sulfurousdreamscapes

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

My new arm made me forget a lot of words. I’d been using them just fine until yesterday, until I got the surgery and upgraded my arm. It’s better, in a lot of ways. 23% more flexible than the previous revision, and the fingers are extendable. If you root it, you can even edit the fingerprints. But all that’s beside the point, because I’ve forgotten a large chunk of my native language now.

I only discovered this when I called my parents and realised that I could only speak English with them. My ex-schoolteacher mom had little trouble understanding me, but my dad squinted. They both stared at my arm like it had a cockroach on it.

“I don’t know,” I said in English, when my mom translated my dad’s question. “I think there’s a bug with somewhere in the hardware.”

“So how do you fix it?” she asked.

“Well, I’ll file a support ticket, but it’ll probably be more of a bug report, to be honest.”

“Will you get your words back?”

“I don’t know,” I said again. “But look at this.” I swivelled my hand around three-sixty degrees, and pulled my thumb out of its socket. “Pretty cool, huh? I got a new thumb, too, the stock one is just okay.”

Within a month, I’d forgotten my native language entirely. The language was completely foreign to me now. Dad stopped appearing on camera during our calls.

“I want to follow up on my support ticket about my new arm overwriting the language module in my firmware?” I asked the support chat agent.

“We are looking into it,” they said.

“It’s really distressing, I’m having a lot of trouble.”

“I am sorry to hear that. We are doing our best to provide a resolution to this issue,” the agent said.

“If the arm wiped out my English language abilities, I wouldn’t even be able to talk to you.”

“I understand your concerns. However, at the moment, there is no resolution or workaround for your issue. Would you like us to keep you updated?”

My calls with Mom became even less frequent than before. A worm crawled through my conscience, until I couldn’t stand it any more.

The doctors raised their eyes when I told them I wanted to downgrade. They warned me about all the features I’d lose, and how there would be no refunds. I said it was okay. They warned me that support for the older model of the arm would eventually be discontinued. I said it was okay. They warned me about security issues, and the possibility of malware intrusion, not to mention bugs and other issues. I said it was okay.

Going back to my old arm was at once nostalgic and disappointing. And I found I couldn’t speak a lick of my native language, even now. I looked up pronunciation guides and grammars, and began learning the language anew. Mom was patient with me, and she helped. The pain never left her eyes, though.

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

Ride a cart south from Voroshkyn, to a signpost, where there's perched a raven whose claws have dug holes into the wood. You can see the monastery from there, if there is no fog. The path to it strangles the sea, which sends waves of brine beating against the rocks. Finally, there is the monastery. Small, like a crucifix that could slip out in the death throes of your drowning.

"Tell me, sweet Khristodin, why don't these grim men and women ever seek our advice? Do they think we're gargoyles standing by the door?"

I ask this, but Khristodin does not answer. He lowers his pruned and wrinkled hands into a pool of stagnant water, and closes his eyes.

"No, not gargoyles. Maybe we're ghosts, brief and fleeting. They look at us once and move on with their fearless chests thrust against the battles to come."

The water in the pool ripples away from Khristodin's hands, and an image forms.

Some day, a brick will be anointed with a lover's ink. That same brick will be illegible a century later. Many years later, it will be tossed down the rocks, and it will meet the sea that lashed it for centuries.

"These are beautiful sights, Khristodin. But what about the man who just passed by us? Oh, him with his crimson stole and his flame-licked armour, hammered by the blacksmith in Voroshkyn. Do you think he comes out?"

Some days, a man called brother by many, walks in circles around the monastery structure, sprinkles water called holy by many as he goes, prays to the sky and nods at the circling hawks.

This is long after Voroshkyn has ceased to exist. The name slips into the sea, and not even ravens care to stop the signpost from being hacked to pieces.

"Khristodin, that is a completely different man. Must it always be a game with you? A gamble? A roulette? You know what happened to this man. What will happen to this man, rather. It is only a matter of feeling the monastery's spine. Reaching across the nerves into the depths of the dungeons, feeling for footsteps, feeling for steel and blood."

A wailing child seeks shelter from the rain, nestled in a nook with his father. The thunder in the distance comes from cannons, but the father assured the child that these are the good cannons. Their only enemy is the rain, he says. It's nothing to worry about.

