Short Stories/Poems

[Sekot]

The waves crashed against my shores and rose up to lick my heels. Hungry mouths opened wide to reveal black maws and endless pits of greed. Upon the sapphire winds came the four eyed birds with their many wings and they lit the sky on fire and the clouds followed. Shaking in anticipation the people of my island were crushed under the weight of ecstasy.

Manic shall the songbird rise and up and up until the sky has run out and the darkness of space presses in. Claustrophobic, there is no hope but to sheer into the great beyond where all remains and there is only I am.

Could this have escaped me as I danced underneath the starry skies? Within the tombs of ancient queens whose crowns were heavy with lead. My heart beats loudly within this earthen cave where grass grows downward and waters flows upward.

Sweet distant lovers visible across the open plain and through the tall grey grass, dancing underneath the shadow of the eye piercing tower, were you as elated as I? Lost amongst the sound we closed our eyes and intertwined our fingers and listened carefully while we lost ourselves within each other.

Gentle hands caressing the brow, the hard bone and soft hair.

[Sekot]

Gone is the technicolor of the future, replaced by the sepia greys of the past. There is no storm, for the sky is empty. There are no stars carefully watching, only the opaque oppressiveness. The branches of the trees have grown out like flames, twisting in shapes and contours and jutting and leaping. I had this all planned out and knew what was to be said but in the end it all fell apart after all.

The board was laid out long ago we have long since forgotten where we started and now the table is covered with our pieces. The fields were drawn and arrayed and ever changing and I wish you could see me feel me and the heart within me. The tall queen threw her crown to the ground where it shattered. And from the thousand and one pieces came gyrating brides with auburn hair and golden eyes.

The owls grew silent, locked away within the timeless spaces and suddenly the world was so quiet. He looked at me with a puzzled look on his face, the look in his eyes speaking volumes. I understood every last bit and could only nod in response. We were both powerless as the rainbow sky fell with heavy clouds to choke the space between us.

The oppressive opaque. Where it is not dark, there is some sensation of light, a knowledge of it, but still you cannot see. There is the sensation of passers-by, but they are more ghost than physical. Imagination run rampant the opaque threatens every last sense within the body.

The sky has fallen and although I frantically search for him I find that I have only run in circles. To spite this world my death will be final. I will not return but merely escape into the void where the opaque does not exist. That when I die may the abyss take me.

I can feel my skin unraveling at my fingertips. Pulled back segment by segment to reveal purple tender flesh and then oxidated muscle and then finally bleached bone. Click clack clackety clack taps the digits idle and bored waiting for the end to come that is so ever elusive. Worn thin to the bone weary and annoyed, he rises from his chair only to stumble. His legs no longer support him. So fluid he has become, so weak. He trembles and shakes but he is held there.

I wanted to plead with the world that it was all a mistake that I should have been sent somewhere else to be someone else but I find myself forever trapped in a too-tight cage with the monsters prowling just on the other side. They have grown silent. I cannot see but I can feel it. Bit by bit reality collapses.

[Sekot]

And out of the quickening flood he stepped out, covered in muck and bile. His arms heaved with a great weight and sewage seeped forth. He roared and growled, shimmered with intensity. Power manifest, trembling and cruel. I was undone by the sight of him as he reached up to grasp the sun.

And until the unraveling we were beauty and we were cold. We ran up the thousand steps to the top of the towers and lit the pyres. We revealed to the night our presence as we danced around our sacrifices even as our world crumbled around us. And as he grasped the sun and took it down we clapped our hands and stamped our feet in the beat.

Across the fields and through the trees we followed one another. Caught upon the endless trails we walked and ran and sprant our way towards the distant lights that gloomed upon the horizon. They appeared to us as fingers raised in ecstatic joy to rake the sky, they were towers made of light. There was no physicality only constant throbbing of phantasmal power. Behind us chasing us was the wave.

That this was fate was never evident for fate had tricked us before and we were so happy our smiles could not be contained. Within the effortless spaces of the inbetween we waltzed through. We ripped out our hearts and fed them to each other, we embraced one another as the bile dripped around us. We sought the eternal horizon and found the city on the world's edge. But even that was never enough so we went deeper. Deeply into the broiling depths where the waters had already risen and left behind the nothing.

