Legs are starting to feel like jelly, I can't feel anything from the waist down, this damn sun is killing me. I'm almost there, just a few more steps then I've reached the top of this hill.

I see the peak, just a few more steps... Yes! I made it to the top! Finally, after having to travel 20 feet I finally made it up on this hill, now people can stop telling me to touch grass.

The rose-colored rays radiated and bounced through and in between the blooming leaves like a tennis ball between rackets arriving at their destination: a forty-ounce miller high life. A story book ending if I’ve ever seen one. Maybe it was the high life that was truly emitting the rays. Perception is reality in that way, and I like to believe the latter of my two options.

Unfortunately, it seemed I was the only one to hold this belief.

“Springdale branch is now set to arrive – 15 — minutes late”

The machine bellowed.

Shirts and ties, dresses, polos all groaned. Only half meant it. The other half because they were supposed to.  

To me, there seemed no better occasion to take a swig. The high life was warm in my hands. The beer bit my tongue with a de facto carbonation in the same manner that a dorsal spine pricks a thumb.  Still did the trick. The damn sweat stuck to my forehead though like Grill grease on fries at the end of a dinner rush. The scent of the sun was prominent, and the only mixer added in was the financial man’s cologne that makes for a concoction that hits the olfactory system of my brain like Ali hits a punching bag.   The high life was empty.

I looked at these soulless people and saw no eyes staring back. Their feet were stuck 4 inches deep in cement and their faces angled parallel to the ground. That just cant be good for the neck. If they’re lucky they’ll be washed away by the waves of new life. If not, they’ll erode for an eternity. The notifications played ping pong between my ears and the cacophonous laugh of the woman behind me shaved the hairs off my ear. No joke is that funny. A symphony of fake nails played on glass screens like marbles bouncing on a countertop and here comes the train in the distance. The bells started to toll as the candy-cane-striped gate came anchoring down but no one looked at this beautiful man-made contraption that can fly on land. No one had looked in years.

The horn blasted through the air surrounding my head and pinned my ear drums to my temple with the ferocity of an angry stapler on a stack of papers. My feet are light. The only one lifted from the cement.

I gathered courage — the same courage that you get at the top of the high dive to take the next step.

And I took it.

Into the shallow abyss. To free my soul.

But don’t pity me, pity the ones still on the platform.

Your life really does flash before your eyes before dying. It’s amazing. Especially the recent memories. Let’s take today as an example. I remember everything. Waking up, normal routine, but everyone was smiling and happy at breakfast. Diane was cooking bacon filling the house with the mouth watering aroma. Emily was sitting at the table making jokes causing everyone to laugh. It is such a state that your recall is 100%. I remember hearing through all of the fun noise in the kitchen, the speaker on the news channel coming from the living room. “... and they are warning that the meteorite material may include metals which can enter the Earth’s atmosphere. They conclude ‘at this time we are unclear of the impact.’”. That brings us to now. Me, standing in front of a window, blinded by the flash of light scaling over the horizon, racing towards us.

“Aloha” was how every employee of the Kon-Tiki Lounge was instructed to greet guests.  Not customers, guests.  As if the people who came there were staying for a vacation instead of a quick bite or some cheap happy hour booze.

Charlie hated it. The entire set up struck him as so bogus that it set his teeth on edge.  However, with his criminal record and history of substance abuse, it was the only job he could get in Branson.  Which made turning that history of substance abuse into a present state a very tempting idea. 

The only thing that stopped him was watching the church across the street.  No one understood how a young man like Charlie with so much promise had gone wrong and he couldn’t bear to tell anyone.  One day, though, he’d have enough saved up to buy that new semi-auto and he’d walk over to the church. He'd have himself a final chat with the priest who had shown him so much about the adult world and all of its lies.

www.matthewcmclean.com

1. I caressed her cheeks as she smiled through her pale lips. It made it harder to bury the rest of her body.

2. Once driving through the town, the old woman at the back started to scream. I gave up the job at funeral service the very next day

3. I once found a diary in my attic describing my future. I flipped to the last page, the date marked was of the very next day.

4. He went to the haunted mansion to debunk the local legend. As he slept, he felt a cold breath upon his neck. Turning back, he saw himself staring back, smiling widely.

5. She heard whispers coming from the old mirror in the attic. In it she saw herself smirking- “You are just an illusion” the reflection said.

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Where does it hurt?

"Everywhere -"

"Ma'am that's not helpful, can you be more specific?"

It's everywhere. Churning inside my gut, twining up through my heart, tingling in my limbs, a tree is sprouting through my body-

"On a scale of 1 to 10-"

Stop asking so many questions. Just fix it, please.

The probe is tangled. My throat is filling

like

reeds

on a riverbank.

