short stories
poems
drawings
misc. projects
i like writing short stories. not sure why. like REALLY short stories. bad at writing longer stuff, i suppose-- dunno. here's an archive of them i guess. even with my long writing it feels more episodic than anything. in any case, these are fun but read at your own risk; the quality of my works is questionable; i can't claim to be skilled or anything
Cremate Me When I Die
Eight Minutes
Airwaves
Story for Children
Combustible, Vulnerable, Expendable
A conversation I had with a stranger
foreword: first piece of creative writing i made while here at college, and also just the first piece of creative writing i've done recently in general. not sure where i got the idea for this one; just woke up with it i suppose. has less dialogue than most of my writing, i noticed. yeah i'm okay no need for concern
On my way to elementary school I would always pass by a funeral home.
“Mom, what is that building?”
“It’s where we leave the bodies of those who’ve passed on, dear. We dress them up in all their best clothes, then we cremate them.”
“Cremate them?”
The concept of cremation both confused and scared me as a child. Then to me, it was unthinkable that you’d want your family to destroy whatever was left of you, let alone your favourite clothes along with it. Why would anyone want it — why would anyone willingly burn out of definition like newspaper scraps out of a tinder box?
I told my mother I wanted to be mummified. I wanted to be preserved and kept safe, in a sealed box with everything I liked so I could keep it and exist forever.
Of course, she couldn’t promise to honour my request. It was a ridiculous wish; I know much better now.
My mother kept a book. It was once bound by thick green paper and twine which had since rotted and frayed; my mother, however, sanctified as if it were remnants of a deity. She didn’t like it brought up in conversation. The story behind it was significant to her, though she dares not open and read it lest she risks damaging the spine further. She was the only soul in the family that the book held any noteworthiness to. She told me it was a gift.
A secondhand memory explained that it would have been a bleak day in a rural Chinese village when she received it. She would have gathered, along with her siblings, around an unmade and filthy bed, atop which would have laid its occupant, my young mother’s grandmother, which soon would not be able to make use of it. The frail and doddering woman would have then handed the book to a then-robust man, the eldest sibling, standing next to my mother. My mother would have then heard her grandmother’s croaking speech.
“Take it,” she would have said, putting her last breath behind her words. “When my spirit leaves this realm, these pages will become my body, and the ink will become my voice. Then, read me and I’ll be right there by your side.”
The book’s first recipient would have then promised to keep the book’s honour alive. My mother was sure that he did, at least as much as he could before he, too, could only exist as a story due to “liver complications”. He passed the book on to the only sister that made the effort to contact him about it. It now lies in a small glass case, buried under convenience store receipts and legal papers.
I got curious one day when my mother wasn’t home. I exhumed the glass case out of a disorderly office and examined its contents; it was evidently falling apart, along with its container. There was no way to open the book without completely destroying the spine. Chunks of pages, pocked with holes and littered with clusters of small white eggs, slid out and onto the floor. I picked them up, eyed them, and upon deciding the handwriting across it was far too illegible, put them back where they came from to the best of my memory.
That was what became of my great-grandmother: a pile of crumbling yellowed paper whose presence was only honoured by moths.
My family was familiar with the process of cremation. We kept a row of unlabeled urns across the fireplace mantle, in which resided mostly relatives we had no recollection of. My mother herself never liked the idea. She told me she would prefer to return, whole and undisturbed, back into the earth where she came from. I disagreed; from a logical perspective cremation just made sense. Ashes did not take up space the way a gravestone would, and unlike cadavers would not run the risk of rotting and going foul. Ashes, if you didn’t care enough, were effectively out of sight and mind. They could be disposed of at any amusement park, where it would be indiscriminately swept up and discarded as refuse by cleaning staff. Scenic points in national parks were a good alternative if you preferred to let nature clean up instead.
Of course, nobody else saw it that way.
As I grew older, becoming less like a boy but not more like a man, I had grown more sensitive. I shed my youth like a snake sheds its skin, but underneath I had no replacement, no new growth. I would feel the eyes of those that saw and spoke to me as less than human chafe against me, causing boils and blisters to rupture. That was why I never wanted to be buried; if you saw me you would understand. I would seep into the soil and putrefy it, or my story risks being discovered for what it really was: the culmination of a degenerate hand, read to be ridiculed, to be consumed as junk media.
Now I write to you, in a corner of my room where rotting mold proliferated and flies gathered. I have become a garden of genesis for lesser life. I sit, near-moribund, atrophied and circled by filth and half-eaten food which I can no longer smell. I watch a beam of yellow-grey of sunlight escape from a crack between my curtains, illuminating dust and spores. Sheaves of paper litter the ground. Ink and grease stains the walls.
Still, I write. I put down all the words that lodged themselves and rotted in my throat. “Cremate me when I die,” I pen in my nicest handwriting, concluding my suicide note. “It’s my last and only wish.”