And our maws grew wide our jaws unhinged and our eyes silent. The quickening paces drew us about the stage where the lights flashed and mesmerized our weary hearts. And we listened to the music and with every new sound we heard our calls. The body tingles from finger to spine to skull and we are awoken to a new wave a crushing force that swells around our feet.

We are drowning slowly within the new storms but we shed no tears. Every inch of our skin is alive with feeling, our eyes dilated and our hands twitching and our blood hungering for more. Can you feel that rise that elevating pull we are throwing our heads back and unable to see beyond the prismatic nonfunctioning.

Swelling forth the waves were us we were the drowning waters. You could claim it all for us but we would never see beyond the walls of the funhouse. Within the city of ephemeral light we met, we passed one another and smiled. In that moment we knew the other and we came up to one another.

And my words were lost as much as within the beat as without it for the snakes had wrapped themselves around me in seeking for their tails and the owls had warped the world with their omens. This is less a sensation of words and more a sensation of color of pulsing lights and feelings that are escaping the touch with every thought presented to them. Do not underestimate the terrifying ferocity of the uncaged monster.

The monster that had risen from the sea and claimed the sun.

[Sekot]

We've battened down the hatches and retreated to our walls. We have shut tight the gates and fled to the high places. The seas are churning and the fires within the hearths are broiling. The skies have grown angry and weary, grey beginning to seep into the normally pale cheeks. Tension has grown. We have all gone quiet while we wait for what may happen next.

The little boy at the center of the winding labyrinth clutches his legs with his hands, pulls himself into a ball, and hides his face in his lap. The cold winds outside roar as they attempt to penetrate his space. The earth shakes. But he is safe.

Could we we would go to war, striking first swift and true and maybe we may assuage whatever gods there are to lessen the coming blow. But our hearts have grown far too weak for such activities, so we are relegated to waiting for what new things this coming time will bring.

We have made these walls as strong as we are able. We have made our homes on the highest points. But the wind is strong and the seas are volatile and every moment is never like it was before.

Here grab my hand, together we will sit here on this damp patch of grass, the last few pieces to exist upon this precipice. Together we will look and watch as the sun touches the horizon, just as the clouds ahead threaten to overcome it. It has retreated fast and far, and it may just escape yet.

The fiery light burns bright underneath the horde. The edges of the clouds are too alight themselves, enraged but still they press on. In that narrow band at the edge of the world, our dreams have fled. They burn bright for now, but soon they too must fade. As sky falls and touches land, as the last bit of light is extinguished, thunder claps.

Together we watched the sun set. Our funerals were indeed quick and dirty. Should we fear this storm as the ghosts we are? Or was it made especially for us? Sitting here upon the stone, we overlook the world. Beneath us is the sea and above us is the sky and here we are between. Slicing the world in two.

Should we lament about ourselves to ourselves?

even if i was the last man would i fear the coming? should i be forever enthralled to the nightmare that sits upon my shoulder glooming and twisting? i was but a ghost a figment figure who watched the lives pass and as he did he wondered why and the world became bare to him but at a cost. within the trappings of his realm was the seats of madness but so tired was he so angry and rampant that the world itself bent unto him.

they stood in the inbetween and watched the passing and wondered why. the world tree had grown decrepit and the fountains dried but still they stood and watched the passing and wondered why. he watched and waited and wondered why. we have weathered this storm we have weathered them all. the choirs have long since grown silent and all that is is we are. i am.

we will wait together for the clouds to part and for the sun to rise and our dreams to return. until then we have retreated to our walls and closed our doors. we will wait watch and wonder why.

[Sekot]

I can hear the first vanguard. Clamoring within my skull. Screaming at my ears. All I know is run. Finding purchase upon the dirty stone, thin fingers scramble to pull up the hulking bodies attached to the spindly arms. Run.

The branches grow with ferocity. Tearing up and through the canopy into the worlds beyond. They are piercing a distant heaven, searching for the stars that have wondered off. Run. Up and down those branches they flee. Jumping where they can and falling if they can't. Down below the floor is covered with attempts missed.

