| Deviant Login | Shop | Join deviantART for FREE  |
Take the Tour  |
It starts with a flash-bang and a Majulahi.It starts with a flash-bang and a Majulah9 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
June's hauled her here again and
she's tapping at my classroom window,
A gazillion tiny fingers rapping in succession
(When she said "invitation" I didn't realise she meant
soaking half the country, the spike in umbrella prices has
nothing to do with me)
What's worse than an impatient child
is one with the whole atmosphere as her battering ram
when she tries to say something the urgency brims over
and one million exclamation marks
is beginning to sound like static frazzling
out on the pavements
ii.
She is without choice: when Cloud mother tips her out
she must go, and go she will
caught in an obtuse cycle, fought over
Russian RouletteThey take her on her honeymoon.Russian Roulette9 months ago in Short Stories More Like This
The wedding was lovely, or as lovely as it could have been with a couple that were more polite acquaintances than anything else and two sets of in-laws as stuffy as a dusty pile of money. They grab her when she sneaks out for a walk one night, two men, beefy, not even bothered to arm themselves. Her last thought before the bag is shoved over her eyes is to wonder how much this would ruin her parents' plans.
She comes to in a small brick room on a sallow mattress, windowless and lit by a cool yellow lamp. There's a man there, standing just outside the barred door.
"Kelly Shale," he says, voice nasally, greasy
Down By The SchoolyardThere is a rather cliched phrase that states that some people live double lives. I have always found that to be an intensely misleading statement and I guess you can call it a bit of a pet peeve of mine. No one leads "double lives", they just lead fucking lives. That those lives are more complex that the singular one-track existence of lesser creatures shouldn't be a matter of duplicity, but of common sense. No one is exactly who they seem to be.Down By The Schoolyard2 years ago in Flash Fiction & Vignettes More Like This
Julio is one of those who they would later say lived a double life, but it is no more true for him than anyone else. The difference in this case is that there are two of him, rather than one.
Perha
of the ground-of the ground1 year ago in Short Stories More Like This
It was Sunday night when Geo climbed into my room from the fire escape. I was painting my toenails and listening to the sounds of the city: police sirens, pulsating bass, the kids in my tenement running guitar riffs back and forth with the street musicians on the sidewalk. That was the year I turned sixteen and took a two-month vow of silence to honor the death of autumn. A premature snow had robbed the season of its delicate warmth and color, forcing the maples to weep their leaves into the gutters. All that rainwater, all that decay. How could anyone create when October was dying outside their windows? Pete and Jake practiced acoustic th
On my way homeBy Romy LaraOn my way home9 months ago in Stories & Vignettes More Like This
I exit the studio, sighing at the sight of the sun quietly hiding behind the trees and buildings. Turn to the right and keep walking. Cars are passing by, people in black suits get out from the nearest buildings; none of them care about their surroundings. I lift up my head and notice in big steel-letters the name of the company that owns that peculiar orange building in the corner of the street. It's the first time I see it. The sky is painted blue with some dabs of gray, just as if somehow the color of the concrete street had been absorbed by the clouds.
Behind me there's a couple discussing something about a house. She doesn
Sforzando Magnificent, imposing shadows towered over the winking lights of the city; even in the late twilight hours, the noises of the bustling metro exploded into the colourful night. Patches of light from streetlamps and back-lighted signs broke up the shadows haunting the streets. Amid the luminous message boards advertising new brands of deodorant, Diamond Shreddies, and fast food chains, a woman with a mask of cold beauty gazed impassively across the city, her long dark hair seeming to sway in the wind. Her unmoving gaze fixed itself upon the silhouettes moving below, small nothings in an immense world.Sforzando2 years ago in Short Stories More Like This
Down in the heart of the city, people se
comfort, crawfish boils, and port vincentand you and me, we got the whole ofcomfort, crawfish boils, and port vincent1 year ago in Free Verse More Like This
Saturday, you and me, we got car grease
streaked straight up to our grins and
let's high five when you triumph over
mom's sneaky nose, her teasing and coy and
i wanna be that kind of wife to a man
like you. i wanna be the kind of woman worth
changing with, sacrificing for, going crazy
over as the years collect in bank rolls of nickels.