I draw the extremities of my flabby body into myself, becoming a soft and formless shape, close my eyes and feel them swell.
When time would undo my binding and when my skin would slough off and give way, my mother would find all the shame that could fit into a man, packed into a book, laid down in my place. She would then take me to a mortician, too struck with grief to read me, so my flaws could be painted over and corrected, so I could be made presentable for the first and final time, so I could be gazed upon as my wooden cover seals shut. I would then be pushed into a crematorium furnace, where my pages would unravel and curl like the petals of a rose, and give life to a pyre radiating the light I never did. I would rise as smoke, drifting in the sun-warmed air, spreading thin and out into nothing.
Then, I would understand the joy of being unperceived, to be ash floating on wind.
foreword: i wrote this a while ago as part of a larger novel thing project, but it had nothing to do with the main plot (no i don't know why i wrote it either) but still it was genuinely like 10x better than the rest of the writing in that book (shamefully), so it deserves its own spot here
Eight minutes.
That was how much longer they had. Two-or-so years ago in an interstellar broadcast, the planet at war with Earth announced that they would destroy the sun. At the end of half the morrow-year it would be gone, and with every major piece of land already chilled past bearable temperatures, everyone living there– who wasn’t lucky enough to catch any transportation away, and there were not many people who were– would freeze to death, and after that the planet Earth would drift off to god-knows-where. Then the enemy would fly in and pick off all the ice and leave.
Humanity had not made its preparations. At most– a smaller city, one not important enough to be bombarded with bitter weather, would buy its inhabitants a day.
The people of Millstone had already made the countdown. Last day of sun– last eight minutes after it was blown into dust. Nobody tried to fight it. Life went on mostly as usual; it was so cold that birds no longer flew, but if you looked around you would see patrons of coffee shops playing games with each other with markers and paper napkins, drivers of frosty-windowed cars turning the radio knobs, and shoppers in malls asking their friends which coat would go better with their shoes. Most people, though, sat at home.
Mikhail had a chipped mug of coffee in his left hand and a pen with scattering ink in his right. He sat at his second favourite chair; his usual spot was right next to a rather large window (which is why it had been his favourite, but oh well) that would no longer close; the chill was too much to be comfortable, and it had been a while since it’d crossed his mind that his house needed to be serviced. He was getting old and was beginning to forget things.
He moved his hand across the blue-lined notepad and made a picture. It was of a cluster of lilies– a sight he’d often see when visiting his sister-in-law, who he’d always thought was a little easier on the eyes than his wife, Natasha (who retained a bit of her childish air since the two of them had met; which Mikhail could only tolerate).
The lilies gave way to a full garden on the sheet. The garden then had a family of birds, which he had copied off a framed picture on a wall– it was browning, dusty, by no means well drawn, and gave off a bit of an oily smell, but when he saw it at a yard sale he knew he had to rescue it before it would sit rotting in a toxic pile of waste. His wife had chided him for spending a thirty– which could’ve gone towards buying a nice couplet of sandwiches– and bringing home an “utter piece of junk”, but he knew what he was doing; he felt bad for the little birds. Now the picture hung above the fireplace mantle and would inspire him, as he knew even a simple attempt to copy the image would’ve produced a result far more sightly.
He tried to sip the coffee– too hot. He’d overcompensated for the weather. In a moment his wife would come bounding into the room and complain that he had made her coffee wrong, and that too would have been bitter.
He didn’t mind his wife. The two of them had been friends since early adolescence, and they had been good friends, but to Mikhail they were never much more. It was acceptable to the province of Pilport should you marry just for the tax cuts, or in this case, to call yourself a married man. He had no interest in romance with her or anyone, but he did not want to stay single.
Mikhail looked up from his notepad and saw that Natasha had already appeared on the armchair across, with a taller blue mug in both of her spotted hands.
“You aren’t mad about the coffee?” he asked her, looking at the mug– it was a quarter emptier than when he had finished preparing it.
“No. I’d say there are bigger things to be mad about right now.” She stirred the liquid with a glass spoon. “How are you feeling?”
He wasn’t exactly sure. To him, it couldn’t matter less that that was the last sunlight they would ever get, in his lifetime at least– but he didn’t know whether it was disbelief or a case of sheer apathy. Perhaps he had already accepted that the end was coming, and perhaps he had already come to terms with it. Either way, it didn’t bother him. Letting yourself be bothered by it was an indicator that somewhere in your heart was hope– or at least, a faint stain of a desire towards something better, and he had abandoned that on the day the interstellar broadcast was made public.
Seven minutes.
“I want to go swimming.” There was a lake not far from the edges of their yard, and it had enough boat activity on it that it would not freeze over.
“You’re insane, Mikhail.” Natasha tilted her head towards the window– she was too old to cock it properly. “In this weather?”
“Well, I’ll be reminding you again that I used to dive in glacier water for fun. Naked,” he replied while tearing the finished drawing out of the pad and folding it into a thin paper airplane. He tossed it at Natasha, who caught it with her left hand and opened it up.
