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i think we've got it bad.the long dirty road has wheels printed into it and buildings jutting from its sides, cars stopping completely, submissive to all the too-bright light. it's freezing but i feel okay, i feel whole. i feel like i could step outside of myself and the numbness of it all wouldn't let anything touch me. the essence of me. the idea of me.

you wait for me under the street signs with your heeled shoes and too much black smeared around your eyes. it makes you look sad but maybe you want to look sad i don't really know. your hugs feel like a mother's. we're going to a party, some great musician's with golden toilets in his loft that likes prostituted gi

The Finest Casket (Complete Story)The chandlers, grocers, butchers, clothiers, and every other merchant in Chantsville was yelling in the streets outside the shop where I was studiously working. Their ruckus combined with the bleats and squawks of livestock wandering underfoot, creating a bustling racket that would drive the unfamiliar ear to distraction.

I was used to the noise, however, and I was so engrossed in my work that I would have sworn the world was silent save for the sound of my chisel biting into the oak box before me. Delicate curls fell from my worktable, collecting in small drifts upon the dirt floor.

I stopped to wipe sweat from my face. The pause gave me a

The Price of Dying“I want to be interred after I die,” Mr. Peters said. He made that clear to his family while he was still lucid, before old age and illness rendered him unintelligible. Seventy wasn’t that old, but he recognized the symptoms that were creeping up on his ailing body – the aches, the fatigue, the feeling of helplessness and despair. Despite his daughter’s attempts to assuage his concerns, he sensed his own mortality.
The worst part about dying, Mr. Peters thought, was what happened afterwards. Even since he was a small boy, he had been afraid of fire. He could never forget the scorching heat of the orange flames searing his skin, the dark billowing smoke entering his nostrils. The time that his house burned down, the fire almost took him with it. How ironic then, to escape the fire only to be fed into it after death.
So one day, he sat his son and daughter down after dinner. “I want to be buried whole,” he said, emphasizing the

chromaWe were merely children when the stars came.

They rained down from the sky in a burst of light, like shards of glass pouring down from the heavens. Supernovas blooming in the night sky, petals raining down onto the barren earth - angels, falling with their wings sheathed, glowing, as they glided down. We watched, starstruck, as the glow overtook us - we were mesmerized. We waited with bated breath as the meteors landed, the celestial light subsiding as dark forms started to pick themselves up from the dust.

They moved towards us with an otherworldly grace, their steps leaving no marks on the earth as they descended upon us. Frozen to our sp

The Best is Yet to Comeif we grow old
there will be a sigh
an attention to the change
as your muscles slacken underneath
your faded, favorite shirt
the one that's threadbare, "holy"
in a sense less than divine
I'll have washed it for
the thousandth time
our eyes will crinkle, wrinkle
in ways that start to match
and we'll hold hands and ask:
when did the nerves and veins
begin to let our hands get cold?
-if we grow old

A Night at Pinetop's TavernSomewhere in the back alleys of the city's older section there was a crumbling brick building that had been around since before ragtime music was popular. Hanging above a faded green door that led down to the building's cellar was a wooden sign, and despite the peeling paint, you could still make out the bar's name: Pinetop's Tavern. Nobody really knew when Pinetop's first opened; local folks would tell you it had been there since time began, and the world had grown up around it. It was one of those places where the lighting was always dim and the cigarette smoke never dissipated and the cloud you were breathing now had probably been around

The Solipsist's LotThere's something about yourself that you don't know. You probably don't remember the circumstances very well, but I do. If you enjoy things the way they are, if you revel in even the smallest speck of ignorance, you need not read ahead. I won't force you. But from what I know of you, you don't like secrets. Especially not when they are about you.

