Murder, Monsters and Misfortune, the first issue of 5×5 Fiction, Stories Told Loud and Clear brought to us by Angel Zapata is out!
The issue consists of 25 complete stories, each 25 words long, told in 5 sentences, with each sentence comprised of 5 words. One of the stories, The Stake, is mine.
I like the idea a lot. 5×5 format is quite strict and it is a real challenge to make the final piece work as a complete story. Great idea, Angel!
Check it out here.
I was just explaining to my husband how all teenage vampires are pathetic and whiny and not very clever. I said many things, some of which were maybe a tad insulting (for the vampires, not for the hubby), so now I wonder if those creatures, although all pitiful and pathetic, can hear me from wherever they are?
Maybe they are in the cellar? We moved to our new house recently and I am not sure which moving boxes are my husband’s and which may be Mr Teenage Vampire’s. So many are still unpacked.
Should I go to the cellar and make the sign of the cross or something on all the boxes? Does it count if I am an atheist? I mean, I CAN draw a cross, in spite of being an atheist; drawing a cross is not beneath me. Cross is a nice symbol and I like to draw. But, there are many different crosses. Which one is the best against vampires? Especially – teenage vampires?
Oh, my head hurts and burns. I have a fever.
My dear teenage vampire reader; you from the cellar; you that I suspect are sitting down in one of your boxes with the new MacBook Air and using my wireless network to surf for vampire porn and read everything I write; if you get pissed off with me and come here to bite me, I hope that you too will get fever and start burning from the inside (I suspect I have a swine flu, and everyone says that is bad). Ha! How pathetic would you be then? A teenage vampire burning from the inside with the swine flu. Oh, wait, that would be – heartbreaking. They should make a movie about you. No – you deserve a whole trilogy!
I need paracetamol. And maybe some garlic. And a pen. Which color should that cross have? Is red too provocative? You can never go wrong with black, right?
My head. My head! I have a fever and I want that guy out of my cellar!
The bunnies jumped softly when they saw your pink watch. Oh, the sight!
The pretty watch is broken, worthless, and the overjoyed bunnies can have it. Happy, happy!
Five o’ clock is standing still and the bubbly bunnies will be clinking their fragile tea-cups forever. Clink! Clink!
The tiny voices are bouncing off the pink clouds of my thoughts. Singing bunnies!
They live inside, my little five o’ clock bunnies, coloring my days. My black days!
Please read my White heat in the new issue of disenthralled – UNDER THE TRIPLE-MOON
Poetry and prose by Quin Browne, Susannah Elisabeth Pabot, Rachel Kalyna, Jelena Vencl Ohlrogge and P.A.Levy.
Photography by Kelly Rae Daugherty. Visit her website at www.kellydaughertyphotography.com
Edited by Walter Conley.
Daniel’s pockets were bulging. It was not simple to walk all easy breezy with his pockets full of stones, but Daniel believed he was gliding. Not that anyone noticed that was not the case, not really. Who had time to watch people, even less their pockets these days.
The stones in Daniel’s pockets were far from ordinary, but Margaret kept on referring to them simply as ‘stones’, in spite of their respectable age and origin. Those ‘stones’ were about 4.5 billion years old, as old as the solar system, and they came from above. They were chondrites, stone meteorites.
I am
a screenful
of images
digitalized
posterized.
Twenty-six plus
different letters
multiplied
endlessly
then shuffled.
I am
black and white,
always right
for you
for anyone.
Manipulated,
interpolated,
made to fit
perfectly.
Black and white. Captivating photography and writing. Moving and memorable.
disenthralled is a journal of art, photography and literature that lie somewhere between contemporary Gothic and Noir.
I am proud to be one of the authors whose pieces are featured at disenthralled. A piece I wrote, Frigid (Kay’s story) is a part of ISSUE #7.
disenthralled, ISSUE #7 : Poetry and prose by Karen Baker, J.S. MacLean, Carrie Clevenger, Kilian Conor, Paula Ray, William Doreski, Roberta Lawson, Tyson Bley, Jelena Vencl Ohlrogge. Photography by Jill Auville. Produced by Walter Conley.
A piece I wrote, Burn Me Farewell, is featured in the March issue of Jeffrey S. Callico’s Negative Suck.
