“Justice is lost on the weak. What good is recompense to an open wound?”

I’ve still been doing my art journal sporadically.

“Are you a Target or a Shield”

Dreams (Short Story)

Dreams are funny.

You can gulp down a flask of spirits and find out it’s more Spirit than fermented vegetable. You can feel yourself explode like Mr. Hyde into a monstrosity that is both strong and impervious to damage.

Then, towering over them and no longer a passive target, you can find the ability to resist. To act as more than a shield with which to absorb their moods. You can halt the lash before it lands and you can scoop up your brother and run and run and run. Until whatever fleeting magic had possessed you passes and still you run.

Feet bleeding and swollen, heart still stuck in your throat, brother still clutched to your chest.

But dreams are funny.

So he turns to ash in your arms and you freeze, collapsing to your knees, as the whirlwind of carbon you thought was your brother swirls away back towards where you came. You do not look back. Even so, you watch in shadows as the ash joins something Else. Something larger and more sinister. Something that raises goosebumps over every inch of you until the dark ooze begins to snake around your person and choke off your airway.

Something that doesn’t quite feel banished when you find yourself gasping awake.

Silence does not become me

Bad habits die hard. I fence with my inhibitions, I test their guard. I always lose my ground.

I lose confidence with every step. I more I care, the more I back away. The weaker my voice.

I don’t know how to come to terms with the fact that we’re over. I began and ended the happiest days of my life these past 5 years sleeping next to you. I miss you.

I wanted a different future. One with you in it. Now I don’t know what I want. I’m sitting here wondering what I possibly could have done any differently. It hurts, but I don’t think there is. I needed you. I needed your support and attention and interest. I needed comfort.

I’m almost scared to remember all of the joy we shared. The good memories. The cute things. I don’t want to bid them farewell. You meant so much to me. You mean so much… if I take the time to recall everything good about us isn’t that admitting it’s over?

I left the door for you and me open but… you’re the kind of person who would lock it shut. Even so. No matter what the future holds, the miserable aching fact is that we are now in the past. We are no longer a present experience. We are no longer growing and changing and able to form new and precious memories.

I can’t flop onto you and cuddle. I don’t have to keep my phone on silent to not wake you while you sleep. I can’t take comfort in you anymore. I can’t reach out with a thought or a touch and know you’re there for me.

It seems like such a small thing. But the effect is profound. Your existence was… I was wrapped up in it.

Nymph (Short Story)

Water comes in so many forms.

It is the gentle fog at the moment of predawn. It is the fat droplet of rain, and the soaring clouds they come from. It floats down in frozen flakes that washes the world into a glowing wonderland. Sometimes liquid falls so fast and cold it turns trees to glass sculptures. Water can flow as a bubbling stream or the gentle waves against sand.

In abundance, it is deadly. Expansive and endless oceans full of more unknowns than certainties. Only contending with the liquid component, as opposed to the life it boasts, begs more stamina than most human bodies possess. This would only be possible during a rare placid moment. Not when waves surge to over 30 feet and rain pummels the surface. Not even the shores are safe, ravaged by typhoons and hurricanes and tsunamis alike.

She screams rage and destruction as easily as she provides a gentle healing caress. Her moods are mutable but visible. She shows her feelings openly and honestly. If only you know how to read the signs.

Water comes in many forms.

I love her in them all.

Run. Flee the wilderness.

Permeating…

Let me show you the darkness that smothers my light. A show and tell of my soul. I wonder if I would still be beloved by you after that. I flee because some demons are too much for even me to face. And I’d show them to you. You, who claims to love darkness and yet you shy away from it at every turn.

Darkness is where passion consumes you. Pain, pleasure and desire rule you. Can you even understand such chaos? Have you ever seen it? Sensations which defy reason and burn past all defenses. The thrill of contradiction. Have you seen the Monster within yourself? Have you met your Id?

I ask these questions whilst restraining mine. Sometimes I don’t know if I’d rather drown in the darkness or continue my desperate clawing after that glimmer of light. I don’t want to take you down with me, see?

You can’t know how deep the rabbit hole goes so you wouldn’t know not to follow me until it was too late. You were almost free. For all the selfish reasons in the world - I am relieved you stayed.

You chose this because you tasted Pain. I could have told you the Truth that didn’t benefit me: that the Pain would ebb. It may take many months or even years but it would ebb. Then you could move on and find yourself properly. But I didn’t. Instead of spoke of my own passion, my own pain and my own desire. I let you shackle yourself to me without fully informing you of what that means.

Keep Out/In (Short Story)

I paint the walls that shield my soul. I cover them in rainbows and sunsets and all the beautiful things that I cannot see. Gossamer strands of light to give off the illusion that I’m not really trapped at all.

For walls do not discriminate on what they keep out. To be fair, some days it feels like it’s more for what’s kept in…

I have worked up a rapport with my demons. I call them by name. The lesser ones I even feed from my palm from time to time to abate their cravings. To make it easier to keep them all at bay.

Maybe that’s what healing is after all. Taming the beasts that haunt you, learning to live with them. Maybe banishing them is as much a fool’s errand as trusting the ones who made them.

Maybe the walls are never meant to come down. Maybe I’m meant to climb up.

Form/Flee (Short Story)

I cannot erase the hands that touched me, no matter how many I cover them with. It is no longer enough to run away. I have surrendered so much unclaimed ground because I never felt safe enough to lay down roots. I have lost so many points of contact because they could not hold on when I had to let go. It is no longer enough to stay silent. Between my tongue and my fingers something needs to be said. Words bring form to thoughts, and only once my monsters have form can I hope to slay them.

I am not sure how I can stand my ground. I am not sure what noises I can make. It is time, however, to find out. I will craft my armour from the purest of truths. My words can make a lash or a lance or perhaps another shield.

It is not enough to flee. It is not enough to run. It is not enough to bite my tongue and bury my fear and let myself be pulled back when I have strayed so far away. It is not enough to run where They can reach me.

It’s not enough…

Can I do anything but?

Illusions (Short Story)

Fog in the middle of the night is like entering another realm.

The moisture hangs in the air making it pregnant with possibilities. The only clearly visible thing remains the stars. Everything else is obscured in water and darkness.

Each breath feels heavy. Each sound is enhanced. The world, decypherable in vague forms and eerie noises, brims with magic.

Faeries become real. Hills whisper your secrets to each other. Every animal trail is a path waiting to lead you away from this mortal world farther, farther into the mist. Farther into the veil between our worlds. A veil so close and thin that it manifests as droplets in the air.

Temptation acts as an intermediary, soaked into the very mist you breathe.

They say that in the rules of the fey… partaking in food or drink from their realm is the equivalent of signing over your entire existence to them.

… does breathing count?