Steven K. Jr.
Stories (4)
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Ghost Town Landscape
They say isolation makes you go crazy. It’s not that we’re social creatures, like many say. You don’t die of loneliness. Sure, that’s part of it, but the real killer is the uncertainty. Lose your compass, and north becomes south. Lose your watch, and seconds become hours. Lose some sleep, and yesterday becomes today. Lose your mind.
By Steven K. Jr.3 years ago in Fiction
The Conversation
The most tragic part of all this peculiarity was when the writers of my favorite sitcom cut out the dialogue. When I watch now, I can hear the shadows of the jokes and the ghosts laughing and whooping in the studio audience. It took some time to adjust to my new routine—I’d always sit down on Thursday evening with a fresh sandwich from the deli (the lady working there always knows what I want now) at 6:55 when I’d watch the last few minutes of the news report (also newly silent) before the latest episode aired. Now, I have to make room on the coffee table for my laptop so I can read the comments of everyone else watching and piece together the plot with messages like “I can’t believe Nick thought that about Jackie” and “I think Dan is gonna let that thought slip while the lawyer is around LOL.” It’s much less fulfilling now, watching the exaggerated, wordless expressions of the ensemble change as they relay information to each other, often unintentionally (which is beginning to become repetitive as a joke, but I guess everyone can relate to that now). I’m sure the quality of the show hasn’t dropped at all for the rest of its audience, though.
By Steven K. Jr.3 years ago in Fiction
Four-Fifths
Sometimes I think I am half of half of parts of parts of everything I have seen, done and known. Little bits of all that I love and hate make up the far-from-whole that appears when I look in. Fractions of fractions of fractions of refractions distort what once was into what is now, incomplete still, and unrecognizable save for the fraction of a fraction that remains stalwart and unchanged. How small need the fractions of fractions be, asks Theseus, before they are fractions of fractions of fractions of nothing at all?
By Steven K. Jr.3 years ago in Poets
