#fiction practice

[punchandjudy]

[rhombusdiamond]

Holy ground

Note: There used to be this amazing band called GARNET CROW. I wrote this piece after their song "Holy ground" hit me right in the feels. And "cabinessence" is a word I borrowed from KADONO Kohei's Soul Drop series, just thought it sounded perfect here.

Words Count: ~1,200

I cut my hand on broken glass. The pain burns like fire through my brain.

I imagined what it would feel like to have my guts torn open: pain, searing pain, nausea, disgust, terror. Just how much worse could it get?

A future without you looked like nothing but endless darkness. If I died, I wouldn’t have to live anymore. That’s all I could think about. A white moon hung in the sky, casting its gentle glow over the hazy night.

My feelings for you filled every part of me. I never imagined I could feel something this intense─so much that I thought I didn’t need anything else. I’ve forgotten how to want, yet here I am, still surviving.

The happy times that passed me by only make the present feel meaningless and worthless. This sick body won’t celebrate the health it had just yesterday.

I could only be satisfied by endlessly giving. I thought that place was our sacred ground. I felt the passion trapped inside me grow cold and hard. If you have nothing left to protect, what are you supposed to pray for?

Should I pray for world peace instead? That kind of hypocritical wish─but if saying it aloud could make it come true, then I’d want that.

More than deep wounds, I wish only tender, cherished memories would remain someday. When tomorrow comes, and the day after, and the next, I hope they’ll collapse gently in the right direction.

If I can walk on my own feet again someday, will I reach the sacred ground I once dreamed of? Will this lost heart of mine ever awaken?

You’re gone now, but surely someday, riding the rhythm of swaying waves, you’ll be reborn. When that time comes, I feel like I’ll be standing on my own unshakable holy ground.

Definitely. The searing pain will probably fade away by then.

✁┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈✁┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈✁

You changed into a pure white summer dress. Blood seeped from glass-cut wounds, staining the pristine fabric red in places. It stood out starkly against the blinding white, but you didn't care.

As you let your arms hang at your sides, blood overflowed from the wounds, forming streaks that crawled down to your fingertips, pooled, and finally fell to the floor when it could no longer hold its own weight. The wooden floorboards absorbed the blood, turning black. Your reflection in the mirror looked ghostly pale, devoid of vitality. Your skin was rough, and your cheeks were hollow. You couldn't even remember how long it had been since you'd had a proper meal.

Still, you didn't care. You'd stopped bothering about things. You had become indifferent.

How many days─or perhaps months─had it been? You had even lost your sense of time. At any rate, you decided to go outside for the first time in what felt like ages. It was a calm, moonlit night. Barefoot, you slipped on your favorite heeled sandals, which were slightly higher than usual, and lazily carried your lighter body outside.

No one ever bothered you, but that also meant there was no one to care for or look after you. You were never really suited for living to begin with. So now, your body was tilting at a slightly steeper angle toward death. The speed of your fall had increased just a bit, but you didn't mind. After all, whether you lived or died, there wasn't much difference either way.

Neither hurting nor being hurt. Just peaceful. You think it would be nice if this tranquility could last. May the world someday be wrapped in gentle light. You flatly acknowledge it's a wish that sounds almost hypocritical, but if speaking it could make it true, then so be it.

Calm, with no changes. Even your heartbeat feels faint, as if being absorbed by the air─so faint it might disappear. What difference is there from being dead?

You laugh. You were simply made this way. Yourself─how you feel, think, and act─was molded to operate only within these confines. Nothing will change unless you're reborn. Like smashing a clay sculpture you've shaped and starting anew, there's no other way.

Perhaps you were always just a cup. Unless someone pours something into you─love, care, affection, bonds, connection─you remain merely a vessel, an outer shell, a form without substance.

Your sick body couldn't endure it anymore─the reality of practical living and sustaining it day after day. Your flesh perished, decayed, and has now lost its form. Yet your soul, essence, core─the very source of your life─hasn't died.

You have made a contract with the ruler of the underworld, the king of the land of night. You are now the gatekeeper, guarding the boundary between life and death. You are the shield of the threshold, one who can bring punishment to those who dare to trespass recklessly.

You were born between Prodigy and Tragedy. The two were twins─brothers and sisters, siblings intertwined as often happens among gods. Their names, too, were mere conveniences and, being divine, they were unbound by them. Their very existence was elusive, embodying freedom and liberation. Anyway, the names don't matter─you were born between something elusive, like a storm. You could also say between chaos and order. Yet you, born from the union of such beings, carried a nature seemingly opposite to theirs: a material body bound by constraints, devoid of freedom, unable to exist without dependence. The reason you could transform was that your flesh died and the whims of the gods touched your soul, reshaping it. Yet your essence remains unchanged: unfree, bound, and dependent.

