/lit/ - Literature

One day," you said to me, "I saw the sunset forty-three times!"

And a little later you added:

"You know-- one loves the sunset, when one is so sad..."

"Were you so sad, then?" I asked, "on the day of the forty-three sunsets?"

But the little prince made no reply.

It's a short book, but boy is it ever good.

My dick was erect.
She said "Nice dick."
I said "Thanks"
I told her to touch my dick.
She touched my dick.
It felt good. "Thanks for touching my dick" I said.
She said "You're welcome for touching your dick."
She left. I left.

I'm working on my suicide note, let me know what you think:

I write this not for attention, nor in the hopes that someone might find it and talk me out of what I have resolved to do. I write this because I have grown tired of life and wish now for the cold comfort of death. I was never good at saying the things that mattered while still living. My tongue became heavy when attempting to confess, my mind tangled and incoherent when hoping to convince, and in general at every turn I spectactularly failed to express what I truly and honestly beleived. Until recently I had nobody to confess to, no person I cared about to the extent that my heart was forced reluctantly to crawl out from the shadow of my brain and say, or mumble, "I care about you profoundly". Now once again I have nobody. Now I hope to say in death what I could never say in life, but even now I shall probably fail.

So It's often that one person comes to me asking for help on their homework. I never heard of someone asking one of my contemporaries how they had managed to get to the position that they were currently in. I don't know if I'd like to ask another person that similar question. However, when it comes to customary, personal implications about whether they deserve that role, sure enough you will find me inquiring my position.

“Jeff, can you come into my office for a moment?”

Jeff was a peculiar man. Nothing pleasant about him to the sophisticated. He wore dark brown hair in curls. He often mentioned how great his parents are in the paintings industry. Of course this was all in an effort to shine the spotlight on him rather to the possibilities on what may be seen mysterious to his ideal audience. But of course, this was all done in vain. Jeff came from a family with no status to degree of. He definitely did not manage to show otherwise. In fact, he was a plain blend; a good blend to the sad, dull realities that he so distressingly fought to hide, unfavorably.

“Yes, your majesty?”

“Jeff, it has come to my understanding that you have taken it upon yourself to to digress my student's problematic situations that they willingly come to you for solutions...”

His manner quickly became calculated. He began morphing his posture, readying, to defend protest against his upcoming explanation. Poor child, really. He has conditioned himself to dismay against retaliation of his doings in the last effort to save his ego; ego that would be hard to collect and distinguish; not really ego at all.

I didn't plan a story. Just practicing prose I suppose.

>>5475852
What! Everybody left and nobody came?!

Feel the tension, bro.

>>5475861

Why would you post this here? Why would you write this?

They found the dead girl under the eaves of the old whitewashed dairy at the corner of the long pasture. they saw the broken dasher and the shattered churn, the torn dress and the vacant eyes.
The red riband binding her throat they did not see, nor the golden arrow clutched in the pale. cool hand. Those were meant for us.

We passed among them, unseen and unfelt, working: gently binding despair here, lifting up hope there, smoothing out the seas of grief and loss and fear. Before our minds always the passive, loving face of the Awful God. For as his eye is on the sparrow, so it is always upon the wings of his greater messengers.

Above us the Unseen City cast it's radiant shadow, welcoming us, calling us back from the dominions of decay and pain, and we would have taken flight. But beside the old well my companions saw a creature in the guise of a tired old man, and seeing that he saw us, and knowing by that what he must be, would have fallen upon him with the always ready blades of righteousness.

But I bade them hold, and approached him alone, for I knew this one of old.

"Hail Idorloo, Child of the Fallen."
"And health to your mighty self, Shaddaiel. Is this a business for the Detective Angel?"

I sat down beside him on the lip of the well and he assumed an aspect more in keeping with his nature and origins.

A white-eyed golden toad with a ruby jewel upon its forhead passed me a Camel Crush from a beltpoke out of which faint cries of lamentation emerged periodically. He lit it with a flick of a thumb.
"Well, a golden arrow and a red ribbon." He said. "If I were Saint Valentine I'd be thinking up an alibi right now."

He was blind, as must all those of his kind must be, that creep out beneath the sun. yet there was for him the darkness visible, and he knew,as we all did, that which was the truth. The better to spin his lies.
"Valentino died a martyr, and sits at the Right Hand." I could not waste time here, but i felt that he might have something to say that might help. "The Golden Arrow is a symbol of Eros, and the red strangling cord of Kali of the Thug. Why not suggest them?"

He chuckled in a deap, croaking way and his gular sack fluttered.
"Because I was with them last night: at Geaepalooza. Pan, Kokopeli and Krishna have started another band."

I had known this, and yet I asked:
"What? some new school of depravity? Do they think to impinge their own rites upon the souls of the Lost Sheep?"

He nodded. "It's always worked before: Wine and the Water of Life, the burning of fragrant herbs, orgiastic practices around bonfires long into the night, and music. The kids would be doing it anyway: why not get some good out of it?"

"Because it deceives, it misleads, it distracts them from the hope of Paradise!"

Again he nodded. "Which is technically my job, yet you don't see me jumping around in a ruffle over it."
"Because you've lost hope." I'm afraid I sneered.

" There is no hope in Hell." he said. "Your boss made sure of that."
I sighed and breathed out the fragrant smoke into the mists hovering above the well.
He chuckled. "'The angel blew out a long breath, for his heart was full with care.'"

"You are here to distract me, i believe." I said to him.
"Not so. Though I might wish it. I am here to assist and to learn: Hell is as surprised by this as you are."
I snorted. "Hell is surprised by murder? By evil?"
"Hell." he said, "Is surprised by the absence of her Guardian Angel. And I am wondering why you are not?"
I am afraid then that I covered my face. Though I knew I could not hide it from Him.

>>5475861
faggot

Here's a lil' snippet of mine:

“Is that all you care about, savage? The size of one’s breasts?”

“I could ask you the same thing. Now’s not the time to be worrying about your looks, ‘Princess’.”, the man growled in her ear. The stench of his breath intruded her nostrils without invitation. Rancid like stale milk. He raised a blade, a withered looking thing, with a twiglike handle. An ugly little tool. “You’d think they’d post guards up here, by your side.”

Sonja found it difficult to respond. The smell had begun to make her want to gag. She refused to swallow, afraid the stench would pollute her body. “Don’t you wash?”, she whispered behind clenched lips. The blade pushed up beneath her bosom but her heart did not pump any harder or faster. It occurred to her that she was not particularly frightened by the threats of this man. It occurred to her that the only concern to her was the raging nausea.
Her assailant must have noticed: “You’re so pumped up with your pills, you don’t even know what fear is!”, he gasped. “Must be nice… Must be boring.” He began to walk backwards, dragging her with him, reaching the edge of the stage with slow, heavy steps that hid a strange kind of weightlessness. “Maybe I’ll take you back to the forest, to show you how to really live.” The knife tightened against her. “Or maybe I’ll stick you here, cleave those tiny titties right off you. Show daddy just how safe his city really is.”

The odour lingered still, clasping at her attention. She had forgotten her surroundings now, forgotten the guards, forgotten the crowds. It was a scent of earth too. Not soil from the University gardens, real earth and realisation of another life outside the high walls of her city. I will not scream, she urged herself. Not in front of these people. But the people were now invisible to her, a mere blur. Her chest had begun a reluctant increase in pumping, as if pulling away from its pharmaceutical shackles.

“Will you kill me?”, she asked. That was not an idea that scared her. No, that was not it at all. The answer failed her. She looked into the man’s face at last, braving the stench full on. The sight would have caused her to jump, had he not held her so tight. His teeth were shattered by rot or force, and his eyes… His eyes were wide, his pupils were gaping holes, with a pitiful rim of brown iris. The very image of madness, with a stare so intent as if it could see all. “Aah, now I see you, girl”, he growled through his grin of shards.

So, we like, told the guy to fuck off, right? But he didn't! Now that aggravated our Little Tommy, whose nickname wasn't ironic - Tommy was little over 5 feet, poor soul. Italian heritage, he always said, as if anyone dared to ask.

"The fuck you mean you won't fuck off?", Tommy asked politely.
"Just so, I won't. Fuck you, Tommy."

Tommy wasn't an adept of handling the banter and punched the fool straight in the face. Guy didn't even flinch, like he was a boxer or something. Au contraire, like the Belgians say, he sniggered like a cunt and delivered a backhand blow that made Tommy fly a little.

"Hah! Faggot!", he shouted.

Tommy didn't answer, as he was bleeding internally after falling down those stairs. The whole affair took maybe less than a minute. We, that is me and Joe Fingers (don't ask), didn't move at all. Not a single muscle twitched on our granite-made faces as the guy approached us with a stern look on his face. Tommy finally regained consciousness and started cursing in both English and Italian, though the latter was a bit off grammar-wise. I was to tell him that later.

I didn't have a chance, though. The guy stabbed me with a shiv he produced out of his backpocket. Straight in the heart! Shit, it didn't even hurt that much, right? Instant internal hemorrhage and that. Not a bad way to die, considering.

Joe Fingers (don't ask) shouted as I was collapsing and tried murdering the guy with his bare hands. He nearly succeeded, only his own bare hands got in the way. By the time I was dead Joe Fingers (don't ask) most probably shat himself out of fear, because it smelled so fucking bad.

And then some heavenly-looking faggot started spouting out bullshit in Latin and offered me the eternal happiness. Hello, it's 2010, dipshit! Ever heard of Richard Dawkins?

Life fucking sucks. Good thing I'm done with it.

