This is how it starts: A man lying on his side in one corner of a room. The position of his body suggests he might be drugged. His legs are twisted around and his mouth has sagged open. His arms are bent in odd ways. His breathing is slow, even, and soundless ( Read more... )

I can feel your hand on my shoulder, shaking me. The flickering stops right away. It's like holding my breath. You're calling my name. It's only barely filtering through. I start to smile. You're having a bad dream, you say. I squeeze my eyes tighter to find what it was, now that it's safe. You shake me again. There's lots to do ( Read more... )

Most nights you'd tell me that story. It wasn't a bedtime story, though sometimes it would be. I'd lay with my head in your lap and watch your lips. Other times you'd start before I noticed. It was that kind of story. It fit easy into whatever we were saying. It had enough parts that it was always nearby. I guess it was a little different each time ( Read more... )

It makes sense that I'd be confused about things. I'm all twisted broken. The way I feel, the tremors and the bleeding, even when I thought there was a chance, I knew I'd end up wrong somehow. I'm sorting things out. It's just there are more and faster than I can manage. I'm running out of time. It doesn't matter ( Read more... )

It was spring becoming summer. The light had faded but we walked on. It was one of those perfect moonless nights. The world was empty and we were filling it up with the sounds of our steps. From where we were, most of the way up the ridge, the city was a bit of glowing cradled by trees. We didn't need to look up to know the colour of the sky or ( Read more... )

At the time I would have said it was a weird kind of storm. Of all the things I knew before, that's the one it was most like. What might have been the wind was coloured through, and its stripes wrapped around each other. The rain fell in patterns instead of all one way. It was in me and all around me, telling me things. That's how I changed. I ( Read more... )

It was that morning the hunters got close, their tin breath sliding over the ground, that's what did it. Something in my dreaming picked up the red of their eye sweeps. I woke up running. There was part of me that thought, you can't run forever. My lungs and blood struggled. I saw myself dragged back to my cell. I couldn't face it again. I thought ( Read more... )

It was the day after. Parts of me were still stuck, mixed-up. I knew better but I didn't. I couldn't hurry it up. I tried to feel frustrated, or bored, or really anything but patient. I couldn't make it strong enough. I kept hearing myself thinking, this is the way it goes, this is what has to happen ( Read more... )

I'm worried. It's screaming at me from all sides something is terribly wrong. I try to collect myself and ask but the answer explodes at me. I can't understand even parts of it. There's too much. It runs and splits and bends in ways I can't follow. I can't tell if they're pictures or words. It's faster than thinking. I need it to stop, I can't ( Read more... )

I am in your bedroom, watching us sleep. I do this a lot now, but only at night, only when we're together, asleep. The waking times, those belong to both of us. I remember them that way. Here, though, it's nothing like that. Just the empty and silent of an image of us tangled in bedclothes. I can't even push the air. I don't mind. I feel safe here ( Read more... )