Honey Due's Blog, page 6

Mother #1 (fiction)

Photo by Jordan Bauer on Unsplash 

Mother was dead. I sat up startled and leaned against the pine headboard of our bed. I didn’t dare look over, not just yet, though I could feel it in my bones, as certain as anything. We’d both known this was coming for a long, long time. Armand seemed to be clueless about it, as with pretty much anything. My husband had a way of drifting in and out of his own realm, only catching bits and glimpses of the real world we inhabited. But that was okay, I always had Mother to talk to and look after, especially in the past few years, when she seemed to be slipping up more and more.

I’d first seen it in her eyes some three months before, the certainty that she was dying and I kept thinking that I should be heartbroken, but I was not. It wasn’t that I wanted her to die, but as if there was a chunk of ice sunken inside of my chest that I couldn’t quite reach. And nothing could ever get through that or past it. And I couldn’t feel, but I hoped she knew how sorry I was. I tried to pay special care to her after that, always making sure she had a comfortable pillow to sit on and was warm. That’s one of the things, I kept saying, that she must keep warm. As if that would keep her alive as well. But in the end, it did not, and I realized how foolish I’d been to think so.

I wouldn’t exactly call it a premonition or some sort of strange sixth sense. I’d known she would die, though nothing was said of it and that it would be in the next 95 days. And as precise as clockwork, there she was.

Dead.

I knew that as well, even before looking. I didn’t need to confirm it, I didn’t really want to know and to be fair, all I could feel in those waking moments was relief that Armand wasn’t there, because I knew he’d try to be comforting and that would only make it harder. He had a good heart, my husband, always, but sometimes it was as if we lived on different planes and he really didn’t understand what I was on about. I needed to be clear-headed. Practical. Box up her life and move forward, this was no time to wallow.

And yet, I still didn’t look. I refused to see her frail body, now limp and pale. Would it be pale, I wondered? For all my bravado, I’d never seen a corpse before and it was most disturbing that the first would be Mother’s. Still, things have to be done and arrangements must be made.

I made my way out of the room slowly, tip-toeing in my thick socks, keeping away from the creaky floorboard on purpose, though there was no one left in the house to hear them creak.

I picked up the phone in the kitchen. I would have to get this out of the way, I couldn’t let Armand sway me later on because then I would fall here. I would lose myself and that was no way to go about things.

‘Mother’s dead.’

The words tasted foreign in my mouth and I felt weird, like trying to speak a different language and pronouncing it wrong.

‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry, love.’

And I could already hear his voice breaking. Just a little. Clear-head. I listened to the torrent of words gush out of him, about grief and flying back early and my head started pounding.

‘No, it’s alright. Really, I’ll be okay. Finish your trip and come back on Friday, like we said. I’m really fine.’

‘Pam, you shouldn’t be alone in the house.’

And I felt the strangest impulse to tell him I wasn’t. I had Mother there to contend with, or at least what had been Mother not quite so long ago.

‘I’ll call someone. Jenna or Francine, I won’t be alone.’

Alone – the word of the century, it seemed, at least for Armand. My husband was one of those people who regarded being on your own as a sort of plague, to be avoided at all costs.

‘I love you,’ he told me, always so honest, so much there, that I could already feel myself getting lost, like I always did in his warmth, so alien to me at times. But I could not let myself go. Mother was dead and I had to do the right thing by her.

‘Me too. I gotta go now. Bye.’

I hung up quickly, before he could say anything else. I walked back through the house, no longer paying attention to where I stepped. I had already disturbed the perfect quiet of the morning by announcing – to Armand, as well as to the world – that Mother was dead. I pushed the door open and looked full on, not quite ready for what I would see. Is anyone ever ready for such a sight? She lay there, slumped over on her side and she looked so…empty. They tell you that corpses are sorrowful, but there’s no one inside to be sorry. That they are sad or cold or lonely, even that they look like they were still alive, asleep somehow, suspended in a time bubble above our heads. But they don’t. They just look empty, like someone who’s no longer there.

Haunted (fiction)

This is the third part of the story. Read the first part here and the second part here.

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Photo by Greg Willson on Unsplash

She started sending him lists. Of things he needed to buy and places he ought to see and he asked her how she knew all those places, she’d never been there with him and behind her little screen, inside her blank office, she smiled. She just knew them, she’d say and she’d shrug, even though he couldn’t see. And in each word she wrote, each point on her list, there were only faint traces of the same soundless message.

Words that obsessed her, that haunted her endless nights pacing around the office – she missed Peter and wished she was there or that he was here, or that they were together. Where and how did not really matter, not anymore. All that mattered was them.

Yes, but you’re here and he is not.

The words rippled across her mind, always leaving a bitter trail that she could not spit out. He is not here, no, and something must be done about that. She started dropping him clues and at first, she didn’t even realize. When she asked him to go out for a bit of rope, it didn’t seem strange because he needed to fix a ladder and she knew a knot that would fix it.

