Suicidal, Again

So here I sit.  

Hot tears streaming down my face.  

My throat raw with the need to scream.

Muscles quivering with unspent anger.

I feel like a caged beast too long tormented.  

I want to bleed.  

I want to show the pain I carry.

The phone rings, buzzing insistently.  

The first shriek tears itself loose from the handset.  

My breath catches, my heart jumps into overdrive.  

I try to unscramble the jumble of anger laden words.

She is having trouble with them again.

I hear their childish wails in the background, 

Strident and pained, upset and hurt.

She is screaming again, the words lost in the emotional battering I feel.

What should she do?  She demands I tell her.

I back down, no yelling, maybe I can diffuse this, 

this time...

What did I do?  I tell her what I do.

She shrills again that I don't understand...

Nothing I am saying is being heard,

Nothing I do is getting noticed.

I hang up.  It rings again...

Dare I pick it up?  Ask for an apology?

Done.  And Done.    Silence.  Nothing...

I guess I'm not worth apologizing to, in her mind.

I hang up.

A moment.

That damn phone will kill me soon.

I answer again (why can't I leave it ring?)

Tears start anew, the hot painful burning in my throat,

I need to rage, I feel the beast begging to be let free.

I dare not free the monster.  But she pushes, accusing now,

Saying hurtful things,

That I don't care.

That I don't love her.

That I'm not ever there for them...

Tears...

More tears...

Goodbye world...

An Update

Hello anybody who might be hopefully following this little corner of the Net'Verse.

I must apologize for my absence from these forums, but I've been busy.  First, it's summer, so there's an insane amount physically demanding tasks that take up large amounts of time, meaning less time to create and write.  Second, the last three things I've written are unsuitable for a general audience so I can't in good conscience post them here.
Third, I've been working on a project for an actual company, which takes precedence over simply puttering around with words for my own entertainment.  *sigh* such is life however.  I'll try to get back to this as soon as I can.

Daniel O Casey.

One Woman's Satisfaction

(A Flash Fiction Contest Entry, once again I didn't win, but I do like this one.)


She was flushed, hot with anticipation.  This secret tryst had been a long time coming, and everything had to be just right.

The windows were slightly open, the scents of fresh hay mingling with the vanilla and lavender from the candle.

The deep red sheets trimmed in gold were turned down ever so perfectly.  The pillows with their scented feathers propped up perfectly, she surveyed it all with a look of satisfaction.  Months of planning so they could be together would come to a climax tonight.  He'd sacrificed everything to be with her tonight; there was no going back.

Tires crunch on the gravel outside, his car almost silent as he arrives. Her heart skips a beat; soon he would be here.  She cautiously slips herself under the silk sheets, artfully draping them so his imagination would have to do all the work.

There.  She saw the knob turn.  Her heart speeds up, thundering in her breast, her breathing  becomes shallow as she watches the door ease open.

“Sarah? My heart?”  He peers into the candlelit room.

“Over here darling.”  Her husky voice is throaty, breathless.

Finally he sees her.  With a grin he steps closer, swiftly removing his clothing, slipping under the sheets with her.

He feels her jeans against his leg, and then the cold point of the knife as she slips it between his ribs twisting it as he gasps.

His pain and confusion show on his face.

“Remember I said you'd pay for leaving me for her?"  She slides out of the bed, surveying the room one last time.  Certain that nothing will lead back to her, she walks out leaving the cooling corpse behind her.

Flash Fiction - Flying with the Gods of Torque

Flying with the Gods of Torque
Flash Fiction ( 281 words)

The sun gleamed off her dark golden hair. It reminded him of the color of ripe wheat in the fields back home where he practiced.  Sweating and cursing inside his racing leathers, Jake waited impatiently for Kellie to be finished with the tweaks and get him back on the track.  His competitors were thundering past eating up his two lap lead.

"What's the problem, this should have been a gas an go!"  He snarled.

"Throttle link was stripped you ham handed ogre." Pulling herself up from the ground, she continued,  "That should hold, but no more snapping it to the stops."

She reached across the bike and hit the starter switch, the throaty KLX140 roared to life, black smoke pouring out the exhaust pipe.

"Kellie?  What'd you do to my baby?"

"Relax ya ninny.  That's just unburnt fuel.  I've tightened up the air-screw to lower your torque point, now get out there and fly boy."

With that she slapped his helmet back down on his head and stepped back.

Grinning maniacally, Jake swung a leg over the saddle, gripped the handlebars and roared out of the pit spraying gravel. Powering up the first slope, he held steady and flew high, clearing the second and touching down on the third, disappearing below the crest to power through the banked turn.

Kellie watched him fly. Her heart felt light as she watched him dance with the gods of torque, defying gravity and paying homage to the almighty horsepower.  Grinning foolishly herself, she shook her head and muttered, "He's going to break that bike again before the day is through, but that's why we're such a good team.

