fiction

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.

I was stopped in my tracks by this art, reminicscent of one of the most iconic and influential fantasy artists around: Frank Frazetta. To this day, he captures motion like no other. Despite the fact that I tend to have an issue creating an interesting story from a battle (in my opinion), I thought I’d give it a shot.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Team CousCous

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

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

Pandemon, I will finish your name. A blade disturbs my thoughts, cutting the air while a greater blade made of shadow cuts the wall. Made of men and swords and banners and spears. A great serpent rising. A battle soaring above the battle. I must soar higher. I will soar higher.

The steps rage with blood. Where it doesn’t flow it spatters. I find those steps with a heavy foot heavy with plate. The blade that distrubed me does no longer. It is the last thing the man holds, longer than his breath, longer than the daydreams of home where a humble home made of stones placed by his own hands atop a field tilled by his own hands sits empty but for a motherless child. I know this for the dirt under his nails tell me the tale, the pendant of twig and feather made by child around his neck, the grip of the hilt. I do not linger. I do not think of him again.

A bowman next, wild-eyed, spies me from rubble colored of soil in which no crop would grow, and this triggers a memory of a wasteland he fled to die among the bugs that swarm around him. Glory he sought? A life where his life would matter? I will never know the answer because as he realizes he is a bug like all the others, they take him down in their fury, not out of anger or fear, but because he’s there, among them, unable to navigate the tide. A good draw he had on that bow. But I am no stag, frozen by the winter of the arrowhead. I am a slayer of serpents, and I must rise to slay it.

A spear tied to a spear is a banner of tattered cloth and bleached skulls. It tries to rise higher, to show me it brings death. But it should know skulls of blood and fractures, oozing eyes and brains show the true meaning of battle. Yet it does hold my gaze long enough for another to think he can best me. A large man, he is, greatsword at the ready, careful steps around severed limbs and fallen bodies toward me as if we are the only two men in this hell.

I grant him the first attack, and what power he has. My shield buckles, wanting nothing more than burst into splinters, but somehow it holds, and I punch it up into the man’s face to punish it for its near betrayal. Heavy of arm but not heavy of mind, this man. I return the sword to him as he had sent it to me, straight up the middle to divide him, and it nearly did, lodging in his skull where his eyes crossed to observe the spectacle, yet somehow he tore another blade from his side and pivoted an attack. My axe silences the song of the blade by taking his arm. It tumbles behind me to never speak again. I step over this man, sorry to have not learned his tale.

Another banner, torn and stitched with dragon scale mirrors the one of skulls that still stands. Symbols I do not know. My side, their side, no side. A carpet of bodies sprawls before me, of all sides, and I use it to usher me to the top, no more steps to be had, so steps I make. The serpent shadow undulates a victory of sorts, spilling scales made of men.

Higher than the serpent loom the uncaring gods, hewn from stone, looking at nothing, not bothered to witness the slaughter done in their name. Not me, but surely someone in this swirling mess. Strange that men dress their halls with gods that cannot nor will not aid them. I wonder if when looking up, these men, with eyes dimming to black, if they realize their folly, and that even in the moment they believe they will ascend to these gods who give them nothing but an expression of apathy. Never think yourself lower than anything but the sky, I tell these men. With my thoughts, with my heart, with my axe, because they can hear me no other way. Acknowledgement or hate or fear or disagreement they show me in their eyes, dying candle flames drowning in the pitch of helms that will not save them.

A clash of steel, a tear of flesh, a break of bone calls from behind me. It could have been mine if not for the man who I do not know, pike not finished with the one who will not give up, clutching the end as if all he has to do is remove it and all will be well. A smell of pine of earth of musk assaults me from the pikeman, and though I cannot give my thanks now, I know his tale, and can give my thanks to what he holds sacred when these halls of stone are done, empty but for death and flies.

I stand tall then, because there is no place to stand taller. The shadow serpent writhes, losing more spines and scales, yet I have lost none of mine. Others see this, from all sides, and I stand taller than their gods in that moment, and they look upon me with awe as the light the serpent cannot steal catches my helm, my blade purging the blood of their brothers, and allies and enemies alike. But I am a humble man, no god, not at all. They realize this because I allow them to realize it, and the first man comes for me, with an axe as mine, a beard unlike mine, eyes of the ink I bring and bring and bring.

I will not survive this day, nor tell the tales I have learned. A quest of mine that never was. Rise above the serpent, rise above the day to do what no other man could. Finish a name. And I have finished your name.