The March issue of Negative Suck is featuring the following authors and artists:
Kenneth Pobo, Ron Androla, KJ Hays, Eileen Escabar, Emily Smith-Miller, Brittany Wallace, Lyn Lifshin (Negative Suck’s first guest author), John C. Mannone, Lynn Kinsey, Lara Konesky, Kristen Shaw, Adam Moorad, and returning author Jelena Vencl Ohlrogge. (Another piece I wrote, “Some Men Talk Too Much”, was published in The Virgin Issue of Negative Suck in December 2009.)
You are crying, screaming and howling, but no tears, not a single movement can hatch from your plastic-infused botoxed mask. You look present to an inexperienced passer-by, but you are fading. You are ethereal, transparent and absent; absent as I am from your life and your thoughts; your blank thoughts that could not retain me with any kind of magic superglue or sheer will. I am gone. Gone. I erased myself from everything that had you even close to its existence and now I can stop holding my breath, I can be weak and alone and start healing.
Happy!
Absolutely Kate gave me The Circle of Friends Award! Thank you, Kate, you are also one of my favorite blogging friends! 🙂
Here are my five other favorites:
Peter Strömberg (in Swedish)
Dear Tobias,
You were not at work today. Are you sick again? I suggested that you were abducted by aliens, but others just laughed off the idea.
I hope you are not abducted at all, but, if you are, it would be cool if your abductors were aliens. Cool, of course, if they return you. And I mean – you, the real you, not a clone of yours…
Oh, no… now I am scared! How will I be able to know that you are the real you when I see you again?
IF they return “you” at all…
I was waiting, staring through the window as if the glass wasn’t there.
It was harder to do the same thing with walls. How funny, when you think about it, since both are made of sand. Walls and windows. Like coal and diamonds.
I think I prefer the transparent forms.
He came and turned around. Yes, the shirt was great, and he looked fine. I just wanted us to leave already, but he thought that the shirt did not really feel like The Shirt for The Evening. He needed more time to decide.
I turned and looked outside.
I was getting really good at this; now I could see through the curtain of snowflakes as if they were not there. But, the walls were not giving up yet. Well, I had plenty of time.
Winter landscapes exposed me to you, Graceslayer, to your blood thirst and your favorite toys.
My dead body hangs on your wall and your little town could not be redder today.
But, Lady D says that she is lying in wait for you, Graceslayer.
Lady D says she’ll quake the life out of your retarded being. She says that in my next life I’ll get a toy made of your hide.
But… I do not want the toy. I just want to live again, howl at the moon and run free with my pack, without you in sight.
And you know what, Graceslayer – that is how it shall be; this is your last life, Lady D says. Your soul perished when you sent that bullet through my heart.
Yes, my dead body hangs on your wall today, but I shall be reborn tomorrow, while your days are numbered. Lady D is counting.
There are laws above yours, Graceslayer.
I am coughing.
It is the 1st of January and everyone I know is hungover. Children, too. They are sugar hungover.
Yesterday afternoon I witnessed how my friends’ status messages on Facebook and Twitter became less and less comprehensible. Soon I understood that those, usually razor-sharp guys and girls were gone. They were sucked out from behind their screens, bytes and bytes per seconds away from me, and replaced by single-celled organisms entrusted with the task of typing random stuff on and on and on.
I was not coughing yesterday when the transformation started. But now I am. I feel worse every minute, as my friends return back to how they were (or so those fast-multiplying, quick-learning clusters of cells would like me to believe).
Doug Mathewson picks my story Androids Can Be Bored as his favorite flash of 2009! Thank you Doug, I am so honored and happy!
More favorites at the NOT, Michael J. Solender’s blog (which, I must add, he “DESIGNED MOSTLY TO ENTERTAIN HIMSELF”).
Lynn Alexander and Doug Mathewson have produced the first issue of Blink|Ink – Print. A free PDF is now available:
Writers as Jim Wittenberg, Michael J Solender, Paul D. Brazill, Robin Stratton and others are featured there.
And, there you can also read a story of mine, ‘Why I Hate Tolstoy‘.
My story Works every time is published on Blink|Ink. The story is about 50 words long. It is about insomnia and one way to cure it. 😉
A piece I wrote, Androids Can Be Bored, is playing today At The Bijou!
