David James
Stories (11)
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An Evening Stroll
Humans think they know the sound of an owl. That classic, onomatopoeic "Who, who?" But that is the kind of thought that only animals past a certain size, with the privilege of enough sheer mass might have. You see, owls are killing machines. They have tons of little adaptations that make them perfect for murder. If you are ever lucky, or, perhaps, unlucky enough to see an owl up close, take a look at their wings. You might imagine you know what an owls wings look like. You've seen enough daytime birds, and an owl is, after all, just another bird. But owl wings are different. Where a hawk or a cardinal will have smooth wings, almost reminiscent of something manufactured and perfect, owls have ratty, uneven wings. Like the ends of a frayed piece of rope. It seems out of place, but it serves a very real purpose. As a bird flies, the air slides over its wings in two sheets of air, one over the top and one over the bottom. On those smooth winged, daytime birds, those sheets of air come back together on the far side of the wing and make a whistling sound. A sound that a sharp eared animal might hear. But with an owl, all those little tufts, those feathers that seem so out of place on a cursory examination, those feathers disturb the air flow just enough. They form a thousand little vortices such that there aren't two large sheets coming together on the trailing edge of the wing, but countless little cominglings of air in countless different directions that, all told, do a rather neat job of cancelling each other out. To even the sharpest eared prey animal, this means that where a diving hawk sounds like a brief scream that you might, just might be able to dodge, an owl sounds like the barest whisper, if you can even hear it over the sound of the wind. So, in a very real sense, in some ways, the true sound of an owl is silence.
By David James4 years ago in Fiction
Managing Expectations
We met for the first time, we three, in a small, dingy bar in some small town with no name that really mattered, somewhere in Kentucky. When I walked in, he was already there, sitting at a high top, staring at the table and looking nervous. He jumped a little as I sat down, then brought his eyes up to meet mine.
By David James4 years ago in Fiction
The Bald
Atop some of the Appalachian mountains is a curious ecological phenomena. Balds, they call them. Mountaintop fields of grass and flowers where there should be trees. There’s plenty of theories as to what may have caused them, but no definitive answers. That, of course, is not what we’re here to talk about. It is simply important to note their existence, as that is where this story takes place.
By David James4 years ago in Fiction
Frostwalker
He had read, at some point in his childhood, about how Tibetan Monks could raise their body temperature high enough to dry a wet towel through nothing but the power of meditation. An incredible feat, to be sure. A truly stupendous demonstration of control over one's own physiology. Dilating capillaries, fibers of muscles rubbing past each other, a myriad of small adjustments to the singular end of increasing one’s own body temperature. That is to say, a purely scientific, if mysterious ability. But between the innocence and lack of understanding inherent in childhood, and the vagaries of decades, and perhaps even the cold seeping through his body, slowing the running of his mind like syrup, that was forgotten.
By David James4 years ago in Fiction
Green Flash
Geoffrey had a bucket list, like so many people do. The difference was that Geoffrey was always seeking to check things off his list. He didn't wait to be diagnosed with a terminal disease or to lose someone close to him that had missed out on some easily attainable dream in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. His list was a mile long, filled with everything from the extraordinary, like visiting mars, to the incredibly mundane, such as eating strawberries fresh from the bush on a hot summer’s day. It was in the pursuit of one such item, somewhere in between mundanity and extraordinarity, that he came to Richard and I towards the end of one of our spring semesters at college. The three of us had been roommates since our freshman year, assigned to the same room through the vagaries of some university bureaucratic decision making process. And far be it from me to second guess the bureaucracy, for, by the end of the first week, people were asking how long we'd known each other, assuming the answer would be many years and not mere days.