I thought it was about time to delve back into fantasy. Strangely, it’s one of my favorite genres, yet one I don’t read much anymore. I try to read broadly, as I’ve stated in my videos. I think it’s important to read a wide variety of genres so you don’t get mucked up in too much of the same thing. All that does is make you myopic and give you tunnel vision. On that note, let’s take a deeper look into a dark forest where a man appears to perish among women who seem to crawl from the very earth itself.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Artem Demura

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/kDP2mx

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

Sleep.

Said a shadow of a tree who was a shadow of an armless man. Not armless, but I thought so, with bow so lithe it was invisible, whispering that word once, then twice. I did not hear if there was a third.

What I heard was plate on plate on joint on flesh. On moss. Soft. A fire will help. It won’t. I prefer cold to hot, so why? Heat burns within me now, pumps out of me, collecting in my upturned hands, as if it knows it should be there, so I can hold it, feel how heavy I am as it empties from me.

Eyes and sparks and voices. I create them all. Impossibilities. I listen for the man or creature again. The forest listens. The forest knows. The moss and gossamer haze and roots and branches dripping with–

Blood. In my hands. My insides on the outside. A tributary. I could let go, but I don’t. I can’t. I know if I do, I will lose it to the bugs and the dirt and the fire.

It’s warm. I hate it. A beacon I wish I could snuff. There is time, though I don’t have much. I am an hourglass, bottom heavy now.

Sleep.

Says the voice. Closer. Farther. Somewhere in between. I listen. I let two handfuls of myself go, and I am lost, just as I imagined. My head is bowed, so I can see its absence. Only green. No red.

Sparks and voices. I no longer see eyes. None greet me at the forests’s floor. None weep for me. I don’t weep for myself. I can’t breathe. Because of the fire. Because I am dead.

Sleep.

I do. That is all I can do. Sleep, drift, flow. All of these things and none of these things. Fire hangs on the edge of my vision. I hate it, but I love it. It shows me fletching. Damp and split and ragged. As I am. They are the shadow of a branch of a legless bird. No, that’s not right. That means nothing. I mean nothing. I will mean nothing. Soon.

Wake.

No. I’d shake my head, if I could. I would answer, if I could. With a voice that would extinguish that fire, because I had a voice to command a legion. Had. I have been had.

My eyes are closed, but I can see. My ears are closed, but I can hear. In front of me. Behind me. All around me. It writhes under the skin of the earth, testing that thin layer between life and death, like a mist, like a veil. Like a flood from a scalp down a neck to shoulders to a spine. To hips and thighs and feet ending with delicate toes. A family of toadstools, shoulder to shoulder, embracing, gouging, to move forward, closer. To me.

Wake.

I scream for the shadow of a tree who is a shadow of an armless man. I scream for his third, his fourth, his fifth, so they can be a family of their own, to match in the toadstools’ number, growing from me, like those grow from the black soil. But they don’t grow. They crawl. They burrow. They exhume. I am not buried yet. I wish to be buried.

The fire. It persists, it lingers, it taunts. Licking my feet I cannot move, spewing its heat on my face I cannot feel. I want to see shadows. I want to feel shadows. Again. I was so close, but now I am so far. The voice is closer than the other had ever been, the one who ushered me to slumber.

Wake.

It is soft, flowing off lush hillocks to a height that brings it down like a spear, to stake me to this world, this ground, not letting me go.

The fire pops, embers parting the smoke. And I feel it. I see it. I hear it. Everything. I know I am wrong. I am not ready. It tells me. It shows me. I believe.

My head raises, but that is all. It is enough. They don’t need to speak anymore. I have heeded their call. I am at their mercy, which is pleasant. I also see the shadow that killed me. It watches from a shadow darker than itself. It does not speak.

Wake.

Wake.

Wake.

“I am,” I tell them with my voice. I know it is real. My throat vibrates with the two words, and I quell the itch it left behind with the back of my tongue.

She smiles at me, the woman with the flood of hair and the feet ending with toadstools. I smile back. A beauty she is, made of all the things we hold dear. Words I cannot find to describe these things because it is in a language that is made of sensations. Ones that unmask a world where there is no sleep. Ones that glide down from cloud-laden skies to breathe unfathomable joys on the back of your neck, which encircle it like a necklace. But when you see it, it’s not a necklace at all. Tresses of the woman who had been inching toward you but is already here, lips parting to tell you to wake again. But you laugh, because you are awake. Alive and well, enjoying the fire that rages now, showing you all of their detail. In front of you, behind you, beside you. They crest again and again, endless waves.

You lift you arms to hold them, all of them, while the shadow that killed you watches with envy. You’d curse that shadow if you were cruel, but you aren’t. You are here, transformed, reborn into–

Pain. I had forgotten pain. They remind me, and it spreads from my leg where she bites, the beautiful one. They are all beautiful. They tear. They feed. I look for the shadow. I listen for its command. To sleep.

