A Little About These Stories

I don't really think the profile boxes allow for a suitable description for why I've started this blog or why I've posted these stories. First, I have had a passion for writing since...grade 10 I think. It's been with me for so long that I forget when it dawned on me that, "Yes, this is what I want to do with my life." It's also been rather blinding as well, because ever since that time, I've never wanted to do anything else. There's a problem there, for I'm sure everyone knows by now, writers never make money (at first anyways). But then again, that's never been the driving force behind what I do. 

Anyways, I've been writing for quite some time now, always showing friends and family and professors my work and getting positive feed-back from them. And while that's all well and good, I find myself constantly seeking something more. So I started this blog, posting some pieces I've done over the past few years, looking for comments as well as critiques on my work by complete strangers. Because, in all honesty, if I ever do published, it will be people much like yourselves who will be reading it. So I have resigned myself to the greatest distributor of information: the internet. 

The short pieces I have submitted here, are, more or less, experiments. I am relatively proud of them, but as always, I know they can always be better. Basically they are here to represent my style, and to present to you a look at where I would like to go with my craft. Even if these ones are never officially published, they serve as, what I think are, decent examples of future projects I'm hoping to expand upon. So enjoy these, or don't, but please let me know what you think! Thanks again for visiting this blog.

  

One Breath

            “He has an incredibly active imagination,” Senan remembers people saying. “Really, quite extraordinary.”

            He never acknowledged the comments as they were usually directed toward his parents. Instead, Senan was content to play with his toys; plastic figurines of his most favourite and detested comic book characters. To him, they contained more life than the whole of the world.

            “You know,” they’d say, “it’ll be children who someday discover the secrets of the universe. Them with their little sponge-brains.”

            “He’s our little angel,” his parents would respond, but the bruises tattooed across his body said otherwise.

            Most nights, when they weren’t yelling at him, his parents yelled at each other, screaming blood and fury from whatever room. Senan had become expert at drowning out the noise by playing with his plastic heroes, but sometimes he was dragged from his world and into theirs, with all the anger and the hitting and the crying.

            One night, in the middle of some wonderful dreamland, a scrape-shattering crash echoed up and down the hallway. Senan’s eyes pulled him awake in time to see his father burst like thunder through his door. The calloused hand of a carpenter grabbed a fistful of hair, tearing him from bed.

            Tears ran down Senan’s face in buckets. His mother was curled and twinkling in a sea of broken mirror.

            “Here, take him!” his father bellowed. “Go ruin someone else’s life!”

            “Fuck you, Dave! You knew I wanted the abortion!” she shrieked.

            Back and forth the two of them went, declaring to the heavens how much they didn’t love their son. And when Senan’s father started to breathe fire out with his words, he raised his hand, poised to strike.

            Senan snatched his favourite figurine from the floor and squeezed his eyes shut tight against the coming blow. He thought of the places he was happiest: his sandbox, his closet, his dreams. He imagined his world devoid of fear or suffering, a world of make-believe where all the ghouls and demons couldn’t reach him—a world without them.

            An unusual state of hesitation hung in the air; his father’s fist never waited this long. Senan opened his eyes just a slit, fearful of what he might see, but when the room came back into focus, he was at a loss. Like all those tacky wax museums that showcase serial killers and war criminals, his parents were stuck-fixed in time, frozen in rage.

            Senan tried to stand but everything felt slowed down, as if the air itself had been injected with morphine. He spacewalked over to the angry statue of his father, its arm cocked for violence. Once within reach, Senan poked at the body to test its authenticity. No sooner did he make contact, a sudden rush of sound grew louder and louder all around him. He pulled back, fearing he’d done something wrong again.

            Senan watched in disbelief as the walls and the furniture began to trickle apart like dry sand. Next went his parents, from head to toe, turning into scattered specks of themselves everywhere. Soon the floor flowed away beneath him, dragging Senan down, down, down. As he flailed to find something solid to keep himself from being dragged under, the sky cascaded toward the Earth, swallowing it whole.

            It was his breathing that Senan noticed first; his own in-and-out, in-and-out. When he looked about, there was nothing. Although this place was neither light nor dark, he could see, however not on account of his having eyes. He wasn’t sure if he was standing or floating or both. It was as if he existed within a single breath—a child’s breath.

            And in the palm of his hand was a grain of sand, glistening like crystalline.

            “Hello,” said Senan to the glistening grain.

            “Hello,” it responded.

            “What’s your name?”

            “I am Universe.”

            “Oh. Would you like to play with me?” Senan asked.

            “I would love to.” 

Creationism

            It all started rather innocently—these things usually do. Like early man, huddled staring into a fire, families gathered around the first television. The picture moved and danced before them in a dozen different greys. Later, channels upon channels of screen-people were invited into homes everywhere, joining men and women for dinner, after work, into their bedrooms.

