Short Stories/Poems

[Sekot]

The sad fact of this life is that I cannot write when I'm happy, or merely not mindnumbingly depressed.

That's not totally true. I can write of Kings and Queens and macabre jesters who stole their crowns. I can write of men and women who take worlds and who envelope power and make it their own and goddammit my dog has to piss.

We could be starving we could be harmless so long as you love me for I am the devil you see and I must own your soul.

Fighting every day for your trench girl yeah I'll just let that particular line sink in.

Oh poor Madonna, girl you are ancient. What the fuck you been doin'? Oh yeah, fucking that stage for all its worth.

Four on the floor sounds like a story about little pigs or golden rings.

Girls gone wild actually means guys gone wild with flying dicks made of rainbows that rain chocolate and condoms.

What the fuck am I even supposed to write. Oblivion is just so boring, there's nothing there and nothing to do and its all just endless nothing everywhere you look nothing nothing upon nothing after nothing ugh.

I don't think you can handle the sweet delight of ecstatic destructive consummation between the ripping of the seams and the unraveling of the time realm beyond the dream eye and within the pools of decadence torn from the heavens of the kidneys.

Run boy run for reality is far harsher than you ever expected run boy run amongst the monsters found at the island at the end of the world which is wrapped in turtle shells and raven feathers and looks upon a cerulean sky made of glass and marshmallow mountains.

Annnd we hear that beat and we drop to the floor. We swing and we fuck and we bleed our souls to the demons that bought them. And we scream to the highest heavens that we will never love you and we are filled with such disdain and sadistic pleasure all while our chests are ripped open and our inner selves are revealed as the black pits of hell that they are. This is life if you don't like it you can get the fuck out.

Abs so tight shoulders so round I am the shallowest motherfucker alive and yet I find more depth in the movement of muscle then many will find in a lifetime upon lifetime because I am arrogant and an intellectual douchebag and I don't give no fucks about the end of the time for it is always ending and no one gives a shit.

You wish you were as hot as this as cool and slick as this as possessed and broken and oh wait what was I talking about oh yes the mania the manic the joker and world stealing jester these are all my crowns for I forged them myself and you can only help to best me at a game I created and promptly forgot the rules to.

[Sekot]

Where do I take a running boy? He is running from Death itself in the angelic form. They all learned long ago not to trust God's messengers. Where do I take this boy, through the mire and the muck?

Through what dangerous avenues?

Brainstorming about a chase that has little meaning except to establish fear. Fear of God. Fear of Order. Where do I take this boy but to Hell? It is there that he shall find his peace, within the forgotten depths that the angels forgot how to find.

Beasts lurk within these shadows that could send Lovecraft's head spinning. They do not merely live in dreams, they do not merely eat dreams, they do not merely create dreams, they are dreams. They are nightmares and they are the absence of dreams where nothing happens and you are forever awake while the world around you twists and shapes and becomes something else.

it is not enough to merely attack the dream-state, but to center in on the beginning of that stage. Where idea meets reality.

This boy wants to kill God. And he will do so. For God long ago died and the replacement lost their heart to cold daylight.

[Sekot]

Is there enough to say about the beauty of the world? Many a person has tried. I certainly could go on about the feeling of a warm breeze with a glass of red wine sitting on the back porch during a summer's evening. Looking through the crimson color that shines and glitters like so many rubies. Grasshoppers big as your finger flitting and fluttering through the air. The long, low hum of the cicada that signals the end of warmth and the coming of autumn. Truthfully one of my favorite sounds.

I could speak of these things, but then my mind wanders. I am...not bored but uninterested. There is plenty of warmth to be had and experienced. My legs burn with fatigue, by body is rejuvenated and excited. Maybe I really do just wish to be miserable. Such is the war.

Romeo and Juliet. But this time Juliet is a boy. Ignoring a few...odd inconsistencies I suddenly recognize what all the fuss is about. Not that I like it anymore than I did, but I understand. A silly reminder, maybe my bitterness, and jealousy, but all the same a cute, quaint tale. What am I even blabbering about?

