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.
I am very pleased to have had my short story ‘Moonscapes and Melancholy‘ published today by Lothlorien Poetry Journal. Those who know me will know I don’t make a big song and dance about such things, though I should, but this journal is a real beauty. I would encourage anyone who writes short prose, fiction and poetry to head over there and take a look at what they require.
Author’s Note: Corrine and the narrator here are current characters in progress for my next body of work. I hope you enjoy
I have no compunction to acquiesce to her wishes. Despite the provocation, I still love her. It is a dilemma.
The night surges around me like a redundant coal mine, the memories of such excavations as to tire an army of dwarves recalled, but discarded. It closes in. I am surrounded.
Her eyes appear first, always her eyes, flashing from this false midnight like two black holes. They hover, darker than dark, drawing in those vestiges of light surface dwellers take for granted, gorging. I would have them gorge on me, too, but have not the energy to ask.
Corrine has a flair for the dramatic, always had, in both life and death. She whispers sweet promises, offers life eternal, a never-ending dream, but is this not what God promises, too? Whether corporeal or incorporeal, one exists. The only decision to make, one unfortunately decided whilst the former presides, is where.
This deep darkness pools like a subterranean sea, tugs with a relentless persistence, one which wears. I capitulate. Corrine wins.
She is here, everywhere. I breathe her, filling my lungs with sorrow. She circulates my system, sluggish in blood made unctuous, taking a slow perusal of all I have to offer. I have nothing to offer, but it still takes time.
When I wake, it is to her raven self. She looms over me in a burgundy chamber, lit by a single black candle with a putrescent flame.
“Make it easier on yourself,” she coos, like a demented dove.
“No.”
“I ask nothing.”
“You ask everything.”
“I could take it.”
“No, my once darling, you cannot.”
I lay for interminable aeons debating this simple truth, as the cosmos unfolds around me, suns blinking in and out of view, universes unfolding like paper swans set loose in time’s ocean. She thinks it will break me, but it only strengthens my resolve. She should never have awoken me.
Corrine enters my perfect prison with a cup of cold water. Condensation drips down the glass like diamonds-made-emeralds in the unnatural light.
“Drink,” she says.
“I’d rather watch it.”
“You never gain anything by watching.”
“No, you gain everything.”
She throws the glass to the floor, but it fails to smash or spill a drop. It is as illusory as she, yet more substantial than ever I’ve been.
Light arrives in the form of a tangerine dawn. I soak up every vitamin, savour every second. There is something about a sparkling new day that transcends description. One must feel it, taste it, love it like there’ll never be another.
She is here.
Corrine snatches the memory from my thoughts and swallows it whole. A slug-like tongue circles her lips as if to ensure every atom sampled. She laughs the laugh of the lost, this demoness. She glares, flares twinned supernovas and is gone.
It takes time for reality to realign.
I climb from bed as though it just another day, throw aside the curtains to the orange skies of my dream.
The sun sits amongst them. It is black.
Love cannot be taken, nor shared unwillingly, nor even explained. One might see it and snatch it momentarily, nothing more. My love for the dawn was not my love for her, if ever it was love at all.
I resist the temptation to sleep this moonless evening. “Not tonight,” I say, as the devil tucks this damaged soul into bed. “I have no compunction to acquiesce to your wishes.” I haven’t. No, I haven’t.
But I have.
The End.
Thank you for reading Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
The feather weighed more than my soul, but less than my heart. That had to be true, didn’t it? I carried my soul around daily and never felt it once. You wouldn’t have known it was there. My heart, however, now that weighed tonnes. It often plunged through my torso like a sinking treasure chest to nestle in the oceanic depths of my gut. Sometimes, my heart even pounded like a fist against my ribcage, bruising and battering. The thing dragged me down when I sat and resisted me when I stood. My soul did none of these things. Yes, the feather in my hand was more like my soul than my heart. That’s why I took the former with me when I left the latter behind.
Thank you for reading Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
Eyes open to a jet-black sky tinged with ebony doubts. This is the circumference of my dream. This is my inhabited nightmare. Gone is the golden sun, departed are the sparkling stars, all those things that make living magical replaced by vagaries and uncertainty. Yet through this uncertainty runs a solidity of thought, though depressing, morose even, it is no less a backbone to despair, for I am stronger in the darkness than ever I was in our beauteous reality, and it is here I shall thrive. Don’t pity those who wish for death, we’re just getting in some practice.
Thank you for reading Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
Photo by Chris Ensminger on Unsplash
There were no indications of illness, no — how does one say it — telltale signs. Not at first, anyway.
Her eyes were the key, how they darkened from a silver grey to near pitch, like storm clouds eclipsing the moon. Her mood moved the same, whereas mine remained cheery throughout. Another mistake.
She remained in bed most of the time, venturing out at night when I fell asleep, or pretended to. That’s when I’d follow her out onto the meadow and up the trancelike hill. She’d stand there and howl at the moon, unafraid and rabid. Others howled multiple returns, whilst I whimpered like a beaten puppy.
The first three months came and went in a flash of angry exchanges. The fourth marked a difference, as she chose not to speak, or simply forgot how. I tried harder to understand her then, but understood nothing.
They came for her when the supermoon kissed the meadow in argent beams. A glistening silver-white, it was like day had come to the night on the one night I’d sooner it darker than the abyss.
I loved my Marie. I loved her with all of my heart. She loved me the same. Perhaps that’s why she ate it?
I keep my soul in a suitcase tucked under the bed, where spare blankets and duvets abide. This is a safe, quiet place where no one else goes. There’s no danger here, only sanctuary.
I keep my soul in a suitcase shoved deep under the bed where monsters gather at night. I hear it crying when the rains cease falling and the moon stops hanging its head. The sound is a constant these days.
I keep my soul in a suitcase hidden deep under the bed, amongst other such discarded junk. I have no use for it any more, never did. Perhaps one day I shall stumble across it, undo the case’s rusting catches, and unpack what’s left. Then again…
I keep my soul in a suitcase too deep under my bed, where dust motes gather and spiders make webs. There’s no means to reach it, as my back hurts and old age has ruined me. No, really, it’s true. I hope it’s doing well, though, and it will remember me when I’m gone.
There’s a soul in a suitcase left under a bed. There are others, too, but they don’t converse.
Richard M. Ankers - Storybook 
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