Wet

Wet

by Richard M. Ankers

Only ever alone with the rain and the sea.

I watched her emerge from the nocturnal river like a perfect pearl. Naked, she was, confused and unchaperoned. A first new life form in aeons. She shimmered for all to see. A miracle. My last hope.

Her beauty outshone the eternal darkness, like the world’s most perfect black rose giving birth to a solitary milk-white petal. She glistened brighter than any star. She dazzled. I was dazzled.

I approached with trepidation, a gliding shadow, and spoke as a mistral wind. “You… Are… Everything…”

“I am nothing.”

The starkness and speed of her response stalled me.

“I have done nothing.”

This time, I was prepared. I decided a direct approach was best.

I closed about the world, about her. “For the first time in eternity, I wished to be seen.”

Her hands fell from her modesty to reveal herself completely. Her eyes appeared to lose their glaze. She smiled. My heart melted.

“I am betrothed.”

I fled.

No star could find me. The spotlight moon illuminated without reason or rhyme. The sun did its best to fill the void. An armada of rainbows searched for my dark gold. Only the rivers had an inkling, as they swept into the deepest sea. Those in the abyss felt the loss, but had never truly experienced my all to begin with.

None would find me, for I was hardest to find by light.

I travelled the earth, and then the starways, and then more. I was everywhere and nowhere, but I never once dared her beauty again: she would have torn my obsidian soul apart. Until…

“Hello.” A soothing soprano.

“I thought my time had passed.”

“It is just beginning.”

I opened one eye to the opaque twin wonders of her own. “You see me?”

“I felt you first.”

“You found me. Me! The unseen!” I sounded like a revealed small child having hidden in a cupboard from a strict parent. “You are the first.”

“I have. I am.”

“How? It is my destiny to go unnoticed. To allow others to shine.”

“My need is greater than theirs.”

“What need?”

“To fulfil yours.”

“You rebuked me?”

“I knew not who you were.”

“But you do now.”

“Everyone does, now.”

I grimaced. “That bad, eh?”

She nodded. A tendril-like strand of hair wiped a tear from her cheek. My breath caught.

“They half need you, whereas I want you fully.”

“You need the lake, the river, the sea. You are born of water and must ever there remain.”

“Sometimes, but not always. I must slip beneath the starshine surface and embrace my creator. I am lost without him. Lost without you. This world is too bright. Too loud. I need the quiet of the…

“Don’t say my name,” I interjected.

“…Night.”

The cape of nothingness slipped from my shoulders, and I stood revealed before her. She smiled anew.

“Now there is only us,” she said, as we slipped beneath the surface into the cool, dark, wet.

The End

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Thank you for reading
Richard

https://ko-fi.com/richardmankers

Whispers

The whispers curled around his ears, like ivy around a tree trunk. They clung there, tightening in ever-increasing desperation, whispering non-stop, persuading. Even the rabid north wind couldn’t dissuade them, cool them, freeze the words on their lips, though it chilled Robert to the bone.

Living with ghosts. Don’t we all? Yet for some, they writhe more than others. He was born to them, for the last of his family gave her life to secure his. Didn’t she? Ghosts surrounded him from then on. Some were welcoming visitors. Others less so. No one saw them but Robert. No one heard them, nor him.

He realised the whispers were his own when the mirror failed to mist. It was bitter that day, and all those beyond the window exhaled ghosts. Robert, however, had no ghost to exhale, no spectre to coddle, no banshee at which to scream. He was merely a whitening shadow, who whispered to the stars and the moon.

He’d never been a baby. Not to his memory, anyway. Neither had he been a child, nor lover, nor husband, nor parent, nor endlessly aging old man. But he was, and that was something. Wasn’t he? He told himself this as the whispers became louder and his family, at last, said, Hello.

An End.

Thank you for reading

Richard

Translucent

Eyes look

But do not see

Beneath this skin

The real me

All pain and sorrow

And sodden heart

A mind in turmoil

No work of art

Just desperate really

So reticent

To be centre stage

Not translucent

Thank you for reading
Richard

Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
Also Available:
The Eternals Series: The Eternals / Hunter Hunted / Into Eternity

Only

Only in sadness is happiness found.

Only in melancholy is there a shift to peace.

Only when the ravens bow is life acknowledge.

Only at midnight do we cease to die.

Why?

Only time will tell, and only if we listen.

Thank you for reading
Richard

Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.

