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At last, I’m revisiting the weird, the strange, whatever you want to call in. A handful of individuals heading toward a mysterious glowing portal.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Erikas Perl

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lVDQZJ

DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.

The Story

Meg woke with gritty, throbbing eyes. She was supposed to remember something but wasn’t sure why. She turned away from the window brimming with sunlight. Face burrowed in her pillow to make it night again, she kicked her exposed leg in the tangle of sheets hoping everything would right itself and she’d be back in the arms of sleep.

She hunted the darkness behind her eyelids for reentry but found nothing but her head spinning unable to orient itself. Spinning forever, a loop that would never end. A loop, a circle, an ellipse.

She was torn from her almost-dream to face Bret and his oversized sleeping shirt of crumbling ink, which looked like–

“You are my sunshine,” Bret sang, stripping the sheet off her.

“I almost remem–What are you doing in my room?” Meg rolled over with her eyes in the crook of her arm. She was so close. To what?

“Saving you from missing your shift,” Bret said, changing into his work clothes in front of her. At least he’d already had pants on.

“Screw that job,” Meg said.

Bret whipped up the sheets into a bubble that settled nicely on her now-empty bed. “The wet sidewalk is more comfortable than a hotel bed now?”

She side-eyed the blanket, fighting the urge to dive back under. A pile of clothes hit her in the face, teasing that sweet darkness again. By the time she pulled them off to dress, her bed looked like she hadn’t slept in it at all. Bret stood beside it with crossed arms, toe tapping, smirk growing.

Meg scowled. “You’ll be well compensated for your service.”

“A simple ‘thank you’ is all I require.” Bret was already behind her while she faced the mirror, doing her makeup better than she ever could. “Going to need some extra foundation for those dark circles.” With the vanity light turned on and her eyes adjusted, she saw the same dark circles under Bret’s eyes.

“That makes two of us,” Meg said.

Bret tossed the brushes onto the table and stepped away, heading for the door. She could tell he was checking himself secretly with his own compact.

“Your feet,” Meg said as Bret slipped on his shoes, sockless. But he was out the door before she could finish.

She scrunched her toes on the carpet, and they felt curiously cold with a different kind of grit than what plagued her eyes. She turned a foot over. A layer of dirt not found even in a hotel room like hers. Flaking like the old ink on Bret’s shirt.

*

Meg barely finished her shift. The walk home felt like she was losing control, like she was a body of flesh with no bones. Bret helped her, but was exhausted, too, using the wall as his support while he supported her. They stopped a moment under the neon lights outside their rooms that plainly read: HOTEL.

“We can’t stop,” Bret said, “I feel like I’m going to float away.” He chuckled. “If only.”

“What did you dream of last night?” Meg asked.

“I don’t dream.”

“Sure you do. Think hard.”

He looked at her with black eye sockets, the red light only catching his forehead and the bridge of his nose.

“Of that,” Bret said, tilting his head back and pointing up. The contrast of red against black made the bags under his eyes look worse than she remembered.

“The sign?”

“No.”

Meg moved to his vantage and found his finger jabbing through the center of the O.

It strobed. She blinked. Rubber her eyes. “You see that?”

“See what?” Bret was already fumbling with his keys, the wall left to hold her up. After the door opened, he helped her to her room, which was right next to his. Her head hit the pillow and all she could think of was how she hadn’t asked Bret about his feet all day.

The thought made her smile. Why, she didn’t know.

Her window was a red, flicker-free rectangle. The ache in her eyes was the only pulse, but it wasn’t a distraction, it was–

A guide. Made of stairs and rails and edges and brick. It led her forward, then up, then back and forth and up at the same time. She should be sick with all this movement, but she wasn’t. Her body was accustomed to it. You never get sick in a dream, because that’s what this was. She told herself so, over and over again, so she’d recall all the details in the morning, when she’d tell Bret and finally ask him about his feet.

The thought made her smile. And she knew why. She heard the patter of the objects in question behind her. Her dream allowed her to observe, and she saw Bret, barefoot, balancing on a few inches of concrete with ease.

“Bret,” Meg said.