The water lies still across the lake. The wind spills above it, rushing across it and meeting me at the water's edge. Above the sun is sweltering, biting, envious. The moon is a much kinder, gentler soul. But I have business here in the land of light.

Flowers are alight with insects that scramble and scribble across their many petals. Insects that buzz and flit and fly. That careen into you when you least want them to. Flies. Are these the fallen kings?

How long will I wait here for him to arrive? Is it even worth it? It seems that I am doomed to materialize at random on one extreme or the other, but never able to meet at some indefinable middle. There are no good people left, we have all been to war.

[Sekot]

Her lips moved and my world was rendered null. Incomplete and broken so that the sky was a mirror with which we could peer into and see nothing more than ourselves. Such fear was in our eyes. Our bodies trembled underneath our own collective gaze. She spoke again and the cracks exploded like lightning, coursing through the sky panes until there was a thousand eyes staring back for every two.

What gods then should come from among us to challenge her cruel rule? What gods were there left but those that sat within golden idols, enslaved by our cruel intentions? Could I but for a moment witness the coming of a winter without snow, I would then die peacefully without eyes.

Through the darkness gathering on the fringe dwells and rumbles the calling cards. We have penned ourselves in an iron cage complete with matching iron throne and iron crown. Trembling hands reach for the bars and are warmed by the living monsters that breath on our fingers. Dripping saliva and blood drench our thin bodies until we have become drunk and disorderly.

Clap your hands in raucous applause. You fought well.

[Sekot]

I sat upon the tallest tower with my knees pulled close. All around my vantage point I witnessed the crawling critters multiplying on the dank streets below. Scrambling over the cracks and darting through the doors and windows. I pulled my cloak of burning flame closer around my shoulders, the bright light reduced to nothing more than a cloak of embers. I was comforted by the rhythmic glow.

Could I have imagined that it would all come to this? Watching from nowhere, the people below worship their god atop the steal mountain. I have grown tired of giving visits. I have grown weary of their complaints and their songs. I have grown so annoyed with them all that I no longer whisper in their ears.

The stars themselves have abandoned them and so they crawl like so many animals.

Their faces have long ago melted away into the nothing grey. Names lost, scratched countlessly into the surface of my tower. So many names covering over so many others. It has become nothing more than a several inch thick barrier of scribbles and scratches. Worthless as the people who were given them.

My body aches. It too is weary. But still I can feel its rebirth, climbing forth from the still burning ash, choking on the embers of my own skin. Those eyes that once burned have long ago departed and all that is left is the holed stare, the endless abyss. Another man, another time. Discordant viewing, two simultaneous conscious beings fighting over concepts and ideas to culminate in the lord upon the tower.

Who was once wrapped in flame.

The machine lumbers beneath me. The great whirring and turning and hissing and spitting of so many pipes and layers of steel and blood. It is alive, it breaths. If you doubt me you need only press your ear against the hot steel and have it melted away by the steamy breathing beast held within.

Slumbering, waiting. The darkness has begun with the setting sun. The days grow short, we can measure the shadows. The cold air rises as the giants fall into their deep sleeps. The empty street no longer feels so lonely, for the dead themselves have come to party, dressed in their finest and wearing masquerades.

Prance and twirl, the hearts are stopping. Soon these broken streets will be filled and the windows will be boarded. Lights will flash and people will scream both in fear and joy. Tears, sobs, laughter. War. Oblivion. It is rising.

And I can see it from atop my tower. My cloak, my shield, it will come no closer. The sun is setting and the stars have abandoned us. Now comes the true night, the only night.

[Sekot]

She breathed and I felt chills.

I was crafted again.

Never knew daylight could be so violent.

Upon the board of chess we few knights wage wars while the pawns were long ago sent to the slaughter. I walk up to the bishop with his lofty hat and hew him in two only to be trampled by the regal majesty of the queen who is the greatest joke, the most mobile woman, the truest kings were never born.

