(art from SalmVil via DeviantArt)

How horrific
To live a life hazed by substances.
Never to appreciate the sun on your skin.
The sound of your child's laughter heard through a fog. 

To suffer so immensely that the bottom of a liquor bottle has proven a better source of oxygen. 
And the sensation of smoke in your lungs has become essential to suffocating your demons. 

Until the reflection in the mirror looks a lot like those demons,
wearing you
inhabiting you,
becoming you. 

When the hand extended before you looks foreign, 
and your reflection multiplies as the world sways below your feet.

And you laugh.
Because this thing inside of you—
that you bred to slay the true demons in your life—
Oh, it has eradicated them.
But the price of it, 
was you.  

Now your limbs are too long,
your brain is too loud.
The silence, all consuming. 
The thoughts are not your own. 
You are not at home in your body any longer, you have handed it over. 

So here you are. 
Adrift within your skin. 
A passenger. 

To know not  what is real and what is synthetic within you,
is certainly hell itself. 

Pic posted by , I wanted to use it as a prompt.

Loving him was a disaster

Hating him was torture

Towards me, he was indifferent. 



His body on mine was heaven, 

his hands a symphony composed only for me.

I was a violin in a cacophony of many. 

His talents graced many instruments,

an orchestra prepared to play for him. 

And I was no different. 



I was being dragged into the whirlpool of him, 

with no desire to fight the current. 

The waves of him lapped greedily at my skin,

tasting the salt and sea air. 



There was no reality in which I would not want him,

he was the raging fire to my tree line,

the hurricane to my shore. 

I did not long for him as the night longs for dawn,

I was consumed as the ink by parchment. 

Even when I tried to pull free. 



Because when he beheld me that way, 

I knew that this gentle sin would find us again.

I would kill to taste my blood on his lips, 

to have him devour me whole. 

For only when he held my life in his hands--- did I find it worth living. 

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(Art by GrippySockPrincess on DeviantArt)

How long before the grief consumes me whole?
Before I collect enough lost loved ones to eclipse my identity? 
Their belonging reduced to meager sums on my bookshelves. 
While pet hair and paw prints are stored carefully in jewelry boxes. 

I am an amalgamation of all the things I try to remember them by.
I am journals of everything that I ever knew of them. 
I am ink stained fingers from last words and times of death scrawled on walls.
I am callused hands from grave tending, 
red eyes from sobbing. 

I am my brother who’s eyes I share, 
my aunt who’s hair grew like mine. 
I am my dog’s last traipse through the park, 
and the comfort of my cats last nap in the sun. 

I am the machines beating a steady fading rhythm—
of a heart holding on, 
beating steadily towards its own end. 

When will I become meager belongings on a bookshelf?
The skeleton beneath the mound of dirt, 
the loved one kept alive only in passing conversation. 

How many loved ones will grace the earth before I’m dragged there kicking and screaming? 
Hoping beyond hope that keeping them alive in spirit will forge a home for my own when these dreary days draw to an end. 
Still I ask; 
How long before the grief consumes me whole? 

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(Art by Cinemaminds on DeviantArt)

The man in my attic laughed all the time,

while crawling through the walls,

inching and bending his body to get closer to me.

Ribs bent and snapped,

vertèbre scraped against wooden beams and left deep grooves.


He chortled as he flayed his arms open,

trying desperately to separate himself from the wallpaper.

His laughs turned desperate

as he left his epidermis upon the drywall.


The house reeled him in,

grabbing and clawing at him.

Burying him in the foundation,

placing him once more in the attic.


Cracking open his chest and placing furniture neatly within.

Hallowing out his head for a skylight to shine through.


His laughter echoed through the house,

haunting the halls which possessed parts of him.

So he took inventory of those broken parts,

of the pieces he lost along the way.


For he could not escape,

he could not be seen.

Still he laughed.


He laughed as he cried.

He laughed as he drowned.

He laughed as he died.

He laughed until he couldn’t make a sound.

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This flash fiction piece is for flash fiction February with Bradley Ramsey . To be submitted to The Writer’s Journey. For prompt 21: “You find yourself in a strange place. A place between places. Liminal spaces often intrigues, confuses, or terrifies us.” I did the wildcard and based this off of ‘s photo (above).

This place is not natural
The kind of empty space that looks back at you.
It smiles with teeth of fluorescent lights. 
It blinks its weary eyes, 
wind against the shutters,
unsure why you’re here. 

Where sound echos back to you,
friendly conversation within this catacomb. 
Where stories of the past claw into you,
making you suffocate on nostalgia.  
Childhood laughter, alive again in this tomb.

You’ve never been here.
You’ll never go here. 
But you know this place... 
You smell the bleach that once cleaned the floors, 
though it’s long evaporated. 
You hear voices carried through these corridors, 
belonging to souls long gone. 

The unnatural vacancy here 
is a yawning trench of need, 
to be seen. 
to feed.
A starving space, 
which seeks now only to consume. 

It grips fading memories of your past and inserts itself.
See me .
See me.
See me. 

Perhaps have you been here before? 
You’ve gripped that door handle.
Ran down this hall.
Been blinded by those lights.

In a different space 
In a different time 
In a different body 

This place invades you,
It crawls up your spine, 
formaldehyde devouring blood,
a gravediggers chant in your soul

For this liminal space is a gateway 
for all the memories entwined from your past lives. 
Familiar isn’t it? 

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(Art by on Trekkie92 Deviant Art)

This flash fiction piece is for flash fiction February with . To be submitted to The Writer’s Journey. For prompt 18: “Invaders sweep across the cosmos, snuffing out stars and planets in equal measure. They are legion, but you? You are worse. Your crimes are unforgiveable.

As punishment for your sins, you have been chosen to wear an exosuit that fuses with your body and your mind. Once donned, it cannot be removed. Ever.

As you march into battle, take comfort, for there is redemption to be found in a glorious death.

May the fires of war wash your soul clean...”

“This is too far!” Malek Caelix roars as the exosuit begins to fuse with his skin. “You can’t fucking do this to me Seren, I saved your life!”

“But you took countless more! Children, Malek! Even I can’t get the High Council to excuse that!”

She pins him to the floor, a boot on either wrist. He can’t fight back as every nerve in his body goes haywire.

“They found out you’ve been feeding the Xal’kai information. Who betrayed you, by the way, now this invasion is on your head,” she sneers at him. He screams when she forces his head into the device that will merge itself with his brain.

“Please I- Ah!!” Malek wails. Bone snaps as the suit grips his vertebrae.

The High-Council watches on through double sided tinted glass, not wanting to be near him. Not wanting to risk falling victim to his unfathomable power. Power that will now serve them and the rest of humanity in fighting the invasion.

They have ensured that the exosuit makes him a living, breathing weapon. It can not be removed until the vessel it beholds dies. It tightens around his ribs, a coffin remembering his shape.

Another world has burned as a result of the information Malek gave them. They believe his death will absolve him, but he knows nothing will cleanse his soul. He doesn’t want to be rid of the sins he’s committed, the screaming keeps him company, the ghosts which are tethered to him make him laugh. He laughs then, as his skull becomes one with the helmet, he remembers the way that Kingpin’s kids cried when he slaughtered their father in front of them.

He laughs for the ruin he’s brought them all. Humanity is a plague on the planet in the end. How could this be worse?

Malek blacks out and when he comes to, he is standing at attention in a row of soldiers dawned in space suits. Only two others in his row have the exosuit like he does. He tilts his head from side to side, trying to crack his neck. But the sensation of metal on bone is never going to sit right. A commander is yelling out a stream of commands.

“… Neutralize the command pod! It stalks across the eastern slope of mountain Beta-9.”

Malek starts, the cold realization that he didn’t just black out but he had been put out and transported hits him all at once. His body is not his, they could put him to sleep if they wanted to.

They aren’t on Earth anymore.

“Welcome to Last Light. The wastelands of Ashara IX,” the bullish looking commander gestures behind him and the spaceship’s massive windows become transparent. “Those of you in the exosuits have been maintained and updated as you slept during our journey. Rest assured the weapons at your disposal are stronger than you’ve ever known.”