He didn’t respond, just kept moving toward her, which pushed her on, and reality set in. Vertigo overcame her and she reeled, everything going fish-eyed. She thought Bret might catch her, like he had on the way home, but he didn’t.

As she teetered on the edge, blackness tinged with red opening below to take her, a brighter light opened, chasing away the darkness. Her eyes hurt no longer, and she no longer feared falling, because she was floating. She faced the light, not by choice, but it felt right, and allowed it to have her, to own her, to use her for whatever it deemed fit. The last sensation she experienced was the sound of more feet that two behind her.

She didn’t care about what she wanted to ask Bret about any longer, or even who the people were behind him, or where this light was taking her. She would end up in her bed again, with eyes full of sand that would carry her through another day until she would do this all over again. This time, she would remember. Yes, this time she would remember.

The last episode pulled me into normalcy. Storytelling, that is. No sci-fi, no fantasy, no supernatural beings. Just a dude playing a piano. It was a good exercise to really find out what matters in a story without having to worry about all the world-building and set dressing.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Neil Ross

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/683wvW

DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.

The Story

Max clacked down the empty hall. He stopped, clacked again. Forward, then back. He wore a unique pair of sneakers, ones with hard soles. He’d found them discounted on some Chinese e-commerce site, forced to buy ten, because they only did pseudo wholesale. That was okay with him, because he loved the sound, a tempo prompt for what was to come.

His reflection in the mirror startled him. He’d gained weight. His mother would have said he’d gained soul, but he wasn’t interested in that. And there wasn’t a soul around. Just him, his shirt printed like an explosive finger-paint job, which complemented the broad spectrum of plastic, glass, and light of the Vista Mall concourse. Banners as still as the dead, hanging from the ceiling, dripping with wishful propaganda. Ghostly orbs refracting rainbows through polished-to-invisible glass walls, which accepted eyes and bodies alike, to peer or purchase, depending on the moods of the passers-by.

But, as Max noted, there wasn’t a soul here. However, everything was “on” to a noisy degree, hence the noise he wore to blend in, and hence noise he would soon make, soulful ass planted on a padded bench, which felt unpadded, fingers on ivory that wasn’t.

Vista Mall didn’t pay him much for his music, but it was enough to rent a studio apartment, stock his fridge with food that would sustain him, clearly, he noted again, passing a particularly reflective window through which an empty elevator sat. The mask he wore, Vista Mall policy, rubbed his nose and chin raw, especially when he had stubble, like today, and he breathed in the scent of the bacteria population furiously regrowing despite his nuclear mouthwash.

He pumped sanitizer onto his hands, even though he would shake none, sat down at the piano bench, and stared at the keys, wondering what they had to tell him today. He took out a sheet of music and placed it above the keys while they deliberated.

His surroundings screamed at him in sharps and flats, dischordant, empty but full. Maybe he should come later, when there were people here, blunt bodies to absorb the babel around him so he could concentrate. He shook his head no to that idea and regarded the sign beside him and the piano that stressed people remain apart for their safety. The six-foot spaces between the passers-by would only transform that babel into timed bursts. He preferred it in a flood.

Clean hands on clean keys, Max listened before responding. It was always important to listen first, understand what you were dealing with to help navigate the unknown. Today, the piano was feeling a bit down, smothered by the towering walls that had the worst acoustics imaginable.

“I understand,” Max said. And he did, shouldering the same burden, suddenly guilty for wearing the hideous shirt.

Max waded into the music, dipping his toes in first, then to his knees, where the chill manifested, growing more intense the deeper he went. He didn’t hold back, because he never held back. Soon he was swimming through the music like he was born in it. His mother always said he was, dancing in her belly to something as gentle as the tap of her finger on a tabletop or the rusted windchime that grated outside the kitchen window. But Max’s father insisted he’d always been driven to loud music, hence his name sake. No matter how much his father had begged his mother, “Maximum” was no name for a boy with any future.

