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They Also Serve Who Only Stand and WaitI don't know when we first went underground. I don't even know if it was one mass exodus, a swarm of mankind trickling through the earth's crust so vehement we carved our own caverns by the force of trampling feet, or whether it was a gradual process, perhaps even a repetitive one, a family here, a neighborhood there. For all I know, the echo of the damp subterranean machine has always reverberated off the cave walls, created long past by the Angels, who think of our well-being even while they shake their heads helplessly at our flaws.

They say that those who remained on the surface were raptured away in a great flash of light, like a millio
The Doppelganger 2The book still sings to me, and that's when I pull it from under my bed and stroke the cover. But I never open it, because I know what happens if I do it wrong. It's still blank; but only of ink. I know the secret, you see. It's how I understand the songs, and know the melodies it echoes up to me, through time. There are impressions hidden in the pages- spilled mead and raucous laughter, summer sunshine and frost on dead leaves. The last time I tried feeling them from start to finish, I passed out from the sheer weight of knowledge, and it left my brain scrambled for ages.

I found out things about my past and my family's past. I have Irish o
Across the Sea and Around the KotatsuSpring

Taco Rice

Mom starts with rice. Japanese rice, one, two, three Japanese cup-fulls of rice grains into the cooker, because Sis eats a lot of this stuff. It's one of her favorite dishes, taco rice, and Mom's always happy to make it for her because it's the only way Sis will eat her tomatoes. But back to the rice. "You want to rinse at least three or four times, until the water's kind of clear," Mom says as she cups her hand under the cooker pot, letting the cloudy water wash over her hand.

Rice cooking's easy though – just fill enough water to the point the rice's covered, punch in a time (or set it to "Quick Cook," which with our cre
Christmas on the Border of England and Over ThereIt's snowing on Christmas Eve, and half the men I've ever known in my life are dead. But that was in the war, supposedly a long way away from Oxfordshire, where I am standing outside my brother-in-law's beautiful brownstone house watching the snow quietly cover the hillside beyond. The daylight is dying and it casts the once-white ground in pink, and the pine trees are black against the hillsides, and the truth of it is that the war is not far away because it has followed me here. I am smoking a cigarette, watching the hill, and my mind is slowly counting down the list of men that I once knew, now buried under hills and snow, all of the way f
of the ground-

It was Sunday night when Geo climbed into my room from the fire escape. I was painting my toenails and listening to the sounds of the city: police sirens, pulsating bass, the kids in my tenement running guitar riffs back and forth with the street musicians on the sidewalk. That was the year I turned sixteen and took a two-month vow of silence to honor the death of autumn. A premature snow had robbed the season of its delicate warmth and color, forcing the maples to weep their leaves into the gutters. All that rainwater, all that decay. How could anyone create when October was dying outside their windows? Pete and Jake practiced acoustic th
Russian RouletteThey take her on her honeymoon.

The wedding was lovely, or as lovely as it could have been with a couple that were more polite acquaintances than anything else and two sets of in-laws as stuffy as a dusty pile of money. They grab her when she sneaks out for a walk one night, two men, beefy, not even bothered to arm themselves. Her last thought before the bag is shoved over her eyes is to wonder how much this would ruin her parents' plans.

She comes to in a small brick room on a sallow mattress, windowless and lit by a cool yellow lamp. There's a man there, standing just outside the barred door.

"Kelly Shale," he says, voice nasally, greasy
The BenchThere's a bench in the park that I never sit on. It sits tucked away, separate from the rest, coddled by the arms of a great old oak tree. Or beech. Or chestnut. Or something. Behind the tree curves the grey concrete of a 1970s flowerbed. Filled with the wax yellow and red of begonias in the summer, the flimsy flickers of pansies in the winter.

I come to the park every day. Sometimes I sit and eat my lunch, freed from the mire of the joyless office box I inhabit for 40 hours a week. Sometimes I walk around, following the tarmac tracks without thought or hope or desire.

Today is no special day. Its grey. One of those British days of murk. It
Night Chaser02:37am 22nd July - depart from London by commercial jet, business class.
00:53am 22nd July - arrive in New York an acceptable 7 minutes behind schedule.

