short fiction

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LIFE IN THE PLEASANT BECOMING

Being Pleasanted wasn’t as terrible as she’d always thought it would be. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t like her skin was burning and tight or her hair felt like a big clown wig. She simply felt as though she was wearing a costume she couldn’t take off.

There were times when she wanted to do one thing, but her body chose to do another. She would find her thoughts clouded and strange; time would jerk and she would find herself in different places and it would be an hour or two later and she would have no idea what she had done in the interim.

She would look in the mirror more than she had ever done, examining herself for any flaws. Gazing at her somehow flawless skin, glossy lips, and shiny hair. She would smile and show her perfect teeth in a perfect smile. Her own beauty was enthralling.

She was enchanted by her own appearance. In love with the sound of her own voice as she talked or sang. Her figure had become more pleasing than ever before and she loved running her hands over the curves of her hips and thighs and breasts. She had never looked so good in her entire her life.

She had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars over her lifetime attempting to make herself beautiful in her own eyes. She’d gotten unnecessary surgeries and put herself through painful and degrading beauty treatments that had never quite given her the results she wanted.

Yet now, after being Pleasanted, she couldn’t find a single bad angle when she looked in the mirror. She looked as beautiful as she’d always dreamed of being. She’d never been happier about her appearance and didn’t want to go back to looking the way she used to be.

Sure, the brainwashing wasn’t something she would have chosen to go through, but in return for her beautiful new self? She could accept it as a fair exchange.

What she didn’t want to put up with was her husband.

Now that she was the perfect version of herself… her husband looked like a hairy goblin creature in comparison. The very sight of him turned her stomach. And the idea of him touching her beautiful body? No way.

Him just looking at her disgusted her. That he thought he was worthy of her in any way?

Killing him was surprisingly easy. He had absolutely no defenses against her, not even the ones he’d had before her Pleasanting. It was as though he was so certain that she would never even consider harming him that he’d dropped all his walls before her.

It made killing him near effortless.

He didn’t even scream before dropping to the floor. There was barely any blood, just a few drops that she wiped up with a paper towel before carrying his body to the suitcase she’d gotten ready and levered him inside.

Before, it would have been near impossible for her to haul around his limp body, but after being Pleasanted her muscles were more efficient. He’d likely planned for her to do all the heavy lifting around the house, never expecting that he would be the first load she’d carry.

She folded him up into the suitcase and zipped it closed. Then she carried the suitcase out through the garage door and put it in the trunk of his car. Then she went back inside and began using his suitcases to pack up his clothes and anything else he would take if he was fleeing his life.

Then she dressed in the clothes she’d prepared and put on a ball cap and sunglasses. Looking in the mirror, she decided that if no one got a close look, she could pass for him.

She gathered up her jewelry and any loose money in the house, but left her important documents in place. They were the sacrifice she was willing to make.

Then she went into the kitchen and used a kitchen knife to cut the back of her arm, well away from any veins or important bits, then began to squeeze blood out, dripping it here and there, splattering it against the walls and floor. Then she used some paper towels and did a bad job cleaning it up, leaving traces under the stove and refrigerator and on the underside of a cabinet. There wasn’t a lot of blood, but there was enough to be suspicious.

She used a prepared bandage and alcohol wipe to treat the cut on her arm. Then she said goodbye to the house and the life she lived and drove away with his dead body in the trunk of his car.

To anyone investigating, it would appear that he had murdered her and fled to points unknown. They would search for him, but they would never find him, because she would have already buried his body in a hole in the desert and burned his car. Then she would be free to make her own life.

Beautiful and free, the way she had always wanted to be, but had never managed.

Because of morals and ethics and expectations put on her by other people and herself.

But now she was Pleasant. And everything felt good and right.

=END=

~Harper Kingsley

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Panoply at Amazon
0 comments on "SHORT FIC: A Snapshot In Time"

TITLE: A Snapshot In Time
AUTHOR: Harper Kingsley
GENRE: aftermath of a fall, introspection

When I first woke up, everything was in shades of black and white. Color was slow to seep back into the world, and it was like her hair was blond and her dress was pink. Then the hair and dresses of the other women popped into focus, while the sky above them still looked like an expanse of pure white. Not a single speck of blue in sight.

The bug resting against my face had looked massive as it made its approach. Landing ever so gently on the tip of my nose, where it for some reason decided to stay. I was just relieved it wasn’t running around all over on my face.

That’s the most hateful part of bugs. The suddenness of their appearance. The way they could be just there, purely noticeable. Then they can do whatever. Jump up. Fly. Skitter under the furniture. Disappear.

But I couldn’t move.

I lay there on the ground face up, body splayed out haphazardly. The shock didn’t give me the option to feel pain.

I was hoping someone was calling an ambulance. I definitely didn’t want them to flop me around and paralyze me or something.

But it was eerie to look up and see them standing over me as the green slipped back onto the grass. To notice the complete soullessness of their gazes as they looked down at me. As they spoke to each other over top of me and I didn’t see a single one showing concern.

I stared at them, these semi-familiar strangers. There was the sense that I knew them, but I could not identify the relationship at the moment.

A pain was building in my body, centered on the back of my head. The pain radiated outward in an endless ache, no sense of throbbing whatsoever. Just pain.

It was a nameless torment. I didn’t even have the words to describe what I was feeling.

I had never really been hurt before. Like, I’d heard about "kids cracking their heads on the playground" and I’ve seen the aftermath when someone bit through their lip or scraped their leg. But I’d never really been hurt hurt before.

