bland
The room was the color of a sugarless milkshake, one that had sat out in the sun too long. In the stark light pouring from its single window, a cream-skinned girl fidgeted as the lurid glare soured her complexion. She ran her hands across the papery folds of her dress, longing for texture, for color. It was all so bland, so vapid. She licked her lips and tried to remember what sweetness tasted like.
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sparkling
I looked up, surprised, as the sound of the radio swiftly degenerated into a rushing hum, like an electronic riverbank on a crystal shore. Sure enough, he hovered there before me, eyes wondering but unaware, the firefly-bright motes around his head clear as ever. I sighed and flicked the radio off, feeling static jump to my fingers as the sound finally died. “You really have to stop showing up when I’m trying to hear the news,” I told him, meeting his questioning gaze with dry amusement. It wasn’t his fault. How was he supposed to know that radio waves didn’t take well to sparkling specters?
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conceal
“I’m tellin’ you Dave,” Joe whispered loudly between the two desks, “Miss Gheram’s got an eye on the back of her head!”
“Don’t you mean she’s got ‘eyes?’” Dave replied, unfazed.
Joe shook his head. “No no no, she’s just got one, like a cyclops. Right in the back. She’s got all that big hair to– to conceal it,” he concluded with emphasis.
“Stop using big words, Joe.”
“Conceal isn’t a big word! It means she hides it!”
“Whatever. I still wanna see this eye.”
Outside the classroom door, Molly Gheram made a mental note to start buying hats.
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bench
A sterling-haired man sauntered into the park, humming tunelessly, and sat down on a faded bench by the old willow tree. The wood creaked as if to greet an old friend.
“Lovely day, isn’t it?”
He turned and spoke to no one in particular, carefully shaking the jacket from his thin shoulders. Something like dust spilled from its faded folds, distracting the butterflies in the air. Sunlight glinted through the particles.
“It’s a little too warm for this. Would you mind?”
There was no objection as he held out the coat, summer winds swirling voicelessly about him. For a moment it seemed as if the man had forgotten that he was alone, his arms held out expectantly, his eyes bright.
Then his hands were as empty as the seat beside him, and he smiled.
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accordion
Accordions are ridiculous. That was an axiom I refused to reconsider, soldered into place from a childhood tainted by bad polka music. But that was self-evident, too. You couldn’t make that instrument sound tuneful if you tried.
These are the thoughts I entertained from the city sidewalk, before I was stopped in my tracks by the bellows of that same irksome contraption. It was impossible, I protested, but there he was, idling at the junction of Washington and Main, an infernal squeezebox between his liver-spotted hands.
I was vexed. Who plays an accordion on a street corner? Even worse, who plays an accordion where I can hear it? It was offensive, and I strongly considered letting the old man know, when my bitter glare caught sight of his fingers.
It was… astounding. For a moment my thoughts were silenced by the deft motions of his hands, dancing over the tiny keys with unexpected grace. For a moment I was transfixed, and in spite of my youthful enmity I found myself feeling genuine admiration for not only the man, but also for the accordion– the accordion!– as its lilting melody sang warmly in the smog-bitten air.
That’s when I realized the air was now quiet, the instrument still, kind eyes fixed on my face. I coughed, feeling sheepish, and tossed a tenner into his hat as I slid away.
His grateful thank-you reached my reddened ears without affront and I couldn’t help but smile.
Look who's talking, old man.
I guess accordions weren’t so stupid after all.
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hinge
The hinges of his jaw creaked as he grinned, his sallow skin twisting into that same dead expression my nightmares loved to remind me of. A row of unnaturally gray teeth glinted from between his wooden lips, shining like frog eggs. I shivered.
“What’s the matter?” Even his speech sounded like rusty nails. “Afraid of dolls?”
Yeah, I thought, swallowing hard. Yeah I’m afraid of dolls, no thanks to you.
Beady eyes glinted back at me in the dark, all-seeing, more aware than I dared contemplate. He didn’t stop smiling.
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racket
His feet slammed into the bronze-slick floor as he ran, breath quick with hopes and terrors, through the clamorous house of bells.
