Excerpt, A Window to the World

         

"I am sorry," the young man said, "but I simply cannot make sense of this.  How did you come to be at the place where we met?"

"I walked," Kitty answered, confused by the question.  "My aunt lives in the trailer park, not far from here."

"The trailer park?"

"Yes, it's very close.  Off the highway that leads to Las Vegas."

"Las Vegas!" the young man repeated.  He stared at Kitty in such a way that she felt her game face falter; something very, very strange was going on here.  "So it is true," he said.  "Yet how is this possible?"  

"How is what possible?"

The young man shook his head.  "What is the last thing you remember before you saw me?”

           

“Well…I was watching this lizard, and I saw something sort of—shimmering, I guess, so I went toward.  And then there you were,” Kitty told him.  “But where did you come from?  Are you French?  I could have sworn I was alone.”

“I am not French, and you were alone,” the young man answered.  “You are no longer in the Nevada desert.  You are not even in the United States.  You are in our world.”

*This will be appearing in serial form on https://channillo.com/ come November.  More details to follow!

Starting over

I will cross out words

I will make believe

I will stop everything

You know me

I was something I liked,

once

I think

I don’t know

I don’t know a damn thing

anymore

the fire has gone out and

I am cold

I am so fucking cold

Half life

We are all quietly sitting in an auditorium.  We are waiting for the presentation—for the balding man to come and turn on the projector and show us transparencies.  He will write on them in marker, circle the important bits, underline words, draw arrows.  We will all sit quietly but make no notes, because notes are not allowed.  We will just hear it again and again until his lecture is all we know.  And it is always the same lecture.  The same lecture again and again, with the same arrows and underlined words.  I have heard it so many times the words mean nothing to me.  It is almost as if they are in a foreign language.  They just roll past me like tumbleweed on the road.  I will stare straight ahead and hear nothing and turn written words into straws that represent intersecting hallways, each one leading somewhere I am not allowed to go.  If you stare at words hard enough you don’t see them.  You can read words out loud and not hear them.  I can read the same pages again and again and again and not recognize them if someone read them to me.  I am a master.  I am a genius.

A Window to the World

A Window to the World, the new serialized novel coming to https://channillo.com/ in November!  Stay tuned for more details...

Fading

So I walked past

the knives

only to be stabbed

a thousand more

times

Camouflaged

The tiniest of smiles crossed his face, which said it all.  He had won. 

“I’ll get her back,” I told him, my fingers forming into tight fists.  “No, you won’t,” he answered, and strolled down the hallway--pausing only to smile at me again before turning into her room.

Lost

Sometimes I am lost,

wandering around my

mind.

And the madness that

touches me,

touches you,

too.

It beats me inside,

it makes me swallow

what I should

release—

but it beats me inside,

I have to swallow

or I will

choke.

It follows me,

but it can run so

much faster.

It can run so much

faster...