Charlie locked his bedroom door. There was no need, Mum was down stairs watching her television and she never came in without knocking. He had managed to train her in that at last. Anyway, turning the key and dropping it into his pocket was all part of the experience, part of the build up.
Continue reading “Memories are Made of This by Diane M Dickson”
“Goddam, son-of-a-bitch, get the hell away from me. Buzzin in my ears like a damn mosquito, trying to drop ticks and vermin down my collar or in my boots. Damn you, to hell.”
The earplugs are workin, but I need earmuffs too. I feel like a damn astronaut, duct tape around my pant legs and boots and gloves and coat sleeves, dust mask over my mouth and nose, muffler around my neck, goggles strapped to my face and this heavy jacket, two pairs of pants and my wool watch cap. I can barely walk. Continue reading “East Wind by Frederick K Foote”
The pain jerks me up from the dark, spills bright red across my memory, shakes me in time to the artillery shells exploding around us.
##
Voices, mumbling medical jargon, the hum, and clicking of some electronics, antiseptic smell. Bright, bright too bright, I close my eyes tight.
##
My arm. They amputated my left arm below the elbow. Shit. I reach across my body and touch my new left forearm and hand. A prosthetic, but it feels, feels flesh like, like dead meat.
It was darker now, he wouldn’t have believed it possible. It was, deep, impenetrable and velvet. For the first time Tom was afraid. When the others had suggested the trip it sounded like fun. A chance to explore the newly discovered pothole, to be the first and so have their names in the journals as the original team opening up a new cavern, shining light on the newly opened place. He wasn’t very experienced and found the roping complicated, he had done it wrong and it had stuck twice on the trial run, the rope catching in the pulley but they told him it would be fine. He knew that they were finding him irritating, they were all so much more experienced but hey, that wasn’t his fault. Anyway in the end it hadn’t been fine, it had let him down and as he began to slide into the smaller cavern, pushing and slithering on the loose gravel at the head the damned thing had failed tossing him end over end into this pit.
Right now. Right at this very moment. The moment we are sharing through the medium of a page and the words it contains a man is washing blood from a nine inch blade. His hands are shaking and not just from the chill of the brown water that alternately dribbles then vomits from a rusting tap.
The bathroom is stark. You know the type. Single, naked bulb throwing diseased shards of light into your brain, alive with a frequency on the ragged edge of your hearing. The floor tiles might be white under the patina of despair, shit and god knows what else. The ones on the walls are much the same but with more graffiti to hide their shame. The mirror above the sink keeps showing the same re-run of a man washing a knife. He looks familiar but he’s changed. Hollowed out. He has no idea why he is cleaning the knife but he doesn’t stop.
My eyes are either shut or simply not working.
Hoping for the former I open my eyes, face down on the floor, my vision consisting of vague shapes and rough colours. Lifting my head takes muster, my brain reluctant to keep up with the images it receives. Everything shimmers like an old video recording. Shapes flicker but never settle, as though I am travelling through time without any way of stopping.
The psychiatric community doesn’t have a name for my problem. Please believe me when I say I’ve looked. Medical journals (both antiquated and current), multiple expert opinions—I even went so far as obtaining and translating some of Kraepelin’s unpublished case reports from the turn of the century—it all leads nowhere. The closest I’ve come is Morgellons syndrome, but that isn’t right. The reality of my condition is much worse than any disease of the mind.
Jim sat in the living room with his gun on the coffee table staring at the wall. He had just locked her in his bedroom and was contemplating his next move.
A gust of wind blew around the outside of the house as Mike pried the bottle cap off his fourth beer with his teeth. It was a trick one of his old classmates had taught him—a trick he used to use to impress women in bars, but now, domesticated, he only used when he couldn’t find the bottle opener.
Continue reading “You’ll Let the Storm In by Nicholas Siegel”
Her legs began to go numb as they tingled from her weight. She was on her knees again, scrubbing. Always scrubbing. The chill of the linoleum floor made goosebumps run over her thighs under her pants.
This home didn’t belong to her. She wouldn’t enjoy the benefits of her labors. Mrs. McCormick, or Mrs. Glenn, or Mrs. Whomever Ella worked for that day would come home after she left. All part of the job, you show up, clean, and leave.
