The time Jack was healing was mostly spent reading Charles’ books and getting caught up on the gossip: the shifting of relationships and businesses, the conception and birth of a variety of babies. What caught Jack’s attention, though, was the news of the summer festival.
“Is it that time already?” he asked Cathy. By now he was sitting up against the stone wall.
Cathy’s eyes glinted with mischief when she said, “Thinking about doing a little mingling?” Continue reading “Promises – part 4”
Jack was occupying his usual stool at the pub, staring into a tankard of ale. The familiar drone of conversation and merriment wrapped around him like an old blanket: frayed and unable to keep him warm, but a comport none-the-less. Trevor, the bartender, walked over and asked Jack if he was okay. Jack just nodded and continued to stare into his drink. Trevor shrugged and walked back to the livelier customers.
Jack considered just paying his tab and heading home, when the door to the pub opened and many of the customers fell quiet. He didn’t turn to look. If it involved him, it’d come to him. Recently, though, not a whole lot around town involved him. His luck at the gambling houses was down, he had no leads for a good heist, and with the gypsies coming through town he couldn’t out swindle the snake oil salesmen. Maybe it was time to give up and take an apprenticeship in something useful… Continue reading “Promises – part 3”
Jack slept fitfully after the procedure was done and his impromptu physicians had retired for the evening. Fred lied on a thin stack of blankets and alternated between watching his friend, staring at the ceiling, and looking around at the strange baubles Charles seemed to collect. Sometimes he would close his eyes and hope for sleep to take him, but it was always in vain. When Jack finally woke, Fred was quick to sit up and greet him with a friendly smile. Jack groaned and mumbled, “You’d think I’d get used to pain by now.”
The slow tick of liquid hitting stone echoes through the dungeon cell. A winged man hung suspended in the middle of the room by a chain connected to a spike that had been plunged through the man’s torso and split into two curled tendrils around his sides. Occasionally a drop of blood fell from the split spike onto the stone floor and into a small pool that never quite made it to the drainage grate. Every once in a while the man took a quick, rattling breath, then let it out in a long, low hiss. The skeletons manacled along the wall watched in frozen, timeless interest at the man who doesn’t die.
Winner of the Holcomb College Award year…something or another….
Crystal roses,
Sparkling like dew,
Glowing with an aura
Of beauty.
Crimson rain,
Falling in the tempest,
Crashing on the roses,
Shattering petals
In agony.
Sapphire fairy,
Lying under the roses,
Not hearing the crash
Of the crimson rain.
Crystal rose petal,
Ruby with rain,
Falling under the rose,
Splintering,
Shattering.
Sapphire fairy,
With crimson and ruby,
In shards on the emerald grass.
Illusions of stained glass.
Maybe if he’d known just how she liked her coffee, she’d still be alive.
Maybe in another life, she would have been able to live how she wanted. Maybe in the years past she would have lived in this presented servitude of the higher beings without question. Unfortunately, she despised servitude, and the gods would likely grant her reincarnation as a dung beetle if she were to try to end her suffering. Then again, beetles never looked out on the wide world and longed to experience it. They seemed pretty content where they were.
The third story printed with Fire in the Sky
Kris sat sideways in her favorite chair, reading a book and waiting for her visitor. The antique clock on the mantle showed 11:57pm. Kris turned the page and listened to the sound of the fire in the hearth, along with the quiet tick tock of the clock. A deck of tarot cards lay on the coffee table in front of her. She closed her book to glance at them. Just that morning they had confirmed the arrival of her guest, though they were not her first hint of his visit. That had come to her last night.
Another story printed with Fire in the Sky’s first publication.
Wind rustled the trees, whipping around the buildings surrounded by the high fence. The storm was nightmare-turned reality to some of the tenants of this place. They tossed and screamed and begged the voices to save them. One prisoner was completely unfazed by the sounds, for they did not reach her. Lying on the floor, she counted the numbers the faces, the names, that only she could see. They called out to her. Always calling.
Careful footsteps down the white hall.
Always whispering.
Counting the numbers by the doors.
Always promising.
Check to make sure she’s there.
Freedom.
This story was featured along with the very first publication of Fire in the Sky. For those few people out there that have a copy of that edition….I’m sorry. Mainly for the typos and flaws that filled the pages. Anyway, have yourself a read:
She never had a chance. She realized this as she sat in the bus station, holding a black rose and waiting for something, anything, to take her away from where she was. The blue-brown-green ocean made its constant trot toward the sand and rocks across the road. Fish leapt out of the moving glass to taunt the sea birds overhead. Silently the rose sat with its black petals reaching up to her, spinning back and forth in her delicate fingers.
ldcarson 