Category: prose

  • Receptions

    From deep within the weald, there is a longing to sit with, to learn from.

    Go fly to the mountain, raven, sit on the stone-filled heath. Become the fells, be come the high places. Better yet: sink down into the underwood deadfall and loam, wrap roots around and tangle hair with moss, lichen the bone. Grow antlers. Become the stone. Who needs these wings?

    They come. They receive. They go.

    Grow to flint, knapped and worn. Become the old trunk they come sit with and exchange, clear off scalloped white fungus as they while away until there is nothing more. They take that away too, and cast away when bored. But that is the way.

    When you are not looking, comes the wolf. Not just a wolf. The winter wolf.

    And being stone will then be the whiling away while the longing melts of winter.

  • lark on the morn

    Today I draw dark lines in charcoal on parchment so thin as to air. All gravities pull in your direction and the angles bend true, in teeth-branded skin and hurt so good.

    Head wrapped in linen for better to see. My fingers dance liminal, waiting for the telegraph of dream. Can you see the words writ in water? The ripples cross my dark lines in coal drawn on angle to you.

    Granites love your gravity, antlers turn their curves to thee.

    And, it is in this I apprehend. Waiting on the morning lark to call you into being.

  • Stolen away

    There are days that I feel like everything was stolen away. Like today. A flash of stagelighting splashed on chrome, showering us in cobalt bright and cherry gone to burgundy under the finger tap tap tap. There was sweat, laughter and I fell in love that night, but there was not enough summer to keep.

    Those moments were before the things broke and I fell to the stolen, poisoned under a trail of stars.

    We danced. How we danced. Different voice, a skew of face. Keeping the faith and spinning, yearning there on the eve of May. Michael, you said, a vampire drawing, drinking me away from the night. Be one of us of us of us…

    And I turned before the fading, blinded again with white. I should have not gone into the light because that it where it started to break. The theft in your obsidian eyes, a box containing all the light and the smell of the waterfront. Distracted by the glitter, I forgot to forget and give over.

    Maybe, I should have let the dead die.

    Tired of the absence, I slender eyes to shadow. I ache for the heart in your voice. But now only echoes sing in the empty place where everything was stolen away.

  • night braille

    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

  • 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)

    1. A rain-slicked neon alleyway
    2. A prototype “memory drive” that contains an animal the protagonist has never seen [edit: I replaced “sunset” with “animal”]
    3. 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:

    1. Person who never gives up
    2. Plastic surgeon
    3. Secret meeting
    4. 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.