Category: fiction

bottoms dream 1

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

Raymond knelt in dark torch-lit crypts.

His sword hung gilded and decorative at his side as his parents decorated the room with their own useless and empty words. The king pulled his eyebrows together to deliver his poetic eulogy, the queen pushed sobs through her mouth and tears through her eyes to mimic grief, Adrian, the crown prince, maintained his stoic composure, letting it crack so as to pretend it difficult, but only Raymond, the second prince gave into a deep melancholy like his heart was a stone sinking into his boots.

It would not appear that way, but the second prince was the only member of the royal family whose mourning for the late Prince Henry Castell was sincere. The late prince had been a bitter old man and a quick enemy of the insincere.

“A great man has died today, and we deeply mourn his loss,” Raymond’s father
continued. The king had only ever thought his uncle a royal annoyance, useless and unsavory. Amid the empty ring of false condolences, the stone relief was lowered over the remains of a the misanthropic royal. He would have given laughed bitterly at his own insincere funeral. It was not as he had wanted, but his protests had died with him.

The funeral party departed to feast in honor of a man they had despised in life, and Raymond Castell walked alone in these empty crypts. He ran his fingers over the feet of his own marble relief, waiting for his death and his own flowery eulogy. He imagined his brother
giving it and he imagined him meaning not a word.

His head twitched to one side, hitting him like an electric shock or the sudden absence of a current. He twitched again and swam up from the deep.

pentacle 2

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

PART 1 – THREE OF SWORDS (cont.)

Stepping out into the street was like being hit with a bucket of ice water. It may have been April, but the seaside town of Columbia remained cold and damp well into June when the fair-weather tourists would begin to show their faces.

Adrian, with a detached sense of calm, realized that they were running on fumes. Eventually, they would crash and understand what had happened. Until then, they reasoned, they should continue to walk. It they stopped, they might forget how to do the locomotion-thing in the first place.

If the fog had any goddamn respect, it would have swirled, or done something majestic like that. But no. It hung cold and dead in the sky, daring Adrian to make it stop. The wind picked up and danced around Adrian, but the fog stubbornly stayed put.

Columbia was one street and if you blinked, or, if like Adrian, your eyes had stopped noticing anything in front of them, you could miss it. And miss it they did. They took a step forward into an unexpected substance.

“Oh,” Adrian said passively. Because they had just realized that they had stepped into the ocean. They might not have even removed their right foot from the ocean had they not heard a familiar call of “Yo Adrian!” followed by an obscene amount of laughter, from the lifeguard tower.

When Adrian reached the top of the ladder, Aiden was still laughing to himself.

“You know that kind of gets old,” Adrian said.

“Maybe to you,” Aiden shrugged. His demeanor turned a variation of serious. A half-smile still poked around his stoic expression. To Aiden, being fully serious meant you were loosing the battle against life’s slew of hardships. “So,” he started, “did you see him.” Adrian nodded.

“Yeah, he’s dead alright,” they repeated. It seemed to be the only thing they could say about their uncle.

“Was there any doubt?” Aiden asked. Adrian sat down and dangled their legs over the edge of the tower’s platform.

“I don’t know,” they replied. “He just never seemed like kind of guy who would -“

“Commit suicide?” Aiden finished.

“Die,” Adrian said. “It just didn’t seem like he could die.” Aiden nodded.

“You’re right. It did seem like he could live forever.” The two friends fell silent. The rhythmic sound of the waves washed over them. The seagulls screamed bloody murder and dove, in turns, to the ocean’s surface. Aiden joined Adrian on the edge of the platform. Tears threatened Adrian’s eyes, but they knew they would have to wait to fall. Aiden turned to talk to them again.

“What else do you have to do?” he asked.

“I have to talk to Joyce, er, his lawyer…will stuff. I think,” Adrian responded, uncertainly. Their stoic autopilot was beginning to falter. Aiden looked at his watch.

“Give me 15 minutes until my shift ends and I’ll go with you,” Aiden said.

“I’lll be fine on my own,” Adrian said. Aiden put his hand up to his ear.

“What’s that? What’s that?” He dropped his hand. “Yeah, I don’t care. I’m coming.”

there are monsters in small places 4

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

They call it Deadman’s Boulder because every year, someone winds up dead there. Usually, it’s a tourist who thinks they can swim against the undertow and stay away from the sharp sea rock. Every year, through the usual town lottery, someone finds their body, skin opened or back twisted and neck snapped.

There are a lot of ways these people find themselves snagged on Deadman’s Boulder and none of them have to do with the undertow. They are thrown from the ocean by the scaly sixty-foot sea snake that no one had ever photographed. They are thrown the other way by people who think the same snake could use a sacrifice. They are sunk by sirens who draw them in with slippery songs.

But every year, one person from Brightview has to call the town police, directly because it takes 911 three transfers to find a place called Brightview, and say, “Chief, there’s another one.”

there are monsters in small places 3

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

There is a boulder thick with moss along the beach that looks like one man leaning over another’s back. It’s an easy thing to climb if you are young and don’t mind scraping your knees the way Hazel doesn’t. She is already watching the ocean with the wind licking her neck – the way you can’t when you’re on the ground like Ray is – when Ezrah catches up to him.

“Want to go up, bud?” Ray shakes his head.

“No,” he says. But he watches Hazel with frustrated jealousy, scared to say that he’s scared of climbing up. Ros walks up slowly from behind.

“Really?” she asks, sounding surprised. “Because there are sirens up there. They’ll listen to you when you’re feeling sad.” Ray looks back up at Hazel on the top of the rock.
“Sirens? Really?”

Ros nods. The air of gravity she always keeps around her makes her easy for a kid to believe as Ray does now. He looks at Ros. She doesn’t make him ask her for help.

“Go on up. I’ll make sure you don’t fall.” Ray’s mouth parts in an uncertain smile, and he starts up the mossy foot of the first man. Ezrah tries to pierce Ros’s silence with his eyes.

“We used to think there were sirens up there,” he smiled.

“There are,” Ros answers. Her face remained sharp sea-broken rock.