Max rolled his fingers across the keys, careful to not let them fully spring back up. Things were getting more intimate, the conversation becoming less about the words and more about the sounds. Soon there were no words. He was water through a river, weaving around stones, churning only when he felt like it. Bubbles gurgled to the top and popped their secrets. Then he was airborne, playing the leaves and branches like windchimes to which the birds answered with accompaniment. Then he went even higher than birds could fly, where the air was too thin to breath. The atmosphere divided the earth and the infinite in beautiful curvature, and still, he went higher.

Stars twinkled, and all he could think of was what planets orbited them, full of rivers and trees and skies just like the one he’d left. He tumbled, head over toes, experiencing this music omnidirectionally, because he wasn’t limited to two ears anymore. It infused him, became his lifeblood. The keys told him the mysteries of the universe then, in so many tones and colors, some of the same ones that plastered Vista Mall, but in a harmonious fashion. He didn’t fully blame the Mall, though. It was built by organisms who were in their infancy, and plus, it paid the bills.

He shook those thoughts from his head, the ones pulling him back to the surface. They clung to him like cotton-candy cobwebs, never letting go, and soon those cobwebs birthed spiders that crawled over his skin. All he could do was shake them off, slap them from his skin. And he fell and fell and fell and–

“Woah there Maxi-man my music man.” It hit Max harder than solid earth.

He opened his eyes to a cage of industrialized tubing four stories above.

“You must have been in real deep.” It was Alfonso, the security guard.

Alfonso helped Max back upright and his hands slammed onto the keys to counter the shove. It sounded like a universe dying.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Alfonso said. And he squeaked around the floor, hips swaying. “Like the shirt.”

Max looked at the keys, and they told him what he already knew. The first gaggle of patrons entered the mall, triggering the drone of Muzak. Alfonso urged him to continue the broken assault of what in no way was music.

Max did, blending in with the rest of the ugliness, counting down the hours until Vista Mall was empty again.

A story about a young woman sipping a drink in a junkyard. Why did I find that interesting? Well, I like to try things from time to time that provide more of a challenge. Tackling an image with zero conflict or heavy drama was less challenging than I imagined. It was a pleasant break, almost a creative vacation, to explore this woman’s story. I look forward to trying something like this again.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Nokse Mojo

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/NxmAn5

DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.

The Story

Angie watched the sky because she couldn’t see the ocean. Flat on her back, hair tucked into her sweaty cap to cool her neck as much as to keep it out of the dirt, she drank in the procession of clouds traveling across the otherwise stark sky. The gulls weren’t here yet, but she heard them. She wished she could see them.

“Do my eyes deceive me or are you actually lying down on the job, Angela?” It was Bert, who looked exactly like a guy named Bert would look. She smelled the extra pickles he’d ordered on his triple stack hanging in the air longer than his words.

“Five minutes left on my break,” she said.

“Your Ma should have left the A off the end of your name ’cause your head’s always in the clouds. It’d better be served bluffing the boys out of their bonus checks. We always keep a spot open for you.”

“Jake smells worse than Paul, and Paul smells worse than–” It was unfair to keep going, Bert having given her a job when no one else had. And he’d gotten enough grief from his wife who had given him a swarm of girls, some of whom probably weren’t his. His wife’s reputation was known by everyone but him.

“You,” Bert said with the broken clock of comedic timing.

Angie gave him a pity chuckle and thereby a pity tit jiggle. She sat up, shook out her hair, and didn’t open her eyes until the blood flowed back into her face, keeping the fat brushstrokes of clouds in her mind’s eye.

“Tell you what,” Bert said, “You get the eight we just got in done by five and I’ll give you an extra fifteen to”–he waved his hands crazy-like around his head–“daydream, or whatever the hell it is you do.”

He gave her the smile of a father, one she remembered from years ago, her first and last memory of her own father, the corners of his mouth rising thoughtfully as if proud, the creases going dark from two-day-old stubble.

“All right, all right,” Bert said. “Twist my arm. Twenty. But–” he wagged his finger over his shoulder as he walked back to the office “–if I catch you lying down out here, break or not, there’ll be . . .” He slapped the final half thought out of the air before disappearing into his cave.