Honestly, OP, I don't think you appreciate what you've let yourself in for. Anyway, here's mine:

Mme. Lascivola, prostrated under the sun, has brought her final audience in Los Machos. A misstep into a crack, the splitting of a heel, an arabesque, the desperate falling to the side through infinity. “Almost onto the tracks!” She’d screamed, though Little Júlio by then had taken relief in the ticket station. Scrabbling over the concrete, incapable of righting herself, she reaches for the accoutrements thrown from her bag indeed as part of her renouncement of life. She doesn't reach them. The crowd occludes her entirely from view. Men watch from the shade as she skins her knees and breaks her nails and looks dead-eyed everywhere for help. Children are folded into their parents. At the window of a stationary train, the passengers have gathered, a series of iPhones peeking over as her only vigil - the conductors, too, watching but never approaching. “You will leave my things!” She shouts at her audience, who are neither laughing nor appear in any way concerned. “You will leave my things!” And surely nobody dare touch them. In its descent the clasp of her purse had burst, and in the torpid breeze the notes are carried out and over the platform, along with receipts, flying in the vacuum of a departing train, catching under the heels of the men’s shoes, onto the tracks. She tries to pick herself off the ground. The cardigan hangs from her like meat, tissue paper now falling from her blouse and joining the receipts and money around her. They look for tears, but there is only shadow there, and desperate streaks of mascara.

>>5478861
>"Sniggered like a cunt,"
>"Hah! Faggot!"
>then some heavenly-looking faggot started spouting out bullshit in Latin and offered me the eternal happiness. Hello, it's 2010, dipshit! Ever heard of Richard Dawkins?
These bits make me feel like I'm on /v/ and I hate it. You're an adult, try not to show you're immaturity so blatantly through your writing. I can really see where you come from with these lines, and it takes me outta the story.

Loved the flow everywhere else and thought overall it was a pretty great piece of flash fiction though.

>There's actually some decent stuff here, lemme fix that.
Which am I?
The Man or the Machine?
The Artist or the Cog?
Am I that writer with a monochrome flat cap
Taking drags of words from my cigarettes,
Or the white-collared worker
pumping away at resume templates
Always looking for that better job?

Am I to create or am I to work?
Sleepless nights with mares of insecurity,
Or hollow days with dreams of greatness?

Tell me!
Which am I?
The Alive or the Just Barely?
The megabytes of unfinished text files,
growing in size like risky behemoths with every keystroke?
Or the constant shuffle back and forth, to and fro,
head too muffled by the rustle and bustle of that holy financial security?

Symbiosis be fucked, I know I want just the one,
but can’t subsist without the other.
I want to be that Man with reams of thoughts under his arm,
with written ideals and breakthroughs that others need to see.
But just as I fight against our current human condition,
It rears its head to lash back.
Wanting nothing more than to swallow me up,
And turn me too into the tragic characterizations that I so fear.
So I ask again now,
Walking on the shaky double path that threatens to crumble beneath my feet,
Making my bones tremble and causing this alien weight to slither up my gut:

Which am I?
The Man or the Machine?

>The Whip Cream Incident
>She collapsed down on the couch beside me and we continued our flirtations, which lamely involved my tickling her and her writhing around like a caffeine-high six-year-old. She is falling into the coffee table upsetting glasses and ashtrays, landing on the floor flopping like a fish, jumping onto me on the couch knees first.
>At one point, my arms tickle-tired, I reached into the refrigerator, which is within arm’s reach, and grabbed the pressurized can of whip cream I had recently purchased, jetting a short spray into my mouth. I turned around with a fake demon expression and stared her down, shaking the can above my head and howling. I began pointing it at her like a laser gun. She ducked and dodged. I began tickling her again, to open her up for an attack. Again she bucked like a mad horse, writhing maniacally, herking and jerking and giggling psychotically. As her movements finally slowed, I saw an opening. For some reason, I was determined to spray her in the face. I lunged with the whip cream weapon while she (seemingly not in control of her body) lunged toward it.
>With her face.

>>5478931
>Pressurized whip cream cans have an inch-long white plastic tip which is serrated, ensuring that the cream is semi-decoratively dispensed. It cuts like a knife.
>Through the feedback of the cold can in my hand, I could feel the hard, serrated plastic tip slice into the tip of the girl’s nose. I could feel it dig into her cartilage, stabbing and twisting. It all happened in a split second. Her head flew back, black hair whipping over her face, her hand flying in under the hair curtain to cover the wound. She screeched and fish-flopped off the couch and ran into the bathroom.
>“Oh dear,” I said, relaxing on the couch examining the blood and strips of nose-skin on the tip of the can. A little desensitized due to drink, I calmly assessed the situation: scar. Permanent scar. Permanent scar in the middle of the tip of her nose.
>She was an attractive girl. She had an unusual kind of darkish complexion and full lips—an alluring and mysterious look.
>Before.

>>5478935
>I jumped up and ran to find her, apologizing profusely. I knocked on the door and called in to her, using her name and confessing my stupidity and expressing patiently and thoroughly my deep deep regret for my utterly stupid actions.
>I pushed the door open. She did not look at me, only stared into the mirror, dabbing at the bloody cut in the center of her nose tip. The tissue she was using was spattered with blood. She turned to me with a sad look on her face and I noticed there were actually two cuts almost intersecting each other. The serrated edge had bent with the force and sliced her open at two angles. Her eyes were red with pain. Sorrow cracked in my voice as I repeated and repeated my most heartfelt apologies and regrets.
>She hated me.
>But she stayed.

>>5478942
>As you might imagine, the atmosphere was different now. She was morose, fidgety. She sat there on the couch, dabbing and dabbing, looking at the spots of blood on the tissue. She didn’t speak. I didn’t speak. Sitting down next to her, I managed a more detailed look at the effect of my surgery. The lacerations were already semi-scabbed. The cuts were more like stab wounds, deep, edged with jagged lips of severed, useless skin which would eventually have to be yanked off and discarded. On another area of the body, it would have been nothing, this wound, but placed so centrally, at the forward-most and central-most point on her face, it was a disastrous mark. I put an apologetic arm around her, to comfort her, the poor girl.
>Then she surprised me.

>>5478944
>She began to “purr,” so to speak, like a happy cat, nestling her head against my chest and placing her hand on my thigh. Really? I thought to myself. Not knowing what to do, I began stroking her arm, saying something like, “I hope you believe how sorry I am.”
>I looked down at her. Some blood was beginning to seep out of the top of the larger wound, her nose dangerously close to my white oxford shirt. I adjusted my body to create some distance from the blood as her hand began to caress my thigh.
>“I do believe you,” she said. “It’s not your fault…just an accident.” The back of her other hand dropped down and landed right on my fly. She was feeling for something? I removed her hand from my thigh and nudged the other hand away from my area. She looked up at me and all I could see was her nose, the skin all red and raw around the bloody cuts. It was like it had doubled in size. She looked into my eyes. I tried to look into her eyes but all I could see in them was accidental damage and everlasting scarring. She noticed.
>“Does it look bad?” she asked, searching in my eyes for the truth. Or the lie.
>“I’m really sorry,” I said, my voice cracking. “I fucked up. I really fucked up.”
>“No…it wasn’t your fault.”
>“I feel terrible.”

>>5478948
>She seemed to take my talking to her as encouragement and once again began to snuggle me and move her hands to the area of my region. Now I should say. I barely knew this girl; this was only the second time we had met, her first time at my place. She was very cute, and an hour earlier I was pretty excited about getting it on with her. But now—her nose in ruins, her eyes red, her bloody tissue, her sad reluctance to leave, her sad attempts to make me feel better after I literally scarred her for life—I was in no way interested in this girl. I wanted this girl to leave.
>But now I faced a dilemma. If she persists and I have to push her away, she is going to think it’s because of what happened—the nose – and if I am now not into her because of that, then I am guilty of some kind of unjust superficiality. In her mind I, as the culprit, have no right to reject her on the basis of something that I caused. Maybe she’s right, but it really doesn’t matter whether or not I have the ‘right’ to reject her as long as I have the inclination. >Inclination is enough.

>>5478950
>My other option is to try to forget about the nose and just go with it. Try to have some fun. As her other hand again falls into my area, I close my eyes and try to imagine she is someone else, and I know I need to be specific. I imagine her as a large-breasted Korean I had been with about a month ago, but that wasn’t going to work because I was pretty sure this girl had next to nothing beneath her stiff wonderbra. Throwing aside my normal process of teasing foreplay, I directly reach behind under her shirt and unhook her bra. “Hey!,” she says, smiling, smacking me on the chest.
>“What?” I snicker, now sliding her shirt off over her head.
>“What are you doing?” she says, breathily.
>“Whatever I want,” I say. I pull her bra off and fling it across the room, evoking from her another “Hey!” I reach over and feel the low mounds. Her large erect nipples are disproportionately large – a damning flaw in my code. She has turned her hand over and is vaguely rubbing my area outside of my pants and I am not getting hard. She can’t be the Korean, whose tits were gloriously large and round and taut, with perfectly small nipples. Again I close my eyes and search my drug-injured memory for replacement images, but all is at hang.

>>5478952
>I let her reach inside but I’m still limp laundry. “I don’t turn you on?” she says, sadly looking up. My eyes are still closed, praying to the gods of imagination. I feel a sharp slap across my face. My eyes open. She is standing up, screaming.
>“You’re a fucking bastard!”
>She reaches for the refrigerator, presumably to get the whip cream weapon and try to enact some kind of revenge, but I grab her by the arm.
>“Maybe you should leave,” I say. As I say this I begin to understand the psychological dynamics of her situation. Her face has become an object of horror at this point. I can’t even look at her. The accident has cast her ego into a state of limbo, which she can only escape from by seducing me. If I reject her, she will be devastated. But I am not horny enough for this. The best I can do, I reason, is jerk off on her, and that is only a maybe. Even so, I am doubtful if that act would satisfy the specific demands of her fractured psyche. I have both of her tiny writhing arms in my firm grip as tears again well in her eyes. I don’t know what to do, but I know I am hurting her. So I let go.
>Then she amazes me.

