I sit high in the tree above the water. Watching. Bapa sits in his little green boat rocking gently in the water. The sight is a familiar one for me. I have been watching Bapa fish and gather since I could climb the tree. I close my eyes and listen. Bapa's voice floats through the warm sticky air and up to my perch in the tree. His voice is deep, warm, and smooth just like the water. when he is in his boat, I don't worry about him. Mama died when I was born and most of the time it...
Nothing here that means anything other than dust and time stretching out.
We are the expression of the infinite
The unknowable
Behind our eyes - depths unthinkable
ineffable
We are sons and warriors, clerks and middle men. Heartbreaking failure, transcendant triumph.
We crowd about this nothing, this dust shaped void. we are the forms and the edge of the void that is the whole.
We are singing you home.
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. It had been an hour since the torrential downpour started. It was only a matter of time before she realized that she would not make it to her own wedding and so she closed her eyes and concentrated very hard. Blood began to trickle from her delicate nose, sullying her piercing white make-up. As so, crows' feet around her eyes displayed her delicate skin underneath. The rain started to lighten gradually and the street seemed to get brighter second by second, inch by inch. The rain...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room. He looks like a nice enough fellow, but the last time I saw a stranger in that general location, I was dragged through the back of my closet into a magical world where the whimsy was spread so thick, I developed psychic diabetes.
This time, my uninvited guest seems to be wearing one of those hard hats with the drink holders on either side, and the tube that mixes the two. It has a logo on it, but I can't quite make it out. The room is too dark.
The figure...
The dream was better than waking. I floated, all the past troubles seeming to dissipate before my very eyes. Luke was nowhere to be seen, which was a relief, because in days past he had haunted my dreams mercilessly. I noticed that there was no one else in my dream, just a thick, white mist. Like a feather bed, i laid in the unusally substantial mist, in a mystical dreamlike state. I saw a shape, a dark figure coming through the fog. It was Nyxie, my facility director. Her red hair floated like me, but she kept to the ground....
I broke away from him and held my unbrella over my head as I walked, my head held high. "Erika! Erika!" I stopped in my tracks, spun on my heel and stared at him. "What?" He didn't move closer to me even as people jabbed and pushed past him on the street. The fresh raindrops fell onto my outstretched hand and created a gentle humming sound as they hit the ground around me. "I'm sorry. I never should have said that." He was right, he sure shouldn't have said that to me. But then... He just stood there, rain dripping...
I couldn't sleep with her next to me. The window was wide open, and there was something resembling a breeze rustling in through it, but the bedroom was stifling, and I could feel every molecule of my skin bonding inextricably with hers. I peeled myself away painfully, and she bristled.
"Where are you going?"
"Babe, it's hot. Really. I'm gonna go sleep on the couch."
"What's wrong with me? Why can't you just sleep on the other side of the bed?"
"There is no other side of the bed. There's no space to do anything but cuddle, and I can't...
They were back again. The Crasoons. And this time she was ready. Ever since they'd laid waste to her town, reducing it to wilderness in a matter of weeks, carrying off the wreckage with their dreadful claws, she had been planning. The white noise in her headphones would drown out their hypnotizing cries. She wouldn't go on a killing spree, no matter what the benign-looking destroyers told her. She was here for one purpose, the purpose she'd been training for for a year and a half: The destruction of the Crasoons. Her red shirt would lure them. And once they...
She could tell I was faking it. Every time I cracked a smile or choked out a laugh. All of it a fabrication to please the people around me. An attempt to lie to everyone, especially myself, about how screwed up my life really was, about how everything around me truly was going to hell.
When you've lost everything, why shouldn't you laugh? The bitterness of it is cathartic.
Yet... She stays around. Keeps an eye on me, noting my dulled eyes and chronicling every irrational action. Hearing the broken glass edges of my voice, seeing the glint of tears...
Dave turned the dial up to 11. Maximum. There were only a few seconds left until the next jump, he needed to be prepared. He rembered back to basic training, all you needed was to get your stance right, place your hands either side and...
The clackson pearced the air. This was it. The heavy metallic doors slowly collapsed revealing the dark bluish purplish redish swirling void that streamed past the opening.
Dave lept.