I choke-

We try again.

Again!

again…

"Where were you exposed?"

I'm being wheeled to someplace new, someplace where my world's barriers are defined by zippers.

"When....were....you....exposed?"

It all begins to fade. I try to describe the pain and gag instead.

"Ma'am we're making you comfortable-"

I splay, branches blossoming, and whisper goodbye.

My body is fodder.

Everyday feels the same, everyday I wake up at the same time, eat the same food, do the same stuff with little to no change. Sometimes it feels like it's eating me up, sometimes I feel like this is all there is too life, another part of me just wants to disappear from society.

Everyday, there's only a few changes here and there, maybe a new product, a new duplicate, nothing interesting or fun, I miss my childhood.

Everyday feels the same, it's stressful, and sometimes I need a break from it all, I head to the park, my mind feels calm, I take in the sound of the birds and the blow of the wind, sometimes the smallest things can make this repeative life bearable.

came from nowhere at the party and whispered in my ear that our lives are an illusion and only some of us know the truth.

It was a poolside party at a mansion in Palm Springs where the desert heat got blown out by nightfall and whatever seemed normal was no longer normal.

When she touched my hand, the lights at the party suddenly dimmed and the water of the pool turned from blue to crimson to purple as if I'd been slipped something entirely hallucinogenic into my drink or she cast a spell. Maybe both. Maybe both. She was beautiful and nearly my height with chiseled features and short hair. She introduced herself and I kissed her hand and felt a tremor under foot as if an earthquake had decided to make it's move just then.

I didn't know what to say next but she said I was the chosen one and now it was time to take a drive.

A moment later she was short shifting her Ferrari with the top down, showing no fear as we blasted through the twisty mountain road. The road twisted higher until the lights from the city twinkled and blurred from the valley below.

The tachometer danced, the tires sang and the engine roared as the night air flew past and with it all my fears, my shame and regret all flew away like burned leaves turned to embers from a fire that sent them towards the stars. And all I saw was her.

I didn't know who she was, where she was taking me or why.

At that moment I didn't care. I wasn't afraid of dying because I realized this was the most alive I had ever been, and so if it all ended right here and right now, that would be totally fine with me.

No one remembers what god lies dead here, in the Requiem. Even the name for the valley it flattened is unattached, conveying the sorrows and tragedy of a people long extinct.

The bones are enormous, five days walk in breadth end to end. Black River courses through an empty gullet, Mallen Peak smashed under splayed claws while Bleywood and Hunters’ Pass lay where the sun passes between exposed ribs.

I climb them with Jaxin and Jerian. A rib-spire so tall even on clear days it is hazy, lost in the blue.

No one speaks. Everyone who climbs knows the wind won’t just snatch words away— it’ll distort them, malign them; sow doubt and trickery in every syllable. So we climb in silence. Hand over hand in grooves older than our grandfathers grandfather.

I do not have words to speak but I do think. I obsess. I can’t think of anything else. The marvel of the horizon curving, the terror of everything I’ve ever known sharp and quaint and terribly below, it all fades into nothing, like the unceasing wind breathing in my ears. The two brothers with me even in silence are all joys and jibes, broad smiles white as bird wings as we ascend.

Who is this God?

When we rest, drinking in heavy swigs, drops tumbling away—

How did they die?

When we find a broken, cavernous notch that will fit us all—

Why did they die here? Was there a battle? A murder?

Some other set of hands brings me to the top of the bone, some other determination. I am too lost in colossal murders, in deicides. A storm cloaks ruined Mallen Peak in purples and blacks. I think to myself that it would be terrible to be beneath but from above it’s an island of upset in serenity, a little tantrum that will be dissected and spun away by the coming winds.

Are there others? Other dead gods? Others that live?

Something tumbles down over the edge near me. Rain? But we’re above the clouds, far above them, in my thought of gods and bigger realms I turn, wondering if an even greater sky is beyond us.

Instead, I watch Jaxin pissing into the great emptiness, head back, smile unburdened.

I wish he wasn't my father.

I know everyone thinks that at some point, but how many have watched their lover pulled from shore, dragged to the depths, blood blossoming in gory petals as water churns and froths and foams.

And then the stillness as I learn he was rejected.

Father has high standards.

----

I remember when I first learned what I was.

Mother kept to streams and ponds, and taught me to stay close, but we always think we know better. We always think the dangers of the depths are exaggerated, and so I swam downriver, to the delta and its sandy bracken. The sea's salt made a buoyant raft and I floated leisurely, hair and toes and fingers skimming the surface of mother's waters.

And then father appeared.

I did not know him as that, then. I had no word for it, no concept of it, but he knew me. A whirlpool erupted and I was swallowed, pulled to the depths in his roar of rage as he reclaimed what was his.