You see, when you were born, so at once was everyone else. Your mother, she sprang into existence, just like that, the instant your tiny infant brain achieved the smallest semblance of self-awareness. Woven out of the ethe

the Chandler's Around the WayThe hose slipped out again. Chan cursed, and shoved it back into the incision he'd made, adjusted his mask, and bent over the pump. He yanked the cord, and the pump started to life with a cough of biodiesel. It bounced on the sand as it grumbled away. Chan kept one hand on it and held the hose in place with the other.
If fucking Fathers would spend the bone on a new one, I wouldn't be all night at this, Chan grumbled. He ached for a smoke, but didn't have the hands to spare. Plenty of hands here, he thought as he glanced at the riverbank. Some of them even had a pulse.
"Hey," he said to whoever was closest.
It was a sunbather. A walker who drew enough bone to slot time on the beach without having to fight for it. She had each arm draped around a man, both of them tattooed in the same place with the same sigil. Chan was jealous. Someday he'd have his own numbers, but they'd be women. All of them. He was old-fashioned like that.
The walker answered without raising her sungl

relearning i. stardust scatters with the
direction of my pupils –
maybe secretly i am an
astrology teacher, waiting
for a sign to wink
happily at me.

ii. excuse the rambling
nature of forgotten question
marks, but tell me:
would you like to be the
object of handwritten clichés
would you like to whisper
secrets in my palm
and would you
like to be the possibility

iii. air brushes against my
skin like the torn petals
of a flower still standing.
[ hold your head up high, honey,
and tell tomorrow to wait just
a while,

iv. so you can figure out
the difference between
patience and having all the

The SculptorBefore he would have harvested a tree,
hacked off its limbs,
skinned it,
torn it from the earth,
shaved one by one its cells - its outer core,
until it was what he believed it was,

no more a tree.

Wiser, he walks deep in to the wood,
underneath a forest giant he stops,
looks up in to the leafy branches, sighs,
climbs and sheds his tears upon its boughs.

This Common BloodI am young when I first hear the word 'adoption'. I am so very young, perhaps three, maybe four. I accept it easily when my mother sits me down and explains that I did not grow beneath her heart, but rather in it. I nod my head, smile big, and ask when I'm getting a little sister. My mother kisses me on the forehead and puts her hand on my head as she stands up. "If you wish on a star, Sarah, maybe she will be here very soon." I practice my wishing until night's companions wink merrily in the sky.

Dear Anna,
I turned seventeen just recently. I thought of you when I woke up, and I wondered if you were thinking of me. I like to think that you

Queen of GeeksUnexpected end to kidnapping case
[Sunnyvale Tribune 23 Feb 2007]

In an unexpected development, police have closed the case against the kidnapper of twenty year old Nicole Cantrip. 'The circumstances surrounding Miss Cantrip's alleged disappearance have become clearer,' Inspector Frank Jones told the Tribune, 'and it's come to light that the case was filed in error. There is no evidence whatsoever that a kidnapping took place.' Since Cantrip is over eighteen, the applicable missing person legislation is almost non-existent, much to the dismay of her mother.

'Something has gone horribly wrong when a girl can be forced away from her family b

A Pocket Full of SkyWhen I was young, my father would take me to the highest tower of Notre Dame precisely once a year. It would be cold. Freezing. But we'd stand there, and take deep breaths of air, and peer down, towards the tiny ants of people below. Down, towards the sprawling city beneath us. It was always winter, when we'd go. Always cold. Freezing, freezing. But however cold it was, and however dull and bleary the weather, my father would ask one thing, and one thing only: that we adhered to tradition.

"Lucie," he would say, with the fond smile and kind eyes I always remember. "Lucie, my peach. Whatever you become, and wherever your heart and mind leads

It Bit Me"And tomorrow we'll install the kitchen cabinets along this wall here," the man gestured into the adjacent room.

