A Decade Short: Stories

Her face left vapour trails every time I think of her, eyes shut, then out of the darkness comes her.   I’m in love. The closest to love I’ve felt in years, the love people say is a myth out of countless attempts at trying and failing.   I swear if I had her in my arms right now I’m squeeze her so damn hard that she’d have no other choice but to kiss me.   It’s a painful love.   The love that grips you and tells you your life has been wrong up to this point, love that alters your perception and all your better inhabitations.   I’m wrong and I’m so happy to be wrong. The worst part is? I’ve never even met her.   It started out when I was walking home, looking at my feet crossing each other, seeing the yellows of the streetlights take over the street.   The moon three times its normal size.   It was a night.   I walk down this garden and it goes on forever, it must’ve been trespassing I swear. Anyway, there are cobwebs all over the place and e...

Lazarus Bethany hated his home. All the houses looked old and every fence outside them had wood that was rotten.   He would often play with the fences, picking apart their fibres. Each flake would snap and partially crumble in his fingers. ‘It’s a piece of rubbish’ he thought. He hated anything old. Old wasn’t interesting, old just was there, like a little sister that wouldn’t ever go away. Old was annoying.    That was until his Mum had to move house.   As soon as he got to his new neighbourhood he missed Old, the rotten fences and the old houses, the familiar smell of musk and damp.   He quickly sought out anything old, filling his room full of old books that smelled and had yellow pages, old dusty guitars that wouldn’t keep tune, old rusted tins that had pictures, ones that had once had biscuits, and some that were so small he didn’t even know what they could be used for. His new house was the only thing he liked, it was old. As it’s already known, Lazarus li...

Dedicated to Adam Harker, the biggest Apollo I know.   A scent from a stranger brought back hurt, it was love gained and lost and remembered such was loves cruel cycle.   It was as though Apollo had her again between his lips, he remembered her eyes staring at him with every look she ever gave.   Lust, distain, anger and wonder, he had disappointed and pleased but every memory was cherished with caramelised nostalgia.    She was gone in an instant, vanishing like mist into the trees. His old loves number was still written on a postcard he could never throw away, it was all he had left off her.   Digits that brought back her face, then that smell.   He flipped the card between his fingers wondering if the number would work.   He doubted that she would   be on the other line but there was a linger of hope that purged through his subconscious, willing him to believe that impossibilities could turn into something real, that hope was something to...

 As I ventured into the Valley of the Kings I recalled the story of the Pharaohs Curse.   People who plundered the tombs would die from a shaving cut. Thieves would have their material lives ripped away from them much like they ripped away the material lives of the kings.   I walked with caution, believing it possible to somehow upset the tomb, for a pebble to fall in my shoe, arriving home to shave, the blood to never cease till I’m blue and breathless. Passing the vendors selling statuettes of Anubis and Ra, it was as though I was sinking into Duat.   The Underworld in Egyptian mythology where souls went to be judged, Ra acquiescently waiting on his boat for his passenger, whilst the eyes of Anubis judged debating if I was worthy to go into the realm of the dead.   I walked over ramps, and through scurrying tourists to finally reach the majestic Valley.   A sand storm abruptly began and I was forced to shelter my face from the brilliant winds that picked...