There's somebody standing in the corner of my room. His hair is dark. He just stands there watching. I call out to him asking his name, but he doesn't reply. He just stares.
A can't take my eyes off of him. I stand there too, staring at him. Our deep eyes meet and a chill flashes down my spine. As I gaze into the windows to his soul, my breathing quickens as does my heart beat. Here we are, two different entities separated only by the distance of a metre or so. I can't describe the deep dread I feel...
I used to follow my grandfather up the field, gathering potatoes. He would pull them up and leave them like gold nuggets, glowing on the topsoil. I came behind with a trug that was big enough for my baby brother to sleep in. I struggled when the trug was nearly full, and I'd have to set it down every few yards and watch my grandfather as he worked mechanically ahead of me.
I daydreamed that, one day, there would be a real gold nugget lying on the row. I would take iot to the bank and a big man with...
"I won't," I said. And she turned and walked away. The generals and lower officers, in turn, followed.
I was alone in that room with the future. I'd only known vanishing past and pounding present. I didn't know what to do with myself. I started by counting my breaths and guessing how many I'd take in a minute. I tried thinking about tomorrow but couldn't. I could only picture a towering wall made of brain matter.
I thought, "Maybe I should've" and stalled again. I closed my eyes and thought about nothing, not knowing I'd sleep soon.
Wine.
"Wine is the one thing we have left in common," he thought, looking out over the set table before him. She had opted for the house red, as he did. She hadn't drunk much of her glass; no time for it between the business at hand. He had gorged himself of his own glass.
She drew some papers from her bag. Starched, sparkling papers with her lawyer's mark on them.
"Her lawyer's mark on her," he thought.
He motioned the waiter to quickly refill his cup. He emptied it with equal alacrity.
Not words, but papers passed between them....
They gathered in the woods. The darkness entwined itself around everything it touched. Filling every hole, every space it could claim.
It was not the darkness that was so frightening, it was that which hide inside. Using it as a clever camouflage.
Something hid, something stalked and watched and he could feel it. It was looking at him, watching and waiting. Its gaze crawling across his skin like tiny spiders.
He hid within himself not wanting to accept it. He built up the layers to keep the darkness out. He would not fear the thing in the dark. he would...
Potatoes.
The bane of my son's existence.
I set the plate down in front of him with a futile hopefulness that today might be the day that he wouldn't wrinkle his nose and recoil as if it were something deeply offensive. But it wasn't. And he did.
"I don't LIKE potatoes," he growled, glowering up at me.
His father frowned and made to reprimand his son's insolence, but I held up a hand to silence him.
"These aren't just any potatoes," I declared with authority, "These potatoes are grown by superheroes."
My four year old looked skeptical, but as he...
Shape.
His kneaded the dough, enjoying it's firm elasticity beneath his fingers. Shape.
Celeste was like that. Firm. Yet pliable. She let him bend her to his will with little resistance. And god damn... she had a shape.
As he coaxed the dough into long snakes, visions of Celeste's creamy smooth skin flooded his memory. His hands worked on autopilot, braiding the challah loaf. What they really wanted to be doing was kneading her delicious rear end.
He loved the ripples each time he spanked her full bottom.
Shape. He admired his challah loaf.
I was not interested in the small poster in his hand. My eyes were on his face. He was the one I had been searching for. Member of that cult, the one that took my daughter away from me. He might have just been an innocent new recruit like she had been all those years ago but the hatred in my heart didn't care. He represented evil and someone had to pay.
I walked over and pretended to be interested in what he had to offer. He explained the organisation would give me peace of mind if I signed up...
Swing. That was what we did every time we danced. We'd grab hands and swing each other around with all our might, laughing all the while. Everyone made sure to stay clear when we hit the floor. Once, he dropped me. It was unexpected, a fluke. We were swinging, like always, when, suddenly, he let go. All i felt beneath me was the cold hard floor. After that incident, we stopped swinging for a while. We'd get onto the dance floor, and everyone would run clear, but all we'd do was kinda sway and maybe do a little hip-hop. After...
The first thing I noticed about him was the shapes his mouth made when he spoke. He spoke in a language I didn't understand, but his voice was gentle and flowed over the foreign words like a lullaby.
His hands made shapes, too; complementing the stories he was telling, drawing invisible pictures in the air. Those hands had told a thousand stories, I think, brought alive by the emotion in his eyes.
I held those hands as he told me his final story. I listened with my heart to what my ears could not understand. I let the shapes of...