By David James4 years ago in Fiction
Flight of the Peregrine
It was supposed to have been an easy delivery. Unusual, exotic even, but no hassle. Transport some cargo from Point A to Point B. Sure, the cargo this time was livestock, strange but not unheard of. But this was a single, glorious specimen. From what Xavier had been told, it had a pedigree that rivalled that of some of the last remaining human monarchies on Earth. It was a bull, with a shining coat of short, black hairs, so dark as to be iridescent, like oil on water, worth more than the ship that carried it. Beneath that fabulous coat, its muscles bulged and rippled with every breath, like some small imitation of the cosmos through which it now floated, inky blackness marred by small bursts of transitory color and hidden strength. That alone had nearly given him pause, the sheer power in those muscles barely restrained by the flesh that covered them. But, when they'd loaded the creature, it had been well tranquilized, its breathing slow, sedate.
By David James4 years ago in Fiction
Her Favorite Flower. Top Story - August 2021.
Her favorite flowers were marigolds. In those halcyon days of summer past, we would run through fields full of all manners of wild flowers, but with every marigold she spotted she would stop, stoop low and take a deep breath. I can still see her there, in that periwinkle blue sun dress, turning back to me with a look of pure exultation. Happy to simply be alive! I can see her there, in those drowsy, endless summers, laughing and squealing with delight, with the purest pleasure at the simple fact that we existed at the same time, the same place, and that there were marigolds there too. A little slice of her own personal heaven.
By David James4 years ago in Fiction
Amidst the Stars
Buried beneath the sands of time, and somewhere amongst the farthest flung stars, an unlikely series of coincidences occurred. Perhaps it could have been expected, in this infinite universe, that something like this could happen. And perhaps, with such infinitesimal odds, it'd be better to expect it to not. But regardless of the presumption of mere humans, or the rigor of statistics or the "laws" of physics, happen it did. The exacting collisions of the dust of dead stars, gases crossing the void only to end up just here, just now. A soup of forming bonds. Hydrocarbon chains, not uncommon in space on a large enough scale, but not at such lengths, not in such concentrations. First the formation of cellulose, then the arrangement of that cellulose into what a box. A box, that had it been instead formed at a specific future, on a specific planet, be a wholly unremarkable box of corrugated cardboard. Slightly scuffed around the corners without ever having touched any other thing, suspended as it was in that endless expanse. Slightly fuzzed around the edges in that way of old or well traveled boxes, and yet newly formed. That perfect patina, looking almost oil soaked around the edges and corners, fading to near manila in the middle of each side. Unremarkable, but for the fact that it was at that spot and in that time.
By David James4 years ago in Fiction
Sacrifice, USA
The names of cities follow certain patterns. With the right amount of information, you can know what a city will be named without ever hearing the name itself. Now, by all rights, this city here would traditionally be known as Thelma, Nebraska. However, Lincoln is famous for only one thing. It has a small volcano. It wouldn't even be famous for this, because this volcano is really just a hot pit of mud which lies beneath the river running through Lincoln. But once a year, every year, someone manages to drive a car off a bridge covered in gargoyles, directly into that hot pit of mud. And that is why we call this city 'Sacrifice, U.S.A.'
By David James4 years ago in Fiction
My Grandfather's Farm
It is my firm belief that certain places exist in a kind of time-between-times. The graveyard ever shrouded in half light, the empty office, full of flickering fluorescence and the sigh of inadequate air conditioning. Peculiar, though, are barns. Specifically, old barns, with holes in the roof and hay that hasn't quite started the slow descent of decay into dust. Peculiar because it seems to matter when you enter them that they fix in time. Enter during the day and they're soft places, almost sepia toned around the edges. The smell of the hay heady on the air, filling your head and chest to the point of bursting, then relaxing into a mellow, lovely perfume. The sun dappling the floor, catching motes of dust in the beams cast by the holes in the roof. The mewling of kittens as their mother feeds them, drowsy and yawning, giving the occasional sleepy lick to one of her young.
By David James5 years ago in Fiction
Greylands
Grey clouds drifted over grey grounds as grey people went about their dreary work. Looking closer, people wasn’t quite right; they had the form of people, but in truth they were just simple machines, doing the same thing, day after day. Sifting through the grey of concrete broken under the treads of machines long past, from before their creators had gone into the grey of a civilization in its twilight years, that crepuscular space of people simply striving to survive. Striving, and slowly, slowly failing.
By David James5 years ago in Fiction
