[x]

The Price of Dying“I want to be interred after I die,” Mr. Peters said. He made that clear to his family while he was still lucid, before old age and illness rendered him unintelligible. Seventy wasn’t that old, but he recognized the symptoms that were creeping up on his ailing body – the aches, the fatigue, the feeling of helplessness and despair. Despite his daughter’s attempts to assuage his concerns, he sensed his own mortality.
The worst part about dying, Mr. Peters thought, was what happened afterwards. Even since he was a small boy, he had been afraid of fire. He could never forget the scorching heat of the orange flames searing his skin, the dark billowing smoke entering his nostrils. The time that his house burned down, the fire almost took him with it. How ironic then, to escape the fire only to be fed into it after death.
So one day, he sat his son and daughter down after dinner. “I want to be buried whole,” he said, emphasizing the

Nathan Turner Nathan Turner, aged thirty, was a modest earner, if nothing other. Son of no

father and a flighty mother, and raised in most part by troubled brothers, he was never

one to put his trust in those upon whom the dust of age had scarcely settled. For a time,

he had meddled, even peddled, looking for the light in his own eyes. But never enough was

it, just as well, in his own mind, for the brand of fire which he desired was the sort a

man might chase until he dies, and even at the gates of Hell, never find.

But one cool evening in July, he chanced to meet - just walking by - a woman with

an empty stroller. "Empty stroller?" he asked at on

The Solipsist's LotThere's something about yourself that you don't know. You probably don't remember the circumstances very well, but I do. If you enjoy things the way they are, if you revel in even the smallest speck of ignorance, you need not read ahead. I won't force you. But from what I know of you, you don't like secrets. Especially not when they are about you.

You see, when you were born, so at once was everyone else. Your mother, she sprang into existence, just like that, the instant your tiny infant brain achieved the smallest semblance of self-awareness. Woven out of the ethe

Ottumwa ShamanIn Iowa, weeping willows dream of
Tigers, born in pagan fog, their
Coat of stripes singing shaman
Songs; shrill symphonies of grief.
Heaven tilts, crashes, and we race
The dirt to get away. We drink the
Earth with bullets of air and grow
Dizzy, light-headed from breathing
Some far off flame. Perhaps a poet
Who braved the fog of Ottumwa, and
Caught fire. Every cowboy has his
Six chances before high noon, before
The fog forms wispy jackals to take
Them home again. Every son inherits
An empty gun, six voids to fill with
Answers, skimmed and guessed from the
Covers of books their fathers used
To read. There is no other way.
In s

SouvenirsWhen her mom went to check the mail at breakfast, she returned with a thin box in her arms.

It was a package from her father.

Her dad was sort of like a traveler... at least, that was what she assumed he was. His job always had him jumping from city to city, country to country. He'd been to almost everywhere around the world, and every few weeks, he would send her a letter with a little souvenir from his stay. This time, it was a miniature Eiffel Tower.

So he's in France again, she mused, studying the two-foot tall replica. A small chuckle escaped her lips. It was about time he remembered to get it for her! He really should've thought of b

The Homeless Shelter     The morgue was colder than Douglas expected. He jammed his good hand into his pocket, but the fingers trapped in his cast were exposed. The cold bit into them, and he prayed they would go numb soon.

     “Detective,” the coroner said as he came out of his office. “How nice to see you again. But to be honest, you weren’t the detective I was expecting. Where is McKenzie?”

     “Probably hiding under his desk. I got roped into coming down here to talk to you.”

     “Hmm. I wonder what I could have done to make him avoid me. Well, no matter. I’ll be with you as soon as I finish signing these release forms. It’s always bittersweet, letting the corpses go to their loved ones. I feel like a bond has formed during our time together.”

     &

Imitating NatureThe morning sun streamed through a series of large plate glass windows lining the library's east wall, its rays warming the room's wooden paneling and illuminating the cavernous space. Tall bookshelves stuffed with literature from across the world towered over polished oak reading tables, each furnished with a plain, green-shaded banker's lamp. On the far side, a massive painting gracing the west wall depicted the solemn face of Saint Patrick, whose protective presence could be felt watching over the library's sole visitor.

All was perfectly quiet, save for a tap, tap, tapping that echoed in the otherwise silent room. Seated at a desk near t

red leaves and Robert Frost.When I was young, my virginity was sacred. Entire religions pray over it and my father bought a gun so long as it meant protecting it.

We throw away half of our refrigerator each week – meanwhile, 24,000 people die of starvation every day.

Hardest part is, sometimes wasting things can't be helped.

At the bus stop, before I could drive, boys would ask for my phone number while I tugged up the neck of my shirt. Asked me how old I was while I crossed my legs under my skirt.

I told them I had a boyfriend even when it wasn't true, because they'll always respect another man more than my disinterest.

Hearing "I love you" for the first time

i think we've got it bad.the long dirty road has wheels printed into it and buildings jutting from its sides, cars stopping completely, submissive to all the too-bright light. it's freezing but i feel okay, i feel whole. i feel like i could step outside of myself and the numbness of it all wouldn't let anything touch me. the essence of me. the idea of me.

you wait for me under the street signs with your heeled shoes and too much black smeared around your eyes. it makes you look sad but maybe you want to look sad i don't really know. your hugs feel like a mother's. we're going to a party, some great musician's with golden toilets in his loft that likes prostituted gi

They Also Serve Who Only Stand and WaitI don't know when we first went underground. I don't even know if it was one mass exodus, a swarm of mankind trickling through the earth's crust so vehement we carved our own caverns by the force of trampling feet, or whether it was a gradual process, perhaps even a repetitive one, a family here, a neighborhood there. For all I know, the echo of the damp subterranean machine has always reverberated off the cave walls, created long past by the Angels, who think of our well-being even while they shake their heads helplessly at our flaws.