It is gone, and I am gone.

Sleep.

The novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorites. This image reminded me of that story, which I haven’t revisited for some time. I didn’t attempt to capture his style of writing or storytelling, but what I appreciate most about his writing is the simple relationships between people that have so much weight.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Adam B.

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

The Story

The scent of a campfire drifted through the broken window of the broken building Abe had spent the last two nights in. Breaking his own rules, but he was tired and hadn’t seen a soul in weeks. A man needed luxuries in a world that had none. Funny thing, calling himself a man. But Billy wasn’t here to tell him otherwise. He would be soon, though, or rather, Abe would be there. Why did grown men choose to keep their boy names into adulthood? He’d never asked Billy, never dared ask, because Billy had always said boys didn’t have the right to ask questions, just to listen, to learn, and when they became men, all the questions they’d been saving up for all those years, they’d know the answers to. From listening.

Abe listened. To the sigh of the building, of the wind, of himself. It was too loud. At least the snowflake the wind carried was silent, tumbling and twirling on air that Samantha might have breathed a few days ago. The direction was right. The smell was right. Pine and flowers. Abe didn’t know much about flowers, just that she was as pretty as they smelled. Soon he’d smell her again, pretending to dodge the smoke of the campfire that he smelled stronger and stronger, his memory of the clearing outside the cabin split by the creek with the unecessary bridge they’d built together, the three of them. So narrow that stream was. Barely a trickle, but that bridge had added a sense of home, a symbol of welcome for anyone passing by, saying “This is a home where we care so much if a stranger’s boots get wet that we built a silly little bridge across a dribble of a creek.”

Abe went to the window. The light was nice, so he took out his journal of questions he didn’t have the answers to, a dried flower pressed right in the center of it he didn’t dare use as a bookmark, even though it kind of was one. Blue and yellow with white flecks at the ends of the petals as if it were wise. Maybe it was. Maybe it had the answers to the questions he had. It would tell them to Samantha when he saw her, and maybe she’d tell him if Billy still gave him shit about having so many questions.

All this thinking, all this remembering, all this dreaming filled his mind with answers. Ones he was about to see come true, when he got through the city to that open space where there should have been roads but weren’t. A rare thing the people were who constructed it, leaving that picturesque slice of untouched nature untouched.

Abe closed the journal and drummed his fingers on it, then gave it a good luck pat after stashing it in his front pocket, where he always kept it, on the left side of his chest. Billy would call him a sentimental bastard. Samantha probably would, too. He smiled, hearing them enact a scene that had never been. Abe looked forward to the ones that would soon be.

His pack packed and his rifle shouldered, Abe left the building he’d called home for too long. He waved to it, sad to go, and it seemed sad to see him go. He turned to look at it again after he’d walked for some time, and it looked like all the rest.

He stuck to the middle of the road, which seemed like a bad idea, considering he stuck out like whatever stuck out most in a gray city growing a coat of white snow. Billy would say a thumb, because he didn’t have much imagination, and Samantha would say a fox, not a white one, but a red one, her favorite animal. Abe liked to imagine there was hidden meaning there about him being handsome even though usually women were referred to as foxes, at some point in history, anyway. He thought about jotting that question down in his journal, but he had enough for Billy to make fun of him.

He caught his reflection in an intact window. The very fact he’d found a window to see his reflection at the moment he thought about his appearance in a city of shattered windows gave him hope. Not that he needed it. The smell of smoke was stronger, the smell of pine. The sky was clear. He couldn’t wait to round the corner up ahead and see what he’d smelled since waking, streaming straight up from the trees until it disappated into a scribble.

He continued at a liesurely pace, because he wanted to savor that moment. Still, his heart beat faster. Would they remember him? Of course they would. It had only been a few months. Hadn’t it? He hadn’t kept track, something he hated himself for, but by the time days turned into weeks, weeks turned into meaningless cycles of hiding and scavenging for food, but always thinking of them and that silly little bridge across the stream to a cabin big enough for the three of them plus anyone who needed a roof for a night to give them the courage to go on. It was hard to go on, Abe knew. He was done with it.

Abe stepped around a barracade of shopping carts, logoed with the market he knew so well, through the parking lot of what had been his favorite burger joint, down a sidewalk Billy’d taught him to ride a bike on, because he told him learning on grass wasn’t for any blood of his, and that girls liked scars way more than tattoos. He’d see what Samantha had to say about that.

When Abe rounded the corner where the city opened up, he knew he’d never have the answer to that question, nor the one filling his journal. All he could do was watch as smoke flooded the sky, belched by flames that weren’t from a campfire at all.

