Stars in Our Eyes

“Can you die?”
Yes.
“Will you die?”
Eventually.
“Why?”
Because everything that lives must die,
If there is to be life, there has to be death.
“But you’ve lived for so long”
Aye, I even seen the death of a star. Though I wonder,
When people with science and big
Complicated words
Say that it is
The death
Of a star,
Could it ever have lived?
And, if so
Then I’d wonder more
What
The life of a star
Could be like?

 

Speakeasy 164 – Big Red Buttons

Leo had taken too much of her time already, she wanted to move on but she couldn’t do anything with him hanging on declaring he still loved her and please don’t go. His whining was only pathetic now. Nothing more. He told her that if she left him he would tell the world what she did and that was precisely what she was trying to avoid. So how to live with him without loving him? Or how to leave him without him telling?

So she left hints, here and there, hoping he’d find them. Eventually he did. He heard a beeping, and curious as he was he had to find out where it was coming from… in a dark alley he found it: a Big Red Button with a sign saying “DO NOT PRESS”. Well she knew nothing would stop him then. The medias talked about suicide by electrocution, some doubtful magazines had theories of their own. 

She searched his house and went to his funeral to make sure he really was dead and hadn’t left any clues. Then she turned around and walked away before the end. She never looked back, she just kept walking. 

 

 

 

Pompeii

Bad things happen around me. I’ve known that since I was 10 years old. But I thought I could escape it, I found a place, so alive that I thought I could hide in between the people and the many lives around me. I loved walking around town, not speaking to anyone, just watching. I got noticed, people started talking to me and I made friends, not close but close enough to not be alone. I really thought I could try again, get another go at life… I was wrong.

But my luck caught up with me, the ground shook, first almost imperceptibly then more and more and I saw my city slowly fall apart before me… all the people I had met, those I had known and those I had gotten used to passing by. The colours and the lights came tumbling down in a shower of ephemeral beauty. The pillars were crumbling and I knew that no matter how hard I tried I would not be harmed. That’s just how it works. I get to see cities fall and people get crushed but I always come out unscathed. I saw the homeless guy I sometimes had sat with for words of wisdom, a pillar about to fall on him, and there were others. I closed my eyes as the city I loved fell to pieces around me and tried to block it out, imagine it still standing, trying to block out the screams of dying people and crashing towers. All I could feel were the tears streaming down my face, it was the only harm done, but it was enough. When I opened them again the rubble sat there accusingly, it was my fault, it always was.
So I closed my eyes again and tried to imagine what it had been again, so full of life. And I cried.

 

Clockwork

Cogs and bells
Whirring chiming
Metal and tongues of flame.
Maps and blueprints
Shoes and footprints
Dust and ashes
Billowing whirring
Chiming clanging
Weapons lined upon the wall
Swords and hammers, deadly all
Armours made to shield the head
Armours made to shield the heart
And machines and projects
Unfinished art
Lying around the chaos and noise
And the tick tock
Tick tock ticking
Of the clock,
Time is running away
There’s not the time but things to do
Always
Billowing whirring
Chiming clanging
Tick tock tick tock
Oh the mind of an artist may sound
Like a bomb about to go off.

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process

— Vincent Van Gogh

 

the Sound of the Earth Flows

I wake up in a new place, I can feel it, the damp, soft earth under my feet as I get up. I’m probably in a field, I can feel an unobstructed cool wind in my back and ruffling my hair. I raise my head and enjoy the morning. It feels like morning. As I didn’t know where I was, I figured I might as well try to find out. And then I wondered was I alone? So I asked: “Hello? Is anyone there?”
But after some waiting I decided no one was, or if they were they were either deaf or didn’t want to be found. I hoped they weren’t deaf and just sitting around. It would be very problematic if I met someone deaf. Or mute. It would be extremely embarrassing.
I decided to go against the wind so that any smells could come to me and further inform me of my surroundings. The land is roughly even though a little on the hilly side I discover while walking. The sound came first: falling water, there was a waterfall, and so, a river where I could drink. I walked carefully towards the sound, knowing that if there was a waterfall tree would be rocks around it. When I got there I stumbled on a step I had miscalculated and fell straight into the water but it was after the waterfall and rather shallow at this point. It was a nice day and the water wasn’t particularly cold so I sat and let it flow over me. For the second time in a long time I could just enjoy the moment with no one around to take pity of me and tell me I couldn’t see beauty. Maybe I can’t, but I can feel it and I think it’s wonderful. People can sometimes rely on their sight too much. I don’t have that problem and I never will…

