Welcome to My Card
Neolatry: noun
1) an excessive fondness for new things or ideas; worship of novelty
2) the name of a writer whose page you've found
Short stories and flash fiction you can read right now for free <3
The house is haunted.It's become a fact of life. The kind only worth mentioning in the same breath as the curled-up linoleum needing replaced, or fruit flies taking over the kitchen sink again. Houses in the strips of nothing left between fields of corn are always falling apart somewhere- what is a haunting if not the house’s spirit falling apart?Last year, the Japanese beetles ate all our cannas. This year we’ve acquired a ghost. It's always something, isn't it?At first, we thought it was sparrows in the attic. The ghost likes to chirp; never boos or moans or groans, just chirps and whistles. It feasibly coulda been birds. No one’s been up in the attic since the wiring caught fire years ago because it still smells like burnt plastic where the Christmas tree melted. Birds don’t care about that, though, and love flying into places they shouldn’t.We couldn't blame birds when the dishes drying in the rack start smashing themselves against the walls, though. Sparrows can’t throw around plates and glasses, no matter how sorely they wish they could.We still lived in denial for a while. An extra strong breeze came through the window, that's all. Maybe it was a simultaneous, heat induced hallucination. Which didn't explain the kitchen smelling like bread at odd hours of the cool, still night. Everyone dead asleep, no bread on the counter- barely any in the breadbox. But the smell was clear as glass.Ghosts smell like yeast. Who knew?The house is falling apart. It’s been falling apart since Papaw gave the house to Ma, and it’ll still be falling apart when I pass it on to my son. It’s home, though. Every room may have a hundred bad memories, but they’ve got a thousand good ones too, all worth keeping. The fire couldn’t smoke us out, the state can’t either- even though the governor sure is trying. We couldn’t afford to move anyway. Especially not with all the new plates we need.Turns out, ghosts aren’t that hard to live with, or maybe we just got an easy one. Cranking up the TV to drown out the whistles isn't too different than doing the same for the neighbors’ driveway arguments. When the smell of yeast tipped over from disconcerting to dread inducing, we spent August baking bread, so there was a perfectly unextraordinary reason for smelling it all the time.Summer is hard on houses in townships rather than towns. Mice from the fields eat through the siding, flies are constantly caught between window panes, and ghosts sneak in through the cracks in the walls. The sun is too bright, the blue jays yell at the ghost until the ghost shrieks back, and vital afternoon naps border near impossible.We could be doing worse, though. My son smiles more after long days spent with his friends. It turns out that baking our own bread is nice on the wallet, and makes a good bonding activity on stormy days. Dad is healing well from his surgery. Life moves on, even if we know now that death might not.Maybe after we get around to fixing the sink’s leaky faucet, we’ll get around to exorcising the ghost. Maybe not. Might tame it instead, and have it help shoo away the stink bugs we can’t reach.
It's bad luck to separate twins.The city was founded by twins and almost brought to its ruin by their separation. First in body, then heart, then deed. There was a time in Dova when a twin arguing with their fellow would cause a scandal. A panic over what disaster would strike to remind them all of Heaven's decree: twins must remain united.No public arguments would cause a fuss in the modern day. Twins are siblings like any other, they bicker and brood as all siblings do. Dovans no longer mark disagreements as portents of destruction, so most Dovans would say.Those same Dovans who scoff at superstition repeat, "frayed hearts can be mended" as they pass by twins in a tizzy.Caution once reigned supreme when physical distance is involved. Should one twin be barred from a field trip, they're both staying home. Some hotels won't host a singular twin. Any trip for one is a trip for two, which is only right and proper, it's only responsible. What responsible adult would chance separation when history shows it unwise?Such policies have slowly started to faze out in this new age, though. It's not as if twins can't have different lives. Asking every pair to work the same job or live in the same house would be silly. It's nonsense. It's fine.Distance can be crossed.Unless it can't be. Once, about fifteen years ago, a young girl's death made national news. Horrible accident, though that wasn't what the headline read. The papers printed "TWIN LEFT BEHIND". Her sister had died, poor sweetheart was inconsolable, and not a single eye on her was more sympathetic than it was nervous.By sheer coincidence, fishing boats to a one came back empty the following weeks. Supply ran thin for restaurants and local markets. People grumbled, including a ship captain who was reported to have grumbled so unceasingly he turned his ship straight into a cliff.None of that had anything to do with the little girl. The day after the shipwreck she slipped away to drown herself on the same beach her sister had been stolen by, overcome by grief.The fishing boats stopped coming home empty a week or so later. Dovans are still taught it is bad luck to separate twins.
