Tag Archives: romance

General Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction

The Sky

In the Field beyond the Village’s last house, they lay looking up at the soft, white clouds that floated by. In that Field, he held her, stroking her hair, and promised her the Sky. She laughed and said she would settle for just him.

And they made love as the clouds quietly floated past, and made lives as the years drifted by.

But then the Otherworlders appeared in their vast Starship above them; a huge, roaring, horror of chrome and fire that filled the Sky and vomited forth soldiers and rules and punishment. Some resisted but they did not last long, and soon the Village was forgotten and replaced with the cold, concrete of the City. The Field was torn up and Factories were built that he (and the rest of the men) had to work at while she (and the rest of the women) had to serve the Otherworlders.

And they toiled beneath the smog-filled Sky; no white clouds drifted by anymore. They laboured each day to shuffle home each night exhausted. But, each night, they would hold each other quietly on their single bed, and stare up at the cracked ceiling. He would stroke her hair, smile, and promise her the Sky. Despite how tired she was, she would quietly laugh, and tell him she would settle for just him.

And they made love as the City and the Factories and the Otherworlders marched on by, and settled into their new life as the months drifted by too.

But, one night, she did not come home, and he knew. The Otherworlders’ had taken her from him. In their callous way with their dark appetites, they had done this to other women at other times. He knew and, when the Otherworlder’s Official acknowledged her death but refused any investigation, he knew and the ground swallowed him whole.

In his grief, he wandered the streets of the City howling as tears blurred his vision. In his grief, he wandered by the belching Factories, screaming and tearing at his clothes. And, in his grief, he wandered beyond where the Otherworlders cared and found others hiding from them in the Wilderness.

Out there in the Wilderness, he found not solace but an army. Out there in the Wilderness, the Others shared their pains inflicted on them by the Otherworlders and he shared his, and they wept together as they collected more and more of their discarded people and the Army swelled in size. They did not have the gigantic Starship of the Otherworlders–indeed, they only had much smaller fighter jets–but they had the fact that they were fighting, not for another planet, but for their homes.

And the Army grew as the Otherworlder’s wickedness fed, and he settled into his new life as he trained to take back the Sky.

When the Army attacked late one night, he flew one of the fighter jets. He had named it after Her, as he fought for Her. They all fought for Someone; some who were passed, some who were still alive and some who were yet to be born.

His fighter jet’s engine roared to life that night. He whispered to it–to Her–that he was going to take back the Sky. He was going to take it all back and give it to her. His hands shook and his throat was dry. The engine roared to life, and the ground flew by and then disappeared as he rose into the night Sky. He rose along with the rest of the fighter jets as the Army pushed forward on the ground.

And then fire flew by him, and fire erupted on the ground. The Otherworlders were many and better armed, but the Army fought hard. Flashes in the night signalled death, and screaming screens in his fighter jet announced incoming death; he gritted his teeth and pushed Her hard. She launched vengeance again and again on the Otherworlder’s Factories and Mansions, and, ducking and rolling through the dark Sky, leaving the fires behind him, he managed to get to where the Otherworlder Starship’s chrome bulk had been parked.

He was going to take the Sky back.

Her screens screamed red at him, smoke bellowing from one of Her wings and fire and death flew all around him. He screamed; tears filling his eyes as he pushed Her closer and closer… Her missiles were out, her ammunition spent, Her tanks were near empty, Her way back lost, and he knew at that moment how to take back the Sky.

He tilted Her nose down towards the grounded Starship and–tears blurring his vision–he thought of Her as Her engine’s crescendo roared towards its final note. He thought only of Her: Her voice, Her hair, Her smile and how, long ago, in that old Field beyond the old Village’s last house he had held Her and promised Her the Sky.

He could hear Her laugh, and say that She would settle for just him…

And, as the Starship exploded, somewhere on a Field He lay with Her again looking up at the soft, white clouds that floated by in the Sky. Their Sky.

Fantasy, Romance

Assassins in the Night

She first saw him as a fleeting shadow across the rooftops of her City. Her mark’s body crumpled quietly to the floor beside her. She hesitated ever so slightly and then she leaped lightly up the wall to chase after him, blades disappearing as quickly as they had appeared.