Iron wrought from blood bound me to the wall and I dangled from the ceiling like a crooked marionnette and soon the sun came to speak to me to ask me questions. I had no answers, and merely responded in more questions. Driven mad the sun met the moon and fucked her silly until together they formed a hole and we all died.

Nothing can save you now. She breathed, and I was reborn.

Nothing will let you go, for I am back again upon the stage for all their eyes to see. Trained well all I see are her purple lips pursed so close together. A breath that gently passes across them with a faint whistle. The beginning of the end comes with a soft breeze. A gentle wind that chills you though the air itself is warm. The vanguard brings ill tidings in its open arms.

I will burn. I will freeze. I will drown. The rivers are rising. Bubbling. Churning. Swarming locusts ripped from my flesh, crawled forth from out of that mouth surrounded by purple lips. Crawling. Creeping. Legs and wings and chitin. Bulbous eyes that could see everything.

And the hum.

The constant one note drone. The beating of wings.

I was furious and now I am only still. Once the fire has gone, all that remains is steel. I was wracked with demons and now I am whole. Alone. And with far too much time.

The mud has boiled. The sky is crystal clear. And still you can draw no breath. The water has risen and swallowed us, drawn us deeper until light itself was drowned.

I was locked into a cage but now I swim free. I have devoured sharks and swept across barren reefs. The deep abyss crawls and creeps and swims and nips a thousand hundred times and you can feel it all. Even as your lungs ache and your chest heaves.

I have become anew.

[Sekot]

We grew furious at the concept of the Lie. That which would render metaphor unstable. That which would send ripples of confusion and doubt through our systems. A lie. A simple untruth. An unmaking an unmasking a destruction and separation.

That which we are is almost like that which we are not. Therefore we are not what we are and are what we are not. We are and we are not therefore we are not. I am not a rabbit.

I am quick as a rabbit. I am naive as a rabbit. I am naive and a rabbit is too. We are both naive. Therefore I am a rabbit. For the rabbit is as quick as me and as naive as me. And up and up and down and down. I am and never was a rabbit. The impossible duality of two conflicting ideals held together at their point of meeting until the (un)raveling of the world occurs at the bisection/separation.

I am like that, similar to that which I am not. If only I could speak with two mouths at once to separate the dualities and speak with them simultaneous. The 0 and 1 become something more than a mere 10 or 01.

Dressed in a dress of black with vibrant tangerine spreading around my aquamarine eyes. Feathers of the peacock turkey and dove and hawk plume from my tomato hair and my emerald shoulder pads. I am on fire with goldenrod and bronze.

[Sekot]

The vicious dogs tore through the artful canvassing and gnashed their wild teeth. They were burly and dark and lively and I could almost reach out and touch them and find myself devoured. But the waves came crashing and we were swept beyond and soon surrounded by the depth that promised nothing to me.

These hounds were beasts of great mischief sent to eat our minds and bring us a certain absent minded joy. That I don't think I was understood was never a possibility and we lived as knightly beggars underneath the sun filled sky smelling the flowers and running across empty fields forever and ever as if there was some house on that prairie.

I am easily the non sequitor turtles are eaten by these hounds of war that bleed in colors I cannot imagine and so only see black. From side to side the music is grinning and we swam like sharks amongst the schools until we ate the center of the world in all its chocolatey goodness.

[Sekot]

And the cold winds blew the thick steel doors open, but only slightly. They screamed on their rusted hinges, never having been touched for countless years. The once ornate designs etched onto the surface had long ago disappeared into nothing more than a smear of disconnected metalwork and macabre faces caught in various emotions.

I looked at that facade and felt the certain empty feeling in my chest. As if my heart, which had gone out once before, had an echo resounding within the empty cavity. I felt that I should know the designs, but they left with that heart and they were not coming back anytime soon.

I gathered my coat closer about me, stuffing my nose into my scarf to protect my already windburnt face against more cold. I stepped over the threshold and out of the backdrop and into the fore. The doors screamed shut behind me, clicking almost anachronistically quiet. The only light came from the outside, from cracks in the ceilings that cast haunting halos upon the marbled floor.