What is a zine? A zine is a self-published magazine or art book revolving around a theme. Sometimes the theme is simple and broad like "gay living" or informative like "how to help local charities without money". Sometimes the theme is The Character.Here are some zines I've worked on!
PokéGeist
Making of the Mask: A Batgirl Zine
Creati's Craft Compendium
Generations: Tales of the Four Nations Vol. III
The previous reincarnations of my soul are harshly judging how I use the Holy Blade which has been passed down for centuries. The smith who first forged the balde, who went before every god he could find like a dog begging for table scraps and crafted a blessing so unstable it kills anyone who is not him or him reborn at one touch, is judging me most of all for my treatment of the Blade.I am not the one of us with the blood of a hundred would-have-been-heroes on my hands, but yes, I do not solely use the Blade for slaying monsters.The smith is my harshest critic but there are other bygone wielders here. Their eyes are burning, their bodies insubstantial wraiths of ancient dust held together only by their will. Heroic endurance on their part to stay in this era for so long. Wasted endurance, unfortunately. This is my time and I won’t be cowed.They are selfish all. Selfish, since they have never considered the Blade’s feelings. If they had it would not come as such a shock to them that the Blade enjoys my unconventional approach. It is a novel experience for a Holy Blade forged to slay monsters, to be wielded yet draw no blood. Have these othered pieces of my soul ever wonder if the Blade might want a break from the violence as surely as they once did?The Blade’s second wielder is furious that I have used the Blade for un-swordly purposes. A friendly spar might be one thing, yet I have chopped trees, I have carved ice, I have cut my own hair, even. Each of these activities and more I have performed with the Holy Blade. Never has the Blade complained of my frivolity.One of them is telling me she stopped speaking ages ago and her absence of complaint cannot be assurance of approval. I ask him why she went so quiet, if not because they listened to none of her words if they did not center battle? Perhaps she wanted to look at the flowers and feel them twined around her hilt only for you to ignore her curiosity, her yearning. The outspoken fragment has no reply and neither do the others.They meant to make a weapon. An extraordinary one, a Holy one, but only a weapon used for death and glory. So much divinity and so much time have thwarted that intention. I have felt her, the oldest wielders have heard her, and still these intruders from the past insist it’s me who does not understand.The smallest one asks a question of their own in a small voice. What if she breaks?I try to keep in mind that each of them are me, some way, and I am them, somehow. My care for the Holy Blade is theirs too. My only reply is that if the Holy Blade should break, it will not be because I used her to rend wood instead of flesh, it will be because she is old. Honestly, even with every blessing in the world she was much diminished when I found her, too old to exist.He who forged the Blade is upset again. His argument now is that it is undignified. That the Holy Blade is Holy, Divine, Precious, and her ancient status should only be more incentive to use her only for her glorious purpose.Undignified. The forms of his soul-brethren are impossible to make out as more than human shaped visages, details lost to time, but I had assumed the smith lived long after his quest. He must have died younger than I thought to make such a young person’s argument.Dignity is for losers. A constantly crumbling facade people cling to as a denial of their own mortality. Everyday someone denies themselves for reasons of maintaining a dignified reputation, acting as if they have all the time in the world to experience the worldly pleasures, but their lifespan is just as insignificant as the wielders of old.I have seen what dignity wins someone. The answer is nothing. I remind the intruding shadows that I am also too old to exist.They know, of course, that’s why they are really here. They got distracted when I planted our Blade in the earth and used her as a lever to move a large rock from the path.These chores, these misdemeanors against her Holy nature, is a rebellion which hurts no one. I know perfectly well this is not what she was made for, and that only doing what you are made for year after year after year and nothing else but exactly your Holy purpose is… tedious.I ask the small one if they think our Blade would enjoy the feeling of paint upon her metal, the others stir in predictable uproar but the one I asked hums in real thought. They suggest a festival painter, the Blade might like the temporary doodles lovingly painted onto children, easily washed away.
