Kissing Eternity

We flourished beside the pool like two happy frogs waiting to take a joyous dip. Lotus flowers floated there atop the becalmed water, like the reflections of perfectly captured stars. A dragonfly, apparently unaware of the twilight, zipped about like an army helicopter, downing as many enemies as his mandibles-for-bullets could bite. A breaching moon threatened one horizon as a submerging sun teased the other. A swan’s neck rose from the reeds like an elegant white snake and then dipped away. The universe hung on her next breath, as did I.

“I love this pool. Don’t you?” she breathed. But my mouth did that thing where some old hag had stitched up my lips, so I just nodded. “There’s something about how it captures everything, from those tiny, stray dandelion seeds to entire eternities. That’s what I think, anyway.” Again, I nodded. “You don’t say much for a man so keen for a date.” I smiled and shrugged. “Meh! Probably for the best. You wouldn’t want to spoil the moment.” As if on queue, she leaned in. I didn’t have to move anything but my lips.

Years later, and the television presenter claimed the police to have found them. All of them. Those dive-bombing children, so obese as to flatten the bullrushes, who had disturbed the pond one last time. They’d stamped on the frogs and stolen the swan’s eggs before they’d even hatched. The presenter looked disgusted, but he was smiling on the inside at the dramatic news story now attached to his name. They were to close the whole area off to ‘re-establish the ecosystem.’ I wanted to cry. It wasn’t that I was an eco-warrior or anything, just that I’d kissed eternity there once, and now I’d never see those stars again.

The End

Thank you for reading

Richard

Richard M. Ankers. Author: The Eternals Series and Britannia Unleashed

Eventually

Published at MasticadoresUSA

I’m delighted to have my micro-fiction Eventually posted today at MasticadoresUSA. I have written for the Masticadores family of magazines for a while now, and this is my second post with the USA branch of said publications. As always, a very big thank you to editor Barbara Leonhard for trusting in my work.

Again, I hope you enjoy the short read that is Eventually.

Thank you for reading

Richard

Richard M. Ankers

Author of The Eternals Series & Britannia Unleashed

Petal

Published Today!

I’m very pleased to announce that my Gobblers & Masticadores monthly post ‘Petal‘ has just gone live. I hope you have time to read this short fiction, and peruse the latest posts on the site. They’re always good.

A big thank you to editor Manuela Timofte for publishing my work. She’s a gem.

Please click HERE to read.

Thank you as always

Richard

Richard M. Ankers: Author of The Eternals Series and Britannia Unleashed

The In-Between

Published Today!

Literary Revelations

It is a great honour to have been published by the fantastic new journal Literary Revelations. My story The In-Between features today on their site.

A big thank you to Editor Gabriela Marie Milton for believing in my work.

Thank you for reading

Richard

Richard M. Ankers

Monthly Post

The Melancholy Divide

Today is the day the wonderful Manuela Timofte has published my latest post for Gobblers and Masticadores. I hope you can check out The Melancholy Divide as it’s one of those kind of writings I love to pen.

Gobblers and Masticadores are a part of the fantastic Masticadores collection of magazines bursting with quality poetry and prose. Please take a look.

Thank you for reading

Richard

Richard M. Ankers

The Lost and the Dreamers

Published Today!

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

And what better way to start the new year than with a newly published piece. A great big thank you to Kelly Easton at Compass Rose Literary Journal for making The Lost and the Dreamers their first story of 2023.

Please do take the opportunity to have a look around at the beautifully presented Compass Rose site. There is a wealth of good quality material to peruse.

Thank you for reading

Richard

Once again, a very Happy New Year to you all. And I hope you enjoy The Lost and the Dreamers.

Richard M. Ankers

The Lighthouse Moon

Published!

I’m delighted to announce my short story ‘The Lighthouse Moon‘ has been published by Verum Literary Press. A very big thank you to Editor-in-Chief Keira Armstrong for showing faith in my work.

Please check out this wonderful magazine and all the fantastic poems and prose included. Amazingly, it is free to do so! This is Issue 2 of Verum and my work appears on page fifteen. I hope the magazine has many more fantastic issues to come.

Thank you for reading

Richard

Richard M. Ankers

The End of all Endings

We plumbed forever’s depths, mined eternity’s fields, tipped our caps to infinity, and came to one startling revelation: Death was the end.

Kara and I closed our eyes together, holding hands as we always did. Sleep soon came. But unlike those times when one awakens to a glimpse of an imagined world that pops out of existence, out of memory, out of reach, this was the beginning and there was no forgetting.

The stars swirled around us, we the centre of our own galaxy. Residual particles sparkled in the vermillion and cobalt light like so many gems in a universal crown, those remnants of the beginning. This place was a tangible, sensual revelation, and we smiled for the first time since the sombre policeman said, “Missing.”

“Do you think?” asked Kara. Her wide eyes implored. Her fingers grasped.

There was no ‘How?’ or ‘We?’ or even a surprised ‘Oh!’, just a complete acceptance of being together here, now, in this place.

I shrugged, for words were never my friends.