A knot that would fix many other things as well.

But Angie said nothing, at least not then. The ladder got fixed and a bit of rope remained inside the house, abandoned in the corner, not in the basement, but in the master bathroom, the one he never used now because it was painful to remember all those nights spent together laughing and loving. Nights that were dead to him now, just like her.

The knife, she meant as a birthday present, because Peter had always had a fascination for knifes, one she’d found morbid, but this time, she insisted he buy it. The small but incredibly sharp one he’d been lusting after for years.

‘From me,’ she wrote and he cried as he read it, typing thank you when all he really wanted to tell her was ‘from you, but you’re not here, love.’

How can I be when you’re not?

The words were a mistake, a slip of the keyboard, written absently as he toyed with the knife and entertained much the same thoughts that weighed on Angie’s mind. It would be so easy. And painless, and then, they wouldn’t have to speak through this bloody screen, but they could be together for real. He would be able to caress the small of her back and her shoulders – plump and full of life, even in death, they’d be.

They’d be happy again, he thought, as his eyes darted between the sharp, gleaming blade and the motionless screen. He waited, it seemed, for the longest of times for her answer. And he hoped, with each second, that she would do as she’d so often done in life and know what he meant without him actually saying it. It’s something rather amazing, really, that if you live long enough with someone, you learn the way their mind works, like a peek into a magician’s sleeve, you understand how it all happens and you can guess the next trick.

And he so hoped she would guess it, because it seemed far too terrible to spell out.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

And on the other side of the screen, Angie stared in horror at the words. How can I be when you’re not? And perhaps to another woman in some happier situation, they might’ve appeared the most romantic words in the world, but to her, they didn’t. She was far too angry – at herself for ever thinking this was an option – and far too sad because of the question in her own mind.

But how can you not be?

She let her head fall onto the cold wooden desk and as the wood hit her forehead, she felt her brain go numb, if only for a second. She cursed herself for putting the idea into his mind, for wishing Peter was dead so that they could be together forever. And she saw now, that she should’ve known better, she should’ve been more careful because she knew – she was the only one who ever knew – of the little voice inside Peter’s head who argued that maybe the world would be better if he was dead.

And besides, she knew it didn’t work like that. He didn’t, but she did and she had to tell him. See, that’s another knack you get after you live with someone for a long time – you can’t quite imagine the world without them.

But sometimes, you have to.

You have to be. For both of us, my love.

And she told him something she’d been thinking for quite some time. She told him that maybe this wasn’t all there was, and that maybe she was here because she wanted to be, because she wanted to be with him more than anything, but that was impossible and they both had to understand that. That she did not want him there,

I couldn’t picture you inside this shitty, colorless office. In front of a sad little screen, holding on to something that’s not yours anymore. To someone. And that’s just the thing, because when you come here, I don’t know where I’ll be or if we will be together at all. And I think that maybe you’ll have no one to talk to, you know, on that side of the wall. That maybe you’ll die and no one will look for you. And it terrifies me because you deserve someone. I love you so much, but you’re wrong. The world wouldn’t be better…My world would fall to pieces.

And she didn’t wait for a reply. She knew that if she did, her resolve would weaken and the same cycle would begin again. They’d be stuck here forever, chatting, and it wouldn’t really be fair to him.

Angie didn’t know what lay behind the red door, but she was fairly certain it wasn’t the corridor from before. And as she watched the laptop screen go black, she hoped.

Without once looking back, she opened the door.

The End

 

Want more? My collection of stories, Grimmest Things is available now on Amazon.

Angie (fiction)

Read the first part of the story here!

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Original by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

There’s a letter for him. There’s a letter inside each of us, hidden deep down and woven through our very soul. And just because we die, it doesn’t mean the letter stops existing, just that it becomes harder to convey. For both sides. And just as he struggled to get his words across to her, to mail the letter of love he carried, she too sat somewhere on the other side of the world, and yet quite close by, and listened. And read.

For hours and days and weeks and months, she read, in an office not unlike the one they shared at home, through hundreds of comments and chat threads. Astonishing how fast you adapt to the new laws dictated in the system, she thought, echoing Peter’s own thoughts.

There is no one moment when you became dead, but there is one where you stop being alive. There’s the subtlest difference and you only understand it when you do die and at that moment, Angie opened her eyes only to find herself in a large, sunless corridor, filled to the brim with little red doors with numbers on them. And she stood there, all alone, and wondered if that’s what Heaven’s supposed to be like – the hallway down to 24B, a place she’d lived once when she was someone else. Or perhaps Hell.

‘Oh neither,’ came a short, embarrassed laugh from behind her, ‘No need to be so grim, m’dear.’