I have lost my reflection. There is nothing in the glass. The water lies so very still, so impossibly still. No light beams across it, no movement no ripple extends upon it. It is still. Ice.

And where the hearth burned it is now empty. There is no warmth no cold but merely space. Artificially lighted it still appears so dark.

Off on the distant hill a figure stands. It does not move it does not run. Soon it disappears. Slowly fades into the background. It left no mark, no footprint or indentation. It was as if it was never there.

And if I could breathe, I run as well. But I fear that I may be swallowed whole. There is no sensation, there is nothing. The world around me begins to grey. To grow old and withered. I look up from this forest floor and I still see them running amongst the branches. I reach up, wanting nothing more than to join them. But I have firmly planted myself upon this ground and I will not move.

They clamor within my skull and I hear every haunting word. Knives etched upon skin words left as marks. And the fountains have run dry. There is no word left to give to placate the unholy monsters that reside beside me. They pick and chew at my plate until even the scraps have been devoured.

I shake as I enter the labyrinth. My legs have grown too tired to support me. How pathetic is this end to make is this far and to suddenly stumble? With every clash of thunder I only yell back. It is the least I can do to protest my situation, to protest the idiocy and denigration.

Upon this ground shall rest the seeds. Whether they grow or wither is no longer my concern. I must leave them be. To wait and watch is to court inability. Insanity. I must plot and plan the future forward. Ignore the rain and wind. The water taunts me, I constantly turn to see if my reflection has returned but it still lies empty.

[Sekot]

I stared at the little child who sat upon the wooden floor playing with his toys. His look of concentration was etched into his flat, cherub face as he attempted valiantly to smash his toys together in a wild ruckus. Outside, one by one, the stars fell to earthly catacombs to rest amongst their dynastic kin. Fire rained from the sky, but still this boy was untouched and unfazed.

Behind me I felt the cold winter winds seeping through the door that was slightly ajar. The outside attempted to penetrate this warm space, but through some hidden powers the boy held them back. I couldn't help but smile as the boy giggled, delighted at his now successful attempt at knocking over one toy, his least favorite.

The air shimmered, reminding me of my place. I wanted to reach out to that boy, to pick up the toy and congratulate him. But I was already intruding enough, just being in the room. So I turned my back on him and went to the door, only pausing once to look back and see the ridiculous gap-toothed smile of his. I opened the door just enough to let me pass and then shut it behind me.

Outside all light had been sucked dry except for the brilliant pyres of fallen stars. It was cold. Ice had already begun to gather on my coat. It ached to breathe, and my eyes burned for lack of moisture. Even I as an apparition was not immune to this mystical wintry storm. The blizzard would claim all souls, be they corporeal or not. But, I was rest assured, they would not enter that room.

Shoving my hands deep into my pockets, I trudged through the piling snow, fading into the mists. There was nothing left to say. My journey often brought me here, though I never really knew why. Rejuvenated, knowing that this storm would not claim me yet again, I would eventually return to check on the child. One day, he might no longer be within the room. The walls grew weaker and the boy stronger.

[Sekot]

She said to me "If you need something to believe in, then believe in me."

At the time those words rang hollow. But now I found myself unsure of this territory, unsure of everything. And while she no longer is here to guide me, I shall decide to believe in me. If I have nothing to believe in, then I will believe in me until I've breathed my last. I have climbed these hills and these mountains and wrested from them the demons that had laid their thrones. I have taken their crowns and I have placed them upon my own.

So close your eyes and follow me. The way is dark and where we're going we won't need eyes to see. Hold my hand if you must but you best keep up. The road is winding and the forest is thick. The sky is unyielding and the ground is threatening, but I will lead you through them all. I have cleared my thoughts cleared my purpose and I can assure you that there is nothing of value. Where I am leading you I do not know. I just want to run.

With my head pressed against your chest all I hear is your heartbeat. I can shut my eyes and lose myself. A simple sound with all the complexity of life behind it. It beats and I am filled with a strange happiness, as if I were a child playing peekaboo. Oo there is is! Ooo there it is again! My heart beats but it lacks this quality, it sounds too hollow. All I want to do is sit here forever and figure out what it is that I've lost. Wrap your arms around me and hold me close, even as the rising waves begin to pull me deeper.

