Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Love At First Sight

(Warning: contains some explicit and adult content)
                Last night, I forgot how to talk. I think it was her eyes, green diamonds hiding behind impossibly long eyelashes, but it could have been her long brown hair, almost black, falling to her shoulders, just gleaming in the fluorescent light. She had high cheek bones that blushed a light red, and her full lips curved in a seductive grin. She stood within a circle of guests right in the middle of the room, and every eye was on her. She practically glowed with attention.
                I was so drawn in to her to that I found myself making my way towards the circle. I placed my beer on a table as I passed it, uncaring that it was still half full. I watched myself, in an almost out of body feeling, as I brushed two members of the circle out of the way and knelt before her. Her eyes perplexedly looked down at me as I took her hand in mine. I told her that she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, and that I wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the night getting to know her. I openly gazed at her perfect face, her cute little nose, the light freckles that I couldn’t see before, and I realized that she was even more striking than I had thought. I just had to have this girl.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Corruption


I guess you could say that I was a little bit of a bastard growing up. Not the kind with the parents who never got married or anything like that; my parents tied the knot a full year before I was born, so you couldn’t even make the argument that I was a secret bastard. No, I was the kind of bastard who ignored those parents.
There are a lot of good kids out there. They were brought up properly by their parents and were taught right and wrong. They made it through high school, maybe went to college, got a girlfriend, got married, and then became those same parents who brought them up in the first place. Full circle, right? Circle of life or whatever.
Then there are bad kids. Most bad kids you can look at their life stories and find some event that made them do whatever bad shit that they did. Their folks split up and the trauma of seeing their family ripped apart sent them down the wrong path. Their mom died, so they went into a fog, blindly going through the motions of life, eventually turning to the bottle and fucking up their life. Or maybe their dad bailed before they were even born, and they grew up without a father figure, forced to be tougher than the other kids, ultimately cracking some idiot’s skull and spending some time. Yep, most bad kids have excuses.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

A Dance With the Devil

An elderly man sat before him. He was dressed in a well-worn gray suit, all the color faded except for the brass buttons which looked to have been recently polished. It was evident that the man was paralyzed: his pants were too loose, his legs failing to fill them out. His chest and arms swelled enough to make up for it, especially considering his age. His face was weathered, wrinkles cracked over his forehead, heavy dark circles under his eyes, yet he was clean shaven and still appealing enough. Darkly shaded glasses rested just before the point of his nose, his eyes scanning the black leather book in his hands.
Rick noted the man with a curiosity unbecoming of a man of his station. Lawyers were supposed to remain strictly professional, yet this man had a grandfather-like quality that beckoned him to beseech the man’s opinion.
“What are your feelings on religion, Frank?” he asked glancing down at the man, feeling a sense of discomfort as the question left his lips. He felt himself reaching for the verbalized thought, attempting in vain to return it to its proper place: the dregs of his mind.

Monday, November 29, 2010

I'll Let You Guess :)

I couldn’t have been standing in front of that door for more than a minute, but I swear to God it felt like lifetimes. I could draw it up right now for you if I wanted to—the magnificent cobbled walkway, the stained glass windows with scenes of childhood ecstasy, and the scarlet door that beckoned us forth. I still see it today in my mind, every time I close my eyes. But it’s not the sight that stills me to my core. It’s the smell. That odor that just seemed so wrong.

                It’s hard for me to describe. I guess I’d have to start by saying that it stank like fresh baked angel cake, that warm sweet smell that drives your tongue insane. The scent was almost overwhelming, and it took everything in me to take a deep breath and wait for my knock to be answered.

How the Bum Got His Fix

James blinked. His eyelids felt like cinderblocks, but he managed to force them wide. Sunlight scored his eyes, and he quickly closed them, covering his face with his hands.
God does my head hurt. James slowly opened and closed his eyes, adjusting them to the harsh sunlight. It was hot. His shirt was already moist and clung to his skin. A cough racked his chest, and he soon found himself hurling up whatever he had eaten last night. James looked around, surveying the alley he had woken up in. It was a narrow one, cracked pavement separating two gray buildings. There was a dented trash barrel a few yards from him, so he struggled his way towards it. He sifted through the garbage—some rotten Chinese food, a few apple cores, and a pile of yesterday’s newspapers—before he found what he was looking for.
James pulled a bottle from among the rest of the trash, and inspected its eroded description. Ah, gin. He put his lips to the glass and desperately sucked for the contents. A small stream made its way down his throat, and his bloodshot eyes gleamed in delight. A small grin appeared under his dirty, raggedy beard. That should last me an hour or so.