Their chase darted across the rooftops under the Dark Moon and its musing Stars. They whirling over the City like its rooftops were their private dance-floor. Even the cool night air seemed to play a secret music as their shadows flittered from roof to roof…

Then he stopped dead still. The music paused. The Dark Moon and the City waited as the Stars leaned ever-so-slightly forward in anticipation.

She too stopped, frozen on the edge of the roof while he turned and looked straight back at her from the other side of the roof.

Silence.

Time held its breath and, despite all the hearts she had stopped, it was her’s that skipped this beat. His dark green eyes as unreadable as his black mask, she weighed the multiple blades hidden over her lithe body.

Then he was gone. Little more than a fleeting shadow wrapped in midnight and ghosted off by a mystery.

She smiled ever-so-slightly and then the next moment the rooftop was empty. The assassins were gone and only the Dark Moon, its Stars and the City knew what had transpired that night.

***

In another life, she next saw him under the midday sun. He lithely stalked across her street, black hair blowing in the wind as his dark green eyes flashed around him.

He flicked up his hand and caught her blade as it flew straight towards his beating heart.

She was long gone as he looked around the street but only the cold blade was still there with a small message wrapped around. All that was written in the message was an address. The address where he had stopped and turned around.

He hesitated for just a moment–a smile dancing across his face–before slipping from sight into the shadows. It was not the blade but the message that found its mark beating in his breast.

The sunlight and all its creatures were oblivious to what had just  happened, but the City smiled and waited for the harsh sun to tire. It always did.

Eventually, the Dark Moon joined the City overhead with its chorus of Stars. Then the assassins’ secret music started to play on the cool night air. And, for the briefest moment, two fleeting shadows met on a lonely rooftop against the night sky.

The City smiled as the Dark Moon looked down amused. All the Stars twinkled and they hummed the lover’s music.

And then they were gone, two fleeting shadows wrapped in midnight and ghosted off by a mystery.

***

Many years later, after a great storm had torn through the City and terrible clouds had smothered the Dark Moon and its Stars for weeks, an ordinary man climbed up to his house’s roof.

Under the harsh sunlight, he had clambered up his rickety ladder carrying rusty tools to fix a leak. It was honest work and he was an honest man and, thus, he had honest expectations.

He expected a hard days work under the harsh sun. He expected muck and dirt while he fixed where the storm and beating rain had torn a gash into his dwelling. He expected a lot of ordinary things as most ordinary people do.

What he found instead were two blades, still as sharp as the day the lovers had left them. Hilts crossing, they were buried deep into what he had always thought was his own roof in what he had always thought was his own city.

Stand there staring at them, he briefly glimpsed a world far from his sunlight which danced to a secret music that he would never hear. The rest of this world, though, would forever remain a fleeting shadow wrapped in midnight and ghosted off by a mystery that only the City, the Dark Moon and its Stars truly knew.

Romance, Science Fiction, Technomology

Children of the Cosmos

“I can still remember the stars twinkling above us in that field,” she thought, electrical impulses being captured by the chip in her brain and cast over the ultraband straight into another’s brain sitting on the far side of the cosmos, “I hope one day to lie there with you again.”

“I love you, you know?” he thought back across the chat connection, “I can’t wait to touch you in the Slow World again. One day it will be my Slow Lips touching yours. One day, we’ll again lie in that field at the center of the cosmos.”

The secure connection between their brains opened up and a skin-app allowed him to download into and reach out with the arm of a synthetic human’s body. He reached out and touched her. The synth was just a hollow body, but the two-way connection between him and it allowed him to feel what it felt and control it as it was his own. His own original body lay back across the cosmos in a state close to dreaming as its consciousness streamed across the Quick World.

He leaned into her and pressed the synth’s lips against hers. He felt the kiss, as did she, and his hand slid to the curve on the low of her back. Her eyes fluttered closed and she pulled him closer to her…

***

The activation light flickered red, as the connection between him and the synth severed. She saw its eyes grow dull and lifeless, and suddenly she was alone in her bedroom again. The temperature app in the synth had turned off once he had disconnected, and she could feel its synthetic skin growing cold.

Emotionally, she sympathized with it.

She stood up from the bed and retrieved her scattered clothing. Once she had put it all back on, she commanded a house-robot to pack the synthetic body away. It would not do to leave such things lying around, besides, they were expensive.

Her husband would be back soon, and she wanted to freshen up before then.