I have entered that special trance that quiet place where nothing is still and chaos is free. I am the eye of the storm, with every step I take the way before me is calmed and the way behind me is embroiled. I can see nothing but the whirring of time. I can see my past as bright lights and flashing fire, but my future moves too fast. I still see those flashing lights and I can only smile knowing that they'll never leave me. But the impenetrable fog is overbearing.

Mirrors within mirrors the walls and ceilings are lined. I can see shattered selves moving in tandem, perfect unison. I raise my arm and they raise theirs. A thousand glittering crowns. I wonder if what they see is what I see. Or if their worlds are radically different from mine. If I could I would visit them, each and every one, and see new worlds through new eyes and finally come to a new enlightenment. I am greed and I am wrath, but they could be pride and lust. Or maybe virtuous (how boring).

All we hear is the music we've wrapped ourselves around, contorted our way through. I am the leader so follow me as we observe time itself and write upon the timeless walls. You have nothing else so follow me, believe in me. Hold my hand and I'll take you on a journey. Shut your eyes against the light and dark, cover your ears against our screams. Willful ignorance is our new motto. I will protect you and I will save you so just follow me.

If you have nothing else to believe in, then believe in me. For we all need something, anything. I'm tired of hope with nothing to hold. I'll put my faith in something unknown.

[Sekot]

And the king shattered his bones against the wall of sand that had consumed his palace. His arrogance threw him forward and his queen smugly watched him die. The crows sang their solemn songs, and the ground finally stopped its tremoring. The wall collapsed and all that remained was a pillar of salt.

With every breath the fire licked the towers and with every snap of their fingers, the wind did a jig. We collapsed together underneath the starless sky and laughed about the end that had come and went. Our chests were heaving and covered in sweat. When we looked at one another, we saw the edge of the universe.

So sing to me a different song, one I have not heard before. Sing it again and again until I've grown bored. Bang on the drums and alert the rest. There's a party here and you're all invited so let's get this started. Our throats are parched, our tongues thick, so let loose the waves and shower us with ecstasy.

Do we even know what freedom looks like? Do we even want it? So entrapped by the walls and the ceilings we have grown accustomed to our space so let's recreate it. If this is our eternal cage then let's make it fabulous.

The queen toppled from her throne and was cast onto the marble ground. There the pillar threatened to mock her, but she cast aside her eyes. The crows laughed instead, their cries echoing through the great halls. Her child stood by, unfazed. And the crowd whispered amongst themselves, spreading the gossip like wildfire. The man before the throne smiled. Furious, she ordered his death. But he had already gone. The earth began to shake.

[Sekot]

Time slowed as she walked down the black marble steps. Her golden dress billowed about her, the train rising and falling in great waves. Her sleeves which dangled from her gentle wrists snapped like snakes. Her onyx hair fled from her alabaster face. Her radiant violet eyes glittered from underneath her platinum crown. Her lips were pursed, thin pink lines that held back the flood of vicious words she undoubtedly wanted to spill.

Leaves fell, reds-greens-golden yellows-blues, but not one lighted upon her. She seemed to walk through them, as an apparition would through a wall. She shines in the sunlight, even though the temple that looms behind her, which she had just exited, casts an almighty shadow across the valley. Blood follows her, dripping down the many crevices and seeping into basins at the bottom.

She is on fire, a powerful creature. A fearsome monster that has been unleashed. My mind cannot fully comprehend how slow she moves, how graceful her actions. A slow motion film that skips, an image on a flickering screen. But still she advances at a terrifying pace. I am rooted. And her hand rises, still so slowly.

The wind stops but still her dress and hair rattle and wail. Those leaves that should have marred her beauty still pass through her. She truly is an abomination. A goddess, a ghost. A banshee come to sing me my requiem.

My world turns to dark but out of that dark appears her hand. Stretching forth, it grabs me and pulls me forward where her open mouth is waiting and I am swallowed whole. More hands reach from her bowels to wrestle me down, to strip me and leave me bare, and to plunge me into the juices and muck of past meals.

