyway, she was bound for the company in a daze. She got into a taxi and got out just a few blocks before the company. Then, she heard the distinct sounds of people squealing up ahead. She came closer there and saw that George Clooney was just coming out of the building. A crowd of female fans was surrounding him, snapping pictures and asking for autographs.

Junko tried to make her way through the crowd but one of the fan shouted, “Hey, you are in my way, step aside!” and pushed Junko. Junko fell onto the street. She tottered back to her feet but found her right knee was bleeding. “Oh, shoot,” she muttered and went into the closest store to use the restroom and wash the injury, and went back into the company.

After her job interview and the journey back home, she was very tired. She opened the fridge, took out yesterday’s dinner, and asked the girl next door Tomomi to join her for dinner.

Tomomi came soon, and they began to eat like sad funeral mourners. Tomomi asked Junko what had happened that day, then Junko began to tell her about her journey and about Mr. Clooney. Tomomi listened carefully to Junko and cheered her up.

Afterwards, they watched a documentary movie while sipping on warm milk. Then they felt sleepy, so Tomomi went back to her room and Junko went to bed.

“It was an awful day,” she muttered to herself under the heavy wool blanket and she was soon dreaming of escape from her bad hair day.

However, further misfortune was creeping closer upon her.

Unfortunately, she was seemingly unaware of the hair monster wearing with an evil smile and gulping down a strawberry shake just beyond the bedroom door!

A Gentle Man?

by Bruce Lee Walker

On the streets of Berkeley, a gentle white male, incredibly hungry for food, snatched some candy from a little girl who was merely two and passing by, with her mom, too closely to his big hairy hand.

Though gentle, the man was an utter loon who found himself periodically robbing his local Family Mart with a spoon and a water gun filled with apple vinegar which he produced to threaten the staff with. 

The gentle white male was now wasting away in jail cleaning bathrooms and scrubbing floors with a used toothbrush given to him by an abusive guard named Steve.

The gentleman was known as Stephano, and he’d been sentenced to two years and was there for only a month but could take it no more.  So, he decided to escape like a crafty ninja and slip through the steel bars of his cold hard cell and run like hell through the cold wet night.

After he escaped, he looked long and hard in a mirror hanging on a bus depot wall and found he was no longer so gentle. He had become crazed and an outrageous man. For the onlookers that passed by thought he had gone completely and utterly mental. And, it was true. Stephano, on the night of his escape, was howling at the moon crazed and selfish after having crossed the great Golden Gate Bridge wearing Prada shoes and eating juicy grapes he had plucked from a vineyard in the Salinas Valley.

He had now gone totally insane, and it seemed the gentle white male had become an evil, menacing, conniving thief. But it didn’t matter anymore as he was self-absorbed and concerned only about getting back to the place of his youth.

Stephano traveled day and night walking for many hours wandering the endless road. He looked for whatever he could find to eat. Suddenly, the guard from the jail found Stephano walking along a road and asked how he was slip sliding away from the jail cell he had been confined to. Steve didn’t wait for the cookie to crumble, because of his great anxiety and depression, he admitted to Stephano that he was tired of working at that depressing place.

Steve and Stephano talked for many hours about each others problems. Finally coming to a conclusion that they both wanted revenge. Revenge on the world that had put them in a position that was unfair.

They decide that they would rob one major bank in every State. Starting from Maine heading to Florida,Florida to Alaska and from there to Washington.

The first few heists were easy. By the time they hit Ohio, they were known everywhere as S and S. They worked their way down to Florida and started to realise that,since everyone knew about the S and S and that everyone knew what they looked like that they would never be able to spend any of the money that they had stolen. But,they had an idea. It wasn’t simple but it was the only way they would ever be able to use the money that they had stolen.

They decided to burn some of the money,keep only what is necessary and hide. Hide until no one remembered them anymore or at least were able to enter a convenience store without being noticed. Still after all the havoc that they had caused they still weren’t sure if a few years would be enough to clear their names.

The S and S duo hid themselves in the state of Alaska. Food, they could scavange for but finding a place to live was the problem. Every Motel, every apartment they would go to always had a wanted poster of them inside.

So, they decided to head to Texas instead. Since it was the biggest state, they thought that at least they might be able to find somewhere they could stay.

As they walked along the state highway they noticed something coming towards them. Shining black and white, blue and red light flickering and in huge numbers. They were on the highway so there was really no place for them to hide. 

As they ran they looked at each other knowing that this was the end they smiled and started to laugh. Holding each others hands and kept running and running until Bam, they were both shot, falling straight to the hot searing ground. 

The S and S duo had been ended. As all the money they had in their bags started to fly away because of the strong wind that day , their feeling for revenge also flew away leaving them with happiness. Happiness that was called “friendship”.

The police had looked at their past history of when they were young. Both of them abused by their father. Not having the childhood they deserved. They felt sorry for them.

A few days had passed, and the daily newspaper had been published with them on the front page. The title of their page was not what everyone had expected or probably thought should have. It was named “S and S the thieves with a heart”

Not many people no the reason why this tragic story or why that page of the newspaper was named that  but the police, the S and S family and you the readers the listeners of this story will truly know what happened.