The commander saunters towards Malek, “and don’t even think about trying that friendly fire bullshit. It’s been disabled.” He smirks and Malek tries to lunge for him, only for the suit to prevent it.

“Exosoldiers go out first,” he demands.

With that Malek is forced to move against his own will, falling in next to him are a dozen just like him. He takes in the sight in the wasteland before him. Hundreds of creatures on all fours wander around inside of what he thinks looks like the Grand Canyon. Red clay makes up the planet as well as unforgiving wind. But the Xal’kai are made to adapt to all types of climates. Technological in nature, they are manufactured for speed and destruction. Their pincers are the size of humans and Malek has seen they way they skewer other life forms. He’s shudder if he had control of his body. Instead he watches them roam the space, waiting for them to attack. They make no move against their vessel which is perched on its own mountain just like their command pod.

The sounds of their gears whirring, their metal claws on stone can be heard echoing all around them. But Malek is not afraid, he does not wish to win. He wishes only for death. Not for redemption but for humanity to be erased. Cleansed. Then they will have a taste of what they’ve done to other living things for so long; to be exterminated for convenience. To be pushed aside for the ‘greater good’. That’s all thje Xal’kai want, they want to start anew and populate the galaxy with their perfect manufactured beings. They are superior in every way, Malek sees it as natural selection. He does not wish to fight or prolong it.

So when he finds himself in the middle of that war zone in that barren wasteland on a planet ages from home, he is not afraid. He makes use of the weapons attached to his exoskeleton because he hasn’t a choice.

Xal’kai fall, humans are eviscerated. There is a push toward the command pod, a group of four including himself who have made a path of bodies. The organic matter within the robot-like shell of the beasts screech as they die, it’s almost deafening. Still Malek marches on. He’s only taken superficial damage to his back and face. He peels back the helmet of a creature and pierces what he thinks is its heart.

Malek knows that if this battle is won, the war will rage on. If this war is won, there will be another. And that means people like him will be placed in a position to fight somebody else’s war, a body to fall for the cause. They don’t care about his redemption and he knows it. They need bodies to bleed, lives to give.

He’s a number, a body to join the masses.

So he does.

As his squad approaches the precipice of the mountain, near the command pod, Malek is thrown sideways. He collides hard with a cliff side, the probes from his exoskeleton shifting in his spine and paralyzing him instantly. He knows it the moment it happens, his vision goes white. The world around him blinks in and out of view.

There’s an impossible numbness to him. The sensation that his bones are floating within his limbs. He thinks he screams but the creature is atop him, impossibly large and vicious. He sees hell reflected back at him, perhaps it’s his own gaze in the visor of the creature’s helmet. The devil looks a lot like his own hysteria.

A metal claw stabs into his rib cage to claim bone shards and sinew. He spits blood as he laughs at the thing. Chaos erupts around him as his squad collides with the Xal’kai. At least they had warning. His life was their warning.

Mercifully he doesn’t feel it when his heart is dislodged from its socket, snapping arteries which paint the creature crimson. As if to shout into the void: “humanity was here!”

Copyright Luden Gray. Do not steal my work.

(Art by on Adadiacarbon Deviant Art)

This flash fiction piece is for flash fiction February. To be submitted to The Writer’s Journey. For prompt 13: “You’ve discovered a magic spell that can bring back anyone from the dead for a single day. Write a story or poem about that day…”

This one is dear to me, an outlet of grief. The loss of my little brother is real, the circumstances around his death are real. The resurrection is not. Enjoy.

The day I raised you is nothing like the way I planned it. 
You didn’t arise as if sleeping and greet me like you used to. 
Your limbs too long and skinny for your clothes, rushing down the stairs to see what games we’d play. 
You didn’t throw air punches in my direction just to see if I’d flinch like you loved. 
You didn’t smile. 
You didn’t want to throw that football back and forth anymore. 

Instead you clawed free of that grave, the one I packed so tight 4 years ago. 
Your flesh hung from you in ribbons, begging to be returned to the earth. 
It was so close. 

You screamed in agony,
the formaldehyde in your system like acid. 
The stitches holding your mouth closed tore your lips to shreds as you cursed me.
That Y incision over your chest fell open, your heart decayed and rotted. 
Reaching out to greet me. 

This vessel is not your home anymore. 
Your soul can’t get comfortable.
Limbs crack and twist, roots pleading for soil. 

How dare I bring you back? 
When you suffered so long in the land of the living? 
How dare I? 
You cursed me again and again. 

You cursed me because there is still no cause of death.
Still no answer about why you died. 
We know not why your heart stopped.
Why you were found in that room folded in half,
as if forced to your knees by cosmic will. 

So this day, 
the day this spell brought you back,
is not spent like the days of our youth. 
You don’t see the big sister who loves you. 
You don’t ask about our childhood dog, 
our parents circling the drain, towards you.
To join you.  

You demand answers for a wretched existence, 
cut short at twenty-two 
and taken from you. 

Because to bring you to life again, 
was to fail you again, little brother. 
Because I couldn’t protect you. 

I see now, to raise you again
was to let you die again. 
Just one more day, 
became one more death.

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(Art by on tokxueyi Deviant Art)

This flash fiction piece is for flash fiction February. To be submitted to The Writer’s Journey. This is a smaller piece, taking the concept of the burnout disease from the prompt and shedding light on such suppressing times.

I can see them now.

Casualties of my suppressed rage.

Eyes extracted, the way the system extracted me.

This disease did not spread unbidden,

it was manufactured, bred by a species needing to break the chains.



I am but the latest casualty.

Well,

The bodies laid before me are.

In the fog I remember the stabbing.

The sensation of one’s soul escaping through a knife wound.

The primal scream of one met with death far too soon.



This is but a symptom

of a system built for profit over people.

The way he drowned in his blood,

when I punctured his lung. 

This is the side effect of greed.

This is the universe establishing an equilibrium amongst its more parasitic creations.

Perhaps the balance is in the swinging of the bodies in these rafters.

Willed by the stars long before they formed me. 



I am the blade that has slain life today.

I am the tears in their eyes, the pleading on their lips.

I am the burnout that came for me

I am wretched hatred

and generational suppression forged into steel.



And when this burnout infects them,

I will not beg for my life.

Because if I do not fall to them,

this system will come for me.

(Art by DamienAddams on Deviant Art)

This flash fiction piece is for flash fiction February. To be submitted to The Writer’s Journey. This is a smaller piece, more exploratory from the perspective of the main character (Harrow) in my upcoming Dark Fantasy book, The Executioner Prince. I love writing small pieces for already existing worlds!

They did not go gently into that good night.

Their necks gave no resistance to the blade of my knife.



When treachery is rewarded with death,

I roll the dice,

I am the dealer.



I am the darkness which night calls upon to cradle its shadows.

To lay them to rest.



Inside that cold corridor do they lay,

Choking on mistakes they could not keep at bay.



Desperate

Wretched

Gurgling drowns out their prayers.

No deity to aid them

They, their own gods in the land of a thousand corpses.

And I their maker,

For doesn’t the story go: the tale bows to the teller?



Alas, the assassins of Dreadfall Moor were welcomed in a parade of ghosts.

As I consumed their life’s blood for its delicious merriment, I listened.

To those spirits of whom they dispatched,

Which would not let them go gently into that good night.

(Art by AndrejZT on Deviant art)

This flash fiction piece is for flash fiction February. To be submitted to The Writer’s Journey. A mix of sci-fi and comedy, in a bit of a different format! Enjoy!

Incident report: Human Breach

Days since last breach: 691

Location: Iteration 8, sector 978, grid 30, block 7

Responsible Keeper(s): Zeta- 6Z, Alpha- 9A

Administrative Notes:

The following is a verbal recollection of events is from Keeper Zeta- 6Z after Archon Alpha- 6H discovered him and Alpha-9A entertaining a human from Iteration 8.

Drugs were involved, identified as LSD-25, which the keepers claimed to have been ESSENTIAL to convincing the human of our non existence.

Keeper Zeta- 6Z Statement:

The blasted knob wouldn’t turn. That one fucking nob!

In and out, thirty seconds. That’s all I was allowed.

And I blew it!