When the child does stop wailing, it's because the monastery's wall has been smashed open, open, open wound making the insides and outsides one.

"I give up, Khristodin. My curiosity has gone to the wall, and it has dived straight into the water below. It's now bait for the fishes. I will not get a straight answer out of you, and I have made my peace with that."

Khristodin flicks a finger at me, and a drop of water hits my forehead. "What does that mean, then? Is he alive? Is he dead? Spare me all the other futures. Only tell me what happens to this man."

I feel the drop slide down into my brow, pushing through the brown hair, down to the eye.

It slips into my eye. And there it is - everything. What is the man? Where is he? How to tease out one body of cells from an infinity of future events? Khristodin, if he knows, will not tell me.

Closing my eyes, I return to waiting for the next fool to ride a cart south from Voroshkyn, to a signpost…

-------

This fiction piece was inspired by @strehlenau's 'caucasian monastery' piece, which I saw on a blazed post today.

Thank you for reading!

#writing #fiction #spilled ink #creative writing #short story #short fiction #short stories #flash fiction #writeblr #original fiction #writers on tumblr

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

Finished drafting my first novella Last Night, New Body this evening.

I wrote 5,749 words in one day to cap it off. The draft is sitting pretty at 30,000 words. I expect to spend the next few months editing it extensively. With luck, it'll be ready to query in June or July. Let's see how it goes.

I can't help but quote Victor Hugo's letter to Auguste Vacquerie on the former's completion of Les Misérables:

Dear Auguste, This morning June 30 [1861] at half past eight, with the sun streaming through my window, I finished Les Misérables. I know the news will be of some interest to you and I’d like you to hear it from me. I owe you this announcement of birth … Rest assured, the child is doing fine.

[Excerpted from 'The Novel of the Century' by David Bellos]

#writing #writeblr #writing wip #my wips #wip #writers on tumblr

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

Writeblr Intro! Sulfurous Dreamscapes!

8 years late, but better than never.

I'm Rahul, in my early 30s, from Mumbai, and this is my writeblr! You can use either he/him or she/her pronouns for me.

In January 2016, I started Sulfurous Dreamscapes as a daily writing practice blog. By some bizarre blessing, I managed to keep up the habit, without fail, for a solid 5 years. This blog contains all the daily writing I did from 2016 to 2021.

Several of my short stories have been published in literary magazines, including Barzakh and Strix! You can see them here.

I also briefly ran a Substack called Sulfur Dreams, where I published short stories. It was previously paywalled, but is completely free to read now.

Finally, I am working on a WIP novella called Last Night, New Body. Its genre is science-fiction, and it's about a sex worker attempting to transfer himself into a cyborg body.

Thank you for reading!

#writing #writeblr #writing community #writeblr intro #writers on tumblr

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

Loose update on things!

I've crossed 20,000 words on my draft of Last Night, New Body. I'm aiming for 30,000 words, so that's 2/3rd of the way there!

I often want to check out other WIPs, writers on Tumblr, the whole book publishing rigmarole, and all that jazz, but it's all so overwhelming. Just dipping my toes in leaves me exhausted.

So if any of you have simpler or beginner-friendly resources on all that stuff, I'd be very grateful!

#writeblr #writing #writing wip

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

His crystal laughter sings louder than the clanking of metal, the hissing of gas, the roar of engines. It’s filtered through the radio, but that’s the only way I know it. That’s the only way I love it.

I don’t see his face, but I see his smile all the same. His metal arm, an arm of giants, holds mine and he swings me into a building long condemned to the ruin of war. The shock causes my body to shudder, causes me to jump in my seat, and I giggle like a schoolgirl while he laughs and apologises at once. And he smiles, I just know that he does.

His engines swivel, make him spin and turn. I lift a leg as he holds my hips. We play in the air, below clouds made of evaporated dreams, above a sea waiting to be exploited. My hover engines let me skate above the water, and I speed towards him. He holds his arm out, and I jump off his arm. He shoots up with tremendous thrust, and his hands join mine.

