"2 AM" #Fridayflash

It's two am and I'm missing you. I've reached out every third Sunday and shivered at the expanse of white cotton that's greeted my searching fingers.

The ground's thawed out a little. The frost cleared for a few days, long enough for the blossoms to return to crisp demeanor. It was blue and rose, this last sort of handkerchief left fluttering, attached to an effigy in the untouched corners of your continuous haunt.

There are no chains strong enough to bind you to that pale horse and so I've been lost in thought, drifting alongside that dark highway, stumbling toe-to-heel, shoes dangling from a casual hand, but it'd be warmer if yours was near.

Listen to the moon sing silver and the clouds tumble haphazardly as I dig deep trenches around you because I can't stand to look at your face one last time.

I have to fool myself into thinking I never found you at all.

Your eyes are nothing but dust, yet I feel them stab between my shoulder blades, as sure as the sweat that slides between my breasts as if it's July, and not January morning.

I dug nails into the engraved edges of your name. Gold ink spilled in a little folded paper, just enough to make the first letter stand out.

Your bulk and your breath are sorely needed.

"Weak Hands" #Fridayflash

Sinew and bone will not show through gentle kid-gloves, nor will they express the sensibility of a brethren savior; the one that gripped tight enough to cling desperately to a shimmering thread of meaning something.

White knuckles clasped over a sweat-smeared steering wheel, clad in worn leather. To brush away the slick and bitter ice that has formed around the corners of life. To punch a proof of existence into surreality. To point out the mistakes borne by a misspoken word.

Weak hands can't hold on to what was not meant to be.

To embrace the child that never was.

To caress a cheek or a cup of coffee—low, fresh, and steaming between the fingers.

The bird.

A thumbs-up.

Certain polite applause to display approval of a despondent recital.

Pallid palms-up alongside the white stripe of a faded love.

Inspired by Chevelle's song,"Panic-Prone"

"Ablaze" #Fridayflash

Daniel met me for lunch, after we were assigned desks. His eyebrow shot up as he scanned the titles of my CDs. I plugged in my little stereo under my desk, stood, and dusted off my hands.

'What kind of music do you like?” He said, “I'm trying to get into this younger generation of music.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, “You can't be a day over twenty-five.”

He chuckled gently. “Thank you for that,” he said and thumbed through the selection of music.

“Well if you're not twenty-five and happy with the compliment, I'd have to guess that you're older.”

“A bit yes,” he said and laughed again.

“Aussie or English?” I asked, curious.

“I'm more than peckish. You can ask me over sandwiches.”

There were others in the cafeteria, but no males aside from the two teen boys from Orientation. Daniel sat in his seat, radiating sunshine, and the women were drawn by it. I rolled my eyes and took a gaping bite out of my roast beef sandwich.

“Daniel, our team is having a meeting at ten,” one plump woman said as she waddled by. I watched her undress him with her piggish eyes. I sighed through my nose and she jerked her hawkish nose at me, narrowing her gaze to pinpoint lasers.

“You're not on our team,” she growled and stalked off.

“That's right Claire, I was going to tell you, I was picked for the other Admin team.”

“Customer?” I mumbled around a full mouth. He nodded and laughed again. He laughed a lot.

“Ah,” I said with a shrug, “I think I'll prefer Client Admin anyway.”

He nodded quickly and folded his used plastic wrap into a square, to deposit it in the recycling bin. I watched this with interest. A man with manners. No wonder the women loved him.

I came to call his team of overly round, ugly, lonely women, his hens.

“Does that make me the cock?” he asked one afternoon as we stood outside the back doors. I smoked, he didn't. He stood there with his hands in his pockets and watched the teen boys walk around the narrow edge of the fountain, holding their arms out for balance.

“I remember being that young,” he said, and I studied him to determine just what was wrong with him. He had wild chestnut hair, those ice-blue eyes. Big hands. My artist's eye appreciated their astounding grace. His fingers were slender and exquisite, like a concert pianist's.

“So how old are you anyway?” I asked. It was abrupt of me but he merely shrugged.

“I'll be thirty-two in August,” he said, his eyes meeting mine. “And you?”

I snorted. “Just turned twenty-three. Looks like neither of us is exactly our age huh?”

We shared gentle laughter. I opened my purse and pulled out a square sleeve.

“Here, before I forget,” I said. I had to smuggle the damned thing out of the house to avoid Ed's questions. He always assumed that I was seeing someone, on top of his other nonsense.

“What's this?' Daniel asked, taking it from me and turning it over.

“You asked about recent music.”

“I asked you what you liked.”

“You asked both,” I said, scowling in exasperation. “I made you a disc.”

His eyebrows pulled together and he looked from the envelope to me. His face erupted in a brilliant smile. I was tempted to look away, it was that grateful.