A New Direction - Flash Fiction

A New Direction

Flash Fiction (280 Words)

Jerking awake, Jake felt the whole sailboat roll to port as a massive incoming swell lifted the wooden vessel over thirty feet straight up, the bow dipping briefly then recovering as the strain on the anchor chain caused it to snap clean off. The sound of the tortured metal apparently summoning a fog and rain on the instant.

"What is going on?" He wondered aloud as he struggled to regain control of the vessel they had anchored in Nanoose Bay the night before.  The cloud cover had settled in last night, but there were no major storms or anything predicted.  As he fired up the motor to bring the old boat back under control, he glanced down at the compass, noting that it was spinning first clockwise then counterclockwise.  Completely useless.

Figuring that they had anchored facing out of the bay, he kept an eye on the depth-sounder and steered Pandora's Slipper towards the open water of the Straight of Georgia.  

Praying that he remembered correctly, and that he hadn't been turned around in the chaos, he locked the wheel on course and set about dogging everything tight on the boat, trying to keep as much of the rain out as possible.

Hours and miles later, soaked and tired, he saw the sails of his schooner start to shift from gray to blue as the sun cleared the horizon, illuminating the purple depths of the ocean around him and the blackened mountain ranges.  The sky was a dirty sulfurous yellow, and the smell of charred timber drifted on the wind.

Going below to wake Katelyn he said to her, "I think we have a problem, nothing seems right this morning..." 

Frozen In History - Short fiction

Frozen In History
(995 words)

As he drove the ice pick deep into the caves vertical face, hanging from the slenderest of lines, Aaron thought back on how he ended up here on his honeymoon.  His shy and retiring bride had turned out to be not quite so retiring as she would have everyone think.

Aaron had set up a relaxing tour of Greece and the surrounding islands, but as they were getting ready to depart, she had made some last minute changes to the tickets and apparently everything else.  Not knowing this, he had gotten on the plane with her, expecting to head to the sunny islands.  When he stepped off onto the frozen pavement of Iceland, and was met by a guy with a land-rover instead of the shuttle to the resort that he had booked, he started to realize something was wrong.

She had changed their plans without telling him.  The were going on an ice-cave exploration trip.

"Hey!"  A voice from below echoed up through the cavern, "keep it moving or we'll never get there."

Aaron, shaken out of his reverie, glanced down sheepishly and started his descent once more.

* * *

Selene looked up as Aaron dropped the last few feet to the floor of the cavern, "What happened up there?  You seemed to be stuck half way down the wall."

"Just marveling at the nature of fate, the odds of chance, that kind of stuff."  Aaron looked down at his feet, then turned to face the pack he had dropped.  Pulling out the gear needed for a quick snack, he set about making tea for everyone.

Jordan, the short swarthy dark haired guide to this expedition cleared his throat.  "Such delays are common in first time explorers," he explained to Selene, "the location will do that to a person of deep spirit.  A sympathetic resonance will be struck between the explorer and the environment."

Selene looked quizzically at Jordan, then appraising at Aaron.  She had never thought of him as having a deep spirit.  His wiry athletic frame, topped with a shock of red-blond hair, did not lead one to think of him as deep.  He was always flitting from point to point like a demented hummingbird after all..

Sighing to herself, she began pitching camp for the night as she considered the situation she found herself in.  The change was exciting, the challenge of ice-cave exploration was much better than laying on a beach, but the emotional journey they had been on was one heck of a roller-coaster ride.  As she struggled with the last of the tents, she thought to herself, at least if we make it through the honeymoon together the next couple of years shouldn't be too much trouble.

* * *

The trio had broken camp almost silently, nobody willing to disturb the sanctity of the silence in the cavern.  The only constant sounds were those of dripping water, and somewhere far off was a waterfall thundering through the confining restraints of the cavern.

Jordan coughed apologetically to break the silence, then he asked, "Are we ok for continuing today, or 
will you want to return to the surface now?"

"Is there any reason to go back up yet?"  Selene's voice hovered between concern and excitement.

"No, not yet. There are no signs of problems.  We will need to be careful when heading into the newly opened cavern that I told you about yesterday.  The unknown will kill faster than anything else this far below the surface."

Aaron looked up from tying his boots, this whole trip had been one stretch after another.  Selene hadn't told him anything about exploring uncharted caverns.  To Selene's eyes, Aaron looked nervous, but didn't appear to be willing to back down in front of his new bride.  She made a mental note to _reward him_ later on in camp tonight.

"So we're going to scout the new cavern today, then tomorrow morning we have to start making our way back up to be in time for the pick-up schedule, right?"  Clarifying the time-frame, for both herself and Aaron, Selene tried to put a positive spin things.

Aaron perked right up at this.  "Alright, so we go do some looking around, then it's a matter of getting back to civilization tomorrow.  We're ready to go."

Jordan just shook his head, "Alright, let's move out."

* * *

Aaron, subdued by the sheer space they were entering, focused on the enticing way Selene was swinging her hips as she hiked along after Jordan.

