Magic.

The dark art responsible for the destruction of the world, the tool wielded by the gods as they slew one another, the bane of all that was good, and the poison that blackened the souls of even the most vile. Nothing good ever came of magic, and Braen knew it would be the death of him, but never in his many nightmares had things played out quite like this.

Bodies lie scattered, some broken, some burnt, across the deserted city streets. A few let moans of agony escape, as their lives slid towards oblivion, but most were dead.  The flames still flickering at his fingertips assured Braen that this was his work, but even now it seemed impossible. Perhaps the past few scenes had been but flickers of yet another nightmare, perhaps he would awaken and find himself soaked in sweat and panting, but mercifully free of death’s burnt stench. It was almost enough to make him wait, but like any good nightmare this scene lacked time for a moment’s introspection, and people were approaching.

It was with a mixture of satisfaction and horror that David found the tiny hole in the side of his head. It wasn’t much larger than a pencil lead, the little red opening into his skull, and was easily hidden beneath his hair. In fact, position as it was, just a bit back from and above his right ear, he probably never would have noticed it, were it not for the infernal itching.

The itching had started two days ago, a nagging that he had tried to ignore when it first struck him in the early morning. Just a little scalp itch, that was all, nothing important. But as the two days had crept along, he simply couldn’t stop scratching, and now he knew why, or at least had some kind of clue. It looked like it might be a bug bite, or maybe some kind of weird sore. Turning his head from side to side, David tried to get a better look. But, try as he might, all he could see was the little red mark amidst a patch of scalp made red from near constant irritation. What was it, and what was he going to do?

David scratched it.

The satisfaction of the scratching was shallow and short lived, leaving David with the distinct impression that he would have to do something more lasting about this particular bite/blemish. But, it was late and despite the itching, he was incredibly tired. It could wait until tomorrow…

I still think it would be really cool to do ‘requested’ stories. Nothing long, per se, just a little short story based on a seed provided by someone else. In a way, I think of it as cross-germination of the imagination. Give me your seed, and I’ll see what it grows for me.

I’ll throw in an autographed copy, just for you!

Come on, what do you have to loose?

“Rip it off” they say.

“I don’t want to; it’ll hurt more that way.”

“Only for a moment, then it’s done. You’re making it hurt more by dragging it out” they continue. Persistent, aren’t they?

But, on some level, you know it’s true. Pain is additive, or multiplicative, or whatever the algebra term is for things that build upon themselves. I might not know the word, but we both know the feeling.

It always plays out the same way.

You try to tug it off, to pull back slowly, and it hurts. Just a little, but enough that you can infer that it’s going to hurt really bad if you try to do it quick. So, you do it really slow, or at least I do. And it hurts a little more, and a little more… and you’re half way thru by the time you realize you aren’t saving yourself any suffering this way. No, you’re only prolonging the pain.

But now you’re committed to the path. So, bit by bit, you grimace and fight your way thru it.

And it hurts. You realize you aren’t saving yourself anything by doing it slowly. You should have listened when they said “rip it off”. You tell yourself you will, next time.

And in the end, you get thru it, raw and sore and tired and resolved not to repeat that process next time.

But you will. You’ll tug at it, just to see, and believe (because it starts off so small) that you really can do it slowly. It really will hurt less that way.

I’ll never learn.

It was some time ago that I started this blog, and then, for reasons both good and bad, I stopped. I haven’t really written much since then. So, i’ve decided to start again. I’m not sure if I want to write unconnected peices, or parts of a larer story… but I need to write something.

Does this count? No. I’m looking to write… not blog. Not my random thoughts, but perhaps those houghts given some shape.

Wish me luck.

Tomorrow I start.

It’s always tomorrow, never today.

Today is always chasing me, never relenting.

But tomorrow, tomorrow I start.

Silence is not the absence of sound, for every condition in which humans exist has sound. Our very bodies generate all manners of sound.

Silence, rather, is the inability to hear.

if there is nothing

at the end of your day

nothing that sparks your mind

or ignites your spirit

then you have not looked

you have not watched

absorbed by that which was not important

you missed that, which was.

today, I have nothing

no fire, so spark, no light

my eyes have been closed

blinded, by myself

wind kisses my jaw

soft brushes

on tingling skin

I want to embrace it

to hold it

return kisses of my own

but I can’t.

so, on those light and brushing kisses

I will subsist

and in the quiet,

when even the wind rests

I shall purse my lips and blow

a kiss on the wind, for the wind

There it was again, the twitch, the glimmer, just on the edge of Jacob’s vision. It was as if his field of vision were some great stage upon which his world was playing, but at the edges, where the actors were slipping off stage, the real show was happening. Yet whenever he turned to catch these glimmers, his direct gaze found nothing and he was left with a nagging feeling that he was missing something terribly important. He was missing the Show, and that’s what was really getting to Jacob.

“That’ll be six ninety four.”

“What?” Jacob replied, shaking away the spider webs in his mind for a moment and looking at the girl standing across the counter from him.

“Six. Ninty. Four.” She repeated, gesturing to the chips and beer setting on the counter, in case the over-stressing of each word was insufficient.

“Oh” Jacob replied, fishing his wallet out and trying to focus on the present.

Yet he could see them, the movements, still. Over by the freezer section, near the cheap wine and overpriced candy, something danced just outside his perception. And by the door, in the other direction, the sign warning that ‘closed-circuit cameras were in use’ just barely concealed something beyond. What, he couldn’t tell.

The whole thing had started no more than a week ago, and at first he had dismissed the fleeting figments as the side effects of fatigue and stress. But, instead of dwindling as he had made time to relax and catch up on sleep, they had become more common, with scarcely a few minutes passing between. And, as of last night, the visions were now teasing him in both the waking world and the realm of dreams.

Maybe forty ounces of Milwaukee’s Best would resolve that.