Category: speculative fiction

bottoms dream 12

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

Raymond’s fingers trembled over the words of the tattered paperback. His voice did not rise above a whisper, melancholy settling deep into his bones.

“The emotions that go with these images of bottoming are reluctance, loathing, sadness, mourning, inhibition, enclosure, lethargy…”

Rose’s head had fallen against his shoulder as the bus bumped along to God knows where at God knows what time in the morning. Their only guide the roles assigned by lot. She could have leaned against the window, but the window did not offer the numbness that took away the burning of her blood through her veins. Her role the inward pressure on drowning lungs. Impossible apart.

“…or that sense of depth that presses on us as depression, oppression,
suppression.” Her touch was a strange sensation, like warm ocean water spreading from his left side to his right, filling the space his emotion had left. His role the rationality of murder to save one’s own life. Impossible apart.

“Our downward imagination has entered the earth.” Raymond gently grasped Rose’s hand on the palm where there was no physical scar. He rested his head against hers.

“Bottom’s dream.” My blood is yours.

bottoms dream 11

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

“Doctor?”

“Yes, Johnson?”

“Perhaps we should discuss…recent events.” The doctor fell silent. Johnson continued anyway. “Like it or not, we’ve got a mess to clean up.” The doctor remained silent. Johnson sighed in frustration. “Don’t do this, Doctor. We’ve got two dangerous teens on the loose. We don’t know where they’re going and we don’t know what they can do. And all because you decided to join the
Hillman fan club.”

Johnson held his breath for the reaction to his outburst. Then a strange thing happened. First the doctor was silent. Then Johnson heard a strange sound. A serious of short gasps escaped the doctor’s mouth. He was laughing. A wide smile spread over his cheeks.

“We’ve done it, Johnson. We’ve found what is below. And we know what we are without it.” Johnson’s anger finally boiled over.

“This isn’t some science experiment,” Johnson boomed. “That’s my daughter!” Johnson delivered his ultimatum. “You will bring her back. You will reverse the damage you’ve done.”

“She’s not your daughter anymore,” the doctor grinned and shook his head. Johnson paused, fear and disgust trembling on his face. “She’s his soul.”

Still trembling, Johnson struggled to contain his rage.

“Doctor?”

“Hmm?”

“Where is that blasted book of yours anyway?”

bottoms dream 10

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

Raymond regarded Rose impassively through the one-way window.

“The subjects have been separated until further notice.”

“So your answer is containment, Doctor?” Rose paced the room. She looked constantly through the window, impossibly, directly at Raymond. With each glance,
her eyes clouded over more, and with each glance, she grew more frantic, the warmth Raymond craved burning through her. He needed her. They were impossible apart. “Doctor?” Johnson repeated. He brought his white-knuckled grip to the edge of the metal table. “Doctor, what happens to her?”

“Let’s get Raymond out of here,” the doctor sighed. Raymond stood, and Rose stopped. She needed him. They were impossible apart. The clouds brought full shadows to her eyes. She walked slowly to the window.

“Mea sanguina est tua.” The words uttered at a whisper carried over with a shiver to the room beyond the window. Raymond’s eyes darkened.

“Dolor,” he responded, and this time she delivered her pain.

viviocentrism + vampires 5

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

You flick open your pocketknife and grip the handle. It’s two in the morning. Your friend’s breathing has finally slowed. You’ve eased him over, but the back of his head is not looking at you, not yet. In your other hand, you clench a wrinkled Wikipedia article. Your lips press themselves together as you read again: 

The alp also possesses an “evil eye” whose gaze will inflict illness and misfortune. Removing or damaging this eye also removes the alp’s malicious intentions.

The back of his head blinks at you. It then stays open, frozen as if in fear. You cough, bile catching at the back of your throat. You grip your knife even tighter by its sweaty hilt and pose it over a soot-colored iris.  

“It is our responsibility to preserve the most lives possible in any given situation,” you whisper, a reassurance. Holding your breath, you plunge the knife home to its gelatinous target. Your hands splatter black with blood. This is what you can do. This is what you have become. 

vivocentrism + vampires 4

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

You leave the room to your friend’s triumphant slap on the back. 

“Told you I’d see you in semi’s.” You take his praise in your usual joking way, but you then continue to stare. Your gaze, though you don’t know it, holds sadness and fear in equal measure. Your friend pulls back and scrunches his face at you. “What’s your problem, man?” he snaps, like he has communicated nothing out of the ordinary. You shake your head. 

“Nothing, just…thinking.” He shrugs and turns away. And the back of his head winks at you. 

viviocentrism + vampires 2

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

You hear sirens and run. Within the characterless walls of the high school hosting this big-deal national tournament ring the sounds of disgust and fear.

Everyone is running away, but you, through some inexplicable self-destructive urge, run towards the sounds of fear.

You come across one victim and you come across another, and the only word you can think of no matter how inhumane is littered. The first you see is a man, his shirt ripped open at the front. His heaving chest marks him as still alive, barely. Below his collarbone and above his navel the man is bleeding, bitten, from his nipples.

Even through your senseless horror, you continue forward in a torrent unquelled. The shut-eyed, almost-dead victims continue to litter the grimy floor as you follow them to their source and some sort of explanation. Only the females do not bleed, but bite marks still punch in, dark purple around their breasts, clearer and deeper along the edge of the nipple.

You reach the epicenter in trance-like agitation. Your friend is there, amidst the ambulances and squad cars. You run up to talk to him, but he is in handcuffs, and the officers are pulling him back. He opens his mouth to you, blood spilling from his gums. 

“This is what could happen,” he warns you. “This is what I can become.” 

the windy city 0

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

“I was following the pack
All swallowed in their coats
With scarves of red tied round their throats
To keep their little heads
From falling in the snow
And I turned round and there you go
And Michael you would fall
And turn the white snow red as strawberries
In the summertime”
-“White Winter Hymnal” by Fleet Foot Foxes

Sinfi
The caravan was broken. It had never been broken before. It had been burned, cracked, cut, and bruised, but never broken. But now the red and gold pieces had caved in, fallen over and up, crushed ships in a dark, white-capped sea.

Sinfi’s blue dress lapped around her ankles, chasing her, demanding that she follow the others.

The others ran ahead, colors dancing a fast, rich, dangerous dance. The yellows leaped and turned white. The reds stomped and turned black. The oranges twirled and turned grey.

But the dance behind them followed, faster, richer, more dangerous. The broken wood turned to flame, the flame danced, but it did not turn white, not black, not even grey.

A small solo lilted away from the fire, his voice rising and falling in tiny pants and
fast heavy footsteps. Sinfi fought against the current: the crowd, her dress, the fire. She reached back.

“Hurry Hanzi,” she urged. “Run.” His dark eyes reached for hers, but his feet
stumbled. They were right behind him.
They didn’t dance. They struck. Hanzi’s head fell to the white-capped waves, red
capped sea. Neither would part, and neither would hold back the Pharaoh’s men.

Sinfi let the current carry her, and she moved on, a steel skiff that knew how to
brave a winter storm.

Hanzi was gone, and the caravan was broken.