            Conversation was first to suffer as people began talking in jingles or quoting their favourite shows until eventually no one had anything else to say. Phone calls and doorbells went ignored, then stopped ringing altogether. By dark, the streets emptied of children and traffic; they all sat bathed in prime time, eyes glazed red.

            A trance soon fell upon the world, and they called it Love.

            No one paid any attention to the masochistic outbreaks that swept through neighbourhoods, cities, countries, and continents. Men were thrusting bloody holes through television sets everywhere, glass and plastic castrating them on the pull-out. The women went around wrap-filling themselves with cables and cords. They switched the tvs on/off, on/off, shocking their insides. Charred bodies smoldered at the side of the street; gore clogged the gutters.

            In the midst of committing these horrors, a husband and wife gazed into each other’s eyes. Their naked bodies ravaged with cuts and burns, they hobbled all broken, staring and staring, while their memories faded.

In one last desperate attempt to reconnect, the woman began tearing the flesh from her man’s neck, nails peeling back, breaking off. He didn’t struggle—even lifted his chin to allow her a better angle. She tossed his head aside, letting it roll unceremoniously down the curb and placed a nearby television atop his gushing carotid. His body stood in place, occasionally twitching at the joints, his new face blank.

            A minor improvement, the wife thought. But something’s missing.

The plug dangled somewhere around his kneecaps, blood dripping off its copper forks. She lifted one side of her husband’s boxy head, trying to keep it from slipping. And like a child peering into a cookie jar, on her tippy-toes, she proceeded to jam-hammer the power cord down his neck, vestal and open. When it could go no further, the woman freed her appendage.

            “I didn’t know it was your first time,” she said, picking fleshy pulp off her arm.

            A moment later, her husband’s face flickered to life and she clapped with glee. The woman ran her fingers over the flakes of static, zaps like pinprick trailing her stroke.

            “Oh, darling!” she exclaimed and jumped into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist. Her breasts pressed up against his electric stubble, prickling her nipples, and she writhed with a razor pleasure. Reaching around, she massaged him inside her, saying she wanted to feel like a woman again, to feel alive. And when he finished, not even the Devil would want them. “When we’re through,” she told her husband, “we’ll show God his perfect little world.”

            She said, “Let’s destroy His children in our image.”

He curled thick fingers through her hair and yanked back hard. She smiled some toothy, drool of a grin, legs still wrapped tight over his hips. She felt him reach upward, his hand clench-digging into her neck like wax.

And she spat, “Good boy.”

They declared, “Let there be darkness,” and the world twisted itself into a frenzied madness. The two went forth hand in hand, spreading The Word like a disease. Soon, the heads of God’s creations choked the oceans dry—mountains of skulls that rivaled Everest. An entire race of abominations took the place of humanity.

Tele sapiens wandered the barren landscape aimless, unless they were fortunate enough to come across another of their kind. For days a pair could stand facing each other, switching stations over and over until, eventually, they would part ways. Although it wasn’t long before two complete strangers crossed paths and played nothing but re-runs. Disheartened, they flicked to static and remained there forever.   

Desolation (a segment)

           I remember them saying – as people do – “We’re very proud of you, Jes.” Dust blows in from the concrete gates, filling each word with sand. Everyone’s hands pressed together, all nodding at me, saying, “Very proud.” However, not many show up for the Prophet ceremonies anymore except the elders.

            Really, this isn’t so much about faith as it is population control.

            The town of Tsol lay somewhere in the heart of what we call the Atlantic Desolate, a desert waste-scape that was once home to a vast ocean of water. Myth and legend tell of great adventurers who sailed across it in search of land, or wars that saw worlds of men campaign among its waves. Magnificent creatures as such the world has ever seen swam above the very spot in which I stand. But now, in the age of Post Light, everything exists in story-tales, and soon, so will humanity.

            One of the elders, a frail, hunch of a man, shuffles over to me. The tattered rags he wears that might have fit him when he was younger, they sag and droop like the rest of him. Lips pulled underneath themselves, his face cratered with age, he says, “As a Prophet of Tsol, your journey represents our very survival. Should you return, Prophet, paradise shall follow.” 

            It’s not so much a journey as it is a funeral; a glorified good-bye.  

            For years, the Prophets of Tsol have been selected via lottery by the elders and ushered out into the Desolate with nothing but a fond farewell. Disguised as the saviour who will guide the people of Tsol to a new source of water, the Prophets are never meant to return. The Faith has become an excuse to preserve what little drink there’s left, by reducing the demand.

            Two other elders take my arms and lead me closer to the gate, swirls of sand nipping at my cheeks. Behind me, the hunched one raises his palms high above his head, crooked fingers spread wide as he recites:

Souls of Tsol, rejoice!