He had an absurd mental image of a box of fireworks, dropped into the middle of a pantry, sending pots and pans screaming in blinding flares of red and gold. The thought faded quickly, however– no thoughts could survive in this racket.
It was unbearable. His ribcage was vibrating, his teeth jarring together with every resonating clang. He was trapped in an absolute disaster of sound.
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switching
The colors of his irises were switching rapidly, like schizophrenic christmas lights. Brown, green, blue, gray… now deep black, now albino pink. His eyelids fluttered in time to their shifting hues.
From across the subway aisle, a girl in a knitted scarf watched intently. His pupils were wide and hazy, and seemed to be gazing straight through her into another realm. But she stared into them from across the subway aisle, just as ignorant to the din around her as he was.
Whatever realm he was viewing, she mused, it was reflected in his eyes.
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brief
Living in this blighted world was hell, he thought. On every street corner there was death, despair, devastation. Families he had known in his youth were rapidly fading from the earth, swallowed up by the insatiable maw of the plague.
Raven-dark death danced about his footsteps, jeering at his face, so like its own. He couldn’t get the stench out of his lungs.
And this child, this poor child, couldn’t get the oozing tar out of his body.
The plague doctor readjusted his ornithic mask, the scent of lavender and clove reminding him of better days, when he didn’t have to watch innocent children bleed.
“Let’s make this brief,” he rasped, and prayed that it would be true.
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straw
I looked up from the daily news at the sudden sound of jingling, a cheery metallic twinkle that cut through the din like a shooting star. I was surprised to find it radiating from the keychain-weighted hips of a young woman, bouncing on her heels as she swirled past my table.
For a moment I simply stared, caught off guard by this sudden burst of color. Striped tights, slim figure, wearing more pink than a rose garden in June… geez, she looked like something you’d drink a strawberry milkshake through. Even that swirl of vanilla-colored hair looked unusually perfect, and that’s from a guy who prefers brunettes. She was cute. Like a cupcake, I decided, and stifled a laugh.
That got her attention. The keychains jingled sharply then, and two ice-blue eyes (look at the size of those lashes!) focused on my own. The gaze she shot at me was strikingly incongruous with her cheery getup, and accusatory enough to summon a twinge of guilt. I cleared my throat, suddenly all too aware of my dress shirt and slacks.
“S’cute,” was all I said, nodding politely at her soda-straw figure.
For a second she looked at me like I was on a sugar high, then simply twirled on her feet and continued on her way, bright as a cherry against the monotonous crowd.
A moment later I put down the newspaper and decided to buy myself a milkshake.
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cathedral
Melancholy rainbows danced across the crystal floors of the Cathedral, great streaks of ethereal blood spilled by the moon. The Prince tread across them like a war hero, proud of the fallen spectrums splashing across his gold-rimmed feet.
This was his stronghold, his sanctuary: a house of worship dedicated to his own name. He was the angel that watched over it, and he was the deity that walked within it. In this hall of mirrors, he was everything; limitless, transcendent, omnipresent.
He paused, his pale face awash with color, at the largest stained glass window, where an elegantly twisted image of his father beamed down upon him. Devotion blazed to life in his chest, filling his amber-blue eyes with sparks.
I will make you proud, the gilded Prince promised wordlessly, ignorant of the creeping shadows beneath the bleeding light. I promise. I will become the god you created me to be.
Behind him, the devil waited with infinite patience, a single splinter of color scarring his darkened face. Soon the kingdom of light would fall, and his hands would have cut the first throat.
He did not smile as he swept forwards, the void about him reaching out to swallow his prey. This death would be just, he swore; this blasphemous act would be a secret saving grace.
For the devil knew, as the Prince turned to him in fear, that an illegitimate Son was no savior at all.
