A dead man came to town today to find a place to lie. We told him that our graves were full of those much too young to die. We offered him a place to sit, to wait his time in shade, but his bones never stopped their pace, unable to take aid The breeze carried his arid words from his uneven stride: he would seek a way underground to find sleep long denied. A dead man passed through town today, he found no place to stay. A dead man passed through town today, but he did not pass away.
Repetition
Amelia awoke to the sound of rain on the tin roof.
The sound was so quiet at first that she wasn’t sure why she had woken up at all. As she lay in bed with her eyes stubbornly clenched shut, she found herself tapping a foot, as though she were impatiently waiting for her sleep to resume.
She regretted renting the attic room in this house, cheap as it was, as she had not slept well since she moved in. She found herself tired all through the day. Not just sleepy, but physically as though she had run marathons in her sleep. She found herself twitching at work and irritated. She’d been reprimanded for rapping her fingers impatiently during meetings.
It was worse when it rained, something that was increasingly regular. Every storm was amplified horribly and she found herself waking constantly to hear heavy raindrops falling what sounded like centimetres above her head.
At least, she reminded herself as she pushed her face into the pillow, her position at the top of the house meant that she couldn’t hear the inhabitants of the lower floors. No one seemed to board in the middle floor, the owners lived on the ground floor due to, she supposed, their frailty. Their faces didn’t look terribly old, but they wore thick, baggy clothes like they felt the cold acutely and they moved so slowly, hunched and stumbling around the house when she actually saw them.
Amelia rolled onto her back, expecting that she would need to wait out this period of restless energy. She tried to recall if she had been dreaming, as the feeling of stress in the pit of her stomach had not left her. Normally waking in her bed was a relief after a nightmare, but she couldn’t remember any nightmares.
Amelia straightened herself, folding her hands above the blanket over her stomach to emulate the perfect posture for sleep. Staring at the ceiling, she found her fingers tapping insistently without her conscious decision. They rapped at the back of her other hand, one after the other. One, two, three, four, pause… one, two, three, four.
Appearance
There is smoke in the air.
I smell it as I wake, wondering blearily what it could mean.
I stumble to the window, expecting to see a neighbour’s house burning.
Ever since the sickness began, we have been at war with each other. Paranoia ran through town faster than the virus and soon it was every household for themselves. Every person for themselves, I reminded myself as I tried to forget Mr Philips down the road burning a pile of his wife’s clothing, covering something that smelled like roasting meat when it finally caught fire. He had waved when he saw me staring through my window. I waved back, both of us seemingly terrified of seeming abnormal in this time.
Apart from the obvious physical conditions, the virus’ main effect is to dull response. A victim will be delayed in feeling pain, temperature, taste, even guilt. There is no cure, if they would even care for one.
Opening the curtain, I can see what looks like the entire town in my yard. They are holding torches and I do not see any mercy in their eyes.
Three Sentence Stories (Part 6)
When my maternal grandmother died, she willed me her house on the strict condition that I not unlock the basement for the first month. This was easy, as I was out of the country for weeks immediately after the funeral. When I finally entered the house and opened the basement, I was horrified to find that my father had not run away years ago.
It took all night, but I have finally boarded up every window and door. There’s no way that the creatures can get to me now. I just hope that they don’t wake up before the fire consumes their house.
The voice over the speaker tells us that out of the ten of us, only one person will get to leave alive with one million dollars.
Looking around, I see that others are confused as one-by-one they realise there are eleven of us here. I can’t believe they forgot to change the announcement after all the money I paid to get into this.
The Arrangement
Timothy Collins was not the rarest person to see in the hardware store. What was odd, the cashier thought, was the sudden regularity of his visits. He seemed to be wearing out his tools at an incredible rate.
As the town’s gravedigger, Mr Collins was expected to be ready to dig graves at fairly short notice. But, as the newspaper had joyfully proclaimed yesterday, the small town of Orwey had seen no deaths in just over a year.
So it was very odd for Mr Collins to be regularly replacing his tools. The cashier asked if someone had passed away. The reply was said with soft surprise, as though it was such an obvious answer that he had to think of how to phrase it.
“No, not yet”
The cashier assumed someone must have taken ill and decided not to press further. Mr Collins looked tired, but certainly seemed to be in good spirits. He did not, however, take his receipt.
The butcher was the first to see Timothy Collins digging in the park.
One Sentence Stories (Part 2)
I know that there wasn’t enough air in the base for everyone to survive until the resupply craft arrived, but that doesn’t help as I stare at the floating corpses through the window, still screaming and reaching for me.
I can still feel my missing hand from time to time and for the most part I try to ignore it, but when I feel a cold hand in mine, I let it lead me away from the train tracks.
Stumbling into the bathroom after unlocking bedroom door, he realised with horror that the door only locked from the inside and he lived alone.
A Perfect Portrait (Part 2)
Alex had never considered himself someone who loved their job.
He liked it well enough on average, but that day he felt strangely energised. The walk there had lifted his mood with every step and he almost forgot to take his breaks, given how much energy he had. While sitting outside for his enforced break he wasn’t even bothered that he didn’t have the money for lunch. Sitting in the dappled sunshine was enough.
This mood followed him all the way through the day, towards his building, up the stairs and all the way to the door. The moment he stepped through the threshold, he found his face dropping its smile and he only walked far enough forward that most of him would land on the bed.
He wanted to sleep more than anything, but his phone buzzed in his pocket and he had the energy to check that, at least. It was a message from an old friend asking when his new place would be ready to host a games night. Looking around his living meagre space, Alex reasoned it might never fit particularly since apart from the chair he couldn’t exactly move the furniture around. He was in the middle of replying when he realised that something was wrong.
A Perfect Portrait (Part 1)
It was only when Alex finished unpacking his few possessions that he noticed the painting.
His room was relatively plain. The walls were painted cream and the hardwood floors were thoroughly scuffed. It had a bed, a desk, a bedside table with drawers and a wardrobe. He remembered those from his hurried inspection of the room a week ago, but he did not remember the painting.
The wooden frame appeared was the same colour as the rest of the furniture in the room and it sat so flush against the wall when he inspected it that Alex concluded it was glued in place.
What was particularly odd was the subject matter. It was a painting of a plain room with a chair off to one side. The room pictured had green carpet and a faded wallpaper design made of yellow flowers and white stripes and grey stripes. For a prominent painting, it was incredibly boring, except for how real it looked. As the sun set through the window, he could swear he saw the shadow of the chair shifting to match the time. It was only when he found himself leaning closer, straining to see the painting that he realised his room had grown dark without him noticing. He quickly put the light on and shook his head, wondering how he could let time get away from him like that. He sat back on his new bed, which felt much sturdier than his last. Like all the furniture included in the room, it was built into the wall. He suspected that might be why the painting was stuck to the wall – maybe the landlord had a problem with theft?
Cross Boss
I painted a watercolour in about half an hour, combining this guy and Animal Crossing.
I have no explanation other than that it felt right.
Good night.
One Sentence Stories
I pick up my beloved childhood ragdoll from the attic floor and as I embrace her I am horrified to feel bones moving under the fabric.
The noise-cancelling earphones helped, but he could could always hear the scream of the pedestrian he’d hit a year ago.
She opened the lovingly wrapped gift box to find that it contained every item she’d lost during her lifetime; earrings, keys, and more worryingly her baby teeth.
Sketched Text 