A big thank you to editor Joelcy Kay at the fantastic Edge of Humanity Magazine for publishing my latest flash fiction, The Hollows of the Heart.
Please do have a good read of the other wonderful published pieces. You won’t be disappointed.
Read Here: The Hollows of the Heart
Thank you for reading
Richard
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
If you enjoyed this piece, please consider a small donation
to help further my writing life.
Thank you for reading
Richard
A big thank you to editor, Manuela Timofte, of Gobblers by Masticadores, for publishing The Mermaid in my Bathtub. I hope you enjoy this little collaboration between the wonderful Gina Maria Manchego and my good self.
As always, please do take a look around the site. There’s much to enjoy.
HERE: The Mermaid in my Bathtub
Thank you for reading
Richard
Massive thanks to editor, Joelcy Kay, at the fantastic Edge of Humanity Magazine for publishing my latest flash fiction, The Cold Burn.
I hope you’re able to take a look and spend a while perusing some of the other wonderful work the magazine has on display.
Thank you for reading
Richard
A big thank you to the wonderful editor of Feed the Holy, Barbara Leonhard, for publishing my latest think piece – because every now and again I do – The Shedding.
Please take a look at the other fantastic posts on Feed the Holy. You will not be disappointed.
Available Here: The Shedding
Thanks you for reading
Richard
Author: Richard M. Ankers
I’m delighted to have had my latest Drabble, Sweet, (100 word story), published by the fabulous folk at Fairfield Scribes. Issue 49 is packed full of 100 word stories. Quick to read and with lots of variety, I hope you enjoy them.
Available here: SWEET
https://ko-fi.com/richardmankers
If you enjoyed this piece, please consider a small donation
to help further my writing life.
Thank you for reading
Richard
I’m delighted to have my latest piece, The Fallen, a Drabble (100 word story), published by the wonderful people at Fairfield Scribes, (Formerly ScribesMicro).
Available here: The Fallen
Issue 48 of Fairfield Scribes offers a wide array of these short form stories for anyone to read. Do feel free to sample them all.
I hope you enjoy.
Richard
If you enjoyed this piece, please consider a small donation
to help further my writing life. Every little helps and is always appreciated.
Thank you for reading
Richard
A big thank you to editor, Manuela Timofte, for publishing my latest short prose, Separated at Birth. Please take a look at the other wonderful poetry and prose on the site. Gobblers by Masticadores never disappoints. Here
Enjoy
Richard – https://ko-fi.com/richardmankers
Twins set apart by time and tide, yet close enough to touch. This is our meeting as if from thin air. This is the face on a screen. Here, we linger, the two of us, interacting with a world that neither understands us nor wishes to. We say the right things, act as others, but remain remote. As hermits in a world made social, where everyone and everything is a supposed friend, we become just this.
We feel each other. Our words mean more when felt, not just spoken to appease. Those with poor memories see through such things, for lies are abhorrent to the cerebrally challenged, whereas truths are undoubtedly solid. Even when the pain strikes us both, we remain true to this. When it grows worse, we never falter. When one hurts, so does the other. If one resists weeping, the other blinks back the tears. As if affixed by a very long string, one tug is felt no matter the distance. Two tugs makes the other one topple; I don’t like to see her fall.
This is us, just eyes in a glass face, and voices powered by electronics. It ought not to work, but it does. It ought not to mean so much, but it couldn’t mean more. Twins, some might call us, separated at birth. She touches the screen and I touch it back. I know the pain in her head is as bad as mine, but a pain shared is a pain halved, mother says. Apparently, hers says the same.
If you enjoyed this piece, please consider a small donation
to help further my writing life.
Thank you for reading
Richard
https://ko-fi.com/richardmankers
Authors Note:
I’ve now been writing for a long time, and it gets harder to manage each year. So, in an unusually technological step, ‘for me, anyway’, I’ve opened a ko-fi donation page. Every little helps to fuel the dream. I shall try my best to post some really good short stories and the like as a thank you.
Richard
https://ko-fi.com/richardmankers
Here is a short fiction about time and its passing.
Pain and anger. Neither holds sway. Every tick both antagonises and coagulates in equal measures.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
I dissipate in perfectly well-measured moments. Not a one longer than the next, nor the last. Like the clacking Newton’s Cradle with its five silver balls, the one positioned exactly central on my wooden desk beneath the workshop window, they regulate my demise. I hope I aren’t the ball in the middle. I prefer the outside and a quicker escape.
Demise? A bit dramatic, I hope.
I know all these facts. There is nothing else to know, only this: Who regulates said demise? That’s what I want to know. Need to know. Have to know! I cast my mind back, but it comes back clueless.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The first few days are an adjustment. The rest of the week is an experience. Week two gathers the information listed above. Week three adds momentum. This isn’t because of things changing — they never change — just to my resolve hardening. If I’m going down, I’m taking my tormentor down with me. Big talk for a man who’s never thrown a punch in his life.
I count everything from the bird calls in the presumed morning to the chirping cicadas in the expected night. The minutes of each day become an exact science. Food and drink aren’t involved; I’ve had neither since my arrival. The spectral fog that fills the room as drips of moist mist intensify; it is the only thing that has changed. So, this is where I will have him, or them, whichever applies, and shall practise at least a degree of revenge.
The whitening light becomes my fixation, the semi-permanent darkness an ignored anomaly.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
I tire. This is the truth of it. I have let my guard down just once.
She appears like an oncoming vehicle in a car’s fogging headlights. A smudge. A shape. Darkness where lightness has roamed. This is her entry into my nightmare. Not a man at all!
“Who…?”
“You know my name,” she breezes.
I freeze. I do know it. I just kind of hope she doesn’t know mine.
“Come,” she says.
“Must I?”
“You did well. Better than most. What others fail to accept, you have adapted to in carefully observed increments.”
“I ticked into death.”
“Ticked towards Death,” she corrects.
“How…?”
“Best you don’t ask. Just know I’ll take care of you. That’s all that matters at the end.”
End! I aren’t in total agreement with this, but what choice do I have?
So, I take her proffered, skeletal hand and allow her to lead me away from the light in a total reverse of all the presumed theories. It hurts not one bit.
The ticking stops.
The other side requires no adjustments. I roam free. I glide. Time and space and family and life and death, all such real-world things are pointless here. No adjustments required. No tweaks at all.
For a clockmaker, it is quite the revelation.
End
As always, thank you for reading, and for your continued support.
Richard
https://ko-fi.com/richardmankers
Richard M. Ankers - Storybook 
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