Cold Case

     A young police officer discovers evidence to a hundred year old cold case in a small village. When he says something he is ignored, ridiculed, shunned and outright mocked. Finally he finds two people he thinks may actually help him, sons of the sons of the original investigators.

     It is dark and cold in the small space where he wakes. Body propped upright, the young officer probes the dank brick of his standing tomb. He experiences a claustrophobia he wasn't aware he suffered from, nails braking against stone as he struggles. So tight is the space he cannot raise his arms high enough to remove the gag covering his mouth, muffling his screams. Water pours in over his vulnerable bare feet, rising higher with each panicked breath. Over the rush he can hear the voices, recognizes them as the men he trusted.

     "It's a shame really, if only he'd left well enough alone."

     "Some things are just meant to stay buried is all."

     Cold water swirls around his knees, his fingertips turned blue. Then his waist, his chest, his chin are engulfed by the inevitable tide. This is the way the first victim  died. The officer wonders if in a hundred years someone will search for him. As the water kisses his gagged lips, he thinks it more likely he will remained buried.

Fur Ball

     It is just dusk and I make a run to the local old world market for mice... to feed to my couch as a treat. I am the proud 'owner' of two kitty couches. They purr when happy, and knead my back to show their affection. When they are displeased it is best to find another place to sit. They like their rodent treats still breathing, shoved down between the cushions like so many other things lost.
     I live is a formal gated community. A high-rise dedicated to fuzzy furniture. Kitty Couches, Bird Beds, Fish Baths. Inside these walls man's best friend is far smarter than the average bear, but they are still just dogs. Apartments are rated for size and type of 'animal' occupant, the rules strictly enforced. Our doors have key pads and retinal scans. Our walls have ivy inside and out. We are green, and we are fuzzy.

1000 Cuts

     I am a near willing accomplice in the plotting of my own death. Make no mistake, I do not want to die, but of the options offered, life is not one. I have seen the deaths of those who came before me, shown like movies as I watch in a drug induced fugue. Tortured, broken down into the smallest bits of their human nature by people who wield weapons  like surgeons, every last one died begging for the end.

     I instead, negotiated for the terms of what was left of my life. Stripped bare, friendless in a room full of too bright light and the smell of antiseptic laced with terror, I knew that death was inevitable. And almost, I welcomed it. 

     Could it be quick? No, I must suffer to fulfill the needs of their unnamed gods. But I could choose. I thought of all the dream like horrors I had seen as I am bound to their altar, the uncomfortable hospital bed of science. They could and would harm or humiliate, belittle or literally cut me into pieces as I lived and died under curious hands. I chose the blade.

     The cold metal rested against the inside of my arm, a tease of sensation, the glint of silver seen from the corner of my eye. And then in the hand of an expert the blade was drawn across flesh. So sharp that at first there was no pain, no sensation at all. Until the blood welled to the surface as my next breath pulled the edges of the wound away from each other. Pain registers, a burn that I have no time to adjust to before the sharpness bites again. I begin to count.

The Voices of Silence

     What does the inside of a sleeping mind sound like? Are colours brighter, are scent and taste obsolete, touch relegated to that of a phantom? Or is everything more real, surreal, as in a dream?

     I pose these questions to you, here in this beginning, before I offer you my own answers in the snippets of dreams and other life rememberings I envision when my eyes are closed and my brain no longer works on the puzzles of this world. I see the wondrous and impossible behind the curtains of my eyelids, as well as the hideous and the horrible. So I warn you, be cautious in reading, mindful that by trapping these dreams with cages of words I am giving them shape, meaning, power. And hopefully, for some, there will be freedom.

-X