And there she was again─standing before you like some cruel inevitability.

Your relationship with her defied definition. It existed in that liminal space between strangers and soulmates, where distance and intimacy blurred into something indefinable. Perhaps that was simply the nature of what you shared─something too complex for words, too fragile for certainties.

She had betrayed you. Asked you to sacrifice yourself to save a world that had never asked for your protection. And like the fool you were, you had done exactly that.

You surrendered your life's essence to the world─that vital spark some might call a "cabinessence," the invisible thread binding your existence to this reality, the one thing you couldn't survive without.

Now you sat in the quiet aftermath, waiting with strange calm as your very being slowly crumbled to ash and memory.

You had become nothing more than a living corpse─a hollow shell offering what remained of your dwindling life to the god of the underworld, simply waiting for time itself to fade you into nothingness. Even the memory of having once loved her seemed swallowed whole by the encroaching mist, vanishing as though it had never existed at all.

Now, you looked back at your former self─that person who had once burned with such fierce passion for another─with a mixture of scorn, bitter irony, and bewildered astonishment.

"Ah! You startled me. What business could you possibly have with me now?" The way you said it─your voice trembled at the edges, as if you were barely holding back a bubbling laugh. It was almost as if you didn't care about the words she threw at you─the way you spoke sounded patched together, like you were brushing them off.

[rhombusdiamond]

The Long Rain at Summer’s End

When you opened the security shutter on the window you’d closed instead of the curtains, hazy sunlight and heat seeped in through the glass. Summers everywhere have been unbearably hot lately—not just hot, but scorching. And today, of all days, it was raining, so you couldn’t even open the windows to let in a breeze. The thick, humid air clung stickily to your entire body.

"Ugh…"

The way your skin touched the edges of your loungewear T-shirt and shorts felt unbearably gross. Even though it’s summer vacation, this heat makes you want to do nothing at all. To make it worse, today it’s raining. You don’t even feel like going to your favorite ice cream shop or the cool, air-conditioned library.

—So, what should I do?

You glanced at the wall clock. It was already past 9:30 AM. Grabbing your phone from the headboard and, on impulse, your pack of cigarettes, you stepped out onto the balcony. The overhanging balcony above shielded you from the rain, but the sweltering heat wrapped around you like a blanket.

Unconsciously, you let out a groan. You lit a cigarette, holding it between your lips, then pulled up the number you’d been talking to late last night and tapped the call button without hesitation. A few rings later, the line connected.

"Hey, it’s me," you said, laughing slightly at your own words. Your voice carried a sweetness that made your cheeks relax on their own.

The person on the other end mumbled something—a "yeah" or an "uh-huh."

"Were you asleep?"

Every sound from the other side of the call sounded drowsy, and you couldn’t help but giggle.

"Hey, what should we do today?"

You exhaled cigarette smoke while checking the smartwatch on your left wrist. You didn’t ask if they wanted to meet up—it was already a given that you would. The sleepy, honeyed voice on the other end of the line melted you into a puddle.

"Alright, honey, let’s brush our teeth while the coffee brews," you said, stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray forgotten on the balcony. Bringing the muggy air with you, you stepped back inside.

Keeping the call connected, you set up the coffee maker. As you brushed your teeth, you listened to the complaints about still being sleepy. Toothpaste foam filled your mouth, spilling slightly past the corners of your lips. From the phone on speaker, the sounds of everyday life kept drifting through.

From the moment you woke up, more than anything else, what you wanted was the sound of your love’s voice.

[rhombusdiamond]

in a bar

A man in a bar seemed to be dead drunk. He lay on the bar counter while his friends went home and left him behind. He was mumbling something as if in a daze. "My wife," he seemed to be talking pathetically to himself, "I think she's having an affair, with another woman, no less."

A bartender was there, quietly polishing glasses.

The man continued, "I believe that she might be cheating on me. And to make matters worse, the other person could be a woman!" He was quiet for a while, then murmured again, "I suspect... she might be engaging in a clandestine relationship with someone. And to top it off, the other person is possibly a woman..." His words became increasingly slurred, but the complaint was the same. He said three times in different expressions that he suspected his wife was having an illicit affair with someone─a woman, apparently.

The bartender knew the drunk man and his wife. Certainly, she was adulterous with another woman. And he knew it was out of their control. Because he also knew the woman and her significant other. "I think being betrayed by someone you love truly breaks your heart. But no matter what, you can never control another person's feelings." He gently called out to the man who had fallen into a deep sleep, even though he knew the man would not hear him. The whisper lingered with a sense of longing before dissolving into the air.

