Drape-stained orange light thrown against the far wall illuminates cracks in the spackle.

My eyes close, head lost in sheets uncomfortably soft against my skin. A chord is strummed, it is in tune; harmonious. I feel sorry that you are leaving.

I remember rolling decades old matchbox cars down lengths of decades old orange, plastic track across a decades old living room under the watchful gaze of a decades old grandmother who had watched my father do the same. Wind could be heard blowing down the chimney. The cat's bell clattering as it turned a corner ( Read more... )

He wished, every day upon waking, that the world had ended while he slept. And the knowledge that he would never escape pressed down into him constantly; forever, like ringing in the ears.

1. As he proceeded farther down the trail, his feeling of isolation grew. He was cut off, walled in on all sides. The sound of footfall after footfall became amplified; echoing off the walls of a lush, ornate prison. Gravel and detritus crushed underneath. Each step the death of a city, the death of a world ( Read more... )

Heat. Damp air. It surrounded them, enclosing them. The van idled uncomfortably, shaking. The low fuel light had come on miles back and yet he had continued to push the accelerator to the floor at every green light spinning the tires on the moist asphalt, burning through what little gas must have been left ( Read more... )

Though denied freedoms absolute and forever bought and sold; it was of the greatest comfort to him that he be able to look across the expanse of table that separated them and say, with great conviction and sincerity, "I love you beyond what can be expressed. You are my past, my present, and my future ( Read more... )

Voices cast carelessly across the street strike targets unintended. I am collateral damage in this particular verbal war. I read timbre and tone; volume suggests intoxication and energy. "Bring me fire" she says. They stand unsure, centered in the middle of the street. Paused, looking at each other ( Read more... )

A dull pain at the back of the neck lay dormant, waiting to grow into something inconceivably larger and drastically more apparent. This future threat, as yet unperceived, drew his focus. Lines carefully rehearsed began to degenerate into slurred and stuttered incoherence; they lurched and careened out of his mouth and onto the table where they lay ( Read more... )

The time passes me very quickly for a period of time and then slows to a crawl. I am sick. Very sick ( Read more... )

How long have you stood, staring at this wall?

Too long, too long.

And how much longer must you stand?

For years to come.

And when the the power's out and nobody's home, the window broken and the photos fallen, the paint is cracked and the ceiling gone?

Well then there's no one left to blame.