Cold, Cold, Love

Fingers entwine like November branches,
The chill offering pleasurable release;
There’s no benefit to being overly warm.
We swish amongst the decadent leaves
Raining down in shades of gone:
Ah, the bliss of the festering mind.
A moment in the meadow is a lifetime on the sea;
Translucent waves like polished glass
Revealing only an inverse night.
The hole looms like a collapsed bed,
And I can’t wait to draw the obsidian sheets high.
A raven rattles a warning, or a joyful dirge,
Flapping wings to dispel the buzzing bats;
They’ve already consumed the flies.
She bends low like an avalanche
Destroying all I’ve ever known, been, seen.
I welcome it, her, this unmarked legacy,
One colder than my heart.
The impossible shades of an afterlife found
Embrace this shell and pop out a nutlike soul.
And though I wish to scream ‘come back’
She spins a maelstrom, shifting time and tide for me,
Only for me, always for me, as she ever has and ever will.
For though our cold, cold love is abhorrent to most,
The universe has just gained two more stars.

Thank you for reading
Richard

Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.

Undone

I am undone, dissolved, wiped from this world like a ghost from a photo. I have nothing left to give, except for my soul. Is it enough?

A cool wind chills them all, whilst I feel nothing. There is no pleasure, no fear, no love, no suggestion of self, and yet I want more than ever.

Chasing rainbows has become a pursuit. I glide over these reversed smiles, refusing to look back at such multicoloured miseries. Is God watching?

I was once a man with a life, wife, and daughter. When I lost them, I know not. How I’ll find them, who knows. This may be my penance for sins foul and false, yet to them all, I remain clueless.

The night gathers in swirls of gloom. The stars pop out of existence like stung balloons. A black sun rises. There was never a moon in my night.

I smile, or pretend to. No one sees.

The End.

Thank you for reading
Richard

Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.

Forever Blood

Desperate, we strive to unite
both sides of souls made
unmanageable by time
and technology, pain and war,
our conjunction hearts seeking
to ease from the shade,
break from the blinding glare of false light.
Neither black nor white, but red,
they run, with copious amounts of blood.
Always blood. Forever blood.

Thank you for reading
Richard

Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.

Un-Blue

Her eyes were the colour of the open sea, transitioning from calm to storm, rippling in sargasso blue, almost indigo, deep and dark, yet tepid. This changed as she changed. Her demeanour ignited. The calm still of the soul she hid so well rippled into being. Those waters that were her eyes pulsed a cerulean mirage. She brooded. I gulped.

Seconds became minutes became more, or so it seemed, and the storm she’d often threatened whirled a maelstrom of frothing cobalt. Hurricane winds tore at her kelp fields for lashes. All the energies of all the seas manifested as a single violent ocean. She churned. I feared.

The abyssal depths had nothing on her, as she exploded in ultramarine, a devastating tsunami. The tears poured forth not from sorrow, but absolute rage. Her world was my world, one of liquid purification. She laughed as I wept, as I fell, as I dreamed a torrent of lies.

I awoke to a strange sensation of bobbing, and her calm again cyan orbs.

“Sorry,” I murmured.

“I know,” she breezed and leant in closer.

She pressed. I dipped beneath the waves. The blue faded to something darker.

The drowning didn’t kill me, just the reality of my foolishness: Her eyes had never been blue, but as black as her cold, dead heart.

The End

Thank you for reading
Richard

Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.

The Blackbird Sings

I wake. I weep. My blackbird alarm clock chirps all the louder, only adding to this hell.

I dress. I fall. The belt I wrap twice about me fails to secure. Will I ever learn!

I eat. I drink. The race to the toilet is a mismatch, and I’m the loser.

I dress… partly. For once, I use my head and don’t bother with pants. Take that fate! Yeah, take that.

I mow. I rake. Several women and a few giggling schoolgirls shout or point or scream or jeer.

I work. I slave. There’s always a distraction, but never a distraction enough.

I avoid. I blur. My beat-up Volvo hovers on the periphery, catching the light in concave shadows and rusting browns.

I vacate. I climb. The shower beckons a sweat-stealing pleasure. But I don’t deserve pleasure, so head to my room, instead.

I undress. I collapse. My eyes close like shutters this evening, midnight filling the void.

I dream. I scream. They are here, as always, unblemished by blood or glass or broken bones, or my drunken incompetence.

I hope. I pray. Perhaps this time that blackbird named Death will let me die in peace.

Chirrup! Chirrup! No release today.

Thank you for reading
Richard

Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.

Wet

by Richard M. Ankers

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