“And I’ll be reminding you that you’re old. No time to be reckless.”
“I have all the time in the world. Now if you don’t want to go swimming you can get out a box from under the bookshelves and we can play a nice game.”
“Alright.” She gently placed her coffee down on a small round table and stood up, walking towards a shaky pile in the corner and returning with a flat cardboard box, the edges of the lid split and flapping. “We have all the pieces in this one?”
“At least I sure don’t remember losing any.”
“Well that’s better than you telling me half of the cards from the set that Junior got you for your birthday are gone.”
Ah. Three years ago he had brought those cards along on a camping excursion with a couple of his friends and lost its contents there, which was a shame; he liked that set. Junior told his father not to worry too much about it, that it was just a cheap bargain he found at the retail bin and nothing worth getting worked up over (though to Mikhail, nothing really was).
“Yes, Natasha, this set’s complete.”
Six minutes.
Natasha was a mousy, sentimental woman– especially so placed next to her husband, and anyone who walked by and saw the two– a near-folded little figure who held onto her possessions like clams holding pearls, paired with a towering, upright man who didn’t put in the ten seconds to hide his thinning blond hair with a hat– could tell which one of the two cared more about things that other people would care about.
“How do you think our son is doing?”
“What, the one that just exploded?” Mikhail smiled, paused, and saw that his wife was forcing herself to reciprocate. “Of course I’m teasing. He’s grown into a fine man; he will fare as much as he can. He has a wife and kids of his own. We can start playing now and we do not need to worry about him.”
They started their game. As usual, Mikhail started with the red pieces somewhere on the left of the board, and Natasha stuck with her blue marker three spaces right of corner A8. The objective was to move exactly seven spaces from your starting point in the direction of the centre, and you’d roll dice and draw cards to determine how you moved. Thus, it didn’t matter what square you chose as your first location. It was a game of luck. Neither of the two would be upset by a loss, since there was nothing to be upset over at all.
A full six. Move your piece down, the card instructed. Mikhail had started at the very bottom-left of the board this round. He didn’t get to move.
Natasha rattled her pair of silver dice around in her hand before tossing it onto the table– a habit she’d fall into whenever she felt like she needed more luck in rolling numbers. She was a little more nervous than usual, as she had rattled the dice around for longer.
Five minutes.
Mikhail’s piece was in the shape of a wheel. It had a minor imperfection, but it was his favourite piece– the couple’s dog had taken a liking to it and chewed off one of the spokes and a part of the rim. That made it special. He was especially reluctant to use anything else after the passing of old Spoons (aptly named, as his inertia made him a viable thing to hug when Natasha was too upset to do so). They’d made the decision to put him down months ago; even Mikhail could tell that Spoons would not have lived well in the deepening cold. His back leg had already made him rather miserable.
Four spaces diagonally, down-right. Natasha was already much closer to her target on the red and black playing board, but being closer did not mean anything– a roll of any moves left or up, or another roll in the same direction which would make her overshoot her destination, was no less likely to happen than anything that would help her win. It was always a little frustrating, but she knew she could do nothing about it but roll, draw, and pray.
“I’m not awfully fond of this game, Mikhail.”
“We don’t have many choices. I suppose you could get by with a few pieces missing on some other games, but as for anything we could play without making cuts or compromises, this is the only one we have.”
“Can’t you find the bits that you lost?”
“We might as well be watching petunias grow! I didn’t lose them in this house.”
“Well I still don’t like this game. You win and it’s whatever, you lose and you don’t really care. There’s nothing I can do to make myself win or lose and it’s not fun. I just feel bored and a little miffed whenever I roll something I don’t want.”
“Natasha, if you want to play something then we have to play this game. We don’t have the time to go and run to the store. Would you rather do nothing?”
Four minutes.
“No,” his friend responded. “I could enjoy some hopeless game of rolling dice with you, at least a little. I like doing things with you, even the obsolete and pointless things.”
“That’s nice, then.” Her husband paused to drink more coffee– it had cooled to a more reasonable temperature now, but his tongue was still tender from drinking it earlier. “If I could get you something more exciting I would. But even then, doesn’t chance have its charm?”
He thought of a round they played a week prior where his friend had pulled the right cards to move in the shape of a certain extremity. She had found it plenty amusing, and it would not have nearly been as entertaining had she done it on purpose. “I’m sorry for calling you immature, by the way.”
“I never took it as an insult.”
“Fair enough.” They continued to play.
Three minutes. Nine more turns and two minutes passed before Natasha finally won. She sighed a little and put her parts away; she was not completely fulfilled, but she did not expect to be, and she had felt a little satisfaction so she reclined into her chair and resigned with a contented smile.