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chills
The glass of shocking-pink liquid spun once, like a soporific lunatic, before fatally crashing to the floor. Simultaneously, a moonlight-colored figure collapsed to his knees, staining them with technicolor liquid. His arms and legs were screaming mutely now, shivering up and down with nauseating chills that he unfortunately recognized all too well. He bit his lip, cursing his own optimism. Roseate refreshments were never safe, no matter how intoxicatingly they shimmered. Yet here he was again, crumpled on the unfeeling marble, his entire nervous system a frozen mess of crushed glass.
He fumbled for the edge of the counter, fingers numb to the icy smoothness above his head, and tried to stand, but his feet were floating and he succeeded only in soaking his silver sleeves as well as they took the brunt of his fall.
By now his body was too shocked to move any more, and his consciousness was quickly dissolving into that nightmarish static void. But even now, he could hear candy-pink heels echoing from the adjacent hallway, tapping out his fate in morse code.
God damn it, the snow king swore, as shooting stars swallowed his world alive.
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trap
The evening sky glimmered far above, bruised violet and starlit red, wrapped tightly with fishing-line threads of cloud. He thought it looked like a dying god; some great, magnificent thing, bleeding to death in the twilight of the world.
Kind of like me, was his next thought, as he weakly shrugged a pair of bony shoulders. The wires pulled tighter in response, scattering another layer of bloodied scales to the dirt floor. They lay in a pitiful mosaic around his feet, glittering like dying stars.
He did not look at them. He was trying not to show the pain that seared along his freakish spine, burying itself between his temples like a parasite.
Still, a being like him could bear the pain, the solitude, the shadows. The humiliation of being trapped was but a splinter. Yes, it would have been useless to keep him here, bound in the bowels of the earth, under any other circumstances.
But his eyes were locked on the wounded sky.
This, indeed, was the cruelest torture.
His shoulders moved again, in the memory of stolen wings, and the wires cut deeper.
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camera
I’d often wondered what I would sacrifice, just to experience immortality at her hands. She was a goddess of creation, terrible and wonderful; she was a sunbeam, turning the dust of the world into gold, and everything she gazed upon was transformed.
She made it look so simple, so elegant… but I knew better. I had tried to imitate her magic once and the beauty had nearly killed me.
And yet I knew, with absolute certainty, that she could take my broken bones and weave them into a masterpiece.
It would only take a moment, and my soul would be forever illuminated.
A smile turned the corners of her mouth ever so lightly, and she raised her camera once more, preparing to bring beauty into the world anew.
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secret
A few seagulls careened past my window, casting fluttering shadows across my perpetually catastrophic work desk. I sat alone on my bedsheets, rumpled from another restless nights sleep, and listened intently. I wasn't quite sure why I was suddenly struck by the typical silence surrounding my life, as I usually put great effort into shifting my attention away from it. Still, I guess you can only go so long before the understated gravity of such things broadsides you.
The sudden sound of birdwings was oddly comforting in light of those resurfacing thoughts, reminding me that benevolent life still existed outside of this lonely place I called home... outside and close enough to touch, which was more than I could say for the few other lives I treasured. I was at least close enough for the birds to seek solace in. As for my source of hope, well...
I let out a sigh, trying to sound nonchalant about it, but the sudden ache in my ribs spited me, too sharp and real to stay hidden in there. For a moment I frustratedly considered running to the window and telling those damn seagulls about it, but that would've been criminally uncool. True, the puppets scattered around my lonely room had heard about this a hundred times before, but I didn't feel like repeating myself, even for the sake of alleviating this recurring melancholy.
See, shouting into the void wasn't an issue. The ocean depths beyond these four walls couldn't respond, and didn't seem to care all that much anyway. The real problem was that I stored my secrets in my fingertips, and maybe I was secretly too used to this silence to risk forever shattering it, even if I'd never admit that, not even to the gulls.
The problem was that you can only live under such pressure for so long, and I knew that my heart had already started to crack.
What irony.
Sometimes it really sucked to be the last man on earth.
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event
It was one in the morning, and yet time had ceased to exist.
True, the reality of space still lingered within my worn-out bones, but even that was tenuous now, slipping away in the morning hours like blood into a drain.