Angie went to work. She was pretty good with the crane, all the boys lined up outside to admire her, pretending to do work, proving that fact. It wasn’t long before Bert shooed them off like gulls, but she’d given them the satisfaction of stacking the eight cars higher than they thought possible, indicated by their slack jaws. She even made one in the stack upside down as a cherry on top. She would have done more, but it was fifteen minutes till her deadline, so one would have to do.

Eight was a good number. Space efficient yet short enough to remain sturdy. She returned the crane to its nook, because she didn’t want to leave any loose ends that might make Bert retract his offer.

A wave of gulls coasted over the jagged horizon of junk only to scatter, not at all keeping to the boundaries of the sky rivers. The base of her skull nearly touching her spine, Angie decided that there were more similaries to the sky and earth than differences. It was just a matter of context, of timing.

“Time’s up,” Bert called in the exaggerated voice of an umpire. Dad liked baseball, too, she remembered. “Lean back any farther and you liable to end up on the ground again, and I believe we already covered that topic.”

Bert held a Styrofoam cup with a red bendy straw, half the paper sleeve still on it. “Bought this for Janey, but she decided she doesn’t like strawberry tea anymore, and well, I thought you might.” He offered it to her.

Angie hated strawberries and anything strawberry flavored. “I do,” she said. “Thanks, Bert.”

Why a man with so many daughters who thought the world of him, his or not, needed more appreciation was beyond her, but she was happy to oblige, especially when she saw the look in his eyes, which weren’t checking out her breasts, and they could have, her coveralls being a little too snug, and one-too-many buttons undone due to the heat of the crane’s cab. She regretted the mental tit jiggle accusation from earlier, slipped the paper off the straw, and took a sip, doing her best to keep a straight face through the flood of oversweetened tea.

“Think of that as a bonus, then,” he said, expecting a laugh from her.

She conjured a good enough one, then decided another sip was easier to handle.

“Go on then,” he said. “You earned it.”

She climbed her car tower without losing the drink.

“Jesus!” Bert called from below.

She thought about saying something about angels, but figured she’d leave the bad jokes to him, and she didn’t need a nickname, and he loved giving nicknames.

“It’s fine,” she said. “Look.” And she rocked left and right, back and forth, to prove it was sturdy.

Bert gave her a a you’re-crazy-but-all-right shake of his head, then another one of those fatherly smiles that strangley made her heart hurt. But she realized it was more from the view. The ocean, unobstructed and calm but for a few whitecaps and bobbing gulls. Why they weren’t soaring in the boundless sky with their brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, was beyond her.

She took another sip, and it didn’t taste so bad. Along with the view of the water, the kiss of the breeze, a chunk of crushed iced added the texture she needed to recall what was, she was happy to find, another piece of Dad that needed less than the twenty minutes she had to assemble. She used the other nineteen to savor it.

This was one of the stories that proved to me these exercises are working. I go into much more detail in the video as to why, but what I generally found is always trust your subconscious. It tends to lead you places just when things feel like their going nowhere. It was indeed darkest before the dawn.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Valera Lutfullina

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QrY31B

DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.

The Story

These thoughts. They whisper from a room with no light, asking to see.

A finger responds, flipping a switch. That finger straightens, as does his body, pale and lean, yet to go to where the whispers asked.

These thoughts. Always asking.

Two paces, three, four, and he’s there, shoes crossing the barrier, dull and black. His hand extends, and the finger is curled no longer. Straight, a vector to take him to where the thoughts demand.

These thoughts. Always demanding.

The chair doesn’t feel right, rickety, back leg lifting and lowering, foreleg wounded and bandaged. He tries to compensate for that flaw. It leads him to an awkward position with left leg extended, right leg bent, and hands gripping the edge of the seat to keep him upright. He is lost in the distance as these thoughts speak.

These thoughs. Always speaking.

Arms and hands, praying, begging, searching behind him. He can feel them disturb the air. They never speak. They can’t. Mouthless. Other things they can’t do either, but what they can, they do well. They offer.

These thoughts. Always offering.

A blade four hands must hold. An answer, a clue, a symbol. The speak in these things, and one chooses to speak in touch, nearly. She wants to, on the leg that counterbalances the chair, but she doesn’t. She knows the rules. If only she’d break them.