i've been called a menagerie of names by
the older, the wiser, the wrinkled; they
call me pretty girl, sweetheart, dollface,
sugarplum as i stir splenda into their
brewed coffees, but they ain't got nothin'
on your horse master hands, the ones that could
Talking to YourselfWind drove snow over the trees with such force they seemed to step into the distance. The whiteness in the air covered everything until it was as faded as an old scent trail after a rainstorm. The snow was already deep enough to suck in a man's leg past the knee if he wasn't wearing snowshoes, but the figure trudging through it was no longer a man.Talking to Yourself10 months ago in Short Stories More Like This
Wendigo had given up on snowshoes long ago in favor of simpler footwear. The straps challenged the clumsy fingers of his stolen human body, and he could never figure out how to move in them without tripping. He lurched onward with the tenacity of a wolverine gnawing through an inch of deer skull t
The PullWhen I was younger, someone showed me a video game—too weird for me, but it made her laugh, and she was pretty. You played as this little guy with a squishy hammer for a head, and you rolled a sticky ball around in front of you. As you rolled it, things got stuck until the ball was gigantic. And then... I don't know. I don't remember the point of the game, nor do I remember the name.The Pull7 months ago in Short Stories More Like This
But that image comes back to me every time I am anxious. I am that little person running around, pushing a ball, and things stick to it. Only they aren't cows or trees or parts of buildings: they are things that make me nervous. The attention of people. My
Changing GearsMy morning oats taste particularly bland this morning. I look outside the clouded windows and see the city across every inch of my vision. Buildings of all shapes and sizes are formed from copper, brass, and iron. At all times of the day, the city's Gears are churning.Changing Gears9 months ago in Short Stories More Like This
The Gears are the machines that run the city, the country, possibly even the entire world. Metals are formed together to form them, robotic men designed to replace our government. Their voices boom over the industrial noises of the factories and drown seem to drown out all individual conversations. We're free, I suppose, but they all say that there was once a time when freedom
The Waste WorldShe said create the world, so I did. I made it dark and dusty, coughed up from my own black lungs. I gave the trees an ashen hue and the ground a color to match the starless sky. The creatures were murmuring oozes, globs of drying acrylic that inked across the orb of my bubbling imagination.The Waste World8 months ago in Flash Fiction & Vignettes More Like This
Repulsing, it was in fact the product of an industrial mind. I was born from man's smog goddess and, if memory serves me, her breath was laced in exhaust which I inhaled nightly with her songs. She was soothing and complacent, her voice smokey like a hazy bar. No one could deny her features were hideous beyond belief. Her skin dripped pollution like morp
WhitewashWhen you're five years old you set a promise in the dark, your sister's ice-queen eyes witness. Millie is sitting straight-backed against the headboard, face wide and earnest, and it seems as if the world has heaped itself on her shoulders, or maybe it's the strangeness of midnight.Whitewash3 years ago in Short Stories More Like This
"We can't make our wills or anything like that until we're eighteen," she says fiercely. "But I might forget this by then."
In later years you will find time to reflect that you're not as whimsical as Millie; young, you only think then that you could never forget something this important. But you can't argue with the three-years-older she holds above your head (
They Also Serve Who Only Stand and WaitI don't know when we first went underground. I don't even know if it was one mass exodus, a swarm of mankind trickling through the earth's crust so vehement we carved our own caverns by the force of trampling feet, or whether it was a gradual process, perhaps even a repetitive one, a family here, a neighborhood there. For all I know, the echo of the damp subterranean machine has always reverberated off the cave walls, created long past by the Angels, who think of our well-being even while they shake their heads helplessly at our flaws.They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait7 months ago in Short Stories More Like This
They say that those who remained on the surface were raptured away in a great flash of light, like a millio
Old Radio StaticIn the aftermath of the failed attempt, Sasha M. went to a bar on Strawson St, where she ordered a pint of its toughest porter and slouched into an empty booth. Whenever one seemed to encourage a refill or a food order, she shot the server a scathing look over her smartphone. Between these forays into doing business, Sasha sighed and pouted and occasionally played with the ring on her left middle finger.Old Radio Static9 months ago in Flash Fiction & Vignettes More Like This
'Inside the bar, a dusky light blah blah blah,' she thought.
After a long half-hour in her own, admittedly poor company, she left the booth with an irritable energy, also payment and a bad tip.
Close to the door, she heard: "You buy one dr
Night Chaser02:37am 22nd July - depart from London by commercial jet, business class.Night Chaser10 months ago in Short Stories More Like This
00:53am 22nd July - arrive in New York an acceptable 7 minutes behind schedule.
Slaying an archangel is hard work. It takes a great deal of study, picking your mark, separating fact from legend, learning your target's tells and vulnerabilities. Even if you succeed, and when I tore Gabriel's crystal heart from his open chest I became one of the precious few who have, there is still the matter of retribution. Angels never forget the death of one of their own, and a legion of these creatures now wait to descend and deliver their vengeance. My only sanctuary is the night.
