Tag Archives: dark

Horror & Dark Fiction

Bayen Boulevard

Come up from the cold docks, down Blackpool Bay’s Main Street and by the old, creepy Athelard mansion with its weathered gargoyles silently screaming out to all that pass on the street. Keep going by the Old Museum and beyond the Gypsy Market with its smoky shops and shady characters. If you keep zigzagging through town that way, you will eventually hit a short, nondescript street with no houses on it and a couple old–even pre-modern–gas lamps still installed down its middle.

If you happen to be walking down this road at night, you will notice that these old lamps are, in fact, all lit. You would not see who lit them. Not even if you wait. No one does. But they are certainly lit, and quietly stand erect and casting their eerie glow out around that noir street; strange, glowing orbs pulsing out into and across the lonely, vacant street beneath a dark night sky.

A curious individual may think to consult the Museum’s records and find out that the street is in fact called “Connecting Street”. But a deeper search will reveal that it was renamed such after a strange but devastating fire ravaged through it.

Originally–before the fire–it was called “Bayen Boulevard”.

Some records may even go on to state a rumour–as if it were a fact–that the original Bayen Summer House stood there. Named after the Old Continent family and, possibly, one of the founders of Blackpool Bay itself. Or so some whisper that they were, before the fire. Others decry them as vile occultists and worshipers of Things-in-the-Deep.

Many doubt they even existed and are probably just the vulgar fictions of simple minds. These people laugh it off and merely point out that Connecting Street was likely the original Main Street of the town, before the Athelard family’s fishing business brought the first waves of money into the town and the old estate was carved up into quaint pockets of houses, shops and a stinking dock with endless fishing boats trawling through it.

Who knows?

None of these stories, anecdotes and rumours satisfy those that crave the truth. No, they are all just bread crumbs leading down a dark path. Those that seek the real truth about that strange, eerie little street will eventually stumble across the old account of the late Benjamin Dole.

***

Professor Benjamin Dole was a scholar in good standing. As an Old Boy of a learned establishment back in the Old Continent, he was prone to fancy and took a leave of absence to explore Blackpool Bay early last century.

Well, that is what his diary says and it is corroborated by the University records overseas.

What is less obvious is that Professor Dole was an occultist. In fact, a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn itself and third only to Mr. Crowley himself back in that age. He was rumoured to have studied a copy of the Necronomicon and read every word of the original Emerald Tablets in the original coptic script.

It was the latter and the elusive lotus of eternity that led him to Blackpool Bay, for he wrote in his diary the single and memorable phrase:

“The Bayen are not rich but old. Immortal, in fact. And I will discover from them the missing coptic ingredient. They have promised as much to me in return for my transcriptions of the Nameless Book. I must keep my wits about me for their type are quick to take and slow to release.“

As best as the old records can tell, Professor Dole left London and next docked in Blackpool Bay. He checked into the same old, stinking tavern–now a “hotel”–in the docks for the first night before checking out.

We can only assume that he went to stay with the Bayen family on the following evening? We can only assume that he stayed there for a while and many dark secrets were exchanged in those halls shadowy confines?

We can assume many things but the next actual fact that we have is the old police records where the Constable was called out to Bayen Boulevard by a concerned passerby.

At this point weeks have passed between Professor Dole’s check-out and this moment.

The Constable Thomas–if the records are correct–arrived late at night to find Professor Dole out in the middle of the street howling. He is screaming at the stars in manic verses of lost languages and the only phrases that the poor, flustered Constable could recollect were: “…their evil fosters as Nodoth’s wound upon this Earth. I was wrong. Wrong! The Golden Way is a lie only fettered by the ones that crawled from the depths! We are their food, Sir! Their food! Oh, Sagaroth forgive me! Nai-twixen! The Unholy Light courses through me and I will unleash it upon them before they upon us!”

Constable Thomas’ memory stops there, or, at least, his account of it does. We remain uncertain as to what transpired next despite being open to a mass of conjecture thereon.

The newspapers, though, do indirectly record some of the rest. A great and ravenous fire raged through Blackpool Bay that night consuming a large proportion of the estate and accompanying village. While its source was unknown, its devastation was quite well known and far-reaching.