 

Jolly Giant Juice

Harvey sat cross legged on a bungalow sipping his juice, how nice of Natty to invite them to a tea party in town he thought. Billy was sitting on a row of houses, eating off a billboard he used as a tray while Garry slouched against a tall building and Walter was lying in the way of angry humans, getting massaged by their blows. They were so funny, running around waving things about, getting in and out of different sized moving objects, screaming “help!” or “die giant die!” and tickling his feet.
What a jolly day, it was always fun going to town, it surely beat sitting in a cave all day. Watching the little beings starting to crawl all over Walter the other giants laughed out loud, making the last of the humans flee. What a nice day indeed!

 

Green Soldiers with Guns

Down from the abyss came-
A deep rumbling song
A sound to wake the dead,
Come let the mourners come,
Rise them from their beds.

Tell them that their flesh and blood
Are soldiers gone to war,
And tell them that they died in vain
Strewn upon the floor.

Tell them how their kinsmen cried
And watched their brothers die.
Tell them how they took a gun
And never wondered why,

And tell them that when all was gone
They sat there looking back,
And wept their hearts out and their souls
For those they killed and did not know
And those that they saw die.

Tell them how in fields of green
They still see pools of blood,
Now tell me if it’s war you seek
I’ll tell you that it’s wrong.

 

Plastic Pigs and Pizza

I was bored so I asked a friend for three words or a sentence to write a story/poem.

This is what I got: pig pizza plastic

…and this was my answer:

On a plastic poster a proposterously painted pig prepared a perfect pepperoni pizza as passing people paused, pondering its purpose.

 

Speakeasy 162 – What is Death?

Until the day I die I’ll never forget those glassy, unblinking eyes. The way they stared on without feeling as the bullets came out of their porcelain hands. I will never forget the way they killed my body to capture my soul. But they’ll kill that too soon enough, and then I really will die. The only thing that matters now is the time I have between now and then.. Because the human instinct is to survive, that’s what they’re counting on with this. I just hope they’ve underestimated it, although now that I think about it, it’s highly doubtful. I know I have to bide my time, I’ll only get one chance.
I hate them so much, the people doing this to us. I hate them for putting me in this white, synthetic body. Plastic and reinforced, the new thought police: perfect, because they are without thought, they can never betray.
They bring us here, from the darkest part of town where men live in the ignorance of life itself. Except they could never know that I had not lived there all my life. They tell us this is the year 1984, it’s a joke but I read, and I understand only too well what it means.
The dark places where they found us and the likes of us will be the first to go, then they will slowly enslave the working classes, building their way up so well that no one will realise before it’s too late. I know how these things work:
I used to be deep in politics and the deeper I went, the more trouble got into. The world we live in now is far from what you’d think. There are layers upon layers of corruption, manipulation plots and manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres in all levels and more as you go higher up the ranks. Of course once I discovered that I tried to restore a democratic and honest government but that wasn’t happening and I was slowly starting to attract unwanted attention. So I retreated into the shadows, where no one would come looking… Until now.
They brought us in, they taught us how to read, they taught us how to fight. Then they immobilised us and put our brains inside these machines: cleverly put together as to resemble human movement as accurately as possible but with a few… upgrades… like the bullets that can be shot through our hands though for now it’s just empty rounds. They need human brains that already know how to move to be able to keep up with the intricate design. We have to be inside.
I’m in a big room in a rather small complex, there are bedrooms (because maybe the one inconvenient thing is that though the body doesn’t need to rest, the mind does) and there is a place with chargers for our bodies and sustenance for our brains which come in cartridges that last a week. The last place is a training ground where we have to remember how to fight and get better at it.
…
I’ve been here for three months now, a monotonous silence with nothing but us. Actually there is a painting, of a man, hung up high on the wall where no one can reach it, even with the “super jump” as I like to call it. A man from long ago, looking down at us disapprovingly. He keeps looking down with that same unwavering stare, guarded by two feisty little hairy beings. He called us dangerous. He taunted our maimed souls: “look what you have become”. And we lower our heads, furiously mute and helpless. Because we cannot talk.
…
By now I can see that most have already become exactly what they wanted us to be. I think some of them believe this is hell.We have no means of communicating. Now I know, they weren’t going to kill us… that was never going to work, they want to drive us so mad that they won’t even need to kill us, over time we will all become the mindless creatures we saw when we first got here, and that’s when I saw, in a flash of lucidity, that I was never getting out of here “alive”, so to say. And so like that, I give up.