[theauthoryperson]

Benjamin Franklin Butler - a 990 word experiment

Benjamin Franklin Butler had always been the model son. He was respectful of his parents, finished all of his homework on time, was picked on by all the right bullies, never lost his glasses, and had his future completely planned out. This included his flawless law degree from Yale, the address of his two story house in the suburbs of New Haven, and the law firm his corner office was going to be in. Everything was perfectly aligned, all the way down to his dark varnished oak desk, just like his father’s. He would have two children that lived upstairs, a German shepherd named Rex, and the best lawn in the neighborhood for four years running. His loving wife would have dinner ready whenever he got home, and they would be the perfect family the neighbors envied.

And that loving wife would be Molly Jenkins.

The twelve-year-old mind that resided in his noggin had never considered the fact that Molly Jenkins might not want to be his loving wife.

On that day, Molly Jenkins and Benjamin Franklin Butler were stuck in the same backseat. They had been confined to the very back-most backseat of Mrs. Butler’s “handy tan van,” which had been Mr. Butler’s idea of a pun. Benjamin hadn’t laughed four years ago, and he still didn’t find it very amusing. It smelled rather used, and the smaller children in the middle seats were pelting Cheerios at each other again, from what could be heard. Benjamin lifted his nose from his book to observe Molly. She wasn’t boring, just…unremarkable. Not the kind of person you would think anything special of unless you had grown up next door to her, which Benjamin hadn’t. She was doing the most unremarkable thing Benjamin had ever seen a person in a car do – staring out the window. Benjamin decided this was a dull thing to do on a road trip, and settled his nose back into the crevice of his book.

“What are you doing?”

He looked up towards Molly’s washed-out face. “Reading a book,” he replied, which seemed fairly obvious to him. “Isn’t it obvious?

“I suppose it is,” she said, nodding slowly.

Benjamin Franklin Butler looked at Molly Jenkins. Molly Jenkins looked back at Benjamin Franklin Butler with her pale, unremarkable eyes.

Benjamin Franklin Butler went back to reading his book.

Molly Jenkins went back to staring out the window at a grubby man next to the stoplight.

Benjamin couldn’t see any reason why she wouldn’t want to be his loving wife. He doubted anyone else would notice her enough to want her as their own loving wife, so she was a fairly safe choice. He supposed it wouldn’t really matter how unremarkable she was, so long as she kept her role. He shifted a bit and out of the corner of his eye, saw Molly lean her head back against the seat to stare at the grimy, tan ceiling of the car. He respected her slight change of unremarkable scenery, and went back to his book yet again. He managed to read five more sentences until Molly interrupted him again.

“What are you reading?”

Benjamin sighed and lifted his nose again. “As I said before, a book.”

“But what kind of book?”

If Benjamin hadn’t looked directly away from Molly Jenkins at that point to roll his eyes, he might have seen her look away from the ceiling and lean towards him and his book with a distinct sort of interest she hadn’t expressed while looking out the van’s window.

Molly Jennifer Jenkins wasn’t quite like Benjamin. She had always been the typical kind of little girl who dreamed of marrying a prince and becoming a princess, until the other girls laughed and told her princesses didn’t exist anymore and she’d be better off dreaming of marrying a lawyer. She wanted to be a marine biologist when she grew up even though she hated the water, because that’s what the other girls wanted to be, even though they laughed when she told them because she had never been any good at science. She painted her room pink, because that’s what girls did; she tried out for cheerleading and didn’t make the team. She didn’t draw because you could never make a living as an artist, and no one ever told her you could try. She tried to care about lipstick and hair clips and wearing the same skirts the other girls wore, and she laughed at their jokes when they made fun of her, because that’s what you do to fit in.  She didn’t know what her future was, and she didn’t really care, because no one else did either. Molly Jennifer Jenkins was the kind of typical anomaly you and I would classify as a follower. She was the person everyone doesn't want to be but still is.

Benjamin leaned away from Molly, defensively pulling his book away from her and furrowing his eyebrows.

“It’s the kind of book with words.”

“But what’s it about?”

“It’s about…” He faltered. Benjamin prided himself on his ability to circumvent direct answers and find loopholes in questions. It was one of the qualities he attributed to his choice of future profession. “It’s about nothing you need to be concerning yourself with at the moment.”

Molly blinked and her pale eyes slid back into a matte, vacant stare. She turned her gaze to the window and stared back at the raindrops on the outside of the glass, a detail Benjamin wasn't interested in and would never notice. Benjamin didn't care about anything outside the car, and his gaze didn't reach beyond the inner surface of the glass when he glanced up to see if there was anything worth looking at. He settled his gaze back into the ink on the pages, and let his view tunnel its way through until nothing around him existed other than himself and the biography of James Madison.