In the village, there was much damage. But, of the Bayen Estate, nothing remained untouched as the fire ravaged with an unnatural intensity. Indeed, at the center of the blaze and completely burnt to ashes was the old Bayen Summer Home and–to the best of our knowledge–all its inhabitants.

Bizarrely, Constable Thomas survived to die many years later from old age.

And of Professor Dole?

Not so much as a footprint was left, albeit his diary was found at the old tavern on the docks a number and entered into public record.

***

No one knows nor, probably, will they ever know what happened on Bayen Boulevard all those many decades ago.

But–for some reason–when you go down to that bizarre, vacant road late at night near a dark moon under a starless sky, you may stumble across a strange, haunting old man.

Or he may stumble upon you.

His age is indeterminate and his manners jarring, but he will pull you close, point across the street and whisper:

“We are their food, Sir! Their food! Nai-twixen! The Light has quashed them, for now, my friend. For now… Look at how their night-lights lay a guiding path for them to come home? Look at the lights and see their darkness.”

And then he is gone.

It may have been Professor Dole, a shadow that was once him, or something much more twisted that he became?

But he is watching. Waiting. Ever aware of whatever vile darkness that short, nondescript street once harboured and what it may yet once again harbour as it is guided home by those eerie, glowing orbs pulsing out into a dark, starless night sky.

General Fiction, Romance

Snowflake


“You just don’t understand real stress until it is owning you,” he said in between puffs of his e-cigarette, it was blueberry flavored, “it is a thousand-ton weight pressing down on you. It flattens you. Squeezes out parts of you that you didn’t know existed. Bad parts. Ugly and alien parts. But with that weight pressing down on you, there is nothing you can do but watch as these strange parts of you come out. They come popping out in different directions and all you can do is try to breathe as everything that surrounds you feels like it is trying to drown you in concrete…”

His voice faded it as he took a deep drag. The light on his e-cigarette lit up, the way they had manufactured it to. His audience was silent. There was no response.

Silence.

Probably because they were the fridge and countertop in his kitchen. A dishwater too, in the background. His girlfriend was out with her friends tonight, probably a good thing. He was not fun to be around these days.

“Even my face feels different. My expressions have changed. I struggle with smiling and moving my head. My neck feels like it has steel rods stuck in it. The way I think about time has shifted to a point of reference where it is now and then what next. I am dying, one ton at a time, beneath expectation, risk and any hope I once held dear but never realized I clung to.”

Still silence. The kitchen did not reply.

“You’re right,” he said, squeezing his face into a labored grimace, “I should go out.”

***

The bass seeped through his being. An elbow jabbed into his ribs but he looked at the lights and dreamt of what they might have looked like in a better world. He moved to the sounds rolling through the club but his shoulders felt fixed to his neck. His mouth twitched.

He needed another drink.

“Neat!” he shouted at the barman, pointing to the whiskey. The barman nodded and executed, obviously well-versed in the sign language of clubbing.

“What do you do?” an ethereal voice screamed in a loud whisper to his side. There was a hand on his shoulders now.

“I’m a trader, mostly stocks and futures,” he shouted, barely audible over the DJ telling everyone what to do with their hands, “Why?”

“You look like you need to relax!” the guy next to him shouted into his ear.

“I’ve lost fifty million of my clients’ money this year. Most of mine too. And you?”

The guy smiled and flicked his hand expertly at the barman. Shots started being poured. He was also well-versed in club sign language.

“Have one of these,” the guy shouted, “You can’t lose with this trade.”

***

The ceiling was white. Light crept in at strange angles through the blinds to cut the wall into abstract geometric formations. It felt meaningful, if only barely.

He immediately knew that when he lifted his head, the weight would be there. The pain. The world.

He resisted, knowing full well that he could not do so forever. It was the beautiful pain of the unsustainable moment hat haunted poets and mortals alike. He also smiled.

“Hey,” a quiet voice breathed to his side, “you awake?”

He was naked. He felt the linen against his thighs. He knew.

And now he remembered, mostly.

He left his eyes closed and squeezed the hand holding him.

He dared not move. Not an inch.

The weight of the world could wait just a moment more before squeezing him into unfamiliar shapes. Everything could wait, including the weight itself.

