Category: prose

  • subject 19 — a short tale

    Below is my short fiction response to prompts proposed by Jolene on her post at Poetry & More. Check out the link to see the criteria she gave her readers either before or after reading to support another online author. Follow her, if you want to be really cool.

    I didn’t do a ton of research before writing this (and it is very much improvisational), so read it as a pulp tale, one not intended to leverage realism to any extent.

    It’s story time!

    subject 19

    Subject 19…?

    His head throbbed in time the hum of the machinery all around as Elias stirred.

    Subject 19…?

    With eyes still closed against the brightness of the room beyond his eyelids, he groaned.

    Subject 19? Can you hear me, now?

    (more…)

  • Stonerot

    We are Slaved of the Riverbound, and so even more stone than they. We are to be culled and carved away to make way for the flow which our overlords assure us is necessary for live to carry forth.

    I could see in the guards eyes and with the way he held his crop that he toyed with riding me. There was a gossamer thread between enforcing compliance and wanton thrill, and the guard had yet to decide if there would be his own punishment or glory in mounting me — if my transgressions warranted it, or were it to premature and hasty to act yet. Overly-eager guards were subject to the same punishments as the slaved. Our overlords wanted their workforce compliant, but largely intact and able to work, after all.

    (more…)

  • Product

    reflection of woman s eye on broken mirror
    Photo by Ismael Sánchez on Pexels.com

    Everything is prop or backdrop on the stage for our play today.

    Check our vaseline smiles in the mirror before calling for “lights” and the sodiums flicker to life and set the world aglow.

    Pull on the masque, assume a pose. Adjust after checking the screen that mirrors the scene. Set, snap and print.

    Pat each other of the back when nothing slips and we have captured a plastic essence pristine.

    Then file it away as just another charade of former days, anxious to apprehend the next.

  • Kind

    I wonder whatever became of Kind. She drifted away like a mote on the wind one summers day, flitting here and there before in the distance she did fade, leaving neither full lips or ashen hair to guide the way to where she went on drift. Perhaps she burned away, like any dream does when the sun shines on something at such length — and so wan she was in the begin, that slim girl Kind. It was a wonder she had not been consumed years ago.

    I check balconies in the gloaming; I inspect the shadowtall oaks, gnarled in the their age. But Kind is no where and no when, our pale empress aloft on the wind. I miss our lady Kind, and the delirium euphoric that she did bring.

    And I wonder at where she took her drift.

  • At Winterkiss

    conceptual portrait of hands with red thread
    Photo by Amirhossein Kianbakht on Pexels.com

    Lingering at midnights, the skin’s hollow drum thrumming with tension tugging taut the skin in anticipation as black coil fingernails trace leys down the soft flesh of an inner forearm. First right, then left, setting lines burning like fireflies down to the fingertips.

    Comes at winterkiss. “Are you ready,” said she. A nod with it begins, her kiss leaving every nerve burning alive.

    A furtive nod, afraid the spell will break and longing for the neverending. Miraculously, there is only long vibrations humming through, a guitar string of tension bound under flesh.

    All bells break, shatter the water’s razor edge and then begins a falling, a falling lingering a twilights all that remains is the skin’s hallow drumming while wondering at Elektra and if might this be that hunger she beheld.

  • Death at the Wharf

    Photo by Izzy E on Unsplash

    I was murdered at Fisherman’s Wharf late one night in the month of July, way back when in 1995.

    (more…)

  • Morning coffee

    Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

    I don’t mean to be no trouble, but I am thinking of dyin.

    He sat across from me, sipping his percolated coffee with one or three too many fistfuls of coffee thrown in “for good measure”. If you were to believe the tall tales he tells, he uses an old sock to filter out the biggest of the grounds, but I think that’s probably bullshit. Or it might not be bullshit and I’m just hoping that it is at least a clean old sock he uses for the purpose.

    (more…)

  • On the drift

    They never mention it in books, of course. The travel guides, I mean. They never tell you just how far you can, on average, walk in a pair of shoes before they start to fall apart. Of course, not all shoes are built the same and there’s going to be some variability in how well they will wear, but I’ve found you can maybe walk five hundred miles on fairly even asphalt in a pair of sneakers before you might want to keep your eyes open for your next pair. Boots meant for hiking? Maybe twice that, but you had better not rely on there being any tread to give you traction that last two hundred miles, give or take. Still, boots are my go-to, though they tend to weigh you down more at the end of the day than something more athletic.

    Of course, you’re rarely given the choice of boots or sneakers while on the drift. More often than not, you have to accept what you come across and, obviously, the mileage on a worn pair of footwear is significantly lowered.

    But beggars can’t be choosers, as my gran would say.

    (more…)

  • New Moon

    I will drift the forest behind blind eyes with her, just as she came, here on the new moon this morn. A new year, come ten days on the loom, rides her night tresses too. Time to wrap root and gather low, gather deep, and gather below. Gather, then, and keen no more.

    If you knew me, you would understand — but I stand alone, unknown. I am wing and I am thorn, that is the best I can explain.

    But when she comes, we gather: wrapping root and pricking low.

  • Gate 32B

    Photo by Joel Tasche on Unsplash

    Wind and needle-sharp snowdust blew something coughing and swearing through Gate 32B. They had opened the door but a crack so that Mark and the other guards would have an easier time of pushing it back into the closed position after their “guest” had entered. The servos were nightfroze again and no one had wanted to open the gate in the first place, but you just did not leave folks out in the cold on a night like this.

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