>>5478956
>She just stands there perfectly still. This writhing maniac suddenly has the poise of a pope. I allow her to open the refrigerator door. Suddenly I don’t care what she does. She takes out the whip cream and tells me to stand up.
>I do.
>She unbuckles my belt and slides my jeans and boxers down. I’m still soft ice-cream. I discreetly hold my hand out, shielding her nose from my view. I had never experienced the sensation of cold whip cream being dispensed onto my shaft before, and it began to twitch. Suddenly my imagination clicked on and the entire view before me changed. She was Janell, a tomboyish high school girlfriend I never slept with that has always lingered in my sex dreams. She kneels down, smiling, and takes the entirety of the whip cream and my stiffening limb into her mouth and sucks on it like a pacifier. And it’s Janell! “Holy shit,” I shout.

>>5478961
>I am rock hard and begin soft thrusting her mouth. Her hand comes up and starts full stroking my shaft as her mouth thrust-sucks the tip. It’s all over. I explode into her mouth roaring like a lion. She remains on her knees sucking me dry then abruptly stands up. I imagine the taste she is experiencing – sweet whipped cream mixed with weird cum. I’m panting like a hot, exhausted dog. I look down and see her nose. She’s not Janell. Gleaming with pleasure, she bounces up onto her toes and looks me square in the face and just as I realize what is going to happen she spatters me in the face with my own cum and whipcream. Cumcream. She is grabbing her bag, her shirt, her bra, and is running out the door, leaving it open behind her. I don’t move. I stand there, my warm cum streaming down my cheek and dripping from my chin thinking: that was okay.

“The next station is Green Park. Change here for the Picadilly and Jubilee lines.”
The tube slowed to a halt and the blank faces of those departing and those clambering on in their usual jostle merged in an indiscernible blur of motion. Despite the overflow of early commuters Ahmed was sat slouched in his seat taking up both armrests and his feet pushed lazily away from him so that the woman standing before him was forced to stand closer to another than her glance in his direction suggested she cared for. He didn’t care. Judging by her outfit, blouse, excessive make up and perfume – attire that suggested retail and not office – she would be getting off at the next station. Like the rest of them, just another body in the amorphous tentacle that would slither its way up the escalators and spill out of the doors to reconnect with its gargantuan mother. Briefly he wondered whether she shared her home with the crowd too. Seven to the bed. Elbow to crotch. An awkward speechless mass before the bathroom in the morning.

He moved to play with his beard watching his doppelgänger do the same in the opposite window. They shared shrunken eyes that were low-lidded and bloodshot. Below, between the back of the woman he had spurned and the paunch of a suited elderly man, the face of a girl swayed side to side in time with the train. He watched her play idly with her phone, flicking at the screen with a finger. She was pretty he decided, a poster girl from this angle despite a thickness in brow that defied western ideals of beauty. Delving his hand into the loose pocket of his joggers he retrieved his own phone and selected an application on his home screen that would allow him to use his camera without the signifying red light. He positioned the camera in her direction and vaguely pretended to be reading the fake message that had appeared before him. As he filmed he felt the familiar twinge in his loins and the sudden desire to sit up straight. The girl scratched absently at her neck revealing the smooth and supple skin of her chest. She glanced towards him as the pre-recorded announcement called the next stop, returning her phone to her handbag and preparing to stand up. He watched the station approach, still filming, rows of faces appearing like a wave of unfettered orange peel.

The girl rose and he found himself standing too. They filed off slowly, Ahmed positioning himself behind the girl and colliding shoulders with impatient commuters as he stepped into the musk of the station. She had turned right down the platform towards the Bakerloo line and he followed her. The crowds had thinned somewhat and he was able to walk behind her his view unimpeded, his camera focused on the backs of her legs and the tight skirt moulded around her firm buttocks. His heart was racing, as always. He didn’t know how long he would follow her, he never did.

Excerpt from Chapter One of my Australian post-apocalyptic novel, I wrote the first three chapters in a single night.

--------------


“Beep Beep”

Mike looked down at his faded G-Shock watch.

08:00
23/09/17
22deg

Argh!, he angrily thought as he slung the backpack over his shoulder. Slept in again! Coulda been killed by someone wandering, you know. Step up your game, or you’ll be stood the fuck down. You’re gettin’ lazy lately, you know that?

No I’m not!

Yeah you are mate. Don’t argue with me.

Fine, whatever.

Stop being so moody, dickhead.

I hate you at times, you know that?

I know.

At first, he thought that having a conversation with himself within his mind was very strange. But, as time went by, he found himself becoming more and more lost in thought, which resulted in having full blown arguments and conversations with another part of his personality that reared its head shortly after the toxin spread.

He reached down and unzipped the right pocket of his torn and tattered camouflage pants, pulling out the object that was best friend, and at times, saviour.

A weathered Glock-17 pistol.

This once belonged to an Australian Federal Police officer of the Bowen, North Queensland region. The officer had been unlucky enough to breathe in the toxin in the first day of the apocalypse, joining the countless millions of others in quick but oh-so-painful death. It had, however, been Mike’s luck to stumble across the body and see the weapon still holstered, with a full magazine of seventeen nine-millimetre rounds, two months after leaving the town of Airlie Beach and venturing north into Bowen, which was surprising, as survivors pillaged all that they could.

Since that day, Mike had only fired three rounds.

Mentally noting that he had fourteen rounds left, his thumb moved upwards, and clicked the safety catch to FIRE, and then, reversing the movement, clicked it back to SAFE. This was done out of pure instinct, which is a good instinct to have in these times, as not having a routine in place would lead to a wrong move, which could be the last move ever made.

He took one last look around the homely, but depressing hovel that had sheltered him that night, away from the dangers of the world, and forced a grim smile of appreciation. He momentarily wondered if they really were watching from above, wondered what they were thinking, and what they would say to him for using their mobile home for the night.

There’s nothin’ up there, moron, he reminded himself. It’s just you in this fuckin’ shithole. Deal with it, and get going. You’re already breaking your rules.

Well well, starting to take my side, eh?

Excerpt from Chapter One of my Australian post-apocalyptic novel, I wrote the first three chapters in a single night.

I have broken the thought pattern bits with greentexting, so I apologise in advance if this seems broken.

--------------


“Beep Beep”

Mike looked down at his faded G-Shock watch.

08:00
23/09/17
22deg

>Argh!,

he angrily thought as he slung the backpack over his shoulder.

>Slept in again! Coulda been killed by someone wandering, you know. Step up your game, or you’ll be stood the fuck down. You’re gettin’ lazy lately, you know that?

>No I’m not!

>Yeah you are mate. Don’t argue with me.

>Fine, whatever.

>Stop being so moody, dickhead.

>I hate you at times, you know that?

>I know.

At first, he thought that having a conversation with himself within his mind was very strange. But, as time went by, he found himself becoming more and more lost in thought, which resulted in having full blown arguments and conversations with another part of his personality that reared its head shortly after the toxin spread.

He reached down and unzipped the right pocket of his torn and tattered camouflage pants, pulling out the object that was best friend, and at times, saviour.

A weathered Glock-17 pistol.

This once belonged to an Australian Federal Police officer of the Bowen, North Queensland region. The officer had been unlucky enough to breathe in the toxin in the first day of the apocalypse, joining the countless millions of others in quick but oh-so-painful death. It had, however, been Mike’s luck to stumble across the body and see the weapon still holstered, with a full magazine of seventeen nine-millimetre rounds, two months after leaving the town of Airlie Beach and venturing north into Bowen, which was surprising, as survivors pillaged all that they could.

Since that day, Mike had only fired three rounds.

Mentally noting that he had fourteen rounds left, his thumb moved upwards, and clicked the safety catch to FIRE, and then, reversing the movement, clicked it back to SAFE. This was done out of pure instinct, which is a good instinct to have in these times, as not having a routine in place would lead to a wrong move, which could be the last move ever made.

He took one last look around the homely, but depressing hovel that had sheltered him that night, away from the dangers of the world, and forced a grim smile of appreciation. He momentarily wondered if they really were watching from above, wondered what they were thinking, and what they would say to him for using their mobile home for the night.

>There’s nothin’ up there, moron, he reminded himself. >It’s just you in this fuckin’ shithole. Deal with it, and get going. You’re already breaking your rules.

>Well well, starting to take my side, eh?

>>5474240
Damn you, OP.

>>5475831
I'm not sure if you intended this to be prose or poetry, but both are no strangers to the whole "Sunset and sadness" shtick. Other than that it's very cute, but in the truly warming sense rather than the vomit-inducing sense. I like it a lot.

>>5475861
Thank Christ it's a suicide note.

>>5477628
I didn't get where you were going with this at all, but neither were you, apparently. The prose isn't that great - parts of it are very awkward to read. For example, "I never heard of someone asking one of my contemporaries how they managed to get to the position that they were currently in." Could easily be redrafted as "Nobody asked my contemporaries how they'd come to initially fill their position." or something like that. The Boss' dialogue is heavily stunted - he's not a real person. If you want a word of advice, you can omit "that"'s in certain contexts to help the flow. It's gibberish for the most part as it stands (I mean, "He has conditioned himself to dismay against retaliation of his doings in the last effort to save his ego". Really?). It needs work.

>>5478776
>>5478781
The discovery of a dead girl is slowly becoming cliche. The "vacant eyes" are definitely cliche, as is "Seas of grief". Your prose is purple (I take it this is prose, yes? Not prose poetry?). It's not very good, and I don't feel like there's much story there.