At that moment, while we’re entwined, I like to imagine I can see the real him there. The pilot underneath the metal shell, a person, a filthy and ugly human like me. But I don’t, I can’t. Our fingers clench, and we breach the cloud cover, so that we’re above the roof of the world. I’ll never forget the way the clouds flow down him as we ascend. I’ll never forget a detail about him.

“I love you,” he says, and his head hits mine, one metal monster and another. Our bodies aren’t meant for this. They’re meant for war and killing. Every instrument in my body shudders, and the exterior of his face touches mine. I wrap my hands around him. Hands that don’t feel.

“I love you,” I echo, and I let out a sigh that I can’t help. He sighs back, but it’s a controlled sigh, the kind that’s almost faked.

“Stay with me, now and forever?” he asks.

“I’ll kill you,” I laugh, leaning forward in my cockpit chair.

“No, I’ll kill you first, love,” he laughs too.

Its a cute joke, backed up by three missile launchers, a gatling gun, and a rail cannon. Sometimes, we fire them off into the stars. We track their trajectories, we watch them light up the night sky, and we watch them fall to the ground, or smash a building. The windows are like crunchy chocolate chips. Always the best part.

And every once in a while, someone does show up. Looking for him mostly, but also for me, now that I’ve fallen for him. Sometimes it’s a poor girl, sometimes it’s a gruff male. They plan their angle of attack, they come with friends, they come well-equipped.

But we have the most robust frames in the world, and they don’t really stand half a chance. So we hold hands, and we kiss, metal on metal, and we fire, fire until they’re gone.

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

The Word started appearing in written text one day. No one had ever seen the word before, but it was present in books and diplomatic papers, in scientific journals and software buttons, in street signs and addresses on envelopes. It was all over the Internet. It was a crisis.

A crowdsourced document was created to find a link between the replaced words. No clues were forthcoming, because the Word replaced other words randomly. Statistics were drawn, analyses were written. But then, even the document came to be invaded by the Word. It seeped into the statistics too, and it began replacing words the analyses were written with. The crisis was growing.

One way to deal with the rogue invader was to simply ignore its presence. When reading things that included the Word, people began to substitute it with whatever word they thought was appropriate. A sentence that could’ve once been written as “I hate you” could be read as “I love you”. People searched for more context, more confirmations, more data to explain the world that was quickly slipping out of their grasp.

The more data that got produced, the more the Word infiltrated it. It did not take long for people to become suspicious of the written word entirely. When you can’t even trust age-old scriptures and classic literature anymore, when your textbooks are incomprehensible, when your statutes and constitutions are rendered unreadable, where exactly do you go?

As modern society began to unravel, the spoken word staged a long-awaited comeback. People were talking more and doing their best to remember more. The human voice gained an importance that had long been denied to it by the pen the keyboard. Ears became eyes.

Then, the Word jumped. A newer generation, a fresher generation, began pronouncing the word when they read it. Unlike their frustrated elders, they did not ignore or replace the Word whenever it appeared. Soon, the Word had legitimacy. It had meaning. But what was the meaning exactly?

Poetry became strings of the Word, impaled in a verse. Declarations were made with the Word. Teachers gave full marks to students using the Word. Suicide letters were written with the Word. Instruction manuals stressed the Word. No one was sure what it meant. And yet, everyone knew exactly what it meant.

At a certain point—it is unclear when—the Word replaced every other word. It had burnt a searing streak through the minds of its speakers. Meaning had been dismantled. Society had been dismantled. The concept of being human had been dismantled.

The infestation was complete. A cocoon had been constructed.

Then, another word began appearing. No one was sure what it meant, or how to pronounce it, or how to use it. Indeed, no one was sure how to use it.

Still, use it they did. It was followed by another word, and then another. The new words replaced the uniform language. It was difficult remembering the many different words that were emerging, and a great many speakers rebelled. They demanded the use of the Word whenever possible. “Nuance” and “corruption” became two ways to express a single phenomenon. Why settle for inferior alternatives, when the Word can mean everything you need it to mean?

The cocoon cracked. Fragments fell. Words continued appearing, replacing instances of the Word. The dawn had come.

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

I’ll admit I forgot that it was my deathday. I was only reminded of it when my granddaughter opened the door at 12:01 am and tiptoed into my room. She waited a while, probably to let her eyes get used to the dark. She couldn’t tell that I was staring at her, because she nudged my shoulder.