My mother nodded in agreement as the construction contractor spoke. All the while, I sat slouched in boredom against the unpainted drywall of my newly-constructed home, my eyes wandering around the unborn living room as I searched for something, anything, to pique my interest. I desperately prayed for any form of entertainment or distraction, but the room loomed in desolate quietness. The scruffy man with my mother turned and stretched his hand out towards the wall directly across from me, redressing the cryptically dull conversat

They Also Serve Who Only Stand and WaitI don't know when we first went underground. I don't even know if it was one mass exodus, a swarm of mankind trickling through the earth's crust so vehement we carved our own caverns by the force of trampling feet, or whether it was a gradual process, perhaps even a repetitive one, a family here, a neighborhood there. For all I know, the echo of the damp subterranean machine has always reverberated off the cave walls, created long past by the Angels, who think of our well-being even while they shake their heads helplessly at our flaws.

They say that those who remained on the surface were raptured away in a great flash of light, like a millio

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SupportAmid the din of young girls in conversation, the musician played softly with no particular piece in mind. Without thinking, he let his fingers dance on the ivory keys. It didn't matter what he played; the loud conversations just drowned out his song. It was difficult to strain his ears just to hear himself. The jumbled, clashing voices grew louder with each note, but he played on. I can make them listen, he thought. He could easily stand up and, with his intimidating voice of authority, reprimand the chatting girls and demand their attention. However, he wouldn't do this. There was no point in forcing people to hear if they didn't want to lis

Not AnymoreShe used to wait by the door for her mother to come home.

Sometimes, she had to stay up the whole night to get a glimpse of her. She didn't mind; it was a small sacrifice to make so she could welcome her mother home. She often woke up curled up on the floor the next morning. On days like that, she would search through the house, calling for her mother. She'd sigh heavily when she was answered with silence. However, she would perk up immediately. If her mother wasn't asleep in her room, then she would be home very soon. She just had to wait a little longer.

She used to tell her to come home soon.

Her mother had a lot of friends, and she fre

At EaseTo the victims of the Great War

Lay down your weapons; it is the end of your war,
but guns still fire and fighter planes soar
Whether soldier or civilian, may your soul rest
Wasn't hell on earth enough of a test?

Lay down your weapons; you have nothing to fear,
though anger and hatred still reign here
Your battle is over; there is no need to fight
You have escaped the darkness and reached the light

Lay down your weapons; now you are free
Why not rest under the shade of a tall oak tree?
There is no need for terror, sorrow, and despair
Wherever you are, you are safe there

Lay down you weapons; abandon the blood-stained land
for a

FrissonA thrill, a sudden rush of excitement
Breath caught and heart racing,
a strange feeling escalates
Let the game begin!

I spy with my little eye
stars shimmering in a tan sky
Above is a field of midnight
A crescent moon shining bright
My breath is taken away by the sight

I spy with my little eye
hints of blue in a pinkish sky
Above are the sun's rays shimmering and bright
Clouds floating on, so graceful and light
My heart is warmed by the sight

I spy with my little eye
a certain boy going on an afternoon run
I spy with my little eye
a certain girl basking in the light of the sun

Playing I Spy has never been more fun!

In the Red NotebookMarch 14th. On that day, a bunch of people gather in my house. It isn't a birthday or any kind of celebration, really. In fact, March 14th is probably the dreariest day for everyone there. That day, thirteen years ago, my older sister, Allie died.

I don't know much about my sister. Almost everything I do know, someone else has told me. She was a decade older (my parents married young) and I was really young when the accident happened. She was beautiful. She had long, dark hair, sparkling eyes and a smile lit that up a room. Eyes followed her wherever she went. She was smart. Our living room is practically a shrine to her academic excellence.

To Sweet EscapeSmooth, cut, place, fold, attach, and sign

The same actions repeating themselves again and again
A tedious cycle with no end in sight
I do not know why I continue; I could simply give up
Drop everything and leave for something more fun

Smooth, cut, place, fold, attach, and sign

Something, anything, stop this routine
I yearn for freedom, for excitement, for change
Someone, anyone, grab my attention
I'll do anything to escape from the bleakness of this

Smooth, cut, place, fold, attach, and sign
The same actions repeating themselves again and again
I know it may seem like I'm overreacting

But wrapping so many Christmas presents isn'

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Souvenirs

by ~RoamingShadow, Jun 16, 2012, 11:17:14 PM
Literature / Prose / Fiction / Family Life / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

When her mom went to check the mail at breakfast, she returned with a thin box in her arms.

