Wordle #188

She watched him cross the street. Her eyes shimmered behind a veil of precipitation. Soi-disant jewels clung to the tips of her eyelashes. She didn’t bother to blink them away, afraid that if she closed her eyes he would disappear. He was beautiful in stillness but in motion he was the perfect combination of grace and carnality. The city emptied itself and then ceased altogether to imprint upon her senses. His presence was all that her mind could hold. The sunlight came down in streaks more silver than gold.

She had never managed to carry a thought to completion. Thoughts, she found, were tremendous breeders. A single thought could spawn a hundred more. She measured herself, not in moments, but in generations. She housed infinities. Her mind was full of soap, of delicate bubbles skidding and erupting endlessly. She was a muse, disguised as a poet. He was love without reservation. She stood before him stripped of all but instinct. He was the sort to pursue a dream with the full weight of his being.

He stopped in front of her, smiling. She felt his fingers wrap around her wrist gently. He pulled her close, his breath hovering against her ear. She saw that he stooped when he spoke and for a moment their faces were more or less the same height. His voice was deep and warm. It started her heart pumping again. Only now instead of one heart she seemed to have two on either side of her head and instead of an angel and a devil, she had two bumblebees muttering incoherently. She inhaled. Audibly. Shakily. The sound was both delicate and obscene. It was the sound of lace being torn away in a fit of passion. When it was clear that she would follow him, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and cradled her against his chest. She did not inquire about their destination. Wherever he went she would follow. She traced the lines of his palm absently with her thumb as they walked. He smiled at her from time to time out of the corner of his eye. He needed only to know that she was there.

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Wordle #452

She stood alone in front of the bathroom mirror. Her large, voyeuristic eyes were like keyholes. Intervals of darkness beyond which two separate, untenanted universes lurked. The sunlight spilled shyly across the wet floor and she thought rather abstractly that it looked like torn satin. She reached her fingers into the light and wiggled them around for a moment. That something so gentle, so ethereal should have the power to burn her only enhanced her sense of mourning. How many times had she had her own heart broken? Love, she thought, is rather like sunlight. She felt as if she could never love again. Not in the same way, not to the same degree. Yet, deep down she knew that she loved him still. That she would always love him, not just as she did now, but more with each passing day. He probably loved her too. Someday, she hoped, that he would end her suffering with a confession.

She could feel herself shrinking into her pink bathrobe. She was shocked by the weight of her bones, by their implacability, by the way they held her in place before her own volatile portrait. That I should carry a cage inside of my very own body! She thought laughing out loud. Sometimes she forced laughter when she was by herself. She bit the end of her thumb with a shudder but reality did not release her.

She unlocked the door. Each room in her house had a story, a fragment of truth that under scrutiny caused some aspect of her persona to unravel. She was not naturally a tidy person, at least, inwardly she knew herself to be a mess. She was not particularly fond of white walls. She had no use for tiny tea lights or candles of any sort. If she ever lit them she’d forget them and the whole building would go up in flames. It was for this reason that she never bothered lighting the fireplace.

When she passed by her roommate’s bedroom she did not lift her eyes but continued on to the kitchen in search of breakfast. In an hour or so her roommate would leave and she’d have the house all to herself. She had the whole day planned. Cry. Exercise. Cum. Sleep. Repeat. She would think of him when she came. She would call his name with all the fierceness of a prayer. She thought his name delicious but she’d never told him so. The waves of orgasm would inundate/erode her senses. Her silt-heavy head would empty itself of all extraneous stimuli. For a few precious moments it would be just the two of them.