General Fiction, Horror & Dark Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction

My Tail

Afterwards, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. I wanted it to be stars but it was just a ceiling. For a while, she lay there too with her head nestled in the crook of my neck and our tails entwined. We lay in silence as the rain came down outside but, eventually, she kissed me gently on my furry cheek, got up, dressed and left.

That would be the last time I ever saw her.

I lay there staring at the corner of the ceiling where the walls met and listening to the soft rain outside before I too got up, dressed and left. I felt more hollow than usual. Much later, I would realize why.

It was still raining when the call came and it was still raining when the Pack arrived. I don’t think it ever stopped raining.

***

“She wanted flowers on her grave,” I said, my quiet growl dripped bitterness, “And the Apocalypse. Unfortunately, this world no longer has any flowers in it.”

The rain was falling around us as we stood in that gloomy cemetery. We were a small pack with buildings looming on every side. The City lights blurred through the water while the noise seemed shy to enter that place of sorrow and the endless traffic of man sounded distant.

“What will you do now?” one of the Pack asked, his jaw taut and his eyes dark as he looked at me, “What can you do now?”

I smiled without any warmth, my fangs showing. The rain soaking us hid my tears but I could taste their salt in my mouth. It lacked the copper of blood. Her fresh grave lay before us barren and empty. There were no flowers on it. Mankind had killed all the flowers centuries ago, as with all the non-urban animals too.

The entire world was just the cursed City now; concrete and trash, streets and endless buildings. Mankind’s own polluted temple to his ever-hungry gods.

The only animals that had made it were the ones that could adapt, or be adapted. Rats, pigeons, cockroaches, among others, like us.

Some fringe scientists and rebel bio-engineers had helped evolution along, creating a handful of hybrids–us–that now mingled on the fringes of society and stalked through dark alleyways. Why? None of us knew. The original scientists were now all dead and disappeared. Mankind had eaten mankind, leaving behind us: their illegal bio-tech legacy to be killed on sight as she had been, or worse if the traffickers got you.

Alone–outcast by nature and banned by men–we were each others only refuge.

And she had been mine.

I threw my head back and howled. The old primal howl from deep inside my heritage ripped its way to the surface. The Pack leaned back and howled too, their voices mingling with mine in both sorrow and rage. A primal choir, the blood-curdling song echoed off the City walls and scattered the rats and other survivors in the sewers and trash cans around us.

Mankind was right to have ostracized us. We were different. We were animals, and we would destroy all of them. And, in that moment, I knew what had to be done.

“Kill them,” I growled, turning to the Pack, “We will kill them all.”

***

I watched the dissolvable canister fall. Slowly it fell, like the rise of the City from the eventual merging of all the smaller cities of mankind. Steadily it fell, like the advance of mankind and the slaughter of nature. But, most importantly, decisively it fell towards the central water pumps that drove the remainder of the de-salted seas–a scarce resource–across the entire planet.

I licked my lips. The copper taste of the guards’ blood was still fresh and their corpses still warm behind me. Some of the blood, though, was mine. Perhaps a lot of it was?

All of my Pack had fallen. I was the last of them, and of us.

Some had sacrificed themselves in obtaining the aggressively-engineered, fast-spreading and water-resistant rabies that I had just dropped into the City’s water. The treachery of the fringe scientists and bio-engineers were to thank for that. The rest had sacrificed themselves in breaking into the secure central water plant and making it this far. The paranoia and weapons of mankind were to thank for those fallen in this Hunt.

The final Hunt.

Mankind would be no more in less than a week. The enhanced virus would enter the populace soon, spread quickly and, before long, mankind itself would be little more than a feral beast tearing itself apart.

And they had her to thank for that. The cop that had fired the killing shot at her had killed mankind as a result.

I threw my head back and howled. The old primal howl from deep inside my heritage ripped its way to the surface. There was no more Pack to join in. No voices mingled with mine and, as my lungs gave in and I dropped to my knees, I put my hand to my chest and felt my life-blood pumping out. One of the guards’ bullets had hit me there.

I toppled over to one side. The last of the Hybrids, alone but not lonely as I was going to rejoin the Pack.

And the last thing I saw was the ceiling, where the walls met in the corner.

Then there was darkness.