>>5478855
It's, uh, genre-y. Parts are overwrought. "The stench of his breath intruded her nostrils without invitation" - "Intruded" implies it comes without invitation. There's hyperbole in places I don't think you intended it. That being said, I feel that there's a good story trying to break through here, it's just held behind rather laughable prose.

>>5478861
Eh, it's pretty funny. I don't personally have a problem with the juvenile segments - if those are your characters, those are your characters - I just think you could phrase this as more of a "fuck you" to the reader. Spice it up just that little bit more. It has the potential to be very good.

>>5478918
There's very little decent stuff here. No, you didn't help the situation. Your fourth stanza is your best. It's all very very abstract. Some people would tell you poetry is about creating images, which is something yours fails to do. Anything about the "human condition" is inherently cringe worthy. And if it's about an existential crisis when someone can't quite reconcile their job and dwindling future (a la Sisyphus) then it's a subject that's been done to death.

>>5478931
>>5478935
>>5478942
>>5478944
>>5478948
>>5478950
>>5478952
>>5478956
>>5478961
>>5478968
Well done. You must be very proud of yourself. Your writing is cliched smut. This kind of vulgarity was never funny. There's zero subtlety. Are you really fourteen? All you've done is waste your own time.

>>5478975
Zadie? Remove the tentacle analogy. It's not very good at all. "Spurned" isn't something we'd use in a contemporary setting. It's "Meh".

We rode across the Great Pan, leading dawn by about an hour. The air was cool and the horses well watered, and we hurried.

The hooves left craters an inch deep in the soil. Two weeks before, a storm in the mountains had rivered itself down throough the cuts and gulleys and arroyos to die here. The water had seeped into the pan and wicked up through the moist and pregnant soil the spectre of what lay beneath this place. All around us sage and mesquite and thistle stood dead and frozen and sere. Strangled at the root by that blasting ghost.
The raiding tribes and the cattle drivers avoid this place. The beasts are stunted and ragged and picket-ribbed as razorbacks. The soil is not good for men or weeds or coyotes. It sparkles in the dew when it falls, and it tastes of blood.

The great pan is the grave of an ocean.

Sometime way back, after the great winter headed up north to sleep in Greenland for awhile, and rolled it's ice blankets back into the scooped out river valleys that hang above Athabasca and Hudson and the Great Fish River, the loss of that weight and thre natural rise of the ground had suspended a gulf of water here, in this dry, dry place, and the ocean had died. It's corpse was a twisted vein of rocksalt eighty miles long and forty wide. Big as three counties. Its shroud was about fifteen feet of sand and silt and leaf-rot loam.
But the ocean is restless, and water wakes it.
It rains shallow and seldom here, and the soil is thick and gets renewed every spring by snowmelt, burying the ocean deeper every year. The water that runs from the springs in the high rocks is sweet and cold and tastes of the life of the high slopes. seeds blow in and tumbleweed slides out and birds fly and things grow in the pan sometimes for a dozen years. Even creosote and bramblebush and shallow rooted trees.

Then the floods rise in the hills, and then the snow melts too heavy, and the water flashes down the cuts and gulleys and spreads out across the pan, washing away the shallow layers of life, and then it finds cracks in the roof of the tomb.

Cold fresh water seeps down and wakes the ocean in its million year sleep, and the poisoned fingers of its ghost creep skyward. Then a morning like this comes, when the soil sparkles whith cubes of mild azure halite and the wind has a bitter and cracked flavor.

We rode through a blasted plain. leaves hung like tinsel on branch willow and white poplar and birch. Saplings as high as sixteen feet over our heads, all dead a week. the bugs had made holes in every leaf that was more than four feet above the ground, but they had had their turn too, and their husks blew in dense drifts around our horses feet. No birds sang. When we made camp that night in a circle of swamp rose the deadfall wood we burned had strange colors of lavender and violet and green at the roots of the flames. The ghost was hungry.

>>5478985
>Character is Australian
>I gotta establish this by dropping the word 'mate' within the first three clusters of dialogue
You have just become my fifteenth mortal enemy.

>>5478905
I like this one. Only thing that made me screw my nose up was 'hangs from her like meat' - it's weird and not particularly evocative.

>>5479400
+1, excellent descriptions.

>>5478961
The pacifier referent just killed me. The only good thing (in a funny sense) this thing has.

The white walls had definitely seen better days, spots and stains peppered across their surface. It was a very functional room, compact even. Most of the space was used by the furniture in it; two beds clad in faded sheets, a bureau covered in dust, an IKEA closet filled with unsorted garments, and an ancient wooden desk, with countless blotches from humidity and other accidents. The floor was in dire need of a sweeping, with a various assortment of crumbs, paper clippings, coins, dirt, and other unidentified bits laying in quantities that were probably beyond what is normally acceptable.

>>5475861

Don't kill yourself, you have to trust me on this.

An excerpt:

"Holy jiminy cricket, that was the dad-gone craziest thing I've ever seen a horse jockey do this side of the Mason-Dixon!"

"Why the hell are you talking like that Jerry."

"Well what in tarnation do you mean Robert. This here is how I always let my words fly out. Y'know, it reminds me of that one time ole Mary Lou was out in th..."

"No, seriously, stop. It's fucking annoying. You're an adult."

"Well I reckon you're..."

"Okay if you're not going to sit down and talk to me about how we're going to figure this thing out then I'm leaving."

"Well y'know Robbie..."

"Okay I'm leaving."

"Fine! Fine, I'll stop. I'm sorry, I just couldn't help myself. It's too funny."

"Okay fine, it's fine," with a moment's hesitation, "so how are we going to convince Hank to let us use his trailer for the week..."

"Trailer! Gee willikers, I haven't been in a trailer since..."

"Okay I'm leaving. You can deal with Hank yourself." And an instance later he sat watching his apartment door slam shut, feeling a pang of regret rise up from his disproportionate gut. Nothing a visit to the fridge for a mildly cold one couldn't mend, at least for the time between now and whenever the outside world demanded unwanted contact. Some spaces are best left unfilled.

>>5479377
>"Spurned" isn't something we'd use in a contemporary setting.
Fair point, thank you.

>It's "Meh".
Not sure what this means but okay, thanks for taking the time to read.

Few things are as prevalent in human nature as the fear of the dark. A deep and primal instinct to avoid the shadows is very much imprinted in our psyche, specially in our early years.

It's very common for this particular fear to be one, if not the first of the fears we learn to overcome. As we grow, we no longer run to a light when we turn another one off, we slowly, but almost surely stop needing a lamp to be on to sleep, and the fear fades away into nothingness as we reach maturity

That is the way it is supposed to be, isn’t it?

Not quite.

The fear never fades, it lingers, it wanes, it can even be suppressed, but it always remains there.

Once the lights are off, there is a split second of uncertainty where the mind needs to remind itself that being scared of the dark is "silly" and "immature", that the shadows dancing on the curtains are just from the trees outside, that the swirling forms in the darkest part of the room are just optical illusions as we acclimate to the shadows, that it is safe

But it doesn't feel safe

The light is gone, there is nothing to be seen, an aura of dread permeates the room, of something lurking just beyond reach. Tendrils flicker in the darkness, and the senses become uncannily acute. The faint sound of the air moving, and the floor being scratched by the lightest of steps. The tingling sensation on the skin, the inexplicable grazes and the breath that really isn’t there.

And everything fades once the light shines again.

And the mind kids itself into ignoring its instinctual reaction.

But the question remains, whether the shadows we see in the dark, these "figments of imagination" are kept there by disbelief.

But disbelief isn't absolute, so we see these images, these shapes, their insidious attempts for us to doubt, and in so becoming ever closer. To undermine the only barrier standing between us.

Many shadows walk in the image of the mind, and the question becomes, will they stay there?

He did a double-take and gave me a mechanical, insomniac smile. We hugged, and I struggled to find him under his oversized t-shirt
"Yo, man," he said, pulling out from the hug, "you look--"

"Good?"

"Dead."

I raised an eyebrow. "I had to wake up early to pick someone up at the airport, you know."

"Dead-dead, I mean. Haggard, like. Did Amsterdam do that or was it my sister?"

>>5479471

Have you read The Dragons of Eden?

>>5479499

I have not

The seedy back ally night club was full of a variety of people, from lost, hopeless misanthropes in the corner, to stoner junkies getting wasted at the bar. Smoke filled the air, clouding it with the thick haze of noxious tobacco fumes, and chatter from the crowded bar emanated over the soft rock music playing from a run down speaker system in the back. The dim orange filament light bulbs on the ceiling pierced the musky air with a soft haze that glowed around the room, lighting it with the subtle ambiance of a raging inferno, only to be accented by dozens of floating embers in front of the patrons mouths and hands. Underneath one of these lights in the corner booth sat a disgruntled man in a slate grey business suit, hair frazzled, tie undone, and top button loose. In front of him was a clipboard full of dozens of lined papers awaiting signatures, and an ashtray full of half a pack of Reds juxtaposed to three empty tumblers and a half empty glass of gin.

>>5479507
>>5479499

Should I?

