She was to blame, the siren. It was her fault. She lured them into things they didn’t want to do.   They didn’t want to hit the rocks,...

Those damn sirens!   Just when I had gotten into the swing of mopping decks in the relative freedom of mere shackles—sans being tethered...

Red heat blisters skin unless wrapped in heavy woollen greatcoats, shields, and gloves.  Goggles and ear muffs unable to stop pain.   Giant brick-lined iron ladles slop molten steel across the foundry.  Massive gloves and coats, aprons, thick face shields struggle.   Red-glowing iron bars snake through ramming, compressing, shuddering mill-blocks squeezing thinner and longer.  Standing on guides, men push flaming bars through the next guide, furnace, mill-block.   Raw coal at

Heat and flames burning bushy eyebrows, aromatic smoke wafting, Nandolnd, the crumpled gnome, moves the long-handled broadtruele inside his 400-year-old cob oven to allow his loaves equal touching of the muffled flames.    “Glonadir, my son, it’s our family honour to create the hleifr for our village.”   He slides the pole in practiced thrusts, a blade of grace, to keep the bread moving inside the hearth.  With gnarled knuckles glistening, the best loaf flings from the oven m

Two days until my wedding. I cannot move from this house. The locks are bigger than my head, the windows high out of reach, so high they look out above the winter sky which crawls along the ground outside. Snowflakes fall in the room and they do not melt on my hand when I catch them.   When the light fades the locks churn and turn, the door opens, the shadows gather into the form that is the Beast. My heart is frozen, else I would dissolve in fear.   One day before my wedding

Roger hates birthdays. He is "given" his own cake, but then forced to share. (And a special variant...) Vesna likes birthdays. She is...

Snow on Barrington, landscape remembers canvas, age-old crown of white.

Atmospheric water vapour, frozen into ice crystals, falling in light, white flakes piling up at the front door.  A mass of flickering white spots streaming across the television.   John Snow misleading everyone with elaborate and insincere words whilst eating a dish of vanilla snow and spraying the room with frozen gas of carbon dioxide.    He pulls another line of cocaine from the glass table, sucks on an advocaat, lemonade and ice snowball cocktail and shakes his snow-globe

We don’t know where we are. Something was chasing. Is chasing, but in all this white it will be chasing forever.   Cold without end. Immobility creeps in at the fingertips, crawls out of the eyes. Ice crystals branch out from pulmonary arteries. Numbness is a force that radiates from us. All is still, even the endless whirling flakes, in their ceaseless quest, static.   The Inferno’s ninth circle is a frozen lake. Oh, we know. Traitors gnawing on each other’s heads - of no co

The party was in full swing. Mark was dancing on the table as expected, Jo was sick in the corner, Cath was running around checking...

Have you forgotten? Jehovah smites the tyrants -- moth visits chamber. ----- Entering inside, landing onto throne's ceiling, crown...

Impactful Destroying Loving Abusing Caring Soul Destroying Soul Creating Neglectful Supporting Cruel Kind Cold Emotional Manipulative...

With a deafening roar and violent spinning wind the 60-meter-wide blinding disc touches down in the football car park.   Thousands of terrified sports fans scream, stare, gasp.  A 6-meter decapod slowly descends as if floating.  Its green slime drips on crushed cars, dissolving them.  A beam of red laser sheers off the top half of the grandstand.   The 15-meter-high lone sign flashes off and on. “Guest Car Park”.   The creature goes completely silent, as if thinking, processi

‘Oh day and night but this is wondrous strange Then as a stranger bid it welcome’   Thoughts that once only visited Make themselves comfortable Couch-surfing in my brain Like aches that used to heal But now are constant That squeezing in the chest The one you thought Was just another deadline Stays and makes its rhythm Like the slow-lapping waves of a quiet shore aspirations crunching underfoot A somatic embodiment of guests I never knew I hosted: Emotional phroggers Leaving