General Fiction, Science Fiction

The Passage of Virtue

“Well met, brother,” a dull, blue-eyed man says as he squats down by the fire, a drink in his hand, “What have we learnt?”

Barbarians are screaming around them. Somewhere a woman is climaxing loudly, and the fire is chasing its sparks up into the twinkling cosmos, ever-watching and eternal.

A strikingly-handsome, green-eyed man turns to the speaker and grins.

“Nothing,” he spits into the flames, “They are a bestial species, caring only for their immediate impulses. Hunger, lust, greed, anger… These are the foundations upon which they live, and they are unstable. I see no future here.”

The blue-eyed man pauses, takes a long sip and nods.

“Yes, I’ve seen those qualities too but they are loud and get a disproportionate amount of exposure. There is complex beauty there. Forget love, we both know that its little more than chemicals for reproduction and survival. No, there is an existential craving for a purpose. I see it deep inside all of them. Each one of these animals wants to know why and what to do next?”

The green-eyed man snorts, finishes his drink and nods.

“Fine, I’ll back your motion. Give them a couple more centuries. Who knows, it’s a young species and I like spending time with their female gender.”

The fire crackles and the woman finishes loudly.

Suddenly, there are just barbarians around a fire with its sparks rising up into the dark, infinite cosmos looming above. The blue and green-eyed men are gone.

***

“Well met, brother,” a dull, blue-eyed man says as he sits down by the bar, “What have we learnt?”

The handsome, green-eyed man nods at him and motions at the barman for a drink for both of them.

“They make something called whiskey around here,” the barman fills up both of the men’s glasses, “It summarizes my answer.”

The blue-eyed man takes a sip and contemplates it. Drunken Scots begin shouting angrily at each other on the other side of the bar. He opens his mouth to reply but the green-eyed man cuts him off.

“It is silk but wrapped in fire. It is bottled happiness but it costs the ruin of so many. It is hope but it only offers despair,” he downs his whiskey in a single sip, “I love it and hate it all at the same time. Such base emotions inspired by such a base species.”

The blue-eyed man smiles and downs his drink. His eyes twinkle a little in mischief.

“But, yet, they have discovered freedom, independence and tea. Many of them fight for these things and, though their path to virtue is far from complete, the dark beginnings only serve as a magnification for what they are achieving. And, let’s be clear, brother, they are achieving great things already.”

“Yes,” the green-eyed man chuckled, “But slavery, war and the justification and rationalization of these acts also exists. Yes, they had their revolutions but what about how they treat those weaker than them? Or poorer than them? Yes, they build pyramids and monuments but at what cost to their lives? Thin-skinned dictators rule over so many and disease infests their cities and their media. Freedom, independence and quality tea are far from universal in their factional lands.”

“Everything begins at the beginning. Give them time, brother, give them time. They have not yet failed the Third Test.”

The drunken Scots are now hugging and their friends calling for more rounds for the lots of them. One of them starts singing and others join. Soon the whole bar is a joyful wave of heart-moving harmony and brotherhood.

The green-eyed man glances at them, smiles and nods.

And, suddenly, the bar is filled with drunken Scottish lads. The two men are gone.

***

“Well met, brother,” a twinkling, blue-eyed man says appearing out of the darkness in the desert night, “What have we learnt?”

The tired, green-eyed man nods at him and glances back at the fire blasting from the starship as it punches up and into the twinkling cosmos, ever-watching and eternal.

“They are stepping off-world, brother. They are actually stepping off-world. This changes everything.”

In the darkness of the desert, on the fringe of civilization, both men stand there in silence. The weight of history weighs heavily on them as each second that passes the starship punches higher into space…

Further from Earth.

Nearer to the future.

“I don’t understand,” the green-eyed man says, sighing, “They still hate, fight and lust. Some still believe in primitive mythologies. Their leaders are mockeries of the very word and they despise vast swathes of their own species for minor differences to their own, microscopic herd. Why… How could they have gotten this far?”

The blue-eyed man smiles and sadly shakes his head. He turns and squeezes his brother’s shoulder.