‘At The Bijou’ is a wonderful site made by Absolutely Kate.
In the most special and very original – only-Kate-can-do-it ways, every Tuesday and Thursday she is presenting chosen authors and their pieces there. Check it out and come back for more!
I am very honoured! : ) Thank you so much, Kate!
My story Some men talk too much got published on Negative Suck in their first, ‘The Virgin Issue’. I am very happy. 🙂
negative suck is for writers who don’t suck and who write things that don’t suck.
And one piece I wrote got published there. How cool is that?! Very cool! 🙂
Please check out all the ten pieces – flash fiction, poems and art. Neither of them sucks, so to say, and they are hang together quite well.
[Edited : Feb 7, 2010 – the content is moved to a pdf document that can be downloaded here. Click on DECEMBER 2009 : THE VIRGIN ISSUE to download it.
‘Some men talk too much‘ starts like this:
You told me I looked so sweet and naive the first time you laid your eyes on me; I was like a little floating cloud of cream and sugar and strawberries and all that drizzled with honey.
I thought you were a bit poetic, but mostly pathetic when talking.
…]
The Secret got published at Blink|Ink today. I love their selection of microfiction and I am very happy that they also published some of my stories (this is the second one!)
Also, please look around some more when you pay a visit to Blink|Ink Online; the design of the whole site and the featured artists section are amazing.
They said they would help me change and that I would not be a freak anymore.
Wires, belts, needles, whispers, hands, people touching me, holding me, waving pictures before my eyes, photos of boys, handsome boys… oh, yes, I like boys, I have always loved boys… I said – I am just an ordinary gay next door, there’s no woman under my skin, but they kept saying I would be happy, asking rhetorically who wants to be deviant anyway.
AAAAAH TREMBLING AND SHAKING AND CONVULSING AND OH PAIN EXCRUCIATING PAIN AND THEN IT GOT WHITE AND ALL I COULD HEAR WAS MUSIC BYE BYE LOVE, BYE BYE HAPPINESS, HELLO LONELINESS, I THINK I’M GONNA CRY and I cried and cried until my tears quit on me, or – was it Valium that made me not care?
Something was not working as it should, they told me that my deviance was a serious one and here I was lying surrounded by belts, even more needles, scalpels, whispers, hands, people touching me, holding me, no pictures before my eyes this time, but then I got sleepy and did not care much even before they put me on the table; a needle went into my sore veins and seconds later I was getting even calmer. They would cure me for sure and I would be pretty-as-a-girl when I wake up, one step further on my way to the penis-less and breast-full body.
The anesthetic was working, I was fading; all that I could register was the white light following me through what I back then did not know was my last crawl through the corridors of consciences and then the music started again BYE BYE LOVE, BYE BYE SWEET CARESS, HELLO EMPTINESS, I FEEL LIKE I COULD DIE, I FEEL I’M GONNA DIE, I FEEL and then I did not feel anything, anymore, ever again.
…………………………….
The piece I wrote was inspired by the Aversion Project.
A study called ‘The Aversion Project’ found that gay conscripts in the South African Defense Forces (SADF) during the apartheid era, during 1970s and 80s, had been forced to submit to ‘curing’ their homosexuality, both by electroshock therapies and by botched sex changes.
Sex-change operations, medical torture and chemical castration were perpetrated on national servicemen in a bizarre program to cure ‘deviants’ during the apartheid era.
To this day dozens of victims of the program are crippled and disfigured, stranded halfway between male and female by incomplete sex-change operations performed by the South African Defence Force (SADF).
Many more are sterile after being chemically castrated. A number of the victims have committed suicide. Surgeons who served under the SADF confirmed that a number of patients died on the operating table while having their sex changed; the actual causes of their death were never made public.
The quote above is from Newsmakings.com (‘send your son to us and we’ll make a man of him; if that fails, we have Plan B‘). More can be read here and here.
My short story (microfiction, about 50 words) The Sneeze is published on Blink|Ink.
07 Nov 2009, Stockholm, Sweden
Was it snow or was it rain that was falling on Stockholm this morning? The opinions were divided.