Kiss from a Rose

Belle wandered the endless hallways of the castle, passing room after room of luxury. She glanced in each as she passed, unsure of what she was looking for, but sure that she would know when she found it. She passed scarlet carpeted rooms, with tables laden with feasts, lanterns bracketed on the walls blazing proudly. One room contained a small fountain in its center, water dancing over a crystal orb, lit only by a small glint of moonlight from the window. Another was filled with statues, many of them Greco-Roman, most certainly originals, yet all were immaculate and unharmed.
The never-ending hallways ended abruptly, reaching a spiral staircase. Strangely, there was no railing. The stairs were of a rusted metal that had seen better days. It seemed a stark distinction from the finery the castle had formerly displayed.

A Medieval Affair

The party wasn’t exactly what he’d expected. His invitation had included phrases like “gourmet buffet”, “decadent furniture”, and “sophisticated social interaction”. He had envisioned a magnificent grand hall, with blazing chandeliers and a feast from some medieval celebration. Aaron shook his head and surveyed the room: the “gourmet buffet” was set atop a 6x2 tables (sans tablecloth) and upon inspection was home to a single block of dry cheddar cheese, a few sleeves of the local grocer’s take on Ritz crackers, and some purple grapes that were more vine than fruit. There wasn’t even any punch, let alone wine. The table looked like it ought to be at a high school art gallery reception. He sighed. At least those had cookies.

The Last Vampire

The corridor opened up to a magnificent ballroom, its rounded glass ceiling illuminating the floor with moonlight. A wooden dance square was set in the center of the room, isolated amongst a sea of dining tables, all of them laden with deep burgundy tablecloths. The polished maple of the square gleamed in the moonlight, and a lone couple danced slowly across the floor, following some unheard rhythm.
A balcony overlooked the floor, almost hidden in the far corner of the room. A lantern, hung in the covered booth, flickered, revealing a solitary figure reclined in a chair. The figure’s eyes were closed. Long fingers hooked around a glass of blood-red wine. Eyes opened slowly, and the glass was brought to lips, white as winter.
The man set the crystal upon a bar adjacent to the chair, spreading dust into the air. The dust reached his nostrils, but he did not cough or sneeze. His eyes, hauntingly bored, glanced around the ballroom, surveying its emptiness. His eyes found the lone couple; color flooded into his pupils.

Beginning of Young Adult Fantasy Novel

Prologue:
The Wind arose in the peaks of faraway mountains, mountains yet to be seen by man. Its thrust blew the wind through the glacial peaks of its origin, sending it in the direction of the sea. Harsh wind it was, and it brought with it ice as sharp as steel. Castings the ice out into the blue-gray sea, the Wind continued on its journey. The Wind swept out over the ocean, its gaze taking in the rough waters crashing against each other in all directions. Sea life was tossed through the air at the mercy of the sea.
Abandoning its glare, the Wind pushed over a rocky cliff, a direct vision of death along the ever-deteriorating shoreline. The Wind spared not even a casual glance. Its journey was not yet finished, and it knew better than to stall and disobey its master’s orders. It trekked on, scaling a small mountain range—a distant cousin of its home—before flying over a barren desert.
A small gathering of birds attempted to rest within the Wind’s strength and glide over the wasteland. The Wind would have none of that. Increasing its velocity, the wind pushed the creatures beyond their limits, and then paused to admire their quick descents to the earth—to their deaths.

Armageddon

The apocalypse began pretty much you’d expect it would. Earthquakes shook the earth, ripping apart cities and causing tsunamis that rampaged the shore. Flaming asteroids pelted the ground, starting forest fires that raged across the countryside. Buildings crumbled over the turbulent earth and crashed onto homes causing a domino effect that seemed mildly ironic.

God watched the destruction from above, a small a part of him tinged with regret. He felt responsible for their demise. He didn’t regret the apocalypse; that had always been planned. He was more frustrated that his creations were so futile. When he’d created man all that time ago, he’d thought they’d be more evolved by this point. He hadn’t expected such compassion from these beings. His other creations had been much more motivated. God had created natural selection to remove the weak from existence, allowing only those who were strongest to survive. In each and every one of his other creations, the beings had not just ignored the weak, they had often killed them, and because of this evolution and adaptation had occurred rapidly.

Here on Earth, his humans had cared for their elderly, their sick, their crippled, and their mentally weak. This care had hindered their evolution; humans were less than half as developed as God’s other creations.

God sighed, wondering what this meant. Of course, he knew what it meant, but that doesn’t mean that you get to find out.