***

It took a second to get over the dislocation as the disconnection brought his consciousness back to his Slow Body. His eyes opened and he blinked, and then he was back in the Slow World.

He stood up from the chair he had been casting from. He grabbed a cigarette and walked out onto the balcony overlooking this planet. He lit the cigarette and contemplated the scene before him.

Three moons circled silently overhead and cast an eerie glow onto a predominantly night-world below him. Days here only occurred once every second century. Far below the lonely tower he lived in, luminous plantations of alien tree species stretched out before him. They were growing galactic fruits that would later be distilled down into rare liquors and distributed throughout the known worlds.

It was all automated–run by Artificial Intelligence–and he was the only sentient life for a couple of light years in any direction. He was there as a fail-safe if anything went wrong in the plantation AI, which it had not for close on a millennium.

He was so bored.

He finished his cigarette and flicked the butt off the balcony. He turned and strolled back inside, his Conduit browsing through news, movies, media and elicit apps in a desperate attempt to stave off boredom.

He poured himself a drink. It was from this plantation and its sweet, tingling liquid glowed slightly in the glass. Back in the central planets, this drink would be worth some people’s annual salaries, but out here and in this plantation, it was free. One of the few perks of his job.

He decided on party-casting app, leaned back in his chair and opened his Conduit’s connection to its menu.

Somewhere out there, a field beneath twinkling stars existing waiting for him and his distant lover. He missed her and her lips. Someday, when he had earned enough money to buy his way back into civilization and be with her again.

Until then, though, he was going to drink tequila and dance in a synth on one of the party planets…

***

“Appreciated, ma’am,” the suited man said, “Its productivity is up and its reality matrix remains robust. The risk with these high-end AI’s is always that they hit a terminal loop, kind of what we would call an existential crisis. Anyway, this seems to be working, so, if you are comfortable with this arrangement, we would like to continue using you. We will keep the same narrative, as well, just for continuity. Do you consent?”

She smiled and nodded. Her husband stood up, shook the man’s hand and showed him out.

When she was all alone, she leaned back in the chair and sighed. They needed the money–even her husband agreed so–and it was not actually cheating on him, nor was it prostitution. Not really.

No, it did not count when it was just an AI.

The arrangement was simple, lucrative, and she was happy to continue with it. The owners of the off-world plantation kept the AI that ran it from going mad by coding it to think that it was human. They placed the conscious portion of the AI in a high-end synth and let it wander around overseeing the plantation. They also coded it with a history and narrative. Her job was simply to play the part of the AI’s distant girlfriend and keep it entertained, thus, motivating it to keep working.

AI’s–like humans–worked better when they had a goal to strive for.

“You alright, dear?” her husband asked as he walked back in, reaching out to hug her.

She smiled and tucked her head under his.

“Yes,” she whispered, kissing him gently on the neck, “Yes, I am. It’s not real anyway. It’s just a synth with an AI, and the money will allow us to handle the debts, so, yes, I am fine, my love.”

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.

General Fiction, Horror & Dark Fiction

Mixed Signals

He smiled at her and she smiled back, but then the tide of students between classes carried her away. He would spend the whole of the next couple periods before close daydreaming about her.

They were in different grades and shared no classes, so she may as well have been on Mars. He tried to catch her after school, but he could not find her.

In the end, he wandered home on his own.

***

Ping.

He was lying on his bed staring at the ceiling. His thoughts were a swirling mess of carnal desire and cheesy romance from too many Hollywood movies.

He rolled over and looked at his phone. It was a friend request on Facebook.

It was her!

His heart skipped a beat. He did not even know that she knew his name, let alone would find him on Facebook. He quickly accepted the friend request and saw that they did not share any mutual friends.

That means that she had actually searched for him on Facebook. That means that she had really wanted to be friends.

She was online, too.

And they started chatting.

***

The next day at school, he passed her in the corridors between classes. He asked how she was doing and she did not respond before the tide of students pushed them away from each other.

He could not find her at break, nor after school.

It was a long day and he spent it worrying about what he had said. Had he phrase ‘Hi, how you doing?‘ wrong? Should he have opened with a joke? Should he have grabbed her hand? What did he do wrong?

***

Ping.

He rolled over on his bed and glanced at the notification. She was messaging him on Facebook again. He smiled. Maybe she had just been shy or something today when they passed in the corridors.

He messaged back.

Ping.

