Slow Burn
Fate ripped my dreams into bits of paper and I, the fool, dance among the scraps as they flutter about. Every measly attempt to catch a piece, and salvage the remnants of hope, misses. By the time the whirlwind dies it’s just me, lingering in a vacuum. Rolling a full Moon between my fingers like a white bead, I have the night in the palm of my hand. It’s cold and bitter. A damp blanket protects me from chilling gusts of wind as I watch firemen fight a wild blaze with flamethrowers. Figures fly out of the inferno and circle above me in a ritual of affliction and divine mockery. “Hold me,” I whisper to the rag, an inanimate object composed of more grime than cloth, and press against the grating assurance even tighter. I wrap my arms around myself to pretend,...
Forborne Tears
Buried in the shadows of the night, its tires shine. The dark graphite metallic exterior of the car’s long-wheelbase form glistens beneath the streetlights. Rain runs through subtle valleys in the pavement, amassing into miniature streams alongside roadways before uniting in an extensive maze of underground channels. Prone, a man comes to and lifts his face from the abrasive parking lot. The car stands perched on its four wheels, offering no acknowledgment, no assistance. Time has announced the inevitable. Numb below the waist, something warm dripping from his forehead, the man crawls, as if to race his final minutes. Just out of reach, the car, his legacy, his dearest friend, is quiet, absentminded. This rain is a lifetime of forborne tears. All he has to do is...
High Clarity
He crawls onward, etching his fingernails into a coarse, frozen, sand-like surface. This realm is devoid of light entirely, a perpetual vacuum of space absorbing every type of energy, consuming every wave of sound. As if trapped in a chamber of sensory deprivation, his brain emits flashes of intense visions, forgotten faces and misplaced memories. A heightened state of self-awareness carves away rationality with a knife forged in cold fear. Disoriented by the overpowering hallucinations, nerves on the verge of overload, he struggles forward, foot by foot, inch by inch. His throat constricts as subzero air enters with each breath, a decaying air delivering futility to the fibers in his lungs, weakness to the cells in his body. Anticipating the end, he tilts a heavy...
About
Here you'll find various scraps I've written over the years, including (very) short stories, movie reviews and commentaries.
I'm a 2011 graduate of the Ramapo College Literature program as well as the Admin / Community Manager at LPLive.
For a resume, additional writing samples (including screenplay), questions pertaining to web development and/or webhosting, etc. please email me or get in touch using one of the above social networks.
- Dmitry Merkulov