Jessica
By Amanda Firefox
In the green mist that pours from the broken time cylinder, I see her face, realize what I have done. Reality hesitates, seems to freeze, and for one, painful moment, I see her smile sadly, the smallest, briefest curve, color condensing within dying eyes. In another instant, the apparition is gone and I am left alone, a broken man sagging in the darkness beside that broken machine. The wrench hangs heavy in my hand, dripping with the blame of the atrocity I have committed.
It was necessary I tell myself. It had to be done.
And still that smile haunts me, hangs wispy in my mind.
Jessica.
- - -
Amanda Firefox is a fiery little brunette who spends as much time at the beach as she can manage. She doesn't write much, but when she writes, it's almost always about her favorite subject: boys.
By Amanda Firefox
In the green mist that pours from the broken time cylinder, I see her face, realize what I have done. Reality hesitates, seems to freeze, and for one, painful moment, I see her smile sadly, the smallest, briefest curve, color condensing within dying eyes. In another instant, the apparition is gone and I am left alone, a broken man sagging in the darkness beside that broken machine. The wrench hangs heavy in my hand, dripping with the blame of the atrocity I have committed.
It was necessary I tell myself. It had to be done.
And still that smile haunts me, hangs wispy in my mind.
Jessica.
- - -
Amanda Firefox is a fiery little brunette who spends as much time at the beach as she can manage. She doesn't write much, but when she writes, it's almost always about her favorite subject: boys.
Day of the Dead
by Jason D. Brawn
There it was, standing straight across the busy road staring into my frightened eyes, this masked figure of death! At first I thought it was part of a post-Halloween celebration, known as Day of the Dead, which explained why he or she wore a skeletal mask, but not the full costume of the Grim Reaper. Instead, it was a fur-trimmed parka, the same I had on, with its hood over the wearer's head.
Still our gazes were held, pedestrians passed, without noticing my stalker's strange attire, and vehicles sped past on a Sunday afternoon. I could also sense some people staring at me, wanting to ask if I was OK.
I first saw this gruesome figure when I was leaving my girlfriend's flat, following a Halloween party she hosted. It stood across the road looking at me. At first, it was dismissed, but soon had noticed its sinister appearance while I was looking out the window, during my bus journey home. From there, I knew it was supernatural and it was after me. So I ran and ran and got on various train and bus journeys - until I found an area - where I thought it wouldn't find me. And there it was, standing across the road, in front of a block of flats, that was being renovated with its towering scaffolding.
Would anyone believe what I had just seen? Or would anyone be able to help me? I knew what the answer was, and the only way to banish this visual curse was to confront it and demand what it had wanted from me. As I was steadily crossing over, I had to avoid the speedy traffic. The being or whatever it was refused to move. Even when I looked away to see the passing cars, bikes, lorries and buses, it was still rooted to the same spot, waiting for me. Then as soon as I reached the other side of the road, to meet my nemesis, it seemed so real, coming face to face with the masked thing.
"What is your bloody problem?!" I yelled out loud, hoping it would respond. But it didn't. "You've been following me all day, what is wrong?!" I was more determined to find out. Passers-by kept throwing strange glances at me, as it must have seemed I was shouting to myself.
Still it didn't respond, as it refused to look away from my grimace. I wanted to walk off, but knew it would continue to follow me. Besides, it had a purpose and if I were to die, then it would have happened already. Then:
I ripped off its mask and recoiled, as I already knew the identity of my stalker - myself.
BAM!
The overhead scaffolding tumbled onto me, burying me with bricks, boards and scaffolding poles. From that moment, my ghost had come to take me away!
- - -
Jason D. Brawn
by Jason D. Brawn
There it was, standing straight across the busy road staring into my frightened eyes, this masked figure of death! At first I thought it was part of a post-Halloween celebration, known as Day of the Dead, which explained why he or she wore a skeletal mask, but not the full costume of the Grim Reaper. Instead, it was a fur-trimmed parka, the same I had on, with its hood over the wearer's head.
Still our gazes were held, pedestrians passed, without noticing my stalker's strange attire, and vehicles sped past on a Sunday afternoon. I could also sense some people staring at me, wanting to ask if I was OK.
I first saw this gruesome figure when I was leaving my girlfriend's flat, following a Halloween party she hosted. It stood across the road looking at me. At first, it was dismissed, but soon had noticed its sinister appearance while I was looking out the window, during my bus journey home. From there, I knew it was supernatural and it was after me. So I ran and ran and got on various train and bus journeys - until I found an area - where I thought it wouldn't find me. And there it was, standing across the road, in front of a block of flats, that was being renovated with its towering scaffolding.