That one nob kept sector 978, grid 30, block 7 from being exposed to the real world. A ten foot by ten foot space between what the humans think is real and what we, the Keepers know to be real. A window into eternity, a glimpse into what would drive their fragile fucking human minds to insanity. The frigid data stream wind blew into me, scraping against the metal at my core, the wires crossed in my ribs. Fuck the cold.

See, the hatred I have for the humans in their manufactured and perfectly fractured bubble festers inside of me like a virus. Still the Keepers and I scramble along the exoskeleton of their existence, knitting it together. Because they can’t know. There is something scrambled inside of their heads, a code unfinished. It’s why they still cling to things like gods in the sky to give them hope when they possess the ability to love and lose all within their soul. They are the very matter of the universe given life. They hold everything and cherish nothing. They give everything perfect about themselves to nameless forces, squandering their life on wishes of after.

There is nothing after.

Still, we Keepers maintain this crumbling facade. Haunting this simulation like parasites to keep it running.

They aren’t supposed to see us.

“They aren’t supposed to know!” Keeper Alpha- 9A screamed at me and yanked the human through the block between our world and theirs. He screamed and failed to find footing in the darkness. He floated helplessly in our space, his limbs not made for the threads of our reality.

“What-wha-“ the human stammered and tried to collapse.

“Quiet,” I slapped him with my hand, well my fingertip. Given that he was about the size of my hand.

“Pl-please-“ he begged. “I repent! Forgive me!”

As you know there is no echo in this place, his voice didn’t echo.

Though I wish it had. I would’ve slapped him again if I were promised an echo of it.

But then see, because the nob still wouldn’t turn- not only could he see us. But he could see the world we took him from. So Alpha-9A thought it best that we disengage him until we came up with a plan.

Administrative Notes: to disengage in this context means to knock out. The two involved Keepers not only kidnapped a human from Iteration 8, but they cast him unconscious before drugging him.

Alpha- 9A statement: No comment.

Archon Alpha-6H Statement: Alpha- 9A and Zeta- 6Z should have taken the human to breach containment. Instead they were found dancing before him, singing human songs, and trying to convince him that he was dreaming. The two were hysterical, even though the human was the one who was drugged. I immediately detained the two Keepers and had the human taken to breach containment.

Report status: CLOSED

Reason: Human returned, confused, and labeled a conspiracy theorist. All is well.

(Art by Dutte1 on Deviant Art)

This flash fiction piece is for flash fiction February. To be submitted to The Writer’s Journey. I had a lot of fun with these characters!

“To us!” Salty bellowed.

“We’re going to be rich!” Ethelred “Feral” Bradley agreed.

The Starlight Voyagers sped at unprecedented speed through the The Deep of Ruglams. With only the North Star to guide them, they were hopeful that the island which never appeared on a map would show itself for them once more.

Viktor Huxley, who begrudgingly went by “Voodoo”, lounged in his hammock, unsure about the nonsense the crew spoke of. He had been travelling these waters for years and never once had he come across such an island as the one they touted.

The Island of Glowing Lights.

The Enchanted Isle.

When the Windcutter made its way to the recorded coordinates, Viktor didn’t hold his breath. He exhaled in boredom and peeked out of the porthole as the ship slowed. He let the waves rocking the vessel soothe him.

There was nothing in the water, not to the east which his window showed him. Nor anywhere to be seen when Viktor emerged onto the deck. He propped his elbows on the wooden railing and shook his head as if he knew this was a dead end.

Then, like a whisper, the prisoner kept in the hull of the ship was allowed to emerge. His cloak was dense with moisture from the humid air, his inky hair sticking to his hollow cheeks. The dozen men upon the deck fell into hushed silence as the prisoner, who was shaking, was led by Salty up to the bow. He shoved him so hard that Viktor thought the prisoner might catch the wind and float away, he was so lanky.

Viktor held his breath and watched the man… no the mage, raise his hands before him. The energy swirled from his fingertips as he whispered the ancient language. Mages died out hundreds of years ago! Viktor blinked and rubbed his eyes, surely he was mistaken. But no. Soon Northern Lights made themselves visible, fading into view like morning fog rising from the sea. The Mage spelled away the magical barrier protecting the island from the rest of the world, Viktor’s knees buckled.

How was this possible?

How had they survived?

Viktor cursed himself when the part of the railing he had been holding on to showed scorch marks from his hand. Shit.

Luckily no one noticed; they were too enthralled with the Island which had appeared before them. No one could know that Viktor Huxley was hiding his mage-like abilities. He would be executed.

Now there was a pull to the prisoner, a familiarity in his blood that hummed to draw closer to him. But he couldn’t, he wouldn’t.

The vessel inched forward, towards the sleeping island and Viktor knew this could not go well.

Captain ‘Feral’, who was the expedition’s captain, would decimate this population and reap the reward from the Poisoned Crown.

Viktor realized that these weren’t northern lights as he beheld the sight above him. No. It was the magical essence of the island, the very life force of the population of mages hiding there.

The rest of the crew started emerging onto the deck. Dozens of soldiers and pirates, with only one goal. Conquer the uncharted island in the name of the Poisoned Crown. When the mage was shoved to the ground, his deed done, Viktor made his way towards him. The mage spat blood onto the deck and groaned as Viktor moved him to standing.

As soon as Viktor touched him though, the mage’s eyes went wide in recognition. Their magic called to one another as long lost lovers. Viktor shook his head, trying to tell the mage that no one knew and that he was trying to help.

“I am Exius,” he spoke softly. He was not fluent in the common tongue, that much was clear.

“Viktor,” he pointed at his own chest with a small nod.

Suddenly shouts erupted all around them.

“They’re engaging!”

“Ready the War Drakes!”

The what?!

Viktor scrambled away from Exius, needing to get down to the belly of the ship where the living artillery were housed.

Something rocked the ship, sending Viktor into a pirate who cursed and shoved him. Viktor bit his tongue, deciding which side he was on with finality. He plunged his wrist blade into the man’s gut. He started to scream but Viktor quickly brought the blade upward and silenced him with a clean slice over the jugular.

The Windcutter took another hit. From the smell in the air it was a magical attack in nature. Cannons boomed but Viktor kept his footing.

“Wait!” Exius called in a half-whisper behind him.

“You can’t follow me!” He bit out.

“I can put the drakes to sleep,” Exius whispered as he grabbed Viktor’s arm with gentle familiarity.

Exius stared at him, allowing Viktor to see that he did indeed have red iris’ like the legends said. In a moment of needing to be seen after so many years in hiding, Viktor dipped his head and removed the contact from his left eye. The only red eye he was born with. He looked up at Exius, who inhaled sharply. Exius pointed a finger at his chest.

“Aetherlost.”

“Aetherlost…” Viktor questioned.

“Born away from home,” Exius gestured broadly around them by way of explanation. A purple explosion of light lit the small corridor from the series of small port holes and the mage glowed before him. Viktor wondered if he too was glowing.

Viktor nodded. He grabbed the mage by the wrist and hurriedly led him down to the belly of the ship. When they got there, two of the six War Drakes were already sent soaring out of the chute which yawned open to the sky.

“Bad,” Exius whispered.

There were three handlers trying to get some of the Drake’s out. The handlers were made of muscle. Viktor wasn’t sure one of his daggers would efficiently incapacitate the men. Still, he sighed, because he didn’t become the best expeditioner in his time, just to be bested by some Drake Handlers. He flipped his twin daggers in his hands, calculating. He sent one soaring through the air, successfully embedding it in the closest ones jugular.

That was the last warning that the men got. Viktor dodged an attack from a man who hurled himself towards him. When the man hit the wall, Viktor’s other dagger found the base of his spine. He went down twitching as the third man wrenched Viktor back by his onyx hair.

Exius’ senses came to him slowly, and he cast a spell. The man holding Viktor spewed blood from his mouth. It coated Viktor and he gagged but fortunately it only took seconds for the handler to die.

“Thanks.”

“Sleep?” Exius asked, pointing to the Drakes who were chortling and huffing at them. Viktor nodded.

Viktor didn’t get a chance to see how Exius put them to sleep because he was engaging in a fight with a pirate who was running from something on the deck. He made the split decision to bash the pirates head into the wall. It was a bloody and extensive feat.

