Literature
Collaborations
I am the editor of a wonderful webcomic from SockBucketFrance called "The Freelance Club".
Fiction Samples
"We were in their living room, sharing whatever fresh produce they could spare in a gut-wrenching last supper," she recalled. "My father handed me my plate, a strange concoction of pasta, shrimp, and other things. It sounds so silly now, saying it aloud."
"It's not so strange," Adrien said, hastily. He had been raised in Greece and somehow felt tied deeper to his Italian family through it.
"I suppose. I remember so vividly looking across to my sister, already engulfed in righteous flame, as if it was her duty to eat. It was like in that moment she was a machine, fuelling her rage. I was always averse to eating, especially in such a sudden, turbulent time. The alien things on the dish were both so detailed and yet, so blurred, like I had no choice but to stare as I ran away. My father spoke to me, 'There, there, it's okay, Alyx. You can be strong today and rest tomorrow, but you must eat the good food while it lasts.' I told him I wasn't hungry, he said, 'You may not be now, but you will be later.' I told him it hurts to think of eating.
Again, he pressed me, this time speaking to me in English, our family's sacred little secret, 'Alyx, I love you. It will hurt now or it will hurt later, remember how papa always says to do the hard thing first. Be grateful for the small pains.' He was always the beacon in mine and my sister's lives, his caring words always encouraging. Emulating my sister, I focused and ate the last of the 'good food' (though I tried hard not to notice that I was eating at all). Later that night, I panicked in disgust and threw it all back up. Yet there my father was again, telling me how brave his little girl had been and how that's all that mattered."
The evening was dry and sweet. The sun roosted behind its blanket of clouds for the night and the sky was ablaze.
"You have such a way with words," said Adrien, after gliding on just the right amount of moments. "Whatever happened to your sister, anyway?"
"She takes care of small villages and brings aid to remote tribes in Africa. It's funny, although we're twins, we have such opposite demeanors. Ivy left very early to fight in the war while I stayed behind to tend to Heidelberg. I really wished we could join together again one day if the revolution hadn't ended so much earlier than my father believed. I could have been her adviser and she could have been my body guard... what an adolescent dream..." her voice trailed off as though it was boarding the sudden breeze like a train home.
Adrien shifted to a more natural sitting position with his foot up against the bars of the porch and began, "Why not move down with your sister? Surely you must miss her after she was of the few to make it out of the war. I suppose you would have to leave your poor mother, though."
"Ivy is rowdy and primal, like the locals she lives around. The wilderness is her home, full of danger and mysticism. I just can't live like her, I enjoy the peace and quiet too much," she said, voice slowly fading to just a whisper.
"You call Berlin peaceful and quiet?" Adrien asked, in honest confusion.
"It is right here and now, isn't it?" Alyx replied.
~
He looked in her eyes and out from the flame in her soul he saw passion. She saw in his eyes a black abyss of tears,
and not only of those he had hurt.
The world skipped.
It was in this moment, as half of the castle vanished in stray lines as if the Sun was a blade,
they realized their hate was their love, their love was their hate.
The world skipped.
Flames as high as mountains spread across the seas of Earth.
The world skipped.
She kissed him, desperately, grasping in futility at that deep abyss, hoping to drown in some requiem of absolution, of dissolution, of solution.
He kissed back, harder, feeling his skull against hers, against every skull in the CD that they had created,
pressing deeply in an attempt to be crushed how they all had been.
The world skipped.
They died, gaining only a single raindrop in their eternal desert.
The world skipped.
The CD shattered into innumerable cosmic dusts. Earth was smashed into fractals while the Spirit Realm whipped about it as a fog of colors never seen by human eyes, nor would be seen by any eyes ever again.
Jesus wept.