And as quickly as she appears she turns back and ascends into the onyxian temple where the massive iron doors slam shut with such force that the world itself shakes. At the base the meditating man breaks his trance and opens his eyes to look upon the horror. The land is quiet. The sun begins to dip below the tops of the mountains and the sky dramatically darkens. Even more ominous then before, the temple is inviting him. The man does his best to close his eyes and reenter his trance.

[Sekot]

The world began to flatten. The clouds grew thinner and time slowed. Light abandoned us, only upon the ever-distant horizon could we see color. For once there are no screaming nightmares to accompany this occasion, nothing leaping out of the shadows. We found comfort underneath the dark sky, laying on our backs and staring up at the stars that were now so close.

We reached up to touch them and they reached back. They made us feel like we were monarchs, a collective of regents and ruling bodies. Dreamers and lovers. Our feet pulsed in comfortable reprieve after the days of walking.

And as I lay I breathed in deep the cool scents of the midnight air. I felt lethargic, unable to move for gravity had pinned me to this spot. Strangely, I did not want to move. The grass itself could cover me, could swallow me, and mountains could rise and fall above me, and oceans vast could surround me, but still I would do nothing more then lie here. Staring at a sky.

[Sekot]

we set the sky on fire
and died together
amongst the infinite crowd
we lived amongst
the stars atop
the highest pyres
and died together
amongst ourselves

[Sekot]

I was atop the lightning spire
and I watched the eclipse
of the stars by the moon

It was no moon
it was a space station
a force an enormous
hole
that swallowed light

We lived amongst the absent minded who painted with leaves and we toppled from tall fires onto soft beds of sand. We ran along the beaches stripping ourselves naked and became enamored with the edge of the moon-space where light still shined. It could reach down to us and grasp us and take us far away where we forgot ourselves.

We were all children once
whatever that means
it just sounds nice
and we were wrapped amongst the arms
of loving peers.

We could only swim so deep before touching the bottom. We looked up far above where the light was broken and tried so hard to come to us. Shimmering effects and fractured faces alighted upon the distant surface.

[Sekot]

And I am we are a monster he took a breath and we are impossible. We are the end result of the evaluation. We are the impossible beginning of the last end of the universe. We are because we are. I am a liar and a thief and a harbinger of the unresolved middle.

We are impossible for we are paradox. We are multiplying stages of inevitability written on the skies of nowhere. We are nothing. No for nothing presumes that there was once a thing we are beyond nothing we have no word we are no word. Absence written into the minds of the no-bodies.

And you could not understand the horizon I sat upon the dwelling at the end of the world where ghosts were made real and I was laid witness to the skies falling. I loved the world but it did not love me is this how god feels?

I have turned my back against the world that born me out of its treacherous womb and I have embraced the dark path that succeeded my death. I am myself a ghost an apparition fading in and out of reality as we deemed it collectively. No light is left upon the stage to shine upon us we are hopeless. Our masks have gone to wear and tear and we are left with nothing more than ashes within the fire.

I could write of kings and queens and I could write of their deaths. I could write of the peasants of the streets and the darkened alleys and the rise of the proletariat and I could be made mad and slobbering drool upon my keyboard. I could be anything for I am infinite.

I am a creature. I am beholden to the insanity I have written upon the walls and I may think that the world itself is going crazy but what is us but the absence.

And we fucked underneath the stars and I heard your gasps and moans as my lips caressed your flesh and we were one another we mixed and denied the world as we tore ourselves together.

Ghastly visions stretch through time. I see the world and the tick tock tick tock that lies underneath. We are a dancing crowd moving about space as if we owned it and we do. For who else is there to stop us?

Can you bring me back from the dead? Can you bring life to this old wasted soul? I have stretched myself thin in my pursuit of the world and my body has left me and I am we are not whole. Clap your hands and let's dance together under the lights that have illuminated our stage and come closer to me so I can smell taste and feel you for my eyes have lied for far too long and my ears are consumed with the eternal beating of the electrical drums.

Thump goes the bass so that the ground shakes and the air itself trembles at the sound. That our breath shakes at the anticipation. Our hearts are beating quick. Our palms, our heads, are sweating. Our chests are thumping. Our feet are tapping. Expression of sound through movement the purest translation popping and extending and locking and sliding we are the beasts written about the soulless forms caught within a storm of ecstasy. Please, feel free to judge. We don't give a shit. We just want to dance.