“You really don’t remember our beginnings, do you, brother? We were once little more than them. All species–indeed, all life–has its own path to virtue. If it cannot adapt to survive, then it dies. If it cannot evolve to rise above the other species, then it dies. And, finally, if it cannot leave its own homeworld, then it dies. Those are the Three Tests. The only tests, really, barring what they face next…”

The green-eyed man nods and shrugs his shoulders.

“Well, I guess we should let father know.”

The blue-eyed man’s face hardens and he nods.

“Yes, we must alert father that there is a new member to our Galactic Council. They will either accept the terms, or we will find out how well their millennia of weaponry technology holds up against our own.”

And then the desert night is empty. Indeed the planet is too. The two men are gone.

By now, the starship is little more than a flicker in the night sky. Like a spark from a fire rising into the twinkling cosmos, ever-watching and eternal…

Horror & Dark Fiction, Romance

The Apple

His wings lay to the side. The act of tearing them off had hurt more than he could explain but the jagged wounds in his flesh just felt numb.

He felt numb.

Then he remembered his anger. He remembered why he was doing what he was doing. He remembered who he was doing this for.

And he smiled.

He knew exactly where he was going. He had waited for most of his torturous existence to do this, and now he was doing it. Heaven forbade such acts, but this was love and he would be damned–literally!–if he would live for eternity in fear instead of one lifetime in love.

He chose love.

***

Fred smiled at the strange man on the subway. He had such chiseled features. He looked like he had come off some divine production line. He was strangely familiar to Fred, yet Fred was also sure that they had never met. This confusion kept Fred’s gaze on him a second longer than normal. He looked up and they made eye-contact, so the man smiled, leaned in and greeted him.

“Hi,” the man said–god, he had blue eyes!–“I’m Michael.”

“Uh-uh,” Fred stumbled over the words, his heart was pounding and his palms sweaty, “Hi, I’m Fred. Uh, do I know you?”

The beautiful man smiled. He never shook his head nor nodded. Rather he reached out and grasped Fred’s hand and squeezed it. Fred’s heart skipped a beat and then he squeezed back.

The beautiful stranger smiled.

“Say, do you want to get a drink, Fred?” he asked, smiling, the light radiating out of his blue eyes, “I know a quiet little pub nearby the next station.”

Fred smiled back and nodded before he realized that he should say something back.

“Sure, sure, yes,” he said, “Say, where are you from?”

The beautiful stranger smiled. Sadness and pain flashed across his eyes before he answered.

“I’m from far away. Very far. But, that doesn’t matter. That place doesn’t approve of people like us, Fred. We were made different to the rest and shouldn’t suffer because of it.”

Fred knew exactly what the man meant. He had run away from home when he was young. He did not miss his father’s or anyone else’s beatings nor the judgment of the priests.

“Born,” Fred corrected, smiling reassuringly back at him, “Born. We weren’t made. We were born.”

“Sure,” the stranger nodded, sadly, “Sometimes it feels more like I was made by some asshole god, to be honest.”

They both laughed at this, and the train came to a stop.

“How about that drink, Fred?”

Fred smiled. It had been a long time since someone had made him feel like this and he would be damned if he was going to let the opportunity slip by him.

Science Fiction, Technomology

Technomology: The Wizard

His hands never shook. It was something to do with bootlegging the Conduit in his brain throughout his body. The Conduit allowed him permanent mental access to the Web. That was not remarkable. Everyone with a Conduit had that. But, bootlegging the Conduit meant that he could ‘Deep Dive’ without needing a physical jack and while maintaining consciousness.

Imagine being able to dream on demand with your eyes open, and those around you could be affected by that dream? He was the Wizard of Oz, but instead of the Emerald City, he had the dual mental states of Surface and Deep Web.

The couple sitting in front of him was wide-eyed as he told them things that they thought he could never know: how she had cried after the baby had died, and how he had grown disassociative and run too many escapism apps through his Conduit. He sat before them while he slipped through big data fields, flicking out search algorithms and stalking through their app setups. He lifted his hand up to trawl through some files while, in front of the couple, his physical hand moved in mystical patterns in the air. He stopped at the file he was looking for, and his physical hand stopped moving too. He was both sitting in this dim room with the couple, and standing next to blazing encrypted databases that were whispering secrets into his ears.

