Ink, Part 5

It is not a lie to say that Chester does not interact well with women. There is something about them he feels he doesn’t understand. He never knows when they’re going to be nice or cruel to them. He has no conception of whether what he says to them will be well-received, ignored, or reviled. … Continue reading Ink, Part 5 →

Ink, Part 4

There is a long line at the customer service desk, and Chester hates every other person in it. His sour mood is affecting the way he looks at the world, but he’s embracing it, because something about the way anger makes him feel is addictive. It’s not pleasant, but anger, for Chester, is like the … Continue reading Ink, Part 4 →

Ink, Part 3

The video game Chester enjoys playing most right now isn’t one he would have picked out for himself when he was younger. The tattoo on his arm is from an online first-person shooter. It’s the symbol of the guild to which he belonged. It was once true that all Chester would play were FPS titles, … Continue reading Ink, Part 3 →

Ink, Part 2

The gleaming aura that surrounded Chester’s new house faded last night as he reclined, on his back, in his bed. He stared at the ceiling which, painted a bone-white, almost seemed to stare back at him. In the night-dark of his first half-hour staring at that ceiling, still awake, it gains the sense of depthless … Continue reading Ink, Part 2 →

Ink, Part 1

Chester is thirty-one years old. He has no spouse or other romantic prospects, though not for lack of desire. He has no children, either, but he is content with that fact. He has two friends — who are truly just acquaintances, but Chester uses the word “friend” too liberally — who have oops-babies, and he … Continue reading Ink, Part 1 →

Romance Movie

If you’ve read one of those romance novels — mostly teen romance novels, but the trope bleeds through into adult fiction, too — where two main characters believe at once when they meet each other that they’ll fall in love, and by the end of the novel, they end up together; and most of the … Continue reading Romance Movie →

Unique

The bullet begins to slide out of the barrel. People, in general, have a hard time gauging their own uniqueness. There’s a confluence of factors that cause this, one of which being the fact that many people have a drive and a desire to be unique. Some people take this further than others — artists … Continue reading Unique →

Grandfather’s Farm

If he sat upright in his bed and turned to the side, Aric could see, out of his bedroom window, a good portion of the land that belonged to his grandparents. He knew, from when his grandfather spoke about their past, that the amount of land they had owned had once been much smaller. Over … Continue reading Grandfather’s Farm →

Unlimited

There is a certain feeling behind opening a door. It’s a feeling of release, as the pressure between the two spaces equalizes. It’s a feeling of resistance, too, as you fight against that pressure in the moment before it gives way, and as you fight the workings of the door itself, which, perhaps, is not … Continue reading Unlimited →

Calman’s Bandwood

Calman’s Bandwood, known colloquially as the Coin Tree, is a species of tree grown exclusively in the country of Ansland. That second name, by which the vast majority of people know it, comes from the fact that its wood is used to mint money in Ansland and in its neighboring countries. Calman’s Bandwood is a … Continue reading Calman’s Bandwood →