Skip to main content

Hunger in Florida


Anastasia frowned. It was a beautiful Florida day— finally. After nearly a week of rain, finally the bruised-looking clouds had abated and brilliant sunshine shone down. And of course, like most things in Florida, the good didn’t last. The heat had swelled and fumed and throbbed into an all-consuming, concentration sucking nightmare. 


Poor Anastasia camping in front of a laptop crammed next to the rattling AC unit as it sputtered and coughed felt every unerring moment of rising temperature. I knew I was going to fucking die in Florida, she thought, as another frustratingly information light work email buzzed. 


A glimmer caught her eye. A sinful, wonderful glint of water. 


The pool.


The zoom call had dragged on for three and a half hours. Three and a half hours of everyone straining to not burst into confused, existential tears of the rapidly disintegrating world. Three and a half hours of trying to not think of wasted schooling, degrading interviews, lackluster paychecks. 


The pool.


Anastasia was already in her swimsuit before she could fully process the fact she was discounting work. Fuck ‘em.


Even after all the rain the water was brilliantly clear. Almost miraculous. She grinned. It was achingly cool when her toe dipped in. Perfect, just— 


Something splashed. Alligator flashed into her mind, and the young woman whirled, half slipping on concrete ground. 


Something lay nearby, only a few feet away. It seemed lazy and bored, unaware or simply uncaring of the intruder. It’s long muscular neck rose only a little from damp ground. Dark, reptilian eyes sat almost completely atop the flat, triangular head. Anastasia shivered at the interlocked, needle-point teeth in gnarly protruding rows. It’s long tail curled half way around it, and beneath its weirdly robust body were sprawling reptilian legs. Claws glistened. 


What the fuck?


The head lifted on four solid feet of neck. She could reach out and touch it.. 


Hisssssss.. It made such an otherworldly rumble that Anastasia just blinked for a moment, completely struck by such a deep noise from something this size. She didn’t hear the stirring beside her, didn’t realize the growl was for something else. 


Something bigger.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Find Your Own Way Out

 Find Your Own Way Out What if things could be undone before you’d done them? Or after? What if you could be rewritten, and never know it? What’s beyond time, what’s beyond death? What lies out in the places between places, above and outside of places? What’s in the basement and the attic of God, the places he won’t look, won’t open up to us? That’s what the note said in the empty, cold house.  It’s handwriting was rushed, the letters looping and stretched, trying to run away from the page to somewhere else. Somewhere else beyond the ominous meaning, the fate of whoever wrote it.  Water drip-drip-drips  from the faucet. Trying to fill that uncomfortable, hungry silence. Something thumps  in the attic, wood creaking before abating back into the quiet.  There are things in the house. There is nothing in the house.  Empty picture frames that you can feel unseen smiles from. If you’d run your hands across the walls there would be the essence of dust from a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tall Grass Kingdoms

We stay up late. Walk through the tall grass, let it’s fingertips anoint us in quiet summer rites. The disembodied orchestra rings out from everywhere, crickets creaking and frogs tolling and bats chittering; the voices of coronation, our adoring audience.  Sweep hands outward to our sides, catching waves of iridescence. Fireflies everywhere, indomitable omnipresent, and between them and the star-crowded sky above it’s like we float out in a mystical cosmos. All alight. All ablaze.  Home is somewhere far away, beyond us. Lost and forgotten like schedules, like good habits. We’re runaways, self exiles hungry for adventure. We share words, drawn so close by that impossible summertime magnetism.  But at the end of the night, standing up in the tall grass, home is just over there, over the hill and the fireflies are a dim trickle. Inviting stars turned cold, unblinking. We share fragile smiles— the last we’ll exchange.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review

 “It’s you this time.”  Look at everyone. All the staring faces. So many wide, watching eyes trying to mask their terror. The macabre interest hidden just behind is all to obvious— because you’ve done the same thing when the Calls came. It was you a few days ago, watching the Selection, feeling the strange thrill spasm through you. Fear from the potential, arousal from the promise, and all of it mixed by relief when someone else was chosen. You too had been part of the many quiet whispers and loaded, meaningful wordless looks. Thinking. Who would it be this time? Who? Why? Why were they chosen?   Someone coughs and all your thinking implodes. That was then . This is now. It’s you. The stares, the quiet whispers and exchanged glances; a solar system of human emotion all about what you will undertake. You lower your gaze to the Phone.  That’s just what it is. A Phone. Sharp, elegant glistening black. It should be worn, scuffed from all that usage, it’s paint changed fr...
Post a Comment
Read more