One day, I meet Beelzebub standing ahead of me in line at the To God Be the Glory Soup Kitchen. Bathed in the glare of the fluorescent lights that flicker above us, the man glistens. Shards of hard white light reflect off his glimmering jacket, obscuring my view.
But that one glimpse gives me the shivers.
Continue reading “Slow Walking Out of Babylon by Deborah Prum”
One day many years from now. Or wait.. Maybe it was many years ago? I guess it doesn’t very much matter.
Well, One day, a small creature not so old, yet also not so very young, its mottled furs pointing this way and that, its feet opened and sore, its body shivering, weak from its life’s long toils, cold from the inclement elements, but most of all hungry; so very hungry, hungry from days-
(Or was it years? Perhaps. That too does not much matter now.)
– without nourishment, came upon a beautiful tree.
Continue reading “The Apple by Simon Berling”
In his book, On Hashish, Walter Benjamin describes what he experienced while under the influence of the psychoactive drug, hashish. In a section in which he details a numbered sequence of hallucinations, one lone sentence has not ceased to haunt me for even the briefest moment since I first laid eyes on it.
Continue reading “Feline Psychedelia by Sam Skipper”
Solitude’s slight light falls faintly across my folded hands
Surrounded by the vacuum of his absence I shiver
a freedom vibration to the tune of Footloose and Fancy-free
My next case is a Walter Simms. Eighty-three. Wife deceased. Estranged from his children. No siblings. A truck from the Department of Water is pulling away as I arrive at his home. I wouldn’t have their job no matter how much it pays.
They said I could go anywhere, so long as my blood was there first. In hindsight, I really should have questioned the deal, but I wanted to travel, and they were handing me a key to the world, no flight reservations required.
literally stories 