A Self-Study Within A Broken Mind

Shining Eves- Flaming Goldester At the end of the long summer that burns so bright and warm, a flower blossoms to progress the season into fall. On the night of the first day of autumn, this flower blooms where no human can possibly see it. The closed bud is golden and shivering in the cooling night breeze on its light green stem. The glow from the inside can be seen very lightly seen through the golden petals. As midnight approaches the bud starts to open letting a waft of sweet summer air roll over the field of dried crops. The moon beckons the flower to bloom, but the flower takes its time. Slowly the golden petals shaped as flames open and let a golden light shine on the field of wheat swaying in the night breeze. The moon looks at the flower with one eye closed as the petals peel into layers of thinnest golden leaves imaginable. The leaves slowly break off from the flower and are taken up by a sudden gust of wind. The golden leaves are carried for a few feet and then disintegrate ...

“Hey,” I said the next night into the library. Lila was sprawled out on top of a bookshelf, these no longer filled with lessons of my life. They looked empty without books, but it was now the digital age, and the stories remained on the laptop downstairs. “Oh, hey,” Lila sat up on the bookshelf, legs hanging off each side. “You’re back like you said. I didn’t expect you to be here the next day.” “I feel a strange need to apologize to you,” I said. “But don’t,” she replied, lifted her leg over to join the other and jumped off the height to land gracefully. “I did what I wanted to do.” “Even without beast rattling around inside me, I took advantage,” I said. “It’s fine,” she said. “And let me know if you’d even feel like trying it in the female form.” I tried to picture it, rubbing our backs together at random. Then I tried to picture how a human female and Lila could engage in sex, much to confusion. There would be a lot to figure out before it could be pleasurable. “I was wondering if ...

 Of the Explorer from another world Tina is a human being, leading a life of little import among her kind. One things she excels at is folding paper into all manner of shapes. After her fourteenth birthday goes uncelebrated, due to both her parents being busy, she seeks to make some friends in the city she lives thanks to her elusive parents. Tina isn’t a brave girl, having to learn all her lessons from the fact that her parents weren’t there for her, and the woman who was taking care of her already passed away. Tina decides to fold a world for herself, somewhere where she would be regarded as someone important, or at least regarded. She starts with a giant modular piece and names it Modul, the planet of living origami models in the imagined Paper Universe. She decides to fold paper people to populate Modul and soon falls asleep beside the giant modular world. When she wakes, Tina can see a model in her hand, a black unicorn, but has no idea when she folded it, or how to fold one ...

“I’m in love with you right now, it’s not even funny,” she said. Her hand touched my shoulder and she leaned close to whisper. “Anything you want, just tell me.” Saliva built in my mouth. It’s been a while since I ate, and she proved to be an especially difficult girl to unlock. The waiting improved the appetite, but wait too long and you die. I needed to survive. Her name was Samantha, a very basic name for very basic person. Human characteristics blended together when I was acting out of love. Samantha had been marinating in pheromones of joy for a week now. I have to be patient as she fully blossomed in love, enriching the threshold of flavors. It was a cruel game, but it was about my survival. She will live on after I fed, yet it would be a lonely existence, if I was to eat her heart. “Come closer,” I said. My mouth watered. No matter how many times I tried to starve myself, I ended up feeding again. My mom told me repeatedly that it wasn’t a burden, but a blessing. How did she man...

I returned to the small wooden room in the untethered space on Tuesday of the saddest St. Patrick’s Day under the heel of a pandemic of a virus in the reality I occupied. Had it been a normal day, I would have been at work the day before, and thus had a moment to speak to Lila at the tea shop I frequented. In light of this seclusion imposed on me, I had been away for another two days. Writing, and even using the writing device strained me at home. I had to explain that to her. I once stepped into the box to find the spiral staircase from before there, but ended up deleting that brief visit from record. I started writing it in the middle of the night at a hotel in Limerick for difficulty falling asleep. The clickety keyboard I used created too much sound for a quiet visit to that untethered space in the middle of the night. “Lila?” I asked, wondering if I would have to use the locator on her already. The bigger the space around me, the harder it would be to find her. Much like with Rebe...

How does one describe the fears of all who reside in the light? Do you not call it darkness? If that is your answer, then I am the entity you call darkness, alive somehow. I know not myself how I survive, but I see, I smell, I feel, I hear, and I taste, just as you do. The cold does not bother me, while you, it kills. That is why you light fires, while I cling to the shadows. You're weak. I'm strong. You tell stories of me, such horrible nightmarish tales, but I cannot say they are untrue. Your fellow humans look to the dark as a thrill, and it is from there where I strike. They scream and cry, but in the end all is silent. This is not about survival. The dark is my domain, my home, I defend it. There is another name that humans call me, a name devised by them of no understandable origin, but I enjoy it. I am a Garavand. I listen to them, to you, humans. The shadows hug me, hide me. So many stories of you are created right before me. I watch the darkness within these humans ...