Bombs rain down indiscriminately as sirens pierce the evening air.
A city set ablaze as it crumbles to the ground.
Plumes of grey and purple smoke rise into the red dusk.
A mother and her child dance through the streets.
Arms outstretched as the ashen sky falls like confetti about them.
Choosing to join the dead than ever surrender.
Brother Ramon awoke, his naked body aching and weak. His head pounding, swimming in a fog of confusion. Fragments of monochromatic light, blurry shades of gray and white filtering into the emptiness behind his eyes. This is what blindness must feel like, he thought. If only his nose was as impaired as his vision, the stench of this place was strong enough to fell an advancing army.
There was nothing before this moment. His mind blank like a book set to page 113, nothing but stark white emptiness filling the preceding pages. Who was he? Where was he?
Ramon rolled onto his side. Reaching out to feel his surrounding, the floor pushing back as he ran his hand across the cold stone. As he continued to probe his surroundings, the stone gave way to rough-hewn fabric. He gripped and pulled but something held it in place. Leveraging its weight, he dragged himself to the object anchoring the cloth.
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Today was difficult. I was completely blindsided by what was to come. If I’d known I’d have stayed in bed.
The day unfolded in layers like a sad country song. I’m sure the dog would have run away if I had one.
My heart pounded, sweat beaded on my forehead. I cried and screamed and sobbed in anger and anguish.
As I sit here alone, the sun long set, I put all of it into a bubble and blow it up and away. As I watch it drift upwards I feel my body relax. Tomorrow is a new day.
Continue readingContent Warning: Contains violence, sexually explicit themes and course language.
She remained calm even as her colleagues spawned a storm of nervous energy that bristled all around her.
Amaya stood five foot seven, her jet-black hair contrasting with her white jumpsuit as it fell over her shoulders. As a young child and long before her family moved to England, she remembers standing along the Bay of Bengal imagining what lay beyond the blue. Her father sparking her curiosity with stories of mermaids and monsters filling the deep.
While her peers turned toward the stars Amaya looked to Earth’s oceans. Fueled by her memories the Indian born, Oxford educated graduate, dove into her studies, becoming the rockstar of her chosen field. Her caché landed her a prestigious position on the Atlantis project. As member of the CoreOne team, the cutting-edge oceanic engineer was part of the deep-sea colony from its initial submergence.
That was 17 years ago and Atlantis had grown from a modest research station to an underwater city. Consisting of four cores supporting 17 modules. The colony was home to over 11,000 permanent residences. Its massive entertainment districts supporting 5,500 hotel rooms, three casinos, several restaurant, entertainment and shopping districts, and the state-of-the-art Marine Discovery Center was a bustling vacation destination for many surface dwellers.
Continue readingViolence against women is all too prevalent in society today. It is not acceptable that many women still live with that reality every day and we must all work together to eliminate it. Unfortunately, scenarios like the one in my #weekendwritingprompt are all too common.
Content Warning: Strong sexual and violent themes implied, including violence against women. Content could elicit strong emotional reactions, reader beware.
The room stopped momentarily as the exquisitely dressed Ella made her provocative entrance. Not 48 hours earlier she had dumped me insisting I was a small spiteful man and now this, as if to mock me.
“Who’s the vindictive one,” he thought, his blood boiling as he slipped into the restroom behind her. “Let’s see how that dress looks coloured in red…”
I remember the first time we met. It was the first day of 11th grade, Mr. Grady’s second period Math class if memory serves. My family had relocated from the west coast over the summer to accommodate my Dad’s big promotion. I despised my new home but it got better once school started, in part because of Darlene. She walked right up on the very first day and introduced herself to the new kid in town. Before long I was just another guy in our circle of friends. One of the gang. Hell, Matt and Chad are my blood brothers to this very day.
I know Darlene crushed on me for a few years before giving up the ghost. She never did come out and say it but I knew she was interested. We never dated unless you count me taking her to the high school prom. She’d broken it off with the douchebag varsity quarterback and didn’t want to go alone. Knowing I was going solo, we struck up a deal to make a grand entrance and light the night on fire. She deserved a proper prom, so we went all out on a gown (already purchased for the d-bag), a tux, a limo, the whole nine yards. It was high school romantic as fuck. I think she even tried to kiss me during Stairway to Heaven, but my eyes were fixed elsewhere.
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Limbs dark and cold thaw in the spring air, lifeblood stored in my subterranean network pushes towards the sky; so sweet and abundant that I can spare a drop or two for you.
In the new warmth, tiny buds form and push outward, filling the canopy and blotting out the sun from the path below.
Branches teaming with life, caterpillars feed on the leaves that breathe in carbon and exhale oxygen; beetles and weevils prefer the dark spaces hidden beneath my bark; robins, woodpeckers and jays nest and rest and feast and hide within my cover; and squirrels burrow in the hollow recesses of my long dead core.
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If there was one thing Violet was certain of it was that Ernest C. Stottlemeyer, or Ernie for short, was a procrastinator. She loved the man but things needed to change.
Vi waited in the dark as Ernie returned from the Brunswick and dropped his bowling ball at the door.
“Put the damned ball away,” she said startling him. “Starting tomorrow,” she paused while reaching to electrify the lamp. The light illuminating the ‘Unabridged Lexicon of Unfulfilled Promises’ she cradled in her arms, “Starting tomorrow Ernie…”
Continue readingRepublished for Fandango’s Flashback Friday. Being relatively new to blogging this was the closest I could find to an April 15th post. Although I had published the odd thing from as early as 2013, Forgotten, which first posted on April 5th, 2020, was my first attempt at fiction, the first blog prompt I’d ever participated in and really was the first entry of the current incarnation of Greg’s Blog. I posted to Sonya’s #threelinetales many times before the last challenge posted on December 30, 2021. Hope you enjoy one of my early posts.
Day by day, she numbs her loneliness in the reflections of a lifeless computer screen.
In a far corner, I sit silent, alone and forgotten.
Oh, how I long to feel her soft hands pulling at my (heart) strings, filling the room around us with her beautiful song.
Jaycee rode the crest of the space-time ripple racing outward across the farthest edges of the universe. Xe could recall every moment of the almost 14 billion year journey starting from the blinding light at the instant xe broke free from xyr father’s grip. Racing ever outward on the expanding wave until all the stars left in xyrs wake had all but faded from view.
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