One more minute. The ministry of Pilport had debated on launching a final broadcast to thank all its citizens, but the premier was against it and thought that it would have been better to just let the people have their peace. Mikhail was grateful for their decision; if there was one thing he would have disdain for it would be the thought of any authority trying to talk to him. He didn’t care, and it would have given him something to dread.
He rose from his furry-cushioned seat at the long oval table and walked across. He turned on a wall-mounted cassette player, slid in a slightly dirted tape, and skipped to his favourite recording of an old piano concerto that he would sometimes take his now-late brothers to hear. Something started to buzz in the walls.
“I should have done that earlier.”
“I don’t think it matters. We wouldn’t have heard it over the sound of the dice anyway,” Natasha said. She had laid a blue plaid blanket over her lap, still folded in half. “But it’s nice to have some music now.”
“Do I clean up and put the box away?” Mikhail wouldn’t have done that had he been alone; he was still in his sleepwear and didn’t put much mental weight on tidiness, but he knew it was of a bit more importance to his friend.
“You can just stuff the pieces in there and leave it; that’s alright.”
He looked at Natasha, and it was a rare moment where she looked as if she was at peace with everything. She had let her bracelets dangle lower than usual and did not adjust them on the hand between her forearm on the armrest and her forehead. With her other hand she drank her coffee, and did not move her locks of brown curly hair out of the way. Mikhail returned to his chair and propped his head against the back of his standing hand as well, before getting to work on putting away his game pieces.
“Well, how are we feeling now?” He asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe a little better now, but…”
She trailed off and never finished her sentence.
Time’s up.
“There goes the timer.” Natasha picked her voice back up as she finished her mug of coffee and laid it to rest on the adjacent table. “We’ll have eight more minutes of sunlight now.”
Mikhail wrapped the rubber band around the colourful cardstock stack four times. It always left a little indent in the cards when he took it out, but he was used to tying it tight like this. “That was the eight minutes. It already happened.”
Natasha looked at her husband, took off her glasses and started rubbing her eyes. She pulled her blanket further over her shoulders. “You didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t think it mattered too much. We’re here and we’re together; what more would you want anyway?”
He put the wrapped block of cardstock in the corner of the flat box, next to the sealed baggie of marbles they’d only take out when they got competitive. Then he closed the box and left it on the side of his chair. “Please get on the couch, dear. I want to sit with you,” he continued.
“Alright.”
The two were then seated on the yellow floral couch. Natasha leaned her head against the shoulder of her husband, who had his head against the top of the low backboard. He took ahold of his wife’s hand and started twisting her small collection of rings around her fingers a little bit. They were far too big for her (and a little ridiculous-looking, Mikhail thought), but they were fun to play with and jingled as they hit each other.
“I love you, Mikhail.”
He didn’t respond at first; instead he closed his eyes and took in his last big breath of air. He smelled the bread rolls that he’d foolishly left blackening in the oven two days ago; he smelled the feet of his old dog that had tracked mud all over the already-tacky lilac carpet; he smelled the bunches of white lilies in the pots that his sister-in-law left in her kitchen. Then he smelled his friend. She wore her usual perfume of rosewood and patchouli, but she smelled a little funny now that she was crying. He began to cry as well.
“Thanks for… thanks for staying with me.” They huddled closer together as they felt the cold closing in. “It’ll be alright, Natasha. We’ll be okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” He took her into an embrace and let his chin hang against the back of her neck. “Everything is going to work out and we’ll be just fine.”
They closed their eyes, and for a little moment it felt like the room stopped getting colder.
foreword: wrote this piece to vent a little bit while violently throwing up i don't know. just realized there's a lot of recurring themes in my writing maybe an english major could come here and give me an analysis... maybe i'll get to know more about myself? but yeah anyhow i showed this one to my friend and he thought it was super fucking gross
Why did you end up leaving?
Oh no, I'm not sure. How was your birthday?
Just fine. I'm sure they didn't know what happened, no?
No. How's it coming along?
Totally swell. I've been making good progress.
What on?
Oh, you know. The usual. I've been going in a circle though.
Not a spiral?
No. How's your mother?
Why would you ask?
[Tape begins.]
[Voice A]: You do know why we're firing you from this job, right, sir?
[Voice B]: I do, and I disagree with it.
[Voice A]: How so?
[Voice B]: Well, for one, I think you're making a mistake.
Looks like I may finally have some time to myself again. Ah, who am I kidding? It's been alone time for almost six years now, ha!
No, no, I was just curious. I mean, I haven't heard a lot from you in a while.
Oh. Well. My mother's been doing fine.
Well, that's good to hear. You're looking a little pale.
[Static fades out. Footsteps fade in.]
[Leaves rustle.]
Ah, shit, shit, shit...
[Heavy breathing. Static fades in.]
[Branches snap.]
(Hushed) Shit!
[Voice A]: You haven't proven yourself useful or unique enough to present a convincing case on why you should stay, despite your crime.
[Voice B]: Crime?
[Voice A]: Don't you know?
[Voice B]: No?