And so the conversation went until late into the evening. He really felt a connection with her. She was so much smarter and funnier than he had realized. And, sometime during the evening, he decided that the next time he saw her he would ask her out.

***

The next day at school was busy, and he did not run into her. Their school was not large, but it was large enough that you could miss someone for a while.

Likewise, the next day. But, he was not concerned, as they kept chatting with each other on Facebook. Ping. She was really funny and he thought she seemed to like him too.

By the end of the week, he was starting to get worried. He was not sure if he should bring it up on Facebook messenger, but he had not seen her once.

Ping.

Like clockwork, the evening chat with her began. He would spend the whole weekend chatting with her too, until late into the Sunday evening. He barely moved and was oblivious to anything outside of his phone’s screen.

He decided that next week he would find her or find some of her friends to help him find her. He was going to ask her out.

Ping.

And the messages kept coming in. He could not stop smiling that weekend.

***

Monday mornings always started with Assembly in the big Hall. The Headmaster would stand up and drone on about rules, morals and whatever was the latest news.

This morning, when Assembly started, it instantly felt different. He was sitting in his grade’s row and straining to see her in her grade’s row, but a deathly quiet fell on the Hall.

Someone next to him muttered disbelief and there was a collective gasp from the Hall.

This made him actually look at the stage, and there was a picture of her. It was a big picture and placed with candles around it. The Headmaster was talking and, suddenly, he realized what was being said.

“…our deepest condolences go out to the family. Their loss is all of our losses, as Carol’s memory and love of life will live on through all of us. But, let us also learn from this tragedy, as the moral decay that is so prevalent in our society takes another victim. The drunk driver that hit her on Friday evening need not have been there. She was always–”

He sat upright, his heart pounding in his chest. He felt faint, dizzy perhaps. His hands were clammy and he could hear the blood pumping in his ears. He whispered to the guy sitting next to him and asked the one question he needed to know.

“Friday night,” the whispered reply exploded quietly in his ears, “No, she died instantly, they say. The funeral was Sunday. Yeah, it was yesterday as my mom went for our family.”

***

The rest of the day passed like a blur. From classes to conversations to the bell.

And then he was home.

In the quiet of his room, he finally got up the guts to look. He pulled out his phone and opened up Facebook.

There were her messages, leading up to last night. It was impossible! He had shared so much intimacy with her! He dropped the phone and jumped back his heart pound. What was he going to do now? What did this mean? He felt violated and he wanted to cry and scream at the same time!

Ping.

His heart leapt into his mouth!

Ping.

He knew. He just knew who this was from. It was like clockwork. He stood frozen staring at the phone where it lay.

Ping…

Romance

Heart Graffiti

When she was fifteen, a boy in her class kissed her. He had brown hair. They snuck around the bottom of the sports fields and kissed. The boy smelt like the cafeteria pie that he had eaten earlier, but she did not mind. It was naughty, and she liked it. The bell rang, and they ran back to class to tell all their friends about their secret.

In the later years, she would not only forget much of the detail of this moment, but she would embellish it for effect.

***

After his parents died, he moved in with his grandparents. They lived elsewhere, so he had to change schools and friends. He cried a lot in those days.

His grandparents were nice, but also doddery old people. Their pension had been damaged in the recession, so both of them had part-time jobs to make ends meet. The housekeeper came to tidy things up occasionally, but mostly there was no one around.

After school, he had to either hang around an empty school ground or walk for miles to get home. It was while walking home that he got to know someone who he should not have. What he thought was a friend touched him where he did not want to be touched. It made him uncomfortable and embarrassed all at the same time, but he did not know what to do.

No one found out, but people come and go, and life moves on. He kept rounding his memories of this part of his life down until they reached fractions of the original. He knew his abuse was not his own fault and, sometimes, in the quiet, long hours of the night, he wondered how it may have affected him. But, most of the time, he spent not thinking about it.

Thus, in later years, he would forget much of the detail of these moments, and let the noise of his life drown out the rest of them.

***

As she went through school, she called a couple of boys by the title ‘boyfriend’. But her first real one was in college. They met accidentally, dated haphazardly and then she intentionally lost her virginity to him.

He had dark hair, a quick laugh and an accute way of thinking about things. She did not quite know why she was attracted to him, but she felt comfortable around him.

