You need to have a plan to deal with terror

When Ben was afraid at night he'd sleep on the floor of his closet to fill the void there. When he crawled out in the morning his face was dimpled from laying his cheek on the carpet. His legs would wobble with pins and needles since he had to bend his knees at an odd angle under the winter coats just to fit. Considering the kind of man he became I think it's funny that as a child he was desperate to become his own monster.

gore

When she woke up, with the sheets all covered in blood she knew something was very wrong.
But the real question was...where was the rest of the dog?

The night the metal heads shattered the window.

By the time he arrived it was too late. The plasic solo cups were strrewn about the living room and the place stank with the acridic air of burning cigarrettes. Pushing his way throught the crowd he searched the living room's bumping and grinding bodies for his pink haired roomate.
"Elise! What is going on?"
She turned, smiled and appeared at his side on a wind of burbon.
"It's a party, dumbass."
She handed him a flask. He looked around and realized that he was in a sea of people that he couldn't escape and that he would never be able to get out of his house. He took a swig.
"Atta boy! You'll have fun."
Suddenly she made a ridiculous face and gestured double thumbs up as if she were the Fonz.
"I'm gonna get you laaaaaid!"
Nicky sighed. This was going to be interesting.

Crinkly Roses

The flower, the last he gave her, dried to a crisp long ago and spun in the bud vase from the draft coming in from the window. She was waiting for it to fall apart. When it did, maybe her heart would stop breaking.

disfyn-shui

the cookbook rips in half
a break in the heretical text
allowing the real question to slip away
like a rat through a crevice
bones chatter
and night blooms, a black flower
damask prints, and missing links
this house is a tomb

A mayfly really in the grand scheme of things

Sitting wrapped in her towel she tried to remember a time when she didn't feel trapped in this old house. It's gingerbread trim and bright colors should have inspired some other emotion, but it didn't. When passersby would stop to talk about the towering Victorian's history her mother would gladly oblige with dates and the names of previous owners, but to Alice she felt like a brief blip in the life of this house. A fly on the wall, and it made her queasy and produced feeling of unwelcomeness. When she was little she would pretend that she was a princess in her turret room. The days of such imaginings were gone. She counted the days before she left for University.

Chlorinated

The corporate courtyard fountain re-pumps it's water again and again in an endless loop. People ask me again and again if I'm OK, if I'm tired. Yes, I am exhausted. I am that cheap concrete fountain, recycling old joys in a glass cage courtyard. The water, stale and septic, reeks of chlorine and prays for rain. But even this water will evaporate, and I too will return to the lakes where I belong.

Monday, June 23, 2008

There was nothing left. The houses had crumbled. The streets had grown over with weeds, their winding tendrils reaching over the tar that had become sticky under the sun. The corpses had long since rotted away, the bones bleached in the sun. The silence was unending and thick. There was a sickening wet crack and a tree crashed to the ground. It proved beyond any doubt that a falling tree makes noise, even if not a soul is alive to hear it.

prelude to a massacre

Her boots were dusty and her jeans were dirty but that wasn't what told sam she was from a place far from here, or no place at all, it was the top of a tattoo that peeked from under the back of her shirt. It sat there, calm, and half hidden, but there was no mistaking the shape. On her skin sat a cathedral window, but instead of depicting a bible story each window had a symbol he had never seen before. He followed her into the gas station's little general store. People opened up to him easily, he could get her to say something. But he was dead wrong...