For we have already died. There is nothing left. We have already been judged and executed.

America is where we went to die. We were eclipsed by the clouds of excess and we drank of the wells of insanity and have embraced fully the absent spaces. I am no more a part of Europe then the hot dog the perfect non-object a processed identity created from nothing. Dead upon the stairs clap your hands and we return for your amusement.

Generic to the point of parody beyond that we are generic we have become the pinnacle the eternal. Nowhere else can say that we are but we are we are exceptionalism. We are different we are special we are unique flutttering snowflakes and if you have missed the train then I felt so sorry for you once I knew how. I'll be damned if it isn't awful but it just feels so good.

The world cannot change fast enough I pick up on the patterns to quickly and it grows dull it has lost its luster and I wonder where else I could go where else I could be taken.

Rejoice in the insanity of the ending do not concern yourself with the fears of the beginning and just let yourself go amongst the screaming crowds that have appeared from eternal horizons that you yourself merely stared at for years.

[Sekot]

The ghosts wrote the message in the sky with the blood of the stars. And through the glass we looked and were made to awe. He grasped his friend's hand tightly as they both looked up. Fear had calmed them, rooted them and kept them still as stone. Even as the world around them began to burn.

He pulled his friend closer, so that their shoulders touched, and leaned over to whisper. His friend looked back, silent and stoic. "Give up and let it go," was the friend's response.

The earth shook once, a slow rumble that rolled through their feet and up their spines. "I can't."

"You are frightened."

"So are you."

"Together then."

And when the world opened it was all unraveled. Together they stepped over the edge and into the abyss, the rush of wind stealing their breath as they began their slow plummet. "Give up. Give in."

He closed his eyes as he felt himself become real. As the plummet grew longer, so did he actualize. Space warped around him and suddenly he was no longer falling but standing peacefully on the edge of nowhere.

He looked and looked and he saw everything. He saw the empty spaces between the words where screams echoed. He saw the fall of signs and the separation of simulation and signal. He saw the tumbling of heaven and the flooding of hell and the gods that were unmasked and remasked and who never had masks at all. After all of that there was nothing left.

And he skirted along the edge knowing that something was there in the center but unable to penetrate the invisible barrier that kept him out.

[Sekot]

And the world grew cold. I could see my breath underneath the street light. New LED lights that made the world a haunted blue, made even worse as it was reflected from the snow. A ghostly ambiance that caused me to question my own corporeality. Needles picked at my exposed skin, I could almost feel a layer of ice forming across my cheeks.

At my back whispered an actual ghost, a wraith that had followed me through time and space and had clung to me like a lost child. It spoke through gasps, sharp intakes of breath and slow exhales. It offered promises, but I ignored them. It offered me a crown, and that I considered.

My world shook, shimmered and grew hazy for a moment and then reverted. I moved my head from side to side and rubbed at my eyes with one hand, trying to clear away the fog that was gathering within me. I took a step forward, into the street. Around me the road was covered in ice and in it I could see the stars. The stars that were dying.

More steps and I was on the other side. My feet sank deep into the frigid snow, water seeped into my shoes. I barely felt it, for I had gone numb either because of the cold or through my own fear. The wraith hovered just behind me, dangling in the corner of my eye. I came closer and closer to my intended destination. Closer and closer to the door that was always shut.

Silence reigned. Not even the wind made a noise. The whispers themselves had grown silent before the majesty of this door. The threat that lied behind it. I didn't want to touch it, but still my hand rose toward the knob. I stopped, just as the tips of my fingers lighted upon the silver handle. Warm.

Another inhale, a gasp. I turned my head but there was nothing there. The wraith had gone, my sole companion for countless years and it had vanished. I was alone. Here on the threshold. I knocked. Twice.

And the door knocked back. A great click and clack sounded from the other side and slowly the door slid open. Before me spread the world. Images and sounds that stopped just at the edge of the door, I knew none of them and saw nothing but somehow knew they were present, that if I just stepped through I would see all that there was.