Soon the stage would fill, Kathleen thought, soon the lights would change and with this change of light the tables would turn. The watchers would be plunged into silent darkness, taciturn anonymity, and the authoritative, organised, silencing cacophony of the opening overture would reign in the hall.
Read MoreI need to be alone. I need to be on my own with my ghosts. I can feel them around me now, shifting among the streetlights, dancing across the faces of deserted windows. I can hear them whispering too, confirming half-truths that I am desperate not to believe.
Read MoreThough there is a funny thing about a life as quiet as this. You realize that the silence has its own little sounds that it keeps to itself, but is willing to share with those who listen. Like a sound such as you.
Read More“Arthur wanted to say he’d miss sunrise runs and playing her favourite songs on the piano. The way her nose crinkled when he offered her peanut butter, and the sound she made when he beat her at tennis for the first time. The crack on her front tooth.”
Read MoreTW: Blood, Death
My first order of business is to make a sandwich. After asking Freddy what he wants for lunch, I make my way to the kitchen with a new goal in mind. It is my preferred activity to fixing the radiator, the first of two tasks my parents entrusted me with earlier today. I was made aware of a screw that was bulging out of the radiator, which could cut the skin or catch the clothes of whoever passed it, but that isn’t my priority.
Read MoreThis is it. The sailors gather around you, some jealous, some admiring, some fearful. Only a few have gone down in the bathysphere, but never to the depths you’re going. You can only hope the bathysphere is as infallible against the ocean as it is on blueprints. The captain salutes you and reminds you of your orders. When you hit 500 fathoms, you’re to observe any geological abnormalities as predicted from the unusual currents that emanate here.
Some expect you to give a final speech before you descend. Perhaps a thanks to the crew or a witty remark. Any final wishes if something goes wrong. A last chance to repent your sins. You offer nothing. Instead, you climb into the bathysphere, giving the crew a thumbs-up through the observation window. The hatch locks. You ready yourself as you’re hoisted above the ocean, deep and murky, and are dropped in.
Your breathing increases as choppy waves slosh against, and eventually over, the bathysphere. You feel like an acorn, dangling on a string, waiting to be cracked.
Read MoreThe lights switched on with a dull buzzing noise, the meeting room awake with their fluorescent glow. Six employees filed in, walking towards the central table. They sat upright in their chairs like a set of matching graphite pencils, ready to underline the importance of finance in a dying world.
The director walked in last, the door clicking shut as he sat at the head of the table. He shuffled his papers as he looked around the room like he wanted to organise his employees into a neat stack as well.
“All right, let’s make a start,” he cleared his throat, “it has come to our attention that DMB, the firm’s biggest competitor, are being praised for their sustainability in becoming a paperless office.”
Shock rippled across the employees in a wave of grey. “So as director of marketing, I wanted to take a deep dive into how we too can be a ‘sustainable’ company. Does anyone have anything they’d like to contribute?”
Read MoreWest Sands Beach, St Andrews.
The sky, sublime, is blanketed with heavy, dark clouds rolling out to meet the water, as cruel and cold as it is. The sand is littered with as much debris as the last time, shells and seaweed discarded everywhere, rejected by the sea.
I was with you when I was here last. You pocketed the seashells you thought most beautiful, to give to me before I left – though you forgot to give them to me. When I did leave, their absence in my pocket only twisted the knife that was my absence in your arms. You’re absent today, too. It’s been a long time since I loved you.
Read MoreYou’re sitting on an armchair, a mug of tea beside you, your child on your lap. She’s holding a book. She keeps asking where you got it from. You don’t recognise it.
Before you, a blank expanse stretches out, bleak and never ending. There’s nothing in sight that can jog your memory, because there’s nothing in sight. At all. It’s just empty and barren, devoid of anything whatsoever, just you and nothing, just you in nothing, and if you’re the only thing left doesn’t that make you nothing, too?
‘Dad?’ She’s looking at you with big eyes, waiting. As you turn to look at her, you notice something at your side. Something that can make the nothing go away.
Read MoreDid you know that all these stars are dead? Isn’t that amazing – that they can shine for so long after they’re gone? And what came before them? What do the stars look up to?
I thought about that for a long while, my gaze searching. In the distance, a bonfire was spitting tongues of smoke into the dusky blue, its warm breath gusting over us. You gripped my hand a little tighter, and that warmth was bone deep. I figured then that it wasn’t so strange at all for stars to shine for so long; you’ll be smiling down at me forever.
Read MorePerfect
/ˈpəːfɪkt/
Having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be.
Read More
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