Nameless Here Forever

Something in the manner the June sun slants through my bedroom window sears my heart.

It burns through, red-hot, singeing its muscles and sinews but not its memories.

For it was on a blistering day like this that terror, treachery, vengeance and death engulfed.

A whirling hate storm, sowed by unknown faces in unknown places, which ravaged my known.

We could neither resist nor understand these demons who killed without remorse.

Who left us with our dead, the dregs of our lives and nameless here forever.

My homecoming, ten years hence, brings deep summer sadness, which will remain within forever.

From Guest Contributor Chitra Gopalakrishnan

Molded Reality

A tap on the shoulder a jolt back to reality, not reality to an abyss. Weary as someone falls on the ground blood everywhere. Running and screaming in vengeance. The puddle grows sticky I melt into the floor, watching time slow down. Put on a pedestal not to adore or admire but to pity. Voices behind me question our reality. Time slowly tick-tocks by. A car ride later, bright lights and people dawned in blue hovering over me. Green silk and glowsticks draped with fresh blood dripping on the expansive white linoleum floors. Going back, I see a molded reality.

From Guest Contributor Bandit Taylor

Bandit is a student at Pikes Peak Community College. He Is only 16 and is loving going to college for education. He is currently working on a novel based in Leningrad, Russia during the Cold War.

Growth

I like watching my nails grow. I eat enough proteins to create dead cells to convert into nails and hair. Every week, I trim my nails, and every two weeks, my hair. But they grow back with a vengeance each time. When I forgot to trim my nails once, my infant brother got a large scratch on his face. I forgot to cut my hair, and my mother had a nasty fall entangled in them. No one comes near me now, except to cut my nails and hair. I’m the keratin child demon everyone has learnt to be scared of.

From Guest Contributor Namitha Varma

Namitha is a media professional based in Bengaluru, India. She has publishing credits in over 25 literary journals including Sahitya Akademi’s journal Indian Literature, eFiction India, Gone Lawn, Postcard Poems and Prose, 101 Words, Microfiction Monday Magazine, and Cafe Dissensus Everyday. Her micropoem has been read out on NPR Radio as part of the National Poetry Month 2014, and her works feature in two anthologies. Read more on her blog or follow her on Twitter.

Misdirection

Stan took Selena's proposal as nothing more than a desperate joke, or perhaps a flailing attempt to save herself from his vengeance. But in reality it was only meant as a distraction. Selena wanted him to believe she was scared and desperate. She wanted him to underestimate her again.

"Til' death do you part, Selena? Richard would have expected you to at least shed a tear on his behalf."

"Richard never cared about me. He never appreciated me, not the way you do, right Stan?"

"It's not going to work."

Selena smiled. It already was working.

Part Nine

Peter And The Whale

Everywhere Peter went, the whale was lurking. It wasn't just the ocean he must avoid, but lakes and rivers as well, any body of water large enough for the whale.

Some days, Peter would stare out his window at the pond across the street. Inevitably, the whale would be staring back at him. Peter never understood what he had done to make the whale so angry, but by now he understood that nothing but his own death would quench the leviathan's thirst for vengeance.

For the rest of Peter's life, even drinking a glass of water was fraught with dread.

The Girl With So Many Tattoos

Brad saw her the first day of class and immediately fell in love. She was cool. She had tattoos on every part of her body. The tattoos made her an outcast as much as her attitude, but Brad loved her for both.

It wasn't until much later that he began to see the truth. She wasn’t tattooed. She was a tattoo herself. A living, walking tattoo, capable of speech, inclined to violence. She was the ultimate artistic rendition of pure vengeance.

Brad loved her all the more. As he told his friends, “True love is not concerned with surface things.”