“Yeah, you're welcome. But if you're wanting the kids' stuff, best to ask Tweedledee and Tweedledum,” I said jerking my head in the fountain's direction. One of the teens almost fell in, but got his pants leg wet. I could hear him cursing from where I stood.

“No, I believe I'll stick with your material first,” he said and shook his head at the explicit language filtering over to us through waves of evening breeze. The sun set in that moment, setting the sky ablaze in a kaleidescope of vibrant hues.

We stood there, marveling at the display in our own separate way, Daniel rubbing his chin, me just standing there slack-jawed. My boyfriend and I never did anything remotely as compatible. I smiled, in spite of myself. It was a small comfort, and I realized that Daniel and I had potential to be good friends.

Featured poem, "For M"

I might continue this trend, of featuring brilliance as time allows. This poem is not by me, but I am so very proud of her I must share it. - CC

by Christina Vincent

You leave me at a loss for words, which,

for me,

is bad business. You see,

words are all I know. Words

are how I know you. Still,

the memory of fire and solid darkness

leaves me shaking. Shivering.

So cold. You burn

so very cold.

Glowing as gold in a vault underground,

buried deep,

deep below

our feet, where

the sun cannot shine, and

the wind cannot

touch. Movement,

still and resonating. Your movement is

sound,

the toll of a bell to call the gods, the

thrum of a dying heart as it bleeds

onto the parched grave dust beneath.

What sorts of trees grow in

blood-soaked graveyard soil? What sort of

fruit would those trees bear?

A pomegranate, so

thick and juicy red, the seeds to settle

in the pit of one’s stomach to anchor

to Persephone, and you can

never go back again. A muse,

a demon, a lover sweet and deadly, a monster

of such exquisite beauty, wrapped in

shimmering gilded robes of poetry and caresses.

One bite, one slit, one

cut

and everything is blackness. Everything is stars,

and everything sinks into arms

like stone.

A precious, feral gift. A dreaming

of a time not of this world

spoken in a language long dead

with tongues that know dialects

we’ve never heard.

We used to throw ourselves on slabs of rock and beg

for a taste of your voice, for your sweetened

devil’s breath in our ear

with whispers,

soft whispers

that tempt madness from dark corners.

A precious thing

as thick as blood

and slick as ice

that burns and bites like hellfire swathed

in empty darkness where nightmares whisper.

A muse.

Vampire.

Demon.

Incubus.

Fuel another fevered dream

and let these tiny shivering hands

offer up another piece

of that twisted silver dreamscape

that holds stories together.

"Tidal" #Fridayflash

The war is over, yet there's an explosion in my head. It’s a deep resonance among the chop-chop-chop of helicopter blades, and shouts of the profane and the dead. I move a muscle—I’m toast. I must stay alive. I will lie here forever if that is what it takes to survive.

Low bended grasses and broken reeds anticipate the crash and clamor of the next land-mine. I crawl on a belly full of MRE and rough-roasted coffee, M16A2 my shield and savior. The war is through, and I want to sound-off the cadence of a lonely soldier, but my mouth has lost all flavor.

I stare through the patterned walls over to the Other Side, where gruesome guard dogs snap frothing jaws and wag ragged tails. A place where sinking ships form a trail of strewn carcasses, like crustacean skeletons at low tide. There’s a rule to not skip, just patter over the xylophone bones as fast as I can before the bottom falls through and the pit gapes wide.

There’s a slow beeping in my ear, and somewhere next to my arm, a cool wire constantly feeding me the ocean.

I stand blanched on the severed shore and shake my head in slow motion at a memory. A spark of reasoning, wedged somewhere between my first kiss in the park and the last cigarette before my flight.

I let go my tidal breath and manage a weak smile as the wave inside washes darker than night.

Inspired by Chevelle's song, "Bend the Bracket."

Photo credit: RAYWAL65 from morguefile.com

"Black" #Fridayflash

He’s a black man. Not dark as in brown-skinned, but black-souled. I can always tell just how they’ll taste with one little peek. Green makes for a crisp experience. Red makes me seethe with unexplained fury. Blue makes me smile and think of Sarah. The colors mean many things, and not many are pure black. When they are, my instructions from high up are damned clear: No redemption. No recycling. No anything. Just poof.

Black souls aren’t good for a fucking thing aside from deletion.

I follow him out the back screen door of the café, a paper folded under his arm, a To-Go cup full of Margaret’s Joe. Black coffee.

I slip my sleeve back from my watch. Five minutes and completely on schedule.

It’ll be a damned good favor to the world to take this one out. Cleaning up, balancing things out, but I tell you, when it’s an innocent…it chokes me up still.

