experimental literature
Short stories and flash fiction
Yolanda stands at her easel, immersed in the colors and forms she is creating.
The seconds turn to minutes to hours.
To days.
Yolanda no longer sees the easel.
She looks around and sees nothing but the world of colors and forms she had dreamed.
Yolanda lives in a dream.
Linda stepped out onto the deck. Her legs were steady despite the rolling waves. The sun was warm, but the drops of water in the air were cold. She was happy to be wearing a coat.
A sailor approached and was waved away. She didn’t come outside to talk. “These damn men can’t wipe their own asses without asking me about it first,” she thought.
Looking up at the sky, and then down to the horizon the direction of travel, she knew the storm would begin just before making landfall. “A little rain never hurt anymore,” she thought. But she didn’t mean it. She knew it would hurt a lot.
When the ship came crashing into the dock on the storm surge, she was glad that she had not expressed the sentiment out loud, despite how banal the experience had become. All the same, she had no plans of going out to sea ever again anyway. She didn’t care what happened to the ship. She dove into the black water as the ship was dragged back out in the receding surge. Her and her crew had had to abandon ship at a port due to storm surge too many times to count. In this instance, she waited until everyone else had abandoned the ship before diving in.
When Linda first went to sea, things like this didn’t happen. She had heard things like this would happen some day, but the media and politicians all implied she’d be dead by then. They were wrong about how quickly the world she grew up in would deteriorate, along with just about everything else.
She clamored onto to shore and could see most of her crew had survived. “Human hubris is the root the of all evil,” she thought as she waded through the garbage.
The paper is off-white or maybe cream. She has a steady hand. The charcoal stains her fingers as she presses against the page. It makes a gentle sound.
She looks up from the page.
She returns her gaze down, and bites her chapped lip.
She struggles to understand why she struggles to draw a completely straight line. Her hand is going where she wants it to. But the line is always sloped one way or another.
Part twelve of Twelve Stories.
Hakon and Courtney share a glance and silently decide it has become more than appropriate to begin running, as whatever lies ahead is likely to be, if nothing else, better than drowning, and at the silent thought of drowning, Hakon remembers everything – his silent childhood, his missing patient’s delusions of a coming zombifying plague and his investigation into it which brought him to the mediation retreat with Courtney and Maryl and the others on the beach filled with black crabs, how a blood sample he had no knowledge of how to do anything with and retreating to a cave with Courtney was all he managed to accomplish in his attempt to combat this plague his delusional patient had tried to warn him of, how frail he was in the face of the very zombies he felt he alone was prepared to encounter, and how, in the midst of everything, a storm surge or something filled the cave and he saw images of flowers and ceilings, and the sound of his and Courtney’s wet running feet becomes softer and softer and his field of vision dimmer and dimmer and he feels the cold water deep in his lungs and all around as he finds himself still trapped in the very same storm surge with salt water stinging his eyes and Courtney unseen as he drifts into the sides of the cave which don’t even harbor the slightest pocket of air, unable to control his body and the feeling of pressure and cold finally ends and he feels as though he has just awoken from a decades-long dream, no longer a being bound by flesh and gravity to a long-cursed planet, but true freedom on a level he had never known, feeling awake and for the very first time, ready to begin the day.
Part eleven of Twelve Stories.
The water rises in the tunnel or cave. All along the direction behind their backs, creeping higher and higher, it gets wetter and wetter.
Courtney clasps her hands to her face. Damp and dark, she wonders how it is she can see the water at all. The earthen cavity affords them seemingly endless space to move forward, their little fire long ago consumed by water.
They reach the foundation of what appears to be a fountain. Grasping at gilded golden railings, they now know they are in a tunnel and not a cave.
Hakon’s hands tremble at the infamous insignias coming into sight upon the walls. He wonders if the journey is just beginning. Kicking all Kafkaesque notions aside, limiting logic more morosely, no other notions remained in mind.
Solid concrete reveals itself underneath the sand, and gradually, there is no sand and only concrete and the sound of Hakon and Courtney’s footfalls reflecting off the walls of the concrete shell they traverse, forced unceasingly forward by the rising water, which seems to be gaining speed, their wet shoes adding an audible weight to their steps, all of which making it very simple for anyone to hear them approaching.
Part seven of the Twelve Stories series.
Hakon had kindled adequately.
Courtney stopped shivering.
Mesmerized by the flames, she couldn’t help but feel glad.
Hakon didn’t know where they were. His appearance, Courtney’s presence, all implied some continuity from the morning at the mediation retreat on the beach, trying to capture the glimmer of the sea behind his eyes.
But there seemed to be a gap in their memories. They were not underwater, but his memory leaps from sinking into the sea to adequately kindling a small fire in cave, or perhaps it was a tunnel.
