written by Susan
Sylvanus (Vibes only. Roughly Fever Dream)
When you realize your mistake, you will fall again. Down into darkness, into a room with no walls.
written by Susan
February 13, 2024
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“Do you have to go?” I ask quietly, watching his face for any sign of the same misery I felt.
“You know I do.” His grave reply was almost enough. There was regret in his eyes, but I couldn’t help the voice screaming inside me that he couldn’t understand. How could he? I’d never told him how much I had come to rely on seeing his face to make living bearable.
Sometimes, I was certain he thought I was simple. Because I said so little. I asked so little. Often just sitting near him and sharing the air. I’m sure he thought I had nothing to say.
I have so much to say.
I just knew in the way that I knew many things, an intuition passed from my mother and mother’s mother, that he’d always had enough of people talking at him. Desperate for his affection.
So was I. But mine was in silence.
And in two days, he would be gone.
written by Susan
February 13, 2024
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Author Note: Scrapped, but keeping as a scribble for inspiration.
Trying to start at the beginning and still capture the immediacy of that moment could be too difficult. I don’t know how to explain the monotony, the complete acceptance of normalcy that made everything I’m about to tell you so horribly unbelievable.
I didn’t believe in fantasy… but I wanted to. I wanted it so badly that I sacrificed reality on a daily basis in favor of computer games, books, movies. I sacrificed it all for a taste of the imagined and then when it all became real, I didn’t believe it.
I hate to be cliche, but sometimes the truth is just that. It started with a dream.
Read more written by Susan
February 13, 2024
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Somehow he’d done it again. Another night with another woman. Her arm had curled around his stomach even as he’d thought over how to get rid her. He spent another thirty minutes trying to think of a good excuse to leave before sunrise to avoid an awkward breakfast. But there was always the chance that she’d be there when he came home and then he would have to explain that he didn’t want to see her again. He’d tried simply avoiding phone calls before and it didn’t work, they always came back.
So he did what had become a second nature. He rolled over and started gathering her things. He put them on the table by the door and then got in the shower. If she wasn’t awake by the time he got out, he would wake her up and tell her to go home. She was pretty, for sure. Soft sienna skin and almond eyes suggested she was a pleasant Puerto Rican mix. Her behavior was another matter. Lucas hated the flirtatious game of push and pull. Not only figuratively but literally. He’d push them away and they’d pull him back.
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February 24, 2023
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Beyond the realm of time and distance and in a place so close but so far away, there is a tree. A special tree that is grand in stature but as gray as the ominous sky. A tree that has grown, but never taken breath or preened in the sun. A tree that was born on a dark October day when time stopped to rest. There it stayed for how long, no one knows because when time stops, eternity passes in a sigh. When time woke again, the tree was surrounded by life and though the sun shined, the tree was still shadowed and gray.
Hungry beasts with gnarling teeth and high, shrill screams tried to cut down the tree, but it would not budge. Soon, the tree was forgotten, but inside, it grew….and grew for within was a tragedy that knew no age. Greedy for knowledge, it burned as it learned. The more it knew, the more it grew until a hole appeared outside of it.
Read more written by Susan
February 24, 2023
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It was a piss green peridot with two inlaid cubic zirconia attached to a size seven band. I wear a size 9, but it might fit my pinky. Since I pulled it off a finger buried under twelve inches of Paco Taco scraps, I had no illusions that the glimmering gems were real. No killer worth his salt would leave anything valuable on a stiff. It may have been cheap, but it sure cleaned up nice.
written by Susan
February 22, 2023
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My story starts in a car traveling up Mt Malema. The green flora slaps against the windows as we speed up a heavily muddied path that I would never call a road. My heart thuds in my chest as I realize what it means we were basically offroading to get to what will be my home for the next year.
Read more written by Susan
March 4, 2022
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Writers Note: This is the original short story I wrote in 2014, but you may see the full novel eventually. Let me know what you think!
January 20, 2025 – 0900
Sometimes when driving over the Springstand Dam, Megan imagined jerking the wheel to the right and plunging over the side of the bridge into the turbulent water. She just imagined. Would the impact of the guard rail be hard or would she go right through? How long would she have before she hit the water? Would it feel like flying? Would the car sink right away or bob for a while? Her car was electric, so would she be electrocuted? She drove on until she was past the dam and the landscape dried up into the same farmland that would stretch all the way to Springstand.
It wasn’t really that she wanted to die. That’s why she always kept driving. Because she didn’t really want to die, nor did she want to put anyone through the trouble of fishing a car out of a lake or grieving for her if that were the case. She just wondered what it felt like the seconds before her car hit the water. She could go skydiving and feel the plunge, but it wouldn’t be the same. All the cars came with automatic collision avoidance now so she probably couldn’t do it even if she tried anyway.
Read more written by Susan
February 3, 2022
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There is a room with white walls. Sea Shell, actually. I don’t understand why they have so many names for the same thing. I wouldn’t have picked Sea Shell. I would have picked a pretty sky blue. Then instead of cream-colored Victorian flowers as a border, I would have fluffy white clouds.
I hear a door slam somewhere outside and I realize that I have been daydreaming again, wasting her precious time. At the rate that our sessions have been progressing, I’m not certain that she has enough time left to break out of her psychosis. She’s only thirty, but it feels like I have been treating her for years. Nothing has changed. I’m starting to wonder if I have the capacity to help her, but medication made her listless and I have always had better results when my patients are talking, and if nothing else, she does talk.
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February 3, 2022
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Your dad’s house is a place of memories.
The present doesn’t exist there and probably never will. It remains stuck in time, and although you only spent the weekends, it remains a place firmly seated in your dreams. One dream took place on a cold misty morning in the backyard. On reflection, the chill and mist themselves were out of place compared to the usual glaring heat barely avoided by hiding in the shade on a typical day. As you walked down the yard towards Grandma’s house, you saw your two cousins standing at a random cluster of trees surrounded by bright purple, yellow and blue Irises. It was strange to have always been disturbed by this oasis in the middle of your dad’s three acres, especially when it was so beautiful, but there was a voice in your head that said there could have been snakes in those flower stalks; poisonous snakes just waiting to bite young girls.
Read more written by Susan
February 3, 2022
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I think I’m an alien. What was that Latin phrase? Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I am. Well, I think I’m an alien, therefore I am.
I don’t think I always felt this way. I briefly remember a time when I didn’t think of anything beyond the moment. It’s funny that I can barely remember that time at all. But I do remember a boy.
This was somewhere in middle school when all we seemed to do was play tag and find new ways to physically hurt each other and laugh about it. He came to my tiny bible-belt school as a transfer student wearing black from head to toe, a tongue ring and a skull necklace. It was a scandal at the time. They were afraid of him because they were taught that fearing what they don’t know is human. They called him Satan.
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