“Pssy, hey, ajjī,” she said. “Are you awake?”

I pretended not to reply and held my breath. My granddaughter Sneha, bless her, put a finger under my nostrils. I nearly bit it off.

“Ouch,” she snickered and jabbed me in the shoulder. “Happy deathday!” she cheered in whisper.

I got up and checked the time on my phone. Yes, sure enough, it was two minutes into my deathday. No one knew about this wonderful day of the year except myself and Sneha. The others wouldn’t take it so well.

“Thank you!” I smiled, and she saw me smile in the glow of the phone below. I noticed she was holding a little blue-and-pink box. “For me?” I asked.

She nodded and placed the box in my lap before sitting next to me. “I was saving for today, but you know my laptop broke. I’ll get you something twice as good next year, I promise.”

Inside the box was a triangular wedge, dark as a void, but sweet and a little bitter. A slice of dark chocolate cake. I scooped it out with a little plastic knife and fed Sneha first.

This was the fourth deathday I’d celebrated with my granddaughter. Sneha held up the camera and in the ugly lighting of the flash, she took a selfie. It was the fourth selfie we’d taken like this, quietly in the dark, my lips stained with chocolate, teeth flashing white.

“Can you believe it’s already been four years?” she asked, flicking through her phone gallery. “We’re going to have to do this as long as we can. As long as I’m alive, I guess.”

“And beyond,” I added.

“And beyond,” she laughed, then remembered she can’t let her parents hear, and lowered the laugh to a giggle.

She kept swiping right, to the picture before all the selfies, which was a website screenshot. It was from an old website that Sneha had found while ‘wasting time’ on the Internet, as her mother used to put it. You had to put in some details into the website, like when you were born, what your lifestyle is like, and so on. In exchange, it told you the precise day and date you will die. Neither of us had believed it, really, but Sneha had been quite excited to show it to me anyway.

Together, we’d decided to celebrate this computer-generated date. A celebration of when we’d leave the world, just like we had one for when we entered it. A reverse-birthday, if you will.

Her thumb traced the date on the screen. 5th April, 20XX. Then she swiped right.

The next image was another screenshot, this one showing my granddaughter’s death date. 5th April, 20XX.

I put the box down on the bed and hugged my granddaughter until the phone dropped from her hand.

(I broke the post while adding Myy’s recording to it, but now it’s fixed again.)

Written for Flash Fiction Friday #7. The theme was “Happy Death Day”. Tagging the hosts again! @cawolters and @shaping-infinity!

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

“You want me to edit a trailer of my own life?” I asked the angel. He was on a call, and the call was on hold, so he deigned to pay attention to me.

“Yes, nothing fancy,” he said, “Just stitch things up, make it 3 minutes. A few seconds more is fine.”

“Don’t you have people to do that for me?” The chair I was sitting in creaked under my weight, and the fibre on the armrest was showing. Rows and rows of cubicles were swarming with departed souls and angels managing them. Large ceiling fans rotated lazily, phones kept ringing, and the buzz of speech never died down.

Heaven.

“Are you serious?” the angel asked me, frowning earnestly. “You think you’re a hotshot world leader? A celebrity? Changed the world forever with your actions or something?”

The call resumed, and the angel smiled politely into his phone, asking the caller to wait just a few more seconds. Then, blocking the mic, he glared at me. “3 minutes. Stitch it, or take the elevator down. You choose.”

They run a tight ship here, I thought, and I turned to the computer.

How do you condense a life of 65 years into a 3-minute trailer?

The memory editing software was intuitive enough, thankfully, even if it kept asking me to register for the premium version to get all the advanced features.

Right, how do I start? Something eye-catching, maybe, something that would turn heads. That’s got to be the time I stood on the edge of the cliff, at the gorge in Colorado. A whole world of nature, and here I am, just a little man. I threw in some Hans Zimmer-esque thumping in there.

That’s a good start—pregnant with promise. Cut to black, and then maybe something quiet and cute. Me playing with teddy bears? Hmm, soccer practice? Maybe studying for school? Sure, that’d all work in a montage, but a trailer has to be exciting.

