13 Posts Tagged "Bot Prompts"

Kean University 2018, The Network

Reflections of Us

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What the Professors did not know when they turned the whole world into a glass eye is what would reflect back. See, they made the eyes out of mirrored glass. Covered spires and lampposts, windows and concrete with tiny, shiny eyes–always watching, always showing. Without pupils or irises, they seem to follow you, act out your life in their little sclera screens for you. Beads of silver beneath moonlight–darkness the only safe place, now. Reflected back, we saw how small and easy we […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

Skin Girl

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Drumbeat batters breeze bare-knuckled. Bloody, if it could. Tut-tut-tut transforms the atmosphere into something tormented. Tortured. Just a sliver shy of a scream. I sway to the sound, skin soaking in its scathe. Absorbing the maim and claim. The tug and tear. In the thick of the crowd, illuminated by a mix of fire and faint moonlight, a figure fights the drum’s beating. Twists sharp turns to thwart possession. To prevail. A losing game. Once lured in, that’s it. Other figures clap, […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

Shadow Girl Reflects V: Silent

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So, you may have noticed that I’ve been rather silent this week. Or, maybe you haven’t…. Anyway, the reason why Shadow Girl has been on the down-low these past few days is because she is currently–and unfortunately–without a reliable mode of access to the digitalscape Last Wednesday, in fact, my laptop decided to–moment of silence–die. At least, that’s the official diagnosis till I hear back from the repair techs. (And, tbh, they’re outlook was not very encouraging.) Since, I’ve been […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

Split Girl

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“See.” Auntie would hiss, breath-half mist-half piss–spit splattering across my face like soggy freckles. “Don’t you see?” Spittle soaking deep into bone, I’d bob my neck up down. A metronome kicked on its side. But that was never enough. My compliance meant nothing till it suffered. Till I suffered. Till I looked. “Can’t you see?” A banshee-screech that bounced off mirrored glass like my small skull in Auntie’s gargantuan grip. Bang. Bang.  “I see.” My raspy exhale fogged the glass. “See […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

Ghost Girl

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All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. ~ Edgar Allen Poe Mama went in her sleep. How she wanted. How she dreamed. Death is an illusion. An imagined end. Mama rasped toward her own foreseeable ending, breaths short and shallow. We don’t live here. We live inside. When you dream, my little ghost, look for me. I will be there. So I did. When Mama moved on from here, I searched–inside. Reached into the recesses. Haunted […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

Living Dead Girl IV

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Part I, Part II, Part III, I’ve become accustomed to being watched. Hollow, sightless eyes boring into me from beyond. Gaping gazes trying to swallow me up, their seeking ravenous for every last scrap. For anything that could fill the empty spaces. Make them a little less like windows without torches. It’s ever-night where they are. Nana said one evening while I was studying the intricacies of incantation intonation at the table, her knobby knuckles knocking a suspiciously rhythmic beat against the window’s wooden […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

It Will Be Satisfied

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Swamp surrounds the village, dirt little more than sponge, sopping up so much water even the slightest of us must strap net stretched across stiff wooden slats to our feet or else risk being swallowed whole. Too many have become meals, preserved in the muck for unsuspecting outside-dwellers to stumble across on one of their daring jaunts to our reaches. It’s why we’re called the People of the Mud. Big sister, unruly and untamable, always a donning a reckless sort of […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

Dream Girl

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“Let’s go to our happy place.” Mommy would say when Daddy’s voice began to hit a certain octave–somewhere between a beastly bellow and a rumbling growl. It bounced off bone. Broke bone–when a slur accompanied it. Sometimes when it didn’t. Mommy told the nurses I was clumsy–a topsy, turvy tot falling head over teapot. Lost in my own little dream land. The nurses never looked as convinced as Mommy did. Hospitals were frequent but transient haunts, us hollow-eyed phantasms in advance mourning for […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

Living Dead Girl III

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Part I, Part II Deadwood’s sole flower shoppe used to be Moses’ Roses–the liveliest place in town. Then, Moses Redding passed away. Peacefully in the night. I know because he came to our window, hollow-eyed and with a red, red bloom in hand. Nana put it in a vase on her nightstand, beside her citronella candle. It wilted by morning. Cerese Redding, Moses’ wife…widow, came around next, a similar bloom–only slightly wilting–woven into her graying hair. She approached Nana and me in the grocery store, […]

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The Network

Bone Girl .V

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Flesh dreamed monstrous beasts. Dreamed somber, faceless vultures, abandoned skeletons, splendid demons of yesteryear, patient  gargoyles. Incredible beasts still call, in the morning. But only briefly, abandoning scandalous actuality. Tweet, tweet…. Ba-dump. Mama bird was first a baby bird herself. A fledgling, picking at bones brought to the nest. Mama’s Mama bird was an excellent hunter. Proficient collector of Nature’s provisions. And, not a scrap ever went to waste. Want not, baby bird. Mama’s Mama bird was ever-squawking. Nature always provides. Mama’s Mama bird […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

Wasteland Girl

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Fog thick like honey but not half-so-sweet clogs the air. Is the air. Without a respirator, it would coat my throat, crawl down the black hole between my bony clavicles to cloy in my lungs. Convince me to claw at my chest till the pressure had an escape route. Ten routes to be exact. Our atmosphere was the first to go. Corroded by uncensored contaminants. Ignited by the bombs. I fell asleep beneath a burning sky, lulled by Mother’s staggered breaths. […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

Bone Girl

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When my blood was younger, I imagined I could soar. Like the condors that circled overhead. Sights set high, I’d roam through the marketplace. Fly barefoot down the city’s skeletal paths, unburdened and unbound, wind tangling knots in my hair–knots Mama would carefully unwind once night nosedived. Then, re-wind in the leather thong she kept wrapped ’round one bony wrist. Only, double. Twice the blessings, baby bird. She explained when I squawked confusion. Nature never weaves mistakes. In hair or flesh. […]

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Kean University 2017, The Network

Living Dead Girl II

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Part I Nights are always the worst. The loudest. Screams do not the sweetest of lullabies make. With time, though, I’ve found the most incessant sounds can become lulling. A buzzing hum, attracted to a torch burning low. Zzzz…. Zzzz…. The occasional sizzle of an Icarus acolyte. Nana slept with a citronella candle on her night table, her ever-cracked window an invitation for all kinds of pests. Even in winter, the window remained a sliver shy of its sill. Wind wailed like a whistle through it. […]

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