"The only redeeming quality about this story is that the good die and the stupid suffer." ~ Anonymous
I’ve always loved nature
“What was that?”
Its mysterious grandeur
“I think it’s coming closer…”
All of life’s wonder coalesced
“Jesus, it must be huge…”
In every sight beheld
“Oh my god!”
And in the face of such magnificence
“It got Mark!”
We find we are but cattle
“Jesus Christ it’s so fast!”
For something ravenous
“This was a mistake…”
And which has always preyed upon
And hungered for
Those fretting
Odd little things
Which call themselves Man
He stood in a vast square
Where milled many
Who fretted and fussed
Over this
And that
Slowly he raised it
A small black box
Whose edges shimmered strangely
As the lid rose
The sound of the square fell
As an unearthly silence blanketed all
Smothering the words
Which played upon their lips
From it arose something black
Which looked more like a hole
Within one’s sight
This something flickered
As though there
And not
And in a moment
Expanded out
Engulfing the square
And all its little fretting people
But still it shifted
Showing now and again
Its flickering ruin
First destroyed
Then not
The people screaming
Then not
Mother held child
Husband held wife
But none spoke
They simply could not
What was their to say
In the face of death
Which took
And gave
With such thoughtless impermanence
Would I could rest
Eyes heavy
Body leaden
Pull me under
Give me sleep
Fathomless dreams
But one more step
One more push
Then it’ll be over
Then I’ll rest
Then I’ll have made it
For sure
certainly
Just one more
Just a little more
Just…
The board buzzes far above
BUY STIMU-LAX TODAY
I press my hand to the pole
Cold metal buzzes under touch
My sight blurs out
And command prompt appears
Within my eyes
I work my magic
Language archaic on these
The oldest electronic boards
Very little security
Their fault really
Moments of waiting
Then I have access
I upload my own board
And confirm changes
Above it flickers
Shifts
Then is replaced by something else
WHO ARE THE BŁAZEN COURT FIVE?
And below faces
Five folks
Buried by the companies
Lost in the wires
But I remember
And now they will too
I pull up hood
Tap my face cloth cover
It lights up
Sharp teeth displayed
In dazzling blues
One more tonight
Then I’ll go home
I walk a few more blocks
Deeper into the commercial district
Smiling faces
Different races
Different sexes
Some indistinguishable
All beautiful
But something wrong
Something off
Too perfect
Too-tight lips
Too-big eyes
I stop before one ad
A woman enwreathed in light
Smile porcelain perfection
ŁANIA SMILE TODAY!
ONLY 630099R!!!
I pull from my pack
A tall tube
One thin slit open
I tap the top and hold it to the wall
Blue light appears
Telling me it is ready
Slowly I move it from left to right
Program dispenses lines of paint
Rapid and precise
Forming my art
A man
Dropped within gears
Churning
Grinding
And the words
THE CORP REQUIRES MORE BLOOD
And below, my tag
GEISHA
In vibrant purples and pinks
I smile beneath my mask
It’s not much
Really
But it makes me feel better
To know
I’ve ruined the day
Of some black suited drone
Featured image source: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Orr1v
I adjust desk nameplate
The only thing adorning the table
Beside my Polyx 630 PC
Company issue of course
My nameplate reads
Bronislava Liska
Personnel Intake
Hard fought position
Though still fairly low
So many vied for this
Yet here I stand
Testament to my spirit
A knock upon the Coreboard walls
All walls white and glaring
In the fluorescent buzz
“Come in” I smile
Door eases open
Silent and ghostly
In walks a waif
Dressed in dregs
And no bigger than my pinky
But in his eyes
Something fiery
Passionate
Ambitious
“Please take a seat mister Novak”
He slides a hand over chair-back
All of him moving like a dance
I pull up his CV
Empty save for a few things
“You wish to become
An Ignis Corporation Webrunner
Yes?”
He nods curtly
Something flickering in his eye
“No recording during interviews
Mister Novak…”
I chide playfully
His eyebrow raising
He presses finger to temple
And the flicker is gone
“You say you were the one
Who perpetrated
The December security break
In which you leaked
Let me see here…
Thirty thousand confidential files
Of our subsidiary Tartarus LLC…”
He nodded again
A smile playing on his lips
“That would be very impressive
If it could be proven”
He then pulls a small flash drive
From some discrete pocket
Sliding across my desk smoothly
I take out my PDA and insert the drive
A few files including one
I, and all Ignis employees know well
“Freenet.exe”
I unplug the drive
Placing it in my drawer
He holds out a hand questioningly
“We’ll have to verify the veracity
But rest assured
You will have an answer
By end of day”
I smile curtly
If he is really
Who he says he is
Those above me
Would kill for the chance
To turn him out
Against our competitors
Wanderer dragged forward
Ever onward past dry land
Through downy soft crystal fields
Stopping briefly for water
In the midst of a silent pasture
Stream burbling pleasantly
Some distance away
The Wanderer saw another
Dressed in garb
So far removed
As his was also
This one in wrapped layers
All but eyes hidden
The Wanderer himself
Dressed in crimson cape
With deep grey and black swirled rags
The Wanderer drew his blade
A humming biting thing
Which brought death swift
The Stranger drew his
Curves wicked and barbed
Its every facet to bring agony
The Stranger gave a guttural call
Challenge in tone
The Wanderer met it in kind
With swift leap the Wanderer landed
Across the lolling stream
Slowly they approached
Blades ready
A careful dance
Not too close
But ever closer
Until
The Stranger lashed out
Flecked with something muddy
Unseen from afar
The Wanderer dodged all
But one barb
Which sliced his arm
As he too swung
The edge cut azure blur
Clear through
A pause
Breath
The Stranger collapsed
Felled in two
Victory
Surely
But
The Wanderer felt a burn
Of something insidious
Crawling through his veins
He knew what this was
And spat on the body of his foe
For the honorless poison he used
He walked to the stream
Dipping in his toes
Laid down his blade
And laid back in the grass
The wind whispered
The grass murmuring
And in them a reminder
He will not be remembered
Nor the trials he faced
All that he accomplished
Was to feed this beauteous place
You’re working on your next story. The inspiration struck you part way through your last story. Your stories never end. Your laptop open on twelve projects all labeled “WIP.”