(don’t write so many short stories)

Sunday Writing Prompt “Everyday Objects”

The Window

He pressed his palm to the glass. The pane was cold, its expression sullen. The rain had stopped more than an hour ago but the sun remained hidden behind layers of ash-colored gauze. He hadn’t been outside for months and in that time the seasons had changed without so much as an acknowledgment. No one had written, rang, pinged, or visited in over a week. He’d imposed his absence without much consideration for anyone’s feelings, his own included. Even if desired how was he ever to return to his old life? He was unrecognizable even to himself, even amidst the gradations that he alone had witnessed. His beard was long and gnarled like the roots of an upended tree. Shadows gathered about his crevices. His clothes were rumpled and malodorous. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a shower or brushed his teeth. His nails were worried to the quick, coagulated blood stuck to his cuticles. His hands looked old, his face looked old, even his skin seemed out of place on its dilapidated frame. The window’s gaze was steady and patient. He saw nothing of his reflection in the glass, only his own backyard which in neglect, had grown wild. Piles of rotten apples spilled over the lawn collecting vermin and insects alike. Inside was even worse. The air was thick and meaty, food deliquesced in the sinks, discarded and unwashed garments littered the floor. Dust and decay gathered about him and he could feel himself submitting to them by degrees. A towering stone wall prevented him from seeing into the adjacent property, all he saw when looking out was his own walled in lawn, with its dying and disheveled flowers and it’s mealy, brown harvest. The window groaned beneath a penitent wind. “What have I done?” He repeated (as if in response) three times each version more shrill than the one preceding.

Bonus Wordle “Wild West”

The saloon doors swing open with a shrill sigh. A man steps in, spurs on his boots jangling like loose change, holsters loaded. A cowboy from the frontier he claims but he’s got a very specific aura, the sort that hangs over a man like a noose. His face and hands are cracked from weather exposure and emotions that I cannot discern at a glance. He takes the stool beside mine, elbows on the bar, gaze just to the right of the bartender’s suspecting frown. He orders Cactus wine and some victuals. He is in need of lodging but the barkeep insists that there are no rooms for rent. This, of course, is a lie there are always room for rent. Strangers aren’t welcome in these parts and the lawman is a no-account drunk.

“I’ll only be needing a roof, a barn would do.” The man is undaunted by the bartender’s churlish demeanor and so it goes for a couple of rounds each man with his own agenda. I reckon this guy is an outlaw, he’s all gristle and grace, eyes as black and soulless as a lump coal but I’ve got a room and nothing fit to steal so I make the man an offer. He accepts. The bartender shakes his head slowly from side to side. I swallow my regret down with a pint and lay my money on the bar.

The man says nothing on the journey but on arrival he is compelled to tell his story. He was, in his youth, a gunslinger. Just like his old man and his five, now three, older brothers. Point of fact he comes from a long line of criminals. He didn’t have the stomach for blood though and picked up a lasso in his late 20s.

“People judge on account of my appearance and my name once they hear it. Reckon I’m as low as they come. Don’t much care for proof, gossip should be a crime, can take away a man’s life as surely as a bullet.” He goes silent as smoke and I know he’s said all that he means to for now.

–

I have never written anything in this genre, ever

for

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2018/07/23/bonus-wordle-wild-west/

 

Wordle #204 and Sunday Writing Prompt “Take a Walk”