Snow drifted from the ceiling, or what I thought was snow. When I extended my face, I discovered that it was of a different texture that smeared on my clothing. Ash. Even after this much time, the stories were true. Eternal ash rained within this empty hall. There was no fire to start it, but still it cascaded as if there were. It covered the floor in several areas, but mostly against the sides where it had drifted from strange winds.

As I continued, I passed mirrors that extended from floor to ceiling. Pristine and well kept without a scratch or crack marring their surfaces. I tried to keep myself from staring too long, but every once in a while the temptation overwhelmed me and I would stop before one of these mirrors and watch as strange things coalesced from the air beyond me, clamored and whispered in my ear and placed hands and parts upon my body. I saw my own face transform, contort and my mouth twisted into a snarl and my eyes grew black and bled. And I could feel them, groping me, grasping at me, rubbing along my body.

It took effort to break those trances, but the whispers never ceased and they chased me all the way down that long hall where the entrance had long since disappeared and I had forgotten if there were any turns or if I had been walking in straight line or a circle.

I could not walk anymore so I collapsed onto the ash. Clouds of dust rolled away from my prostrate form, creating a terrible storm for those microbic creatures unaware of their impending doom. Or were they always aware and learned to welcome it?

My eyes shut and the world transformed about me.

Sweet slumber take me gently into the dark where none may follow. I found this place, this strange uninhabitable fortress abandoned. For I had left it many years ago and followed the siren call back to the stony walls only just recently. Sweet dreams take heed do not come with me but rather flee to some place safe, some head of a child who could use you better than I.

For that ash had never ceased its constant fall and the ghosts had waited patiently. Countless endless mirrors within mirrors reflecting futures and pasts and time itself is becoming unwound once more. I can feel it. Parts of me stretching and shrinking.

I know each of their names, their reasons for being locked here, why they whisper. Oh deadly phantoms do not torment me, not now. There is still work to be done. Though my lids are heavy and my body is weary, I will not yet depart. Storms are gathering and the seas are falling back. The matches have been removed and the kindling stacked.

He who sat atop his tower has regained his strength and that cloak of embers begins to glow so very bright. The hounds are biting at the bits and the handlers have long since been fed to the handled and soon. soon the great drums will ring forth as they never have before.

Do I bring a storm of my own? Has winter come so soon, or have I merely prepared to meet it? This hall with its many cracks surely will not hold much longer. Do you hear me? Nightmares within the dark, do you hear me?

Somewhere within this keep rests a chest. And no storm or fire or god or demon will stop me from acquiring what was always rightfully mine. I am the thunder and I am the rain.

[Sekot]

Long into the warm summer night we sat around the fire and spoke of fairy tales and loves. We spoke of each other and ourselves and we came closer underneath those stars. Laughter followed laughter and the beer was good and we were all drunk and happy. And that was it. That was all.

[Sekot]

He looked from upon the cresting wave that towered over the city. But not toward that very city but atop the tower that stood at its center, that tower that pierced the sky and brought about the stars and the shattered moon. As water coursed like blood through the veins of the streets and alleys, into the homes and offices, the man grew ready.

He had put his faith in Nothing. And so the culmination of that power was the ocean itself rising up from the depths, pulling every bit of strength. The earth groaned with the strain and shook as the water rampaged across it.

Atop the tower he saw the rising wall of water. He saw the fish swimming within it, silhouetted against the light of the sun that spilled from the other side. Armed with the darkness of the space outside his tower, he appeared as his owns sun and star and was not afraid. He had crushed moons, he had captured and enslaved stars. The flames that roared about him were monstrous, horrendous. They stretched with greedy fingers, twisting and churning as they consumed the air.

The water filled. The fire emptied.

Those in the street could only stare in dumbstruck awe. They screamed and wept and recognized that not even Moses himself could create a sea so vast. That these bushes were certainly burning. Their hearts would never be the same again.

Trembling shaking earth is that the beat of your heart I hear as I press my ear against you? Can you recognize the true primal nature of the ensuing violence? Of course you can, you, after all, set it in motion and it is you who will suffer the greatest toil.