The ship rolled sideways, Viktor screamed as he was slammed into Exius. Something massive had hit the Windcutter. Exius groaned when the ship rolled again and left them on the floor in a mix of blood and salt water.

Viktor’s forehead dripped blood into his eye, he blinked rapidly as Exius dragged him to his feet, seemingly in a hurry to get to the upper deck.

When they made it topside, it was a mess of blood, mangled flesh, and screaming. Cloaked mages swept across the deck with smooth efficiency, bringing death to whomever they touched.

Exius shouted at them, waving a woman over who seemed relieved to see him. Viktor backed up and made himself smaller against the railing as Exius spoke to her. Her eyes softened but she looked at Viktor curiously. He flinched when she grabbed his jaw and jerked his head so she could see his red eye.

“Aetherlost,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

It was all he could think to say. Then a War Drake swooped low and Viktor thought for sure Exius was about to die. He lunged forward but halted as another mage jumped off the back of the beast. What the…

“They are made here,” the woman explained to Viktor. He nodded frantically and pointed to the hatch that would lead down to the rest of them. Exius translated for him.

Once Viktor realized that there was no immediate danger to him, he stood up straight and surveyed the situation. The population of mages had the situation under control all along…

Captain ‘Feral’ was hanging by his feet from the mast and screaming in response to whatever magic he was being subjected to. That magic made Viktor’s blood hum, he wanted to be closer to it, he wanted to be enveloped by it.

Instead he stumbled to the bow and inhaled the smell of blood and new beginnings.

The island was a beacon of resilience. He couldn’t possibly see the entirety of it but he could see sprawling forests, skyscrapers reaching for the sky, and a population cheering for the destruction of their would-be conquerors from the beach. Red-eyed kids on shoulders clapped and cheered, causing Viktor’s heart to swell.

“We are going home,” Exius pointed at the island.

Viktor tried to think of a good reason to say no. He had been searching the world for answers and belonging. Now he had found it. He found home in a lost civilization of mages who were ghosts according to history.

He nodded at Exius and looped his arm in his.

Trigger warning: CSA

Art by veurvei on deviant art.

I was interested

in shaggy haired boys

with runny noses

similar to mine

who liked to climb trees

and have rock fights



the occasional stick battle

was a rush

as suddenly

our minds took us to

another world

a safer one



I really liked the boys

With shaggy hair



But

He liked me

He shouldn’t have



My curly hair

just barely 3 1/2 feet off the ground

should have been

for the boys

who fought

monsters with me

in far off lands



What was it?

The curly hair?

My big brown eyes?

My thin arms, too frail to fight back?

My undeveloped mind in awe of you.



Perhaps my innocence.

Small frame.

The lack of understanding.



what was it?

something tempted you

to look at a child

just over

3 foot 2

and need her

to pleasure you


“father”?

what made me so desirable?


I just…

I just wanted

the shaggy haired boy.

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Art via deviant art by dlow.

Escargot, the Village Reads Bookstore cat, had become very familiar with the ancient texts which lined his walls. Escargot could tell the condition of a book by the way the spine felt against his cheeks. He knew of all the classics from Bronte to Wilde by their scent. He knew them by their popularity just as he knew the ones who were never touched, by the loneliness which lived in their pages. He especially loved the antique books because of their wide array of smells. He could even identify the other cats who once occupied the same space as the ancient texts.

The new books were less exciting, they only smelled of paper and dust. They made him sneeze and retreat back to the room of the books with scents that told stories. They spoke to him in light whispers as he lounged on his aging couch, listening to the owner, Rachel, go on and on about some new book series with a group of people. Fortunately she would close the store after the group left.

Only… there was one voice missing. A familiar and deep one which never moved, never drew attention. An ancient text of long dead magic dated 1561. That book wasn’t even in the store’s inventory. One of two ever printed, it lived on the second shelf from the bottom on the fifth shelf over from the back door. It had been there since the store opened 12 years ago, long before Escargot came to be the “bookstore cat”. Though he preferred to be called the “keeper of texts”.

He plopped down from the couch and sniffed the empty space, a thick layer of dust outlining where the worn leather book once sat. Hm. He stretched and curled his tail around the bookshelf as he made his way towards Rachel at the front of the store.

“What’s up Gogo?” Rachel asked.

Escargot made a chortling sound and hugged his owner. Then he meowed, earning a look of surprise from Rachel. Escargot was not a very vocal cat. Escargot did not like to draw attention from anything except his old books.

Finally after a vicious string of meows, did Rachel follow Escargot.

Escargot tried not to grow frustrated as he nudged the empty space where the book was. Where he was sure he didn’t see anyone take it from.

“Oh! Where did that one go?” She asked in surprise. This confirmed to Escargot that the book had not been sold.

“Brrgh,” Escargot answered. Rachel adjusted Escargot’s blue bandanna and marched back to the front of the store. No doubt to look at the cameras.

“Why would someone steal that one specifically?” Rachel murmured to herself.

After a moment of silence, Rachel spoke again. Seemingly to Escargot who jumped up onto the counter.

“It had to be Milo,” she sounded confused.

Milo hadn’t been to work in three days and Rachel couldn’t contact him. It would appear he was the last person to work while the book was still on the shelf. Escargot looked at the footage of the thin college lingering around the book and then he remembered. Milo had given Escargot wet food at the front counter after closing!

Escargot had been distracted!

On purpose!

There was nothing else to do so Escargot hissed at the screen.

How could he not notice the book had been missing for THREE days? He was getting old. His tenth birthday was sneaking up on him.

“There there,” Rachel rubbed his ears. “We’ll just go get it. I know where he lives.”

Escargot tilted his head at her and dutifully climbed onto her shoulder as he always did when it was time to leave.

The streets of Paris were busy, bustling crowds of tourists heading in one direction or the other. Escargot hissed at a poodle that stared at him too long and the dog whimpered. Good. His orange fur caught the warm evening sun as he clung to Rachel’s shoulder. He was going to claw Milo’s eyes out for this. Well, more likely just hiss at him while Rachel fired him but still, Escargot was angry.

It took an annoyingly long time for Milo to answer the door of the small Paris apartment. When he did, he peeked his head out slowly. He had bags under his eyes, his hair was greasy, and he appeared to have been awake for days.

“Milo?” Rachel tilted her head gently. Escargot rubbed his head against hers and purred.

“Oh god, Rachel!” He flung the door open and hurriedly ushered them inside. He seemed relieved to see them, Escargot hopped from Rachel’s shoulder as the two of them started speaking frantically.

Escargot was going to find the book.

He eased under tables and behind the couch. He hopped up on window sills and counters, searching far and wide for the ancient book. He could hear it whispering to him. Milo and Rachel were arguing but those were human matters, this was between the book and the cat.

Tucked in the back of the apartment was a walk in closet, a small candle flickering within it. Escargot nudged the door open the rest of the way and chirped happily when he found the book upon an easel. It seemed to glow now, a swirling mix of purples and blues… he thought. He didn’t have a wide range of colors he could see. Still the energy emitting from it was familiar. The whispering was so much louder than it ever had been. More than that… the book knew his name!

“Escargot.”

“Escargot.”

The cat folded his ears back and flicked his tail.

He took a step forward as the two humans entered the space.

“No, I’m telling you! Your cat was summoned from this book!”

Escargot looked at them in confusion as he tried to resist the pull of the book. The book felt like home, more so than the bookstore. Had this book made the bookstore feel like home all along?

“What are you talking about?” Rachel huffed.

“Look, watch him,” Milo pointed at the feline.

Escargot was entranced by the open book, by the matter ebbing and flowing about the pages. It reached for him, offering him the sweet scent of fish and fresh baked chicken. He hopped up on the clothing rack next to the easel and peered into the pages which laid open.

Within the pages he saw himself, his white stripes and pink nose reflected back at him. It was like looking into a puddle, it pulled him harder and he nearly fell forward.

“Brrr,” he regarded it carefully.

He crouched, shaking his rump and aiming true.

“Escargot don’t!” Rachel lurched forward.

But he was airborne. His nose crinkled as he made contact with the pages. No, the portal. And it really was familiar, it was like a hug or a warm bowl of milk.

