short stories

This was a great experience that I doubt will be often. Getting to write a story inspired by artwork and music by the same creator. I feel like more than ever the music really drove the narrative on this one.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Artem Chebokha

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8eNe4G

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

Her love was a horizon lodged in my throat. Flat, with a pulse of steepled rooftops, but that pulse was rare. Always dead center, no matter how high or low you went. And I usually went high.

Slick aluminum shingles, always precarious, but so was she. Broke me out of equalibrium with more than her eyes gazing at me above a mask through which her hot breath puffed clouds more beautiful than the ones above. It smelled like the sun. Felt like it, too. When she leaned on my shoulder, face to my neck, angled up to aim at the spot behind my jaw and below my ear. Got me every time, skin electric.

“The best kind of sunsets are the ones that look like the end of the world,” she’d said.

That one had, a swirl of fire with a hot center. Like looking at a cross-section of Earth, that molten core bearing down on me. I shied away from it. She noticed.

“Afraid of heights?” she asked.

I shook my electrified neck. The brush of her soft chin that had escaped her mask made it worse. Made it better.

“You afraid of germs?” I shot back, stupidly. Her hand left mine, and the leaving made me remember that it had been there to begin with. That’s when I knew she was for me. That feeling of absense. A hole. I know that sounds fucking cheesy, but it’s true.

“Prove it,” she said and sprinted away across the roof.

My sneaker slipped on condensation before I even considered going after her. Maybe I was afraid.

Her silhoutte soon matched the rest in the dwindling light, head bobbing like a moon or a sun, bringing chaos to the skyline. In that moment, I felt like I could touch the moon, or the sun.

I went after her, skirting vertigo and chimneys and air ducts, telling myself that if I kept up my pace, not hesitating, I wouldn’t slip and end my life. Somehow I knew she was worth it. The hand she’d held was so cold it hurt, and I feared if I didn’t hold it again, it might shatter like ice. I know that sounds fucking cheesy, but it’s true.

“Hey slowpoke!” A call that came from everywhere as if she had ascended to the sky, became the earth and everything in between. But no, that was just my disorientation. I honed in on her location, standing with hands on hips in that sexy way, wet asphalt glinting like gold dust around her.

I found my way to a fire escape, and she laughed me the whole way down, clapping me to the finish line I did and didn’t want to reach.

She tugged her mask down and blew me a kiss before dashing down the street to anywhere I’d follow. Where I followed her was through a maze of piss-scented alleyways, home to a nation of cats who ruled homeless men in cardboard castles. They were scattered ball bearings that tripped me up.

“I was wrong,” she said gripping a light post with one hand, circling it. “You’re worse on the ground than on the roof.”

No kiss this time, virtual or not, before she made her way to the ribbon of water that looked even more majestic, slim and precise, bringing the sky to the ground in an illusion that made my eyes hurt.

I picked my way to the docks. She wasn’t among the crates crowned with rope and bird shit. I held my sleeve up to my nose to mask the smell. Nothing pretty about that.

Then something flew toward me, a bullet, a torpedo, a meteor. That frozen hand of mine was my dominant, so I brought it up to deflect the missle, but it was as heavy as a block of ice. My head took the impact instead, right on top.

The cutest laugh you could call a cackle flocked around me. Birds took flight as I stumbled back. I mentally thanked the deck hands for leaving so much rope. And so many crates.

She joined me then, to rub it in. Or so I thought. She glided to me and kissed the top of my head with her mask still on.

“I always hated football,” she said, picking up the object of her declaration. She tossed it from hand to hand. “But my brothers made me practice.” She nudged herself a seat next to me. “I always thought it was such an ugly shape. So I disassembled the one we had and reassembled it into a heart shape. I’m damn good at sewing.”

I should have laughed, but I didn’t, and I could see she waited for me to.

“I like it,” I said, and I did.

She punched me in the shoulder. “No you don’t.”

I looked into her eyes that were like staring into the sun. A crash sounded in front of us.

“Whale!” she said miming a telescope. She found it funny. So did I.

She held my hand, and it came back to life. We watched that lone giant breach once more until its waves were like all the others. She took my head in her hands, and I almost melted, unsure if I would be able to stand–no that was the wrong word–

She tilted it down to where I faced the ground, our feet touching, connected, and right where my cowlick exposed a hint of scalp, she placed her unmasked lips.

Remain whole. It was a phrase I’d needed, not a word. And I it blew my roof off. I know that sounds fucking cheesy, but it’s true.

“Tomorrow?” she asked.

She didn’t give me time to answer, because she knew the answer, another shadow lost among shadows.

I stayed there, my hand heavy again, but my head weightless, afire, never smoldering.

I never saw her again, but I still come back to that spot, where I am now, because I can never miss a “tomorrow.”

