Random literature scraps
Some of the sketches that are not long enough to really be short stories, but I still think they're excellent works so here they are! Enjoy.
i) Joanna In December Joanna began to lose her hair.The beginning of this scourge is usually a dream, and so Joanna dreams that her hair grows into a dying clump of watercress, tied into a bun at the back of her head and transforms into a dark-shelled spider - and she is hanged in the night.The round bells struggled to vomit, and thus the dream curdled again into spoiled milk in the forced extension of time.Joanna awoke, her brown curls like lengthy parchment spread out in a haphazard fashion, enveloping her body like a halo of light. She propped herself up from the bed and slumped into a chair, pronouncing monotonously, I'm probably going to die. She was a melancholic, somewhat over-neurotic, we might say.She wore the flimsy white dress that seemed to sway in the wind as if she were standing on a tall building, and her face twitched now and then as if she were going to vomit the next second.Her lips were a ghastly tragedy; they curved like an incompletely healed scar, and even if they weren't exactly ugly in themselves, the pallor was undeniable.The hairs curved and clung to her limbs, as if the dying grapevine was still trying to grow by nipping at the poles. The table lamp in the room was on, giving off a dim, cold light, and the overly clean air made her panic.Smells were a testament to the senses, and the senses made it clear that one was a living creature.She closed her eyes and snapped her fingers onto the cold wooden desktop as if she were a child carefully yarding a stack of coins. She gently rubbed the pen and finally opened her eyes as if she saw Lex standing in the corer.His face was always a blur, like a pencil mark erased by a bad eraser, making it hard to see.Lex was a collection of contradictions; gender was a non-existent concept in Him.As a result His face was usually calm, sometimes revealing something critical or mocking, an expression that reminded Joanna of a snake shedding its old skin, and she felt a pang of horror and took out a blank sheet of paper to write to Lex, even though He Himself was standing right here.Words are more powerful than language, and emotions are more complex than words, but it's like an individual's original language that others simply can't read.Unfortunately, while the purpose of human writing was expression, Joanna's heart was no different than that of a plastic mannequin, and the words that came out of her mouth were nothing more than artificial clicheés.Her fingers still clutched the pen like a baby grasping its mother's fingers, feeling like throwing up at her own inability to express herselfThen she became more sorrowfully aware of the neamess of death, and her sighs congealed into a white mist as the hypothermia took hold. Halfway through her writing she stopped her pen, the ink in it having dried up like a river in the dry season.Joanna looked to the comer,Lex had disappeared. She pushed the window open in silence.In a sticky silence, she seemed to hear Lex's voice again: what are you going to do now that you're dead? Joanna walked straight to the bookcase and fished a cigarette out of the metal box.She polished off a match and stared at its flame rising and receding like seawater in a bottle cap before the paper roll was ignited and exhaled grayish-white smoke.Joanna leaned toward the window again, letting those choking wisps of artificial cloud be drawn away by the cold wind.The orange sparks on the cigarettes danced brightly and dimly, like some kind of time bomb.She resumed her seat at the desk and pulled down the drawstring of the desk lamp, whereupon the cigarette went out silently in the darkness of the night.
ii) Tit for Tat One. Shatted Glass Sometimes I think of you and your tyrant-like cruelty.You were indifferent to the pain of my wearing the crown of thorns, and eager to crucify me - even though you knew I was not Jesus but a mere mortal.It's a marvelous mechanism of the human brain that always makes one remember negative emotions.-- It's not that I don't rememberOne Sunday in March you took me out for gelato in a department store, and I remember it well: you bought me and you four balls for a hundred and fifty-six dollars, and you thought the sangria flavor was the best, but I liked the toffee flavor, so you gave me the creamy one. I have a good memory, and of course I remember the fact that you're a devil-no kind man laughs in the presence of a weeping man, and you did, and you broke me with your tongue and your vocal cords, with more violence than Nero.You are like Marie Antoinette, and I am a commoner who died under your arrogance; you have scorched me with your fury.Your words were a cold knife and fork, I was a rare steak on your white porcelain plate, you doused me with spicy black pepper sauce and cut me up, devouring my flesh like a praying mantis.You laugh and say, "Yummy!Yummy! I lived on your landmine, the panic of the area filling the air like the stench of a dead cat, so I turned myself into a diamond under your weight and stuffed all the pieces into my coat pocket.I remember,1 remember it all, and I may have to say I'm sorry, but a hundred and fifty-six dollars and a cream-flavored ice cream ball can't buy a piece of broken glass. TWO. Waterproof Band-Aids I think of your goodness like a Band-Aid on a piece of healed scar. It's not a pure lie, because I understand that your amends are all out of guilt and friendly gestures of goodwill, and I accept your bandage with a smile.I sometimes feel like you know everything, like asking a question you already know the answer to - motivated by boredom, you understand that band-aids don't heal old scars, but like a man pronounced dead who still says his morning prayers, you know my lies but you're still happy to play along with me; most of the time I pity myself because you don't know, you don't understand what has been posted.don't know, you don't understand that the headlines that have been published in the newspapers can't be retracted or that the nail holes in the fence can't be filled - you don't understand that I'm handing you a new mirror instead of pieces of the truth. Sometimes you complain about my cruelty and I smile at you without telling you where I learned it.You have a bad memory and always make up facts, and I forgive you - though you may not need my forgiveness - for not remembering the atrocities you inflicted on me.My only plea to you now is not to disguise it as a show of love; you use love as a sword that will only break one more rib, like drops of sugar on a whiplash that will only cause an infection that will leave me struggling in an abyss of misery. You never caught me at the right moment, always handing me a waterproof band-aid after I bought a box of them, and telling me not to let the wound touch water - you informed those people that I was in Gethsemane for thirty silver coins, and your presence was my flogging. It