“Escar-” Rachel’s voice was cut off.

Escargot found himself anew. He was deposited on the steps of the Village Reads Bookstore. He was smaller and… based on the puddle beneath him, gray this time. He licked his paws, recalling his previous life. Recalling Rachel in her youth and the bookstore she loved so much.

“Hey!” An elderly woman picked up the kitten. “Who are you?” She asked.

“Brr!” He answered.

“It’s much too cold for you to be out here,” she insisted and scratched his ears in that familiar way. He purred because this life, his third of nine, had deposited him back in Rachel’s life and back in the bookstore.

She placed him on the wooden floorboards of the bookstore and he relished the familiar feeling on his toes. He looked up at her, she had the same eyes but she had aged.

“You remind me of another cat we had many years ago,” she bent down to inform him. Surely she must also recognize him by his eyes. “Yes, I think Escargot suits you.”

She scratched his chin and smiled at him.

With a glance in the backroom, Escargot ensured his book was exactly where it should be once more. Then he curled up for a nap on another sofa in another decade, in the same bookstore. His life lived between the pages if that ancient book.

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Art via deviant art by Darkcloud013

“Please! I don’t want to play anymore!” Mina cries, her lip quivering.

“Yes you do,” her older brother yanks her hand towards him. The breeze off the ocean ruffles his hair and threatens to send it into his eyes. He double checks the die, she rolled a two.

“Parker no!” She screams as he carves a clean line to intersect through the previous one. The razor moves so smoothly through her paper thin skin and the blood drips anew into the sand.

Nearby a large wave splashes against the rocks, threatening to inch up the beach and turn her blood in the sand to mud.

Mina has just turned six, the same age he was when he played this game. When his cousin guided him through these very steps to “fulfillment”. Just as his family has done for generations.

“Quiet!” He snaps at the crying girl.

Parker flips through the pages of the decayed journal, ensuring he’s following the instructions carefully.

1. Let the Infernal Cards fall free, the faces who stare up from the pile will call out for Morvii.

2. Where the ocean meets the land, upon the sand, let there be blood of the blessed born spilled in his name.

3. Let the ten sided dice inform the cuts, let your heart decide the design. Where the palm yawns open, Morvii shall enter.

4. The child shall skip towards the sea, arms extended for Morvii.

5. When The Gamekeeper shuffles the cards again, may The Creature meet Leviathan.

6. Only then may the child be pulled from the sea.

As Parker reads the third step, he senses when Morvii also enters her. The dark beast stirring within him to reach her too. She begins to hum, playing with the blood between her fingers as he once did so long ago. No longer mortified but in awe.

The game can’t end until the Blessed Child meets death.

Parker ignores the chills that scatter across his skin every time he reads the title; Morvii’s Game. This wretched inherited thing that demands to be played, to be passed along.

Mina stands and begins skipping towards the ocean, the dark sky threatening to swallow her up, if not for her blonde curls.

He wants to shuffle the cards. To cheat and try to get The Creature and The Leviathan to pull together. To lessen the time his sister is in the gaping maw of the ocean, to lessen the amount of time she spends in Morvii’s realm.

But he can’t.

Those aren’t the rules! He can hear Morvii screaming inside of him.

When she splashes into the water, her arms remain outstretched. Submissive.

All the fight in her is gone, Morvii’s claws sinking into her as his essence crawls into the flesh which Parker carved open for him. A doorway for this monster, a thing for them to share.

He shuffles the cards over and over again.

A minute passes.

Impaled Man, The Keeper. NO!

The Crier, Six of Flames. No, no, no.

He’s frantic in his scattering and reshuffling of cards.

What if he never pulls them?

Another minute and his sister remains out of view and he knows what she’s experiencing. The untold horrors that will rob her of her innocence and dim the spark in her eyes.

He sees the creature which occupies him every time he closes his eyes. A humanoid beast, starved and lean. Far too tall. Its face composed of overlapping rotted skin. Sharp, impaling eyes which meet Parker’s gaze in the mirror. His mouth capable of yawning open to the size of his head, sharp teeth like daggers meant to devour. They sink into his skin and shred his soul. He isn’t able to mourn his reflection without Morvii, he wouldn’t recognize himself. He hopes to remember his sister as she was the day before. Happy, full of life, unable to fathom the horrors which only Morvii can show her.

On the fifth shuffle two cards fall out, The Creature and The Leviathan embrace one another and he can almost see Morvii’s claw marks upon the ancient cards. This game isn’t up to chance, but Morvii’s will.

Parker scrambles to get Mina from the throws of the ocean floor where Morvii has taken her to be consumed, to claim her soul as he once did him. As he has done to all of their ancestors before them. Morvii is more a part of them than their shared DNA, their blonde hair, or their brown eyes.

Mina’s body is limp and cold, foreign, heavier as if the weight on her soul has decided to weigh her down, to keep her in the depths of the ocean where she belongs.

When she begins to sputter and cough up water and seaweed, so does Parker.The sea goes still, the ocean itself pauses its assault on the shore. The two stare at each other.

No longer seeing siblings but seeing the lurking beast behind their eyes. They are a mirrored host, one in the same, never again to command their own bodies once they’ve played Morvii’s game.

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Chapter 2- The Ghosts of the Past

Chapter 1

This short story explores themes of corrupt governing systems, the fall of society, grief, and hopelessness. This was a project I did for my masters class, I had a lot of fun with it. I hope someone out there enjoys!

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“So shiny, so pretty,” Jacob’s voice taunts as I scrub the guts off of my boot. I roll my eyes.

My eyes scan Hollywood boulevard, its festering wounds in the buildings from missiles where the military failed to fight off the hordes. McDonald’s golden arches are dark and crumbling, an ode to the American dreams which was a nightmare long before the world fell. The iconic palm trees sag with their weight, no longer tall and neatly trimmed to give newcomers hope as they chase their dreams. Now dried blood stains the streets, the building faces. No one cared for the Kardashian clothing store or the Gucci purses when the world went to shit. I snatch up a chain linked bag and swing it over my shoulder as I whistle. Its green and red stripes overlaying the tan surly are an ode to how worthless luxury becomes when survival is the only currency.

A pack of coyotes, who I’ve learned are the true kings of Los Angeles, sprint proudly down the boulevard, signaling to me that the area is clear of rotters for at least the next quarter mile.

A laugh ghosts out of me—dry, unused after all these years. Hell, it’s been a year since the last time I spoke to a real person.

“Kings, huh?” I mutter, mostly to myself, mostly to Jacob. The coyotes vanish between storefronts, tails high, unafraid. They never are. They learned early what the rest of us took too long to understand: this city rewards those who adapt, not those who shine.

“Don’t get sentimental,” Jacob says, leaning against a burned-out parking meter like he’s still got weight, like his spirit still has a physical vessel. Like he’s still got lungs.

“I could leave,” I say suddenly. The words surprise even me. “Head east. See what’s left of Vegas.”

I came from Vegas, my world went dark in the city of lights. Jacob and I headed west to a boat or something that would get us off the main land. We hoped maybe LA fared better once we realized no one was getting on the military crafts and they were sinking civilian boats. Of course, LA did no better.

Jacob’s expression hardens. “And abandon your food cache? Your perimeter? Your safe zones and traps? All that careful little control you’ve built?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. The boulevard stretches ahead, cracked and empty, the stars in the sidewalk dulled by ash and time. “I at least thought I would be dead by now, through saving someone else, or in a hail of bullets… something! But this is so paradoxical.” I groan and kick a can into the gutter.

Sure I’m alive, technically. I’m breathing, but haunted. My heart beats but not living.

Jacob steps closer, his voice lowering, steady as a trigger pull. “You do not get to leave yet. Not today. LA isn’t done with you.”

Maybe he’s right, he always is. I turn back toward my safe zone, the Gucci bag heavy against my side, rattling now with two of my grenades instead of status. The ghosts follow me home, and I let them—because as long as Jacob and the rest of them cling to me, I know I’ll fight to keep my vessel here for them to cling to. As long as Jacob walks beside me, I remember how to survive.

