fiction

Fan

I’ve been living alone this way for so long I don’t remember what it’s like to talk to other people. I order my food online and grunt to the delivery man at the door as I hand him my debit card – my bank account is stocked automatically.

All there is, is you my darling.

My family won’t talk to me anymore; they say I am delusional. But you and I know better.

You and I talk, sometimes. There was only that one time when we met and I was able to look you in the eye, in person. But we talk now, don’t we.

I know I’ve told you already, but I loved you the moment I set eyes on you. Your eyes a brilliant blue and your teeth are the most perfect I have ever seen on a real person. You are so talented.

You and I were meant to be together. I know it. I dream about you all the time. When I see your picture or when I see a video on Youtube it’s as if you perform just for me.

I caught you on a chat on Twitter once, remember? You said you remembered meeting me back then and you loved what I was wearing. I was so happy when you said that.

But it’s our nocturnal chats I love the most, when we meet in the ether and you tell me you love me and that we were meant to be together for all eternity.

I believe it’s true. I believe you are right. We are soulmates. I will wait for you.

I’m still a virgin. I’ll wait. I love you so much.

Truth

“It’s true what they said about you, isn’t it? When you were alive I mean?

“Now that you’re gone I guess it doesn’t matter. The way you died was horrible, and I’m sorry for that. Not that I had anything to do with it! Don’t come haunting me!

“Unless you want to do it nicely of course. You can watch over me if you like.

“I heard some interesting things today, at the funeral. I’m the only one here now. Everyone’s gone home, even the funeral director. I hid under a pew so we could have a few minutes in private.

“Anyways, I heard some things about you today that I never knew. Even though we were lovers for all those years it seems like maybe I hardly knew you at all.

“I have to wonder if the guys who put your face in that giant sandwich press had known you better maybe they wouldn’t have done it.

“Or come to think of it maybe that’s why they did.

“To me you were always the badass. The one who liked to whip me good and then kiss it all better. The one who sold the most drugs.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were donating all the proceeds to feed the poor?”

Reaper

“Step back now please,” said the police officer. He shuffled forward with his palms raised, pushing the curious crowd back across the white painted line of the parking space. “There’s really nothing to see here.”

“But sir,” said one of the onlookers. “I know that girl.”

“Which one,” the cop asked quietly.

“The one on top.”

“How can you tell? She’s face-down?”

“I recognize her tattoo. I inked her myself.”

“Step under the tape please,” offered the cop, lifting the yellow plastic crime scene ribbon. “MacPherson!” called the cop over his shoulder. “Talk to this man.”

“I know her,” the bystander repeated to MacPherson across the bodies of two naked women – a blonde on top and a brunette on her back underneath.

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Reaper,” said the man. “First name Grim.”

MacPherson widened his stance. “And what’s your real name?”

“That is my real name,” said Reaper.

MacPherson shook his head. “Okay fine. So how do you know her?”

“I tattooed the knife in her back.”

MacPherson looked down at the body. The hilt of a knife was, indeed, tattooed on the woman’s lower left shoulder, the point appearing to have been plunged into her body.

The coroner stepped up to give his orders.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s lift her.”

Four investigators, two at the blonde’s shoulders and two at her hips, attempted to lift her.

“She’s stuck,” said one of the investigators.

The coroner crouched and lifted the woman’s left shoulder a few inches. “What the…” whispered the coroner.

MacPherson turned back to see Reaper grinning. “It’s a damned good tattoo even if I do say so myself.”

More

“i want more.”

“here I am, ” says More

“but i didn’t expect more to be personified.”

he squints at More. if he holds his head just right he can perceive the reflection of a pool, hovering in front of More, as if More is made of the pool. he leans to the left and from that side More looks like the new expensive laptop he has been eyeing for a while. he glances down to see that More is standing in a mist, like a cloud and More is wearing airplanes that are traveling at 30,000 feet to his dream destination. from the back More is a house. yes, the home he grew up in, only new and on the other side of More pokes out the head of a horse.

having completed his lap of More he walks back to face his most dear wish. in the face of More he sees a girl. his soulmate. the girl he hasn’t yet met.

“how can I have all this?”

“first you must make room for me,” says More. “you must give up what you have. a sacrifice must be made. but particularly for your soulmate.”

“but why?”

“ask yourself, how can you have a pool while you live in an apartment? how will you be happy with a new computer before you have backed up the files on your old one to move them over? that takes time. how can you leave it all behind to travel when you have so much to do? how can you live in a new house when you haven’t the money to buy one? or a farm for that matter, with a horse? you must make room in your life for these things and to do so you must sacrifice what you have.