My fault really; I got a little bit of heart left. It’s supposed to not be there anymore but sometimes, I can hear it beating. Maybe one or two thumps. Maybe ten. My guts tighten when I have to cut that thread on a kid. Or a sweet old lady. Death isn’t supposed to care about these things, but I do.

The dark man skirts around my car without as much as a glance. I smirk. The evil ones never can see very well. My car is special. She killed me a long time ago. I can’t explain how or why in five minutes.

Well four.

The dark man pauses at the corner to light a cigarette. I want one as well. I can smell his smoke and his coffee and I miss life. It pisses me off. I want to take him early.

A bus passes by, just like the script. The dark man crosses the street, and I follow. I glance back at the car. Her headlights are dim but getting brighter. An orange jack-o-lantern gaze. She’s alive but doesn’t breathe. I stopped asking why and just take the when.

Three minutes. He’s boring me. I wish I’d catch him doing one last wicked thing, so it wouldn’t feel like wasting time.

He strolls into the alley. He’ll probably start seeing me here in a few. People always react uniquely because I look different to each one. He stops midway and leans back against the brick. Convinced he’s still alone, he lets out a rapid-fire raunchy fart. I laugh, and then he looks right at me.

A spot spreads on the front of his grey slacks and a trickle of his urine pools beneath him. I reach for him, wrinkling my nose. He no longer smells like good coffee and cigarettes. He smells like the dying. His heart struggles against tightened arteries. A vein pulses in his forehead and his eyes bulge.

The black form inside him comes loose and wisps around his body sliding down the wall, the coffee overturned in urine, the cigarette extinguished.

Yellow and brown. I stare at the colors and miss his getaway.

The misty shape whirls, unaffected by the alley-breeze like me. He’s in my reach, but my hand closes around nothing.

A couple strolls by the alley’s exit. The girl is pregnant. The dark form flows seamlessly into her distended belly.

A pigeon is startled from sleep by my howl.

"Half-Past-Huh?" #Fridayflash

The boss never said that the train would be exactly on time, but by the time my knees ached and begged for relief, it was half-past-midnight. Almost from ridiculous habit, I glanced down the silent tracks once more. The moonlight did not pass through the yellowed sodium-lights pissing all over the boarding station deck. I tugged at my tie and sat the briefcase down. The itinerary screamed the time expected in loud red numbers:

11:45 P.M.

It was now tomorrow, and there was no train. The sky rumbled in disagreement with itself, and forks of weak lightning fingered out along the clouds’ underbelly. A curtain of rain dropped like it was poured out of a bucket.

Far away, I heard the unmistakable whistle of the steam engine. A slight chuggachugga, like it was working uphill. I plucked up the case again, gripping the leather-covered handle tight. It was supposed to be cuffed to my wrist, but I’d forgotten the damn things at the motel. The combination locks gleamed on other side. I smiled, confident again, and stepped out into the rain.

The train churned the engine and the wheels worked furiously in the slick tracks. Around the corner, and then the cyclopean headlamp. It burned brighter as the beast neared, the ground beneath the platform shaking in response. As it approached, I could see the heavy dent in the boiler tank. The crushed smokestack. Smoke curled out from random holes in the thing and it came to a screeching, shuddering full stop several hundred meters past the boarding dock.

A woman screamed; I didn’t even know she was standing there. I eyed her standing there with her hands covering her mouth, and followed her terrified gaze.

Draped over the coal car, and half of the next two passenger cars, was a black shape, oily and writhing like a coiled snake, but it wasn’t one of those.

A great slotted eye the size of a dinner plate stared out at us, as my mind scrambled to piece together the entirety of the monster wrapped around and tethered to the partially-destroyed locomotive: A big, black, Giant Squid.

There was the torpedic head, the cat-golden eye, with about a dozen shredded and oozing tentacles hung over the machine. It squirmed, clearly uncomfortable or dying, maybe both.

The train station attendant left his post, (having no tickets to sell) and approached the platform, mouth agape. I took a deep breath and squeezed my eyes shut. We had to remain calm, even if there was a cephalopod crushing the (11:45 P.M.) train. I cleared my throat.

“What about the passengers aboard?” I shook my head and started to put the briefcase down, then thought better of it. The rain smacked me on my cheeks as I neared the train and looked up. One tentacle lifted, waved and fell back to the tangled mess with a heavy plop. I climbed up into the mangled car and had a peek in. The interior was dark, but blessedly free of bodies. Overhead, the groan of overburdened metal and splintered wood framing encouraged me to vacate immediately.

“Right, well look at it. It appears to be dying,” I said as I hopped down to the platform.

The woman tore her gaze from the animal and stared at me like I had tentacles of my own. “Shouldn’t we call the police?”

“What would the police do?”

The attendant pulled a worn handkerchief from his overalls pocket, paisley-deep red, and blotted his whiskered chin.

“I’m thinking calamari.”