It was Tuesday when I killed him. To date it is my only kill. Given events I would do it again. I have no regrets. Had we met under different circumstances you would not think me a monster. I would have appeared to you very ordinary if I appeared to you at all. I spent the whole of my life wrestling the eaves, hidden in the umbra and dust like a forgotten dream. Nothing could compete with his ambition. You cannot possibly imagine what it is to be obsessed if you have lived only to endure. He was obsession itself, a force of nature held together only by enigma. You would have liked him, he was charismatic, everyone said so.
–
I do not wish to speak of our courtship. All things are beautiful and shiny in the beginning. The man that I met all those years ago was very different from the man who became my husband. To call him a man at all is blasphemy for he was something else entirely. Not a God but a Devil in plain sight. Once I saw him nothing, not even sleep, could persuade my eyes closed.
–
We lived on the marsh in a large grey house with stingy windows and heavy metal doors. The sort of doors that bar passage in either direction, doors to denote incarceration. Within his withered chest there was a muculant heart not fit for kindling. Never have I met a man so greasy and cold and him a sawbones no less. Ours was an unhappy marriage from start to denouement.  My life was a coffin, a mortared wall, a mournful sigh carried over from the moment before.
–
A heart can break many times over and mine clung to the sweat on my skin like a fine powder, it covered me from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes. I was only that, a great, gaping black hole of a heart. When he beat me I did not feel it but for his subjects I felt deeply. Mournful and breakable his subjects were the sort not to be missed. He took to tying me up table side, he wanted a witness. Not for his crimes mind, he saw the murders as necessary, research he called them. I was there to witness his genius and of his genius he was fanatically proud. In the beginning I tried to reason with him but he was convinced of the validity of his cause. In the end my only purpose became to undermine him, to save as many people as could be saved. My efforts were met with force and cruelty the likes of which you could not imagine even if recounted.
–
It was broad daylight when I killed him in the cellar where he conducted his experiments. His face was cruel in the in dim light, like a sickle or a smile turned on edge. I crouched for hours beside his stiffening corpse, a pair of latex gloves peeping out from his white coat while my hands rested bloody and bare on the hilt. Finally, I thought and heaved a sigh of relief.
–
All my dreams cut and cauterized at his behest but as a murderess I suspect that I shall know fame if not gratitude. I have done the world a great service though the world may never know it. I dare say his crimes may be assigned my face and my name. He was a fantastic liar, good under pressure, a preta in human guise.

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/sunday-writing-prompt-take-a-walk/

and

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2018/07/16/wordle-204/

Sunday Writing Prompt – Select a Heading

Alice was not a product of science but a product of hope. A hope, albeit threadbare, that held two very special people hostage for over 10 years.

Joseph and Avina had been trying for years to conceive. The strain of infertility tore at their marriage and at their faith in the universe’s benevolence. Alice was a miracle and with her birth they grew both individually and as a unit. Alice was a precocious child full of light and wonder. They spoiled her and she loved them without embarrassment as only very small children can.

Alice died when she was 6 years old, drowned in the river behind their house. She had been told never to go to the river by herself but on that particular day she decided to exercise her curiosity. It was a beautiful day, a day of invitations, spring after a long and isolating winter. She had been coloring in her room when she noticed something by the water. To an adult’s eyes it was only a trick of light but to her mind it was proof of the impossible. She crept out through a side door while her mother made lunch and down to the river’s edge. She hadn’t intended to get wet, only to investigate.

The day that Alice died the willows bowed their heads deeper and wept. Each night Avina and Joseph crept down to the star-glazed water and cried alongside them.

–

I chose When Willows Weep at Night

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2018/05/27/sunday-writing-prompt-select-a-heading/

Writing Prompt #205 “Stories By 5” and Wordle #153

When measured against his dreams Qensai’s successes were minimal. He’d lived the whole of his short life with his chin to his chest, insubstantial and echolalic. She was an exclamation, singing in bedlam, her malachite eyes stripped him entirely of pretense. Her hair was quarrelsome, caught in a self-perpetuating wind. The way it spilled over her face, half-heartedly, reminded Qensai of the masks worn at masquerades. She was everything he was not. She was an epiphany worth the price of all his former comforts. She swallowed him up, even the bits rotten from disuse. She remade him at his soul’s bequest and through her devotion even his demons made their way into the light. He became such a different sort of man that even his family scrambled to recognize him. Happiness suited him. His narrow margins expanded into possibility and success came in the wake of a newly found ardor. His skin took on the sheen of a perpetual solstice. He loved as he had never loved before and the whitewashed walls of his heart grew moist and red. She was the mirror in which all his good intentions were reflected. Their love was palpable, visible to all and they, in their absorption, were immune to the machinations of those who sought to divide them. Their love endured all the challenges that fell upon it though not without the acquisition of a few scars. They grew old together and when the time came they died together, not a second between them.

