Stream of Consciousness

The Shape of the Law From the Man of the Mountain
The man from the mountain did not come down shining but that was how people told it later, after years had worn the terror smooth and made a lantern of him in memory. When I first saw him descending through the dusk, he looked like someone who had been pulled through the inside of a storm and returned only in part. Dust clung to the hollows of his face. His robe was split at the shoulder. His mouth moved once before sound came out as if speech had been thinned by the height and had not yet thickened again in the air below; still the people surged toward him. They always did when fear and hope wore the same face.
By Cadma7 days ago in Fiction
Where did February go?
Is it really already the middle of March? All of February has blurred into one vast memory, and I don’t know what I did or where it went. Outside, there was frost, and for the first time in a long while, Prague was wrapped in a white coat and stayed that way, the way winters used to be. Like the city, I wrapped myself up too, and from the safety of my home, I watched from beneath the covers how quickly life can pass by when one isn’t paying attention.
By George Roast7 days ago in Fiction
Real men drink, right?
He has a problem. He’s felt it for years now, but he refuses to face it. He doesn’t want to admit it, to himself or to the people around him. All his heroes were the same. He likes to recall the scene where James Bond sits in a dusty pub in Latin America, a glass of whiskey in hand, his gaze fixed on a scorpion crawling across the bar. When he first fell for literature, it was Post Office and Women, which he read over and over again. Without those cans of beer and bottles of cheap whiskey, Bukowski’s work wouldn’t have been so raw, so honest. Even Vaclav Havel spent most of his nights in Prague bars; without that, he wouldn’t have been who he was. Those were the real men.
By George Roast7 days ago in Fiction
New Normalcy
I and my team of five were at least convinced that the HEIST was not the result of greed; rather, it was due to the banking system's stupidly overinclined and ever-increasing reliance on biometric identity verification. We thought it would work in our favor, but in a hyper-digital world, the tragedy isn't just that the body fails but that the body's degradation outpaces the rigidity of the encryption.
By Viral Rana8 days ago in Fiction
Frisson. Content Warning.
I feel a smidge retarded up there, whirling upside down by the skin of my thighs. I like the outfit though. The leather feels good— it's a tactile thing. The chains on it feel cold and crisp when I snap it on. I feel like the Batman of sadomasochism.
By Noah Husband9 days ago in Fiction
The Map of Remembering
The Road That Remembered Us A Mystical Adventure About the Journey Every Soul Is Walking No one remembers the moment the journey begins. Not really. We like to say it begins with birth. With the first breath. With the cry that tells the world we have arrived. But the old travelers say the journey begins much earlier. It begins the moment a soul agrees to forget.
By Flower InBloom9 days ago in Fiction
Dreaming to Drown
“Here you are.” Fire formed in the gray-bearded bartender’s eyes as he put a glass of whiskey down in front of his patron. His posture was firm and willing—a stark comparison to the man with rounded shoulders sitting at the bar.
By L.H. Reid10 days ago in Fiction
The Apple Gardener
Sally was ready to begin her compulsive schedule of doing an hour of work in the garden. Gardening is good for mental health. Gardening was her time to empty her mind. This was her time of meditation. She decided to do a 21-day challenge and journal her no-thoughts during mindful moving meditation. She noted the irony of this intention.
By Katherine D. Graham10 days ago in Fiction
They Won’t Fix It
“This is so wrong. You can see how screwed up it is, can’t you?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ronnie. It’s been like this for years.”
By Mark Gagnon11 days ago in Fiction
In Like A Lion
The murder of crows circled above, dread harbingers of his army’s advance. Pasha gazed at the hill before them taking in every curve as though it were a beautiful woman lounging on a chaise. Atop the promontory sat a squat square keep, its angles jarring against the rolling cliff. It was many generations older than Pasha dared hope to recite, the head and seat of some trumped up local lordling. All Pasha knew was that he lay in their way.
By Matthew J. Fromm11 days ago in Fiction
Víðarr Óðinnson
Maybe I shouldn’t have come; most here don’t even know my name. To many, I am invisible, but to the one who has summoned me, I appear in all my fearsome splendor. Alas, woe to anyone I am summoned against, for they shall feel the sharpness of my blade before they see me.
By Mother Combs12 days ago in Fiction
The Noise Complaint; normal is only a setting on a dryer
The first time anyone mentioned the noise complaint, nobody could explain what noise was. Mr. Alvarez lived in 3B. He was soft-spoken, walked slowly, watered the hallway plants when the super forgot. The kind of neighbor people described as quiet and kind even when they didn’t know him; which is why the relocation felt administrative rather than alarming.
By Cadma13 days ago in Fiction