“When you leave here, you will see a planetary shuttle. Get on it and go where it is going. Be open to new experiences, but close the door on old ones. Drink the tea and eat the biscuit, before the wine. Do not be scared of being scared and, Jenny, don’t worry, you will soon get what you want,” the last part almost made him laugh, it was his winning formula. Humans were never as unique or different as they liked to think. He briefly wondered if he still considered himself human? He could not actually remember ever being one anymore.

The lady gasped and the man leaned back, wide-eyed. They paid their Units and then they left.

They would catch that planetary shuttle. It was going to New Paris where they would wander before finding a hotel. While in the Deep Web, he had embedded a geo-trigger into their Conduits that would go off in any hotel. It was a minor hack but socially engineered for an optimal response. Its notification would get the hotel to bring them a certain tea that helped circulation and libido while the sugar biscuit made sure that they were not too tired and the wine helped ease inhibitions…

The rest was biology; she was due to start ovulating mid-flight.

It was not magic that he sold them, it part digital sleight-of-hand, part psychology and–if he admitted it to himself–also part showmanship.

As they walked out the door, he turned around to stare at a blank wall. Had he ever been born? He found himself wondering… He could feel data flowing by him, but the cold, blank wall allowed his biological eyes to look at something real and kept his mind from Deep Running away in the Web.

***

“Wiz, hey, Wiz, you still with us,” a gruff voice penetrated his consciousness and slowly the flowing lights and oceans of data streams receded into a blank wall in a square room with a noisy aircon rattling in the corner.

“Yessss,” he breathed out, his bodily functions appeared to have run sufficiently on the apps while he zoned out, “Yes, I am.”

He stood and turned around. His assistant, Luke, was there. Actually, Luke was more a caretaker and a salesman, actually. He needed someone around him that dealt with frustrating Slow World and kept him from falling fully into the Quick World of data.

“Right, what do we have next?” he asked, sensing the answer already.

“Uh, Wiz, well there is a couple–” his assistant answered before he cut him off.

“Show them in,” he said, already scanning the data stream outside, he could see their Conduits, which led to their names, and back into their entire lives…

***

Luke closed the door behind the couple and walked outside for a smoke. The Wizard’s apartment was just outside of the center of town and overlooked a river that flowed by. He liked the view, but mostly he just found the inside of that apartment bare, boring and mildly depressing.

How could a guy do that to himself? Luke would never understand, but then again he supposed that the guy did not actually do it to himself.

A flashing light and soft ping in his brain’s simulation of the inner ear told him that he was being called. It was the office. He pulled on his smoke and then flicked it off the roof, before thinking to answer the call and his Conduit did the rest.

“Luke, what’s the status?” his superior’s voice streamed straight into his cortex.

“The Wiz’s working an appointment, we had another one earlier this morning,” Luke paused and took out another cigarette, thank god cancer was cured he thought, “Uh, that’s bout it.”

There was a grunt of acknowledgment on the other side of the line. Luke could hear the faint crackle of encryption on the line. The office was getting increasingly paranoid these days.

“Right, when he’s done with the couple, bring him in. We have a job for him.”

Luke grunted confirmation and the office hung up. He finished his cigarette and, through the window, saw the couple leaving the room. They looked shocked. The woman was crying and the man was almost holding her up. The appointment must have gone well.

He flicked the cigarette off the roof. It was time to get the Wizard to the Boss. After all, the Boss owned the Wizard and all the hardware they had put in him. The Boss had owned the Wizard ever since the Wizard had owed the Boss money.

Luke walked back inside the apartment and inside the Wizard’s bare room. The Wizard was sitting with his back to the door staring at the blank wall again. Why did he do that, Luke wondered? Drunk on perma-data like some cheap data-junkie, Luke thought. But, at least it made him easy to transport, as Luke slipped a sedative out of his pocket and readied it for injection into the Wizard’s neck.

“I bet you regret owing the mafia money, eh Wiz?” Luke muttered, “But then again, you probably don’t even remember after the memory whipe, eh, do you?”

Fantasy, General Fiction, Horror & Dark Fiction

Me, Myself and the Fae

As a child, I had a best friend. He was mischievous and funny. His smile sparkled and his eyes twinkled as we ran through the grass down the bottom of our garden. It was our secret time in our secret world, but he had to leave.

Or was it me that had to leave?