An intriguing title I should have looked up the meaning of first. However, that would have yielded a different story I’m sure. And I discuss this at length in the video, but one of my favorite things about storytelling is that you ever only take one possible path when infinite ones are available. I always wonder where those other paths lead.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Igor Galkin

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/bKn4Rk

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

The candle’s flame was cold. It flickered, and a thread of smoke lifted into the air, so Merryn knew it was real. She thought to touch it, but she couldn’t bring her hands from the sheet eaten by time. Barely there, it was. However, she enjoyed the hearty threads on her palms, and she sent her fingertips to explore its surface.

It was dark here, except for the faint candle light, but after a time, the moon showed itself, and when she saw what it revealed, she nearly screamed. Walls, high and coarse with stone were dressed in foul whispers that came from dark places tunneled within them. If she could only bring her hands to her ears to silence those whispers. If she could only bring her hands to her eyes to hide what the moonlight revealed. It showed her more than walls festooned with empty holes that breathed horror. It brought the truth of what lay before her. No longer were her hands or the sheet caressed with the warm tones of the candle. The silver moon struck her naked with its frigid gaze, leaving her alone but for the emptiness of a mausoleum.

She dropped to her knees, because it would at least limit her view, and she pressed her face into the hanging sheet. She would bring it back to its former glory. She was good with her hands, with a needle and thread. She would repay it for the comfort it had given her in this terrible place.

Comfort didn’t last long, for she saw through the sheet to see nothing beneath what she had assumed was a table. This was not a table at all but a box without legs. It had to be the dust, her reeling mind, that conjured such illusions. Perhaps she needed to stand again, allow the blood to flow where it needed.

So, she did and was greeted by a ghostly face. It hovered there, expressionless in the gloom. Still, she could not move her hands to run away. They wanted to remain, grounded to the only thing she could feel, and soon the rest of her was possessed by their desire.

The face belonged to a woman, smooth of skin and gentle of eye, her beauty not sullied by the sharp rays of the moon. She did not speak, merely touched the wick of an unlit candle opposite the other Merryn had not noticed. When the woman removed her finger, a flame sprung to life, as cold as the other.

“These fragile things will do nothing to warm you up,” the woman said. “Here, let me.” And she went to Merryn, took the shawl from her shoulders and draped it over Merryn’s.

“Better?” the woman said into her. Her breath smelled of nothing.

Merryn nodded, unable to trust her voice.

The woman returned to her spot opposite Merryn, hands mirroring her own.

“This place is not to be feared, child,” the woman said. “It’s dark and cold and smells of both, but you will find comfort here. Soon.”

“I don’t want to find anything but the way out,” Merryn said, surprising herself. She pressed her lips together and swallowed her tongue.

The woman glanced at Merryn’s hands, smiled softly before gazing back into her eyes. “This place isn’t always so dreary, child. The skylight there, it welcomes the sun when the time is right. I am sorry that time is not now. You will love to bask in her glory, hear her laughter. Her secrets. Feel her touch.”

Merryn felt something at that moment, as if the sun had found its way here, through the candles’ flames. Warmth, growing from her fingernails, over her knucles, to her wrists, burrowing up her sleeves to reach–

“Her heart,” the woman said. “The sun is a she, didn’t you know?” The woman chuckled distant wind chimes.

“When?” Merryn said.

“Oh, it’s difficult to tell anymore. She is a tricky one. Generous but fickle at times. More than anything, you mustn’t fear her brother, who wraps us in his steel blanket now. Only when the family is complete, shall she show herself and take you into her arms.”

“I don’t understand,” Merry said. “Why am I here? Why can’t I move … my … hands?” Tears squeezed from her eyes.

“Look there,” the woman said nodding behind Merryn.

Merryn saw a cloaked man, his hands arranged similarly to hers atop what she now saw resembled the legless box before her, floating, unquestionably housing a corpse. The man blew out the single candle there and was one with the smoke left behind. The coffin rose higher and higher, its shadow moving across the ground toward her like a pit to consume her.

Merryn wept, tore her hands from what she knew now was a coffin beneath her own hands, stumbled back a few steps until the gaze of the woman found her and brought her back.

“Good,” the woman said. “She accepts you. You accept her.”

“I accept no one!” Merry shrieked. “Show me from this place.”

“If only I could. But that is not my duty, child. It is yours.”

Merryn ran away from the woman, into the darkness, guiding herself along the walls, but no matter how far she went, she always came back to where she started, her hands where they started.

“All roads lead to home,” the woman said.

Home. Merryn’s hands revisited the peaks, the valleys. The imperfections that were perfect. Like family.

Merryn felt the candles’ flames. Their invitation. She blew out one, then the other. Around her, other coffins rose toward the moonlight to where she would shortly go. And hope to find the sun.