Sequestered souls in an ocean of abundant activity reach for the gutters during times of a sort of passive persecution that really is wrought on in a mirror; and so time flies and people die deaths dealt in an absence of grief, leaving places with vacuous holes that are interminably filled with emptiness. The sidearms of police officers shine through the trousers of the proverbial "man" and the sole souls, unsyncopated, but rhyming, stick up and out through the cotton leaves of a tormented city of dreamless lives and the hopes of a new past or a future that becomes past due. And so abstractions collapse in on themselves and become the concrete structures that we impose so much importance upon, laying foundation to the mental edifices of undisturbed convalescence that only remains to be relapsed back into a cancerous pool of dregs that cannibalizes itself with the ravenous pursuit of a rabid hyena rung loose in a crowd of crippled rodents that only have until June to die. But what month is it now? How will the wrecking balls lie, and how will the last building collapse? Time and weather will be the only sayers of such evidential truths, truths not held to be self-evident, bullets not seen nor felt by the receiver but laid down into the souls of those who watch the atrocities ignored by their epicenters, the earthquakes of our tectonic spirits whose volatilities only beg to beget a sinister sense of false love that is imbued upon the lackluster veneers of our mirrored faces in rabbles that form to make nothing but crumbs of bread to be spread by old men in parks, old men too traumatized to speak of the bloodshed in their past, in the pasts of all nations. And so, the sun sets on an ungrateful city, and a brass bull sparkles with a flurry of spit particles flung by the beleaguered tongues of fatherless daughters and motherless sons, a troupe of siblings we've long abandoned since the dawn of a time we created in the green eyes set on an elemental set of letters too sacred to say with the lips, a sinful horde of crystallized imaginings, a desperate plea for impossible improvement, a ballad for the fall of New York.

>>5479460
Why ever not? The one person who ever cared for me is all but gone from my life. I shall never find another about whom I feel the same way.

I wish for death

>>5479507
>>5479539

Definitely. It's a relatively short and incredibly rewarding read that offers much more food for thought than the average book. I don't hold much bearing on accolades, but winning the Pulitzer is slightly different. Anyway, the reason I ask is because Carl Sagan mentions at some point in the book how our fear of the dark has been both a product and a mechanism of our evolutionary survival that harkens back to a time when our ancestors were much more tightly communed and dependent upon one another, a time when electricity was unimaginable. I just thought you might've received inspiration for it.

>>5479471
neat. last three lines make me think its going in the direction towards either real demons in the dark, like monsters under the bed type horror, or a psychological thriller talking about the shadows in our minds. Is that sort of the direction you are going in?

OP here. Sorry for the delay. I thought thread would be ded after hours without any replies yesterday.

>>5475831
I should read that

>>5475852
would read more

>>5475861
Pretty ok, would cry over dead body

>>5477628
If you're practicing how to write like a pretentious cunt, well done

>>5478776
>>5478781
>>5478784
fucking edit before you post
> capitalization and punctuation errors everywhere
have some self respect
Besides that, your prose is kind of flat. Concept might be interesting but I'm not hooked by the style.

>>5478855
A good start. Needs editing to lean it out further.
> Her chest had begun a reluctant increase in pumping, as if pulling away from its pharmaceutical shackles.
This is the kind of stuff that goes too far in purple territory. Cut it, rewrite it, simplify it. This is supposed to be a tense scene but it's broken up by these slow passages.

>>5478861
Good start. I'm not a big fan of the cocky narrator idea but it's technically good, great flow, consistent. Might be for someone, but not for me. Reminds me of that dwarf from Goodfellas.

>>5478905
Good stuff. You're going for a certain style and I think you pulled it off. Nothing much to say, except maybe
> Children are folded into their parents.
maybe a little more active, like "Children fold themselves into their parents"? Fits the flow better IMO.


more later.

>>5479548

You need to not kill yourself so you can prove that you're not a complete pussy, because right now you just seem like someone who is completely naive to the definition of perseverance, and what great wonders come from it. Just stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop savoring and brooding over regrets, because you can't do anything about their sources. The future is full of ample opportunity my friend. All it takes to seize it is a little determination and the will to put the energy in to get something incredible back. If it helps: there exists a flurry of people, not just one, who see you, you right now reading this, as their soul mate, the love of their life. You think that there isn't some sad, lonely girl out there that needs you? I can tell you right now that there is, and also that if you kill yourself, you're not only killing one person, you're probably killing two. So, stop being a selfish cunt and contribute something to yourself and the world. Anyway, do you think you're the only one that doesn't want to seek the comfort of death? I have a tiny penis and have contemplated suicide countless times. But I've realized, that's stupid. I, like you, am an asset to myself and this shitty planet. So just fucking enjoy it. If you can't after a year of actually trying, then yeah, you should just kill yourself. But it doesn't seem like you've actually tried. Yet, I think you care. If you didn't, you wouldnt have posted your shitty suicide not on an anonymous website for feedback. Deep down you care, fish for it. Man up. It feels too good to pity yourself, but if you do it too much you eventually invite life's greatest pains into your own. Fend them off. Do something faggot.

>>5478931
this is trite, meaningless smut; however, there is a market for everything. I recommend getting into the fanfic genre (>>>/mlp/), you'll be golden over there.

>>5479467

I liked it. Your word choice was nice but some clauses feel redundant, not in the run-on way but in sense that some of it is repetitious. Overall 6/10, meh-ly interesting plot and good flow. Only one I really read all the way through.

you should make ahmed a terrorist

>>5479457

I can't help but to think that you just said to yourself: right, gotta write something because there's promised feedback...now, what to write. I know! I'll just describe my room, with absolutely no intent on turning it into anything more than just a description, and see what kind of response I get.

>>5479548

This has to be a troll post, no one can place the entirety of their arbitrary worth as a human being upon the shoulder of another. Have you never read Stirner? For shame!

>>5479537

*alley

Anyway, it's nicely written I suppose. But, what's the point? You describe and don't really do much else. That's fine and all, but description is pointless if you don't give the reader a reason to think that it's important. Here, there is no reason to think that.

>>5479572

Hey OP, there are a few posts ITT that have yet to be critiqued. I would do it myself, but I can't because they're mine. Anyway, I would really appreciate the feedback homie.

>>5479636

No cigar, that description has been sitting on my hard drive for a while now.

>>5479647
Which one is yours?

Rant incoming:

Nothing awes me as much as people who turn, “I don’t care,” into a mantra. I understand not caring, there are plenty of things I’m ambivalent about, but NOooo, they feel the need, nay, the duty, to interject their infinitely useful comment into every conversation. Most people don’t have the gusto to do it in real life of course, but once the internet is involved? It comes pouring out, the truest form of self expression. “Hey, I heard you guys talking about the Curiosity rover, and I just wanted to let you know that I don’t care.” “The World Cup? Who cares about the World Cup, or just soccer in general?” “Oh, I noticed that you’re discussing about the club or community you’re part of that’s experiencing some major changes? I felt the need to mention that it doesn’t really matter.” CONGRATU-BLOODY-LATIONS! You deserve a prize for that highly insightful comment. Damn, just look at that nonchalant attitude. Thank you, kind sir, thank you for sharing how immeasurably cool you are with the rest of us. Here, have a jacket; it’ll warm you up.
No really, just look at all that superiority. Look and be awed. This-this is a shining example of the self-righteous, holier-than-thou, attitude we all need in our daily lives. But more than that, look at how ironically angry they are pretending to be, the sharp contrast that only serves to underscore their coolness. It’s not just, “who cares?” oh no, that would be far too prosaic. No, this embodiment of human superiority, this garden variety James Dean, would never use something so innately boring. It’s more like, “Oh My God, who the HELL cares?!” Not only are they stating their inner coolness, they’re simultaneously and indirectly berating those that stoop so low as to give a damn about something. Really though, passion? And worse yet, passion about things they aren’t passionate about? How… bourgeois. How low must you stoop to care about something that doesn’t directly affect your life?
Thank you, thank you to the ladies and gentlemen of the world, the watchful protectors, the unsilent guardians, who make it their duty to inform the ignorant folk that, “It Doesn’t Friggin’ Matter!” Blessed and thankful we all are for your highly insightful comments and contributions, for the unmatched gusto with which you accept your difficult task, and for educating us all about the importance of unimportance. You’re truly a wonder to us all.

>>5479648
You knew this thread was coming. Tell us more great oracle.

>>5479662
I also was going to have a cigar last night, but it dried out and I threw it into the street as I drove home from class and had no cigar afterwards. Thats 2/2, you're on a roll.

>>5474240
had to translate this, I don't think that's as good as it sounds in italian

You know, once I too was like you, sweet maiden. Once I bathed in the Meriam, when I couldn’t stand summer’s warmth upon my skin. My hairs created golden shapes in the fresh water. Now I love you, my sweet sweet maiden. I feel nothing but love in this very moment. Is it pity what I feel in your chest? What is that I am feeling while you caress my head? What are you feeling while watching the beast that I have become? What are you feeling now that I bite your pale flesh?
Your hand is still caressing me, not caring about the blood pouring out of your body. I’m feeling it inside my fangs, upon my tongue and in the end I feel it flowing down my throat. Is that what you taste like, my beloved?
Once I too was like you, my sweet maiden. Is that true, Mother?
I hear you behind me. I hear your indigo dress swishing under a silent wind. Your dark hairs touch me lightly.
I was once beautiful. Is that true, mother?
You still, my daughter.
I’m beautiful.
The moon pales in your majesty.
Isn’t she more beautiful than me? She’s not moving, she died in silence.
She’s but a star in the night, but you are the brightest one.
I lower my head, letting you go. I look at you another time, glimmer of all my love. The light is dim, it lightens your pale face. There is no fear in your eyes, only a feeling that I don’t remember. You could’ve showed me what you hid, instead you died in silence, my beloved.
My mother has gone away, in the darkness of our dwelling.
I keep eating. I’m loving you until the end, my sweet maiden. Until the last drop of blood.

>>5479649

Well, these two:

>>5479540
>>5479463

And I really appreciate it señor. You a good man.

>>5479667
>>5479648

Well okay then, let me put it in terms that you can understand. Your description is vacuous and boring. Nothing in it strikes me as interesting or relatable or promising. It also gives the impression that you've written it with absolutely no intent beyond describing some boring, stock room that anyone out of a billion could live in. But don't get me wrong, it's described relatively well. It's just dull. And I don't mean to be cruel, that's just how it seems.