Bargains were made and oaths sworn and when I was relinquished I was left cursed, unable to swim away from his shores.

He never knew me or wanted me until he knew I was not his to have, until he learned that mother survived and I existed to bear testament to their union.

----

Courtship has been stagnant. Nobody will be a match for me - or him - and he is undying. The choices I am given are scant.

So I have begun to grow legs.

Land beckons, and someday, soon, I shall find my way there, for I can no longer find a way to exist in the sea.

Our first fight would be on a windswept hillside overlooking the Forum.

Below us, Rome would be stretching away to wash in an urban crash against the cradling hillsides, crowned by the dome of the Vatican, and a stiff breeze would be rushing past, grabbing our words so only half-snatches of our argument punctuate the air, sharp stabs of accusation and petty conceits.

It would be a pointless, stupid fight, debating whether to visit the catacombs or the Coliseum, when neither of us wanted either, when both of us just needed to return to the hotel and fuck in the golden light of sunset. But we would fight, instead, because we would have been travelling for two weeks at this point, and couldn't stand the magic of romance anymore. We would fight to break the spell, to confirm that beneath the gossamer sheen of the affair there was a solid reality.

I would turn away from you, I would begin walking alone towards the city, and you would chase behind me, grab me, turn me, press your lips to mine, do everything I had ached for, wanted, some toxic proof I was too immature to ask for - evidence that we existed. We would kiss and the setting sun would halo our entwined bodies, and then we'd break away, flushing, nervously laughing at our own silliness, and we'd pull close and murmur about what wine to have with dinner. Something red, passionate, expensive, rich, heady.

It wouldn't really matter.

And then, later, in the hotel, I'd be pulling up my stockings, and our eyes would meet, and we'd never make it to dinner.

The stars would fade in and we'd creep from bed to watch the lights of the city awaken, pretending for a moment that we were ancient emperors, or perhaps a harlot you'd murmur and I'd blush, and your lips would find that spot on the side of my neck that makes my knees shake, and your breath would softly whisper a secret to my skin. Perhaps we'd drink that wine, finally.

We'd breakfast on the balcony, morning sun warming our arms, and we'd sit in content silence as the crisp flap of Pace flags and the distant cries of taxi drivers murmured the city's melody. We would smile, and you'd rest your hand on my thigh.

And then I'd remember that you hadn't chased after me, hadn't spun me around, that I had walked away alone into the city, into the darkness. Id remember that we'd never had that dinner or that wine or even that fight in the Forum.

I’d remember that you'd never been there at all, because that hadn't been our first fight, but our last, our only, and it hadn't been in Rome, but in your car. Your hand hadn't been on my thigh, or knee, or cheek, but bruisingly grabbing my arm, shaking me, bashing me against the door, and once I wrenched it free, I shed you and you didn't follow.

Thank God.

I went inside, and that was the end.

I'm always caught up in what could have been.

The priest waited in darkness, time measured only by the steady drip of water off stalactites. Every few heartbeats, another landed in a puddling splash, softly echoing through the cold, vast cavern. Overhead, he felt the weight of the mountain’s bones pressing down, the earth herself heavy as she arched ponderously above him.

He breathed slowly, meditating as he had been taught, focusing on nothing save emptiness. His eyes were closed, though it mattered not - the darkness was absolute here in the Womb of the World.

In an instant nothing became everything and he realized She had arrived. There were no sounds, no speech, but his mind flooded with Her presence.

My priest, he felt. It is time. I hunger. I need.

He felt touch from too many limbs and then pleasure pierced with pain. They mated, and melded, and his mind dwindled to nothing, subsumbed as She absorbed him.

Sour, She felt. Too young.

She had gleaned little, but enough to know that Her order was beginning to fade, their devotion becoming overtaken by ambition and greed and that desperate cling to life and power She existed to eradicate.

Humans. Such wastes.

At the crossroads between Claireview Street and Millshire Avenue, two men, by happenstance, met each other below the streetlight that shined a lonely beacon beside snow-covered fields, stretching into a darkness of blue. One man tipped his hat, though his face could not be spoken for, and the light above him shadowed his features as he reached into his pockets and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. 

“Lost?” He said to the wanderer and held out the open pack. There were only two left, but he insisted: “It’s alright, take it,” he said, gesturing to the hatless man. “I asked if you were lost.”

“I was just heading out of town,” the hatless man said, looking back the way he came. 

“Out of town? With no proper footwear?” He asked with sincerity, pointing at the man’s lack of shoes, and the holes in his socks. The hatless man was utterly confused, but this confusion only mounted when he glanced down at his feet and saw he had no boots on at all. There was a surprising jolt through his body in this realization, but it faded into numbness as he recalled the moments before his meeting below the light. Tires screeching themselves of rubber, the sounds of wailing engines shocking only in life. There was a pain—a brief one—but that faded too, and then there was nothing.