“Beautiful, no?” the woman said, admiring the display. “I never tire of it.”

Merryn watched her fingers swirl into gray tendrils, then her arms, then all of her until she could watch no longer. Her heart, though, she could feel, and it burned as warm and as bright as the sun.

An amazing style you don’t frequently see in contemporary commerical art. I love the combination of the old world style with the modern themes. This artwork led me to a strange place, one I feel could be expanded upon. Who know, one day I may revisit it.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Morten Vlademir Motsar

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0nW3dK

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

No other trees grew there, so they were easy to find. If they were trees at all.

Leafless, nearly branchless, he could make out all of their detail for some time. The walk had been long, and he had dreaded the gnarled forms growing into view, but the walk had to be made. He didn’t know why, nor thought to question why. It was a walk they had all made, his many fathers and mothers, none of whom were truly his own, but they loved him all the same. They told him he’d know the answer when he arrived, and that he’d find joy. He played the voices over and over in his head to search between them for meaning until they deteriorated into the scratch of an old record.

He stopped because his foot was sore from the walking, but also from something else. Pebbles somehow always made it into his boot no matter how tightly he tied the laces. Untying them now would take some time, and the pain wasn’t so bad, so he made his way down the meandering path that led right between the two trees, through a space that allayed the fear and the mystery that he’d carried since leaving home.

Birds darted in discordant flocks, and he expected them to land on one of the few branches, but they never did, choosing flight over rest and perhaps a grub lodged in the old wood. He thought about this concept, of labor over rest, and how he had been granted the latter ever since he had been a child, told the mind would always outlast a body. Another thing he had never questioned until now, and he had seen many of them deteriorate in mind before body. Perhaps it was the years taking their toll. Unbalanced strain.

His pace quickened at this notion of unbalance, that pebble nipping his sole more and more. Even though they had allowed him the most mimimal of activity, he had exercised in secret. Rearranging cords of wood, digging holes, then burying them again, careful to remove the upper layer of grass first so no evidence of a hole would be left.

So why were his joints sore, fingers stiff? It was cold, and the walk had been long. The trees didn’t look so ominous anymore, the scoops of their trunks inviting.

He smiled, felt the vibration of a sigh across his vocal cords as his boots found pleasure in uprooting stone after stone to keep the path clear, an activity he hadn’t realized he was doing until he looked back the way he had come.

That smiled sigh again, followed by a tickle at the back of his throat. He couldn’t clear or cough it away. Must be the mist again, the clouds that prefered the ground to the sky, the very ones that turned the forest beyond into a hazy memory.

He decided he was close enough for whatever he was supposed to see, a dozen paces or so from the trunks. The space between the trees had been deceptive during his approach. They had created an overlap, which made the trees appear much closer to each other. But they stood a good distance apart, one in front of the other, the shorter one leaning across that distance with branches outstretched.

The area at the base of the trunk did indeed look comfortable, and now would be as good time as any to remove that pebble from his boot. He slipped it off but found nothing. He looked at the trees above. The branches looked even more barren. No fruit. No sap. No answers.

He put his boot back on and tested his weight. Still the bite of that damn pebble. He stripped his foot bare. It looked so pale in the sunless sky. There, on the ball of his foot, just below his big toe was a series of holes, so deep they looked black even in the daylight. His fingertips hesitated over over them, and he half expected something to come out, wondering where the darkness had gone. Even more surprising than the discovery was the realization that he wasn’t surprised. He’d never had these holes before, but they were as plain and ordinary as a toenail, not even a blister or wart. He had the desire to take the other boot and sock off, to feel this smooth path on his bare feet, so that’s what he did.

He traced the bark of the nearest tree, the smaller one, peeked into its many knots for the answers they’d said he’d find. Finding nothing at all but wood and moss, he moved to a nearby spot to feel the grass on his feet. It fanned between his toes, and he held on to it. The grass and earth had soothed his pain.

He stretched, wiggling his fingers as if conducting the birds’ flight above. Fine droplets spattered his eyes, making everything prismatic. He went to wipe them but couldn’t. His hands. He felt his connection to them, but was unable to command them. His arms, too. Shoulders, elbows, wrists. All of them were locked. Mentally moving down his body, he found the rest of his joints were the same. His neck allowed him one more turn, and that was to look at the two trees behind him, which appeared to have slightly changed their configurations. The branches of both reached toward him, lower than he had remember them being, and his own arms reached back.

His eyes, thankfully without joints, frantically scanned where they could for the answer they had all promised him, his false mothers and fathers, who he would curse their name if he had been able.

Then he saw it, from a swollen knot on the smaller tree, something as pale as his foot. It spilled from that hole to the earth, with toes of its own, fingers of its own, eyes of its own, a voice of its own, and very alive.

