Chile's Stories

[Cressida Hawker]

Hello Chile
I read the first story.
It's great. I was struck at how the simplicity, the first part where the lines are all short... it made the words seem more powerful. Erm. The only thing that minorly bugged me at times [but you can ignore me if you want] was that the bird's thoughts and the protagonist's thoughts

Here:

It’s time to walk among them. As a ghost among the dead.
How long have I been a dead?
Your whole life.
So I am a ghost now?
Soon you will be.
Where are we going?

Maybe Indent or format or something to differentiate? But it's minor, and you can ignore me if you choose.
I've only skimmed the poetry for now, but I'll come back and look at it in depth some other time.
Keep up the good work. Don't stop writing.

[Chile]

Thank you

And I really didn't want to differentiate. I wanted to leave as much of it up the reader as possible. But maybe that's just me being lazy.

[Cressida Hawker]

Thank you

And I really didn't want to differentiate. I wanted to leave as much of it up the reader as possible. But maybe that's just me being lazy.

Alright then.
Looking forward to more

[Chile]

Little doodle.

[Chile]

This is the beginning to a new story that has not been finished or edited. This is an unfinished rough draft. Stay tuned for moar.

The Humbled Soul

by Casey James Sonnier

I like things the way they are. My world is dull and grey. Lifeless. The people I pass on the way home from work are muddled masses, forms without faces or eyes, forever spiraling onwards by ambiguous impulse. And in my world, everything lacks a certain clarity. Colors are dull, trees don’t sway, the sun’s smudged, and the moon doesn’t smile. Words are weightless and just float around in space; hit and miss. And in my world sincerity is a rare commodity, forced into a black market in the spectrum of human emotion. But I like it like this. My co-workers like it like this. My boss likes it most of all. And in my world, most normal people reside, willing to raise arms and hide behind the blades of grass eager to pounce on anyone who expresses a veracious sentiment.
And this is my world.
I like it like this. Indistinct. Unfocused. If the world was pristine, if the sun shined, if the trees bent in respect to the will of the wind, and if those colors- my lifeless angry hashes of pastel painting a burn here and there- ever became vibrant or full, well... I just might weep. I know this because I’ve spent a year hoping she’d come back and beg for forgiveness, to apologize for her slights, to crave for my name just as passionately as she defied it. This year, I spend hating my daughter. I hate her for thinking her world was more clear than mine. Because my world is everyone else’s world, and without it, I’d be lost.
Because my world is dull and grey.
And I like it like this.

I’m a home healthcare worker. Basically, I go sit in the homes of old people who are no longer capable of living independently. If you’re too old to shit on your own, then I’m the guy that gets called. Overall, it’s a pretty easy job. I like old people. I like their long wolfish faces, unkempt whiskers, scraggly beards, loose opaque skin, and their colorful use of slang from prehistoric days. They live far off in their own world, a land far far away from my own world. Their fantasy land is impenetrable, but their views sometime allow for mine. A venn diagram of two realities intersecting when I’m measuring out the medicine.
I’ve been assigned to help a lady who still speaks to her flowers. Despite being held in high esteem by her family and friends, they want me to help her out of the deep end. Well I won’t be able to get her out of the deep end, but I can make her sink to the bottom as comfortable and painless as possible.
This is my job.

I don’t notice anything on the way to work. But that’s not right. Because I notice everything. It just doesn’t matter. The neighbor and his wife screaming while their children pleaded for silence; the hoodlums breaking into that rustic blue (insert car name here); the deranged bum clutching a sign with a fortune cookie message scribbled on the front in crisp black ink; the zealots protesting an abortion clinic; the father promising his daughter the claim to a throne where life and happiness are eternal, all were swept up in my blurry double vision, and I never notice any of it. Because if I did, I might weep. I know this because I’ve spent a year missing her.

In the light the house is blanche and surrounded by neatly pruned blossoming vegetation on all sides. The scent of the chromatic myriad of flowers permeates the air, consuming the house in an aroma of color. As I approach the house, the flowers bend to and fro from a kiss in the breeze, like a beckoning hand. While emitting such a pleasant ambiance, my stomach can’t help but turn, and my senses struggle to turn me in the other direction. I’m allergic to sincerity. Everything about this place is sweet and wonderful. In an attempt to cure the twist in my side, I turn, and glance at the boy next door. He’s digging trenches at the base of a tree, bent and bare. This reminds me. It’s fucking winter. I turn back to the old lady’s house. The sting on my cheek, the whips of the winter wind retrieves for me my reality. Her house is like the ineffable Garden, an oasis in the frozen inner city. Lush and vibrant and strewn full of life. The impossibility of such a place doesn’t deter me. If I left, I might have to admit to something. Screw that. I don’t want to weep.

The door creaks open. In the silence the squeaking door is obviously painful, like cannon fire in a silent convent. And I like it. A detectable flaw in the perfection and chilling warmth of the senile lady’s house. I call out and make my presence known, leering through the crack. This must be what the Grinch feels like when he’s stealing Christmas. My only objective is to ruin the stunning perfection, to validate my shitty reality by revealing this place to be a decaying rotting cat infested... I don’t smell cat piss. I don’t see uncleaned litter boxes basking in the bile of flea bitten felines, nor stacks of clothes, dirty laundry, piles of trash and dusty magazines. I don’t see anything typical to a deranged senior citizens’ abode. It’s spotless really, well taken care of. Neat, organized. Stagnant. There are beautiful flowers everywhere too. It’s homey. I shake off the admiration and resolve to get to work.
A quick tour of the house and I realize the back door is open. The spilled sunlight is the only source of illumination and it is incredibly bright. Blindingly so. Then a voice calls to me from the light. It says, “Well, come here child.” I step through the light screen and into the backyard. I shield myself from its intensity. My eyes adjust sufficiently and I take a look at my surroundings. Another fucking garden. This time, it’s more grand and intense and the murky winter sky has been replaced by immaculate tumbling cirrus clouds. This is some Twilight Zone shit. And instead of Rod Serling is a smiling old lady. She’s small and frail, her facial features are soft with intense blue eyes to punctuate her papery face. Her hair is perfectly white, like snow without impressions. She seems sweet. I wave awkwardly and reply, “I’m 37 years old ma’m. That means I’m not exactly a child.” She giggles and waves away my nonsense and reality. I expected this. Old people typically believe their wisdom supersedes my own. “We’re all children in this light.”
My physical response is careful. With a smile and a nod I dust away all chance to pursue the subject.
“Sit down darling.”
“Yes ma’m.” I pull up a chair.
“What’s your name, sweetie?”
“Joe.” That’s a lie. She won’t remember it in a few minutes anyways. It’s fun this way.
“Eve. My name is Eve.”
I make a casual allusion assuming she’ll understand, “Oh like Adam and Eve.”
“Yes, that’s me.” She smiles. I don’t think she got it.
“No,” I should correct her, “I just meant you have the same name as Eve in Genesis. Like in the Bible.”
She frowns, “And I told you, that’s me.”
I scratch my head. So this is how she took the plunge. With her faith as an anchor to drag her to the bottom. I grin. In my mind. In all this stunning perfection, I’ve finally been able to find her place in my reality. She’s just as defective and insincere in her claims to be someone else. Good. Cause in my reality, everyone wishes they were somebody else.
Somebody famous.
Somebody like Johnny Depp.