>>5479696
Post it in italian, please.

>>5479726

Well, it was a description exercise, so no offense taken.

>>5479736
Is my english that bad?

Sai, una volta ero anch’io come te, dolce fanciulla. Un tempo bagnavo i piedi nel Meriam, quando non riuscivo a sopportare il calore dell’estate sul mio corpo. Anche i miei capelli, nell’acqua fresca, creavano delle forme dorate.
Ora ti amo, mia dolce fanciulla. In questo momento non provo che amore. Ed è pietà, quella che sento nel tuo petto? Cos’è, ciò che sento mentre accarezzi il mio capo? Cosa provi mentre guardi la bestia che sono diventata? Cosa hai sentito mentre mordevo la tua pallida carne?
La tua mano continua ad accarezzarmi, incurante del sangue che fuoriesce dal tuo corpo. Lo sento tra i miei denti, lo sento nella mia lingua e infine lo sento scorrere lungo la gola. È questo il tuo sapore, mia amata?
Un tempo ero anch’io come te, dolce fanciulla. Vero, madre?
Ti sento, dietro di me. Sento il tuo vestito indaco frusciare sotto un vento silenzioso. I tuoi lunghi capelli neri toccano la mia schiena.
Ero bellissima. Vero, madre?
Lo sei ancora, figlia mia.
Sono bellissima.
La luna impallidisce di fronte al tuo splendore.
Non è forse lei più bella di me? Non si dimena, nel silenzio si è spenta.
Ella è una misera stella nel cosmo, e tu la più brillante di tutte.
Abbasso il capo e ti lascio andare. Ti guardo un’ultima volta, barlume di tutto il mio amore. La luce è fioca, e illumina il tuo bel viso pallido. Negli occhi non c’è paura, ma un sentimento a me sconosciuto. Hai preferito il silenzio nella morte, pur di non mostrarmi cosa nascondevi, mia amata.
Mia madre è andata via, nell’oscurità della nostra dimora.
Continuo a mangiare. Ti amerò fino alla fine, mia dolce fanciulla. Fino all’ultima goccia di sangue.

>>5479637
Shame is a spook

>>5479576
This was my year. I wrote my note at the beginning of the year. Then I found a reason to live, and for the last six months I Was truly happy.

Now I have nothing again.

But thank you for your post. I guess I'll give it another year. At the very least I'll have more time to polish my suicide note.

>>5479736
Io sono un grande tavolo, per te.

I went to Italian for a week with my brother two years ago. How is it?

I like to read this in a black man's voice similar to Morgan Freeman's.

Today I see smiles
Smiles a mile wide
Wide as the sky's blissful blue embrace
In dappled shade flutter butterflies to chase
Through glad green groves
Where the tall trees tell
Of life at a different pace

all I got so far

>>5479789
No, I think the translation is just fine, but I liked it and wanted to see the original version, even if I only understand about three fourths of it.

>>5479647
I'm going through everything in the order it's posted. It might take a while, but I'll get to you.

>>5474240
Is Alliterative Verse fine to post?

if so:

Sleeping I Saw a Sharp Vision
Lulled to a Lush Land of Dream.
At a Bonnie Bubbling Brook I Stared.
Glinting and Gleaming like Gold it Flowed
The Windless Woodland it Weaved and Wended
Streaming Since the Start of Time
Mindless to Man's Movements it Rushed
a Palmer Passing Peace and War .
The River Roved Regardless of Kings
Striving Solely the Silver Sea

>>5479867
get to this *grabs crotch*

The crimson leaves went dancing down the avenues of air. Each rolling wave of northern wind sent greater showers falling from the blackened, gnarling branches that reached to the deep blue sky. Many leaves, however, still clung to their parents, so that a canopy of red like godly fire covered the dirt road on either side. Those fallen leaves, meanwhile, were trod thickly underfoot, building up a muddy, ruddy carpet over which the endless tramp of commerce had so often passed. The road wound through the fiery forest, a single sign of man's endeavors out amongst an endless wilderness. The road at length grew straight, and somewhat broader, where it collided with a massive oak whose branches blazed bright orange. It forked here, going left and going right.

“Any calls?”

“Amy Brine from Helmholtz. About the ink on the ports.”

“The problem?”

“She was complaining about it being too thick. She sounded rather annoyed, however, rather distracted, honestly.”

John sighed...

“Next time she calls tell her I'm taking the weekend off...”

“Anything from the distillery?”

“No. But a fax confirming payment finally came through. Should I forward it to the accountant?”

“Won't be necessary. I'm dropping by later this afternoon to talk to him about downgrading our equipment which reminds me, tell Steve to stop using the company's yacht for his stupid parties. That kid is costing me a fortune...” His tone dwindled then faded. “Too much like his mother.” He stood, stalling under his office door frame, reading the bank statement, but really contemplating fond memories... Then twice as quick, “Also, Steve called, he's holding a party for some special guests today. Would you like me to go ahead and put you on the line with him?”

John sighed once more and momentarily announced, “No...”. Eagerly trying to close the widening gap in his semantics created by feeling of powerlessness. Finally he quickened, “No calls!” and slammed the door behind him.


Be nice.

In the heart of the Darkness Visible, in the depths of the Fathomless Void, at the entrance to the Vasty Hall of Death, a chime sounds, but Death does not hear it. Death is Elsewhere.

Between a poolroom and an herbal teashop, Death stands before a screen door. It is one of two, opening like casements into a storefront named "Phil's Phine Smokeables" Painted in crude mirror of one another, one on each door, two genies rise from two lamps and brandish elegant cheroots with great elan. The smoke from the cheroots mingles in the air above them to spell out the name of the shop in a style that will one day grace dozens of progressive rock album covers. The genies themselves are big lipped, smiling black men, and the one on the left winks suggestively. It would never occur to any customer of Phil's establisment to take offense at such a thing as a simple cartoon, though. It is 1967. Black people, and white, have bigger things to worry about.

Death walked into the headshop on Morgan Street in San Francisco at four forty five P.M. on April 23d, 1967. The screen doors swung together behind him on long, rusted springs of pencil thickness. The air inside smelled of stale cigarette smoke, lemon disinfectant, incense and Aqua Velva. The scent of the sixties.

The proprietor was in the corner behind the long glass display case, it displayed pipes of all descriptions, as well as a few open boxes of cheap cigars as a limp attempt at verisimilitude. A spinner rack topped by a metal sign reading "Hey Kids! Comics!" help copies os Zap!, and an assortment of Captain Marvel and Daredevil and the like.

Philip Gerald looked up from his work, folding down the corner of the Krupps catalog, and gave his customer the critical pass over his rose tinted John Lennons. Nobody ever recognizes Death, of course. Phil though he looke familiar though: something about him rmeinded him of the needle park behind the bank building, and there was something about his cream jacket and tight black gloves that called to mind his uncle's funeral when he was nine.

The crisp moleskin tie and the tan loafers made him think about the old-folks home he had done janitor duty for on a work release from the halfway house. He could not have told you why these things came to mind though. The mans face reminded him of nothing.

forty years later, when a band called the Blind Lemmings released an album with a cover featuring the painting "The Racecourse" by Albert Pinkham Ryder he would think of this moment and feel an acytual chill. as though a great and heavy object, moving through a dark ocean at incredible speed, had narrowly missed his small craft and left him wallowing in the wake.

At the moment he simply addressesd his visitor as he did all strangers.

"Help you sir?"

"Yes, I hope so." Death ran his hand across the counter top. "I'm trying to find a deck of cards. A Tarot. A....friend of mine mentioned that you carry such things."

>>5479809
It's okay, even though you said you are a big table.

>>5480015
Sono un grande Orson Welles!

It's not the kind of island anybody would normally stop at: not really an island at all. just a long spit of sand half a mile outside the channel markers that had been colonized by a few mangroves and a few stands of lonesome salt pines and maples out in the low places where the rain collects and the winds can't reach. Nowhere there is out of the sound of surf.
I had stopped to check the motor of the little launch because it was buzzing and I thought it might be shaking something loose inside. There was a break in the brush about ten yards up from where it ran out into a shoal, and it lead to a swale where a stand of juniper and red maple stood in among the camphor weed and sea oat. Thats where I found her, or what was left of her.
Chained to a huge holly by steel gyres on both ankles. She had been left water in six plastic jugs, all empty, and one cut open to make a rain catching funnel. I wonder if it had ever been used. It rains a lot out here. She had cut it with a belt buckle, rubbed sharp on the chain. She had cut her wrists the same way. There were no food packages, no sign of even a sodden blanket or coat. Somebody had hated this woman a lot. When I found the messages she had scraped into the undersides of the big flat sheet of galvanized steel that must have been her only shelter, I found out who. And of course, about the money.

>>5478918
Uninteresting subject, not very imaginative, immature. On the plus side, it's pretty well written for a teenage angst poem. I imagine your prose wouldn't be terrible.

>>5478931
technically good, wouldn't read more

>>5478975
I already commented on this in another thread. Long, awkward sentences, unenjoyable. Might form an interesting story but needs massive editing.

>>5478985
> I wrote the first three chapters in a single night.
Implying you didn't edit it since then?
> Argh!, he angrily thought
Cause it sure looks like it.
Your prose is flat as a pancake. Doesn't activate the imagination. It doesn't have any style. It sounds like a first draft where you're just getting down what you want to say without paying attention to the way you say it. Omniscient third person narrator is dull; you leave no mystery. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.

>>5479400
Echoes of Steinbeck and McCarthy. Nice. Would be interested in reading more. Your paragraph division could be better; it's a little awkward right now. You don't need that many half-paragraphs or one-sentence paragraphs. I expect you start the story after this.

