Previous story: 400 years The elevator in the apartment building rattled and stopped sometimes and with it, time. The inside covered with vibrating metal sheets and worn wooden moldings that reminded him of a basement in a house where a family had hung hollow and drained. The floor of the entrance and the steps in […]
Author: Niklas
Army of the Pharoes
They stood mute at the edge of the desert, scarecrows gently swaying in the wind, as if they already were no longer there. There was a starry sky, a sea of red sand and a horde of soldiers, thousands of men gathered from the delta and the cities and villages, sent out of the empire […]
Bubbe and little fox
It was a huge penthouse, and in that penthouse everyone froze and gazed towards the door. Behind them the world, the balcony and the view over smeared beaches, a horizon cloaked in smog and salt, queues outside of clubs, pale pink houses inside of golden gates, vibrant pillars that scanned the sky like floodlights in […]
Freebird
”Get her!” The girl belted across the schoolyard, pale and meager, dressed in a passed down gown yellowed with time and life on the roads. Too big, black and clumsy boots on her feet, limping from an ancestral ailment in her hip. She barely brushed the ground, took off in odd little skips without any […]
Alice
She had seen smoke. Remembered every detail. It was there when everything fell apart and changed form and disappeared and order was restored. Cigarettes had its smoke, forests had its smoke, houses had its smoke, bodies had its smoke. From black, burdened with soot and crawling along the ground to milky and thin, dissolving into […]
Out of the taiga
”Hey, why don’t you come over here and clean up?” The huge body stopped in its tracks and slowly turned to where the human voice had sprung from. He covered half the corridor and almost devoured the sharp fluorescent lights in the ceiling, like a liquid darkness. The head was huge and slouched and the […]
400 years
Sunrise. Sunset. Days like seasons, moments. He closed his eyes and opened them again and the world outside the window had altered, torn down, rebuilt, expanded, arised, ingrained. During the deep winter there was no sun. Only the moon, yellow and dense, so distinct that the landscapes emerged, dappled valleys and mountain ranges carefully scetched […]
I am the sea
He had seen oceans. Rivers, rapids, bays and open seas, shallow and deep waters, serene untold voids and masses unknown. Storms raging at the surface, waves streching towards rumbling skies, down to the depths where time stands still. Biting, cold water covered with ice that light sips through, casting a green shimmer down below, thinner […]
Welcome to the jungle
It was just past dawn but you could already hear it. It started with a single shot, then followed burst after burst, a hollow blare bouncing through the streets, the alleys. The houses and the sheds had spred like a multicolored rash covering the slopes. Far above them the green, timeless mountains with its arched […]
Letter from ground 716
Surely there must have been a beginning. There must have been a place and a time where and when all beings came from and came to be. Maybe there even was a thought behind and before it all. But it doesn’t matter much now. Neither for you nor me. What’s important for you to understand, […]