was you who cut open my belly and made my organs into the thread of your violin; it was you who made me your servant, and it was you who gave me a life which I did not greatly value.Remember that it was you who made Gomorrah. Three. Round Jade I'd actually like to write some nice memories or stories about you and me instead of deliberately lying in my posts - unfortunately that's a sin that has to be committed. You enjoy hugging me or kissing me, you consider it an expression of love.And I don't like it, yet you forget that respecting others is also a form of love.And so I felt guilty towards you out of instinct every time you expressed love to me verbally or physically.Very sorry. But you are the one who created Sodom, and you are the one who turned me into a pillar of salt, and it may be that on some level you did it to yourself, though no one with a conscience, including me, would think that.I understand you because you think that I am all yours, that I am like a Pinocchio created by you, and that my umbilical cord is always attached to your abdomen until ! reach adulthood; but there is more than one way to tame a beast, and you don't really need to choose the most extreme and horrible violence - which is something that all of us are against. I know you, so I give you the understanding and tolerance you do not need; and in times of need, I will present you with both hands the only smile I have ever had on a dark cloudy day, even though you have pierced me with many different kinds of sharpness.You have not learned the laws of dealing with children, and as outrage can easily take hold of your mind, you have made me learn many terrible words and phrases.Your insults are like snails crawling across a concrete road on a rainy day.But I want you to know that I forgive you, and this may sound ungrateful, but I forgive you. I'm doing myself a favor - you have no idea what I have to deal with on a daily basis.I've been tortured enough by self-deprecation, indignant worry and emptiness, and the anger and aggression toward you must be given up by me like giving up a membership card to a natural history museum that I never use.You, you, you.The truth is that I have been confronting me for so long that you are not in my body, and naturally, 1 cannot hear the curses that are being hurled at me in my head - some of them yours, some of them mine.You can taste my love, it's not good at all, and no, I can't say it's thanks to you, but it has certainly become a scented candle.Please don't light it. My renunciation of you is solemnly considered, for 1 pity myself-you know nothing.I kissed the corners of your lips, but you must be clear that it was not out of love, for henceforth I shall have to hide my face when I face you.I feel guilty towards you out of instinct to cover the indifference of my face with a blue cloth. I think there are two kinds of people who have to write about love: those whose happiness has spilled over the rim of the glass and those who try to use these words to justify retaining the only remaining grain of sand with the initials of love written on it.In the past I have forced myself to remember the sweet times I had with you, but now I give you up, not with a clean slate, but only that henceforth I love you as I love a wilted fallen leaf-my heart has been cooled below the point of ignition. Four Hot Rain Sometimes thinking of you makes me feel sad, like thinking of a hot, boiling main falling from the sky.This sadness is not because of you, but because of myselfl was able to maintain my dislike for you while you were gone - 1 would wam myself not to expect too much from you, because expecting a snail to outrun a Bolt or Louis XV1 to rise again from the grave is simply pie in the sky, if you can understand that I think of you like I think of spoiled milk, and no insult is intended, but l do shun you - not necessarily with distaste.You have to understand that you have broken me - that you have planted a tree inside me, whose daily condensed dew beats on my veins as if it were a cold rain that never stops - you have to understand that not every living thing needs an overdose of water, you have to understand that not every animalall need an overdose of yelling and reprimanding to make them cringe, you have to understand that freezing and then exposing to the sun won't do any good for survival, you have to understand, you have to understand, you have to understand. You understand the secret of making saplings wither and have perfected it, you don't understand what you've done, you don't understand that your very existence is a terrible threat - and so to summarize, I can't stand you anymore, Creator.Like our choices of food, love is a demon that needs to be properly selected and swallowed, and I don't eat the love of strangers, just as you wouldn't choose fish bones for your breakfast - they are both raw and horrible.
iii) Untitled "If I'm going to love, I'm going to love purely."Amy said. "What does that mean?Is it not allowing the other person to fall in love with someone else?" "No, it's not like that, I don't ask for exclusive love, it's unrealistic, and it would be a kind of deception to myself if I believed it.I hate lies, I hate everything that breaks, I hate them - mistakes can't be forgiven, what can be forgiven are lame jokes that don't amount to much, mistakes can only be forgotten.But most people can't do that, because no one can forget the assholes that have bitten off half the body in a beautiful red apple.It's just a form of self-deception." "Okay, so what do you really want?" The candle in the center of the room was nearly bured out, the wick curled up to languish at the bottom of the tray.Amy Nitrate's eyes glittered in the foggy, blurred light, and she smiled wryly as she said slowly, "I'll tell you what I'll do - it's actually fairly simple.I'd start by making a man love me like crazy, so much so that in some moments he'd think I harbored the same feelings for him.I would make some mistake and make him think that I didn't love him equally, and he would hate me as much as he loved me.He'd think he'd been cheated on and take his revenge as a legitimate victim of his own imagination.When he hated me most, I died immediately." "And then what?"Ramon asked. Amy shrugged, "lf he loves me honestly, he goes crazy.You know, really go crazy." Ramon couldn't say anything for a while, just stared straight at Amy rather interestedly flicking the blackened wick with her hairpin, humming a Beach Boys tune softly under her breath, illegible because it was a little off-key.Raymond heard himself say, "This is ridiculous, this isn't love-it's murder." "If you prefer to call it murder, so be it.In any case, love is supposed to be a cruelty."Her voice was rather cold, and she was still absently fiddling with the long rusty brass candlestick.After a moment, she turned to him and added, "Of course, it all stands on the basis that I did love him just as much.But I suppose he could never know that at that time, could he?"