The more time passed, the more I realised that I couldn’t even make the 1:30 minute mark, let along a full 3 minutes. There were no glorious car chases to hint at, no shootouts, no heists, no grand wars or personal betrayals. My kisses were messy and awkward, and I didn’t even walk very dramatically. All the times I thought I looked dramatic, I was actually looking like a dork.

I sighed. Maybe I said something insightful that could be used as a sound bite? A real punchy quote, maybe even something memeable.

Dad jokes? Was that really the best I had?

I had my face buried in my face when I heard a familiar voice. It was the angel from before, he was tapping my shoulder.

“You may go now, thanks,” he said, still holding a phone to his ear.

“I haven’t finished it,” I said. “Give me some more time, I'll—”

“No, it’s fine, you don’t need to sell your life with a trailer. Someone’s already bought it. They’re going to start living it as soon as you depart.”

“Someone bought my life?” I got up from my chair immediately. “Who?”

“Can’t say,” the angel checked his watch, peeking out from a white sleeve. “Could you please leave the room?”

Meanwhile, a confused woman walked into my cubicle, looking every which way and taking my seat. The angel leaned over her. “Please edit a trailer of your life so that we can sell your life to potential souls. You may use the…”

I’d heard it all before, so I sighed, and I left. Whoever bought my life, I hoped they’d make something better out of it.

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

Yo what’s up YouTube, this is Occult Freddy, and I’m here with another unboxing and review video for you. In this video, we’re going to be covering the Raven’s Totem of Trauma. This time around, I actually got it straight from the source, and that’s Ariadne. That’s right, Ariadne left this box—it’s so light—under a bridge for me to find, with a note and stuff. I can’t tell you what was on the note, that’s confidential, but I can tell you that this package is s-w-e-e-t, my friends, I’m so excited to rip it apart and get started, so let’s roll the intro!

Okay, so I’ve got my box cutter ready, and let’s start opening up this baby. I love the sound of ripping cardboard, honestly, it’s what I live for? Or it’s at least what I make these videos for, hah. I mean, it’s just so fresh and—there we go, there’s the beauty. As you can see, the box is made of lacquered wood, and she is a beaut. Sorry, that was a terrible whistle. Let me try that again—okay no, I can’t whistle.

Okay, so here we have the box, and this is the manual here, which no one really reads so we’ll just toss it aside for the time being. And this is the warranty card, just a piece of paper, hmm, two years of warranty, not bad, but not great either. Oh hello, more bubble wrap? I’m gonna make good use of this later, trust me.

So here we go, Raven’s Totem of Trauma, packaged in a nice wooden box here. You see this latch? Hold on, let me just adjust the focus on this camera here—now you just have to open this latch, and press on the depressed part here to open the box. It should snap right open. It’s actually a hex, but Ariadne likes to make it seem benign and analogue. Old-fashioned charm, right? And inside, here’s the real deal.

The interior is absolutely plush, velvet, I think. And the totem itself is made out of bone. Now as it says here on the main box, this bone is one hundred percent raven bone, and Ariadne has a pretty—almost dropped it there, sorry, gotta be really careful with these things—Ariadne’s source of ravens is Derek’s Hut, which is honestly, I mean, you want raven bones, you got no better place to turn to.

Now we’ve done this before, so I’m just going to skip the manual and get right to the totem. Ideally, you want this to work on someone else, and in this case, I’m going to use the totem on Menelaus, who is sitting in a chair here, all nicely secured and gagged. Say hi!

First, soak the totem in a pool of rabbit’s blood—I recommend heating it a bit for best effect—and always check your sources, because rabbit’s blood is very easy to fake these days, so you only want the real deal. And once it’s out—do NOT, and I repeat, do NOT hold it with your fingers, use a tweezer for this, or you can use chopsticks like I am, and rub the totem on the skin of the person you want to—

What the fuck, Menelaus? How did you— Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, okay, it touched me, it touched me you guys, this is not good and

Sulfurous Dreamscapes now has a sibling blog! It’s called Sulfurous Mirrorscapes, and it will feature reblogs, submissions, comments and other content.

#gonna reblog some old stories now and then

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

Hi :)

What do you use to keep track of your word-count?

The official NaNoWriMo website!