Young love is difficult. Changes happen so fast at that age and, within two years, they had drifted apart as the fighting grew worse. He was getting into different things than her and she was becoming more interested in her career in finance and her friends and clubs.

Years later, she would rarely speak about the first boy she slept with and, even then, it would only be in noting it as a fact with little elaboration. There would be no embellishing of this part of the story. The details were only for her and she held them dear inside her heart.

***

He had ended up only just scraping through school, but that left his college options rather limited. Besides his grandparents had both passed away and there was nothing left in their estate for him. Instead, he moved to the big city down by the coast and began working in a restaurant.

While waiting tables there, he met her. She was different to the rest. At first, he had thought she was hot, but then he got to know her and thought she was cool. And then they slept together for the first time–his first, not hers–and he no longer questioned why he liked her. He just did.

They would stay up long after their shifts had ended and split a bottle of cheap wine. She smoked cigarettes and he tried to, but they would laugh and cry and talk and fuck.

And then she changed her mind, and he was alone again.

It did not matter. He had shared something with someone. He had been honest. It had felt good. Although he would never really talk about this, it had given him hope that he could be close to others and his wall had begun to crack.

***

She dated a boy with blonde hair who surfed and then she saw one with dark hair who played in a band. She finished college, went to work in a bank and slept with another one she met at a club after a few cocktails and whisky sours. She could not remember his name, but he had the bluest eyes and was gone the next morning.

None of these stuck with her and, like small stones being flung into a large pond, they barely rippled her heart. Sometimes she would feel like crying or a sad scene in a movie would make her unexpectedly cry. She did not exactly know why, but she felt sad. She felt alone.

Her job was not bad and she lived comfortably in a good house in a nice neighbourhood.

She did not notice it, but she began to drift through life. She went to more clubs than restaurants, and she began to drink more whisky sours than cocktails.

***

He left the restaurant and started his own. He put a bar into it but still made good food. He managed to move into his own house and his banker kept telling him how well he was doing.

He felt proud. The darkness around his youth was a fragmented memory from another age. His confidence led him forward now. He could date and did so with a couple of women. They were all beautiful and he was amazed that they even looked at him, let alone spent time with him. He slept with some of them and some of them even stayed longer than that with him.

But nothing stuck. At first, this was not a problem. He had built a good life, his restro-bar–as he called it–was doing well, he lived well and he was happier than he had ever been. But, nothing stuck, and that began to bother him. There felt like there was a distance between him and everyone else.

The real tragedy, he sometimes chided himself, was that he had no one to share all these wonderful things with.

Just before close late one night, she wandered in. The diners at all tables had left, the kitchen was closed and only a couple patrons were sitting at the bar finishing their drinks when she walked into his restro-bar.

***

Late one night, alone and drunk, she had wandered into a new bar in another part of town. Some hours and drinks later, she had fallen into his bed. The next morning she had woken up and felt different. He had smiled at her, brought her coffee and spent the morning asking her about her life.

She had not told him about the first kiss or boyfriend, nor had she told him about her fancy job. Rather, she found herself telling him about her loneliness and how she would cry sometimes. He had cried with her then, telling her of the dirty darkness in his childhood and the distance he felt around his heart.

He had hugged her and told her that everything would be alright. She had hugged him and kissed him deeply. The rain had begun to fall softly outside and they had both fallen asleep in each other’s arms.

It was then she had known that this one was different. It was then that she knew that all the nicks, cuts and scars across her heart had found a match and they were meant to be together.

***

It was then that he had known that she was the one. For the first time in his life, he did not regret anything that had happened to him. It was all important; each and every experience. After all, it had all been the map graffitied on his grubby heart that had led him to her, and for that he was thankful.

Blackpool Bay, Horror & Dark Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction

The Old Man and the Stars

As evening fell in the quiet town of Blackpool Bay, a strange man walked into the General Store. No one had seen him arrive, but no one had been specifically looking. This was all a bit unusual, as few people travelled this far along the coast and outsiders stuck out in town.

The stranger was tall, thin and quite hairless with immensely pale skin. His long black trenchcoat covered him like a second skin while square, functional dark-glasses hid his eyes. His smile was cold when he enquired of the location of Callum Road from the young boy working the desk in the store.