[Voice A]: Holy hell- you murdered someone! I can see their skin sliding off of yours right now.
[Repeated thumping. A second pair of footsteps gets louder.]
[Pained groaning.]
(Second voice) You-
[NARRATOR]: Today, pain is in style! Of course, some people wear it a lot better than others. It tends to make the vast majority quite hideous.
(Audience laughs.)
[NARRATOR]: Sometimes, we'll just never understand the times!
Really? I had a good night's sleep last night.
Yeah, you don't look so good. Is something getting you down?
(Curtains draw open. A BOY is standing on the stage. In the audience, only a MAN is present.)
MAN: You look like an angel. I bet you sing like one too.
Flakes fall away. Dry skin sloughs off. Inside, a warm embrace begins to weep. A flame begins to burn.
[Soft, wet noises.]
[Camera points up to a young man hiding in among bushes in a forest. He is covered in inch-deep gashes.]
(Hushed) Okay, so...
[The young man takes out a knife and holds it to his left wrist.]
(Pained) Gah!
[Blood splashes onto camera lens. The young man inserts his right hand's fingers into the cut in his left wrist and begins to pull.]
[Sounds of ripping. He successfully degloves his left hand, leaving only muscle and bone.]
[Voice B]: What murder? I did as you asked.
[Voice A]: You're wearing a dead man's skin. The entrails are falling off around you onto the floor.
[Voice B]: You- I-
[Voice A]: Your clothes are soaked in blood. Can't you see?
[Voice B]: It was only-
MAN: Can you sing for me, darling?
(The BOY does not move. He gives a nervous smile.)
MAN: You're beautiful. I might start forgetting that you're only--
CURRENT REGIONAL CONDITIONS
TODAY: Very cold. Harsh sun. High: 12 degrees. Extreme heat warning is in effect.
TONIGHT: Warm. Light winds west-northwest. Snow accumulating six to seven inches overnight. Chance of rain: 90%.
[Laboured breathing.]
Ah...
[Sharp inhaling through teeth.]
D-damn it.
[Camera refocuses. The muscle of the young man's entire left arm is now exposed. Peeled skin falls around him in clumps.]
[Second pair of footsteps approaches.]
Don't worry. I know you're not here to hurt me.
[Footsteps grow louder.]
You're not here to hurt me, are you?
I don't know. I've just been having a bit of a rash, I guess. Over here.
Allergic to something?
Not sure. It does hurt, though. It almost feels like I could...
Dude, that's disgusting!
...I could peel it right off.
In the corner of a dusty pink room, mold begins to grow. The mold did not spread far nor degrade the room's structural integrity, but it was still present enough to give off a rotting smell.
[Voice A]: No, no. I'm done. I'm done with this.
[Voice B screams.]
[Voice A]: I am SICK of you! There isn't a single thing that you have done right-
[A gunshot rings out.]
[Voice B begins to sob.]
[NARRATOR]: (Laughing) Well, I guess that's what happens when you don't wear it properly!
(Audience laughs.)
(The MAN asks the BOY to remove the entirety of his own skin. The BOY complies.)
MAN: I love seeing you smile.
(Laughter.)
Of course. I thought you were my friend.
[Stabbing, ripping noises.]
How could I have been so stupid?
The smell persists.
I bought a pack of Skittles today. I didn't finish it.
[Voice B]: I tried.
[Voice B sobs.]
[Voice B]: (unintelligible)
[Advertisement]: Try our new cherry-flavoured tarts, available at a supermarket today! Hurry up, because it won't be long before-
[Stabbing grows louder and more frequent.]
HAAhh... haah...
[The young man stands up, revealing that he has peeled off all his skin.]
[Woman's voice]: -corn flakes, apple sauce, and raspberry syrup. You can buy these products at your local grocery store for less than five dollars apiece.
MAN: It feels nice to be loved, isn't it?
[Voice B]: It does, it does...
[Retching, vomiting.]
[NARRATOR]: And some blame the cruelty of the modern world...
[Voice B sobs.]
[Sobbing.]
I guess that's all I'm good for, huh.
[Vomiting.]
Maybe I should wear more skins.
foreword: woke up at 5 am and decided i wouldn't be able to fall asleep unless i wrote this, then i wrote it and went to bed. anyway it's meant for a younger audience compared to my usual stuff i guess. not a whole lot of words, but i figured it'd fit something like a picture book or something
“When I die, what will I become?”
Paul smiled as he asked his friend a question. Jacob began to think.
Nothing. That was easy. When you die, you become nothing. You can’t do anything anymore. You can’t even think or feel. That sounds like a whole lot of nothing.
But wait, Jacob thought. That can’t be right. When Paul dies, there will be a funeral. And people don’t hold funerals for nothing.
Well, a funeral would have Paul’s body in a case. That’s what the funeral would be for. It made sense. When Paul slept, Jacob could point towards the bed and say “there he is— that’s Paul”, and death is like a long sleep. So that’s what Paul would become. He would become his body.