The results of today’s online survey conducted by “Times of Sweden” showed that the majority of those who experienced rain were also pro invasion of Norway, with the main aim of moving the responsibility for giving The Nobel Peace Prize “to Sweden, where it belongs”.
According to the Zero Personal Privacy Law, “Times of Sweden” provided the government with all the IP addresses of the survey participants.
Your obsessive-compulsive survey-filling reporter hopes that she won’t be behind bars the next time you hear from her.
First posted here, in The Skeptic’s Newspaper
This time I did everything right; I booked our favorite restaurant and bought her a pair of expensive looking earrings (I got her flowers only once, the first time we went out; just seeing me holding the bouquet at the door made her cry; I thought – crap, what have I done now, my mom says roses always work… It turns out that my wife-to-be is actually not overly emotional; she just has a strong allergy to pollen).
My girl came out of the bathroom after not more than half an hour late, but I was fine with that; I had some time to deliver a daily dose of “yes, mom” and “no, mom” on the phone.
In the midst of thinking how lucky I was to be with that gorgeous woman who also had (most of the time) the sweetest personality to match, I noticed an impatient look on my darling’s pretty face; her left brow was twitching (now, maybe that is not a condition that requires medical attention, but I really get scared from looking at it, and being scared often can’t possibly be good for my health…); she had asked something, apparently, and now she was waiting for an answer.
I felt like in a bad dream; my brain paralyzed, stuck in a wrong moment; but still I could hear myself very well when I responded with one firm “yes” just to see those perfectly shaped lips getting distorted with anger while her freckles were disappearing in the sea of red that took over her whole face within seconds.
The love of my life ran back into the bathroom, slamming and locking the door while sobbing and at the same time screaming (at me, evidently): “You… you… happy jerkaversary, you jerk!!!”.
I went to bathroom #4 and saw the clothes tossed all over the floor; the shower was on, steam crawling over the walls; my black and white satin shoes with small quirky bows were getting exposed to the humidity in large amounts; why were they not in their box and what were they doing here?!
The whole search for my shoes started when I could not find them this morning so I went from room to room trying to trace them; and – George.
I was sure he snatched them; I saw how he looked at them yesterday when I had them on when we met him for dinner; but we had a deal – play with whatever you want; you may borrow my hats, my sunglasses, or even dresses as much as you please; but NOT MY SHOES!
George, that prick with wide hairy feet, who kidnapped my shoes, must have had plenty of time to try them on while I was sleeping (a mental note – inspect the shoes for yucky hair traces after you find that lying cross-dresser and pull his ears out) and when I came in he must have just dropped them on the floor and hid in the shower!
George, you coward and thief, you so crossed the limit this time; we will never be staying at your place when we are in Como again; you may try to sweet-talk me, but good luck with that!
I do not care that my hubby is delighted that I am pissed off with someone else (for a change) this early in the morning, and is not likely to support my decision to end our friendship with you; I do not care that your precious arse is naked and no one who does not pay you 25 million dollars or is not intimate with you gets to see it; get out of the shower and explain what you did to my shoes; NOW!
Darling, my saccharine darling; the short-lived euphoria I felt when we met extruded a poem or two that weakened your knees and made you vertiginous; we spent a few days waking up together and now you are in love.
Please don’t keep on saying you love me; that poor statement is so… abused.
Oh no, you furious lady, now you say you hate me; but, hate is so… impolite.
I never said I loved you, did I?
Even if I did, my dear naivetess… if you ever dare trust a poet – do not stop reading his work.
If you paid more attention, you would have known that I left you about two poems ago, my September darling; left you for good.
The first question she popped out caught her new friend off guard; or… did it? She could not read people’s faces that well back then, especially not a face like his, but however he behaved or whatever he said would not have mattered that much; she had already decided that the only interesting person she saw since they came here will become her new friend.
“Why are you black?”
“Wow, that’s a good question; well, my mom was black and my dad was black; I guess that is why I turned out black, too…”
“I like you.”
A lady came nearly running all the way from the other side of the hotel lobby, murmured something even she herself did not understand, and then started dragging her daughter away from the tall guy who was waving back to the little girl whose eyes were turning into waterfalls.
You said I was perfect for you; isn’t it amazing how you could feel that after knowing me for only an hour we’ve spent together in the moving car?