Opening his eyes, the man was still there holding the cigarette out to him when a sudden rumble broke the silence between them. Headlights cut through the snowfall, and upon their entry, so too did the shrieks of terrified children, and the grinding of the battered vehicle against asphalt. As it came into their view, he could see then that the front end of the car had been crushed, and atop the shattered windshield sprawled a mangled figure without shoes. 

"You'll wake the baby," she hisses into the receiver.

"Not this bullshit again," comes the response. She feels his rage rising.

"I just got him down. He's been quite fussy tonight."

Silence.

"I'll be right over," he says, kinder this time.

She replaces the handset and dozes off until she is awoken by a sharp "rap, rap, rap" at the door. Mercifully, the baby does not stir.

"We need to talk," he says, his steely blue eyes boring through her.

"I've nothing more to say." She avoids his gaze. 

"This has gone on long enough," he sighs, reaching for his cell phone.

Suddenly, he feels a sharp pain in his side, and senses the cool trickle of blood oozing through his shirt.

He looks at her, stunned. "Please, call…nine…one…"

Then he sees them, the baby doll's saucer-like eyes peering down at him, its Cheshire smile taunting him.

"Now mommy and me can be together forever," he hears, as the blackness takes over.

..and she laughed and smirked and begged for more.

It had been a weak night at the pub until Nick, my reckless and filthy rich friend rolled in, somewhat drunk, with three women. Jesus, I don't know how this guy does it.

All time in the universe ground to a halt at that moment. Lana was the most beautiful woman I'd ever met in real life. She had perfect skin wrapped in a black dress with long hair, a doppelgänger for Ally Sheedy and all this was on the barstool next to mine.

Probably four galaxies out of my league. But despite being old, I'm not dead yet. And so I took off my glasses and turned on the charm.

I picked up on her accent and asked her where she was from, how old was she, was she married and did she want another drink.

After a bit I told her the plot of my thriller, a true story that involves sex, death, and a young woman who tried to rule the world.

I kept asking her if I should stop, if she was getting bored, if she was just pretending to like the story, but she begged me to continue and I did. I asked for her number and she gave it.

If there ever was a good motivator to keep writing, here it was.

Here she was.

The City of Maastricht will undoubtedly remain in the public imagination for decades. Certainly it will in mine.

It is somewhat of a mystery (if one does not hear, see, or know evil) how Alexander Hawthorne was allowed to breach the extraordinarily stringent temporal controls of the past.

But what a whirlwind it was.

The advertisements were everywhere. Holos in Times Square and Tycho Hall boasted An Adventure Sixty-Five Million Years in the Making…, complete with a simulated Cretaceous skyline dotted by Art Deco towers and anachronistic Brontosaurs. Memorabilia came next: livestream wallpaper feeds, animated t-shirts and car skins, video game map packs boasting the proposed city itself as a digital battleground. Runway shows sponsored by Hawthorne featured strutting, bellowing models in dinosaur regalia, their fanged smiles on personalized adverts selling penthouses overlooking the vanished Western Interior Seaway. Rough-and-ready brands asked for cowboys who could hunt dromeosaurs or Tyrant Lizards, pheromone colognes that smelled like rotten bark and sharp leather. The gladiator shows auctioned tickets to the fiercest winners.

By robotic proxy, the city took eighteen months to complete. A metropolis on the shores of an ocean that would one day be Kansas, surrounded by jungles that would put the lost Amazon to shame. There were Art Deco towers, and there were penthouses that overlooked an ancient sea. Hawthorne happily broadcasted 24/7 live feeds to the world of the future. It did not matter that the city was more theme park than anything else, that the air was strangely thin. It was immaterial that private security firms were lax, eager to hire, and eager to hide their blunders. It was undisclosed what the advanced teams had found, long before the first PR stunt of scrawny Alexander Hawthorne digging in the dirt. Everyone wanted in through the portals.

There was no warning when they closed. The gateways shimmered and dimmed. So too did the constant broadcast.

Would-be settlers and Cretaceous cowboys waited.

They did not open.

Days passed. Weeks.

They did not open.

Uproars, boycotts, conspiracies, disgruntled workers, everything seemed to open except those priceless doorways. The Company closed, the technology once again slipped into bureaucratic decommission.

It came as a shock when, for only moments, the doorways did reopen. Like ghostly wounds. The feed shimmered, a static mess of half shapes and blurs. A city, dark, lit only by a moon eerily closer than what is familiar. Broken windows, broad avenues and listing penthouse towers overgrown by strangling vines.