The fog of age clouds the memories of a child. The banality of modern life smothers us under its bills and bustle. All the noise, but none of the music. All of the colours, but none of them sparkle.

I grew up. I finished my studies and got a job in a big city. I moved there and fought through the traffic for eternity. I met a man. He was a good man, then. We married. We were content for a time. But, when the children came, eventually I could not even remember what my best friend looked like anymore.

One evening, after the children had grown up, the parties had finished and work had ended, I sat on our balcony overlooking the twinkling lights of the city below. My bones ached, or was it my heart? My hands looked so old that I did not recognise them anymore. How was I this person now? Suddenly, I remembered him. I suddenly remembered how real he made me feel in my secret world. Our secret world.

I stood on the edge of the balcony. Far below, I could feel the long, cool grass and all the mysteries it contained. My man was out with another woman. He was not my man anymore. My house was empty and my home was far, far away. The children had their own lives and I was not included. We were all strangers to each other. The people who called themselves friends all wanted to talk about men and money, and shoes and celebrities. They all wanted to stay young, but they had lost it too. They did not talk about it, but I knew that they could not see the colours anymore either.

Far, far below me, I could feel him. He was calling to me. The secret, magical world was still there. I just had to find it. He wanted me to come play. Come dance with him. Come home. He wanted me to see all the colours I had forgotten. He wanted me to touch the sky and breathe in the infinite air. I could see his pale, thin hand stretching out like a wispy twig from the old tree we used to climb.

“Just a step away. Just a step will take you home. Just a wee lil’ step, and you won’t be alone…”

And I stepped towards him. I stepped back to the long, cool, uncut grass at the shady, bottom of the garden. I could feel the infinite air rushing passed me with that single step… I was going home.

“It has been a long, long time, child,” he quietly chuckled, his musical voice sending sheer joy down my spine as his eyes sparkled green and all the colours exploded around me, “Welcome home, child, welcome home.“

General Fiction, Horror & Dark Fiction

Old Roads

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old-road

Down the bottom of our smoothly-tarred, modern road and at the quiet beach lying there, there is a rock that runs into the ocean. It is less of a single rock and more a series of tightly packed rocks running in a straight line, like an ancient road. The rocks are old and cracked. They are worn where the wind and water have battered them, but they hold fast where they were laid many ages ago.

No cement or binding holds them there. No tar binds the rocks into this old road running the sea. They just hold there, like some mysterious force was protecting them against the pounding waves, the beating Sun and the blowing wind.

On warm summer days over the weekends, families will flock to the beach. Umbrellas will pop open like blooming flowers displaying various company logos across the sand. Deckchairs will fold out as clothes come off in a near ritual wave of familiarity under the warm Sun and to the tune of the softly, crashing waves in the background.

The children are the first to run to the waters. Shouting at each other, they splash through the cool ocean, laughing and shrieking in delight.

And right in the middle of these trivial excesses and family fun, runs the old, weathered road straight into the ocean.

I wonder what sights this old road has seen?

When childrens’ feet run pattering over it now, does the old road remember soldiers’ boot stomping down it? When children run over it laughing and shrieking amidst their fun, does the old road remember the cries and shrieks of the fallen that walked it, their blood washing over it like the salty, cool sea water does now?

And, sometimes, I even wonder if one day the smoothly-tarred, modern tar road that I walked down to get to this beach will be like this old road. After the inevitable nuclear bombs drop, the virus wipes us out or the climate change starves us to death and the water level rises, will my modern road remain? Will my modern road–by then cracked and old–run down to and under the gently lapping, slightly-radio-active, ocean water? And would the original old road have finally disappeared deep under those dark waters?

Perhaps the old road would finally have been forgotten? Maybe there will be no one left to remember it. Perhaps it will finally have been given to the ocean that it has been leading to for ages. The old road would finally be able to rest at the bottom of the cool sea without any feet running shrieking over it.

And, sometimes, I then wonder how many past ages have come and gone? How many old, cracked roads potentially lie on that ocean floor? How many old cracked roads could there be, and how many feet may have walked them? All these forgotten and all the shrieks of their times lost to us, lying under our umbrellas and on our deckchairs in the sun and drowned out by our childrens’ laughter.