The rain that fell came from no clouds. The lightning that crackled was not followed with thunder except that of water. A thousand waterfalls crashing at once, the hungering roar of the fire as the air was consumed from within their lungs. Craven souls fled, brave souls danced underneath the broken sky and worshiped the gods that had brought revelation and rapture.

The two stared each other down from atop their elemental thrones. The meeting of their wills was the forging of iron and steel from blood. Shattered, bodies slumped and broke, iron golems rupturing from their skin bags. They were in mad ecstasy.

Demons screamed for it all to stop and the angels could only watch silently. Together wave met inferno and the earth stopped its beating heart. All lay still for just a moment. A brief moment. Time itself stopped.

And the two crossed paths, grasped hands and said a few words.

Their war was not with each other. They had put their faith in something unknown. They were tired of hope when there was only drowning, when there was only burning, when there was only suffocating.

Lovers, they whispered sweet nothings.

And time started. The people looked in horror and wonder, in wondhor, at what had been wrought with the Meeting. silence. unending eternal silence for once we are drowned we have lost the ability to speak to make a noise except to float/lie still as stone.

From the depths the flame rose. The from the darkness light pierced like lightning and the great whales were silhouetted against the stars, great majestic beasts trapped and enslaved.

A tidal wave of flame, a towering pyre, rushed through the city, filled the streets and the alleys and the homes and the offices. Towering claws of jagged ice burned the flesh and seared the mind and stole all their breath from their lungs.

The silence was unending. It permeated everything. All things. Nothing. They had put their faith in the unknown. The whispers had only just began.

[Sekot]

The constant sound of dripping water would soon drive me crazy. Drip. Drip. Drip. Rhythmic pacing, a natural metronome. This water came from no pipe, no faucet, no crack or hole. It dripped from the man who knelt before me as I lay on the dank concrete, my back pressed against a moldy wall. He is looking at me with his head cocked to the side, those eyes that were the color of dried kelp. It is disturbing, something within me is made restless by his constant stare.

"There is nothing left to love," he says. His voice is bubbling, muffled, as if there is water in the back of his throat.

He rose to his full height and turned his back toward me. I gasped, suddenly able to breathe. Off in the murky distance, I heard the sound of organs and church bells. The dripping man faced that direction, clasped his hands before him and bowed his head. Was he praying?

Out of the mists swam creatures. Out of the swamp they crawled. These were not as pristine as the man. They were covered in muck, in algae and pulsating fungus. Their faces were contorted in myriad expressions that constantly shifted. They walked towards the both of us, but disappeared into steamy clouds before they got too close. The stench was overwhelming me, suffocating me.

The man turned back around, a deep seated sorrow now sitting underneath those thin brows. The music swelled, reached a crescendo. "Nothing more. So we must move on."

He gestured out to the swamp-that-should-not-be, "They are memories. They fade in and out. I have waited here, hoping that at least one, just one, would reach me. But they all just disappear, returning to that far off church that haunts me. I hear those bells in my sleep."

He sighed heavily, followed by a choking gurgle, and then proceeded to sit next to me. He grabbed my lifeless hand and held to his chest. I could feel his heart beating, or struggling to beat. I could feel water or blood, I did not know which, rushing within his chest. "I am on a journey, my friend. I am looking for someone. I do not know his name or his face, but nevertheless."

He rested his head on my shoulder and I felt compelled to rest mine against his. With my ear pressed against his wet hair, I could hear the ocean I had never been to. "You must think me strange, acting like this. You knew me once, I certainly behaved differently. And I knew you."

He laid one of his own hands on my chest where there was no heart beat. "And you were different."

He laughed/gurgled. "We make quite a pair, don't we?"

With nothing left to love.

"I heard that."

I wanted to move, to push him away from me. "The truth is," his voice had fallen to nothing more than the soft sounds of trickling streams. "For all my melodrama, there still is something left to love."

My head rose and his with it. "You."