The Prophet has arrived

to guide us and protect us.

To stave off the Light

that ravaged the world of old,

and breathe a garden of life

within the grains of our Great Desolate.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

            By the time he’s finished, the massive doorway is already being cranked shut between us, gritty whirlwinds traveling up my pant-legs. A chest-thundering explosion of rejection echoes in my ears as the gates seal closed.

            I feel less like a Prophet than I do abandoned.

Death in the Land of Paintbrush Voices

I tell the detective sitting across from me it’s a great icebreaker: for sure, the perfect party trick. Do you want to know the colour of your voice? I watch him scribble it all down, s-y-n-s-t-h-s-i-a, and under-lines it twice.

He spells it wrong, but I don’t tell him that.

“And you didn’t see anything?” he asks in spring green.

Someone once told me cops repeat the same questions over and over, just in different ways, to see if your story ever changes. Like getting interviewed by a new employer, or screening to adopt one of those baby Chinese girls who all get thrown in the garbage, everyone’s always looking for your lie. The problem is most people make up their minds about you within the first few seconds.

“No,” I say. “Nothing.”

“Right, you ‘only heard his voice,’” he quotes me from his chicken-scratch.

I nod.

How my condition works, some people call it a gift, unique. It’s tough to explain, but I hear things a little different than most. To me, the sound of people is colour, and its spectrum is endless. The moment someone begins speaking I see: coagulated red, or coral blue, or reaper grey. On occasion I get stripes, sometimes patterns, but so far no voice has ever looked the same as another. 

I once had orange strobe violent at me while listening to the eulogy at my aunt’s funeral. With eyes closed tight, I bumped my way through the circle of family and friends, faces all leaking wet, gasping and murmuring as I stumbled past. Afterwards, when the priest made his rounds offering pulsating condolences, I threw up on his shoes. Everyone thought I was possessed or on drugs or sex-crazy (really, they’re all the same). That was a singular instance, for sure the most bizarre. However this one, the incident involving the murder and the voice and the crying out, this is by far scariest. 

Inside a pub called The Rye Fox, it’s mid-afternoon and only three people sit hunched over their beer. The air is propane stale; a smoky ozone curls above me, staining the light bulbs all nicotine. I don’t come here for the conversation, and it’s the closest place that doesn’t promote karaoke. That place people always mistake the front door for the back so never go in, that’s usually where you’ll find me.

The bartender speaks in charcoal and looks almost as old.

I place a twenty underneath my glass, water sweating a ring over some historical icon, smiling and proper and dead. It’s time for me to go, so I head to the washroom. The porcelain and tiles I’m sure used to be white at one time or another. Taped to the wall, in marker-thick letters, a sign reads, don’t eat the urinal cakes – management. When I don’t see any, a shudder travels down my spine.

“Look, mister, money’s in the register,” charcoal words fogging my eyes.

And it happens; gunshots blast-rumble from inside the bar, shaking me off balance. I crawl across the moist tiles and press my ear to the door.

“Where am I?” the voice asks, but I see nothing. No colour, no fancy patterns, no polka dots or strobing priest talk.

Nothing.

“Where am I?” I hear again, followed by the bartender’s “Oh God, oh God, oh my God.” He begins rambling some kind of prayer, I can’t make it out, but it’s flooding my eyes grey. Another shot rings fire, and the bartender is gone, colourless, leaving me alone with the void approaching my door, step by thunderous step.

Whispering, whispering, the transparent voice is muffled by my breathing. The air fills with consonants until it sounds like a form of tongues, a curse that keeps my hands and cheek glued flat against the bathroom door. Dull metal slides heavy across the outside and holds still at my ear.

Listening, listening.

“Where have you been?” voice asks. “Do you think you can just walk away from me? You think you’re the one who calls the shots now?”

The gun barrel grinds in half-circles, drilling a divot into the soft wood that stands between us.

“For sure, you are mistaken. There is nowhere you can go that I cannot follow. Embrace me. Embrace yourself.”

Something in that voice, a haunting familiarity, compels me to clench the brass knob at my waist. Slow but unafraid, I pull back. The bar opens before me transformed, an archipelago of blood dotted with islands of brain and bone, empty of life.

“And that was it?” the detective across from me asks. “Simply lets you go?”

“I suppose so.”

He scribbles some more on his crowded sheet of paper. A moment later another officer pokes his head inside the interrogation room and says, “Sir, you’d better come see this.” His words are injected with crystalline purple.

“Alright,” he motions me to stay.

Before he leaves, he stops and turns; an inquisitive look paints his face.

“Out of curiosity,” he pauses. “What colour is your voice?”

My voice? I wonder.

“Shit, never mind,” he shuts the door behind him. “What the Hell’s going on out here?” comes a yell from within the precinct.

What colour is my voice? I’m paralyzed in my chair. How should I know?