I talk a lot and I am not used to people actually listening, but you do; and I usually feel so lonely but no, not now when I am with you, isn’t that amazing?
No, I have no friends or family, no, I have no one; there are seldom days when I do not feel like the most miserable person on Earth, and here you came, being so kind and talking to me with such a genuine warmth in your voice.
Why are we stopping in the middle of the forest, did something break?
Is that a gun in your hand?
But, you said I was perfect…
It was early in the morning and I was in the bathroom getting ready for work. I washed my face and was about to put the towel back on the hook, when somehow I managed to turn my head in a previously unexplored direction. My silly move was immediately punished with an excruciating “I see stars” pain before everything became silent and turned black.
(A story about growing up)
At first I had none. No “coffee sense” or anything connected to it, existed in my head.
One day, as my awareness of the external world grew over a certain point, I have noticed a peculiar thing. They called it “coffee”.
Coffee was embodied in mini black holes of a specific smell that grown ups gravitated towards in their daily get-togethers.
Upon a closer inspection I have noticed that coffee was a blackish liquid with brown foam on top. They used to drink it from small cups – that previously established source of the strong gravitational force.
Grown ups; a mysterious drink; conversations that were either boring or non-understandable; the whole happening often enveloped in clouds of smoke… I was suspecting that all those coffee drinkers were actually members of a sect. Therefore I decided to stay away from coffee.
That was the beginning. My coffee sense hatched from those feelings and impressions. There it was; a virtual one-state cell, with no developed receptors.
– Am I real?
– Why wouldn’t you be?
– I am not visible.
– You do not have to be visible in order to be real.
– I was visible recently. Now, when I look at you, I am not. I have changed.
– Do you think the change was from “real” to “unreal”?
– You tell me. I can not see my own reflection in you. How’s that for “being real”?!
– Hmmm, have you ever heard of vampires?
On a sunny summer day I was lying on a pier, with my head resting on your lap. There were no waves. The turquoise sea was calm, almost silent.
I heard the buzz coming from the people sitting in a small café on the beach and shouts of children in the background. They were there, cut and pasted from another time, another place. They did not see us, in spite of the train of my dress covering about one-third of the pier, coloring it red. We were there in our own invisible bubble, more real for us than reality itself was; non existing for others.
A murderer is in my bed, lying next to me, breathing silently. She looks like the most innocent creature that ever walked the Earth, nothing but gentle softness resides in her transparent aura.
Her cheek on my hand feels light as a feather. Her body is warm and dry like a good summer day. All the hugs and kisses stained her with my perfume; she smells so sweet. The scent feels different and even better on her than the pure concentrate from the bottle.
I kiss her perfect little forehead and she makes a small sound while dreaming of her past and future killings.
My little angel kills with her innocence unharmed. No, she never regrets it. Still, she always gets confused in front of Death. She does not understand. Where did Life go?
I struggle hard to ignore all the killings, I do not want to think of them. I love her as she is, my little furry darling angel. My little accidental murderer.
“You should go out and meet some new people. Or some old friends of yours.”
“I have no friends.”
“Of course you do. Anyway, you should not be alone all day long, every day. You must feel lonely.”
“I am not lonely. I am not alone either, God is often with me.”
Dear Joe,
Take a deep breath and keep your eyes wide open. You knew the truth all this time, yet you refused to believe in it.
You stood there for some time and stared without blinking, Joe. They were approaching, all of them. They were coming closer and closer while the smoke caressed my body, attempting to hide me from them.
My bones were heated to stay warm for all the ice ages to come, and you, my love, you were the only one who did not whisper God’s name and make the sign of the cross over your heart, horrified after I broke into laughter. You were the only one who dared to come close to the stake and spit on the witch from The North. Did they praise your courage in the years that followed, my darling? I am laughing again, Joe… but, tell me, did you spit in an attempt to extinguish the fire, or because you hated me for leaving you?
I am being honest, Joe. I admit – I left you. It sounds like a fairytale – you loved me because I put a spell on you, while I did not care. But, when I fell in love with you, Joe… you are the only one who knows how I can love.
I brought you back to life and broke the spell. You could have left, but you stayed, Joe… and I, I came back. Eight hundred years later, I still love you.
Mini lions in our house
Stumble it!
MissUnderstood 