“but most of all, for love you must sacrifice the woman who loves you now.”

“sacrifice her how?” he asks.

“let her go,” More answers.

“but that will kill her, she loves me,” he cries.

More fades away, awaiting Desperation.

The more

Canopies and Scars

It’s sunny outside but in here it’s raining. The thunder crashes against my canopy, reverberating waves of sound and slashes thick with the hate of ages and sage advocacies of children fallen on deaf ears. For I can’t save everyone. And for each there is a scar.

mannequin

Pale

I am a ghost.

Or was I? I believe I am standing in the rain, buckets pouring down on me I am

Slippery in slippers. Why am I wearing

Long loose clothing, layered chiffon blowing in the breeze high upon the roof of

Deep cold metal framework? I feel

Hot ash laying in the sun. My bones ache ooooh how

blistered and blushed up brushes forward

My hair. Black. Over my face. It is so dark so dark so I can’t see why can’t I

am a ghost.

Saw it! I glimpsed the pale horse, steam from his nostrils he lifted me

Up on high mountain

top of the windy cliff. The sea smashes

my ahhh I can fly now!

NO! I stand in my mother’s living room but wait, this is from before

She cries why? I can see her through

shades of gray silk I cross my arms angrily growling I am

a ghost.

But wait! There! Right there a scrap of paper with my name! Surely if

My name remains I must be

Alive. It is there written in stone. In the pale moonlight

in a cemetery.

I walk, the cold sleet slashing my skin and

I don’t breathe

in the air of the night brisk chill diamond cut

I bled

out of the darkness I see light I see light

blind

I am alive. I am a

ghost.

Beauty’s Calling

hair

Prince Blorigan heard of Beauty through one of his own servants. A cousin of a friend who knew a girl who had been to visit Beauty told the tale of a teenaged boy locked in a tower catered to by only women. It was a sin against humanity if ever Blorigan had heard of one. And so, curious, he plotted to see for himself.

Blorigan, with the aid of trusted woman in his household, went about dressing himself up as a young girl to gain entrance to Grim’s castle. Once inside it was simple. Gush over never having seen Beauty up close (as though anyone had seen him from afar) and tell of a cousin who had had the pleasure of Beauty’s company and it was only a matter of moments before Blorigan was in the presence of the beautiful young man.

The Prince had with him a fan which he held up to his face as he tittered with the six other girls who had been invited to sit with Beauty that afternoon. He hadn’t expected to find himself quite so enamoured of the young man. He was, indeed, very beautiful. Blorigan was quite nervous. For it was told that after court with Beauty was held, he would go around the room and kiss each of the girls on the lips, deciding which, if any, would have a place in his chambers to help him dress in the morning and undress at night. None of the girls lasted long, unless they happened to be in Beauty’s employ when one of the older women left, unable to give away a son of Beauty’s father, Grim.

As Beauty moved around the room, bending before each of the girls to give them each a chaste kiss on the lips and then straighten and smile, Blorigan began to tremble. Should he be outed by Beauty (who would surely be surprised to feel the roughness of his closely shaven skin) the consequences of his deception would be dire. He began to wonder what had gotten into him, thinking he could get away with it, let alone being well received by Beauty. So it was with nervous bravery that Blorigan lowered his fan and accepted Beauty’s kiss. Beauty, startled, pulled away just enough to stare at Blorigan’s lips before kissing him again. He didn’t smile. Without glancing away from Blorigan he ordered the rest out of the room.

“But Beauty!” exclaimed the lady who always accompanied the girls. “This is highly unusual.”

“Leave us!” Beauty commanded.

Blorigan heard the shuffling of feet and the soft thunk of the wooden door closing against its frame. Without a word Beauty reached under the Prince’s skirt and felt there a hardness.

“You’re like me,” Beauty whispered.

Prince Blorigan nodded, speechless.

“You must stay, and teach me,” Beauty breathed against the Prince’s lips. “Are you,” Beauty swallowed, “are you the only other one?”

“No, the world is filled with men as well as with women…”

Beauty cut off his words with another deeper kiss.

“Stay with me,” Beauty repeated with a groan.

“I can’t,” Blorigan said. “I have a kingdom to help my father rule. I am a Prince and must marry soon.”

“You will marry a woman?” Beauty asked, unbelieving as he pressed himself against the Prince.

“We will teach each other perhaps, before I go.”

“And you will return?” Beauty demanded, dropping to his knees for a better look.

“As often as I can,” Blorigan sighed, his head tipping back and his eyes closing.

