Author / MNK

by MNK

An Ardent Longing for Something Lost

It’s raining. Of course it’s raining. And the leaves on the trees are whipping around wildly, a discouraging sight from the bedroom window. Because the rain is a melancholic reminder, unsure if whether revising the memory is even a decent idea or not but definitely out of the question if the wind is strong enough to sting and jolt and leech the warmth and happiness from the skin.

Rain is a romantic backdrop, and most importantly a terribly cliche yet worthwhile foreground. And tied to an open wound of a memory only serves to make it depressingly peaceful.

“It’s nice,” she says. She likes the rain, too. Standing in it together with neither coat nor umbrella just served to strengthen that endearing moment. There are so many of those moments tied inexplicably together, where every breath, blink, and heartbeat is unabashedly wonderful, a shameless smile. A bond. To be with a woman that never ceases to amaze is a truly remarkable life.

The rain. The idea deserves a conclusion but it will never achieve one. The rain is an ache now. The story, a counterpart in its opposite, longs for a sequel but it was retired far too long ago. The wind is biting and the rain is a whisper, an intimation. Going out would be an unpleasantness, and now–today and tomorrow–perhaps it would be better to stay inside and close the blinds.

by MNK

Like Waves

“I just…”

“What?”

“No matter which way I look at it, I don’t like it. Not one bit.”

“I know. Neither do I.”

“You had a choice.”

“Did I?”

“I… I don’t know.” He leaned back against the rail, blinking against the ocean wind and staring st the waves crashing and leaping over the rocks. “I guess not.”

Silence, save for the seagulls squawking on a distant shore.

“You don’t have to smoke those things anymore, dammit.”

“It’s an old habit, Jack, I know.” She was squinting. She didn’t like the taste these days, but she breathed it in anyways. The sea breeze snuffed it out, so she brought a lighter to its tip, cupping it in her hands, the tiny flame brightening her face like candlelight.

None of this should have happened. The ocean waves like slowing heartbeats, slower than a breath, slower than death, the birds screeching far away, loud as whispers but not unlike the voices in his head full of doubts, of fears, of sadness and a quiet pain that would sooner wait until the waves had stopped beating to come closer and say something before it was too late, because the smell of tobacco was a biter memory before they held hands and it was only getting stronger, coming back as though someone was pulling the floor up to his face really fast. And then it was over.

“I should go.”

A pause. A deep breath. Like the waves.

“Will I see you again?”

She flicked the cigarette on the ground. She thought she had wanted it, but she didn’t. She wasn’t sure.

“No, I don’t think so.”

by MNK

Senseless: Chapter 0 – Part 2 of 2

Looking for Part 1? Click here to start at the beginning!

The weather on the other side of the continent was a dreadfully dry heat. The dust that swarmed and gnashed at his eyes and whipped at his coat choked him with a nasty, intense fervor. The only available helicopter he could charter was an ancient, noisy machine so the travel was a rattling and hard-endured mess. By the time they had landed after hours in the sky the Doctor was shaking and cursing. It wasn’t any better that he had to ride passenger with the veritable corpse of the woman he most despised.

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by MNK

In Limbo #1

No one wants to be at this point, here in writing limbo. School has picked up again, a certainly interesting affair that prevents me from doing the things I wish I were doing. I would like to continue to churn out the lives of Sapphira, Ryo, and with the most recent short story slowing down, the trauma-stricken Katherine. It’s been far too long since I’ve made a post, but I must persist in the promise that I will make something new soon, along with a post from some of my older materials.

I am somewhat hesitant on discussing the further details of life as I find them personally unbearable from a stranger’s mouth. I do, however, think it is important to recognize and allow others to recognize the problematic points that really affect myself and very likely countless others.

I am not special. I’m a human amidst humans. I am not special. The work I can do is special, is unique, and runs of the risk of becoming something horrifyingly extraordinary. I go to school, I clock in at work, I greet people with smiles but that does not make me stand out. The things I can create have a footprint. They are digitized and in readable ASCII and hopefully will be on readable paper, the kind that eventually emits a pleasant smell to the reader. You can’t smell a computer screen.

The point here is being so focused on the trivial things, the things that no one will remember, least of all yourself. Creation is the greatest gift to others. Practiced creation is the greatest gift to yourself. It begets both failure and accomplishment of the most memorable degree, and without the former there will never truly exist the latter, because true success is a learned tool. The trivial things can wash away this principle in a mudslide of melancholic misery, as it has for myself. I find the memory of most days erased by the next sunrise. I find the thought of celebrating every New Year’s Eve wondering just what the hell I did for the last 365 days absolutely appalling; if it can be boiled down to a handful of rudimentary habits and routines then why am I still here?

There needs to be a purpose.

I would like to go further into the subject at a later point, and I do sincerely apologize for the stream-of-consciousness style writing. For now, I’d like to leave it as-is, and perhaps think about committing some effort to writing a pseudo-philosophical piece on the subject in the future. In the meantime, farewell!

by MNK

Do Not Worry, Child

The hundreds, the thousands, the tens of thousands, the million billion trillion people that flowed around a singular child, a fawn in the midst of indifferent predators, blank faces, or—more repugnant—ignorant faces, men and women, young and old, people of an assimilated culture raging with helplessness more stupendously weak than the child that as such was ignored, left alone, eyes yet growing wide with realization that there was no soft hand to anchor the self to, no smile to greet, no leg to wrap one’s arms around, no maternal voice to sweeten one’s ears, no tens or hundreds of points of comfort that barricaded off that swell of pure emotion a child was painfully capable of.

Fear.

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by MNK

Fall – Chapter 1

What is this story about? Read an overview for Supaku! and my other upcoming series on the Series Overview page, and stay tuned for more!

 

A lone figure staggered across a flat expanse of barren land with an absurdly drunken gait. The light of the moon was obscured by dense fog that had drifted in from the nearby sea. Broken brick pillars pockmarked the boundaries of the visible landscape, dirty relics of an unforgivably harsh new world. This was an old industrial district, once full of rumbling machinery belching black smoke. Steel beams protruded haphazardly from piles of blackened rubble, some of them half-melted, bent or shattered, and it was likely that many were covered in dried blood from the First War, untouched and frozen in time.

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by MNK

Smoke

The wood-plank walls seemed to reflect none of the dim orange light as the sun itself dipped below the horizon. Thick clouds of cigar smoke pockmarked the barroom air, drifting lazily around their owners, themselves leisurely arranged around the room in forest-green booth seats with their men of business and their women of pleasure. Though divided, each group of suited men reflected one another, revealed how fundamentally similar they all were. The look in their eyes, these pasty old men and their decrepit culture, and the clench in their hands said nothing of the flair and royalty each and every one believed themselves to have achieved. They were relics, not in the sense of a new generation’s rise but in the very simple fact that from the glare of their eyes was primal fear as they watched their miserable end walk into the room by the front door.

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