I always imagined that I'd feel nothing. Instead, I feel everything. Every paper cut, every broken heart, everything. It's like a million voices echoing in my head, vying for attention. I tip my head back, letting the wind rip through my hair. It's calming. I feel the knots in my shoulders relax, the pounding behind my eyes ease. This is it. It will soon be over. The pain, the misery, this life. It is almost over. I glance down at the crashing waves. It's a long way down. Noone will ever recover it. Its time to say goodbye. Time to...
It was the fall that surprised me most. Stumbling, suddenly in darkness, in a vile body that felt alien, so different, so limited, so odd - nothing to...before.
They never believed me, never believed what I said, when I tried to explain where I belonged (this tongue is clumsy and cannot say the words I need - I use words like "sky" and "stars" and "above" and "far" but none of them even begin to describe home - home is the closest approximation I have, but it is, I find, unhelpful)
They tell me that such things - I -...
"Please, just let me on!"
"Sorry sir, but we have regulations."
"Regulations? I am a citizen of the US. I served my country, and this is how my county serves me. I am looked down upon while leather and aftershave walks past me. Hundreds spent on a single meal for two, yet I collect cans and tips to buy a single meal from the arches at night. I try to get a job, but I have no address, no phone number. I am stuck because of your regulations. And does help come? No, the ones who do good - our...
Four minutes away from the burn point, one of the telltales switched from green to red. Tears streamed from my eyes, flowing back fast into my ears. The compression collar held my head in an unshakable grip. I flicked from gauge to gauge, moving only my eyes.
We were pulling seven Gs on the spinning turn, squeezing as much boost velocity as possible from the flyby. Apparently, the strain had been too much for the secondary backup fuel pump. The main primary pump and its backup were still reading green, and the main secondary was still green as well. The...
The fiction being poured through letters that collied into words, which sit next to other words, that extend to as far as the punctuation that keeps a careful watch to make sure no one is getting too crazy, breaking the law.
And somehow, none of that becomes trivial when we start to see punctuation being used to keep the pace of my pronunciation so my eyes can scan the code and I can zone out into that little story I'm reading in my head.
So much becomes poetic if I just start to look at it a little differently. Cubes...
Fault.
It wasn't mine. It wasn't his. I'm not sure it was anyone's, really.
I think it considered itself its own fault, kind of a Frank Sinatra "I did it my way," "I'm my own man" sort of thing. No one was going to tell it what to do or when it was allowed to slip, and how much. If it wanted to let off little 3.5s every couple of months, it would, and if it decided to store up for a 9.9, that was its own business!
And I figured it wasn't really my business to interfere. I would've...
Okay, look. I had this idea that this was going to be a nice relaxing trip.
It was.
And we were going to come out here --
Yes.
And enjoy ourselves --
Yes.
And not have to deal with stress. Do you understand?
Yes, of course.
And now, what do you see?
What do you mean?
What do you see here?
I don't know... Trees, blue sky --
Stress!
Sorry?
Stress. It's stress. Every direction I look is stress.
Okay, look, you need to just take a breath. Remember what they said at the clinic. Deep breaths.
Stop it. I...
Not that I mind being dead. It's nothing to be saved from, really. Oh, at first believe me, I railed against it, bracing myself for whatever fight or hell lay before me. But after about an hour it seemed pretty clear to me that nothing was going to happen.
Literally, nothing happens when you are dead. To from your own view point anyway. Granted, I do not have a body to call my own anymore, but being dead feels surprisingly like being alive does. Only with less worry. And not taxes of course.
But if you can read this, and...
The embroidery was hard to steal. Laser beams criss crossing the museum walls and floors. Two hours later I was opening the bag of cash, counting, shaking hands with my client, ignoring the warning thoughts invading my head since the moment I'd been hired.
'Moonlite Glow' was cursed. Apparently, anyone who handled it suffered misfortune. The last four owners died unexpectedly, gruesome and slow. One fell out of his bedroom window straight onto steel sharp railings, not found until the next day. Another drowned in his hot tub after his big toe got stuck somehow. He shut off his mind...
The words hovered beneath my glowing finger, power incarnate. I lifted the text, spinning it lazily in the air, before hurling the curse at the image of my nemesis.
The photo I had ripped from the backcover of her book dissolved, dripping onto the table, her face hideously deformed, the black ink staining the tablecloth beneath.
"She thinks she can write horror," I said, the deathly silence of the basement swallowing my words. "She doesn't know what horror is." I smiled. "Yet."