A low groan rolls in from the east, carried on the wind like a bad memory. Then another. Then dozens. I freeze, hand tightening around the strap of the bag. The Coyotes are nowhere to be seen. A wild horse storms from the east where a parking garage looms. The horse runs now. Free of fences, traffic, and watchers in towers. Fascism had promised control, but control had devoured itself, leaving only empty streets where freedom returned in forms we could no longer recognize. Freedom has rotting legs and an appetite for human flesh now.

Jacob grins. “Showtime.”

I sprint down the street, a chorus of groaning and gurgling echoing from the garage. The sound is drawing more in. The rotters are in varying stages of decomposition, jaws hanging by tendrils of flesh, emaciated skeletons jutting through skin. This way, they remind me of the abandoned children the government demanded be birthed then left alone.

One loses a foot in a rusty storm drain in pursuit of me, he follows clumsily as do another handful as I sprint towards the parking garage. Drawn by noise, by movement, by me. Good. Exactly as planned.

The parking garage yawns ahead, its lower level shadowed and inviting. I duck inside, weaving past abandoned cars stacked nose-to-nose like a graveyard for what LA used to be. Over five years ago now. I bump into a car and a bobble head of a rapper nods at me on the dash. That rapper endorsed the regime in the end, he had a price they were willing to pay. A year later, he was then part of the “colored” people they hung publicly to scare other minorities. I scoff.

My trap waits patiently beneath the concrete—propane tanks wired together, a spiderweb of stolen detonators and scavenged military cord, all fed into a single trigger. It took me days to set it. Took me well over a year alone and 5 years since the world fell to learn it, to perfect it. The animal corpses I planted here this morning have attracted them, fresh enough blood to call them from their hovels around the city and in my safe zone. Which simply won’t do.

“Bit excessive, don’t you think?” Jacob says, though his eyes shine with pride.

“Overkill keeps you breathing,” I mutter, vaulting a guardrail and sprinting up the ramp. The rotters follow, feet slapping wetly against oil-slick concrete, bodies slamming into one another in their eagerness. I count them in my head, dozens behind me, more awaiting ahead as they devour a horse’s carcass. I pass them on the second landing, their attention turning towards me as they spit and snarl in my direction.

I recall what I learned, what Jacob’s years in the Navy Seals taught me. Distance. Density. Wind.

I sprint ahead of them, breathing heavily. My lungs get tired. Theirs don’t. At the fourth and top level, I skid to a stop and look back. They are a floor behind me, and pissed about it.

Now.

I thumb the trigger.

The explosion hits like the boom of an active volcano. Fire blooms upward, tearing through the garage’s belly with a roar like a god. Explosives and ammo are the only gods who remain.

Concrete fissures. Cars lift and flip like the toys my friends and I used to play with. The horde disappears in a storm of flame, smoke, and pulverized steel as the lower levels collapse inward, swallowing the dead in a grinding scream.

It reminds me of the footage that was released of the controlled detonations in the twin towers on 9/11. No one was shocked to learn that it was planned, many people speculated it. The dictator’s regime used that truth to justify his murdering and cleansing of the American people. “We’ve always used population control, we’ve always bled our own in the name of growth.” I spit on the ground.

Finally, the shockwave throws me against the wall, knocking the air from my lungs.

For a moment, there is only ringing silence as my eyes fight to refocus. Dust falls upon my shoulders, the steel beams still holding the garage up, despite it being gutted now.

I slide to the floor, chest heaving, laughter bubbling out of me before I can stop it. It sounds wrong. Broken. Helped along by the ghost crouching beside me.

“Still got it,” Jacob boasts.

I take a later and jump down to the ground, I stare at the ruined garage. Taking in the space where the horde used to be. Efficient. Brutal. Empty. The same words could describe my life now.

“I at least thought I would be dead by now,” I say quietly, staring into the smoke, “through saving someone else, or in a hail of bullets… something! But this is so paradoxical.”

Jacob doesn’t answer right away. When he does, his voice is softer. “You’re alive because you know how to be.”

“Because you taught me,” I retort.

I stand slowly, brushing dust from my jacket, and sling the bag back over my shoulder. Somewhere, coyotes howl their approval. The dead finally stop moving. I should head back toward my safe zone, even as my feet itch to wander farther, because the ghosts of the past aren’t done keeping me alive, and I’m damn sure not ready to lose them yet.

I glance down to find my little sister, Sienna smiling up at me. Her small hand reached to grip mine. But I don’t feel her, and she doesn’t speak. She never does. Somewhere behind me, my fiancé, Trevor, looms. He died via hanging when the military lost the fight and rotters became the majority. The snapping of his neck in that noose ensured I would never love again, never kiss anyone again, and I would never hold anyone again. No one was made for me the way he was. Now he haunts me and he doesn’t speak either.

His ghost sports the marks on his neck the way Sienna and Jacob’s ghosts have bite marks from their cause of death. I frown and look away.

Hours pass as the sun inches down in the sky, I snack on homemade jerky which keeps me alive.

“You’re outside your zone,” Jacob warns.

“I know,” I say.

(Art by Nele-Diel on Deviant Art)

This flash fiction piece is for flash fiction February. To be submitted to The Writer’s Journey. I thought it would be fun to dive into some lore from my new book, The Executioner Prince, which releases in April!

When the Isthryen began clawing themselves free from the earth, Rigel Lomatré stood in awe. His armor was crafted for every muscle on his toned body. His long sword held firmly in his grip, he did not waver. Known in the common tongue as Unseen Hunters, they emerged from the ground and set upon their prey with lightning speed. The Isthryen’s gnarled limbs twitched and cracked as they dragged their mutilated corpses forward. They were legion, an army of corpses spelled to end Rigel’s Rebellion. But this was more than a rebellion, this was a reckoning. Rigel knew that when he saw him that his rage would be wholly all consuming. Because in the end it always came down to Phoenix Shadowfall, Prince of the Shadowed Depths.

The severed eyes corded together around the necks of the Isthryen spoke to the lives they’ve claimed, spoke to the magic imbued in their very bones. Stolen magic from the arcanists they’d slain. Rigel sneered.

“Bow!” A roar floated over the crowd of Unseen Hunters and they did.

It’s a voice that Rigel would know in the deepest pits of the underworld, he’d know it deaf, he’d know it on the brink of death.

It is said that Phoenix Shadowfall’s horse halted mere yards from Rigel’s own, and Rigel’s soldiers erupted in screams and growls of hatred for the Stygian Prince. Rigel’s horse gave a threatening chortle as it stared into the black eyes of Phoenix’s horse.

Rigel ordered his soldiers into silence as he took in the sight of Phoenix, his dark hair falling in waves around his face, panting out puffs of breath into the cold morning. Rigel could remember those tendrils between his fingers, could inhale and still smell the sweet sinful aroma of him.

Months before Prince Phoenix Shadowfall raised the Isthryen to put down Rigel’s Rebellion, the two of them had been…

“This ends here!” Phoenix boomed and the Unseen Hunters seemed to double in number, crawling from the backs of their kin.

Rigel didn’t falter, his second in command blew a horn and their forces came from the wintered woods, surrounding the mile long horde of Isthryen.

“Clever clever thing,” Phoenix pitched his voice to Rigel so that only he could hear. It was a caress against the shell of his ear.

“This does end here, Prince,” Rigel smirked.

Phoenix had more than the Isthryen, his knighthood loomed in the center of the mass of rotting bodies. Ensuring he was protected even amongst his summoned creatures.

When Rigel lowered his banner and thrust it forward, a storm of rebel troops released arrows as dozens charged at the enemy forces. Rigel took a step back as the bodies charged around him. But he never broke eye contact with Phoenix.

The heated eye contact as snow and ice cascaded around him was not unlike the look Phoenix once gave him as Rigel held him tightly in his arms. Fierce determination, hatred, need, admiration, all merging as bodies clash and fall. All in the name of this love which was cruelly destroyed and denounced.

After the two were found out, Phoenix’s claim to the throne as heir was in jeopardy and the King demanded Rigel be hunted down and executed. It was only natural that he fell into the rebel factions looming in the kingdom, which he already dabbled in.

That didn’t matter. What did matter was when Prince Phoenix stood upon the dais and denounced ever caring for Rigel. When he endorsed the execution of Rigel Lomatré before the entire kingdom.