That couldn’t be right either. Paul is a lot of things— he is smart and kind. His body can’t be that. Jacob frowned and began to think harder.
Could he become his paintings? Paul is good at painting. When the Paul that Jacob knows will be gone, Paul’s canvases will still be around. What’s more, he paints to express himself. He paints to talk. He talks right now, and his paintings will still be talking when he goes. Paul is an artist; it just makes sense.
But if Paul decided one day he was not going to paint anymore, it wouldn’t make him not-Paul. He would still be himself, no matter what he was going to do. So Jacob changed his mind.
Paul and Jacob are best friends, and promised they would be forever. When Paul goes, Jacob will still think of happy times they spent together and smile. Death seems lonely. Death could use a friend like Paul.
That may be true, and I know we’ll be friends forever, even if we can’t talk to each other anymore, thought Jacob. But I don’t know what that means. What would that make Paul? He can’t be only my best friend. He does things by himself that have nothing to do with me.
After thinking for a very long time, Jacob finally spoke.
“I don’t know, but I’ll try to remember everything about you.”
foreword: came up with this one while reading a wikipedia article about black comedy
“I don’t know why I’m here. I miss seeing the land.”
“You’re here because the navy was short on volunteers. That’s why I’m here, too.”
“No, no, that’s not what I mean. I mean I don’t know what purpose I’m supposed to serve here.”
“To meet a quota, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t pay attention to these kinds of things.”
“Do you ever think about leaving?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“If I desert I’d get whipped and executed. In that order, probably. It’d hurt.”
“Or you could just jump overboard. Less pain. I’ve thought about doing that myself.”
“I’d really rather not.”
“What’s the difference between doing that and waiting for this tin can to get shot so you can go down with it?”
“Well, I don’t make the choice that this thing will eventually sink. It’s just a fact of life that they aren’t well-made.”
“I don’t see a point in this war.”
“Neither do I. Unfortunately I don’t have much of a hand in geopolitics, and I can’t ignore them either.”
“We’re a pair of nobodies. We weren’t even important enough to board a proper warship— we’re in an escort carrier, for God’s sake.”
“Do you believe in God?”
“Only when I’m having a hard time keeping myself alive. What I know right now is that he wouldn’t approve of the way things are.”
“Things don’t always happen for good reasons. Sometimes they just happen. The world is stupid like that.”
“Why do you bother doing - whatever this is? We aren't fighting; we aren't planning; we're just - drifting out in the middle of nowhere, waiting to get shot.”
“I was drafted. It’s my job. I don't think I want to bother justifying something that just happened to me.”
“I don’t think your job means anything. Nothing will change after this— so long as people have opinions war will always be a thing. And it’ll be as meaningless as ever.”
“If I jump overboard or desert post, is that going to change?”
“No.”
“Then I’m not going to do either of those.”
“Don’t you find these conditions miserable?”
“Well, yes; I’d say it’s a reasonable reaction.”
“What’s keeping you around?”
“I like to think of my memories as trinkets to collect. Gather enough of them and you’ll always have something nice to hold until the second you drop dead.”
“So you just think about nice things all day, on a boat, out in the middle of the sea.”
“I do prefer doing that to being dead, yes.”
“Say someone took all your little trinkets and smashed them on the floor. Then what?”
“Then what? I can’t un-smash them.”
“Don’t you realize that’s the situation the war’s putting you in? It treats us like stock. Just means to an end. If you even walk out of here alive you’d be left with nothing but scars inside and out.”
“I don’t care about what war thinks of me and I don’t see myself as means to an end. My life is its own end, I’d say.”
“Is it an end you find particularly noteworthy or meaningful?”
“Not whatsoever.”
“Then why are you still alive?”
“The same reason as you are— because I haven’t died yet.”
foreword: just wanted to write something weird!
It was 7 PM and I had just finished my shift. It was typically not dark at this hour, and it typically did not rain; this was not a typical day, however, and I wore my fabric shoes out. I had the wonderful choice between stinking up my room with moist socks or taking the bus - I went with the latter.
When the vehicle arrived, it was musty and cramped with sweat and sighs of resignation. The only seat that was open was a little wet and had a few hairs clinging to it, and it sat next to a mousy, pale man. He sat still and quiet, with one earbud in.
After a few stops, he began to exhale harder and tapped my shoulder.
“Do you dream in colour? I was surprised to learn that some people don’t. I’ve always had vivid dreams, and assumed it was the same for everyone else. That’s my mistake, I guess. But no, some people dream in black and white, and I think I know why.”
“What?” I replied, confused. “Why?”
“You know, they’re farming us,” the man said. “For our brains.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, think about it. What do we do with animals we consider lesser? We capture them. Breed them for our own purposes, you might say. And scientists pretty much agree that it’s almost definitely impossible for us to be the the most developed creatures out there.”