Slaying an archangel is hard work. It takes a great deal of study, picking your mark, separating fact from legend, learning your target's tells and vulnerabilities. Even if you succeed, and when I tore Gabriel's crystal heart from his open chest I became one of the precious few who have, there is still the matter of retribution. Angels never forget the death of one of their own, and a legion of these creatures now wait to descend and deliver their vengeance. My only sanctuary is the night.
The Order of Sublime Simulacra Kamon woke to the sound of bells and saws. The ceremony must have started hours ago; there was invigorating yellow sunlight outside the gauzy curtains. Kamon's Self was intoning eight o'clock, eight o'clock with all the insistence of a song looping in his head.

Flesh brain, he thought, you should have caught that alarm. Sometimes the flesh was louder than the devices supposed to make it properly quiet. The flesh insisted on the persistence of the Real. This was exactly the type of lesson that the brothers were supposed to learn, and Kamon hoped that relaying to the abbot how thoroughly he had learned it might lighten the inevitable punishm
The Substitution ParadigmThe Substitution Paradigm

Ramu came up to our table. Glaring at me, he said, “You either order something or get out.”
I glanced away from the threat, and turned to Raghav. A single drop of sweat was running down his brow. Ramu saw that too and identifying his prey, he sprung.

Swinging around, he faced Raghav, “Order something or get out.”

Then Ramu just stood there. It was not as if we had rehearsed it before hand, but he knew. He knew that my co-occupants generally folded in the first round. Only the stout made it to second level, but they too buckled under Ramu’s relentless gaze.

I always had a policy of n
Brushing Up Against HistoryNovember 1963

I'm eight years old and sitting in class (I strangely recall that my seat was in the middle of second row, on the side away from the window), when the principal comes in to tell us that the president has been shot.

I did not know
what it means, but I know
that it scares me.

May 1968

My mother meets Senator Robert F. Kennedy while he is campaigning in San Francisco and gets his autograph.  I live with my father in a small town in Michigan, where every year leading up to Memorial Day, I sell paper poppies for the VFW.

blood-red poppies
blood of soldiers on the field
war has come home

December 1971  

chromaWe were merely children when the stars came.

They rained down from the sky in a burst of light, like shards of glass pouring down from the heavens. Supernovas blooming in the night sky, petals raining down onto the barren earth - angels, falling with their wings sheathed, glowing, as they glided down. We watched, starstruck, as the glow overtook us - we were mesmerized. We waited with bated breath as the meteors landed, the celestial light subsiding as dark forms started to pick themselves up from the dust.

They moved towards us with an otherworldly grace, their steps leaving no marks on the earth as they descended upon us. Frozen to our sp
Renew
The pig carcass filled most of the stainless tub where the delivery men had laid it. Freshly slaughtered, but not butchered, it had taken four of them to lift it there. None of them spoke to Rinnovi, only pausing for him to sign for the animal before they left.

On the way to the door, one of the men pointed at the stickers affixed to virtually every item in the house; black typewritten names and addresses on white shipping labels. The leader of the group nudged him and shook his head 'no', before hurrying him out the door.

Rinnovi poured a scotch, and turned on the kitchen vid display, his own visage peering back at him with a smile. He fro
the Chandler's Around the WayThe hose slipped out again. Chan cursed, and shoved it back into the incision he'd made, adjusted his mask, and bent over the pump. He yanked the cord, and the pump started to life with a cough of biodiesel. It bounced on the sand as it grumbled away. Chan kept one hand on it and held the hose in place with the other.
If fucking Fathers would spend the bone on a new one, I wouldn't be all night at this, Chan grumbled. He ached for a smoke, but didn't have the hands to spare. Plenty of hands here, he thought as he glanced at the riverbank. Some of them even had a pulse.
"Hey," he said to whoever was closest.
It was a sunbather. A walker who drew enough bone to slot time on the beach without having to fight for it. She had each arm draped around a man, both of them tattooed in the same place with the same sigil. Chan was jealous. Someday he'd have his own numbers, but they'd be women. All of them. He was old-fashioned like that.
The walker answered without raising her sungl
mia culpa, mia miasmaI'm still counting chromosomes and odd numbers
still playing hopscotch over the symmetry
of your shoulder blades, your whispers
skipping 'cross the seventy percent water
the one forty proof rum, still running
running sheep
until we can sleep,
we,
that thing they called relationship
something common, like counting
rocks at the bottom of a wishing well.
I am slipping through, sliding into
a seamless cervix, and she's serving
throat lozenges in the mean time,
mean time and mean country
serving time in this union, this marriage,
they served cough and coffee
held the Capricorn, held up the register
held the infant to the sag
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There is Thunder in Our HeartsThe incessant patter of rain against the umbrella just above my head quickened, and a precise crack of thunder echoed through the narrow valley. I tromped through tall, damp grass; the long blades whipped at my military trousers and left streaks of rain water in their wakes. Clenching my fist around the umbrella handle in irritation, I continued down the meandering slope of a hill and into the basin of the valley, where puddles of rainwater already began to pool.