Would anyone believe what I had just seen? Or would anyone be able to help me? I knew what the answer was, and the only way to banish this visual curse was to confront it and demand what it had wanted from me. As I was steadily crossing over, I had to avoid the speedy traffic. The being or whatever it was refused to move. Even when I looked away to see the passing cars, bikes, lorries and buses, it was still rooted to the same spot, waiting for me. Then as soon as I reached the other side of the road, to meet my nemesis, it seemed so real, coming face to face with the masked thing.
"What is your bloody problem?!" I yelled out loud, hoping it would respond. But it didn't. "You've been following me all day, what is wrong?!" I was more determined to find out. Passers-by kept throwing strange glances at me, as it must have seemed I was shouting to myself.
Still it didn't respond, as it refused to look away from my grimace. I wanted to walk off, but knew it would continue to follow me. Besides, it had a purpose and if I were to die, then it would have happened already. Then:
I ripped off its mask and recoiled, as I already knew the identity of my stalker - myself.
BAM!
The overhead scaffolding tumbled onto me, burying me with bricks, boards and scaffolding poles. From that moment, my ghost had come to take me away!
- - -
Jason D. Brawn
The Grind
By David Mogen
I'm driving straight
Down a long, narrow lane.
Just like I do every morning,
My watch full of numbers.
- - -
Here lies the Borquist. All the Borquist ever wanted was a place to ferment in the son. You read that wright.
By David Mogen
I'm driving straight
Down a long, narrow lane.
Just like I do every morning,
My watch full of numbers.
- - -
Here lies the Borquist. All the Borquist ever wanted was a place to ferment in the son. You read that wright.
Just Another Easy-to-Believe Tragicomedy
By Philip Gaber
Think it was 1990.
(Funny how you can’t remember dates when you’ve been alone for so long).
Seems like somebody was always pulling a gun on me in those days… something about sleeping with women I wasn’t supposed to be sleeping with.
Fortunately, I never got shot… little muscle pain every now and then… but that’s why they invented aspirin.
Eventually, I’d move on.
Usually meet some woman with a flushed face and puffy eyes living in a sleepyheaded little town, not unlike some of those burgs in Cheshire County, New Hampshire.
She’d ask about my past and I’d shrug a little and mumble something about “kicking a dead horse,” and she’d look at me like I had no sense of humor and wonder who the hell this American stereotype was; but somehow we’d always end up locked in a static embrace after trying to achieve a higher form of bliss.
Come morning, she’d wake up with neck pain from using my knee cap as a pillow and I’d have cramps from attempting to perform one of those tantric methods; so we’d take a non habit forming prescription pain killer, because that’s what they were invented for, and spend the rest of the day determining which one of us could go through a needle’s eye without overdosing.
We’d come down off an inauthentic high a few hours later and she’d ask me some trick question like, “So, what did you, ditch your inert and restless life in search of a more authentic experience…?”
I’d show a polite grin and say something like, “Just on a one-man mission to find something morally positive,” and she’d sort of accept that, but I could tell she’d be thinking I was just another one of those t-shirted slackers trying like hell to break away from his family’s pathological path.
And she was right.
Always searching for the ring of truth by going down blind alleys, always ending up stranded in the middle of a mythic American dream.
Then she’d go into the kitchen and start mixing screwdrivers in those little juice boxes and I’d go off on another one of my lonesome ruminations and suddenly begin not to trust my memory at all.
She’d return twenty minutes later, drained and pale, hand me my drink, glance anxiously at the clock, force a smile, say, “I’ve always felt I was capable of great friendships and kindnesses…but I am strange… I do come from a different place..."
Suddenly, her eyes would fill with tears and I’d reach out and take her hand. “Well, at least you’re not somebody whose worldview is often obscured by an inability to fathom much of anything, like me,” I’d say and she’d smile and make some comment like, “so much dysfunction and chaos in your backstory, man…so much existential absurdity…”
As usual, I’d have no comment, no argument, and wouldn’t even feel guilty about it.
There’d be a silent but perceptible grinding of teeth there and with that, she’d lock the door, and we’d go back to bed.
Because that’s what beds were invented for.
- - -
A freelance writer and poet who spends the majority of his day attempting to reconcile differences between his love for writing and keeping hummus on the table.
By Philip Gaber
Think it was 1990.
(Funny how you can’t remember dates when you’ve been alone for so long).
Seems like somebody was always pulling a gun on me in those days… something about sleeping with women I wasn’t supposed to be sleeping with.
Fortunately, I never got shot… little muscle pain every now and then… but that’s why they invented aspirin.
Eventually, I’d move on.
Usually meet some woman with a flushed face and puffy eyes living in a sleepyheaded little town, not unlike some of those burgs in Cheshire County, New Hampshire.