My eyelids fluttered under the weight of exhaustion, adamant in their refusal to welcome sleep. I had been surviving as a mote in the threads of society for the past twelve hours– an eternity now, a tick of the dying second-hand now– and I had no intention of escaping this transient state of being. This freedom from existence itself was all that mattered.
The sparse few souls around me slept, sprawled out across hard carpets, collapsing into unfeeling chairs. I sat alone beneath a symphonic fractal and breathed, forgetting what it was like to be somebody, and smiled.
Time had ceased to exist, and so had I.
And within that impossible cosmic event, I was infinite.
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comfort
I was told that there would be blood; there would be tears, and sweat, and disaster beyond knowing. I was assured of our total failure, of catastrophe, of defeat.
I did not doubt this, when I saw the blade pressed against your throat, burning cold with inexorable sacrifice. I did not question this, as you screamed into the unfeeling night with an anguish no mortal soul could fathom.
I prayed for sleep as the shadows danced about my feet, dripping tar-pink fever dreams and bile. You never tired as you pursued them, hands stained dark beneath old bandages and scars, every last thread seared with bitter fury.
The years dragged on, and we followed suit, white and red and violet rage beneath a sunless sky. Our death had been guaranteed, but in spite of eternity, an impossible life dripped from my arms, leaving breadcrumb hopes in the soulless dust. You watched them wordlessly, as great black stains crept across your body, hidden by the void pulled tight about your shoulders.
It was a strange comfort, to know that I could gaze unafraid into your blazing eyes.
Whatever wars we may still have to fight, whatever wounds we will wear anew, whatever anguish and horror must come, in this anomalous life of ours... if only you remain by my side, I shall never despair.
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half
Something was wrong.
Those three words, unsettling as they were, could never describe the way his very presence sent spasms of dread through my veins. And yet there he was, sitting across the room from me even now, sepulchral eyes staring into an inner world no one else could perceive. I wondered if he even knew I was there.
He was indisputably, irreparably divided, that was evident. Not conflicted, disorganized, or alienated, although those were indeed true as well: no, he was split in half to a depth I could not fathom. His heart had been dimidiated, and he had been left with nothing but sinister scars, memories of wounds suffered for the sake of a love not forgotten, but denied in agony.
The algorithms of his existence were all wrong, I decided. No matter how many times his shattered mind was plugged into the system, an answer could not be found. There were no solutions to his madness, only a sole hope of restoration, the impossible dream of a long-dead counterpart and the ashes of tortured faith.
He stared on, seeing nothing. It was all he had left.
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begin
I stood at the threshold of the Cathedral and watched in serene silence as tar-blade shadows wound about my feet. I did not resist, nor would I fight back when its imminent onslaught crashed into my bones. Its seething rage sunk metaphorical teeth into my veins but I stood fast, ignoring my trembling hands. I had survived our first encounter, had I not?
Two months had passed since then and my blood still beat within these walls, silent but strong, deep red within white, an invincible truth that this tainted shade could never defile. This atrium had not ruptured, despite the scars that lined my arms… indeed, it was only by virtue of their agony that I could now breathe, clear and faithful, in the shadow of death itself. Its devotion to my ruin had instead brought about a rebirth… a miracle manifested in the small child now entering the Cathedral behind me.
The tar rose up then, frenzied and screaming, utter destruction its only thought, but its loss was already guaranteed. In that moment, as the first blow rushed towards me, I knew that we could not lose. No one would die here tonight, not in this holy twilight. This was our atonement; we would not be forsaken.
And now, it was time to begin…
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determined
Flashes of red and pink were dancing in the corners of her eyes, filling her with a strange and impossible hope. For too long, she had simply stood and watched like this. How many years had she spent, praying and wishing and trying until her bones ached, looking to the skies for an answer? But now that the moment was here, was it worth taking a chance? Or was she really going to spend another lifetime waiting?
No… she refused to wait any longer. If there were going to be any miracles today, they would be wrought by her hands, clenched in determined fists.
I do belong here, she told herself. I am worth something. I can do this.
And this time, as diamonds sparked to life within her, she believed it.
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