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Written by Shawn
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Friday, 27 March 2009 20:15 |
Brian has been lost for three days before the forest started talking to him.
"Hello," it said in a pleasant voice. Brian looked around for a moment, confused about where the voice had come from.
"Is someone there?" Brian asked. He'd shouted himself hoarse the day before, and his shredded vocal-chords could only produce a sound above a whisper, but the forest seemed to hear him just fine.
"You've been wandering through me for a few days now," the forest said. "I thought I'd introduce myself."
Brian continued plodding forward in silence for several minutes. He was aware of the direness of his situation, of course; no food or water for the last few days, along with physical exhaustion, was beginning to take its toll. Brian assumed the voice was a hallucination, some trick that his dying brain was playing on him. He decided to ignore it. Nothing to do but keep walking forward.
"I was wondering," the forest said again after a time. "What exactly is your plan here?"
"What do you mean?"
"You've been walking for three days," the forest observed. "Only stopping to sleep for an hour or so at a time, no idea where you're going, not sure if you've even made any real progress. If you've got an endgame in mind here, I don't see it."
"Don't want to die," Brian said. In his weakened state, the act of speaking while walking had already winded him.
"Everybody dies," the forest said reasonably.
"Don't want to die here," Brian clarified.
"What's wrong with here?"
Brian didn't have the breath to reply, and so he continued walking- or, perhaps, stumbling- forward, toward some destination he couldn't see but needed to reach more than anything. It was almost an hour before the forest spoke to him again, when Brian had leaned against a large tree to rest.
"Is this place really so bad?"
"It's lovely," Brian said, though he wasn't looking around. His head was bowed, his eyes closed against the sun.
"So what's wrong with dying here?"
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Read On...
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Written by Shawn
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Saturday, 14 March 2009 04:36 |
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Tommy Larsen snapped awake, sitting straight up in bed.
In the dream, he'd been running, fleeing from something that had been right behind him, right about to sink its teeth into the back of his neck...
Awake now.
He blinked, and gradually his five year old eyes adjusted to the darkness. A tiny nightlight in the form of a clown glowed merrily on his nightstand, but all it really did was make the rest of the shadows in the room even bigger, even darker by comparison. Tommy pulled the covers up to his chin as he glanced around the room. He wanted to call for his parents, to have his father check the closets and under the bed while his mother stroked his hair and told him everything would be okay, that there were no such things as monsters. But if he did, it would be the third time in as many days that he'd woken them up in the middle of the night. Even though he was young, Tommy understood that his parents both had to work very early in the morning, and his child's perception could tell that they were growing increasingly weary every time they had to reassure him; his father's routine monster-checks became more halfhearted and cursory with each repetition, and his mother's reassurances grew shorter and shorter.
His eyes fell on a large pool of shadows in the corner, and his breath hitched in his throat. He was certain he could see two yellow eyes, could hear the 'drip! drip! drip!' of drool as some unimaginable horror straight from his nightmare opened its mouth to reveal rows and rows of shiny teeth. Tommy thought he could see long claws reaching out from the darkness, waiting to snatch him up and pull him into the shadow, away from the safety of his bed and his covers and into a world that was all teeth and darkness.
"Mommy!"
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Read On...
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Written by Shawn
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Monday, 30 March 2009 01:07 |
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Michael Shay
I am in the shower. There is water running down my head, into my eyes and ears, and I am rubbing shampoo through my hair. When I open my eyes and look at my hands, they are coated with shampoo and clumps of brownish-gray hair. When I rinse the shampoo out, it only takes more clumps with it. The hair collects in an obscene ball over the drain.
This is what it's like to die.
I am Michael Shay. I am 47 years old. I have a wife, a son, and a daughter. I work in an office building up town, where I manage the financial lives of people much wealthier than I will ever be. And I have cancer.
It's funny how that last one is the only one that seems to matter anymore.
I have been dying for four months now. Life isn't as different as you'd expect. I still drive to work every morning. The other cars on the road whizz by just as fast, their drivers just as oblivious. I am given no special consideration. At work, my boss expects me to meet the same deadlines in the same amount of time; the only thing that's changed about our relationship is that now he will sometimes remember I am dying and, his eyes full sympathy, tell me that it's okay if I need some time off, that he can find someone else to cover my accounts. What he is telling me is that this place will go on fine without me. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to take that.
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Read On...
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Written by Shawn
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Saturday, 14 February 2009 04:53 |
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Chris Brown Is A Werewolf.
Ah, February 14th. The day when couples everywhere awake to the beautiful morning sun, prepared to spend a the day romancing their true love. Alternately, it's also the day that single people go home, polish off a bottle of tequila while looking at photos of their ex-girlfriends, and cry themselves to sleep. Either way, it is a rich tradition that has been going on as long as any of us can remember.
But where did it come from? What are the origins of Valentine's Day? Well, since I'm not burdened by a relationship (Jose Cuervo, here I come!), I have some free time on my hands, so I figured I'd clue you all in on the real story of Valentine's Day.
Enjoy!
THE LYCEA: HOW IT ALL STARTED
Journey back with me to ancient Greece. Thousands of years ago, long before chalk-flavored candy hearts had monopolized Valentine's Day, sheep-herding was pretty much the in-thing to be doing. It was easier to break into than being royalty, and paid better than dying of the plague, so many ancient Greeks would take their sheep out into the fields each day to earn their money.
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Read On...
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