Beauty’s Education

hair

Life in the castle was an endless cycle of excitement and monotony. For days on end Beauty was locked up in his chambers with his tutor, a nubile young woman of brains who carried her children with her (or lead them around depending on their size) where ever she went. All of the children were daughters – it was well known in the kingdom that Beauty’s father, Grim, would only have members of the gentler sex in his household, with the exception of Beauty himself. Whenever a male child was born it was given away – an agreed-upon expectation of the women who were privileged to be in Grim’s servitude and allowed into his bedchamber.

Beauty was hidden away from the world, an eyesore to his father but the glory of the domestic help who cared for him, for they knew he was destined for greatness. (They would whisper among themselves that perhaps Beauty would be even greater than his father!)

And so the women of the grand estate had a vested interest in Beauty’s education and his upbringing. They urged him to be like his father, though he had not his father’s direct influence. Therefore the consensus was that Beauty should be as they wished his father to be.

While monotony reigned over Beauty’s days, he would take in the vision of his teacher’s breasts as she nursed her daughters, unable to avoid licking his lips at the sight of her wet nipples. By night he would be alone, a slave to his dreams. Even as he grew into the age of double digits the scenery remained unchanged. Excitement had finally come when he gained the age at which he was allowed visitors; girls in training from other castles who would become his father’s servants. Only then was he allowed to touch. Only then did his education begin in earnest.

Beauty’s Beginning

Beauty

Beauty

Beauty was born without a mother. That is to say his mother died in childbirth, leaving him in the peculiar care of his father and his father’s servants. Since Beauty’s father was a soldier, he was often absent from the family estate. Beauty, therefore, spent all of his waking and sleeping moments with the women who cleaned, cooked, and cared for the castle in which he lived.

So uninterested was Beauty’s father in him that he even went as far as to allow the housemaid-turned-nursemaid (she gave birth to a daughter at the same time Beauty was born and was able to nurse him at her breast) to name the poor boy. Having used what she thought was the best name available on her own daughter (some said she was the spawn of the gentleman for whom the woman worked), and she couldn’t very well call the boy Adrianna two (or too, the woman knew not the distinction) she simply called him what he was.

From the time Beauty was a babe he learned the ways of women. They taught him to clean and to cook and to care for them when they were tired at the end of the day. Time and time again his father would return home from battle only to find his son rubbing the feet of a char woman. The more it happened the less his father expected of him.

And so Beauty went without the benefit of a role model. His father was the only man Beauty knew of, for his father surrounded himself only with women unless he was off to war. From his father Beauty learned only that if he was ignored, there would surely be a woman to take care of him.

Beauty my Beauty

Beauty tore down all the sheets that hung around the room. It was Beauty’s darling Step-mother who requested they be hung in the first place. Beauty didn’t think anything of it at the time, the sheets needed to dry. But five years later, when they had begun to fade in the sun, Beauty knew it was time for them to be taken down. Flowery sheets weren’t Beauty’s idea of beauty. He liked plain white ones.

“Oh Beauty!” It was Step-mother calling. She waltzed into his room as though she belonged there.

“Step-mother, I told you before that I don’t like you coming into my room without knocking first,” Beauty whined.

“Oh nonsense!” Step-mother cried. “Now where are the sheets I asked you to hang up?”

“That was so long ago, I took them down,” Beauty confessed.

“Alright then, get on your knees. Where is the whip?”

“Step-mother,” Beauty sighed. “I’m four and twenty years old. Aren’t we a little past this?”

“Well who else am I going to beat now that your father is gone?” Step-mother exclaimed.

“Alright then,” Beauty conceded. “But just this once.”

Beauty took the barbed whip from the wardrobe and handed it to Step-mother. He fell to his knees before her, his long brown hair hiding his face as he removed his shirt. Step-mother hissed when she saw the scars on his back.

“Who did this to you?” Step-mother questioned.

“You did, Step-mother. Last week. And the week before. And every week for the last five years,” Beauty counted.

“Liar!” Step-mother screeched and the whip came down upon Beauty’s back.

Beauty felt the sting of the whip cutting into his flesh, removing the few scabs from the last time. Within three lashes the blood was flowing freely.

“Oh!” Step-mother gasped. She stepped back and Beauty looked up at her, a grin on his face.

“What happened?” Step-mother asked.

“Nothing at all Step-mother,” Beauty chided.

“Then hang up the sheets!” Step-mother demanded, dropping the whip and leaving the room.

“Right away Step-mother,” Beauty submitted.

As soon as the door to Beauty’s bedroom closed he lay upon his white sheets and graced them with roses and adonis.

Beauty