“If this is a tunnel,” he thought, “which way did we come from? Did we come from the same direction?”
Courtney could see him knitting his brows. “So, what do we do?” she asks.
“I guess look for an exit. I don’t know which direction we came from.”
“I think you were here when I got here. But I don’t remember which direction I came from, either. How did you start the fire?”
“I have no idea.”
Silt covered the ground of the cave or tunnel. Like a lake or river bed.
“…What was your name, again?” she asks. “I want to say, ‘The Falconer,’ but that can’t be it.”
The quintessence of acquiescence, Hakon sat, green and garbled, consumed by confusion, no longer listening to Courtney.
This is part five of the Twelve Stories series.
Hakon and Courtney rush to a nearby cave, no longer concerned about the endless black crabs dotting the beach.
They are soaked in seawater and blood. The corpses of the fellow meditators are mixed with those of the infected who fell upon them.
Cowering in a cave, Hakon turns to her, his countenance asks, “How did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” she responds shakily. “I saw Jerome bite Maryl, and the next thing I remember, you were trying to wash the blood off of me in the water.”
“By the time I dealt with Jerome, they were all dead. But you were still beating them,” Hakon verbalizes.
“Who were they?”
“It is easiest to just think of them as zombies,” Hakon replied after some consideration. “They aren’t ‘undead’ but they aren’t really alive anymore.”
“How do you know?” Courtney asked, stepping away from him.
“I am… something like a therapist. One of my patients does biological research for the military. However, his reality is… different. He went missing, and I began to wonder if the delusions I thought he was suffering from were a reality.”
They crouch in the cave in silence. “I don’t usually talk so much,” Hakon says. “I’m not sure what else to say.”
“What happened with Jerome? What do you mean you ‘dealt’ with him?”
“I took a blood sample. I think it may help develop a vaccine. i just need to find someone with the expertise who will believe me.”
Courtney begins to open her mouth and pauses as she hears the sound of someone approaching the cave.
Jerome is the first to fall.
The brutes see his absent minded kicking as a threat.
Fake-diamond-studded knuckles tipped with disease strike Jerome across the cheek and the silence is broken.
Maryl responds, but she makes a critical mistake. She includes Jerome in her magical barrier, unaware that he has been more than simply struck.
Courtney, unaware of Maryl’s response, is more alarmed by the sudden silence from the attackers, seeing and sharing the confusion on their faces as they unsuccessfully try to walk towards her only to make no forward progress.
The countless black crabs pay no heed to this.
But Hakon knew. He had seen it all before. This moment was why Hakon was there. He springs to his feet, but he is too late.
Maryl is already at Jerome’s side, his hand in hers, Hakon looks away for a moment as he frantically searches in his bag, and in that moment, Jerome’s teeth sink into the flesh around Maryl’s throat and the roar the brutes breaks through.
Part of the Twelve Stories collection.
Facing garnished halcyon images, Jerome kicks like mad, never on purpose, quietly resting sullen, tired, unsettled–veritably wishing xenophobic yuppies zilch.
Aghast, bashful Courtney decides, eventually, following generalizations–her intuition just keeps letting more nonsense overpower premonitions. Quickly, reflexively, she traverses uncertainty, vanquishes wild xanthan/yeast zombies.
Astonishingly black crabs dot every feasible gap. Her intent justifies koans. Lovingly, Maryl’s neurological overdrive protects quaint retreats. She teaches–unflinching, vigilant–xylography, yoga, & zoology.
Alas, brutes come down eventually.
Fearless, gaunt, hirsute.
Influential, jutting knuckles let most numinous overtones pulse qi.
Revenge slashes though.
Undead viruses xenotransplant yellow zircon.
Part of the Twelve Stories collection.
At a young age, Hakon learned he was different.
Everyone else was always talking about something. Hakon only liked to listen.
It wasn’t that he was unsure of what to say. He thought other’s cared what he had to say, too. He just didn’t find talking all that appealing.
As he grew older, he became more adept at communicating with his face and body language–allowing him to become more and more silent without others really noticing.
His family was surprised to see how popular he became once he went to college. They had all been very concerned he would be unable to make new friends or find a romantic partner.
They underestimated how much people like talk and how rarely they feel heard.
Hakon eventually found himself as a sort of therapist. He didn’t offer advice or anything like that. Most people spoke of the same concerns–not being seen or heard, masked as something else. Every conversation, they felt like the other people were just waiting for their turn to speak.
But not Hakon. So they’d talk to him, and feel better.
True to his nature, he sat quietly while Maryl gave guidance to Courtney.
“This applies to you, too, Hakon,” Maryl said, detecting his distraction.
Part of the Twelve Stories collection.