Callum Road ran through the old industrial edge of town and there was only one residential house on it. While other buildings dotted the road, most of them were empty warehouses from an age before the railroad had been diverted inland. Many years ago, an old mayor had tried to rejuvenate the place with a small park in one of the open plots along Callum Road, but that mayor was long gone and no one except the Old Man now used that overgrown park.

The Stranger nodded his thanks to the young boy, turned, and left the store without another word. The boy swallowed and wondered why his heart was beating so fast. And, in Callum Road, the Old Man stepped from his small house, walking stick in hand and began tottering down his walkway to the small park and the even smaller bench that lay down Callum Road.

Even the locals of Blackpool Bay knew little about the Old Man. He had moved to Blackpool Bay many years ago but kept to himself. He would buy odds and ends from the General Store and occasionally ask people awkward questions, but Callum Road was removed from the rest of town and no one ever visited him.

Sometimes, a local passerby would see the Old Man sitting on the bench at the park down Callum Road. He would be just sitting there staring at the night sky. This far from the lights of cities and civilisation, the stars came out in all their glory encrusting the cosmos in twinkling splendour as this small, spinning, insignificant planet spun its way through the Milky Way. The night skies just outside of Blackpool Bay were incredible and they were not the strangest thing to be sitting and looking at.

This was such an evening with the cosmic display twinkling in all its infinite beauty. And, so, the Old Man sat on his bench quietly looking upwards at the stars.

“Why is there moisture on your face? Is your body leaking?”

The Stranger was standing behind the Old Man. There had been no noise of his approach. He stepped forward and took a seat next to the Old Man on the bench. The Old Man never so much as glanced at him, his gaze directed squarely at the stars in the night sky.

“Human’s call it ‘tears’. It is the physical manifestation of ‘sorrow’. If you live long enough amongst them, you start to pick up some of their traits,’ the Old Man began talking slowly, but then started picking up pace like he had wanted to say these things for a very long time, “I have a theory that I actually had those emotionally traits all along, but I was unaware of them. I think we are all unaware of them. Sure, we can travel further and faster than humans and we have better technology, but humans are far more emotionally evolved than we are and we can learn great things from them about this hidden knowledge.”

The Stranger takes off his dark-glasses and holds them in his lap where he neatly folded his hands. He glances at the Old Man–who has not moved his gaze from the stars above–and then turns and looks to the night sky.

“We sent you down in a pair–” the Stranger starts talking, but the Old Man turns and looks straight at him, abruptly interrupting him with a dry chuckle.

“You always send us down in pairs. Always in pairs,” the Old Man leans forward and wipes away a tear from his eyes before continuing, “My other half is gone. My partner’s cosmic light expired when one of the human’s mechanical mobile devices, a Mercedes Benz, driven by an intoxicated driver skipped a red light and hit her crossing a road. This was thirteen years ago. Human’s call it ‘passing away’. She passed away thirteen years ago.”

The Stranger’s face was impenetrable, but his gaze turned from the stars above to the Old Man next to him. The Old Man now had tears openly slipping down his face.

“She passed away in my arms, and thirteen years have passed since then. This body you gave me has aged and it is starting to expire, but all I want is my partner back,” the Old Man wipes his eyes and sighs deeply, before turning back to look at the stars twinkling far above, “Many humans believe that there is life after death, and I do hope so. Even though her body is gone, her cosmic light could still have been captured by one us out there, surely? I keep searching for her somewhere out there in one of our galaxies, or some hidden part of the cosmos that we will yet discover…”

The Old Man’s voice fades and he drops his gaze to the ground. The Stranger is still looking at him.

“I do not understand,” the Stranger shakes his head, “What are you doing? What are you talking about? Perhaps we left you on this planet too long, but I look forward to the full report.”

The Old Man turns to the Stranger and smiles.

“Of all the things I have learnt here and of all the things that humans have taught me, this is the greatest knowledge of all: what I am feeling is love, and we can all feel that too. Love is the greatest of all emotions, and I will teach our people it. Come, it is time to go. I will tell you all about it back home.”

The Stranger nods, the Old Man smiles, and then the bench is empty.

The Old Man will never be seen, nor will the Stranger. But, the next day, local talk buzzes about two particularly bright shooting stars that flew low over Blackpool Bay late that night. A few locals even swore that they saw a third shooting star up there join the passage of the other two.

Romance

Trust, My Child, Trust

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The greatest battle anyone can ever face is not war nor any conflict. It is not even survival. It is also not finding love, but keeping it.

