Not my fate!

This brief tale I wrote for the AbeBooks 1001-Word Short Story Competition:


Snowy grass cracked under bare feet. Frostbite was the least of his worries as he approached, one step after another, the stream and the verge of death. His right hand held a clot of blood, from which poured onto the snow steaming drops, bright and thick as rubies. In his left, he carried an even heavier weight: a black sack from which came foreign, muffled sounds of agony and anger. The keen pain in his gut grew clearer and his steps slower, but no more were needed. Exhaling a last rasping breath, he turned to gather momentum and threw the sack into the water. The expanding waves echoed the last beats of his heart, as he lay on the frozen shore...

Read on...

The last strand

"Si alguna vez amé,
si algún día
después de amar, amé,
fue por tu amor..."
from "Lucia" by Joan Manuel Serrat


'T was your Birthnight...

A crimson notebook in hand contained a single remnant hair from the lock I once helped cut. A lighter, clasped in my left, bode the time when it would join the ranks of eternal flames within the dark mausoleum I now well knew.

I stepped slowly, almost mournfully towards my Mecca, a bearer of many things, a Magus, a Lucifer... As if the nightly dome above had substance, the footfalls reverberated through its fabric, carrying their weight in waves to distant deserts where storms would muffle and render them senseless to the pilgrims passing by.

My strides carried me into the particular darkness of Firefly Street and found the faintest of lanterns. Opening the book with utmost care, I extracted the last strand left therein and struck the wheel, yet Helios never left his chariot to consume the lifeline I offered it. Countless times my thumb bowed before his altar to no avail. A breeze passed. Finally, He emerged, illuming my fingers and the void 'tween them.

Somewhere that last strand exists. Unburnt. Unbroken. Knot tied between your heart and mine. Now we are but pendants suspended by fateful chords. Finally "hang as the stars do..."

Good eve. Evermore.