Dropping the three hundred feet to the floor of the newly opened cavern hadn't been tricky at all, just a standard rope drop down the ledges.  But now they had been walking for a couple of hours, and it felt for all the world like they were walking through a city made of ice.  The stalagmites were oddly squared off, with straight sides and fluted tops.  The paths between them were more often than not straight, coming together at right angles.

As they made their way towards one particularly large and imposing edifice,Aaron thought he saw something through the ice, a frozen fish or something.

Suddenly the whole front face of the structure of ice cracked sharply, sheets of ice flowing off the underlying rock.  They were faced with the front stairs of what looked like a building made of cut stone.  Emblazoned across the lintel above the arched doors was a foreign term.

Aaron had stopped, along with the other two, as the ice started moving.  Stunned, he managed to find his voice, "The images I've been seeing through in ice, those carvings on the door, the artistic cut of the stones, could we have found...?"

Jordan, practical as always, made a questioning affirmative sound.

Aaron looked at Selene to finish his thoughts, and she didn't fail him.

"Aaron, I think we just stumbled on Atlantis."

Choices of a Darker Spirit - Short Fiction

Choices and motivations of a darker weaker spirit
July 20th entry for the Writer's Cramp  (874 words)

He picked up the rattan sword, hefting it easily in his left hand.  The training grounds where he was meeting his contact were dusty and windswept, the sun-baked Texas clay almost as hard as the concrete of the buildings it surrounded.

Dave had asked him to be here at nine in the morning, suggested that he couldn't afford to pass up the opportunity he would be presented with.  As he idly swung the crafted and balanced rattan back and forth, Marcus wondered where Dave had gotten himself off to now.  He recalled with some irony that Dave was never on time, and nine in the morning could mean eleven by the time he showed up.

Shrugging, Marcus decided to make the most of his time here.  The rattan sword wasn't the staff  he was used to for his training, but it would do in a pinch.  Taking a deep, lung clearing breath, Marcus dropped into his opening stance and began.  Flowing from one set to the next, he spent most of an hour just exercising.  

Off in the distance Marcus noted a plume of dust, whatever was causing it was getting closer.  Standing up straight, and putting the rattan back where he found it, he settled in to wait.  The dry air quickly drying his sweat stained shirt.

Sure enough, Marcus noted, it was Dave, just over an hour late.  He noted Dave was making some indifferent excuse for the time and everything.  Not paying much attention to this, Marcus just let it pass, and got right down to business.

"Why in the hell did you ask me here Dave?"

"As I said, I have an opportunity for you, but it's your choice.  No pressure."

"And?"  Marcus hated having to drag the conversation from anybody, let alone someone as smug as Dave.

"And here's the good part.  If you and I can drive this truck across the border, straight into Canada at one of the flatland border crossings, then we can each make twenty thousand dollars."  Dave dropped the whole thing on Marcus at one pass.  That fact in itself, thought Marcus, was significant.  Dave only did that when he was so excited he was about to burst.

"What's the catch?"  

"No catch, well, alright, one catch.  the truck is loaded with contraband."  Dave was positively jittery by this point.

Marcus, never one to take things quickly, paused for a moment.  After considering the situation from all angles, he decided to go ahead and help.  

"One question first, what kind of contraband?" Marcus was adamant about the information, without it he wasn't going.
"Cash." the word echoed in the empty space between them before Dave continued.  "Every so often money get's discarded, and it is shipped by the banks, back to government for disposal.  The guys that contacted me to drive the truck managed to,  umm, redirect this discarded currency into their own keeping."

"Alright.  We get the truck, we drive to Canada, where we meet the original perpetrators and give them back the money."

Dave looked up from his study of the truck's hood.  "Yep.  Unless you're not up to the challenge of driving for a day or two."

* * *

Two days later, north of the 49th parallel.  

* * *

Marcus looked over at Dave.  It was about sunrise, they had just filled up again and were back on the road for the morning stretch.  Two hours north and west would see them in Sedley Saskatchewan, just south and east of Regina.

They were supposed to meet their contacts at around noon, at the intersection provincial highway 33 and highway 620.

As Dave drifted off to sleep for the duration of the next leg of the trip, Marcus started thinking.

* * *

Two hours later Dave awoke with a start when Marcus prodded him with the sharp end of the hunting knife.  The truck was sitting on the side of Highway 13, they were facing west.  Marcus indicated the sign ahead of them that showed the distances to the next three towns, and then pointed to the barely visible roofs of the town they had just passed through.

"Twenty-four hours ago, in the middle of Texas, you challenged me to run to Canada in this truck with you.  We're here, I did my challenge, so it seems to me you have a choice to make here old friend.  See, near as I can make out, this truck is holding somewhere on the order of three or four million dollars in unmarked untraceable US currency.  Now I can go and drop this off like we were supposed to do, but that's two hours east of us right now and it'd be a hard drive to make it there on time.  Or I can keep driving, and settle down nice and cozy in Alaska somewhere.  The choice you have to make is whether you prefer another three day's driving, or if you'd rather walk back to Ogema, and then explain what an American is doing stranded in Ogema, without going into why or how you got there and what we were doing driving this truck in the first place."