No one believes me, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t see shapes there. Just for a moment. Starring back with shining eyes and long, killing claws.

The show was considered a boffo success, but not because it made money. When Jacob had taken the job of promoting the show, the anonymous financiers had made it clear they wanted a certain kind of the city’s society to attend.  Jacob had smiled, reassuring the crackling voice on the other end of the phone that he could do that.  When the money transfer came through, he eagerly went to work.  Nothing more exciting than a paying job in a dying economy, especially when a bonus was promised for success.

Promoting a show you knew nothing about was tricky work, though.  However, its title Outer Dark and what he had gleaned about it told him enough.  Promote it as a piece of avant-garde work, intrigue the city’s intellectuals with promises of esoteric themes and unique production values, and they would do the work for him.  Some well-placed calls, free drinks among critiques and art journalists, and they spread rumors of the show at the city’s elite parties they attended.

Jacob couldn’t have been more pleased with the results: sold out opening night.  The emptiness of the back stage, though, frightened him, afraid he had put his reputation on the line for someone’s cruel joke, luring the wealthy and influential to a no-show show.  But as the crowd settled in, the binaural drone began.  Before the curtain even rose, the sound drove Jacob out the stage door where he chain smoked cigarettes waiting for the applause or boos that would announce the end of the show.

The crowd’s reaction never came, but the bombination stopped, and Jacob risked going inside.  At the corner of the still empty stage, he peeked through the curtain, seeing every attendee still seated, entranced by what, Jacob did not know.

He only regretted taking the job when he turned from the curtain to see six men in identical suits, wearing identical black hoods.  One lifted its arms to offer Jacob a velvet bag that had the weight and sound of gold.  In the same crackling voice that had offered him the job over the telephone, they said, “Well done, Jacob.  Here is the promised bonus.”

www.matthewcmclean.com

I had just finished flicking the last smashed ant into the sink when I first saw it. Down in the bottom near the drain opening was a jumping spider.

It had the usual features of a jumping spider. Small beady eyes, hairy legs, and a tint of orange on its abdomen. It was actually quite beautiful, and I took a few more seconds to study it further. It moved away from the drain opening in a jerky, nervous manner. I eyed the handle for the faucet to wash the dead ants away but stopped knowing I'd probably kill the spider then too. And I didn’t want to do that because I like spiders. Always have.

I turned and started to walk away when I heard a voice call out. From behind me.

"Thank you."

It was strong yet not intimidating at all. I said hello out loud not really knowing what to expect.

"Down here." The voice sounded like it came from right in front of me.

I looked around a bit until I saw movement from the counter in front of me. There sitting near the edge was the same jumping spider, tall tale orange spot and all.

"Here."

It was at that moment the reality of what was happening hit me. This tiny spider was speaking to me. It sat there in place, watching me with its even tinier black eyes. I did the only thing that made sense at the time.

"You can speak to me?"

It took a few seconds for it to respond.

"I have the ability yes. And it's because of what you did. You showed me kindness and spared my life."

"Well, I do like spiders. Always have."

"And since you spared me from the same fate as those ants I now owe you a debt."

This was nuts. But I just kept going with it.

"A debt?"

The spider said that for a time he would help me with my carpenter ant problem. Now those little bastards I hate. Every summer they get into my house. The spider told me to go to bed and in the morning he'd show me.

The next day I came downstairs and started to walk into the kitchen when I felt something on the bottom of my barefoot. I looked and saw what looked like pieces of ground up black pepper. I wiped them off and then I noticed the tile floor. Hundreds more of them all over the place.

I got my magnifying glass out and took a look. They were dead ants. Or more like pieces of dead ants. Heads, thoraxes, and legs scattered about like bodies on a battlefield.

"Do you approve master?"

I told the spider I did. It was pure carnage and I did approve. Fuck those ants.

As I was sweeping the pieces up I asked the spider if it could take on a bigger job. I've got this really annoying neighbor.

The spider said tomorrow morning he'd show me.

The little vine crept over the edge of the page. It worked its way across the razor thin edge of the paper, turned, and crawled out onto the cloth cover. There it wriggled around the title and the author’s name, and wrapped itself around the frame of the author’s illustration, where it branched in two directions.

In one, in towards the illustration, the leaves and sprouting flowers adorning the hand drawn image of a child driving a hoop past a Virginia worm fence with a white porticoed house lying low in the distance. In the other, the creeper made its way to the spine of the book, forming a gilded Celtic knot at the bottom, and working its way around the horizontal title and up to the top, terminating with a second gilded knot.

