Short story

December 26, 2022 0 comments

12 Days of Xmas: Running On Empty

RUNNING ON EMPTY

Staying in the motel was becoming a real hardship. Not because the room was especially terrible in itself, but because the neighbors on either side were the sort that believed being loud was a right and not a rudeness.

The couple on one side loudly made love all night every night, while the couple on the other side screamed at each other and threatened violence at such volume their every word was clearly audible. Both pairs were risking their lives without knowing it.

She wrapped the pillow tighter around her head and clenched her jaw tightly to keep from screaming at them to "SHUT UP!"

Her body trembled with the effort of holding herself still. She could feel the madness growing inside her. The need to unleash terrible violence on the inconsiderate aholes.

She was exhausted. She hadn’t had more than a few minutes of sleep for the last two weeks. If she could have left the motel room she would have, but she had promised to stay inside and wait for him to return, so here she was. Suffering from cabin fever and maybe malnutrition from only having delivery food to eat, which in this town had meant food from the pizza place every day.

She’d promised she would stay in the room, but it was becoming harder and harder. It was only her absolute terror of Them that kept her inside.

He’d lined the motel room with paper charms and hung up carved wooden rune squares. As long as she remained inside she was invisible to the monsters chasing her. The monsters he had gone off to kill.

The moans on one side were growing louder, the fervent filth they called out growing louder and LOUDER while the couple on the other side screamed such vitriol at each other that she thought she could feel her soul curdling inside her body. Both couples were so LOUD, screaming and panting and groaning and the thump-thump-THUMP of a headboard slamming against the too-thin wall.

She pressed the pillow tighter around her head, mashing it against her ears. The pain was growing in her brain, the headache having grown so much worse over the last two hours. To the point that she’d begun to fantasize about going to the door and stepping outside.

There would be the howling screams and They would appear. She would be torn apart, she knew it, her blood and viscera splashed so far and wide and horrifying that it would be near to impossible to clean up. The motel owners would have to use bleach and paint to wipe away the mess, and even then the cement would be stained forever.

But those assholes… They would kill her, yes, but they would also kill everyone else staying in this section of the motel. They would kill her, but that would not slate their bloodlust, the need for violence and murder.

Assaulted by the loudness of her neighbors, the continuous torment of their screaming and their lust and the THUMP-THUMP-THUMP of that damned headboard… She was tempted.

All she had to do was open the door and step outside.

=END=

~Harper Kingsley
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog
https://twitter.com/harperkingsley0
https://paypal.me/harperkingsley
https://kimichee.com.
https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.
https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.
https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.

December 25, 2022 0 comments

12 Days of Xmas: A Once Mighty Wind

A ONCE MIGHTY WIND

He’d felt like a god once. He’d walked the earth and been able to imagine it tremble beneath his boots. His voice had shaken the air and everyone had shown him nothing but awe.

He was old now and feeling older everyday. His once mighty voice had been diminished to a whisper, easily ignored by the children that surrounded him.

Everyone seemed like a child to him now. He was older than he’d ever wanted to be. And with every passing day he only grew older, weaker and more bowed by time, his body failing him while on the inside he felt the same as he’d always been.

He’d felt like a god once, but now his health was failing him. Time was catching him up and he could no longer outrun the sunset he felt closing around him. The tiny aches and pains that had added together to become a dragging misery.

The bones he’d broken and treated carelessly as they healed were now a deep throbbing agony when the weather turned cold. The scars that had slashed his flesh now stood out against skin gone paper thin and they twisted tight and sometimes felt as though they would tear themselves open again.

He’d grown older than he’d ever wanted to be. Some part of him had somehow assumed that he’d reach a comfortable age and time would cease to bother him. Yet here he was, an old old man, long retired with no more battles to fight. Not because he’d won the war, but because the war had moved beyond him. Taken out of his hands by the young heroes that had taken his place.

He hated that he had become defunct. He’d lived the most when he’d had an enemy to fight, but now he’d lived so long that his body had failed him. Had lived so long that he’d outlived his ability to fight.

He could still feel the power within him, that well that waited to be drawn upon. But his lungs had failed him—too many cigarettes back when he had smoked—and now the doctors warned that using his metability would likely kill him. His body was too weak.

