unbirthday

0 comments on "SHORT FICTION: A Once Spirited Teen"

A ONCE SPIRITED TEEN

Ed loved her the first time he met her. An instinctive and overwhelming awareness that "She is the one. I’m going to marry her."

But they were young. He was shy. They went to separate colleges. And it was 16 years before they met again, both older and more worn down, but he didn’t care. Because she gave him a chance.

She was his life. His one true love.

He was happy to become a dad to her daughter because that was HER child.

Truly was an extension of Barbara. He had to accept her daughter to have Barbara in his life, and it was a deal he was willing to make.

For four years he lived a happy life.

He was married with a beautiful wife that he loved more than anything.

Then she was gone.

Murdered by Truly. Shot dead in the house he’d bought for her with the gun he’d bought so she could feel safe from her unstable and dangerous ex-husband. And it was her daughter–the girl she’d loved more than ANYTHING (even him!)–that did it.

And he didn’t know why.

Whatever story Truly gave, Ed didn’t believe it. Didn’t trust it. Because Barbara was the kindest, gentlest, most wonderful person ever. A truly loving mom.

And Truly cold-bloodedly shot her dead.

And all the excuses and reasons were weak. Untrustworthy. Manipulations he could not believe.

But he would smile at her in court. Mouth words of love and trust. Do or say anything to get her released from prison.

Because in the gaping maw of his broken heart, he was desperate for blood.

/END

~Harper Kingsley

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0 comments on "Möbius Stripped: Genesis"

MÖBIUS STRIPPED

GENESIS

In the beginning, was there the chicken or the egg? Without darkness, can there be any perception of light? From the moment of beginning, is there already the awareness of an end?

A seed was cast across the void. A spark seeking to become a flame. A baited lure with an imperceptible line leading back to a distant shore.

It drifted with seeming randomness while actually following a hidden path. Finding the points that connected one reality to the next. Gathering strength–fuel–to power its metamorphosis, parasitizing and consuming as necessary to reach its goal.

And from the darkness, a star was reborn.

/END

Prairie Fires 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

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Kakushigoto 01 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.

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

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