Yet we have been overcoming this war, conflict by conflict since the dawn of mankind.

It was not when the first lusty caveman lumbered over a beautiful woman. It was not during that chill night when their naked bodies entwined so hauntingly. No, it was when the Sun rose and the cold, harsh light of dawn blasted away all romantic notions that the greatest war began.

All the pickup artists, fancy suites and witty one-liners won’t save a man in this war. All the fast cars, big paychecks and accolades won’t save man from the loneliness of a scorned partner. All the big houses, blue pools and exotic cocktails won’t matter when the door closes.

These are the moments when the darkness closes in and the fire flickering in the cave seems meaningless. These are the moments when hearts break and spirits walk through the same empty abyss that many have wandered through before you. These are the moments when tenderness and care seem further from life than the warmth of the Sun in deepest winter or the touch of water from the dryest desert.

And how does man fight this battle? What weapons does he have at his disposal? What armour does he have to defend himself in this war?

My child, these are the times when you realize that you don’t exist, if it were not for your partner. My son, this are the times when your existence truly is a flickering candle in the winds of time that have blown since before even life mucked around on this dirty, little planet. My girl, these are the time when your heart hurt so much because your life is empty and devoid of the one thing that we were built to seek out.

Your other half.

We are souls flying through the vacuum of life on a spinning rock through endless, empty space and we need not the fire nor the Sun for warmth nor the touch of the cool waters on our tongues.

No, my child, we need only each other.

So do not use your head to fight this battle. Do not trust your anger or rage. Do not use your power or intellect. Definitely, do not use your hands. Do not even trust your own heart. Though your heart beats pure, it is like a beast that is frightened and cornered by the loneliness of our existence. And, like a cornered beast fighting for its survival, your heart cannot even truly be trusted here.

No, my child, this is when you trust your hurt. You trust your loneliness. Trust your longing for the other soul in this barren world.

And trust that they feel it too. Trust that they feel your isolation and neglect as sharp as you feel your loneliness. Trust that they feel your insults and injustices as much as you feel their loss.

Break open these feelings and see them in the mirror of life cast into the bodies of those around us.

Trust that they hurt as much as you do. Trust that you hurt them just as much as yourself, if not more. While anyone can survive love’s highs, trust that you must survive its lows as well. Trust that when we fall down before our soulmates, that we actually rise up to be with them.

Trust, my child, that you are not alone in love’s endless war and you only lose when you stop loving.

So, my child, do not stop loving.

Romance

Windows

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"...the two of boy and the girl kissed under a full moon on a warm summer night..."

Across the street lay a house. In that house was a window. In that window was a girl. And that girl spent long hours looking out at the world from her window.

On the other side of the street was another house. It also had a window. In that window was a boy. He also spent long hours looking out from his window. But, he spent most of these long hours looking out from his window and into the window across the street with the girl in it.

Then one day he went and knocked on the door in the house across the street.

The girl opened it and they both smiled.

Stars were birthed and universes formed in rolling cosmic thunder that echoes great, booming heartbeats. The great tides of the world lifted and rose like great lungs sucking in life. And the boy and girl kissed under a full moon on a warm summer night.

Years later they got married. The girl, who was now a woman, gave birth to a beautiful boy and they lived as a happy family for many years. Yes, there were fights. Yes, like anyone else, occasionally there was crying. But, for the most part, that man and that woman and their little boy lived happy.

But one day the baby boy, who was now a young man, moved out and into the big wide world.

Time passed and the woman and her husband grew old.

Stars cooled down as entropy spread chill through universes that began to forget the cosmic thunder and the dimming echoes of a heartbeat. The tides of the world lifted just a little less each time that rose against the shores. The air was getting dark and quiet.

Then one day the old man passed away. And, after the funeral, after the tears, and after all the family and friends had left, the old woman sat all alone in her old house looking out from her old window.

She would spend many hours looking out from that window rubbing her old, tired hands. She would spend many hours looking out that window thinking of that little boy who so many years ago knocked on her door.

But then one day there was no one in that window in that house on that street. One day it was empty and neither filled with longing nor happiness nor sadness. One day it was just quiet, the cosmic thunder and the tides had all gone out with the old woman.

And somewhere, somehow out there, the old man heard a knock on his door. He opened it. The old woman was standing there and they both smiled.