These thoughts. Always obeying.

He loses balance and the rear chair leg hammers the floor. The faceless women scatter, taking their offering with them only to return moments later as if they had never left. The smell of flesh of blood of brass. Eyes that once saw but now are blind. A mouth that could never speak bleeds. Bodiless it rests upon a stool of keys, singing like windchimes on a breeze that cannot be felt. He sweats, wishing he could feel.

These thoughts. Always denying.

The chair rights itself from the help of another. Chills creep down his spine. He swallows. The smell of the earth of the sea of the grave. This one tastes the breeze he cannot feel, the heat he can. It stops the hand of another, the one of two faces, one inside the other. Four hands she has, the splitfaced one, two crossed on her breast, one directly under his chin to lift it so the blade she holds can do its work. If not for the other, it might have. He wishes it would.

These thoughts. Never killing.

More wait in the distance, so many more. Wave after wave, a battle all for him. Which one will bring him what he needs? What does he need? Everything blends, directionless. He is no longer the center. The light is no longer the beacon. Wings scatter to the wind, to the storm that will not destroy. Endless shoulders hold endless poles, meeting to a center that is him but not quite. In this bedlam they harmonize, making a center for him, those who can speak with their voices, those who can feel with their hands, those who can kill with their blades.

These thoughts. Never–

He sees it in the eyes of the pig, feels it in the touch of the faceless women who can’t, smells it in the one made of worms, hears it in the blade to kill him, and he stands to face them. He grabs the sword with two hands, and it is enough.

These thoughts. Never controlling.

He cuts these women down who now have faces, mouths to speak. They tell him he is handsome, he is perfect, he is disgusting, he is forgotten. Each of them he leaves headless because he wants to see their faces, not see them retract where he cannot go only to come again.

These thoughts. Never leaving.

He kicks the sword to where the women would have fled if they’d been able and reaches into the entrails of brass and secrets. The pig stares at him, bubbling awful things in the voice of his brother who left him in this place with a way out but no way out. He finds it. The way out. Grasps it, and it fits in the grooves of his closed hand, unlocking the door.

These thoughts. Never winning.

He faces the thing made of worms, hand still on that arm that wishes to torment more than kill. He finds his finger curled again, a hook, nail shaper than the great blade he left behind, and he reaches into the writhing mass of worms that is a face that is a voice telling him he is a coward, that he is no son, that he should go inside with those soft hands and weak stomach because this is a man’s work and he’s not a man. He hooks an open mouth deep inside, and he pulls. His fingernail holds steady on the ridges of a mouth’s roof, loses it briefly but the teeth are enough, and they aren’t brave enough to bite down.

These thoughts. Never speaking.

Four hands are occupied with fear, not blade or torment, backing into the waves of others who have fled into the storm. The hair of this thing, parted down its face, hugging the sides that might have been beautiful once to expose something that is not. The blade it once held he holds now, as hooked as the finger that had ended the plague of worms who spoke in the voice of his father. This one is simple because it does not object. It drops to its knees, tangled in its robes of horror, and he splits its head once more. For a moment, it weeps that a son does not betray a mother, that a man is a man, like his father, like his brother, but he cuts her down again.

These thoughts. Never understanding.

He is alone with only an empty room and a chair. He breaks the chair. He turns off the light. He closes the door, and he never returns.

I know. I’m treading familiar territory. But with this one I’ve taken a different angle. One that may be more or less satisfying to you, depending on your perspective. While the first time I explored someone concocting a story for herself, this time I explored someone concoting a story for someone else. These are things we rarely see in post apocalyptic fiction: someone trying to create hope for the sake of creating hope. After air, water, and food, I imagine that is somewhere next on the list, but I’ll let you decide.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Anshuman Kashyap

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rALX1a

DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.

The Story

He stood in the shadowed entryway beause it allowed him to make sure the story was right.

Christmas lights sagged across the ceiling. A little ambience never hurt anyone, and she liked to dance from time to time, dreaming of those times when electricity was something that just happened, as if by magic. He hadn’t found a generator to seed that idea, but emotions were rarely driven by logic. No ladder to be found, dragging that old desk across the room to reach the beams had been back-breaking work. He rubbed the sore spot that told him it had been worthwhile.