That was six months ago.

Rigel had spent six months hiding, planning, killing, and inching his rebellion ever closer to ending Prince Phoenix. The wretched boy he fell for, the Prince who broke his heart.

Blood splattered against his chest, through his helmet. He cut down soldiers and Unseen Hunters alike with a rage only extinguishable by the death of Phoenix. Or perhaps the taste of his love upon his lips once more.

No.

Rigel roared as he separated the head of an Isthryen from its shoulders. He reared back and kicked a royal knight in his chest, sending him into the arms of other knights who were advancing on him.

“Vyrketh,” Rigel hissed the spell and sent dark jagged spears of dark magic into them. They rose from the ground and impaled three of them. Others stumbled back as Rigel raised more jagged stone pillars of dark magic from the ground. This pure form of dark magic laid waste to hundreds as the battle raged on.

Phoenix used his own Stygian Magic to end rebels in droves.

Both Rigel and Phoenix fought through lives and bodies and blood and hell to get to one another.

The screams consumed the disgraced lovers as bodies knocked into them. Rigel didn’t take his eyes off of Phoenix who was now draped in the blood of the rebels and lavishing each kill. Prince Phoenix loved his kingdom, he would die for his kingdom. There was once a time where Rigel thought they would always choose one another, would run away and be free. Because Phoenix never wanted to lead armies into war. He wanted to prevent them. And yet, and yet, and yet.

Phoenix drove his sword into the throat of the rebel standing between him and Rigel just as Rigel gutted a knight which stood in the space between, too.

When Phoenix’s black eyes met Rigel’s blue eyes, the world around them seemed to stop. Bodies fell in slow motion, swords stopped mid clash, the clouds held their breath.

They bared their teeth at one another, panting through the adrenaline which drew them closer. Love clung to their souls like blood to their swords, not quite able to be washed clean by hatred.

So when Prince Phoenix whispered the spell that changed everything, the world remained frozen for another moment. The snow remained still in the air between the two as Rigel inhaled in shock, his eyes blowing wide with realization.

It started within the recesses of his body, solidifying his organs, slowing his blood. There was an impossible weight inside of him. Rigel tried to scream but his vocal chords stilled. He watched Phoenix wrestle with despair.

“I once told you that you were mine forever,” Phoenix whispered.

You’re not killing me, you’re keeping me! Rigel realized.

A dark graying color crawled over Rigel’s skin, his grip turning to stone on the hilt of his sword as the magic worked through him. He panicked, he tried to scream, tried to move. But there was no use, the Prince was turning him to stone.

Phoenix stepped closer. Close enough that Rigel could see the tremor in his hands. Close enough to hate him for it.

Rigel wanted to shake his head, to call down the Titans, to curse himself for hesitating to kill Phoenix. Curse himself for still loving him as he turned him to stone.

The sun reached its apex in the sky as Rigel Lomatré became frozen in time. A possession for a selfish Prince who meant only to own him.

Rigel Lomatré was not slain.

He was preserved.

Rigel’s Rebellion was lost that day, and after ten years Prince Phoenix Shadowfall took the throne.

At the base of the dais stood the stone statue of Rigel Lomatré. Paintings which depicted him in battle, portraits done by artists, and sketches done by Phoenix to immortalize him hung within Phoenix’s bed chambers.

The throne room stood tall in a palace dedicated to the Lomatré name. Where temples were erected and Rigel Lomatré was named a demigod, servant of the fallen Titan Xeusis who bestowed the arcanists with their powers.

King Phoenix Shadowfall’s reign became irrevocably attached to the love of Rigel Lomatré, immortalizing him. Rigel’s perfect beauty became the paragon for men. Women fawned over the demigod who belonged only to King Phoenix.

Phoenix would die of old age, alone is his bed with only the ghost of Rigel to keep him company. Servants recall his last moments spent screaming Rigel’s name, driven to insanity by his deed, after a life spent failing to free Rigel from the stone.

Chapter 1- World in Ruin

This short story explores themes of corrupt governing systems, the fall of society, grief, and hopelessness. This was a project I did for my masters class, I had a lot of fun with it. I hope someone out there enjoys!

They were quarantined for five months before they were wiped from existence, or so we thought. The method used to change them was highly debated, but to me they’re just dead. The whole walking around and trying to eat me thing aside, they’re dead. I still can’t bring myself to ponder whether or not they felt pain or knew what was happening to them in their last moments. 

The day society deemed elders over 70 to be a nuisance, a burden, still replays in my head. It all started so slow. We all thought that the control over us would stop at ending abortions but they just kept going… 

No abortions. No birth control. Women couldn’t work. Immigrants gone. 

Once sprawling farms that fed our people rolled into wastelands, essential structures caved in from lack of upkeep, disease picked populations off slowly after the CDC was dismantled. It was convenient enough, The Department of Public Purity was able to run their little experiment on the outcasts of society. First elders, then the disabled and the immigrants. How horrific it was when we thought they were being taken to their deaths. What a blessing that would have been. 

Society began to crumble under the loud mouthed dictator who collapsed the economy in the name of hate. “Drill baby drill’ became ‘kill baby kill’ under the Department of War which was carefully puppeted by The Department of Public Purity. 

The memes. The memes were funny. We could share and repost and laugh with our friends until our cheeks hurt. The whole time, the joke was on us. That loud mouthed dictator coined The Department of Public Purity as a means to rid his country of anyone who wasn’t white, young, and able to keep the money flowing to the ruling elite. It wasn’t until years later that we learned that their experiment was meant to alter genes and make ‘lesser humans’perfect. If not perfect, then they would manufacture them into soldiers capable of completing the dictator's conquest in other countries. 

We all laughed at the surplus of memes that came out when he, the homophobic ruler of the ‘free world’, had actually had sexual relations with a former president. I chuckle to myself, softly, still able to remember parts of the joke song called ‘bubba’. I clamp my hand over my mouth as a rotter stumbles past the broken down car I’m hiding in. 

Next, the social security well ran dry and prices were too high for us to save money and that didn’t matter because we were aging too. 

We worked 80 hour weeks just to pay our way to keep a roof over our head and rations in our stomachs. We watched the clocks tick by on our loved ones until they were harvested. We stood by, filming, while masked men zip tied children and families. Only to throw them into vans, for them never to be heard from again. We tried to believe they were being deported. 

We watched that same clock count us down to the same fate as the streets crawled with starving people, abandoned children, and violence so sinister that blood spatter became part of our clothing. And this was BEFORE the rotters were set upon us, while the dictator swore into his third term, while breathing through an iron lung. It was so awful that it was funny at the time, but we still found ways to laugh because he refused to ban our social media apps. 

Amidst it all, forced birth implemented on an already failing society was the final straw that collapsed America. But we weren’t allowed to call it that in the years that birth rates spiked and laboring mothers died in droves. 

The tides turned when the dictator died, no longer kept alive by artificial means. Something collapsed, something got leaked, a rotter got out… we still don’t know which thing happened first. But Dictator Jr. was giving the State of the Dominion Address when the room was swarmed on live TV with snarling rotters who overtook them so quickly that they didn’t have time to be ‘the good guys with the guns’. 

Rotters began crawling from the sea, from underground tunnels in LA, from military bases, and in Atlanta where the CDC once operated.  Thousands of seniors, immigrants, and disabled people turned undead poured from the labs, poured from holding as if someone simply flipped a switch. Someone learned what they were doing, learned about the army they were building. Somebody had enough. Somebody decided America needed to collapse or it would never heal. 

I’m drawn out of my reflections when the car begins to shake, signaling a horde of rotters charging down what used to be Hollywood blvd. Fuck. I cram myself into the floorboard of the aging vehicle, certain that the stinking pile of rotter guts I put in the front seat will conceal my scent. These fuckers have heightened senses, I’ve learned that living covered in dead rotter parts is the only way not to be tracked. That moving in silence keeps me safe. 

“You’re not light enough on your feet!” The ghost of my best friend Jacob reminds me. If he were alive today I would gloat that maybe I am. 

Then comes the familiar survivor's guilt which is apparently normal according to the psychology textbooks I've read over the years. Access to UCLA’s library certainly has its perks. I have the knowledge of multiple degrees under my belt at this point. Not counting my official Bachelor's in Forensic Science which I credit with giving me the stomach to deal with this shit show. 