It was a package from her father.

Her dad was sort of like a traveler... at least, that was what she assumed he was. His job always had him jumping from city to city, country to country. He'd been to almost everywhere around the world, and every few weeks, he would send her a letter with a little souvenir from his stay. This time, it was a miniature Eiffel Tower.

So he's in France again, she mused, studying the two-foot tall replica. A small chuckle escaped her lips. It was about time he remembered to get it for her! He really should've thought of buying it six visits ago. She opened the small envelope attached to package and read the letter inside with a fond smile. When she finished reading, she stood up and excused herself from the table. Her mom answered with a sad smile as she nodded.

She raced up the stairs and headed for the Gift Room. It was a special place in the house just for her dad's souvenirs. Her mom gave her the spare room when the stuff started taking up too much space in her bedroom. She set the little tower among the many, many other gifts she received. (Miniature landmarks, books, paintings, mugs, clothes, toys, key-chains, jewelry… even strange-colored rocks and pressed flowers.) Each thing had a story behind them that her father always explained so vividly in the letter that came with it.

A small smile made its way to her face as she looked over at the large map that took up a whole wall of the room. It was her very first gift. On it, was an assortment of dots that formed dozens of different shapes and patterns. Each time her father sent her something, she would mark his location on the large map. Sometimes, she would try finding a pattern in her father's travels and try to guess where the next souvenir would come from.

She always loved the gifts her dad sent her. Who could say they had something from almost every country in the world? Even if it was just a rock or a flower. Her dad had the best taste in gifts too; he always knew what to get her.

But as she took a small thumbtack and placed a seventh brightly-colored marker on France, a frown made its way to her face. Her father had been almost everywhere around the world, but there was one place she was sure he had yet to visit.

Home.

Souvenirsby ~RoamingShadow

Literature / Prose / Fiction / Family Life / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

And the angst/sadness fairy strikes again! I've been working on this for a while now, just a few days after finishing "Not Anymore". I'm not sure what brought this on either. I assume that it's cause Father's Day was approaching. Funny how I finished this sad piece on Father's day...

Like my last short story, I would like to point out that I have absolutely no bitter feelings of resentment toward my Father. I am his spoiled eldest child and I love him sooooooo much~!!

June 18, 2012: I made just a tiny little edit due to a suggestion by

Daily Deviation

Given 2013-01-07

Souvenirs by ~RoamingShadow Suggester Writes: Often in stories about absent parents, said parent is maliciously or stupidly neglectful. I like that this take is of a loving father who simply can't be there, but is not a terrible person for it; I imagine many families can relate to a similar situation. ( Suggested by =SilverInkblot and Featured by ^Beccalicious )

love 2 2

joy 2 2

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

*theamazingwrabbit Jan 7, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

nice! I think more Flash Fics should make DDs.

*catelee2u Jan 7, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Very well written.

~Falljoydelux Jan 7, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

All of the feels!

~RoamingShadow Jan 8, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Awwww, I punched you in the feels

!vedisdragon Jan 7, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Now this is something that actually deserves a DD.

~RoamingShadow Jan 8, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you so much

~Adonael Jan 7, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Wow. That last line hits pretty hard.

~Fevley Jan 7, 2013

I love how well she knows her father, and how she knows he loves and cares for her. I especially love how the ending doesn't read like angst, just hopeful wistfulness. Keep it up! :}

~Doodelay Jan 7, 2013 Student Writer

Congrats on the DD
The story was very precious

~RoamingShadow Jan 8, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you

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