She’d ask about my past and I’d shrug a little and mumble something about “kicking a dead horse,” and she’d look at me like I had no sense of humor and wonder who the hell this American stereotype was; but somehow we’d always end up locked in a static embrace after trying to achieve a higher form of bliss.
Come morning, she’d wake up with neck pain from using my knee cap as a pillow and I’d have cramps from attempting to perform one of those tantric methods; so we’d take a non habit forming prescription pain killer, because that’s what they were invented for, and spend the rest of the day determining which one of us could go through a needle’s eye without overdosing.
We’d come down off an inauthentic high a few hours later and she’d ask me some trick question like, “So, what did you, ditch your inert and restless life in search of a more authentic experience…?”
I’d show a polite grin and say something like, “Just on a one-man mission to find something morally positive,” and she’d sort of accept that, but I could tell she’d be thinking I was just another one of those t-shirted slackers trying like hell to break away from his family’s pathological path.
And she was right.
Always searching for the ring of truth by going down blind alleys, always ending up stranded in the middle of a mythic American dream.
Then she’d go into the kitchen and start mixing screwdrivers in those little juice boxes and I’d go off on another one of my lonesome ruminations and suddenly begin not to trust my memory at all.
She’d return twenty minutes later, drained and pale, hand me my drink, glance anxiously at the clock, force a smile, say, “I’ve always felt I was capable of great friendships and kindnesses…but I am strange… I do come from a different place..."
Suddenly, her eyes would fill with tears and I’d reach out and take her hand. “Well, at least you’re not somebody whose worldview is often obscured by an inability to fathom much of anything, like me,” I’d say and she’d smile and make some comment like, “so much dysfunction and chaos in your backstory, man…so much existential absurdity…”
As usual, I’d have no comment, no argument, and wouldn’t even feel guilty about it.
There’d be a silent but perceptible grinding of teeth there and with that, she’d lock the door, and we’d go back to bed.
Because that’s what beds were invented for.
- - -
A freelance writer and poet who spends the majority of his day attempting to reconcile differences between his love for writing and keeping hummus on the table.
Heart of Ice
By E.S. Wynn
The first touch of her talons is enough to make you shiver.
The second is enough to kill.
She isn’t from this world, this hazy, narrow fragment of existence that wraps around us like blinders on a horse. This isn’t reality to her. She’s from somewhere else. She’s the cruel master who knows what the world really looks like, who looms up into your sight like a wisp of white and traces the lines of your jaw with phantom fingers like jagged ice. Her pale smile is soft and cruelly casual, and for a moment you can almost believe that she pities you, pities your narrow, limited vision the way one might pity a child who does not know yet the scope and breadth of the world around him.
And then, she reaches into your chest.
When she reaches into you, she reaches through you, touches your soul. You feel her fingers as they curl around the muscle-pulse of your heart, bite into you with a hunger that is alien, draining. In a single, surging pull more felt than seen, she drains the heat from your soul, the strength from your body in progressive waves. She smiles as she squeezes you, as she squeezes that part within you which fights to maintain some semblance of life, of warmth, and reflected in her ethereal teeth you can see the shadows of your death, the fate that approaches moment by moment, comes with each breath, each squeeze of her frigid, edged fingers.
When she is done, when her claws at last release the dead and frozen stone of your sluggish heart, your body is little more than a husk, a dry memory of flesh etched with ice and agony. You catch a milky, faded glimpse of her for the barest moment, and then you realize suddenly that you are no longer looking at her-- you are within her, a lost wisp of light swirling through her as she waxes sated on the edge of reality. You cry out with a voiceless, unheard sound as you feel yourself slowly fading, dulling, lost on a sea of whispers where the voices of ten thousand lost souls mingle in a quiet melancholy, knowing that there is no escape, that there is only the slow fade toward quiet oblivion.
- - -
The great Old Ones, the ancient, elder gods of the deep that stir quietly in the depths of their sunken cities and otherworldly temples have nightmares about E.S. Wynn. Sometimes these dreams last for eons, and even the great lord Cthulhu has refused to emerge from R'lyeh for as long as E.S. Wynn walks this dimensional annex.
By E.S. Wynn
The first touch of her talons is enough to make you shiver.
The second is enough to kill.
She isn’t from this world, this hazy, narrow fragment of existence that wraps around us like blinders on a horse. This isn’t reality to her. She’s from somewhere else. She’s the cruel master who knows what the world really looks like, who looms up into your sight like a wisp of white and traces the lines of your jaw with phantom fingers like jagged ice. Her pale smile is soft and cruelly casual, and for a moment you can almost believe that she pities you, pities your narrow, limited vision the way one might pity a child who does not know yet the scope and breadth of the world around him.