 

DragonSpark – Speakeasy 162 – Terror in the Dark

Until the day I die, I’ll never forget those glassy, unblinking eyes. Before me was the body of a running man, his motion frozen in time. He was now a fragile, lifeless statue, his once opaque body now translucent. Terror was the only thing expressed by the man’s facial features. A SoulEater was near.
I contoured the crystal statue and walked further into the cave’s open chamber. A stream of light poured in from a narrow crack in the ceiling, maybe 60 feet above me, probably more. This lone, distant source of light gave the chamber an eerie mood. The air within was cold, still. I felt a tingle of fear in my spine. “The artefact had to be here of all places”, I thought as I tugged my cloak around me, “A SoulEater’s den.”
On the opposite side of the chamber, a massive, ancient structure had been built along the inner wall of the cave. Most of the chamber’s floor was occupied by a lake, traversed by a lone path, splitting the body of water in two. To either side of the path, the water was pierced by high stony spikes, as if two giant hedgehogs were slumbering beneath the surface.
I lit a ball of fire on the tip of my index and made my way across. Halfway through, I felt a subtle shift in the air immediately behind me. I turned around, and found myself face to face with the empty cavern. Tense moments followed. All of those who had seen a SoulEater and had lived to tell the tale had died shortly after, in a state of lunacy.
All of my senses were alert, scouting the darkness in front of me for movement, for a presence. My hood was restricting my peripheral vision but taking it off would break my concentration. After a couple seconds, the tension started to fade. The movement I had sensed was probably just a stray air current. I breathed a sigh of what seemed like relief and turned around….
​….And found myself staring into four green, glowing eyes.
I recoiled back, kicking the creature away from me. It shrieked in response, in a way I would have never imagined a living thing capable, its body thrashing about on the floor. I could not make out the shape of it clearly. It seemed humanoid, yet its neck seemed too flexible, its arms too long, the legs supporting its frame articulated in a strange way. Within seconds it was standing again, ready to attack.
I thrust balls of energy in the thing’s direction. It dogged by jumping high in the cavern. As it landed, it slashed at my cloak, trying to grab it. It took the cumbersome thing off and threw it in the creature’s direction.
The heavy fabric exploded in mid-air. I shielded my eyes. The distinguishable sound of glass shattering echoed through the room. I lowered my arms only to see the creature still before me, the thing that had been my cloak lay on the floor in one thousand different, crystal-like pieces.
The fight had been a short one, yet I was out of breath. The very air in this chamber seemed to be sapping my strength. The creature then pounced in my direction. Time slowed down. It was in the air. Its trajectory could not be changed. It couldn’t dodge. I put my hands before me and used the last of my strengths to fire an intense missile of magic at the beast, transpiercing it.
It fell to my feet, dead. I knelt on the stone floor, exhausted. As I gazed at the thing’s dimming blue eyes, I felt relief wash over my body.
Wait a second…..Blue?
I jerked myself back onto my feet. Before me was the first creature, its green eyes peering into my soul. A bestial roar resonated in my ears. It came from my left. I turned to face the sound to find that on top of every spike in the water stood a SoulEater, their glowing eyes varying in color, like brushstrokes on a terrifying canvas. Another inhuman sound radiated behind me. I turned around only to witness a similar sight. Maybe 40 SoulEaters were gazing at me with their terrifying eyes.
I delved into my body for my magic but found only petrifying fear. I darted towards the ruins at the end of the path, my legs powered by terror.
Roars echoed in the chamber as the beast shot towards their desperate prey.