Running out of places to go, the vine reached out, feeling for anything it might grab onto, and eventually finding the table that the book rested on, searched in any direction in could go. Its worked its way towards the smell of a friend, and snuck under the round slab of marble that protected the wood table from the base of the crystal glass. Then it tip-toed its way up the marble, over the crystal base and up the back of the long thin stem, looping itself several times tight around the bottom of the bowl before rushing over the rim and into the amber liquid, drinking it up, refreshing itself, pumping the liquid out of the glass and injecting the water of life into the page.

And that is how things stood when I returned to my library in the attic after my walk around the block, where I had smiled at the small, soft-spoken lady who had been on her knees in the garden, plucking cherry tomatoes off the stem and placing them in a silver pail. That is how I, lost in thought about what I may do to honor this sight now passed, picked up the book I had been reading, not noticing the adventurous vine, and knocked over my wine glass, spilling not a drop, for what had been there when I left, was now sponged into the text.

***

www.medium.com/@quillandtrowel

So, Frank hides, hides from a cruel entity they call "The Hellish Damnation" for its ruthless and merciless hunting, as Frank hides in the wardrobe he can only pray that it's a coincidence that it's coming to his wardrobe, then... Suddenly- smashes open door Frank: "Get the hell outta my house, biatch!" Uh, he was overconfident and- Frank: "And quit with the stupid monologue!" Ah- excuse you! I worked 8 years on this mother- Frank: "I don't want to hear it anymore, go away!" Ugh fine, to be continued when I find a more respectful person who doesn't do drugs. Frank: "Did you call me a drug addict?!" 4 letters! S T F U

Come over this afternoon and I can introduce you to my suicide. Oh, you have one too? Bring them along; we can have a playdate. They can go outside while you and I sit on the couch, smoking and drinking tea, exchanging worries. From there, a window gives us a clear view of the garden. We can observe them getting to know one another without them knowing we are watching, allow them to be natural with themselves. They look like us, don't they? Except they are so much taller even while they stoop their long backs and hunch their broad shoulders.

They will move towards each other like cautious animals, sniffing, testing the waters. All at once, they will become entangled. They will be rough with each other, but neither will seem concerned. You will go to stand, but I’ll put out my arm to stop you. It's alright. It will only last a couple of minutes before they separate again, and now they will have lost all their shyness. They'll wander around the garden together, occasionally standing still, lifting their faces, smelling the breeze. One of them, yours or mine? I cannot be certain which, will become frightened of the sun and sprint to the shade, the other following. They will leap from shadow to shadow, avoiding the light at all costs. Is this a game they're playing? If so, they take it very seriously.

This is important, I will tell you; they must meet others like themselves or else become peculiar. Soon enough, they'll settle in the shade of the sweet chestnut and sit with their backs to one another. We will see their lips moving, speculate on what they might be saying. They'll take turns speaking; isn't that lovely? They are so respectful of one another. You will wring your hands and laugh. I can see you are relieved. It can be lonely, can't it, when it is only you and them?

Too soon, it will be time for you to go. You will call from the window, and your suicide will come rushing back, no longer scared of the sun. It won't dally or complain; clearly, it is ready to go. And as for mine, it won't seem to notice that it is now all alone again. I will leave it there beneath the tree and see you both out. The three of us pressed together in my narrow hallway, your suicide avoiding me by staring fixedly at the carpet, trying to make itself smaller though it can't help but loom, you and I promising to do this all again.

After you leave, I will linger by the window, watching my suicide under the sweet chestnut tree. Alone again, it seems smaller, more fragile. I will take a moment to myself, possibly smoke another cigarette, before going outside to meet it.

‘What a beautiful day for a walk’ thought Peter, as he stepped out of his house and onto the sidewalk. Looking up, Peter saw a clear blue sky with a spattering of white fluffy clouds. A hint of the sun’s bright rays shone on his face, just the right amount to feel warm but not enough to hurt his eyes. It was nice, cool Autumn day. A slight breeze brushed against Peter’s face as he observed red, green, and yellow leaves swaying along the sidewalk. Autumn was by far Peter’s favorite season, and in all retrospects, it was a perfect day. Taking in a breath of fresh air, Peter began walking and soon found himself at the entrance of a nearby park. It was a nice, quaint park, just like the one he had frequented as a child with his mother. As soon as Peter stepped into the park, he immediately noticed the lush evergreen trees swaying in the light breeze, and in the distance he could hear a bird chirping. ‘What a lovely song’ thought Peter.