She spun around to see a tiny bespectacled man coming down the hallway toward her. ‘Sorry for the wait-up, there was some trouble with some spilt milk over in 301A. Excuse the smell, but I might’ve gotten a bit of it on me.’

‘What milk?’ Angie asked, somewhat confused, only to hear the man laugh out again.

‘Oh not real milk, you see. Metaphorical milk. Smells something awful. You’ll understand. Come with me,’ he bristled past her, not stopping as he went for he was indeed a busy man.

The little man had sat her down at her own little private desk inside 1093D and explained in no uncertain terms the new laws of her existence.

‘You’re joking,’ she said, after listening carefully for a good ten minutes.

‘Not in the slightest,’ the little man said, his mouth set firmly into an obnoxiously polite smile. ‘See, you click here to start up the screen, as it has a tendency to fall asleep. You don’t need to log in or ever show credentials. The room knows who you are.’

‘But this can’t be it,’ she quipped, staring uncertain at the screen.

‘Oh, I’m afraid it is,’ he told her ‘You want to see who remembers you, don’t you?’

And, with a swoosh of his hands, he lifted all the metaphorical walls that kept the corridor firmly in place. Behind them, hundreds of thousands of faces stood revealed, all behind their allotted screens, scrolling through endless comment feeds and chuckling to themselves now and again.

‘Good luck,’ the little man added, swooping the walls back into place and disappearing from sight before Angie could say anything else. Surely, this couldn’t be the afterlife.

Except it was.

The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. After all, that was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To be back with Peter. Man, she would’ve given anything to be with Peter, to talk to him, to hold him. So, she sat behind her screen and hoped. And she scrolled and searched and hoped some more. And then, she found it. He was there.

To my darling Angie…

She read the message again and again, with tears in her eyes, not just because he was there, but because she was so tired of searching for him and because something she’d thought so pointless had proved to be fruitful. She must’ve typed a million words and listened to her little keyboard clack and then erased it all only to start all over again because how do you reply to such a message? What could she tell him that would balance out all the pain in his own words, all the sad truths that made up Peter now?

Original by Edan Cohen on Unsplash

In the end, she settled with something short and honest and hoped he’d reply once more, which he did. Words flowed on her screen and suddenly, she understood all those people behind screens smiling to themselves. She had a purpose now, she had someone on the other side of the screen, so she began writing to him more. She told him to write her privately and they chatted for hours, only stopping so that he could sleep – hours in which she’d wander the office, looking through empty books and drawing on the walls. There wasn’t much to do apart from talking to Peter. She’d tried contacting the others, her own dead loved ones, but she couldn’t figure out where to start. The computer only seemed to want to take her to the chat rooms and the comment sections and she couldn’t really find someone like that. Not someone who was dead, anyways. She would have to try the door, she decided one long night, when she found there was nothing left to draw. But then, that could bring up all sorts of unpleasant outcomes – she might find it locked and that would truly be terrifying. And if she did manage to leave, that would also mean leaving the computer behind. She might never find Peter again if she walked out. Or what if the little man caught her?

He didn’t seem particularly frightful, and yet there was something about him that told her not to cross him, or there’d be hell to pay. Or perhaps something not quite so grim. But still, she did not wish to find out and there was no real reason to leave, she was just being silly.

She had Peter and that was all she needed. He was all she’d ever wanted, ever since meeting him some ten years before. Why would she leave when her only way of talking to him was through that computer?

So Angie stayed put, writing her beloved, urging him to tell her all about his life, the world outside. The tiniest changes to their once shared apartment sounded like amazing thrills. Home. The word loomed above her, always somewhere close, seemingly within reach, but never quite. Often, when Peter went to sleep exhausted, she found herself crying because she’d felt so close, so there, and yet here she was, in the same old office, behind the same cold screen.

And as Peter told her everything about his life and Angie skirted around her own dull existence, a question began to gnaw at both their minds, one neither felt they could put into words.

One day, as sure as anything, Peter would die. And then what?

to be continued

Peter (fiction)

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Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

He knew the messages wouldn’t help, but words were all he knew and right now, they were like a warm water bottle in the middle of winter, a comfort of sorts, though not the thing he needed. How could they ever be the thing he needed? How could anything, when he knew all too well that that would never come around again? He’d be stuck with luke-warm water bottles all his life.

Sink or swim.

His mother had taught him that right before she found that bit of old rope in the basement one day and went and hung herself. This was a bit like that, like waiting at the top of the stairs for someone who would never come back up. In the end, it hadn’t been Peter who’d gone down the stairs to see what was happening but his great aunt Gertrude, who was eighty-five, but took the news remarkably well. Astonishing how quickly you become strong when there’s an eight year old waiting for you at the top of the stairs. Or not. After all, two women went down those stairs that day and only one came back up.

Sink or swim.

But this was not about his aunt Gertrude or about the basement he never saw after that because they moved far away to an apartment block that had an elevator so Gertrude didn’t have to keep going up and down the stairs. Particularly not down. And it wasn’t about his mother either, though he’d loved her dearly.