“Where am I?”

I hear the voice, however, I cannot see it.

    

Sity

            My agent tells me to start off by apologising. He says, let everyone know you didn’t mean for all this to happen. The standard song and dance for people like me, I suppose. You offend some obscure religion; apologise – most will forgive you once. Single out some minority struggling against their oppressor; apologise, then attend counselling. My agent says this one’s a bit different though, “sensitive,” I think he says. It’s not a matter of wording; that’s not the issue. He just hopes there’s still someone alive who will forgive me.      

            And I can’t help but laugh.

            The truth is I don’t want their forgiveness, your forgiveness. This isn’t a confession, an excuse, or a cry for help. All the blood water-falling down sides of apartment buildings, clotting the storm drains. Moans keening up and down every corner of the city like some super generator. This is people’s own desires and obsessions revolting against them.  

I don’t know why they’re acting so surprised. You can’t expect to turn someone into everybody’s pretty little fantasy and not have it tear reality to shreds.  The same as if God were to come down and say, “No, look, you’ve got it all backwards.” They did it to themselves.

Any time there were plagues or locusts or floods was because people pissed off their one big celebrity.  The one everybody read about; gossiped about. Now, gods are created every day.  All they need to do is have an over-developed sense of fashion, adopt a few starving children then leak a sex tape.

So here I am, watching the rivers turn red with my agent in the background, his tie twisted loose. With one meaty hand down his designer slacks he says, “They love you, Bryn.” The smell of his sweat gives me a funny taste in the back of my throat.

“Tell them you love them back.  Say that you’re sorry.”

Where I am, my mountain. Mount Bryn. A heap of wrecked television sets with people hobbling around crags of broken glass and plastic, all screaming up at me. All screaming my name. 

I’m not sorry, I say.

My agent, everyone calls him Ran, his breath quickens behind me as we both listen to the pained calls from below. Fuck me, Bryn they cry. These days, no one feels truly accepted until they’ve been penetrated.

Harder! Harder!

Ran fists his pants, going faster-faster.

            From up here even the city, Sity; its skyline lower than eye level. Smoke rises from buildings outlined in flame, but not a single fire-engine wails its siren. Streets are ambulance absent. No one here helps.

            No one does anything but moan and bleed.

            Naked.

            This looks anything but sane. Zombie orgasms whenever I hear my name echo inside Sity. This is only the beginning, the first act, the teaser trailer. Now it’s all up to them, down there. Fucking holes through all their television sets, computer monitors, and laptops until there’s nothing left.

            Building me my mountain.  Mount Bryn.

            Make me beg! I hear now, followed by a muffled grunt.

A pair of a/v cables stick-twist under my feet as I turn. My eyes do a back-and-forth before settling on Ran, on his knees. I’m squinting, asking, “Did you just grunt?”

“Sorry, Bryn. I have to.”

Turncoat.

            People will probably worship my mountain centuries from now. They’ll cover it up with sod, all that flesh and glass and plastic, and name it some holy shrine. Those who climb it shoeless run the risk of contracting a disease, but they’ll go anyways calling it a prayer walk, a pilgrimage. With fresh cuts on everyone’s feet, they’ll celebrate the mass rape of mass media. stis turn into the new stigmata.

             My face, my body, I see them burnt-faded in the hole-punched screens around me. Like the aftermath of Hiroshima, walls stamped with the shadows of dead people, I’m frozen in time. Ran’s staring at my reflections, breathing heavy.

            Pull my hair! Slap me! I’m not paying attention.

            Glass digging, knees bleeding, he can’t stop himself.

I don’t do anything.

The thing about modelling is, sooner or later, it’s all you can think. Your whole life becomes a series of snapshots, like: here I’m born, or here I’m happy. Here someone says my face belongs on magazines. Portfolio memories that shape you into some imaginary picture-person until you forget everything else.

Here my agent is dumping me.

His face has this mid-coitus confusion, eyes rolling and bulging. Convulsions snap him forward every few seconds. He’s close now.

And when Ran’s done fucking my reflection, like everyone else down there, fucking my image, I’ll know I’m alone. When his pants are filled up all sticky white, everything will change. Because what happens in Sity, never stays in Sity. It infects and multiplies, leaving nothing untouched, no one unaffected.

Here I’m wondering, maybe I should watch. Maybe seeing my agent spit drool and lick his lips over the fantasy he helped create will complete me—as a person. Maybe it’s the least I can do, but I don’t.

I turn and stare at the fires and the screaming and the flowing blood. I can hear Ran suck in a lungful of air, beating the insides of his pants like a dirty welcome mat. A gurgling cry erupts, punching its way from the pit of his stomach. The sound of glass chalk-boarding against his knee-caps.

And I tell him we are all of us, Gods sex tape.