>>5479457
Not a very exciting description. What do you want me to say? You described a room like a dozen other shmoes would describe a room. Technically good, lacking in imagination.

>>5479463
It's okay. Too short to be remarkable. It doesn't stand on its own, there's little point to it. How would you work this conversation into a story?
You need to use more commas though.
> "Why the hell are you talking like that, Jerry."
> every time after "okay"
Also when you say instance you mean instant

>>5479471
spopypasta/10
needs editing to correct punctuation errors.
I'm certain there's a special place in hell for people who connect two independent clauses with a comma.
Might work as the introduction to a story, but needs work. There's no real use to all the white space.

>>5479482
It's good. If I said anything more this critique would be longer than your submission

>>5479537
I swear "description of seedy pubs" is a genre now. Anyway, it's decent, but like the other guy said, there's no hook. You've competently described a bar and a dude, what else is new?

>>5479540
I honestly cannot be bothered to work through the purple (though I realize the purple is the point). I can't critique this because I'd never want to write anything like this myself. I might appreciate it if you read it to me while I'm coming down from LSD.

>>5479652
I don't read rants

>>5479696
I like it. Simple, pretty, and a good - I don't want to say twist, more like a secret or a non-obvious layer. Would read more.

>>5479844
keep going

>>5479870
post whatever you want, but I'm not good at poetry so I can't critique it well (in as far as I can critique anything). Like here, I thought it's a pity that the last word break the alliteration. It'd feel more powerful and flowing if it kept. But I don't know if that's helpful at all, see.

In the depths of rallying guns and flaring drums, the need to escape, to live, comes at an end: unmourned and forgotten. A sea rises from beneath the shadows, and its waves crest not with foam, but despair, crashing with fury on a deserted shore. The gelid winds howl, hitting the sails of a ship long lost from this world, its bow rocking to a different pace than the ocean beneath it.

Angrily, Stefan stood up and brushed the earth off of his chinos.
"What the heck, mister? I thought we were pals!"
"We were never pals you little douchecanoe."
"But why, Anthony? What did I do?"
"You fucked up."
Anthony took a step toward Stefan and smacked him across the face. Hot tears began streaming down Stefan's cheek.
"Please stop! It won't happen again mister, I swear!"
"You should have thought about that before."
Stefan attempted to turn and run but found himself face to face with a brick wall. He tried anyway to go through the wall but only succeeded in hurting himself.
"Enough," said Anthony, "This ends now. Let this be a reminder for future endeavors to never release something so disgusting again." He then grabbed Stefan by his curly chesthair with one hand and used the other to force his black skinny jeans down from his waist, turned him around, and pushed him up against the wall. The screams could be heard for blocks.
"I'M IN YOUR AREA!" Anthony yelled, then leaning into Stefan's ear whispered "I gave you a strong seven"

And so goes the story of Anthony and Stefen and the loss of all known copies of Jenny Death.

>>5480185
I'm >>5479696 and I'm glad you liked it

I turned my brain inside out, crafting an artificial dynamo of vulgarity and rot. The mechanized weapons of mankind’s only true escape were sitting there, in my hands, engulfing them in flames the color of the night sky on a cloudy day. They felt like a million tiny daggers, each smaller than the last, digging into my flesh on a molecular level. It all exploded like a lifetime of ennui condensed into an instantaneous volition of pain and emotion. I lifted the needles up to my lips, spreading the eruption down my throat, into my stomach and my eyes. Bubbling sores rose up underneath my fingernails, scratching themselves with a razor edge and a bottle of red wine.

She’s a nice girl. They’re all nice girls. We’re all nice girls. Even the monsters at the ends of the world, it is said, are nice girls, though they do not know it.

>>5480331
Would read more. This is pretty much exactly to my aesthetic tastes.

Also gelid is a little out of pace with the rest of the passage, but it's too short to know for sure.

>>5480108
>swale
>stand
>mangroves
hnng dat diction

>Chained to a huge holly by steel gyres
I don't think gyres is right here

also I'm kind of intrigued, but the detachment from the dead lady kinda puts me off the narrator and there're some grammar errors and choppy sentences.

Mr L. was not an easily scared man. In fact, he was not scared even when he turned on the news and saw that the number of bats on the streets these days has multiplied by a lot. "Ha,ha, what's gonna happen, vampires?" He went to the bathroom and started washing his face and looked at the mirror. "Oooh, I'm so scared, vampires can't be seen in the mirror, is there one behind me right now, hahaha...". Then suddenly, a bat flew through the window and bit his hand. He screamed and open the medical cabinet to find something to clean the wound. He looked at the mirror, but this time, he was scared. But there was nothing in the mirror. He sighed with relief. It was just an empty bathroom. Wait, empty? He realized that he wasn't on the mirror, either. He became dizzy and thirsty. He opened the tap to drink some water but no matter how much he drank, he was still thirsty. He went down the stairs to his wife to end his thirst....

>>5480530
is this bait?

>>5479907
>downgrading our equipment which reminds me
maybe put a dash in here?


So your dialog flows incredibly well. There's only one beat I saw missing, which I mentioned. The stuff outside the dialog still needs work.

>>5480530
ten out of ten, a post-modern master piece

Someone tell me how to condense this/make it better/remove linking verbs

>When I was a young child, I thought adults knew everything. This is, perhaps, one of the biggest misconceptions I held as a child. I thought that I would surely know everything about the world when I turned eighteen, just like all the other adults I had known in my life. My mom seemed to know the answer to every question I asked her. And, being particularly inquisitive as a child, I tended to ask a lot of questions. It was my assumption that, upon becoming an adult, one suddenly knew everything about how the world works. I figured that paying bills, navigating city streets, going to work, and other such “adult-like” things would be second nature to me by then.
>I longed to be an adult. I longed to know the answer to every conceivable question, to be able to dissect life itself, to be able to open it up and examine its inner workings. I imagined constantly what my adult life would be like. It seemed so far away.
>I was largely unaware of how quickly I would be thrust into adult life, and I didn’t realize how soon it would come. One moment, I was a child - the next, a teenager, and finally, in the blink of an eye, I was an adult. For some, the transition might be a bit more natural. I’m not sure. But for me, it was abrupt.

Hey, some people read my shitty poem!
Very cool.
Here's some of my prose(which is just as shitty, don't get too excited.) if you're interested.

>>5480886
>>5480892
>>5480900
>>5480906
>>5480912

Be back in a bit to do a few more critiques

>>5474240
Where some might say the heat and humidity of a lunchtime in early September made my old school shirt cling to my back, I couldn't help but feel it was desperate to do so. Happy to be out of the dismal drawer for another day, but fully aware that the golden age of constant and consistent use was long gone, and that soon it could expect to be banished indefinitely to the gloom once more. Where some might have said the sweat of a 21-year-old man had made the collar damp and the sleeves crumpled, I couldn't help but liken the moisture to tears, oozing not from pore and gland, but from seam and hem. The collar had grown steadily tighter over the years, and to some this sensation would seem perfectly self-explanatory given my age and the shirt's lifespan, with frequent washings and poor treatment. Still, I couldn't help but feel a subtle twinge of relief when the top button was pulled open and the strain against my throat released. I wouldn't blame it for trying to level the playing field, for trying to reduce us both to mere things, and in doing so to bind us together for a little while longer.

>>5480185
>You've competently described a bar and a dude, what else is new?
Thats the point of the post, obviously. Im not publishing a full story right now, goddammit. If I want to have your eyes read the rest, I would.

You're very passive aggressive with alot of youre reviews, other times your just a cunt.

>>5481671

Dude, you posted your writing and received criticism. Don't be a pissy bitch when you don't get the feedback that you expected. And don't post such a boring, pointless excerpt if you don't want people to call it boring and pointless.

"No--no, absolutely not." I said, grimacing at the news.
Isabel sat across the dining table and stared at me with moist eyes, her hands wrestling one another in distress. "Our daughter just wants your approval. That's all."
I kept carving into my plate of vat-grown chicken breast, then stabbed and dabbed a ragged strip into the gravy bowl, occasionally glancing at my wife's dumb, sad face as I chewed.
"Well I'm not gonna give it to her." I blurted.
Isa stiffened. "Babe, this is the love of her life!"
I couldn't help but snicker. "She's twenty."
"We were the same age when we met."
"We broke up several times and I slept with your sister."
"But now here we are--with kids and this apartment and family portraits!" Isa said, gesturing to a wall of framed photographs.
I wiped the corner of my mouth before immediately smearing sauce over my lips with the next bite. "And I still regret it sometimes."
Isa whined childishly, then snatched up a napkin and pawed at my face. "You shouldn't even be eating. They'll be here any minute."
"That's precisely why I'm eating. So I can go hide."
"I want you to meet him."
"That's nice."
"He's a nice boy." she said.
"Exactly; he's a boy. Your dad still hates my guts. No man wants to know some guy is fucking his daughter. I wept when Diana was born, out of grief for this moment."
"Well I'm ecstatic. I'm glad she's finally steady with someone nice. Not like the others at all."
I gaped. "Others?"
Before I could push the question, there was a knock at the door which Isa took as an opportunity to slink away. "They're here!" she whispered loudly, escaping into the living room.
I straightened in my chair, preparing myself for the onslaught that was about to rush down my hall. Some messy idiot, no doubt. A foe I'd have no power to eliminate.
Just then, Isabel came prancing into the room, flanked by Diana and what I could only describe as a grey-blue cat crossed with an eel. It was about four feet high with a long serpentine body and six legs, its thick tail topped with flukes like a whale. I stared at it for a long while even as Isa began dispensing introductions--staring into those huge orange eyes as if they were a fire into which I was being tossed.
"It's a worm." I said, my voice hollow.
The alien only stuck out one of its top legs in greeting and displayed what must have been its best attempt at a human smile. "Sir, it's such a pleasure to finally meet." said a small ceramic sphere floating beside the fishy creature. "Diana's told me so much about you."
I gingerly grasped its extended hand and pumped it. The flesh was warm, but slightly sticky. 'Yeah, likewise... um?"
"Vlesckr." Isabel chimed in, irritated that I had ignored her a moment ago.
"Awesome," I said, rising. "I'll be right back. You two get comfortable and mama will set up dinner for us, won't you, kitten?"
I strode off into the hall before Isabel could protest and continued to the master bedroom, where I retrieved my gun and loaded it.