And then, she reaches into your chest.
When she reaches into you, she reaches through you, touches your soul. You feel her fingers as they curl around the muscle-pulse of your heart, bite into you with a hunger that is alien, draining. In a single, surging pull more felt than seen, she drains the heat from your soul, the strength from your body in progressive waves. She smiles as she squeezes you, as she squeezes that part within you which fights to maintain some semblance of life, of warmth, and reflected in her ethereal teeth you can see the shadows of your death, the fate that approaches moment by moment, comes with each breath, each squeeze of her frigid, edged fingers.
When she is done, when her claws at last release the dead and frozen stone of your sluggish heart, your body is little more than a husk, a dry memory of flesh etched with ice and agony. You catch a milky, faded glimpse of her for the barest moment, and then you realize suddenly that you are no longer looking at her-- you are within her, a lost wisp of light swirling through her as she waxes sated on the edge of reality. You cry out with a voiceless, unheard sound as you feel yourself slowly fading, dulling, lost on a sea of whispers where the voices of ten thousand lost souls mingle in a quiet melancholy, knowing that there is no escape, that there is only the slow fade toward quiet oblivion.
- - -
The great Old Ones, the ancient, elder gods of the deep that stir quietly in the depths of their sunken cities and otherworldly temples have nightmares about E.S. Wynn. Sometimes these dreams last for eons, and even the great lord Cthulhu has refused to emerge from R'lyeh for as long as E.S. Wynn walks this dimensional annex.
Fuck Editors
By John Ogden
The narrative is jam-packed
With tech terms, a fairly quick read
Fairly minimalist, the combat descriptions.
But not really an improvement
Given the narrative distance.
It’s clear the author cares about his characters;
Unfortunately, I found it hard to do the same,
It’s trash, it’s trash
Don’t send it here
All the characters sound the same.
- - -
John Ogden was conceived of a government form and a passing mailbox. He lives somewhere out in the woods of a rural land more akin to the fantasy realms of literature than real life, and his favorite dirt bikes will always be the broken ones.
By John Ogden
The narrative is jam-packed
With tech terms, a fairly quick read
Fairly minimalist, the combat descriptions.
But not really an improvement
Given the narrative distance.
It’s clear the author cares about his characters;
Unfortunately, I found it hard to do the same,
It’s trash, it’s trash
Don’t send it here
All the characters sound the same.
- - -
John Ogden was conceived of a government form and a passing mailbox. He lives somewhere out in the woods of a rural land more akin to the fantasy realms of literature than real life, and his favorite dirt bikes will always be the broken ones.
The Mirror
By Zenn Wu
In my hands, I hold a mirror
A portal to another now,
Another when.
Perched on the edge of nowhere,
There are still-frames of a family,
Of children and of lovers
Staring, touching, smiling, hugging
Warmth and safety leak from the glass,
Play golden and sweet in the cold, wet air
Of the night.
Some forgotten part of my mind
Knows exactly what to do
Knows the words to say,
The actions to take.
My hands tense.
Let the future come now.
“Okay.” I breathe,
And I hold the breath in the stillness.
I lick my lips, whisper the words
“I am ready.”
In a flash, the mirror cracks,
Shatters long, side to side.
In a rolling wave of light, it shifts
melts
changes
And then in my palm
There is only a mirrored key.
Out of the haze, a door rises like an obelisk,
A door to nowhere, to everything.
The key fits snugly in the lock
Turns easily, opens the way
To a golden time, a golden now
Lit with children’s laughter,
The happy sounds
Of love and joy.
- - -
You do not have to know the Buddha to know Zenn.
By Zenn Wu
In my hands, I hold a mirror
A portal to another now,
Another when.
Perched on the edge of nowhere,
There are still-frames of a family,
Of children and of lovers
Staring, touching, smiling, hugging
Warmth and safety leak from the glass,
Play golden and sweet in the cold, wet air
Of the night.
Some forgotten part of my mind
Knows exactly what to do
Knows the words to say,
The actions to take.
My hands tense.
Let the future come now.
“Okay.” I breathe,
And I hold the breath in the stillness.
I lick my lips, whisper the words
“I am ready.”
In a flash, the mirror cracks,
Shatters long, side to side.
In a rolling wave of light, it shifts
melts
changes
And then in my palm
There is only a mirrored key.
Out of the haze, a door rises like an obelisk,
A door to nowhere, to everything.
The key fits snugly in the lock
Turns easily, opens the way
To a golden time, a golden now
Lit with children’s laughter,
The happy sounds
Of love and joy.
- - -
You do not have to know the Buddha to know Zenn.
