Jeff Coleman's Blog: Jeff Coleman Writes, page 27

Redemption, Part 2 of 5

Read Part 1 here. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been running. The light in the distance seemed to be getting larger, brighter, yet still he hadn’t reached it. He was moving as fast as he could, had been pushing himself as far as he could go, but he wasn’t tired, and he was too […]

Redemption, Part 1 of 5

Falling. Tumbling. Fire. Burning. Screaming. The man woke with a start, certain he’d been dreaming. There was still a residue of anxiety, the vague feeling that he was being pursued, but it was already slipping from his mind, and by the time he rolled over onto his side it had left him completely. He opened […]

Gone

Everything was fine, until he made a mistake.

It’s gone now, the world, or at least the world he’s always known. A subtle slip of the tongue, one mispronounced syllable, and the universe collapsed. So many lives, squeezed out of existence. Friends. Family. Cities. Nations. Gone.

He tries to undo the damage, to bring them all back. But every word moves the universe one step closer to ruin. At last he stops, too devastated and out of breath to continue. He stands alone in the dark, the world h...

Afraid of the Dark

“Hush little baby, don’t say a word,
And never mind that noise you heard.
It’s just the beasts under your bed,
In your closet, in your head.”
― Metallica, Enter Sandman

Mom always tells me not to be afraid of the dark. But I know better.

“There’s nothing that can hurt you,” she’ll say with a smile before kissing me on the forehead and closing the door behind her. That’s when I pull the covers over myself like a burial cloth and lay awake with my eyes open until I see the light again.

Once,...

Shattered Reality

Déjà vu. Everything is the same as it was before.

Jordan sees her by the register, standing in line with a gallon of milk and a plastic bag of carrots. She looks so much like the woman he’s been searching for, the woman he loved for so many years, his wife and the mother of his child. He wants to run to her, to embrace her, to tell her they can be a family again. But before he can move he knows it isn’t her.

She looks the same. She has the same dark brown hair, the same olive colored skin, t...

Innocent Blood

The boy strolls through my alley alone, and I bare my gums from behind the shadows.

I was like him once. Over a thousand years ago, I used to lay beneath the stars and dream of far off places. I was a bundle of youthful optimism and boundless possibilities.

That was before I changed.

I’d strayed from our clan’s caravan and was playing in the woods when I stumbled on an old woman, sitting atop a pile of course gray stones. She was crying. I asked her what was wrong, and she only answered that...

Mischief Maker

Not long now, he thinks, before the world unravels again. His mouth blossoms in a jack-o-lantern grin.

It was just by chance that he happened upon the Earth. Wandering the cosmos in search of mischief, he’d stumbled on it by accident, and he was already moving on when he caught sight of a curious thing.

They called themselves Man. They gazed up from their tiny little rock at the dawn of their existence like ants upon a mound of sand. They beheld the depth and breadth of the mysteries beyond,...

Nothing Lasts Forever

I thought it would last forever. I thought I could do no wrong, that no matter what I did it would always be with me. Then it up and went and I never saw it again.

I cry every night, pausing only to dab at red and swollen eyelids. I drop to my knees and pray, beg the creator of the cosmos to bring it back. I promise not to take it for granted, to give it the veneration it deserves. But my prayers always go unanswered.

I am only a shell of my former self, a hollowed out husk who’s lived for c...

The Writer

Jared’s eyes popped open at three seventeen in the morning. His head was pounding. His brain was a jumbled kaleidoscope of broken thoughts and disjoint memories, and at first he couldn’t tell where he was.

Then the pressure in his head increased. Jared moaned. He tossed the blanket aside, fumbled in the dark for the light switch, then walked briskly to his desk and picked up a pen. He groped the hardwood surface for his notebook, and when he found it he pulled it open to where he’d left off...

An Immortal in Exile

I walk across the beach, follow the ever-shifting outline of the water. The sun has begun to set; the sky is blossoming with fire. I watch the surf churn and froth as it rolls in and out. I find the waves to be contemplative. They comfort me, draw me into myself as the water is always inevitably drawn back to the sea. I step into the tide on a whim, and cool briny water surrounds my legs, sometimes splashing as high as my knees.

I stub my toe on a rock and a sharp staccato curse escapes my l...