“For what? Why for our brains?”
“Don’t think I’m advanced enough to answer the first question for you, but if I were to guess - to pass around to their children like candy. They don’t need us for other stuff - meat, hair, companionship, whatever. They have far better options than that. Do you know how short pig gestation periods are? About a third of ours. And the chicken is a third of that, even. We don’t compare - not to mention we don’t tend to produce more than one or two a litter. We’re also mostly bald, save for our heads. And have you ever argued with a dog?”
“So we do their thinking for them.”
“No, don’t take it like that. It sounds too much like a compliment that way. We aren’t special stuff. You know how it works in the animal world out there? Survival of the fittest - more food, more kids, more shelter, more better. Fit that criteria and you’ll come out on top. But for us advanced - well, relatively - homo sapiens, a metric like that is base and uninspired. And here we are farming those animals for the things they measure themselves by. But what do we do? We say whoever has the most thoughts must be the superior creature. Smarter is better. But not to those aliens. They eat Willie Shakespeare and his masterpieces for breakfast, or as a little side dish.”
He pulled out a crumbling cigar from his leather coat pocket, took a long drag, and breathed out a pungent grey fog that did not dissipate in the atmosphere of the bus.
“And,” he started, after he coughed a few times. “You need to hear this. I love my chicken meat. Many of us do. Because of people like us, we made it so that chickens grow meatier - so much faster. But the chickens aren’t happy about it - at least one can assume. All that weight is more pressure on their bones. Most people agree they’re quite miserable, in fact. And data shows that the world’s collective IQ is going up. So are depression rates. Thinking too much makes anyone miserable. We assume that our increasing IQs are a good thing, like a chicken might think it’s doing well because it’s growing quickly. But we don’t know what to do with all our intelligence, and we don’t know why it’s there.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I didn’t. He was keen on continuing conversation, though.
“What’s your name?” He asked.
I opted to tell him my surname instead. “It’s Jones,” I said.
“Well, Jones, what do you do?”
“I’m a writer.”
“A writer! They love people like you. They find your type funny. When people get smarter, they tend to want to write more. That’s a consequence of their farming. Because we get smarter, though, we start getting the feeling like we’re being taken advantage of by the aliens. You don’t register it as such - it sounds like nonsense to you now. But believe me. You write because you want to keep a piece of your own world to yourself - or at least, remember it forever.”
“You make it sound like we’re losing something otherwise.”
“That’s because we are.”
“And how do thought-farming aliens relate to colorless dreams?”
“They harvest our thoughts through something like a cosmic straw. When you fall asleep, they stick it in your head and start sucking - like marrow from a bone. Now you wouldn’t be feeling anything, because their implements are advanced enough that you have no idea any of this is even happening to you. They don’t always finish you clean, though. They leave a little slurry. Those are your dreams. Sometimes the colour gets sucked out of them, sometimes it doesn’t. It all depends on the shape of the person’s head - like a cup. But those dreams, those are your real thoughts. That’s all we have left of the actual world. They don’t make sense to us when we’re awake because we don’t see like that, usually. But here’s the thing. Thought is not a bounded resource. Experience is. You can have two people from anywhere across the world think about the exact same thing at the exact same time - but for them to have the exact same experience? Not possible. They’d somehow have to occupy identical points in space and time, and to share those attributes with a person you’d have to be that person, which defeats the purpose of having two different people in the first place. So they take your experiences away from you, but leave your thoughts more-or-less intact - though altered as they see fit, of course. But to fill the void in your head they give you some replacements. They’re standard-issue, which is why people tend to see similar things. But the real world is different for all of us. Dreams are all the records we have left, but the slurry dries up pretty quick which is why we don’t remember very well.”
I paused. “How do you know this is true?”
“I don’t,” he replied. “It’s just a guess. But it’s a damn good one, I’d reckon. I don’t know why it wouldn’t be true.”
We didn’t say anything else to each other on the whole ride.
It was my stop. Someone had already pulled the cord to inform the driver they needed to leave there, so all I had to do was get up and go. I didn’t need to lean over the stranger to pull the cord myself.
As I exited the bus, I took one last look at the mousy man. His head was against the the window, and he was fast asleep.
jfc for the longest time i said i hated poetry (it is partially still true) and ehhhhh i don't vibe with it sometimes but for some reason i'm compelled to make some. not that it'd be good. expect it to be bad
Don't Overthink It
Determinism is No Excuse to Hate Life
Unclean
Voice
Philosophers have debated for eons and still don't have a good answer for what counts as art
WHAT DID WE DO WRONG
untitled 1
i don’t write long poems because that implies i have something to say
foreword: came up with this one while rolling around the neighbourhood. like the title says, don't overthink it. it should take you as little effort for you to understand as it did for me to write it
I'm only happy when
I'm riding my bike
with iron in my breath
and the road beneath my wheels
and my legs grow so sore
that scraping winds
become gentle caresses.
foreword: wrote half of this while sleeping
You picked up a book, under the recommendation of your parents.