MeanderingHardly a mountain, though on lowering days its head sits wreathedMeandering1 year ago in Free Verse More Like This
By the mists of a passing front, aged and befogged as bygone elders
Doddering about – before there were names for the malaise
That hazed their thinking
And from this modest crown there slouched and sloped
A long shoulder, meandering down to meadows below
Pausing now and again to coddle a pleasant hollow
Casting a sloping pitch – enough to rush a torrent
After a sudden shower
Seldom pooling
Its glint and glimmer burble among the stones
To join a rill and plash and swirl and putter about a root
It's there I'm apt to wander
Not much of a path, hard passed a
Whiskey Laden DreamsBitter eyes and tears might taint a drink, but sitting in this bar alone with your stool pulled out next to me, and the Martini poured regardless of your presence still brings a smile to my face; despite the taste. I'm having a whiskey myself; dry. Yes, I know I don't drink, but every once in a while you need whiskey to solve an intricate problem, and mine is the distinct lack of alcohol in my life.Whiskey Laden Dreams1 year ago in Flash Fiction & Vignettes More Like This
There are people everywhere and it amazes me how none of them are you, from the woman in the black dress coming down the stairs to the signing couple in the corner, laughing silently. They're not you at all, and that's what's amazing – in an
Wonderland Syndrome Ch.1Chapter 1Wonderland Syndrome Ch.11 year ago in Introductions & Chapters More Like This
----
"Cheshire-Puss," she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider.
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
----
Rain was getting through the window of the motor car. Auntie didn't bother to do it up. She just kept urging the cabby man on.
Her daughter was possessed by the Devil himself if ever she saw it. Oh her poor sister Jessamine. If only she could have seen the way that girl cried and begged them not to take her baby sister away. Bless the girl.
B
The Doppelganger 2The book still sings to me, and that's when I pull it from under my bed and stroke the cover. But I never open it, because I know what happens if I do it wrong. It's still blank; but only of ink. I know the secret, you see. It's how I understand the songs, and know the melodies it echoes up to me, through time. There are impressions hidden in the pages- spilled mead and raucous laughter, summer sunshine and frost on dead leaves. The last time I tried feeling them from start to finish, I passed out from the sheer weight of knowledge, and it left my brain scrambled for ages.The Doppelganger 28 months ago in Flash Fiction & Vignettes More Like This
I found out things about my past and my family's past. I have Irish o
The Green of my Heartbeats5: Red, rude, a bully.The Green of my Heartbeats9 months ago in Stories & Vignettes More Like This
She was bored, propping her face up on her palms. Her teacher, high-voiced and chirping in fuzzy green flurries, was writing rows of sevens on the board. White chalk. The sevens were glimmering in turquoise, and she smiled.
Sevens were nice, friendly. Seven would never eat nine. Nine was just a baby, like her brother at home.
She was only five. Fives were bullies, nasty. Bright garish red, like B. B was red, but he was not as rude. He forgot things though. Like his keys. Impatient.
She sighed, her head slipping and resting on her wrist. She could feel her pulse on her cheek.
"Seven!" said her teacher, continuin
The Price of Dying“I want to be interred after I die,” Mr. Peters said. He made that clear to his family while he was still lucid, before old age and illness rendered him unintelligible. Seventy wasn’t that old, but he recognized the symptoms that were creeping up on his ailing body – the aches, the fatigue, the feeling of helplessness and despair. Despite his daughter’s attempts to assuage his concerns, he sensed his own mortality.The Price of Dying8 months ago in Short Stories More Like This
The worst part about dying, Mr. Peters thought, was what happened afterwards. Even since he was a small boy, he had been afraid of fire. He could never forget the scorching heat of the orange flames searing his skin, the dark billowing smoke entering his nostrils. The time that his house burned down, the fire almost took him with it. How ironic then, to escape the fire only to be fed into it after death.
So one day, he sat his son and daughter down after dinner. “I want to be buried whole,” he said, emphasizing the
What I Know of MadridI dream of MadridWhat I Know of Madrid2 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
Because I know nearly nothing about it
Except that the heat is tangible
And sits in a layer beneath the skin
And the sweat of the heat is silk
I imagine it tastes of honey and wine
Except that the churches are tall
And God still has a fist of gold
Just as he has a palm of silver
Shaded in the vaulted arches of another age
The cheekbones of giants holding up the world
There the air smells of musk and incense
That has long since been swept away
By the wings of the doves that dance where the choirs sang.
Except that the nights are long
And the golden lights filter across the water
Like a sunset sleeps on the sil
Sta.sh
