Category: Flashes

– It was a kiss that saved her life. She would have never imagined such a thing was possible. There are few who would admit to believing in such a thing occurring. But it did. It did save her life. And it was a kiss, in some way. This light we have to see by is always shifting, as is the slippery nature of names. Such that when she was given this kiss, she would not have identified it as such. But he did. When he placed it in her palm and gently bent her fingers over it. He looked […]

– She was pregnant, at least, that’s what she said in the message she left you. Your immediate response, logically, was to add up the weeks since you last saw her, or more accurately, since you last copulated. She was the one who would always use euphemisms. She always hoped you would ‘make love,’ ‘dance in the sheets,’ ‘dance in the nude,’ or ‘join your bodies as one.’ To you, it was always just sex. Sometimes you wanted her more, sometimes you wanted her less. Sex, you always wanted about the same. You’d humor her. When she’d call it making […]

– She was bored, or tired of so much company. It had been several months and she wanted what she had started with. She liked waking in the middle of the night to silence, rather than his deep breathing and his warmth burrowing into her, as his cheek rested on her bare shoulder. She had enjoyed all those nights of sleeping in the nude, and just resting, as free as the day of her birth. It wasn’t that he couldn’t help it or that he wouldn’t. But even for her, there was something about that type of proximity which made […]

-She’s wearing the same grey shirt she left your apartment with. You smile. It looks good on her, your grey shirt. More than a bit on the large side, but you want it to look good on her. You want to imagine that there’s a reason it looks good on her, that it’s more than the simple fact that to you, in that moment, and for quite a while now, everything looks good on her. It’s her. Not what she wears, but in that moment, as she walks in wearing your grey shirt, you want to believe that the universe […]

– He heard the story from a friend. His friend had taken it from a girl he slept with once, though it had not been a one night stand. It had taken his friend months to get this girl to open up to him. And then she did and shortly after swore she never would again. They stopped calling and texting each other. But he kept the story. He placed it on a shelf and forgot about it for a good long while. It collected dust. Spiders used it as a foundation for their intricately spun designs. It wasn’t until […]

-We are complex creatures. Shadows envelop us, so that the space the light touches is empty. We are dark outlines. She sits on the edge of the bed. Her thigh tenses causing the mattress to quiver. The smoke swirls around us. The only thing that joins us. There is a silence now. The buzz of the electric current feeding the lamp is a muffled hum. The bed has felt every movement and echoed it along its springs. It is still now. We are silent. But not a word has passed between us since we entered the room. Only the clinking […]

-He winces at the blood dripping. He can feel the pain tracing its way through his nerve passages, outlining his frame the way the tip of a knife would work to cut him out of this life. His muscles contract the way instinct commands in its attempt to assure survival. There is no assurance. There is blood. There is no certainty.There are bruises. There are scabs. Bits of the upper layer of his skin remain on the gravel. Little bits resembling red soaked clay shavings; the remains of a serpent’s skin after it has begun to shed and the shedding […]

-He had fallen in love once. She had been nearly perfect. That was not why he had fallen in love. She had been absolutely beautiful. That was not why either. He had not realized she was beautiful until he had already fallen in love. They met by chance, or fate, or happenstance. She had been walking. He had been walking. They found that they were both headed in the same direction, with the same destination in mind, at the same time. It was not the first time this had happened, but it was the first time they noticed. He smiled, […]

-Consciousness calls. It sounds like the creak of rusted screen doors being harassed by the arid cold breezes of the desert. I wake with a headache, on a tattered mattress in a run down motel room. The kind of place that seems a mirage in the summer. Now, simply the frozen ruins of someone’s dream, harboring the ghosts and illusions long since lost. My eyes open and I can see the dust swirls in the room. The bed creaks as I raise my eyes to make out the darkened images. The shades are drawn and the light just barely manages […]