Tag: old stories

  • Strife | a fragment

    Photo by Marjoline Delahaye on Unsplash

    The following is a lightly-edited fragment of a what was intended to be a longer bit of fiction I wrote in January 2015. I found it while looking for old files on a portable HDD to see how hard it would be to recreate “Rust” from my post yesterday. No dice… yet, anyway. I may be looking for the wrong filename and it could be under another name entirely. The song I referred to as “Myrrh” (which is only one of many “Myrrh”-titled songs I’ve worked on) is actually fully intact and on my modern DAW, so I might have to share that (with vocals!) once I decide what those lyrics should be. But, on with the story… I’ll say a bit more about this piece after the fragment.


    Strife

    The smell of excrement, rot and chemicals rose from the waters as the barge Vivienne and Llewellyn were riding floated across the River Strife to the slaughter yards south of the river. The copper smell of fresh blood drifted over the other smells and Llewellyn had to choke back a the bile that threatened to add to the miasma of roiling in the dark twilight waters below.

    “Good gods, how does anyone deal with this stench on a daily basis?” he asked no one in particular, and didn’t expect to get a response. He covered his face with a handkerchief.

    (more…)
  • Market missing

    I miss the Market today.

    Pikes Market, Seattle
    Photo by Sabine Ojeil on Unsplash

    It would be closed by now, of course. But I would have skipped out of work early and spent the afternoon window shopping comics, trinkets, maybe some herbs or incense. Walk down to the pier, although it was a stranger the last time I walked there because of the missing viaduct.

    I’d buy a couple of börek to take back to the apartment, reheat for dinner, salad or quinoa with tahini dressing on the side. I was never a very good vegetarian back then — I couldn’t give up my cheese or butter, but I rarely ate meat when I could visit the Market. Honestly, I rarely ate at all.

    (more…)