We soaked ourselves in splendour, familiarised ourselves with every speckled area of night. Then, once we’d appraised everything, like a compass pointing the way, moved.

We flew. With our hands clasped together and hearts already one, we flung ourselves into heaven. Our search had begun.

To explain what we saw, what we felt, would relive the disappointment of losing it, and we’d already lost our everything, but after all reality’s magnificence, we came to another place. An un-reality, one might’ve termed it, though it felt more real than the blood in our veins.

The cosmos is darkness made magic, but darkness, nevertheless. This place, this domain, however, was only darkness. Light was as foreign here as an ant in the Arctic.

“Where?” she said.

I shook my head.

This absolute darkness folded around us, sucked us into itself as grapes pushed into jelly. There was no pain, nor fear of it, just acceptance. We moved from one plane to the next. We sped through this nothingness with more hope than ever, for it is what you don’t see, not what you do, that offers possibilities. Then we arrived, and she was there.

Little Corrine sat upon her knee like she once did on Kara’s. The child giggled. It broke my heart again.

“No!” screamed Kara at the top of her lungs; the darkness snatched it away.

She saw us then, not Corrine, our sweet girl, but her hostess, her keeper, Death.

I like most had expected the Reaper to tower in dreadful, skeletal manliness. I was wrong. I was so wrong!

Death wore the visage of the afterlife, porcelain and wan. Her tumbling hair glittered a raven waterfall. Her form shamed all other goddesses and queens. The ghost of all ghosts, she appeared in her sable litheness. And then she opened her eyes.

They held everything and nothing at once. All that had passed and all that would come in all its manifested sadness. She bore its brunt. Knew it all. And she did it for us, for everyone, and more so for our darling Corrine.

“It’s not fair,” wept my Kara. “It’s just not fair.”

I pulled her closer.

“At least we know.”

“But we don’t know how?”

“We don’t need to, my love. She’s safe now. That’s all that matters. No one could care for her more.

We awoke together as we had fallen asleep. Our only regret, our one misfortune, that she’d never known us there.

The End

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

Dreaming By Design

The alarm clock makes a mess of the morning, drowning out the blackbirds and scaring away the crows. A fire engine charges off to douse angry flames. A police car wails its siren song; attentive thieves stop to listen, whilst I carry on dreaming by design.

I hold the cosseting darkness close, bathe in its obsidian cool, feel it course through my veins as liquid night. There are no stars, no moon, no higher angels here, just an ever-stretching moment sandwiched between last and next. I squeeze my eyes tight as a shrink-wrapped shroud, but the reason for this preservation slips away.

There are still brief moments of lucidity where golden dawns merge to cerulean days and the nights are nothing but places to lay one’s head. They are rare, flashes of a past once lived, and most days I turn my back to them. But not today. Today is special. It’s the day I wait for every week.

I dress in my Sunday best even though it’s a Thursday. The weightless white lilies lay across my outstretched arms like a tightrope walker’s pole, offering a balance I should otherwise lack. In this fashion, foot before foot, I make my way there.

The deserted cemetery mires in a morose nod to the forgotten. How I wish it would laugh and sing, awaken.

I follow the well-worn path through these winding monuments to other people’s memories in search of one of my own. It is the last stone of the last row of an extension abutting a hedge. Ready for a quick getaway, I tell myself.

A quick glance and I lay my flowers and leave, passing the same woman who tends her mother’s grave every Thursday. We often smile, nod even, but today she offers some words.

“Back again,” she says. It is not a question.

I nod, unwilling to risk more.

“A family member?”

“Yes.”

“Close?”

“Very.”

She pauses as if to say more might offend me, but her desperation for contact wins over. “A parent?”

She looks aghast as I shake my head.

“A child?”

I repeat the gesture and make to move away, my cheeks reddening.

“Then who?”

I am already weeping when I turn to say, “Me.”

My eyes rest most mornings, my heart too. I have never loved and never grieved. Some might claim me dead to the world, and the world dead to me. I lay flowers at a grave I have paid for in advance, near a woman who does not know my name. One day, I shall lay there as I have practiced here. One day, she shall do the same.

I pretend to sleep until the day takes over, testing myself against an overly loud alarm and a window open to the world. This is my ritual, my darkening of the mind. I block out all that would disturb me and ponder the woman in the cemetery, she who the flowers are truly for. It is a meditation of sorts. I dream by design in the hope I’ll be ready when we meet on equal terms. For ghosts may pass and smile and chat, but only in death be together forever.

The alarm rings. Are my eyes open or closed?

Thank you for reading

Richard

Richard M. Ankers

Carved

Written for Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge
Today’s prompt was Carve.

She used them like a builder might a mallet, smashing her way through one person to get to the next. There were never words. She never needed them. Her every action, thought, and deed stemmed from her eyes.

What were they like? Could you describe them: narrowed, nasty, blood-stained, or worse?

My answer was always the same, of course I could. They were carved. The Devil himself had chiselled them out of her porcelain facade. But it was only now as she used them with more venom than ever that the cracks showed.

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