OP here. I've got a busy day ahead, won't be able to read until tonight. Not to end a post without a review:

>>5480331
> +
Solid style. You've got some aesthetic sense. No fat.
> -
Passages like "unmourned and forgotten" feel cliché, a bit look mom I wrote my first story.
I'd avoid using words like gelid. I don't want to resort to a dictionary while reading.
> and its waves crest not with foam, but despair,
I'm not sure crest counts as an active verb? Consider changing it to "its waves are crest". I might be wrong.
> overall
Keep writing, would be interested in seeing more.

i gotta message for you


i'm weak like a child and so infantile
when you're near
you know you're stuck with me in the short term at least
i hate when you talk like this please dont
theres no reason you should stay.
please, you know i love you
i'm going to bring you down and you know it but you think there's a chance you can change me so you stay
no, i just want you to stop drinking, not change, please
were both playing at passion games that neither of us feel. like infant children.
no, i feel it for you when you aren't drinking. don't you feel it for me?
he says nothing. he grunts a distant affirmative and sighs, collapses back onto the bed.
tomorrow will be different, she whispers in his ear.
he turns on to her and kisses suddenly. she is surprised for a moment and then the weight gives from under her arms, and she collapses back onto her spine, and the tear choked sobs turn into breathless sighs
naw i hate this were both playing at passion games that neither of us feel

'You know you're stuck with me. In the short term at least'
'I hate when you talk like this. Please don't..'
'There's no reason you should stay here'.
'Please, you know I love you.'
'I'm going to drag you down and you know it but you think you can change me, so you stay'.
'I don't want to change you, I just want you to stop drinking, please..'
'We are both pretending to hold passion that neither of us feel, like infant children.'
'No, I feel it for you when you aren't drinking. Don't you feel it for me?'
He says nothing. Eventually a distant affirmative grunt is issued. He sighs and collapses back onto the bed.
'Tomorrow will be different', she whispers in his ear.

He turns to her and kisses her suddenly. For the merest moment her eyes flare with surprise and then the lashes sink back together, and the weight gives under her arms, and she collapses back onto her spine, and the tear-choked sobs turn to breathless sighs.

accidentally posted other stuff with that before:


'You know you're stuck with me. In the short term at least'
'I hate when you talk like this. Please don't..'
'There's no reason you should stay here'.
'Please, you know I love you.'
'I'm going to drag you down and you know it but you think you can change me, so you stay'.
'I don't want to change you, I just want you to stop drinking, please..'
'We are both pretending to hold passion that neither of us feel, like infant children.'
'No, I feel it for you when you aren't drinking. Don't you feel it for me?'
He says nothing. Eventually a distant affirmative grunt is issued. He sighs and collapses back onto the bed.
'Tomorrow will be different', she whispers in his ear.

He turns to her and kisses her suddenly. For the merest moment her eyes flare with surprise and then the lashes sink back together, and the weight gives under her arms, and she collapses back onto her spine, and the tear-choked sobs turn to breathless sighs.

bump

I never realised what a massive faggot I was until the encounter with the whore. She had boobs and pretty eyes. Isn't that all I ever really wanted ? No, not really. I am just like everyone else but think I'm different. The body was tested as a youth and failed,really. But you could say that for every level. There will always be someone smarter or stronger or cuter or just generally a better human being than you. Then you ask, who will ever know ?
She asked did I like women and did I have sex with my last girlfriend. I did but always thought of someone else during. How weird is that ? Or was I on medication. I started hyperventilating and couldn't stop. Getting advice from a prostitute, "you should relax and find a gf" , be yourself. I felt like shit and she couldn't wait for me to get out. Well I guess that's it, there isn't any more to say on that. Well, of course, there is more. I just cant bring myself to say it. Perhaps crying with a whore is just a passage rite, something that needs to happen. These are the ramblings of the distorted mind.

http://pastebin.com/wtz5EFzE

I did my last review out of order, oops.

>>5479874
Good stuff, good imagery, but I don't know where it's going. If it's supposed to be an actual description in a story, stop right now, because I'd never want to read a whole story written like this. Don't let that discourage you because I like it.

>>5479907
> She sounded rather annoyed, however, rather distracted, honestly.
> But a fax confirming payment finally came through.
This is not good dialogue. The only people I imagine actually talking like this are Sherlock Holmes era british caricatures with bowler hats and handlebar mustaches.
> He stood, stalling under his office door frame, reading the bank statement, but really contemplating fond memories... Then twice as quick, “Also, Steve called, he's holding a party for some special guests today. Would you like me to go ahead and put you on the line with him?”
This makes it sound like John's talking. Also "twice as quick" is not a good phrase. Twice as fast is better, but IMHO it's better to leave it out alltogether. The scene doesn't gain anything by her saying these things quickly.
> John sighed once more and momentarily announced, “No...”. Eagerly trying to close the widening gap in his semantics created by feeling of powerlessness. Finally he quickened, “No calls!” and slammed the door behind him.
Announce and quicken are used wrongly, the second sentence has no subject (and is incomprehensible), and you're better off just writing 'he said no' than 'he said, "No..."'. Come on I know you're better than this

>>5479924
The typos in the second half of this make me think it's a first draft, and if so it's quite impressive. Edit it for typos and fluidity and you've got a winner.
> It would never occur to any customer of Phil's establisment to take offense at such a thing as a simple cartoon, though. It is 1967. Black people, and white, have bigger things to worry about.
No point to this passage unless the rest of the story is about racial tension in the sixties. I'd say scrap it.
> The proprietor was in the corner behind the long glass display case, it displayed pipes of all descriptions, as well as a few open boxes of cheap cigars as a limp attempt at verisimilitude.
linking sentences with a comma is a sin
> as though a great and heavy object, moving through a dark ocean at incredible speed, had narrowly missed his small craft and left him wallowing in the wake.
Maybe a bit lengthy for what you're trying to express?

>>5480108
Good stuff, marred by awkward sentences.
> Nowhere there is out of the sound of surf.
> it might be shaking something loose inside.
> Chained to a huge holly by steel gyres on both ankles. - no subject
> I found out who. And of course, about the money. >> And of course, I found out about the money.
On the plus side there's a hook, and I'd like to find out what happened.

>>5480412
You're not taking this seriously are you.

>>5480463
I like it. Very effective imagery. Would read more.

>>5483945
>but I don't know where it's going.

It's meant to be the very first paragraph of a short story, to really drive home that it's set in autumn. The rest of the story isn't as flowery. I just started writing it, and I really wanted to dwell on the autumn landscape of Eastern Europe, where the story takes place.

bump

I'd like some advice on structure, especially paragraphs. It feels stiff to me, and I don't know how to loosen it up.


More often now, these images came to his mind, intrusive.
His brother’s face, crumpling up in anguish over the news of a divorce. His brother had only been ten, and his lower lip had stuck out like a baby’s as the wail rose out of his very being, a cord of black and blue hopelessness slowly ripped out of him by circumstances beyond his control.
A pain great enough to make his father, a grown man with a deep voice, shriek like a little girl. He thought he’d die, and they never figured out the cause of that pain, just something in his blood or in his brain.
The time he had punched his own mother in the face. The noise she’d made, a bark, had broken his heart even as he spit in rage.
His father again, looking down in loneliness. A thousand miles away from his children, alone to cope with the death of a son, the death of the only good son.
His sister’s frequent panic attacks, shaky and red. The poor girl didn’t understand anything about herself, so she turned to drugs to force herself under control. “I only use it about three times a month! It helps calm me down when I feel sad or start to panic.” She sounded just like her drug-addicted best friend, just like her, the fucking bitch. He had begged and haggled with her to stop, but she wouldn’t. In the end, it made sense. What kind of leverage would he have had? He’d been an alcoholic by the time he was 18. He still was. Why should she respect the wishes of her pathetic scum older brother, the one who made the bad choices, the one everyone seemed to love more, to his dismay, despite his drug and alcohol use, and despite the times he’d stolen from his own family, oh it had been many times, and they didn’t even know about all of them.
The death of his brother came to him often.
“Help, help!” he had managed to choke out, his friends having too much fun to hear or care, “My shoes are too heavy, help!” He went under, pulled by the murky water, agent of some demon whose name might be Jack, one he had dreamed about, or maybe it wasn’t a demon and it was actually god (does it even matter?) that had pulled his brother into that flooded, inhumane canal. He could imagine his brother’s fear, his pain both emotional and bodily, and he couldn’t shake the image out of his head of his little brother, only 14, a kid, suspended in that water.

English isn't my first language so maybe parts of this might not make much sense or might be iffy but I'd like to know what anons think about it.


The lone droplet fell from the clouds above,
slicing the border between Earth and Sky.
Not for a purpose but a lack thereof,
separated from a dark plume up high.

Its sudden plunge backdropped by darkness,
illuminated by distant stars.
Its dimensions dwarfed by the vastness
of the black canvas it dared to scar.

Pieces of it separated;
the rapid descent took its toll.
Then the pieces dissipated
leaving their host no longer whole.

It crashed among sand and dirt
where it's now for Earth to keep.
And although lonely its birth,
sad its end, Sky did not weep.