Attracted by the bird’s song, Peter began walking in its direction. As a child, his mother had told him that a bird’s song indicated it was lonely and looking for someone to love it. Peter longed to find the bird and show that he was listening to its song. In the distance, Peter saw what appeared to be a nest in a tree. Excitedly, Peter walked swiftly towards the nest and looked in. There was nothing in it but a few fresh bird droppings. In the distance, Peter once again heard the bird chirping. As Peter turned towards it, he was suddenly interrupted by a loud beeping noise. Looking down at his smart watch, Peter saw that he had only ten minutes left before he had to get back to work. Taking off his NatureSim 3.0 Goggles to wipe the sweat off his brow, Peter saw that he was actually in the middle of an old, worn-down car park. There was not a single green thing in sight and the only thing he could hear was the buzz of delivery drones flying overhead. Sighing, Peter put the VR goggles back on and began his short trek back home. The lush evergreen trees continued to sway in the breeze, but Peter could no longer hear the chirping of the bird. “What a beautiful day for a walk’ thought Peter. ‘Maybe next time I’ll find the bird’.

Listen: I have been everywhere and seen nothing. I have spoken to the spirits and gained no understanding. I have drunk from the waters of life and still I am thirsty. I have eaten the whole world and my stomach screams for more.

Once when I was still a man I became a leopard. In this animal body I went mad with lust. I stalked through the jungle in search of a mate and when I found a beautiful she-leopard I growled at her lasciviously. But she looked in my eyes, saw that I was really a man and chased me away.

So I returned to the town but when the townsfolk saw me they saw only a leopard and fled. When they were at a safe distance they began throwing stones. One of the stones that struck my forehead contained a kernel of obsidian and this transformed me back into a man. I was relieved. I thought that now I was a man they would treat me better. But instead they took me for a witch and attacked me with even more fear and hatred. Closed in on me so they could strike out with boot and fist. Once they’d beaten me to the point I’d surely perish from my injuries they left me in the street to do so alone.

A raven came down to the street to watch me die. “when you are dead,” it said “I will eat your eyes. Then I will pluck the hair from your head out by their roots and take them back to my nest where they will keep my mate and I warm. Then I will return for your tongue and…”

I struck out my arm quick as a snake and caught the bird in my fist. I brought it squawking to my mouth and bit off its head. With its brain in my belly I knew how to be a raven and took off, leaving my own broken body behind. It had been a great adventure but I had learned nothing from it. In my new body I flew higher and higher and went looking for the ravens mate.

Five more minutes before they take the body. She’s been gone for hours. 

Then I become the harbinger of death. I face children and rip their mother away. I face parents and rip a daughter away. I face a world and rip her away.

I’m waiting in a world where she is only gone for me.

The children are at school, still with a mother, her parents are at home, still with a daughter.

Still they have five more minutes.

Taken. The room, no emptier. Time to pack these burdens and deliver them to the undeserving.

…In five more minutes

--

*Five More Minutes is a drabble constructed and constrained to be exactly 100 words

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To apprize such a rare gem was nearly impossible. Its size and clarity made it valuable enough, but add to that a storied history and it became priceless.  Its legendary origin went back to Makeda gifting it to Solomon.  Looted when the Temple was destroyed, the gem ended up stolen by Cilician pirates, who sold it to itinerate merchants in North Africa.  From there it traveled the Silk Road to the great emperor’s court.

Through all of that it ended up in a small jeweler’s shop on 144^(th) Street, being peered at through a loupe by an old man whose ancestors crossed all of the same boundaries as the gem. The knowledge of evaluating and selling of precious stones and gems that had been passed down from those ancestors forced him to ask a disquieting question: why had this gem not been recut into smaller gems?  Like so many of his own tribes, carving it up would make it easier to sell and control.

He pondered this as he stared at it through his eyepiece, only stopping when he spotted what appeared to be an imperfection at its center.  Exciting and dreading that perhaps he had found something no one else had, he examined it more closely.  There he discovered something no book or story had ever told of the gem.  In its center, small beyond imagining, sat a single man, head bowed in the submission of prayer.

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Nobody noticed the red flowers. It was appallingly hot that summer, hot enough to kill people indoors. Quarantine had been one thing, but the Heat was another, a sticky, syrupy entrapment. The air hard to breathe and soupy, like it wanted to drown you.

So when the red flowers began to bloom, no one paid them any mind. They grew in cracks in the sidewalk, pushed up blood-colored petals on telephone poles and through rails.

Landscaping and gardening went extinct. Nobody in their right mind was going out there. So lawns got wild, tall and shadowy. Parks became free reign. Offices sat empty, mirrors to a merciless sun. We dreamed to the hum-rattle of ACs, clacked at keyboards in a daze, wiping at ghostly sweat that was always threatening to begin. The days were a blur.

And the flowers grew. Islands of red became seas. They grew until their delicate petals became fat, broad palms of wine-colored hands. They grew until the lawns lay in their shadow, until the office buildings were encrusted with lesions, glass cracked and splintered from probing vines. The heat nourished them, hot thunderstorms and hotter, sun-scorched blue skies.