Published Work
"Corn in the Summertime"
Pen: NeolatryPublished in Written Tales Chapbook XI Nostalgia
(Nov 2023)
Only certain dreams caused it to happen. At first, the signs were subtle and infrequent; easily seen as the usual early morning malady. Upon first waking, Trey does not answer to his name.It started to linger. Trey took a quarter step too long to respond to his name in class. Not often, but over the course of the term it happens more than once.In his off time he is lively and gregarious. His friends whisper about how often his eyes flutter when he murmurs to someone they cannot see. It only happened when turned away until it began to happen anyway.It gets worse. Not overmuch. Trey's professor does not know that the dreams have come more often, nearly every night as Spring Equinox approaches, but even he has noticed something amiss.Trey's attention never wavers in class, Professor Nigel acknowledges. Good behavior that nonetheless makes it difficult to get Trey's attention if he's looking at the board or his own notes. He doesn't react to calls of "Trey" at all unless one is looking directly at him, and Trey at them. His own name incomprehensible to him.It comes to a head when Trey falls asleep in his seat. Professor Nigel had let him be, the boy bothered no one from noise or an ill-placed lean, and Nigel had students eager for destruction to keep his eyes on.Still, as he packed his satchel he looked at Trey again, he found himself loathe to leave a student by themselves in a nearly empty building.The professor called Trey's name. Forgotten for a brief moment that his student is suffering some strange affliction, or perhaps willful ignorance. The sound of his voice nonetheless rouses Trey, lifting his head, yet his eyes adrift."Class is over, Trey. I recommend sleeping in your dorm room next time."The young man blinks at Nigel, heavier than blinks ought to be from a short rest, and says, "Trey hasn't come back yet."
A katydid crawled by over a leaf as I stared hard at the ground, and before it could disappear into the grass I told it, “I love you.”The katydid did not reply, trundling on without acknowledgement- bugs are such singularly focused creatures. A trait I was trying to emulate when first I saw a katydid. Exercises of control and stamina in the grassy fields of youth were hard and tedious, and to distract myself from neverending seconds I focused on a bug sitting calmly underneath me, one I had never seen. I still think about that katydid which kept me company.The katydid now beneath my eye held no such intentions to stop for me. The wind whispered replies in its stead. A pleased giggle echoed from far away and a voice in the breeze said, “I love you.” Then the katydid was gone.A gray cat sprawled across a house’s roof as I took my walk around the neighborhood. It looked at me with squinty eyes and regarded me only with feline suspicion. I laughed. It was a cute little thing, lounging in the sun without a care in the world; I might envy it, but what is an afternoon stroll but an excuse to bask in the sun? Both of us were creatures of leisure today.I told the cat, “I love you,” and continued on my way. From the corner of my eye it returned to its sprawl and from the edge of my hearing came a lazy, “love you too.”In the night when I sit close to an open window, I can hear the soft hooting of owls in the maple tree. A rare delight I was treated to that Wednesday eve.“I love you,” I told them earnestly. I had always thought them splendid, but one of childhood’s small embarrassments had been mistaking a mourning dove’s loud crying for theirs. The doves cry “hoo” and I’d been told that was what owls say! Yet hearing a real owl’s soft brogue had cleared the misunderstanding abruptly. I felt it even more imperative after that to impress upon the owls my care for them.I have never seen an owl in the maple tree; only ever heard their soft chatter. Voices seemed to come from behind me that eve, murmuring, “and we love you.”My granddaughter was aiding in the setup of the funeral, opening cookie trays and laying out sandwiches that her cousin had prepared the night before as I watched her unseen. It was no shock when I passed from the mortal coil, the reaper is only so patient, yet from the look on my darling girl’s face I might wonder if she knew death existed at all.It may well be her first true loss, though not her first funeral. I had been to that one too, a brother to her father that I had never met, and she was so small; I watched her so my daughter could focus on her husband, and I sang to my granddaughter a made up lullaby.The girl whispers," I love you," to open air, to me. I have no voice to sing anymore, but here in the parlor’s tiny kitchen was a humming fridge, and it hummed the tune to a lullaby I sang to her when she fit in the crook of my arm, the one that starts and ends with, “I love you.”
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