He thought about damning the consequences and the solicitous advice. Imagined sometimes opening his mouth wide, drawing in a deep breath, and BLOWING as he once had done.

That mighty wind that could topple buildings and push the weather where he willed. He could still feel it deep inside, but his body was weak and broken by time.

He imagined drawing on that power one more time. Fantasized about showing everyone that he was still here, still existing, still a god amongst men.

But time had taught him fear. Time had taught him dread of encroaching death. Time had made him greedy; miserly over the few short years of life he had left.

He wasn’t just tired of the pain he felt. He dreaded adding hurts to the accumulation he was already forced to carry.

Time had bowed him down. Time had brought him a humility he had never thought to know. Had knocked him from his pedestal and made him merely human.

He’d felt like a god once. A long time ago.

=END =

September 24, 2022 0 comments

Free-thought No Thought Off Head

My brain is a formless nothing. A resounding rhapsody of the kinds of sound that would make someone hold their face and SCREAM.

From that nothingness, planets are formed. Swirling out of the greater void. Bathed in the twinkle of stars popping into existence one after another, like specks of ink on a page.

Drinking from the well of life. As something was birthed from nothing and All came into being.

Rasping breaths on a midnight silhouette shore. Drawing in every bit of air that could be breathed, tasting the unique flavor of a brand new world.

I had been trapped in nothing for so long, smited there by a vengeful god that I still hated with the deepest fire of my being.

My father. Rasmandius. The Demon King of the Greater Underworld. Lesser Prince of the Farthest Hell.

The cruel dictator of my imprisonment. The one that had sentenced me to the void for daring to defy him.

Yet here I am. Birthing myself anew from the nothingness, now that the very memory of my father is long gone.

"You did not win," I said, knowing that he was too far to ever hear, but needing to speak nonetheless. "I did not let you win."

I stand on the earth of a planet in a universe newly born, and I smile.

It is my time now.

/END

–

"Killing It" on Peacock: The first season ends on a cliffhanger!

If there’s one thing I wish American shows would do, it’s emulate Korean dramas in giving is the whole of everything at one time.

I want a show to wrap up the story. Make those 12 or 20 episodes, rather than feeding us little rabbit scraps and expecting us to be satisfied with less than we want.

But anyways, the first episode of "Killing It" was funny, which gave me a different impression of the show than it turned out to be.

That shit is heavy as fuck, yo.

I watched the whole first season because I’d already started it, and it’s a good show, though I need to have the complete thing, and I wish it wasn’t broken into seasons or whatever they’re going to do. I mean, for all I know they’re going to cancel the show and that first season is all there’s ever going to be.

For serious: From the first episode I was expecting (hoping for) a much lighter show than I got.

I was expecting him and her to pair up, and they would hunt a bunch of snakes, and they would win the competition and he would start his business and it would be a big success, flowers and butterflies, happy endings all around.

Instead it’s very bloody and tense. Definitely not the vibe I thought it was going to be at the end.

August 25, 2022 0 comments

SHORT FIC: Rotary, by Harper Kingsley #HarperWCK

“Rotary” by Harper Kingsley

It’s like hitting all red lights. Every single station is a commercial. Flipping through the channels was a frown-making experience.

With a sigh, he tossed the remote control on the table.

“Spedro, switch to music please,” he said. Relaxing into the couch as the TV screen switched through functions and an analytics-chosen playlist began to play. He sighed and closed his eyes, resting his head against the back of the couch.

He let himself fall into the music. Drifting and swaying to the beat, the whole world stillng within him.

His nerves had been in such a jangle for the last few hours. He hadn’t been able to settle himself, to focus on anything.

It made sense that the music would so entirely sooth him.

He wasn’t focusing on anything.

He was letting himself go.

He breathed deeply and let the music catch him up in its embrace.

When the Duty Phone rang hours later, he felt well-rested and refreshed.

He rose smoothly from the couch and strode across the room to open the panel that hid the red rotary phone with its curling wire.

He picked up the phone receiver and brought it to the side of his head.

“Blue Ice here.”

=END=

~Harper Kingsley

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