Suddenly, through the cracks in the asphalt, paving and brickwork: water. It’s raining upwards; the city is crying. Drowning me and everyone like me in its tears. My hair, my clothes, my skin: soaked. My eyelashes beaded with droplets. You can only write when you allow the world outside to slow down, because as it… Continue reading Journal Sequence #11: Remission [Appending]
Tag: creative writing
Flash: Machine in the Corner/Claws
I “But is it really so bad?” I almost leapt out of my seat at the sound of the voice, coarse and familiar like a long lost grandmother. It was, of course, my moon-self (as opposed to my sun-self, which I worship most often). Sun-selves are all about action and light and focus. Moon-selves are… Continue reading Flash: Machine in the Corner/Claws
Journal Sequence #10: Desktop Sunshine [Exit]
Self-indulgence is a dirty word, and yet we are expected to know who we are. Is it feminine to write the personal? Tear everything up, Kafka said in his diary. And I hear him loud. Ash takes my head in his hands. He is naked. I see his tattooed arms and his slick hair. He… Continue reading Journal Sequence #10: Desktop Sunshine [Exit]
Journal Sequence #9: There are Snakes Inside [Dreamframe]
But there are snakes inside. One coils ever tighter around my heart and laughs. Another guards the rib cage, all smug. Another shoots venom into my gut. Another squeezes its head into my skull and talks to you through my mouth, my eyes. My breath, my only weapon. Exhale. Expand. Robots, the lot of them.… Continue reading Journal Sequence #9: There are Snakes Inside [Dreamframe]
Journal Sequence #8: Terrific [Runes]
The journal is the writer’s sketchbook. Document what you see, rough out whims and fantasies. Allow fragments and the poorest of punctuation. Allow any form whatsoever. Allow reality to melt into fiction. Stop thinking about how this will be perceived. There is no observer. We are only waves here. The dark-skinned lady with her bald… Continue reading Journal Sequence #8: Terrific [Runes]
Glue in the Head
Stuck. Looking at the manuscript. Not in detail, just the mass of it flat on the table. 74 pages of Calibri Regular, unevenly spaced. Sheets of notes torn up and spliced in with sticky tape. Hand-written jots in the margins, sometimes spanning pages, the only indication of place given by asterisks and little numbers in… Continue reading Glue in the Head
Flash Fiction: Metal Box
I’m in a metal box. It’s raining outside, maybe. No one is coming. Not ever. Sleep provides a refuge in which mind becomes one with its habitat. But I must emerge. The jewel is coming. I buzzed her in. Soon she’ll enter between the bars across my window. I selected her from thousands of possibilities.… Continue reading Flash Fiction: Metal Box
Micro Fiction: Cursed
And the world fades away, and I find myself curled up in a nest woven from straw that encloses me all the way around. There’s light coming from somewhere, because I can see. Outside? What’s outside? I’ve a feeling I have never known. A friendly echo, a hum. A message carried upon it that I… Continue reading Micro Fiction: Cursed
Micro Fiction: Elbow
You need the drugs, as it turns out. You need them to make the world shine, to show you it’s more than a three-dimensional dump. You need them so you understand – truly understand – that the fourth dimension is you, your mind. It’s what brings everything to life. It’s what makes a pedestrian crossing… Continue reading Micro Fiction: Elbow
Journal Sequence #7: Liminal People
What happened to all the moments in between? Surely in their darkness they hold the key to all this. Or have I truly moved from one scene to the next as though through a portal? Where do we go when we’re inside a portal? Where are we when we’re in between? We are liminal people,… Continue reading Journal Sequence #7: Liminal People