The Crazy Star-crossed Lovers from Sothern California

by Iori Tada

Behind the garage, the beautiful blonde bombshell Lily who was selfish and crazed and her new boyfriend Troy who had dark gray eyes and who was good looking were arguing like rabid cats and dogs. They were going off the deep end because he was caught selling her secrets, and their conflict was worth getting serious about because of how much she was acting like a horrible little brat. But, she was very tough and even frightened him.

So, finally, he started running away from home from the dark room of his prison under the light of the street lamp to seek a beautiful new beginning by the end of the night to escape her out-of-control behavior. He ran feverishly to fly home to his hometown to visit his ex-girlfriend, Sarah, because he needed so desperately to hold someone and calm his heightened anxiety.

He was sucking up his courage after the near-death experience he had when his girlfriend Lily tried to plunge a knife in his back. He was having a very, very bad hair day, indeed. He had tried to understand her genuinely, but she ultimately drove him crazy. He lost his cool and was so tired of her constant jealousy that he wanted to stay well away from her, but she had thought about that incident quite differently.

When he realized that he got to his ex's home, he immediately knocked at the door. Sarah came out, and he hugged her like a lost puppy filling his inner-most emptiness. However, the next moment, he suddenly developed a severe sense of pain on his right cheek, and he fell to the floor. It was Sarah's hulking boyfriend Jake. Troy was now in serious trouble because Jake tried to fight with Troy. Luckily for Tory, Sarah stopped Jake from being violent and told him to go back inside like a pet kitten. 

After Jake returned inside, Sarah said, "Troy… Never show up again please. It's too late now, and you are the one who wanted to break up with me. You left me when I needed you. So, how could you show up in front of me now?" Sarah started crying, and Troy said nothing. "Troy... I'm really happy with my Jakeypoo. He has given me everything that you didn't or couldn't give me, and, by the way, don't you have a new girlfriend right now?" Sarah asked Troy. "….yeah" He said. "You are an asshole" Sarah slapped his face and said "You know that you treat girls like a joke. Good bye Troy. I'll never see you again" Sarah returned inside. Visiting his ex, Troy now knew, he had been wrong. He promptly left there and was waddling around like a lost terrier.

Troy started really missing his girlfriend Lily and thought back to that time when they were both happy. He remembered on land and in the air how much they were love-sick young lovers in the past who were once so gentle and kind. But, it was so sad that they were now fighting like psychotic shopaholics and drinking excellent red wine from paper cups and dancing half-naked by the light of a full moon, but he couldn’t go back to her because he had an obstinate personality.

Suddenly, he felt wrapped up in warm air. It was his crazy girlfriend Lily. She came to find him and apologized that she tried to control him so much and, of course, to plunge a steely steak knife in his back. She was afraid of losing him and regretted that she had driven him crazy with her constant jealousy. She admitted that she was not only comfortable with him, but she could also be herself with him.

After they talked, on the ice rink, they began making love in their best positions with their extreme body heat and in a pair of very high heels. They were now crazy star-crossed lovers and living the life of movie stars, believing the bizarre story that they could float in the clouds without wings.

Later in the year, in the self-improvement section of their local library, they were caught by security because Lily had gotten jealous of Troy talking to a young cutie on the library staff, and she started acting violently toward him.

It seemed that Lily still couldn't control her emotions and her behavior. 

Mystery Woman Jane

by Rina Hachimine

     The beautiful blonde bombshell who sneaked into the party was Brenda Bradley, the cute daughter of Billy and Betty Bradley. She was slurping some icy cold coke with dark rum and swaying her hips to the beat of some loud Latin music at the    

     Miami Beach Midnight Bash where she wore a bizarre look on her face.

This was because some other smart sexy woman appeared and whose name was Jane. In spite of Jane's successful practice of medicine, she was wearing self-degrading tight pink shorts and a cropped tee shirt with a pair of very high heels. Moreover in her hair were lovely florescent pink flowers made from imported Chinese plastic. That style made her look like a new major fashion phenomenon to excite the style-conscious crowd in Miami. Billy was awesome too, like a really old dude romancing a young woman.

     The great beauty of her smart fashion was a new beginning for her career as a doctor who pretended, like an especially hunky little movie-star and as Brenda looked on, she could not help but feel extreme envy.

     After her job interview, Jane said, “I’m making a pretty penny!” and saved her money to buy new leather shoes for her dad and her new boyfriend. They were expensive and made in Italy.

     After today’s sunset, Jane imagined living the life of a famous super model, but at half-past 7:00A.M., she was happily married and later went to the supermarket, thinking about tomorrow'sdinner while humming a sad melody. She felt conflicted by the sudden marriage and her desire to be a model. 

     Many months later on a holiday in upstate New York while hiking the mountains and climbing the tallest tree in the forest with her new family of young squirrels, she expressed some hope to herself for a new future.

     One day after her return from holiday, she went to lunch with her friends and met a cool young man who talked happily and made her dream about a new life with him in a far off land hidden away in high mountains. 

Moon and Sun

Azuhi Hanasaki, OCU

I'm like the moon
My heart changes form just like the moon changes form.
Sometimes I feel confident about myself.
Sometimes I want to disappear.
I'm like the moon.
However, you're like the sun.
You're always smiling.
You always make everyone energetic.
You're like the sun.
Completely opposite to me.
But I hope to be just like you someday.
And I hope to be next to you sometime soon.