On that desk, a mess of papers, Post-It notes and general disarray left by a man who worked too much. The chair skewed enough for a clean exit to retrieve seconds of the half-eaten meal that made his stomach growl though it had gone cold long ago.

The floor he’d left littered with enough debris to give it that lived-in feeling, a reminder that everything could come down at any time, like the world had, and to never get too comfortable. The coffee table looked better by the window, a stack of architectural and art books. He liked painting and she liked design, however a children’s book he’d put on top because it got more use than the others, from the boy. The boom box he wasn’t sure of, but the boy was an old soul, preferring the hiss of tape to digital perfection. The mug, perhaps too clean, but the man devoured more art than coffee with those smudged glasses.

The guitar, strung but out of tune, because he was no musician, held up a slumped note with broad strokes that read MUSIC IS FOOD FOR THE SOUL, which made him cringe, but the teenage girl was a terrible poet. Maybe her mother had battled those words with pillows and wall art that read LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE, though there had been no evidence. All he’d found were old magazines, whose innards now served as family portraits. Lucky for him, a lot of the photos had been free of copy, so they served their purpose. Besides, they were dreamers, the people who’d lived here, layering the walls with people they’d never met to go along with their own memories, because surely they’d have been friends.

Standing here, observing the pictures arrayed together as if they’d always belonged, he had to agree. He just wished their smiles were contagious beyond the bounds of the frames.

What he felt most were the words he’d written in soot on the wardrobe’s door. This couldn’t be a paradise full of only happy memories. That would make the newcomers feel too safe, too comfortable and forget the way things were. The peeling walls and ivy dripping through the ceiling wouldn’t be enough. Those things had become too commmonplace. But to counterbalance those words, he’d taped some photos, real photos, at eye level, so at least it would be the first thing they’d see before finding what had become of at least one of the original dwellers, whose whereabouts didn’t even exist in his mind.

More books were boxed at his feet, as if someone were moving in or out. But they’d been too big for the road, where backpack real estate was better served for the biggest ratio of the hierarchy of needs. The upright spines told of history, adventure, and dogs, because who doesn’t love dogs? This family surely had, as much as the art they admired and created, demonstrated by the ones just right of the entrance, tastefully distrubuted with the best photos he’d been able to find. Weddings. Beaches. People smiling in all manner of places.

A family. He hadn’t been able to construct one fully to discerning eyes, but as he knew, emotions were rarely driven by logic. This was good enough. Maybe if he repeated it aloud, it would feel better. Speaking alone didn’t seem right. He had his sanity, along with his rifle, good pair of boots, relatively clean clothes, a pack lighter than he’d like but enough to get him on for a few days, and an axe made for chopping wood but not used as such.

Not much else, really. The upstairs was mostly bare now, much of its contents had been repurposed down here. And, anyway, few people dared halls with closed doors, choosing rather to hide in the open because at least a chance of escape was more likely.

He thought about taking one more walk through to check other possible angles, but decided against it, because it might make it hard to leave, his story so convincing. Or was it? When you know all the answers, nothing was, he supposed.

After spreading the curtains just a bit more, he returned to his spot in shadow, having stirred up a flock of dust on the rug he’d used to conceal blood stains.

It looked damn beautiful, all of it. In another life, he might have been an interior designer. He sure as hell did better than the ones who staged model homes. Finally, the smiles in the photos were contagious. He was infected.

The view out the door, into where he had to go, cured him. Maybe he’d catch it again, out there on the road, when he saw the stars that could have been Christmas lights, when he’d hear the songs of birds that could have been the strum of guitar strings, when he’d see teeth that might have smiled once, for a picture, perhaps, on a happier day.

He closed the windowless door, because that’s what you did, took to the grass off the path, because he was a ghost. He’d never been here. A family had lived here. A father who liked to read but not drink coffee. A mother who liked to dance beneath Christmas lights. A teenage daughter who played guitar and wrote bad poetry. A son who loved dogs and music on cassette tapes.

The story was right.