–

A 250 word story. I would like to learn how to write stories but I haven’t got very much patience so I decided to start with very short ones! I even decided to write something squishy and happy for once.

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2017/05/01/wordle-153/

Mad Swirl

I just wanted to let you know that my short story Midas Eye was featured at Mad Swirl on Friday =)

 

The Terminal (Wordle #27)

I watch a spider amble across the platform; the emblem on his abdomen, savage as a gangster’s tattoo. He means no harm in passing and yet the enormity of his imposition fractures my nerves. If I held him he would fill my palm, his colors are extraordinary, his genus unknown. There’s a certain freedom in instinct, a freedom that civilization does not permit. I envy his resolve, his nonchalance, the fashionable top hat, which suggests his phantasmagorical nature. From birth my instincts have been a point of contention and if a glass I would have sweated every moment. The condensation of two irreconcilable extremes, that is who I am in summary.

I turn my attention to a retinue of argyle-socked swindlers idling inside a coffee shop. Manners over morals, the world’s manifesto. They speak furtively behind white mugs, their huburistic tongues molting like limestone. Their lockers no doubt have identical bags and jackets, mine has a box of old journals crippled with years of heavily upholstered monologues. My secrets are like bronze statues, shiftless, insurmountable.

I glance at my watch, the numbers confirm my impatience. I take several pointless trips around the terminal just to stretch my legs. I purchase a book on the return journey but someone has taken my seat. I take the seat beside her and peel back the cover slowly as if a pair of silk stockings. The first line reads “I died as I lived, alone.” I close the book there isn’t much more to be said I suppose. I glance at my watch again, the skin of my wrist is raw and sticky. The contents of my veins have soaked the sleeve, the vertical line is proof of conviction. The woman beside me is blue and dripping wet. She is negligibly dressed, a predicament of which she is self-consciously aware. She covers her pert nipples with folded arms and scowls in my direction.

*

I combined the two prompts, the sentences in bold are my 6 word sentences. My wordle words are: spider, platform, savage, condensation, argyle, hubris, locker, cripple, upholstery, bronze

Wordle #24 “Fifth Circle”

It was as if a fracture had opened beneath the floorboards, cutting through the very fabric of space and time, of sentience and senescence. Such was the mephitic stench, a scent like dying, like the slow simmer of rotten meat at the base of a muculent stew. The smell was a static one, not even the breath of Spring could relinquish its constancy. Lamps suspended midair, as if the inimical vapor had solidified forming invisible shelves. The ivory walls bloomed red and then black as if the wounds decayed on acquisition. A single voice assaulted the air as an alarm, rising steadily in intensity. The voice was mine, albeit octaves higher than the one chosen for speech.

I had heard the rumors of infestation, everything from poltergeists to portals. This room in particular seemed to exist between dimensions. Each morning I crossed that threshold and each morning I retreated half-way not from the horror of it but from the anger that rose up within me. I clenched my fists till the blood formed, as sickles in the indentures fashioned by my nails. My mouth tasted of marrow and offal as if I’d bitten into the flesh of the walls. My breath came in visible gasps, like the bestial steam of frenzied cattle. I felt violent beyond my means.

I detested that room but my visits became more frequent. I’d wake in the night finding myself mid-stroll soaked in sweat and smelling of vomit. Eventually the smell began to permeate my clothes and skin. People kept their distance, first strangers than friends. I began to hate (those I loved especially). I sent them gifts from my hunting trips but only the leavings. I sent them letters, cruel and cryptic poems that I knew would both offend and frighten. I came to enjoy their tears and dismay, to relish them as I had once relished their smiles and greetings. I had so little reason to hate them that I invented their crimes until their fear and discomfort furnished me with the catalyst of neglect.

I moved my bed and desk into the room that I could stay there while I slept and worked. The room that I had only entered in order to discover the source of its sickness, but within which I could never remain long enough to rectify, became my sanctuary. And I in turn became the room.