No. Although impossible to believe at the time, life goes on and good things happen, you find that not all the people who love you will go one day down to the basement and stay there for good and sometimes, if you’re lucky, you find someone who would rather die fighting than leave you behind. And sometimes, if you’re unlucky, they do.

Peter never quite understood what happened to Angie. Not because it had been sudden, but because it had been so terribly slow. See, Peter understood how one day, someone could be right beside you, making you laugh, and the next they could be gone. It made sense to him, because he tended to believe what he saw and he’d seen it happen. So, he expected people to disappear. Though not before his own eyes and while he’d half expected Angie to bolt one day, he found he was utterly unprepared to watch her fade into nothing, her cheeks become a little more sunk-in, her eyes just a little more not there with each day. There’s something awfully helpless in watching somebody die, which kinda made Peter wish she’d bolted.

And he’d done what was expected, he’d sat with her through hours of treatment though they both knew it wouldn’t help and he brought her anything he asked, keeping the house spotlessly clean and making sure he didn’t catch even the slightest cold because then he’d pass it on to her and it might all be over. And he’d played her favorite song at her funeral and he’d been strong, not crying through the endless stream of faces that told him how sorry they were, though they could have no idea what sorry was.

Maybe they should make a new word for sorry, Peter kept thinking as he shook hands and kissed tear-streaked cheeks.

Because they either don’t know what they’re saying or sorry is something very different from what I am feeling.

He never felt sorry after Angie died, not once. It was much, much worse. He felt hollow, like a pumpkin on Halloween. Everything inside had somehow been scooped up by a careless hand and now there was mess everywhere. So, when the first notification came through, he didn’t quite care. He didn’t quite care about anything and he couldn’t even remember writing the message. He’d been listening to the same song over and over – it had been her song and he’d always felt so strange about her listening to it. Why listen to a song about a break-up when you’re not broken up? It felt silly to him, though now it did not. Because the song she so loved wasn’t about break-ups, but about early goodbyes. Bot all goodbyes come early, don’t they? Regardless how late.

He took to listening to it because it sometimes made him feel as if she might just be over in the next room, like she might walk in any moment, like she might wake up from where she was and come back to him.

To my darling Angie…

He began typing, though he’d always made fun of such people before. How could that bring any comfort? he wondered before when he saw such messages. It’s not like the dead are scrolling through YouTube comments, hoping they’d get a mention on their favorite song.

Peter wrote to her about everything, about the pain of losing her and how the people at her funeral didn’t know what sorry meant. Of how he’d played her favorite song, this song, and everyone had cried and he’d hoped she’d come back, hearing the music perhaps.

And he swore he’d never forget her and he watched as the comment got likes and thought that maybe the people who gave a thumbs up knew more about what he meant than the people who were “sorry”.

He took to checking the number of likes as he listened to the music. It gave him a strange sense of pleasure, of belonging. If people were listening to the song, then they might get it a little and that was the only type of person he felt he could stomach. He even started commenting on some of the other people’s posts – posts he’d laughed at in the past. Posts so painfully similar to his own.

It’s in the nature of humans to become accustomed to things. We adapt to the new normal, otherwise we’d die and this became Peter’s new normal, his online little family – faceless, but with broken hearts.

So that the day when he saw the little notification box blink and read the word “commented” he secretly felt delighted. Accepted in a way in this group of unsorry outcasts. He sat, stone-faced, reading the words over and over. Just three.

I miss you.

To be continued

 

 

Trial by kerosene

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Trial by
Kerosene

We’ve been here so many times, baby, and I feel…I feel we’re gonna be here a lot more times before this is over, ain’t we? You draw me in and then you spit me out and I’m a little more broken and a little more lost each time. And each time, I come back to you, my kerosene.

Your claws grow deep, piercing, until I don’t know no more where you end and I begin. And I’m afraid. So afraid, baby, that I’ll pull away one day, but your claws will be too deep and all that’ll be left will be the blood of me. I hope that doesn’t happen, but I can’t…I can no longer do anything, do you know how that feels?

What it’s like to be so dependent on someone, so in deep that you’re afraid to tear away? ‘Cause you know it’ll kill you when you do. Because I know. I can lie to you and to me, so many times, I can claim I don’t, that I’m still safe, but the truth is I haven’t been safe for a really long time.

I was walking to your place one day, I think, and then something called out to me. A bird or some wayward bum…and I responded. I shouldn’t have, but I did, ’cause I guess I didn’t know any better. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I know. I know. I know.

But I didn’t then and I suppose it doesn’t matter now, you know? I thought I could find my way back to you, but I never did.