The love of my life, Trevor, who I was set to marry, didn’t have the stomach for it. He took the quick way out when it became clear that the military failed to fight off the dead. I found him hanging from the rafters of a grocery store we were squatting in. That’s how I learned that dying of natural causes does not turn all of us into rotters, only being bitten does. I couldn’t save him, or Jacob, and I definitely couldn’t save Sienna. 

Sienna. 

Boom.

Boom.

Boom. 

Some of the dead beat against the glass. Decomposing skin sliding from their knuckles and palms. My heart lurches, a familiar thing now. Not because I am afraid of death but because I am hard wired to stay alive, despite my boredom of it. The prospect of another long lonely day stretching out before me has me pushing the car door open, opposite where the two rotters are beating on the window. 

They’re stragglers, at the tail end of the horde. I twirl the longsword in my grip and whistle to get their attention. Festering flesh drips from bone, blood turned black oozing from their mouths. Their clothes are tattered, torn apart by the years and the attempting decay of their bodies. They growl and stumble around the car. 

I engage the one who must’ve been a middle aged woman first, her hair might have been blonde. It's lifeless and dull now, matted and dirty. She swipes out at me with those deadly claws, I jump back and drive my sword through her abdomen. I sense the other one rounding the car. 

One step. 

Two. 

She struggles against the blade, trying to free herself of it. It won’t kill her. I hold fast, keeping her still. Then I kick my leg out to send the other rotter tumbling to the ground. His flesh squelches against my foot, depositing guts over my boot. I sigh in annoyance.

I sneer at the rotter who is dragging herself closer to me down the length of my longsword. Go for the brain. I pull out a dagger and stab it into her temple, her blood shot eyes go wide and then vacant. Was there even anything behind those eyes besides an animalistic need to feed? 

She slides back down my sword and hits the ground with a wet thud. The male, a young male by the look of it, pitches himself up on all fours and crawls towards me. They’re faster this way, as if animalistic instinct has begun to change their bodies now that their brains care not for the pain of the maneuver. His shoulders are definitely not properly in their sockets as he clammers towards me. I decide not to waste any bullets and jump sideways, lobbing his head off. He collapses and I find myself underwhelmed once more. 

In my master’s of English class, I was asked to write a vignette. A vignette is described as an account of a memory which evokes strong emotion. I wrote the way panic disorder feels ~

Alas, Another Ending - Luden Gray

My brain knocks against my skull, desperate to get out.

Thunk, thunk.

The world swims as my eyes try to find a beacon.

My heart plummets from its home in my chest cavity, plopping between my feet to make a home in the softened earth.

My tears drench soil, spill soul.

Breathing becomes labored, lungs fill with sand.

Glass shards in my ribcage to bleed me from within.

I am ending.

The earth is reclaiming me, roots crawling into my nervous system to make me tellurian again.

Rabid vines take control of my fingers, my limbs, creeping along beneath my skin as foreign species.

The buzzing of a thousand bees rattles my bones.

I am drawn into the cold yawning maw of the planet which gave me, which bestowed me this fractured soul.

Drug backward just as the sun nearly reached me, falling into an expanse which seeks only to reclaim me.

Against my will I keep digging. I keep clawing at the earth in search of something that I must of forgotten. My temples pulse and squeeze as I strain to remember what was so damn important under the ground.

Digging.

Digging.

Digging.

“Riley?” I jump at my manager pulling me from my thoughts. “You’re zoning out again.”

“Right, sorry,” I push my glasses back up my nose and refocuse the eyes on the screen.

For a brief moment a harrowing glimpse of myself, half decayed and screaming in the rain flashes before my eyes. I jolt back in my uncomfortable office chair and attempt to clear my vision.

In my peripheral I see the decaying me, digging.

Digging.

Digging.

When I turn my head, the image is gone. I choke back the bile rising in my throat.

Always digging.

What am I looking for?

I regard myself in my sleeping computer screen, a ghost of who I once was. My hair is too long, too dry, my lips cracking. I don’t remember the last time I washed my face because whenever I find myself starting a task I end up digging.

I stab my nails into my thighs in an attempt to settle myself in realty.

Numbers dance on the screen, they’re meaningless.

Nothing means anything anymore.

The hair on the back of my neck stands at attention. Sensations of a spider crawling across my spine causes it to stiffen.

Suddenly it’s dark, I’m not in the office anymore.

My hands are raw, cracked, bleeding.

I’m digging again.

I’m losing time.

I can’t focus on anything but digging.

I pant and heave from the physical exertion.  Please.

Please please.

I just need to find it.

Find it.

Find what?

I pause again and wipe the remains of drool from my chin. A mad man.

“Riley?” A hand on my arm.

My eyes blur into focus.

“He wants his dada,” a beautiful woman’s hands me a small child.

“Huh?”

She smiles warmly and leaves me with the tiny stranger. I’m in a living room I don’t recognize. Surrounded by photos I’m in that I don’t remember taking.

But this-

I crane my head towards the mirror, aged thirty or so.

I was just 16.

I was digging.

Then I was 21.

And I was digging.

“Dada?” The child touches my face.

Dirt crumples from me onto his small hands and his face twists in confusion.

Then I’m sinking.

Closer closer closer to the ground and I’m bent over a hole and I’m digging. Crying, and digging.

Digging and crying and my nail beds are peeled back and I’m in agony but I have to find it.

Please.

I smooth out the walls of the ditch around me. But I haven’t found it yet.

So I keep digging.

Then the rain floods it and I dig again.

And I keep digging until my knee caps deteriorate from kneeling to keep this ditch from disappearing.

I don’t want to lose it.

“Riley?” I start.

The same woman from before clasps my hand as I stare into our backyard. She rocks in her chair, the one that matches mine.

I don’t remember her name but,

she hasn’t been digging.

She never digs, it’s just me.

While I was busy digging, she was living and the smile lines frame her mouth from years of laughter. Crows feet and wrinkles frame my eyes from the agony of searching. The agony of digging.

I step off of the porch.

If I could just keep digging.

I’ll find it.

It’s there.

It’s always reaching, always calling out to me.

Dig dig dig.

I toss the shovel aside, certain I’m getting somewhere.

Then finally.

Finally.

I stop.

On a harsh intake of breath, my final one.

I stop digging.

Do I get to live now?

The realization hits me.

It’s like a fresh breath of air.

I had been digging my grave all my life. So certain that something was there.

Something was coming.

Something was hidden.

Something was just about to happen.

So certain that something was there.

Then, there he was.

He stood before me, an all consuming presence that had promised to make my acquaintance eventually.

I found it, I found him.

The antithesis of the gift of life, the price we pay to live.

I dug long enough and I found him waiting.

He embraces me and leads me into the deepest most comforting slumber.

I’m done digging.

It seems I found what I was looking for. This time, no one snaps me out of it.

A stone slab marks the grave in which I dug. I don’t remember being a loving father, son, or husband.

I only remember digging.

The Smell of Death - Luden Gray

My mother collapses on the floor as her claws dig into my arm. The air is filled with what I can only assume to be the smell of embalming fluid as I stare at my little brother’s lifeless body.

Stiff, cold, on a hard wooden table with a blanket draped over him. I’m aware of nails in my skin somewhere in the back of my consciousness as my mother vomits all over the floor. Her screaming is a roar in response to her only sons body. That scream is primal, world shattering, unending, and the very essence of pain given life.

My brother used to jump when my mother screamed. He doesn’t now.

His fingers don’t interlink with mine. The cold chills me the bone and I trace the Y incision beneath his shirt where they tore him open for answers. Answers that wouldn’t come.

The scar on his thumb is there from us playing as children, from measuring tape that I released for a laugh.

I nearly touch that scar on his lip. From the day he learned not to kiss feral cats.

I can see the glue keeping his mouth closed, sticky and shiny over that familiar scar. If that same glue wasn’t keeping his eyes closed, I fear the absence of soul in his brown eyes would strike me dead.

I inhale deeply.

Vomit.

Glue.

Embalming fluid.

Makeup.

I sniff again.

Death.

That smell is death.