sleepy drafts
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a sleepy writer named em :)
Achievements (10)
Stories (98)
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Like Lightning
My camera hung heavy around my neck. I followed C around the landscape of her family's farmland nestled in a remote French village, 30 minutes by electric bike from the city of Lille. It was March, tipping into April. The spring air was crisp and what little dusting of snow there had been was already melted. Up until then, C and I spent every weekend at grungy basement parties or black tie events. Sometimes there would be a dinner of her parents to attend to, or a family function, or a family friend's family function. Sometimes there were dancing and etiquette classes on the weekends in order to attend all those black tie events and functions. The social life of the French elite was always moving.
By sleepy drafts12 months ago in Photography
Neverchangeable | Chapter 6
<< Click here to read from the beginning (Chapter 0) < Click here to read Chapter 5 You’ve started to decompose more slowly now, the colder the season’s become. I’ll join you eventually. I'm sure of it. Until then you and the camera are my audience. It feels good to be the watched for once instead of the watcher. Finally, for everyone to shut up long enough for me to tell my story. To matter. You and I know this will all matter once the stacks of canned goods and the canteens of water run out; once December, January, February, and March pass and the ice begins to thaw and our bodies with it. Then, in the heat of summer when the tourists and the buzzards come, when Mrs. Developer and Madame Liliana come back from their real homes in Santa Fe and you and I are burning in hell; when the rot and stink get too much to hide… that’s when this confession will matter. Farley made sure of that.
By sleepy drafts12 months ago in Chapters
Neverchangeable | Chapter 5
<< Click here to start from the beginning (Chapter 0) < Click here to read Chapter 4 The police force everyone who doesn’t have a legal right to be on the property to clear out. Guests are checked one by one as they cross the bridge back to civilization. In the corner of the barn, Mrs. Developer attempts to calm down the little girl’s mother.
By sleepy drafts12 months ago in Chapters
Neverchangeable | Chapter 4
<< Click to read from the beginning (Chapter 0) < Click to read Chapter 3 My eye has adjusted to the darkness now. I can make out more of the scene I’ve watched for weeks from the other side of my cell phone. You, clearer than ever, point at me with your rigid finger, skin barely hanging on to the bone. The maggots have multiplied. They swarm your mouth and eyes, the tongue and eyeballs long gone, the larvae eating away at the fatty remainders of your partially liquefied brain. It will only be so long before your lips and gums are devoured too, your cheeks, hips and buttocks, your thighs, your cunt. I calculate how long it would take for every crumb of you to be eaten by the same maggots you used to dump out of our compost on Tuesdays.
By sleepy drafts12 months ago in Chapters
Turning 29
Last week, I entered the last year of my twenties. When I look back, there are many times I wish I could give my younger self a hug (she really was doing her best.) Other times, I wish I could give my younger self a good shake (because at points... girl, what were you thinking?)
By sleepy drafts12 months ago in Confessions
New Year, New Projects, Neverchangeable. Honorable Mention in New Year, New Projects Challenge.
The first three characters of this story were introduced to me while working a late-night shift alone, at my job at the local dispensary. These characters came in the form of a short, off-handed comment from a customer: "People never change."
By sleepy drafts12 months ago in Motivation
Neverchangeable | Chapter 3
<< Click to read from the beginning (Chapter 0) < Click to read Chapter 2 On the security camera app installed on my cell phone, I watch the nothingness on the screen. In front of me, Farley walks across the bridge. It’s the same easy walk he’s had from since when we were kids. He doesn’t look back which makes it easy to take a moment and dip into my pixelated reverie. The cabin is black and grey except for the clump of dim white glow near the bottom corner of the screen. No sound comes from the room, no footsteps or crackling of a wood-burning fire from when Farley and I were kids. Even in the middle of the day, the room on the screen is midnight dark.
By sleepy drafts12 months ago in Chapters
Neverchangeable | Chapter 2
<< Click to read from the beginning (Chapter 0) < Click to read Chapter 1 I look to you, slumped in the corner, as if awaiting your approval. My one remaining eye has adjusted more now. I can see more than just your rubbery skin, neon with death in front of me, and the single, shiny eye of the camera. I can make out the moose head I know is there, the overstuffed loveseat, the long, leather sofa under Auntie Rachel’s watercolour paintings. The ones she made when she got brain cancer. I can see the radiation on those paintings, green and luminescent, sparkling like the snowy landscapes they depict. The radiation poured from her pupils as she transferred the images from her mind to the coarse paper. Snowy hills, like clean, fresh starts, the radiation underneath only visible to me. Like two weeks from now, when the tourism season will officially be over, when winter will come, and here you and I will be. The two of us, alone, at last. Like it should have always been.
By sleepy drafts12 months ago in Chapters
