Stories

Surreal Darkness

Sometimes the darkness and I tell stories.

Emo Pistols

Seth Morrigan feels like the sun is trying to eat him. In a last ditch effort to save himself, he signs up for the Pen Pal Project.

Skinscribe

The darkness signs up for the Pen Pal Project, because why not?

In the Valley of the Sun

This story is completed. 🙂

Lilith Parker is working at the local paper, announcing births and birthdays and deaths. One morning her boss Shannon gives her a more exciting assignment – research the local haunted house and write an article on its history. Nice flavor for Halloween, right?

But then Shannon turns up dead the next day, the local townspeople seem intent on keeping the story of the haunted house a secret, and Lilith is being haunted herself. Will she survive?

Bits and Pieces

These are stand alone one off short stories, inspired by challenges and prompts at the LJ Idol writing community. Some are Sims stories, some are full text, some feature familiar characters, some have new characters.

Note – in pretty much everything I write there will be occasional curse words, non-gory violence, and DEATH!!! Also you may be eaten by grue.

Plans and Coffee

Hello nice reader friends!

I am planning on self-publishing a collection of my short stories soon. That way, if you like them, you can have them on your shelf or your e-reader no matter what happens to the sites currently hosting them.

I’ve also made a Ko-Fi account, which you can find here: Ko-Fi. If you’ve enjoyed my writing over the years and you think it’s worth a coffee to help me put together the collection, you can throw me one. 🙂

I’ll post updates there on the progress of the story collection. At the moment I’m collecting them in a Word file and organizing them, and I’m going to have to do some editing. Sentences I thought were cool five years ago don’t always seem so cool now.

I also want to see how Surreal Darkness does without pictures, and I may try to make it into its own little novella and publish it too.

No worries, I’ll keep updating the two current pen pal stories. I’ve been low on time and neural energy the last few months, but I’ve started taking CBD oil and it’s really helping with the PTSD and anxiety, and I’m beginning to feel more capable of actually doing things.

Thank you to all of you who’ve stayed with me through all these years. It really means a lot.

Parmenides in Love

Hello, Anya. I am always glad to hear from you, however your letters arrive.

They show up on my computer, but I’m not sure how they get there. Especially if your computer is no longer working. But even when it was working, what cables connected it to mine?

The summer, with its hot hungry sun, has passed. The bit of the planet that I am on is now tilting the other direction. The air is cooler, the leaves are changing color, and the sun is getting its fill elsewhere now. It only comes here for an occasional snack.

I am fishing on the docks, and the rat behind me is now alone. I am not sure if it ever knew any relationship secrets. I am not sure if anyone ever knows anything.

I am the Seth who told Sarah the truth.

Glowy Warm

Sometimes the human and I receive letters in the usual way, with the words twisting in the sky above us.

Hello, Tad. You might be interested to know that your letters were a soft yellow, which the human found hard to read against the light pink and purple of the setting sun. Not that it can read the language of eldritch beings who were mostly a conglomeration of tubes with eyes attached at the ends anyway, but, you know. Humans and wanting to see things clearly.

For now I will accept your protestation that you do not wish to eat the human. For now.

What do sunflowers look like? The human says that they are very pretty plants and that they follow the sun through the sky. If they float through the sky, chasing after the sun, how do they get water and phosphorus and nitrogen and the other things that the grass tells me plants need to live?

I am not at all surprised that my words were black and angular and neat. Pity. I was rather hoping they would be rainbow colored.

We are still on the same path that we were walking when I wrote you before. I fear we are lost.

Coffee vs. the Sun

I hate the taste of coffee.

It smells nice. It smells like the silence of late afternoons with Sarah, when she sits at the table and drinks it and reads the newspaper while I sit on the couch and read alchemy books.

But it tastes like hell.

Hello, Jasper. Good to hear from you again.

The Garden Behind

Hello, Anya. I see I have two letters from you. I am sorry for taking so long to reply.

I am the Seth that went through the hole in the woods, and I am also the Seth who had to come back to San Myshuno. Perhaps there is only one Seth after all.

I actually did have some fun in Granite Falls. The sun grants me reprieves, now and then.

Edges For The Edge God

Sometimes the human and I grow bored of mushrooms and bright blue liquid.

We are looking at what appears to be a portal. Three glowing green lines run along the inside. The green glow pulses.

The human says, “What do you think it is?”

