“No, no… eat it like this… like this! See what I’m doing? No, you hold chopsticks like this… No! Ryo, this is your fault!”
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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.
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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Fall – Chapter 3 (part 2 of 2)
The Ghost Wolf panted softly behind his mask. He caught his breath quickly, sheathing the swordbreaker in his offhand and tapping the body before him with the flat of his sword: no response. Just dead weight.
There were bodies strewn about everywhere. Even a scattered few the Wolf did not cut down himself, he recounted. The campfire that one side had started was spitting pitifully, unattended. The Wolf tread sowly over the ground.
From beyond there was a slight groan. It was no louder than a whisper, a stifled cough, but the noise couldn’t escape the ears of the masked ambusher. Within an instant he had pounced on a shapeless mass that whimpered at his grip, being lifted into the air by a single hand into the moonlight.
“They called you Madoc, did they not?” the Ghost Wolf’s words sunk into the air with malice.
“You… you…” Madoc stammered. The sight of the mask petrified him, melting away entirely his once cold and confident demeanor. “Hokkaido!”
The Wolf tightened his grip, causing the man to squeak. “Yes, you know of me. But I am of no importance.” He looked over the man’s broken body. The stump he had in place of an arm had been bandaged well, but not well enough, as it seeped blood and dripped audibly to the ground.
“Ha, no importance!” The man’s eyes bulged. “You killed damn near everyone singlehandedly. A fellow… with your reputation and skill, well, it doesn’t take much smarts to see how much gold you’re worth…”
The Wolf’s grip tightened further.
“Or…! Or… you might be interested in the many, ah, intangible things my employers can offer. I know people, Wolf, people who know things you can use…”
Madoc yelped suddenly as he found himself sailing through the air to hit the floor on his back and roll to a stop. And before he could blink the Wolf was on him again.
“I take care of the vermin that stand before me. Your begging matters very little in this transaction.”
“Nothing interests you, Wolf?” Madoc gulped. “Not even Warwick? Not even his—aaggh!”
Madoc didn’t get a chance to explain. With one precise slash the Wolf severed his one remaining arm. The man screamed and dropped to the ground, writhing and grinding his teeth.
The Wolf did not give him long: he considered himself no torturer. With another flick of the blade he sliced through Madoc’s neck and watched him drown in his own blood. Madoc’s dying gurgles were spirited but futile. After a short time, it stopped.
A peaceful silence hung in the air. Hokkaido, the Ghost Wolf, put a hand to the mask and lifted it.
The earth began to tremble.
Blades were unsheathed, but without purpose; no more enemies appeared. Instead, a peculiar thing happened: Madoc’s body began to glow. It brightened especially in the veins, which seemed to course with a sickeningly green substance. The skin began to crack, spiderwebbing like broken glass, and it grew pale as the moon before peeling slowly, magically, lifting slowly into the air as though carried in the wind. His skin disappeared entirely, leaving behind muscle, blood, and bone.
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.”
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.
Fall – Chapter 2
Mugs wasn’t entirely ecstatic to hear the soft patter of rain creep up on the roof of their dilapidated hideout but he was not moronic enough to believe the situation wasn’t par for the job to begin with. Through a hole in the rusted sheet-metal wall he could see distant lightning crack erratically at the sky, a quiet, moody thunder resonating softly. The sky had quickly been taken by grey clouds, swallowing the sun and along with it any hope of warmth for the next dozen or so hours. He sighed to himself, content with the chill in the air and frustrated beyond measure by the deluge of idiocy from his companions.
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.”
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.
Desiderium Fiction 