The Stain

- triggerwarning -

I plunked down into the leather couch and tugged the patchwork quilt over my legs. Maria, my ex-wife, made it during the five long years of our marriage. She made it for Amy, our little daughter.

I petted the fabric, fingers tracing the sewed areas, for the hundredths time, maybe for the hundred-thousandths time by now…

It had been vibrant and colorful, with the reds and blues and yellows thoughtfully arranged on twenty to thirty-five inches. Baby animals playing under the stars and the moon. Pink hearts lined beneath those little paws. My fingertips knew all the stitches.

 

It was one of Maria’s wonderful pieces. You could feel how she poured her heart, her soul, into it. Like she did with Amy. Now it was dirty, soiled with life and death, but I’d never dare to wash it.

DEVIL’S PEAK (2)

– NAMES FOR BLADES –

begin: here
remember, this is still WIP

The trees creaked as if the moon itself rolled on top of them. The sky was still bright enough but caught amber on the west side. The silence was accompanying a sense of dread and heaviness on my chest. “We should hurry,” I told Frank. No birds chirped, no animal rustled the leaves. The longer we had our feet on the trail, the quieter the forest got.

Improbable

“THE HORSE DID IT!” I roared at Detective Inspector Redfern, pointing at the nervous beast in the box behind me. He rolled his eyes. The Detective Inspector, not the horse. This was my only chance to solve the murder of Beggy, the jockey, and save myself.

“You, braindead ululating crumpet! You snuck into my crime scene to – what?- brighten my sad little day up?” I kept out of his and the horse’s reach. My jaw still had vivid memories of the time he caught me good with his famous left hook, and no way I came close to that thing.

Heartless​ Jack

The bar holds its breath. Bogeyed people keep a secure distance to the fight. Smashed bottles and blood glisten on the counter and the tile floor. Someone urges words into their phone.

The emptiness in Jack’s chest is drilling ache. The skin feels numb under his bloody shirt. His fingertips trace the long scar on his breastbone.

The surgeons take his heart and soul. They strip him bare of his past, of all who he was, and hoped to be. The doctors call it amnesia.

Weekly Horrorscope

ARIES

You woke up today, congrats.  One down, thousand fifty-two to go. You will fall asleep, and wake up in Paris – for a month. Don’t trust a word what the cats say. There is no truth in a cat’s answer.

TAURUS

Yep. That’s a grizzly. Nope, it’s not the Yeti. By the way, those berries you ate half an hour ago, those weren’t huckleberries. Yep. Pretty much.

Corona (1)

The bulk of “Corona” rolled under me. My sweet little rustbucket drifted away from the denser part of the junkyard.

Nothing had “easy money” stencilled on the side, like old-timey electronics that belonged to nobody. All the gold and tantalum just sat there, so lonely. “Keeps me searching for a heart of gold, and I’m getting old,” I sang under my breath. Oldies were the best.

The New Year of the Rabbit

The boat rocked heavily.

That made me trip, not the whiskeys, nor the pills or the beers. Cross my heart! The railing was cold and wet under my grip, and for a moment, I wondered if I should let go of it. The stupid pink rabbit ears slipped and went bye-bye. They took a dive into the big black hungry Hong Kong Bay. Maybe I should jump straight after them, and end this farce.