You skimmed the summary to see if you’d like it. You did.
The book’s been published. Its words are sealed in paper and ink.
The characters move along the plot like dolls on a string.
The story is finished. You know how it ends.
And yet, you read on because you want to feel it for yourself.
foreword: i was gonna write "i'll let you guess what this one's about" but knowing me i'd probably forget it eventually. so note to myself: this is about my experience with OCD (it hasn't been this bad in a while since i'm on prozac but still)
Palpitations
scraping myself
raw and dry Dread
ed ritual
to a hateful
god of white and
water Skitter
ing through the skin
and mouth Resi
ding on your fin
gertips bitten
with plague Oh god
it’s spreading the
smell is spreading
The day comes close
r where I rot
inside out My
hands bleed to stop
it I coat my
walls with grease and
mold It stays there
in the corner
festering It
stays there on my
body and in
my food Nause
ating sick flesh
Impure buildups
on soiled floors I
wait for the in
fection I wait
and I decay
foreword: i swear i once read something that had a similar message on the SAT or AP tests or whatever but it's whatever it won't stop me from writing about it again
My hands extend down from my ears,
five fingers for each side.
My ears record so I can hear,
my hands so I can listen.
foreword: partially meant as satirical commentary. i don't know what it's commenting on. i wrote this with one hand. i'll let you guess what the other one was doing
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foreword: i don't have any snarky funny message to put here since this one's meant to be a serious poem im sorry. in any case a lot of it is ironic
i am a tragic creature
encased in my own flesh
seen through my shrill voice
and protrusions on my chest
there are a group of people
who take pity on we
who batter through our cages
and set our spirits free
i once read on the news
a woman who’d been saved
her flesh was beaten formless and soft
so her soul could escape
the kindness of the world
does shake me into tears
how we can be so loving
that we’d murder out of fear
foreword: came up with it half asleep and forgot most of it waking up
listen! the sound is near—
it waits in details, like shadows through blinds.
and when all is quiet, you will hear
the sweet melody of air.
foreword: its as obvious as it looks
it’s just a
damp matchstick
that won’t light up.
there it is - lying there.
it’s kept in a cool, dry place
surrounded by sparks of warmth.
but it still stays in its box - inert, and
soaked in salty tears.
i dont really consider myself an artist but sometimes you just gotta draw
treat yourself - nov 26 2023
first thing i drew for myself in a while. the title is ironic
focused more on atmosphere and composition over anatomy and shading. you'll find that might be a common theme in some of the stuff i post here
untitled - nov 28 2023
not sure what this is. just wanted to try something
untitled - nov 30 2023
also not sure what this is and also just wanted to try something. i used sketchup for the background lmfao
untitled - nov 30 2023
doodle of no particular meaning
time - dec 17 2023
not very technically impressive (used stock photos for like half of it) but i wanted to draw something before i turned 18. wanted to convey a bit of dread but i feel like that got lost in translation
there's no meaning to it anyway - dec 17 2023
im pretty sure this one is self explanatory
untitled - dec 24 2023
used the same stock photo collaging technique as "time". i actually really like how this one turned out lol
untitled, unfinished - dec 29 2023
would've looked like a generic anime drawing if i finished it properly (but i didn't). the text is an old suicide note from earlier this year (as you can see, the attempt failed)
quick tip: you can do something very lazy and call it avant-garde
self portrait - jan 7 2024
i don't really like drawing self portraits but i made this one because i wanted to practice scribbling on one layer and have a photo reference so forgive me this one time. compare with this old-ass self portrait back from aug 1 2019
life beckons - jan 11 2024
a rare happy drawing from me!!! not the biiiiiggest fan of the end product but oh well it's hopeful so i guess that's all that matters
untitled - jan 13 2024
just playing with colours
a doe's lament - jan 17 2024
kinda weak in the technical department. kinda weak in the vibes department. it's giving very 2014 deviantart
untitled - jan 18 2024
a redraw-ish of my first attempt at lineless art (mar 29 2022)
untitled - jan 25 2024
i said that my anime figurines would probably make good shading references so i drew this to test my hypothesis. gave up halfway and just made this instead
catharsis - feb 4 2024
i swear i originally planned to draw the hand normally but it looked bad like really bad. i didn't finish the shading either because my brother wanted to play league of legends
a distant light from a faraway place - feb 4 2024
it'd make a good album cover i think
a distant light from a faraway place, pt. 2 - feb 4 2024
same as above
to help the webpage load faster i put more drawings on a new page. click here to look
miscellaneous projects, such as novels. these tend to be on the larger side. GENUINELY do not expect there to be a lot here. i only wrote one novel and it was just to get into college; i've had ideas for other ones here and there but of course i don't really plan to commit to any of them. maybe that'll change, though, hopefully
some of these are too long to fit on this page so they get their individual pages
