Category / Short Fiction

by MNK

Riftbreaker

The following is a small scene reconstructed from vivid dreams. I believe it has the potential to become a YA novel, if pursued.

Thanks for reading.

-MK

“Korinna.”

She materialized from the darkness in a cloak of heavy mist. Her skin was delicately pale, long white hair billowing lazily, and her eyes bore no pupil: only an eerie whiteness. Her face shone of a beautiful youth but the glow that enveloped her body spoke to an incorporeal existence, the torn wisps of a once stunning dress clinging to her body.

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by MNK

Y – dream

First memories were a strange and wondrous thing. They were blurry and distorted messes of collected images and thoughts and childish emotions. They were proof that the past was real, or was at least real to their beholder. It was a sort of validation, an invaluable Turing test of the psyche. One could argue against this praise of commemorated antiquity, but why would anyone wish to do such a thing?

Her first memory was the only proof her mother ever existed.
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by MNK

Close to Closure

It took two frustrated attempts to ignite the lighter, his hands shaking. The ocean air was too damn cold: he remembered it once as a peaceful sensation but now it just made him apprehensive, almost bitterly so. The flame caught the tip of his cigarette pinched halfheartedly between his lips, and died against the wind a moment later.

How long ago was it he started smoking? He asked himself the question without wanting the answer. He knew. He didn’t want to remember.

I wish you didn’t smoke those.

He turned his head and coughed violently, spitting the cigarette into the sand. His lungs were screaming in rebellion as they did every year, every time he came to this spot and inhaled that stupid, masochistic poison, and every time he hated himself just a little bit more because he didn’t want to remember.

And because he did.

Shifting footsteps and a red sunset and the feeling of butterflies and the sunkenness of a lost anchor, anxious hope and worthlessness. A thousand peaceful sounds time-locked in an overplayed memory. A picturesque romance typecast the enemy. A mistake.

The cigarette had gone cold but its job was finished. It was the smell and singular taste of sincerity. It was a sacrificial ritual in progress for decades.

He hated these fragmented thoughts.

What do you think you’re doing? Do you really think so little of me you’d make some stupid assumption like that?

I was just worried about you.

That’s a lie. You don’t get to barge into my life whenever you feel like playing lifeguard.

It was a punch in the gut, a lifelong fear. It had to be saved…

No, hey, I just want you to be happy. You know how I feel, you know I would never… never smother you.

Stop. You don’t get to do this. An exasperated sigh. He could smell that scent on her breath. You can’t just be a hero. You always assume the worst in people, like the world is a big black hole and you’re the only one that hasn’t been sucked in. It’s not a reality for us: it’s a reflection of you, because you just couldn’t stand living on without having someone to rescue. You need a damsel in distress. You don’t want me to be happy. You just need someone pitiful enough to save you from yourself.

One final exhale. A cigarette dropped in the sand and its scent hung in the air. It’s all that was left. All that could be known again.

The coughing stopped but his eyes were watering and the cold saltwater air didn’t help. He stood on stiff joints and brittle bones, muttering to himself. The stars were bright in the sky but he hadn’t the strength to care anymore.

I wish you didn’t smoke those.

He imagined it was her saying those words but he shut his eyes at the thought. He didn’t deserve them. He didn’t deserve any one of them.

 

by MNK

Desiderata

“What are we doing?”

The same thing over and over. The candles in the corner flicker; they don’t last very long. The sun will rise long after the wax is gone and the wick burned black. The air is stale and warm. In the hall is the sound of a slowly dripping faucet, the faint heartbeat of a placid house.

“What—”

“We’re learning.”

It’s true: it’s the closest thing to truth, at least. What else is there to say? Too much in too little time.

There’s reason in that truth: fear. It permeates and settles easily in those subtle places. Human nature seizes a piece of that bond between two people, a piece scattered and buried and made nondescript. It becomes a fear of the well-trodden path.

It becomes depression and monotony, the infinite sense of worthlessness. Her eyes are cast downward against the sun. The bedsheets are twisted and unkempt. Her smiles are reserved for strangers and stranger friends. There’s a slight and cold breeze in the air and the gas tank is close to empty.

It becomes anxiety and paranoia. Her lips are parting and closing with a whisper and the breeze seems to deaden at the sound. Someone jogs by on the sidewalk without looking up. She can’t remember if she left the front door open, she can’t remember if he was supposed to visit, she can’t remember—

Why would anyone care about you?

She can’t remember.

“We’re learning.”

They huddle close together. The bedsheets are folded back and the rising sun is soft and warm through the window, a pleasant prickling on the skin. A lengthy silence follows, a natural and gentle stillness. One of them shifts away.

“I hope so.”

by MNK

Desolate Concern

“Why do you care?”

The question is grating. It’s saturated with a horror and a hopelessness akin to perhaps an evolution, yet where can they say it’s grown?

It didn’t used to be this way. They didn’t used to vilify these things. It was always a little cold outside, and the sidewalk a little dirty but that was okay. The beachfront was always busy, always with surfers and swimmers, always with playful dogs that leapt through the saltwater foam and kicked sand all around, always with silent joggers and their bouncing ponytails or ballcaps or earbuds, always with happy children and always with older folk content to walk at a tranquil pace. Holding hands. Always.

It’s not there anymore. It’s in memory, somewhere, inaccessible because of the question. It is a roadblock and it is hideous.

Can they call it growth if it is backwards? The sidewalk is clean now, and unbearably hot. There is no ocean, only sand and asphalt, metal and concrete. Can they say this is growth? Time has passed, but not even that is linear. Maybe if they stepped to the side they could see. Perspective is reality. Maybe if they tried to look at it another way… maybe it’s worse than they imagined.

But it is not a collective problem. Perhaps “they” is inappropriate.

“Why do you care, Jack?”

Because her eyes agree with him. Yes, that is the cautious enigma, how typical and naïve, how confusingly predictable, how dull and uninteresting! There is an ardent longing for something so long ago lost yet so close to heart. There is no need for regrets upon the deathbed: pain can be a learned lesson, like waves on the beachfront, that thing that never escapes from memory. Pain can be a reminder of something beyond its face value, of something greater.

Pain can become closure, if you allow it.

He wanted to answer the question. The words were stuck in his throat.

She wasn’t there. The room was quiet, the curtains closed and a small ray of light shone onto the bed. An unused ashtray sat on the dresser. Someone outside laughed.

He looked back at the mirror.

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

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

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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