Short story

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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https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.
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Fortress in the Eye of Time 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

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.

Kakushigoto 01 at Amazon
1 comment on "SHORT FIC: Apricot Sunrise"

For Kevin

Up all night. Exhausted. Bone tired. Weariness dragging down.

Whoever said crime doesn’t sleep wasn’t lying. It had been nonstop action all night. There was a scent of soot and body odor clinging to her skin.

Elisa looked at her phone to check the time. Grimaced at the crack running across the screen. Meta-grade materials her left foot. She’d slammed the thing into one recalcitrant face and now look at it: crack city.

The thought of having to get a new phone made her want to have a headache. Even with the cloud, there was still a lot of personal stuff she’d have to transfer over. And there was always the nagging sense of something being forgotten, left behind, whenever she got a new phone or device and had to abandon the old.

Nostalgia was almost a suffering friend on her part, rather than the thoughtful softness that other people got to enjoy.

She shoved the phone back in her utility belt and finished her slog to Canaverra Bridge. It was the perfect spot to watch the sunrise, the rippling blue water and the clean scent of ocean a cleansing backdrop.

Being a superhero wasn’t all cheery media smiles and punching villains in the face. It was tiring work, especially for a second-rate hero like her.

She didn’t have any illusions about her place in the world. She wasn’t a frontline hero. Just one of the grunts that cleaned up ground level criminals. And that was fine with her.

Superheroing was a job. One that paid her bills and let her live the life she wanted.

It hadn’t been her dream. It was a paycheck she worked hard for and earned with blood, sweat, and tears. Mostly not her own. She had a powerful right hook and wasn’t afraid to use it.

Her lips curved up when she realized she’d made it on time. Barely.

Ghostly wavering light at first rising up over the mountains. Then the spill of golden light as the sky brightened beneath the clouds. Then the first piercing rays of sunlight.

The sun rose, beautiful in the early morning chill. And Elisa watched it happen.

Beautiful.

=END=

Kakushigoto 01 at Amazon
1 comment on "Prompt 26: After being seduced by a demon, an empath ate a baby"

23. After being seduced by a demon, an empath ate a baby.

It was a strange time. That wasn’t an excuse. It just was what it was.

A strange time.

He’d picked up the demon at an estate sale. The candlesticks had immediately appealed to him. The sight made him think of the little hallway alcove that had been built into the house for some reason. That empty space called out to him, demanding to be filled.

He’d bought the candlesticks and brought them home. They’d fit in the alcove perfectly. Added class to the place.

Everything was great for a time. Work was going well. His house was finally feeling like a home. He was healthy and felt fitter than ever before in his life.

Of course it couldn’t last.

The dreams came first, then the sleepwalking started. The sleep emissions. The zoning out. The realization that something was really wrong.

By then it had likely already been too late.

The demon got in his head and built a home to stay. And in that time when he was lost, they’d done terrible things together.

The demon had twined itself throughout him until he didn’t know where it began and he ended.

Because he’d been so wrapped up in the feeling of things that he’d lost touch with the reality of things.

None of it had seemed real, even as it happened, and it was only afterward with the nightmares and prison cells that he’d come to realize what he’d done.

Because while they’d done it together, the demon was a demon and realized no wrong. It took a human soul to suffer for human sins.

And he’d committed a grave sin for letting it happen. For enjoying it in the moment, because whatever the strength of the demon there were some things he never should have allowed.

The sex. The scarification. The gorging themselves on any food they could reach.

It could all be forgiven.

The eating of a human baby?

Unforgivable.

x_x x_x x_x

Being known as "the baby eater" in prison wasn’t exactly the highest point of his prison sentence, but it wasn’t the worst either.

A spiritual trace had highlighted the signs of demonic possession in his aura. He was still sentenced to prison, but it was a lesser term than he would have gotten without the evidence of a demonic presence.

He took whatever blessings he could find. So that reduction of what otherwise would’ve been a life sentence was gratefully accepted.

He didn’t really think it was fair, considering what he’d done, but he raised no objection to being released just two years after he was sentenced.

A small apartment. A from-home job. And six months later he could almost pretend that his life wasn’t a completely ruined thing.

Almost.

/END