They say that those who remained on the surface were raptured away in a great flash of light, like a millio

The TimesI was printed on the evening of November 27th, 2008, just as the weather was turning from chilly to cold. I was tomorrow's news. At the moment I came off the press, I told the future. I knew things before the rest of the world; it was wonderful. I knew what my purpose was: to inform as many people as possible about the world's happenings.

As I was put to bed, bound against my brothers and sisters, I dreamt of being passed around a construction site, making sure all the workers were aware of which sports team triumphed, and which celebrity was getting a divorce. I dreamt that corporate peons debated over politics, and the state of the economy

Russian RouletteThey take her on her honeymoon.

The wedding was lovely, or as lovely as it could have been with a couple that were more polite acquaintances than anything else and two sets of in-laws as stuffy as a dusty pile of money. They grab her when she sneaks out for a walk one night, two men, beefy, not even bothered to arm themselves. Her last thought before the bag is shoved over her eyes is to wonder how much this would ruin her parents' plans.

She comes to in a small brick room on a sallow mattress, windowless and lit by a cool yellow lamp. There's a man there, standing just outside the barred door.

"Kelly Shale," he says, voice nasally, greasy

The Best is Yet to Comeif we grow old
there will be a sigh
an attention to the change
as your muscles slacken underneath
your faded, favorite shirt
the one that's threadbare, "holy"
in a sense less than divine
I'll have washed it for
the thousandth time
our eyes will crinkle, wrinkle
in ways that start to match
and we'll hold hands and ask:
when did the nerves and veins
begin to let our hands get cold?
-if we grow old

Yet Another Christmas CarolIt was Christmas, celebrated all around Earth - and in Heaven, of course. As for elsewhere...

If you believe for a single second that the devils don't celebrate Christmas, you are, well, right, actually. They keep very quiet about it. Not even a mouse would dare speak about it to the Almighty Fiend, Lucifer. The sole exception to this unspoken rule had happened a few years back on the occasion of a Satanically spiked MTV "Merry Christmas" video which had seemed like a good idea for a few hours. Until it became obvious that it had been a pointless endeavor – those who watched MTV regularly had been mostly unaffected, those who didn't had

It Began With Ashes - Prologue.

     "Are we being followed, father?"

     "No, Astartes, we are not being followed."

     "How can you be sure? You didn't even look!" Astartes whined. Struggling to turn in the saddle behind his father, Astartes craned his neck to look back through the night. The dirt track meandered this way and that, winding through the Emberfen Forest. The path was hard to make out amongst the muddy browns of the woodland, made all the more difficult by the thick canopy obscuring the glow of the stars and moon overhead.

     Nicolas shook his head, scratching idly at his flame-red moustache. "Don't let your eyes play tricks on you, son…there's no

Browse More Like This

more ▶

More from ~PandaCat-Productions

View Gallery

Featured in Groups:

#CRLiterature
CR hub for Literature Community!

#All-Art-Wanted
Every ART accepted

Details

Submitted: April 16, 2012
Submitted with: Sta.sh Writer

Thumb

Statistics

Comments: 78
Favourites: 155 [who?]
Views: 4,862 (1 today)

[x]

Mature Content Filter is On
(Contains: violence/gore)

Whisper Wraith - 1by ~PandaCat-Productions

Literature / Prose / Fiction / Fantasy / Introductions & Chapters

©2012-2013 ~PandaCat-Productions

Mature Content

Something that's been bouncing around my head lately.

This isn't necessarily chapter 1, since I'm writing this out of order.

Edit: Removed the Princess Bride ref, since it obviously wasn't working :

Edit 2: Made a few small changes - the mother is now preggers, and the man in black's dialogue is minutely different

A DD! Huzzah! Thank you everyone who faved and commented! You are beautiful.

(C) Me

Daily Deviation

Given 2013-01-17

The suggester notes that *PandaCat-Productions "has an uncanny ability to get you into the emotions of her characters." Whisper Wraith - 1 is a dark example of this. ( Suggested by `GrimFace242 and Featured by ^neurotype )

~~love 0 0~~

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

*12who Jan 21, 2013 Hobbyist

_{Congrats on your Daily Deviation!}

Reply

~PandaCat-Productions Feb 3, 2013 Student Writer

Thankies!

Reply

~crashmypartyhard Jan 18, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

_{this was amazing. very well written--it sucked me in and it made me interested. i would love to read more.}

Reply

~PandaCat-Productions Feb 3, 2013 Student Writer

Gneeeee, thank you!

Reply

~crashmypartyhard Feb 3, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

_np!

Reply

~kaedeath Jan 18, 2013

Thank you for making this.

Reply

~PandaCat-Productions Feb 3, 2013 Student Writer

Thank you for reading!

Reply

~kaedeath Feb 8, 2013

Any time!

Reply

~DamienDoesntCare Jan 17, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

OMG, this is awesome^^ I just keep that chapter as a oneshot in mind, cuz I like to think that the man was only in her imagination.... The scene with the razor...got me wanting to throw up a little and I had goosebumps at that moment oO

Reply

~EntrancingAlchemy Jan 17, 2013 Hobbyist Digital Artist

I would like to read more

Reply