They approach the gallows chanting low, letting the cold soft winter settle over the, the brisk wind washing over their sins. They’ve forgotten, men like them are wont to forget. After all, they’ve got so many sins to remember, the sins of others, they aren’t much interested in their own. As they walk, their minds are clear, empty to the very last, because nothing can be allowed to disturb them. One errant thought and their peace of mind will be broken. And the judgment will have to begin all over again.

The prisoners sit mutely along the wall. They would wail if they had any tongues, if their mouths weren’t gagged and chained. They cannot be allowed to scream or yell out against their punishment, otherwise they would not be purified. Besides, they know better, they’ve been trained to accept what’s given.

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The voice of the judges is just, always, they know. And they wait, hoping that the judges find them worthy. If they had anyone left to pray to, they would, they’d beg for their deaths, for the swift axe that comes down and never goes up, because here, death is the preferable outcome.

Sensing their thoughts, the eldest judge opens his mouth. The judgment has concluded, sentence will now be passed.

‘Many of you are weak, many of you crave your death, we know. It is not easy, but a life without judgment is no life at all. Fate has been merciful with all of you. None of you will die and those of you who make it through the purification process will come out strong. You must take comfort in that or you will not make it at all. You will wander the darkest of voids for the rest of eternity, empty, nameless. Nobody will know you in the dark.’

And not one of them wants to end up in the dark, because even after all this, that fate is still more terrible than the one they have. At least here, their loved ones can come visit.

I see you in my dreams, sometimes, but then I see you really, as you are. Without me.

The condemned look up at him, one by one fighting back their tears. They hoped for a different sentence, but now they must take what they can. They know there will be no appeal. They are already on the bottom of the world, nobody cares if they live or die, if they make it out of here strong – as the judges promise – or broken. They don’t matter to the outside world, not anymore and even if they do make it through the purification process, they will be alone. Some understand, some are slowly crumbling.

Tick-tock, tick-tock. The dance begins again and many fail. They die upon the rack, fingernails pulled and cheeks slashed. And they wake up again, the next day, a little battered, a tad fainter, but still very much there. A few nurse their wounds in the dark, weeping for what they could have been, once.

None know how they made it out here. Many think they got lost, they wandered off the path and forgot the way back. I suppose it happens, I suppose you can believe it, if you’re desperate enough.

You can believe anything if you’re desperate enough.

But the truth is, none got lost and they all know it, deep down. In the nights where they can’t sleep, where they pray for a sleep that will take them somewhere far away. A sleep that never seems to come…They remember that they were all meant to end up here, that they sealed their fates each time, with a smile and a nod, thinking it didn’t really matter, that there was time still to repent.

And there is. The judges make sure they repent for the whole of eternity. Day, after day, after day.

End.

Images – 1; 2.

The Chameleon Artist – writing the bad guys

Someone said something interesting. Well no, that really doesn’t happen all that often if you think about it. Most of the time, we’re just regurgitating the same old thoughts, ideas, and we’re basically having the same conversations. So naturally, when someone says something that strikes you as different, you cling to it. Weird, because I don’t even know if it was something that special, just something that appealed to me – I suppose such things are more fascinating for writers.

I went to see this play because a guy I knew was in it and I really enjoyed the play, it really left a mark, I suppose. And afterwards, I asked this guy how he could play the character he played, who wasn’t really all that nice, and he said that well, he understands that guy, too.

And it struck me as interesting because I understood what he meant. As a writer, I’m constantly looking for the other side of the story, you know? I mean, you can’t write about an assassin and despise him, because that’s going to make a bad read and in order to write with honesty about any character, you have to be on their side, you do indeed have to understand their point of view, even if you find it flawed, personally.

You change yourself so as to understand, you get in character, whether it’s for a writing session or a representation of a play, you’re stepping into someone else’s mind, just for a while. If you don’t believe in someone or at least understand them, how could you write or play them?

This is a really fascinating subject to me. The idea that for every evil person, everyone on this earth, there is someone who loves them or at least understands them. And thinking about it, I’ve often found myself in a similar position, although I never realized it. Writing like I do about dark things and mostly not-so-good characters, I often hear people react negatively to them – what a monster, I hate him – and while I’m glad ’cause that was the desired effect, I can’t really agree with them.

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Because I don’t view my characters as such. I’m often going ‘well, he’s not so bad’. Because nobody wants to hear the story of ‘well, there was this asshole and he…’. No.

People want to hear the ‘there was this guy who though this and did that and who was an asshole, incidentally,’ story. The motivation, the psychology behind the character, that’s the fascinating part – with the good ones, but particularly with the bad. I’ve written before on the appeal of the anti-hero and the bad guy and in writing that, I noticed that most people favor the evil character, if he has a stronger backstory.

Readers aren’t picking up a book to see good and bad, black and white. They want to read about the gray area in between, or at least glimpse it, so as to understand the people, to relate to them.

So, you get inside that character’s head and you listen, you think them through and you end up understanding all sorts of weird, fucked-up people you never thought you’d understand.

