i read the night braille
a chill breeze raises on skin
all fingertip & firefly slow
with a burning below
while your fingernail
stole away my breath
whisper in crushed velvet
while crickets fiddle
under full moons
Category: prose
night braille
Sunny Day Parasol Co. — Case File #1: Cold Case
an episodic Vivian Locke noir
AI-generated image by Gemini, with direction by Michael Raven It takes a lot of nerve to slide uninvited into my booth when I’m halfway through a bad week and a worse cup of coffee — it could have just as likely dishwater as coffee by the sheen reflecting my mug in the surface. Usually, I’d just tell the stray to take a hike. But the guy smelled like burnt ozone and sheer panic, and before I could even complain about the static-charged puddle he was leaving on the seat across from me, he slammed a frost-encrusted attaché down on the cracked and stained laminate.
(more…)The Wormwood Mason
AI-generated image with refinements by Michael Raven using Gemini agent Erza trudged up the muddy two-wheel track leading to the Vane cabin, making sure to cover his bound notebook under his slicker to keep it dry. The rough path was greasy with the steady drizzle of rain that had arrived at Wormwood the same day as he had. He had despaired of driving the last quarter-mile to the cabin immediately upon seeing the conditions from the two-lane, shoulder-less county road that passed by the homestead. When choosing his rental car, he had emphasized economy over practicality. He regretted, not the first time on this expedition, that he had not rented something with four-wheel drive for a trek into the heart of Appalachia.
(more…)hollows
I am gnawing at black ice, waiting to become real while taking in all obsidian and injecting it in my veins. I would offer you a taste, but I can already see your shard eyes speak and say, “Oh, I had planned to offer you mine.” I would not want your generosity to go to waste. So I gnaw.
Sure sure, I’ll be paid in token for my taking — coin coming in kisses melting on the wind. Scant warmth, that. But enough heat for a haint, when we black ice gnaw the typic nights, I expect.
My twin blind eyes haze over when I look to the east. Hollows, I say to none… There is no Avalon.
It Never Rains in Southern California — prompted flash fiction
I’ve decided to up my flash fiction output after trying out two of the prompts from Jolene’s site. I need to try and stretch out that muscle and strengthen it a bit after letting it atrophy for a long spell.
Unless otherwise specified, I am leveraging Google’s Gemini AI to give me daily prompts. I don’t currently know the frequency at which I will actually post the flash fiction developed as a response to the prompts, but probably not on a daily basis.
In this current series, I am going to explore random subgenres of speculative fiction, fantasy and horror.
Required Plot Elements (per Gemini)
- A rain-slicked neon alleyway
- A prototype “memory drive” that contains an animal the protagonist has never seen [edit: I replaced “sunset” with “animal”]
- A debt collector who accepts childhood nostalgia as payment.
Genre: Cyberpunk / Noir
Someone felt the need to share their affliction for retro-premillennial oldie covers with the alleyway. As if the neon were not headache-inducing loud enough on the eyes by itself, they blared some nonsense song that echoed though the narrow chasm between decrepit brick buildings built around the same era as the music.
(more…)The Bell Palimpsest — a prompted fiction exercise
Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash The following is written from another fiction prompt from Jolene (Chico’s Mom). On-the-fly, off-the-cuff and keeping edits to a minimum (my personal rules). The required included elements from her prompt are:
- Person who never gives up
- Plastic surgeon
- Secret meeting
- Library
As expected, it ended up like another Twilight Zone reject, and I expect that’s just the way my mind is wired. I may make small edits in the next day or so as I read it with a fresh mind, but I don’t expect anything substantial to change during that time.
Doctor Eliot Thorne was not a patient man in the best of times. And he was losing what patience he had as he waited for Miss Clara Bell in the candlelit library of her ancestral home in the wealthy end of town. He had thought to ask for more lighting, and had turned to the butler to ask for the lighting to be increased, but Gunter, her manservant, was already through the double-hung doors before he could think to ask.
(more…)Masochism world
Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash There was a guy one of my tattooist used to regularly tattoo. It turned out his client was not getting inked, but just getting tattoos for the sensation they gave him.
“Is he just a masochist,” I asked, having immediately decided it must be true.
“Not really,” said the Brain, as his typo’d business card proclaimed. “He doesn’t much care for pain. I think he is actively trying to avoid pain.”
“Explain,” I asked, befuddled, wincing as he hit the nerve bundle near my armpit. “Do you not use needles either?”
The Brain frowned. “Of course I use needles. He’s getting a tattoo.” He held my bicep firm to prevent me from flinching and messing up his linework.
“So… why no ink?” I said, taking a drag on my cigarette, for this was back when you could smoke while getting a tattoo.
“He doesn’t want it to stick around more than scar tissue.”
“So… Why get one at all if he doesn’t like ink?”
“He says it makes his pain go away” said the Brain.
“Riiiight,” was my incredulous response. “Oh-kay.”
The Brain shrugged. “His business, I just follow his direction.”
Welcome to masochism world, I thought to myself. Definitely a masochist.
It is years later, arthritis and old injuries later. The Brain’s client was right. Pain washes the pain away.
It’s too expensive and no one will agree to doing tattoos without ink anymore, however. They just nod and you can see it in their eyes: Welcome to masochism world.
Twilight aching
Photo by Cornelia Munteanu on Unsplash She covers me in twilight aching, as filtered by summer leaves. Shadowed within shadows gloaming slips down, descends, pours over me.
Blind to consequence, she moves through the weald seamless, with feet drifting on wraith. A kiss on my grey lips passing, breath crisp to the taste and pale fingers linger mists on cheek before she wisps away.
I am wicker-bound by convention though the distance moves well beyond time.
Flint for my eyes, sharp, though always blind I must be. They scrimshawed my bones to mask the words from me. Lips set to suture, to trap my voice to me.
Waiting on the fires, mists’ kiss watching, twilight aching over me.
of evensong
Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash All that could be seen was ankle; your ankle, in fact. My face was against your bare calf, warmed in the golden glow of early summer evensong atop the old elm-crowned hillock, your fingers tangled in my hair. Narrowed of focus by my heavy eyelids, dreamy for ebb and flow of cicada drones — narrowed so I could drink in that ankle of yours, the sight of which being mead that made my head dizzy drunk and the linger of a kiss honey sweet.
Someone hummed a tuneless song and I never did discover if it was you or me. But neither of us moved in the fading day’s heat. Not wanting to break the thralling spell, I just lay there, feeling the pulse of your blood against my cheek as I bathed in the vision of your ankle and the massage of your fingers in my hair.
Hollowman
I’ve gone hollow, with dusty cobwebs occupying the empty space inside. If you were to loosen the black leather lacing that holds everything inside, you would be surprised at the void that greets you.
I don’t want you to be shocked. So, consider this fair warning if you elect to look inside just out for the looking for any curiosities you thought might be tied up inside. Some other thief or thieves have already lifted the everything of what used to reside there.
Ahh, is that disappointment I perceive? That long, gravity-trapped face dragging to the ground, where once a smile was to reside, turned to the upside down?
It’s not my preference to be primarily hollow, I assure you. My clockwork heart was quite the thing, I promise, before it was taken from me. Even the spleen filled of ideal was taken from me. I am quite empty, you see.
With all parts cannibalized for the sake of entertainment of others, only my eyes remain to reflect the void within. Waiting for something that long has a been and unlike to be again.
