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…)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…)
The bus was running late, as usual. The only sensible thing to do in such conditions is to smoke a cigarette, as far as Paul was concerned. So he did.
“I’ve run out of fucks to give,” he said, dropping a pinch of tobacco into the cigarette paper. He shifted the distribution of the tan, shredded leaf, pushing it to the edges of the paper. The amount was still unsatisfactory by whatever criteria he had, so another pinch was added shifted about until he was satisfied and his fingers started their practiced rolling to transform the package into a serviceable cigarette.
(more…)
Drip drop, water in the well. She peers down between the moss stones and half-shadows to the water’s tenebrious surface casing ripples with each drop of dew gathering in the chill of the dark before it casts itself downward, a suicide plunge to rejoin the well of spirits gathered below.
(more…)
“Can you hear it? The wind is calling to carry.”
She stood away from me, turned away from the buildings, the trees and me, her black hair blowing on the gathering breeze as the skies grew flint to match the color of her eyes she wore before the turning away. I did not doubt her eyes could change colors to match her mood, I had seen it happen many time before. Her mood was that of the coming storms, unsettled, roiling and only barely constrained — and so she now wore flint and heather where most people wore mere eyes.
(more…)
“I told yer ma, that’s a season — tain’t no name for a girl,” her father used to tell her when she was young, before he had choked on all that ash that started falling from the skies and died. He was never one to wear a mask, and refused to cover his face after the Ashfalls began. The particulates, buried deep under the earth until recent years, made quick work of his cigarette-ravaged lungs.
“I n’ver did know why she gone did that, but she made me promise to name y’that after you was born.”
“Maybe it was because my hair was white as snow?” she would always suggest, knowing the answer even as she said it. It was a game they played, this conversation of theirs.
(more…)
How do I write a story? I forget. Perhaps one goes a little like this:
There once was a little girl, and she liked red and so she wore red. Except that her mum called it crimson and her da preferred scarlet. But the fae said it was more poppy, and so that stuck because her mum thought it a more cheery thing than those other blood colors.
The girl said nothing at all and not because she did not have a mind of her own, but because someone had stolen her voice before she was born and she had no head for writing, though she knew plenty of words like “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, “snicker-snack” and “albatross” (a word she dreamed of shouting from the top of the radio tower that rose over the place she was born). But writing those words? Oh, well, that just was not something she could do.
(more…)Of the rubble they wandered, she and the one she called Puck; she dressed in crimson and ash while Puck was dressed in Puck, a shadow somewhere between chrome scuffed and tetris blocks that might have been mustard yellow, if not for the scorching and scratch. Azur, too, if you looked atop his aluminum pate from above or when not aloft — a rarity given the nuclear pellet fueling his eternal flight.
Stones rattled for reasons only stones know, and fell to the scree near her feet with wonton abandon. If Puck did not have encyclopedic reference to the circuitric contrary, it might have thought the stones were rushing down from the remnants of highrises to worship the angel at their base. Puck certainly did, but that was his nature. The girl was its goddess and its life and, even if they had been programmed otherwise, it would still choose this life of servitude under her wing. Call it love, for even machines may become such things as the capacity for love.
Puck tensed at the howl of greymalkin prowling distant, yet close enough to warrant caution. She dressed of vermillion tensed not at all, which was her nature, such as was her trust given to Puck. It was for Puck to worry while she wandered and his servos did whine at the unexpected danger lurking the shadows beyond. How far was far enough? it wondered. Almost immediately, it responded, Never enough, but was loath to leave his charge for the time required to chase the great cats off.
So Puck did the only sensible thing and flew closer to her and did what all things must eventually consider as their final option when danger lurks nearby: hope.
And so, Puck hoped while the greymalkin cast out more mewls and cries, suggesting the hunt had begun.
Puck sighed relief when the sounds moved away from their location, and it embraced the momentary calm, as short-lived as it was like to be.
At long drag, the fens and fog draw down, sucking the moon behind a veil of shadows to obfuscate and obscure. Edgewater, nightwalking slow, shoulders burdened of regret and battleworn, he shambles all shagged, matted and weary to the dampness of home.
These invasions falling into his moors and swamps, they ache with each needle piercing at the festering wound of birth. Could they not find another fallow place for their disruption? He scoffs at the idea, certain that the answer will remain that his time has grown overdue and, like these wild places, he must also be forced to submit or wither.
And submission is not his nature; and so he shuffles from damp stone to damp stone, wary of the moss growing slick over each, lumbering on his way home to rest. For tomorrow there will be fresh battles to weary him to the bone. A wry smile, only tugging at one corner of his mouth, at the thought. When that day comes, he will lay down his fatigue and return to dirt. Rest comes for all, eventually — but in this, he must struggle bitter to the end.
He chased the coffee rings on the formica coffee bar with his fingertip, spreading the thin ensō of liquid into ever broader strokes in time with the acid jazz playing softly overhead. It was past midnight on a work night, he should go home. Instead, he lingered at the late-night coffee joint with the drinks looking for sobriety in the dregs of their cup and not finding much there to give them hope. The stared at their empty cups, debating on if they should risk the drive home or the sleeplessness another cup would bring. The Beacon’s barista could not be bothered to help them decide — the tips had been lackluster all night anyway with no promise of more to come for showing a willingness to serve the clientele another cup.
Mark was avoiding home, with good reason. Along with the futon bed that called his name even from here, his studio apartment overlooking the Sound was otherwise occupied by ghosts.
So he put off dealing with the unwanted, uninvited guests at least until the barista made his last call announcement. Mark wished it was not raining, because then he would have been able to roam the streets until daybreak, when the ghosts would finally take their leave. He thought he might call in sick today so he could sleep for the first time in three days.
If he was lucky, perhaps he would sleep right through the return of his ghosts after dusk. It did not seem likely, but he considered himself an optimist.