Why can’t we be chameleon people?

I often wonder that – if we can get inside the head of a character and see the world from their point of view, why can’t we do the same with people around us? Right now, humanity is so divided, we’re bickering among ourselves so much. And we choose to see things in black and white. Perhaps it’s not a conscious choice, I suppose not, but we do it. We decide someone’s bad and that’s it. We rarely stop to consider how someone else sees things. God forbid we realize they’re right too, in their own way…

The older I get, the more I realize how things aren’t really just black and white, they’re not really that simple, although we’d sometimes like them to be. Maybe we can be artists for a day and try to understand each other rather than be at another human’s throat all the time?

 

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Clock beats

‘There’s something screaming in me,’ he whispered. He was looking down low, staring at the wall as if he was about to cry. But no, I was wrong. I realized, as the seconds passed, that he would never cry. Not in front of me, not in front of anyone. I think he was beyond cring at that point, to tell you the truth. And for one brief second, I wished I could help him.

I wished I could reach out and take his hand, soothe him in some way. I was young then and I thought myself very brave, I thought I could do anything. Even quieten the screaming in his head. You’re thinking how arrogant of me, I know. But there you have it. I was, I suppose.

I don’t think you were arrogant, James, I think your reaction was to be expected.

Anyway. He was rocking back and forth on my bed, twitching like there were a thoousand invisible bugs crawling up his chest and he was trying to shake them off. But he never could shake them off, I think that was his problem. Not that, you know, I think he had a problem.

I told him I could help him. I said, ‘Let me try, let me…’

I don’t know what I wanted him to let me, because I don’t really know what I could’ve done.

‘You can’t help me. Nobody can help me,’ he told me, shaking his head.

He asked me to leave, but I couldn’t leave. How could I do that? Come out of the…facility an utter fool? Go back to his father and tell him I’d tried to cure him and failed miserably, just like all the others? Not when I was…

The best. Go on, you can say it. Everyone says you were. The youngest man to reach such heights.

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Yes, I suppose I was. And I didn’t want to not seem the best, not even for a second. He was the first man I failed to cure and I hated it. I felt a burning in my chest as I looked at him, rocking on the bed. You know, they always said – in all the speeches and all the commendations and all the books – they always said I did it because I had this need to see people cured. A goodness in me that wanted to help others.

And I stood there and I smiled and I would accept their praise. But it was a lie. I never cared about helping people. Not in that way, not that much. I didn’t even see them, just like I didn’t see the desperate man rocking on the bed that day. I just saw in terms of advancement andregression. Success and failure.

And if I walked out of that room and left him like that, he would be my first failure.

The worst one.

No, that’s another lie. They say the first one breaks your heart the worst, but that’s not true. They all do, and every time it tears at you the same, ’cause you thought it would be different, this time.

‘I need to get away from here,’ he told me. He was crying, but I didn’t see that. I couldn’t see how far off he was gone, I couldn’t understand the situation he was in. All I saw…

– and he pauses here, wishing for the other man to complete his sentence, but he does not. This is a journey the doctor must go alone. –

…was a second chance. For me.

So, I took it. I told him that the only way he was leaving the facility was to act as if I’d cured him. I assured him no one would question me, no one would dare stop us. My career would be saved and he would be free to go anywhere he wished.

And do anything he saw fit with himself. Although I think that’s nothing but a euphemism. I don’t think he saw a whole lot by that point, certainly not what was good for him.

And he walked.

And he walked. We both did. In those moments, some strange sanity broke through him and he acted completely normal. Like – I suppose – the man he was before he became ill. We walked out of the room, him leaning on my arm, but otherwise composed. And I signed his check-out papers, I signed it all and the next thing I knew, we were both getting into my car, in the facility’s parking lot.

And then?

And then I let him out. About 100 miles from the facility. I couldn’t risk anyone seeing him, understanding what I’d done. He said he didn’t mind. As soon as we got into my car, he went very quiet, collapsed back into himself. He just nodded and walked off.

I know you want me to tell you where. I know you want me to tell you what happened to that young, troubled man. But I can’t.

You want to know what I think? I think there’s something inside of us. Something like a sort of clock. A terrible device that ticks away. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. And then one day, it stops ticking and you don’t quite know how to fix it. And you try, as you might, to do something. Anything. But you can’t fix it, and it only get s louder and louder.

See, that’s what I think the screaming was. The one he was talking about. I think it was his clock going bust.

So what do you do when the clock busts?

Nothing. There’s nothing you can do. When the clock is done, so are you. And so was he. I don’t know what happened to him. The man I helped bust out of the facility. But I’m sure it wasn’t good.

 

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Grimmest Things by Honey Due

It’s an amazing feeling – seeing that your words (that you thought no one would even read) could inspire such intense emotions in somebody else. What an amazing review for ‘Grimmest Things’. It really warmed my heart.