I don’t think I have.

I’d never been to the hospital for anything related to a fall or an accident. It was something I knew as natural as breathing, which felt a bit hard as the fall had knocked the wind out of me.

As the color refilled the world, the memories and the thoughts were returning. The me that had been missing was coming back. It was as though my brain’s processes were coming back on line a bit at a time.

And by the time I was loaded onto the ambulance that a kind elderly person called by using the emergency device strapped to their wrist, the sky had become so bright.

A brilliant blue sky. Warm temperatures that weren’t too hot. Everything comfortable and perfect.

It was a beautiful day.

And my step-mother had tried to kill me.

=END=

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

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A City On Mars at Amazon
0 comments on "SHORT FICTION: In a Paper World Full of Paper People"

TITLE: In a Paper World Full of Paper People
AUTHOR: Harper Kingsley
GENRE: science fiction, introspection

It was called “paper skin,” though its real scientific name was something long and largely unpronounceable. Everyone knew what paper skin was though. The fear of it was an ever growing concern. A rising stress level that left parents weeping in the night as they feared they or their children would be infected.

It was highly communicable. Lingering on hard surfaces for four hours and in fabric for close to ten. And once it got inside the human body, its effects were swift and devastating.

Blood that refused to clot and skin layers that became thin and brittle to the point that simply touching anything with an edge could cause the skin to split open.

A person with paper skin could die from a paper cut. A simple touch could cause the inside to come outside as the person bled and bled.

It was horrifying to watch. But hard to look away. Because there was no cure, no vaccine, no treatment other than to never let the infected ever come to harm.

The victims of paper skin lived in bubbles or muffled themselves with layers of cloth. They kept bandages on them at all times and carried injectors full of drugs that were supposed to help their blood coagulate. But in the end, it was a paper towel to hold back a river. Even if it took years, no one survived paper skin.

They were separated. Segregated. Surrounded by people wearing hazardous material suits, because their blood always seemed to want out of their bodies, and their blood carried the infection that was taking their lives.

People feared having paper skin. Dreaded it and fought the inevitably of it, this human plague that was taking hundreds and thousands of lives with every passing day.

The world had become harsh and terrifying. The invisible prickles on a maple seed became like hypodermic needles. The edge of a table became a blade. The strands of a person’s hair or the licking of a cat’s tongue could result in flesh shearing off to the bone.

Every day was a day of neverending fear. Mortality had never felt so close at hand. Yet here it was.

The world was full of paper people desperately avoiding the rain. Coating themselves in wax, but knowing that nothing lasts forever. It only exists for right now.

=END=

~Harper Kingsley

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https://kimichee.com.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HarperKingsley.

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Heroes & Villains at Amazon
0 comments on "12 Days of Xmas: Year of the Snake"

Year of the Snake

She had been born in the year of the Snake, that’s what the paper restaurant placemat said. Dara traced her finger over her birth year and frowned a little.

She liked rabbits and she liked dogs. She wouldn’t have minded being a tiger or a dragon. Even the chibi ox printed on the placemat had a charm to it.

But she was a snake. The one thing she was most afraid of in the world.

Ophidiophobia. A fear of snakes. That’s what Wikipedia said she had.

When she was really small–like still wearing pull-ups small–she’d been sitting in the yard on a checkered blanket playing with her dolls when she’d felt something crawling over her toes and up her leg. And she’d looked, and even without know what it was, she’d been absolutely terrified.

Now, as a big girl, she knew that it had been a garter snake and that it couldn’t hurt her. But when she’d been small… Seeing that thing crawling on her leg had left a deep scar on her psyche.

Even thinking about snakes sent a chill over her skin and made her stomach ache. She was terrified of them, with their blank black eyes and the way their tongues would flick out as they tasted the air. Or when they ate something and their whole heads would open up to reveal that maw lined by sharp fangs.

She hated snakes.

And now, looking at the placemat, she found out she was a snake.

Dara sighed and moved her plate to cover the placemat, refusing to look at it.

No matter what good words were said about snakes, she didn’t think she could bear being something she was so scared of.

Why couldn’t I have been a dog? she thought.

"Hey Dad," she said, "can we get a dog?"

"A dog?" Izan looked at his daughter, wondering where this had come from. The way her brain worked was a complete mystery to him. Even looking into her eyes, he could never tell what she was thinking.

Dara licked her fork. "Yeah. A dog. Can we get one? It doesn’t have to be a big one." She held her hands a few inches apart to represent a size. "We can get a little one. A cute little dog. I’ll take care of it. Feed it. Walk it. I’ll even pick up it’s poop!"

"Well…"

"Please Dad? I really want one and… and… It’s… It’s my year!"

"It’s your year?"

"Yeah. It’s my year. So we should get a dog that’s born in the same year as me and we’ll be best friends because we’ll be the same!"

Izan looked at her pleading face, then sighed. "I’ll have to talk to your mom."

Dara grinned, knowing that she’d be getting a dog. She kicked her feet and scooped up another forkful of fried rice. "We’ll have to get a collar and a leash and all kinds of toys! I’m so excited."

Izan watched his daughter eat and couldn’t help smiling to himself. She was humming under her breath, and her feet couldn’t stay still, little white laces dangling. She was so happy that he couldn’t bear to break her mood.

I guess this is the year we’re getting a dog, he thought.

=END=

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.

https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.
https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog.
https://kimichee.com.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HarperKingsley.

https://harperkingsley.bsky.social.
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/HarperKingsley.