Another departure from the fantastic, mostly. It is vaguely set in the future and explores a woman approaching her twilight. How small things we hold on to affect our final days.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Swang

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8egg3R

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

The building was white and flat and clean, and Grace hated it. But it was home now. It was bad luck to hate your home before you entered it. Someone must have said that once. The sight of it even made the box in her arms heavier, though it was only full of flowers.

“The first step is the worst step,” Grace said, her sunglasses doing nothing to block the bleached concrete.

Cole weaved in front of her, without rubbing against her leg, sat, yellow eyes boring through her. He never looked at her.

“I know,” she said.

“Well isn’t he a darling–or she, my instinct in that regard faded ever since Maeve was born. What do you call that magnificient feline?” A woman shuffled onto the synthetic grass with a miniature parasol shading her swoop of a nose.

“Cole,” Grace said.

“So cute. You must have been a bad girl. Coal and a box of dead flowers for Christmas.” The woman’s face pinched into a cone. “Let me take care of those for you.”

Grace looked into the box of wilted lack of color. The ride hadn’t been long. Had it? The heat on the bus, her seat in direct sunlight, because no one respected their elders anymore.

Grace shook her head, disagreeing with herself about the first step being the worst as she made her way inside.

The walls were white and flat and clean. She cried, surrounded by a lack of color.

Cole glided his way to the window, hopped onto the sill and did as cats do.

“You don’t care, do you?” Grace said.

Cole looked at her. He never looked at her.

Grace made the best of things in the place where she would die. The flowers were an sign. And this apartment was the size of a tomb.

The next day, Cole was gone. The last thing to lose. She’d told him she couldn’t live without him, and that’s why she specifically bought him when she had. He hadn’t seemed to listen.

Grace went to the patio with two pairs of sunglasses to fend off the morning. A little warmer out there, but no furniture, so she had to stand. Touching the antiseptic building was the last thing she wanted to do, but her rickety legs never gave her much of what she wanted anymore.

She took comfort in the less-ugly horizon, with its highs and lows, much like her garden. No matter how much she planned the planting of those flowers, the rascals never seemed to harmonize. A painful memory, trapped in a tomb without a grain of soil for miles. A dog walked by on the sidewalk below, considered the synthetic grass, then decided it wasn’t good enough for his urine.

Grace snorted a laugh, which brought more tears than joy. Sweat gluing her arms to her sides, and her thighs feeling like a battlefield, she returned inside. There, in a patch of four squares of light, was Cole, an orange flower in his mouth.

“Where’d you get that?” she said. Her heart fluttered like the butterflies in her garden.

Cole didn’t answer, just dropped it at his feet like a dead mouse. Her cane was no good, just pushing it around, so she braved squatting. A chair for support would have been a good idea, but hindsight is always twenty-twenty, as if she had ever known what that looked like. On her back, body a sea of spasms, the ceiling was an unfocusable nothing. If there had only been something to concentrate on, maybe it would have dulled the pain.

The flower’s scent made it to her. She closed her eyes and used that. Time was meaningless, but she supposed it had been hours. Hours were what she needed.

The flower kept the pain at bay. She couldn’t reach it, but she pretended she could, delicately gripping the stem before give it a respectful sniff. Then Cole snatched it away and pranced to somewhere she couldn’t see. She rattled off all the curses she’d bottled since the swear jar that she fucking got rid of first before coming to this cell.

Sometimes anger was what you needed. The thought came to her as she got to her feet, hunched like an invalid, which she was. She limped to the door, where Cole continued to taunt her, holding the flower all wrong. Two of the petals were missing already. How could he do this to her?

The door opened by a sensor, with a hiss, and Cole darted outside. She gave an encore of curses to the stupid, dead, robotic room, and hauled her flesh fire after him.

The path to the road was hot coals. The kind the lady thought her worthless cat was named after. Cole had dropped the flower as he crossed the street, just in time for a car to flatten it before she got there. Someone shouted behind her. She didn’t care.

At least she had remembered her cane. Her mind may be going, but she still had that. The cane propelled her after Cole, and she hoped it was picking up all kind of filth, because she would bop him on the head with it when she finally caught him. She tracked him to a tunnel, which she entered with fervor, this dead place finally have some use.

After an eternity of darkness, she was reborn again into light, and felt like screaming like a newborn. Doubly so when she saw Cole in a slant of light, the back of his head to her, like back home.

She followed his gaze up to a wall, not lacking color at all, arcing like a crashing wave. She separated from her body, the planet-size pain left behind in another solar system.

The flowers grew with enough irregularity to make her smile, to make her cry.

“Thank you,” she said to Cole.

Cole flicked a ear, his back to her, and she wouldn’t have had it any other way.