Thank you so much, Nada

Early Bookish Birds

see, once the lie gets in…. the smallest, sneakiest, most insignificant lie, it ain’t getting out. You’re done for when you first lie. It’s just a matter of time until it blows up.

This book is super underrated. because yeah indie author doesn’t get their worth in our so not-fair-world.

ADD ON GOODREADS!

It’s an anthology

but no ordinary one!

First of all it’s all written by the same author.

second of all, it won’t let you get attached and then leave you hanging like most anthologies do. 

It’s more of a glimpse of the main character’s life, a scene he is going thro.

like for example:

a couple breaking up.
a hostage living in prison.
a killer killing his victim.
a writer having coffee.

and so on, you don’t get to get attached to the main character or like really get to know them in a way that will…

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The God that Ceased to Be

They wandered together through the keyhole that led into another world and they were not at all surprised when they found themselves standing in the middle of the flea market. Not a flea market, the flea market, the one they all gathered in and whistled, where the crows came pecking from the dark and sunk their teeth into the soft skin of children.

As they stood hand in hand, brother and sister, child and child, they were not afraid, not of the crows or of the grown-ups that may wish them harm. This is the way of things that would be, they said to each other and went on.

They passed the green owls and the stands filled with rotten berries and they knelt before the great altar of the God that Ceased to Be. He was waiting here, the man who had called them. The children had been playing in the forest behind their house, where their imaginary parents lived and breathed their way through their perfectly ordinary worlds. The children, however, did not wish to belong inside their parents’ monstrously boring lies, so when the call came for them to attend the flea market, they knew they must go. They raced through the clearing and jumped at once over the fallen logs and now, they were here. It is remarkably easy to get to the flea market if one really wants to. However, most people don’t really want to.

The man came, baring his blade and already seeing blood, to the altar of the God that Ceased to be. He knelt behind the children.

‘I will tell you a story if you sit still and listen and don’t move until it’s over,’ he murmured and the children sat perfectly still. Because this was where they were supposed to be.

That and because it was too late to run now. And the man told them a story of violence, of weeping, of lost friends and enemies who would not fall. He told them of the many sacrifices along the way and how one should fight and power through, regardless of what one was facing and the children took to heart everything the man said, for he would not say it again, at least not to them.

‘How do we know if we’re worthy?’ the boy asked, putting out his hand towards his sister, who grabbed it eagerly but made no sound.

‘It is not a question of worth, little one,’ the man said, ‘you must rise to the challenge. That’s all.’



What if we can’t?

The question was on the children’s minds, but they didn’t dare open their mouths, for this much was clear – if they couldn’t, then that would be the end, for there is no going back, once you’re inside the flea market.

The girl felt it first, the cold steel of the man’s blade enter her back. Just an inch, just enough to mark her as his own. He was a skilled drawer and an even more skilled knife man, so the blade moved swiftly across her soft skin. She did not know what he wrote on her, but it was not hers to know. She would find out when the time was right.

Then the man drew his mark and his words on the boy’s frail back. Neither of them flinched for this was the way things were meant to be, but somewhere between cuts, they gripped each other’s fingers tighter.

I’m here.

When the man was done, he stood up and began walking away from the children and the altar. And the children stood up after him, brother and sister, child and child, and they followed the God that Ceased to Be.

Funny thing (Part 3)

They found themselves quite helpless when they saw the old man had gone and the guards or as they liked to call themselves, the nurses, broke through their spell one by solitary one and realized how silly this all was. They looked out at the people in the garden and at the planet of pills that awaited behind their screen door and saw there was no point to it all. These old people were not helpless, not in the slightest, but they were. They have no power no more and so, the nurses settled on doing one last kind thing (or perhaps it was the very first) and that evening, the nurses began setting all the old people free. They roused them from their weary sleep and rounded them up at once and they sent them on their way.

Of course, they kicked nobody out, and after their elderly residents had packed their bags, they made it known that if there was anyone who hadn’t a place to go, they were welcome to stay.

As it turned out, they all had a place to go. So that by nightfall, the home for the old was completely deserted.

And it was at about that time that Andreas reached his destination. Naturally, he had no clue it was his destination since he’d never been there before, hadn’t even seen a picture, but he felt it in his bones and in the sounds of his mind that this was where he was meant to be.



It was an old house, rustled and just out of sleep. The bells around this town had quieted down many moons ago, as the trucker who’d brought him up here said, just before they parted. He’d worried for the old man, although after a bit, he forgot he’d ever seen him at all. There had been no one in that truck that day, or at least, no one he could remember.

Remembrance is a funny thing.

Andreas sat on the stoop, in front of the house, knowing all too well he would never step inside. He was not here to step inside, he was here to let go, because that was what the voices in his head were telling him, from afar. To let go, to forget, to kiss the child he never had goodbye and finally move on. But moving on is another of those funny things that sometimes doesn’t happen when it should, and then, it doesn’t happen at all.