The glare of the page hurts your eyes. The idea of what to write hurts your head. Your hands ache from hours of writing. your fingers nearly blistered. Why is the page still blank?
Eureka! The breakthrough needed to conclude that manuscript you started years ago! Now… where was it? Where did you keep it? Was it on the flash drive? External hard drive? Gigabytes of data, but not the few kilos you require.
Ah the old story blog you started in college… maybe you should start it again. Passwords spill out of you and all are wrong. You were clever and made the password relate to the story. Too clever. The email is the same. A simple quip no one would see and you have forgotten.
A publication’s email “submission requested” and the promise of exposure… yet no payment. You eat your cold ramen. It tastes like exposure, completely without value.
You scoff as you read an excerpt from a new e-book. You can write better than that! So why are they published and you aren’t? Your twenty unfinished novels eye you sadly like puppies in a pound from their folder on your desktop.
A rejection letter in the mail. You set it with the others. A few more and your paper craft castle will be complete. You jokingly refer to it as your “house of leaves.” No one gets the joke.
Just keep writing. You get better with practice. We don’t look back on where we came from. Those were dark times. Just keep writing.
You’re depressed because you haven’t written. You don’t have the energy to lift your hand, let alone create. You berate yourself for not writing. This makes you more depressed. The cycle continues, every day the same.
You just need a cup of coffee to start your day. After this cup you’ll begin. One more then it can really get under way. A few more sips and you’ll have it. The cups are a mountain range lining your sink.
You finished. Finally. It’s over. You look back and instantly are filled with the unstoppable urge to delete everything. It is an affront to god and should not see the light of day.
The light drips off of windowsills
Spreading iridescent pools
As I feel the cotton inside my mouth
Air like cotton but nothing there
I take a step and floor gives
Like quicksand meets rubberband
Senses flooded by hazy delirium
I stumble and catch the wall
Folding its plaster between fingers
As I walk towards her
The nurse cries in terror
Scrabbling at the door
“I… don’t feel… well…”
I groan stomach churning something awful
I feel the world tilt and my feet slide forward
She slams against the door and sobs
Lifting herself from its face
As I collapse in a heap beside her
The door warps below us
Bending bowing into a teardrop
Closing above us
And then shattering
Obliterated as I fall
She falls too
Screaming all the while
“DON’T WAKE UP
I DON’T WANT TO DIE!”
I hear her cry
Just before a tree comes up to meet me
And as I land with sickening crunch
My bed shakes from the force
Of my body jolt
I stretched my toes
Feeling the soil spread beneath them
Slowly I closed my eyes
Easing a breath from my lungs
Was I truly ready for what I’d find?
For what it would show me?
No
But no one could truly be prepared
I knelt and with a black bladed knife
Carved an eye into the dirt
Then pressed the point of the dagger into my thumb
dripping a few drops of scarlet blood upon the mound
The frimament began to shift
Quaking in excitement as a low rumbling took up
Then the eye I had drawn
Blinked
As it opened the loam fell away
Down into the earth
I lowered my face to this hole
And stared back into the eye
Black nothing greeting me
Then a distant light
Sparkling
Shimmering in the dim
It was magnificent
Horrible
Awful
Terrible
Everything which had died
Or will die
The churning mass of souls
Which comprised the earth
The lives we walked upon daily
Without thought
They looked up at me
And screamed their truth
“The final life
The ultimate form
Of all that is
Or shall be
Is simply the dirt
And that which lives within”
‘Nothing ever happens here’
I think out loud
To myself
In my head
The door bell jingles gently
playfully
Then he walks in
What world did he fall from?
Why would he have left?
To end up here
In my little now here
We smile
Shared moment of knowing
Was it my hair
Something on my face
The way I held myself?
No bother what it was
He walked up
A devil’s grin plying his lips
Playing on his features
I put away the journal
Page after page of useless words
Poetry I suppose in some circles
I
I’ll skip ahead I suppose
A date or two
Three I suppose
Counting the library
He whisks me away
His name was Into
Finnish he said
Explains his beauty
What I didn’t suspect
Didn’t want to think
Was what I actually was
To this angelic man
Every time he leaves
Every time I am alone
Nothing happens
Life stops
Or nearly seems to
When he returns
Color returns
Things happen
Life happens
When he’s gone
Nothing Happens
When he is here
I wish only that I was
Ever Here
What would you do
How would you feel
To realize
That you were nothing more
Than the supporting cast
In another person’s life?
Dried Ink Ribbon 