It was my voice. The scenery had begun to change, to rapidly fluctuate and shimmer with collecting energy. Holes were ripped into the seams and the stars were revealed within the fog. Life returned to my limbs, to my body. And finally, I could turn to him and look upon him in much the same manner as he looked at me.

The organ ceased its constant wailing. The mist-ghosts evaporated. The air shimmered as it was heated. I grabbed his hand which had retracted in fear and pressed it back against my chest. "There's...."

"Nothing," I finished, grinning.

I was on top of him, pushing him against the ground that had become dirt. Cracked, sucked dry of moisture. My throat burned, my fingers itched. I leaned forward and kissed him passionately. Our lips met and the air crackled and a wind was swept through the mossy trees who's leaves began to curl.

"Awakened, awoke, I am here and alive. I have you to thank for that. As I have you for putting me here. So shall I return the favor?"

[Sekot]

I am confronted with a black wall and a phrase emblazoned upon it. "Don't you worry, child."

All I can do is stand and stare at it, afraid. Terror grips me, clings to me. Whispers in my ear keep me rooted and against the reflections in the wall I can see myselves.

Not happy with what was laid before me I wanted something new. So I built this wall and now I do not know what to do with it. It is a wall, after all. I want to etch upon its surface, carve out words that bring meaning to it. For all it is is a wall.

That is all I wish it was.

[Sekot]

So begins the unraveling. I am peering into a tepid darkness where things walk. I hesitate to name them as monsters. They merely walk, what harm do they bring? It is hardly my fault if you are fearful of their faces.

I run my finger across the surface of the pond, the still black water fracturing. So much scattered light against the surface of the walls. I never knew light could dance. This calm, it lays across this pond, this valley, this cave, across me and I am unwell. I am restless. I threw my heart into this lake and I know that I will never retrieve it. But still I find myself seated, playing with the water.

The cave taunts me. This light that comes from nowhere and everywhere teases me at the edges of my vision. Constant movement drains the senses and leaves you...

I can see my reflection in the stillness of the pond. The rot has long since sat in, I have grown accustomed. I can almost forget it though as tiny waves roll onto my meager shore. Hidden imperfections.

The cave rumbles and hums as if singing to itself a long forgotten song. And from the lake rises them. Indescribable, they merely are. Shifting and shattering they appear to teleport, never able to stay in one place long but unable to walk or run. Just standing. And yet moving. Closer and closer.

what is this oppressiveness that weighs me down and has captured my feet? i cannot see their faces they are hidden to me but they rise and they drip and they are drowned dead come alive.

and i do not know their faces.

If I give in and tread the path that leads away shall I find myself once more in the storm? Where no grass grows and the roads are lined by cliffs and eyeless souls wander aimlessly.

I run my finger against the surface of the water and the light dances on the walls. Such a neat trick. Difficult to appreciate.

[Sekot]

My mind has ruptured it has torn and I am the encapsulating god oh dear lord save me from the nightmare that gathers on the forever horizon for i fear that I am not enough to handle it and my world is fracturing and I am listening to the music and I am gods unreknowed and the world shall fall and burn underneath a tidal wave of monstrous depths that shall tear apart the light shall find your way.

I am the dead the death and the unknown i am the void and the terrible uncontrollable abyss that has swam through the molten cores and found purchase on the minds of the weak so that I may sap them of their collective wells and devour their hearts.

I am a bottomless well to seek all things and know them to merely destroy them under a current so vast and wide that the world itself has never known another kind I am destructive and self destructive a force a power and I am alive and I can breathe even as i suffocate and the world itself is folding in and out and i have no words for such ecstasies.

ALIVE I am god I am demon and I am death I am drunk and alive and swinging and dancing and the world itself will end on the end of a blade covered in the blood of innocent souls brought back from the dead.

zombies are frightening for they are vengeance they are terror they are family they are kindred they are lovers and fighters and wants and dreams all cast aside and they are ABOMINATION and dead come alive what horror awaits us if we are to find ourselves animate after a final rest.

so dual so final death is both a terror and a delight an acceptance and avoidance i have a right to death but i am subject to the power over life.