I was fortunate that this story flowed. I’ve had some bumps in the road during this series, some taking over two hours to complete, so it’s always nice when something just comes out almost effortlessly. Horror is one of my favorite genres, but I don’t write in it often. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the pressures of genre popularity, or maybe it’s me liking too many things and never knowing where to go. Whatever it is, I’m glad I give myself the opportunities to write in genres I don’t normally write in for my longer-form works.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by David Bocquillon Carrasco

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/48QnW4

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

Dear Sister. Do you remember the prairie that you called a pasture? The one with the scraggly grass that was more like inverted roots, thick and twisted? I didn’t know what the difference between a prairie and pasture was until later, when we were tucked in bed, moonlight streaming in through the open window by which I could read, even under my blanket.

I told you it was a prairie, an expanse of flat land with little to no trees, while a pasture was land for cows to graze.

“Why can’t cows graze in a prairie?” you asked.

You were always smarter than me, no matter how much I read, and you didn’t read at all.

All I could do was read the definitions again, hoping to find an answer. My finger became black with ink from stroking the definitions too many times.

“Go to sleep,” you said. “You look like a ghost with the sheet over your head.”

I wished I could have seen myself, as a ghost. My love of all things dark and mysterious was the one thing I had over you. So, instead of going to sleep, I made moaning sounds, whimpering sounds. I found words that made me cry. They made you cry, too, and you threatened to tell Mom, so I stopped.

Dear Sister. Do you remember when we snuck out at night to the prairie that you still called a pasture? Looking for hoofprints, cow patties, even inspecting blades of grass for bite marks, as if you could tell. Tears could be bites. You tore your dress that day, rolling on the grass down the only slope in the entire prairie. I knew that might happens, so I’d brought my sewing kit, the size of a matchbox.

“Just because you carry around a sewing kit doesn’t mean you can sew,” you said.

That made me sad, and I told you so. I also told you that I’d been sewing for some time, and if you cared enough about my interests you’d have seen the quilt I was working on. Sure, I kept it hidden under my bed, because it was for you. I was making it for you. Always spoiling surprises. Always ruining everything. How I wished you wouldn’t do that.

“I’m sorry,” you said. But I could tell you really weren’t. You were combing your hair with your fingers. You didn’t even need a real comb. Your fingers were enough, sculpting the bouncy ringlets that hung down to breasts. My chest was as flat as the prairie, the ribcage to my belly the only slope. Even though I was only a year older than you, and you’d had breasts for a year.

Dear Sister. Do you remember when I really scared you? When you woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, because you always had to every night? I was standing there, just behind the wardrobe door that was left open, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary, because we did it all the time. I wore my sheet over my head, the one you hated me wearing so much, with the sheep jumping over fences you said made scary faces when the lights were out. I didn’t need to cut eyeholes because I’d fallen asleep so many times with the sheet over my eyes that I had gotten used to seeing between the threads.

I didn’t yell. I didn’t jump. No “boos” or moans like you see on TV or hear from kids on Halloween. No, I said something in a voice I didn’t think possible. And what I said was I would kill you then eat your soul. I’d decided that’s what ghosts did in that moment. Pretty creative, huh? I don’t even read scary stories, so I know it was my own creation.

You stopped, so still I thought time had frozen. I couldn’t even hear you breathe. After a long silence came the sound of your pee hitting the floorboards. It sounded like a waterfall on rocks. It sounded like hail on the tin roof of the shed we don’t use anymore.

I felt terrible. “I’m sorry,” I said. But I really wasn’t. I was happy to have something over you. I still cleaned up the mess. With my favorite sheet, even. Your least favorite. I led you back to your bed, brushed aside the hair that should have been mussed but wasn’t, kissed your ceramic forehead without a single blemish, when I had plenty. I almost cried then, thinking of what it must be like to kiss my forehead. I sang to you until you fell asleep.

Dear Sister. Do you remember when you said you were tired of going to the prairie you still called a pasture? That you were too old for childish games now and had started hanging out with everyone but me?

I do.

“One more time,” I said. “For your sister.”

That worked, to my surprise. You even agreed to go out at night, my favorite time, when the ground was cool and the crickets sang, and we’d roll in the grass long enough to make our backs itchy and then scratch each other’s.

Those were the best times, weren’t they? Before you grew up and turned into something I for once didn’t envy.

Dear Sister. Do you remember the razorblade I kept in my sewing kit? The one I killed you with? I’m not sure if you saw it when I offered to mend yet another tear in your night gown. I did mend it, though. You probably don’t remember that. Maybe one day I’ll know if ghosts can remember. I do know they can fly, because you do, but can’t talk, because you never talk to me when I visit you, out in the night. It’s colder now, and the crickets don’t sing. So I sing to you, like I did when I scared you as a ghost. But you don’t scare me, dear Sister.