Posts tagged "fiction":

Ocracoke

That night was the first full moon after Analise and I fell in love. It was the summer after the last year of high school, and it was hot. We lived on a small island called Wocomac, a sand bar east of the mainland, held together by trees. On the inland, west side there’s a sound full of good fish; on the ocean, east side there’s the gulf stream. The sands gather on the shelf at the edge of the continent. Where grasses and bushes and trees take hold they keep a bunch of sand together long enough for it to become an island.

The Fountainhead

The fountain pours into you. Your eyes and ears are filled with its blessings: the sweet relief of stimulus. Never a video too long, a song too loud, a word too harsh; everything is exactly as you want it to be. Enjoy! Everyone else is, the fountain tells you so. You watch the people dance and sing and run off into the sunset, but never more than you can stand: a count of eight, a couple of lines, a few strides, then the next. You twitch your finger and another thing comes into view. You raise your eyes: who can help you? Only the fountain, and it opens itself to you as it opens itself to everyone, just for them, for you are unique and special, UUID 3CA23F5E-DEE6-47B2-A4B9-B4A730D81546. There’s no one like you, and no one understands you the way the fountain does. You raise your arms to touch it, but it’s so difficult. They’re so heavy, your arms. When did you need them last? They drop to your side and splash in the water.

Madeline's lost

Madeline and Sally check in to the Hotel Benjamin on Tuesday afternoon. Madeline (or “Maddy,” as her parents called her) has never stayed in such a nice hotel before, so she’s excited. She walks into the big lobby with Sally, who has a suitcase on wheels and a purse across her shoulder. Maddy’s clothes are all in Sally’s bag, but Maddy carries her backback with her blanket curled up in the bottom, and her bear’s head poking out of the top of the bag watches behind Maddy as she walks. Sally and Maddy go up to the big desk where the man waits for them. Sally talks to the man over the desk, but Maddy can hardly see: the rim of the marble counter meets her right in the forehead. The man (Sally calls him the “receptionist,” which Maddy finds difficult to say: “recepyoniss”; Sally laughs) hands Sally a key and points across the lobby to the elevators. Sally and Maddy cross a sea of carpet to reach the golden doors. Maddy makes faces at her reflection.

Sitee

From a scenario by and with the assistance of Ben Lawrence.

In The Eyes

When I enter the Ego Death bar, the bouncer shows me how to connect my personal machine to their local network. “Here ya go!” She waves at a sign next to her as I step through the door. “The party starts after midnight. Till then, grab a drink upstairs and take a look around.” I look back to ask her if I have to, but she’s already waving her metal detector over the person in line behind me.

Doomscrolling

It happened again last night: I was doomscrolling¹ through the endless feed of trash videos the algorithm serves to me, and I scrolled right by it. The video: this time, it was called “do you want to be free?” No thumbnail, no channel, no view count: just a black rectangle, and the title: “do you want to be free?” Before I could react, my thumb had already scrolled past it; I scrolled up to look for it, but it was gone.

Stewart is Lost

The car slithered into the parking lot like a particularly aggressive species of beetle: all angles and sharp corners, its hooded headlights gazing angrily forward, daring anybody to tell the car’s owner that the car wasn’t worth the obscene amount of money that its owner had payed for it. The concrete was a dismal gray and reflected the dismal gray sky, which occasionally sent down a desultory rain drop to keep the concrete unpleasantly damp. The car parked. Its driver’s side door opened, and out stepped a man who, if possible, looked even more like an aggressive beetle than the car he stepped out of.

The Cat Dies

You see, first comes the obsession, a thought that intrudes on you and won’t leave; it just swirls around and around your brain without stopping. For example, you might be tormented by the thought “what if I go to hell?” Of course, you may have some reason to suspect that you will be damned—which of us has never done anything that might be held against us?—or you may not believe in hell at all—the afterlife is a very unpopular notion in these oh-so-wise, oh-so-skeptical days—but nevertheless, you can’t stop thinking it: “what if I go to hell?” When you awake, it’s nagging at you, and you go through your day as best you can, all the while worrying at the same thought like a cold-sore in your mind. Obsession.