‘This is where he would’ve lived, had our child survived, he would’ve lived in this very house,’ the woman with honey-eyes whispered through the breeze.

But no, that can’t be right, can it? Surely, if their child…but they never had a child, they never even met one another, how could their child…

‘I don’t understand,’ he replied, to the wind and the wind told him he didn’t have to.

And suddenly, the old man feels weary, he feels the weight of all those years weighing down on him, the monsters he’s so far managed to out-run catch up to him now and he does the only thing he can do to escape them one last time. He sleeps, and furthermore, he dreams.

In his dream, Andreas journeys through the eyes of the past and the promises of what never was. He passes by buildings, strange, built of grass and underwaterness and things he can’t understand because he’s never seen them until now and his brain is fighting him on each one. He walks through a world woven on dreams. He walks by the Post Office, with its door upside-down, but only he knows it’s upside down. To everyone else, it is just a door.

And he buys a loaf of breed with coins that disappear soon after he passed them to the seller and then, standing on the corner of Here and Perhaps Tomorrow, he sinks his teeth into the hot, delicious batter and realizes, too late, that you cannot purchase breed, not by the loaf, not by the kilogram, you can’t purchase it at all. So he lets it drop to the soft ground and resumes his journeying into the world where he’s never been.

And then the voices in his head – who’ve been quiet up to now – pick up again and being rumbling on the insides of his brain, screaming, thwarting and thrusting at his sanity.

Run, run, run. Go now, little boy, or you’ll never go again.

And they yell at him and he yells back, but he picks up the pace and soon enough, he’s running fast and doesn’t dare to look behind him for he knows what he will see.

He will see fire and ghouls, some from long ago and some from just around the corner. Faces caved in an traced over by deep lines of loss and misunderstandings. So, in his dream, he runs and hides and walks, when he can’t run anymore and he stumbles and falls and he knows the ghouls will be upon him. Soon, they will be here and it will all be over.

But until that happens, he will have one last look around. The stoop on which he’s fallen is the very same stoop he’s fallen asleep on, but in a different universe, in the universe, it was always meant to be in.



Andreas stares up at the door, at the house, which is clearly inhabited, where in his other universe, it was not. And as he looks and wonders, the wooden door opens and from it steps the woman with the honey eyes and long blonde hair.

Only no, it’s not the woman with the honey eyes, although he’d like her to be. It’s their son and suddenly, he knows him, as clear as day, he remembers the day he was born. He recalls that he drunk too much to celebrate and had a terrible stomach pain the day after so that it felt like he was kind of giving birth himself.

He remembers watching him grow and play. He remembers seeing the boy slip through his fingers as the claws of adulthood wrapped themselves around his throat.

‘Dad, where have you been?’ the young man chides. He has the same eyes made of liquid honey. ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’

And the door opens once more and this time indeed, it is her. The only her that could ever exist for Andreas.

‘I told you we would meet, Andreas,’ she says and smiles, but there is such terrible sadness in her honey-eyes. ‘You’ve come to us, finally, we’ve waited for so long, but you’ve come so late. Your time in this world is almost over now.’

‘But you came to me,’ he says. He doesn’t understand.

‘I suppose I did. Strange, I hoped you’d come sooner, that you’d be younger, more like when I first met you.’

‘But I was a child then.’

‘And now, you’re an old man,’ she says, full of heartache.

‘Who are you?’ Andreas asks although he senses the answer.

‘We’re your what could’ve been, what should’ve been. You see, in each reality, there is a possibility of things being as they should. Sometimes they are and sometimes, they’re not and when they’re not, the realities that could’ve been are just left hanging. We don’t die, we don’t disappear, we just…aren’t.’

‘But how can he exist if I never met you?’ he asks, gesturing towards the young man.

‘Oh don’t you understand? It doesn’t matter if we met or not. The realities that should be are pre-existing, the possibility of them has already been written into the very fabric of the Universe. You may follow it or you may not. You did not, but we’re still here, forever watching, waiting, hoping that our time will come. But until you do not take this path, we are left here hanging, existing. And –’

‘And you’ve been calling to me, taking me through all those places so that I could find you so that I could lead the life I was supposed to.’

And suddenly, Andreas understands why, for all his life, things never seemed to be at their fullest, why there was always something lacking.

‘But why are you crying?’ he asks as he sees her clear white tears stain her cheeks. ‘I’m here now.’

‘But it’s too late, you didn’t live this life, you didn’t get drunk and you didn’t watch him slip away. And we’ll still be here, forever, until the time is right for you to maybe walk our path again.’

The woman with the honey-eyes kisses Andreas on the forehead for the first and last time and drifts away. And Andreas too drifts away, and as he leaves the world, as he leaves all worlds, he’s filled with a feeling that’s deeply unsatisfactory.

The END