The temperature kept us stuck like insects in amber. Our panic dissolved, dripping away, thoughts melting into vagueness. And the flowers grew. They grew under our floorboards, they grew into our ducts and our pipes, grew until the snaking vines poked out of sinks, draped from showerheads. The flowers grew into our beds, the flowers encrusted our swivel chairs.

They grew around us.

They grew until there was shade, and cool respite, and everything beneath their silent kingdom was in shadow.

Carl was fast asleep in a seemingly quiet sleep, although it was quiet until his mind went and thought "What is it like to get struck by lighting?" So he got up to look it up. Only, what he sees is not his comfortable bedroom and instead in a white room, wrapped in a patient gown, hooked up to a heart rate monitor, he sees his wife Beatrice next to him looking like she hasn't slept for days and says "Carl? Oh thank God, you've been out for months, I was so worried I would loose you..." Carl, now wrapped in all sorts of confusion could only think of the question he had before waking up, when asking she responds "Baby, that's what happened before you ended up like this." So as he was in recovery, he thinks it's best not to get struck by lighting... At least not again.

The television remote laid far from my reach. It had once been a shade of Earnest black, but now it had faded to a dull gray. The buttons, when pressed, gave satisfaction to the fingers, like pooping a sheet of bubble wrap, but now some buttons remained inside and refused to pop back up. The battery has run out and requires a hard smack on the back to even increase the volume. The Body had worn off, and become rough around the edges. There once was a red light that showed the remote's determination to keep working. I think I am the only one in the family who remembers that though. I recently heard my son and his wife discuss during an evening break.

“We should get a new remote, It's hardly working anymore” My daughter in Law said.

“Yeah I know, I will bring a new one.” Said my Foolish Son.

I felt anxious and sorry that the remote had grown attached to the warmth of my hand. Time is to the Remote as Cancer is to me, The more you survive the harder it is to keep functioning properly. Everything will soon be replaced by your memory, A person's lifetime reduced to an evening snack afterthought. What will they do? If I told them the truth, My cancer, can they replace me too??

It had come out from the fog. The worst omens always did, in the tales. A terrible, armored leviathan that stank and roared. They had to come to him smelling of it, like steel.

Like death.

Saint George could hear the dragon now. It sounded like an earthquake, stank like burning things on the hot wind.

His horse rode hard, hooves churning earth. They ran alongside deep, scornful furrows in the ground, like the monster in its fury had tried to eat the world. It was over the hill, smoke billowing in the sky.

The sword sang when he pulled it.

Inside Semper in Excretum, Edward Bailey was still trying the radio. The static laughed for his efforts. Confusion killed tank crews. Confusion reigned now, all five voices sounding shrill and tinny in their lone war machine.

There had been the push, Bellow and Ronson alongside, Bailey another cog as shells materialized from his hands to the track to the enemy wreathed in fog. Such thick fog. A sudden whiteness that wanted them all gone, undone, erased. When it had cleared, no one was there. A chill ran down Baileys back, and then it was Mack kicking him. Telling him to reload. Something about a German chasing them on a horse.

When Saint George crested the rise, the dragon spat at him. A long, shiny snout that coughed and hillside turned into brimstone. The voice it used said silence and nothing came, just ringing bells and the feeling of dirt pinging on his steel. For all his legend and renown, Saint George had never ridden air. He wouldn’t now, either. The horse beneath him was gone, gone, gone.

Inside Semper in Excretum, Edward Bailey had stopped calling on the radio. The whole crew had seen all kinds of insanity from the Germans, especially this late in the war. Boys and cripples in foxholes, pretty girls like ghosts on the road, asking for food or cigarettes with grenades stuffed down their torn blouses. But some sonofabitch on a horse, in full armor? Bailey was sincerely wondering what in the genuine hell they were putting in the water here when Mack started calling for him to try the radio again.

They needed to know where the hell everybody else had gone.

In a kingdom divided Oharun was tired of pretending he wasn’t king.  He had deposed the Queen and only a few regiments of loyalists remained. 

At the stage of the final battle Oharun’s plan was to surround the enemy in a pincer, to lure them forward with a false retreat then have his reserves swing in from the flanks, surrounding and crushing the loyalists.  When dawn rose, the shofars sounded and the troops clashed, Oharun let an appropriate number of them die before calling for the retreat.

All went to plan as the loyalists pushed forward.  Oharun smiled wider until the pursuing loyalist infantry didn’t stop.  Even as the trap was sprung and they were attacked from all sides, they pushed forward, dangerously close to Oharun himself.  He stood in his chariot, looking over the battle and felt his blood run cold when a spear landed in the man next to him.  The spear had left the hand of Jundi, the queen’s son, and he clearly cared more for revenge than the crown.  Or life.

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