He was standing there, chalky hair and corresponding robes clinging to his body like some poorly fitting glove. Pathetic really, yet somehow serene in a way only he could manage. Hi
Pie-IX: Time Can WaitThe Horologist had a special affinity for the clock tower at night. The droning tick and tock of the clock hands that only tended to amplify the moment the sun set, reverberating off the high walls back and forth, back and forth. The interconnecting cog teeth webbing together for not a second in noisy matrimony before breaking apart to continue the rotation. But what the Horologist loved most were the clock tower's eerie creaks during the night, the bellowing groans that marked its exceptional antiquity. The Historian wasn't too fond of them some nights but the Horologist had a sneaking suspicion The Watchdog slept better when the clock tower

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Introduction to a short story I never finished. Old, but I liked it enough to polish up a bit and put up here for a change. I'm a better writer than I am an artist.

Maybe I'll finish it someday.

When I wrote this, I wanted a completely androgynous, ambiguous main character. What do you think?

I know prose doesn't go over very well here on dA, but I thought I would post this nonetheless. It's short, so maybe it will!

Heavily inspired by J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye.

EDIT: HOLY SHIT, A DD? Thank you so much ^neurotype! I'm speechless. :heart: I'm even more flattered knowing that I recently re-wrote and completed this short story a couple weeks ago for a creative writing class, but had to remove it from dA because I am seeking publication for it. This is so encouraging and wonderful. Thanks again, everyone!
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Daily Deviation

Given 2012-11-03
It Goes Both Ways - Intro by ~spectrosity ( Featured by ^neurotype )
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:iconskywarddestiny:
~SkywardDestiny Nov 5, 2012
Amazing, I loved every bit of it!
I really hope to read more!
Reply
:iconspectrosity:
~spectrosity Nov 5, 2012   Writer
I am seeking publication for the completed version of this story. So perhaps some day you'll be able to read more. Unless, of course, you note me with your email address and I can send you a copy of the finished, revised story. ;)
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:iconskywarddestiny:
~SkywardDestiny Nov 5, 2012
I really do think you'll go far! You've got a gift!. . . Okay that sounds pretty cheesy, but I mean it!
Oh and that sounds great! I hope it's not a bother.
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:iconspectrosity:
~spectrosity Nov 5, 2012   Writer
Thank you very kindly :) :heart:

You're not a bother. XD
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:iconlintu47:
`lintu47 Nov 4, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
Congrats on the well deserved DD! :heart:
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:iconspectrosity:
~spectrosity Nov 4, 2012   Writer
Thank you so much!
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:iconlintu47:
`lintu47 Nov 4, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
My pleasure :happybounce:
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:iconsmeltlikesafety:
~smeltlikesafety Nov 4, 2012  Student
I love the way your details - picking at her fingernails, and the way she treated the cat - they all let the readers see how the character really is like, without even having to explain it outright. Thank you for the really great read. :)
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:iconspectrosity:
~spectrosity Nov 4, 2012   Writer
I'm glad you picked up on those things! Thank you for your thoughts. :)
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:iconsindima:
~Sindima Nov 3, 2012  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
That was very interesting. Congrats on the daily.
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