I say, “I’m not sure. It could be a door or a streetlight or a structure that the former inhabitants of this universe used as decoration. Or it could be where they ritually sacrificed their children to their dark and hungry gods, so that the mushrooms would grow for another year. Also so that their gods would hopefully not rip them open, chew up their innermost secrets and desires, and then spit out the bright blue liquid of their remains.”

The human looks at the bright blue pond behind the structure. It says, “Huh.” It also says, “I thought I created this universe.”

I say, “The green glow is probably the blood of the sacrifices.”

Whiteness blooms in the center of the portal. It spreads until it fills the space inside the center green line. Words appear in the white, written with the bright blue liquid.

The human says, “Is that more pen pal stuff? I was wondering what happened there, since we never heard back.”

I say, “Yes, it is more pen pal stuff. It’s written in the same language. It says ‘Pen Pal Profiles’.”

The letters writhe around each other and reform into more words, more and more until the white space is completely filled, and then the white space shifts and the letters appear again.

I say, “I think it wants us to choose a pen pal.”

Toomuch Notenough

Hello, Jasper.

We are back in San Myshuno.

I do not think I would like these stores that remain in Windenburg. I prefer the sorts of stores that aren’t there anymore when you come back a few days later with questions about the cursed cutlery you purchased, and why all your loved ones are now zombies.

But there is no one around to answer your questions, and the musty old store with the piles of junk under dim lighting and the wizened shopkeeper with the creepy laugh has been replaced by a shiny new coffee house with skinny and damp baristas who set your tall mocha frappuccino on fire as they serve it to you, saying, “This is for your bad taste in glasses!” and you walk home with a heavy heart, knowing that you have to use the flaming coffee to dispose of your loved ones, who leer at you as you enter the front yard, saliva dripping from their lolling tongues as the smell of your brain reaches their nostrils.

But yeah, the Old Town Mercantile store sounds nice. I’ll check it out.

There is a festival happening in the plaza outside our apartment building tonight. Sarah was adamant about going. I think she feels restless, after Granite Falls.

I am also restless, and I am not sure which Seth I am.

Hyphae

Sometimes the human and I search for consciousnesses not our own.

The human made this universe. It is a good universe. It has not yet melted into the black. It is small though, and very quiet. There are no voices other than ours.

The human asks me to tell it stories sometimes, to break up the quiet. I tell it about the universe where everything is round. There are angry round robots who scream their round rage in round metallic voices as they make round cars, furiously shoving round dashes into round body frames.

The human says I told it that story last week, and it wants another one.

I tell it about the universe where the ice cream people live.

The ice cream universe is a cold dark foreboding place. It is always night time and it is always freezing and the ground is always covered with a light snow. The air is very still.

The homes of the ice cream people are dark dank palaces, with chocolate covered crenellations and wet walnut turrets and brightly flavored flags that snap in a breeze only they can feel. Deep in the palace kitchens, the waffle cone servants cook the humans who have wandered into the ice cream universe and who have been captured. For of course the ice cream people cannot go near fire themselves, but they do so like warm food.

The human says I told it that story last month. Then it asks how the ice cream people can eat warm food without melting, if they can’t be near fire. I tell it that the universe where the ice cream people live has very odd laws of thermodynamics.

I am trying to remember a universe I have not yet told the human about when the message appears. It floats in the black space above the blue stalks.

The human asks, “What is that?”

The human asks, “Where did it come from?”

The human asks, “Is it conscious?”

I look at the letters hanging in the black. They are not letters in a language the human would recognize. They are bright and blue and shining and writhing in the dark, and they are beautiful.

I tell the human, “It is a new story.”

Uncracked

Hello Anya. I am glad to hear from you. I always enjoy your letters.

I am sorry for the lives where you tried to find a door. I don’t imagine they were very pleasant. But at least the door eventually came.

I am fairly sure a door is never going to come for me. I have been trying to make my own door. I had to stop, after the fire. Sarah said it wasn’t healthy.

I don’t know if I agree with her or not.

Right now, at this very moment, I am not clawing at the boundaries of my own universe. I am breathing inside it, and there are trees and grass and birds and bushes, and it is not so bad. The sun is shining on me. Watching me. I don’t think it is very hungry today.

It’s good that you’re feeling better too.

Tiny Knife Elephants

Unzipping a canvas tent flap is not quite the same thing as opening stiff hotel curtains, but it’ll do.

Hello, Jasper. I got your last letter just before Sarah and I left San Myshuno for three days in Granite Falls.