General updates

Been working on some side projects that I can't post here. Latest Anika chapter has been posted, months overdue. I'm actually about halfway done with the next one. I've gone ahead and added an index to each chapter for easier, continuous reading.

Anika - Chapter Seven

Index:

• Prologue
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

To Deal with Devils

There’s a certain truth,

Behind the lie,

Of what I’m said to be

It’s an ugly core,

Masked by façade,

Concealed from even me

If it’s flesh and blood,

And tender skin,

Composing who I am…

Let not scale and bone,

But what’s beneath,

Stay every gentle hand

I’ll never forget your kindness

1673 A.D.

Valenik, Russia – Spring

          THE TASTE WAS invigorating—iron and salt, hot against her tongue despite the chill that struck her cheeks. The initial bite had sent a full-body shudder down her spine, and even now, as she drank, she felt a twitch in her shoulders, in her toes. Satiation flooded every nerve, every synapse, as instantaneous in its delivery as an intravenous drug.

          Behind her, a scream caught her ears. Blinking, Anna felt her hands falling away from her mouth. Felt the crushed bundle of blood, flesh, and feathers leave her fingers and crumple to the ground. Still. Unmoving.

          He little girl’s eyes opened wide. Red-soaked fingers began to tremble. She drew her sleeve across her lips and felt a smear.

          Her stomach clenched.

          Revulsion.

          The scream was joined by shouting. Anger. Fear. Voices were sounding off all around her, a cacophony of outrage and disbelief.

puuu

On nights like these, it's like my worst mistakes are stuck on repeat, a visual loop of regret and betrayal triggered by some misplaced sense of deja vu. The common thread is guilt, not for a specific action or inaction, but for the consistent state of ignorance that is human life. I lack insight beyond my means, and for that, I am punished by no other but myself. To bear the weight of another's happiness is never something I would voluntarily commit to, as its maintenance becomes, by necessity, exponentially opposed to my own. To maintain the flame, I must supply oxygen. My lungs deplete, and for every breath I take the fire dwindles. The inherent injustice is self-evident; it takes no  feat of imagination to understand that the twin roles of supplicant and supplier are not, and have never been, my responsibility. Yet while the human mind may be trained to discern causation from correlation, the human heart knows only the action and the reaction. Pain lingers on, triggered by the familiar sight or sound, oblivious to the absence of the very stimuli that once produced it. The soul is, in its truest form, an echo of experience - and once damaged, a phantom limb.

tl;dr: I want oatmeal cookies, but I'm too lazy to bake and the store always wrecks them with those goddamned raisins.

Every time I close my eyes, I see your smile.

It's no wonder I never sleep.

Thoughts

Growing up, I fell in love with music because the young men and women behind it had found a way to turn something so profound, so beyond words, so confounding and overwhelming as my own heart into something tangible. I could invest in each note, each word, each up and down, and release my pain and anxieties and fears and hopes and dreams, every facet of my own inescapable creation, to the trusted hands of an artist.

Now, as something of an adult-in-progress, and just as much an artist in the making, I've grown to appreciate these sounds not for doing something I am helpless to do myself, but for doing something I'm willing to trust someone else to do better. I trust these strangers, largely faceless and anonymous so far as I'm concerned, to share their darkest secrets, their most treasured dreams, in a format I'm able to grab, hold on to, and press close to my heart. I allow them to take my soul on a journey, open and unguarded, to places I'm terrified of, or exhilarated by, or maybe even comfortable in.

I've said before that music has become my faith. I think it's more accurate, perhaps, to say it's like the partner I hope, one day, I can trust just as deeply.

Someone with whom I can close my eyes and surrender my soul.

Face-to-face.

Completely without fear.

a small update

Writing again. Just an edit of a previous work, but it's creativity, and it's happening.

I'm feeling a little bit better.

Which may or may not be a dramatic understatement.

Misery comes and goes, but my cats still want their breakfast.

The sky is always darkest right before a tornado.

The only way left to go is any direction not immediately hampered by a physical object.

I've got nothing left to lose, except my job, my home, my car, my pets, etc.

Somehow, I think I just described my anxieties instead of my relief. How telling.



I'll put some real writing here, soon. Clichés are fun to kill, however.