You can sign up there and create your own goals for both writing and editing.

It gives you really cool stats and graphs, like how many words you write on average and how long it'll take for you to finish at your current pace, etc.

#writing #writeblr #nanowrimo #fiction #creative writing

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

As of today, it's been 8 years since I started Sulfurous Dreamscapes.

I've always maintained that doing so was the best decision I ever made in my life.

It was my attempt to practice my fiction daily, but it turned out to also be a gateway to publication in literary journals, and of course, it brought me so much love and attention that I could never be grateful enough to all of you.

So what's up with me now?

I'm still working on the WIP I announced in 2022; Last Night, New Body. My current draft crossed the 10,000-word mark today.

The modest word target points to this story being fit for a novella.

I considered - even attempted - stretching the story into a novel-length piece.

However, I decided in the end to be in service to the story rather than to have the story be in service to me. If it wants to be a novella, I will respect that.

Thank you for following me, and I really can't wait to finish Last Night, New Body and put it in your hands. I hope you'll love it just as much as you liked my previous fiction.

#writeblr #writing #fiction

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

"Cover her up," said the father, and the girl reached for the shroud. She pulled it over her mother, allowing herself to feel detached from her hands. An impartial observer would not take their time to cover up a dead woman.

When she turned around, the girl found that her father was off of the pyre platform already. He had his back to her, so she leaned onto the pyre and cupped her mouth. On lurched the anxiety of being watched, and the girl realised that she didn't know what to say.

So she said the first two words, the only two words, that she had been able to form. "I will."

The girl took a few steps away, hoping for a spark of recognition. A nod, maybe, or a waving hand saying goodbye. Instead, she was assailed by her own name, called out from behind her. She turned her back to her mother and clapped her bare feet down the stairs.

For the rest of the funeral, the girl felt an unyielding pressure on the corners of her mind. The very act of funeral seemed like a monster squeezing her in its grasp. She was going to pop, like an abscess full of pus and leave a big scar on existence.

When the pyre came alight, when the torch was discarded so freely, when her father came back down the steps - the girl stared at the bricks that built the platform. Everything important happened in her peripheral vision, but she felt sorry for the bricks, for some reason. Her father would no doubt suggest that she was grieving, and in a fit of defiance, she would no doubt insist that she was not.

At home - which no longer felt like home - she counted the voices she heard. None of them had the decency to whisper around her. Each voice added to the pressure that was boxing her mind in, and she was learning to lay out each of the sentences in front of her, straight and clean like dead snakes.

"She could have had a younger brother or sister."

"Devotion still got her very far, I'd say."

"I've nothing but good memories of her. Not many, and certainly not enough."

"My boy's getting famished - when's the banquet again?"

The girl could borrow a knife from the butcher's girl in the next street, and she'd chop the snake sentences into even-sized pieces. And the butcher's girl would laugh and put them in a soup. And they'd stir and stir and stir and stir and serve the soup back to the people who said all those things.

She whispered the butcher's girl's name, only to remember that there was no reason for her to be at this funeral. Despite this, there was no one else she would rather see in that moment. She got up from the mattress on the floor and deflected the snake sentences flying to bite her, stepping in the little spaces between all the sitting mourners, and once she got out of the house, she put on her sandals and fled.

"What are you doing here?" the butcher asked. His cleaver hung above an animal carcass, ready to separate flesh, break through bone, and tear through cartilage.

The longer the girl stood there, the more mortified the butcher looked. All these carcasses, and he'd been spooked by the one dead body he hadn't even seen.

The girl asked if her friend was there.

"What? Why? What do you want with her?" the butcher asked, before adding a trembling 'my dear'.

"I feel like playing with her," the girl said.

The butcher lay his cleaver down and shifted his weight from one foot to another. "Where's your father? Shouldn't you be… I mean, is this the right time to…"

A movement along the stairs in the back, and the girl smiled for the first time that day. It was her friend's feet.

The butcher half-turned and yelled out his daughter's name. "Go back up," he ordered. "And no questions, understood?"

The girl considered how heavy that cleaver might be, and how much force might be needed to cut through tough hide. How many times you have to swing it, with just the right care, too, before you get the hang of it.

"Come later, okay?" the butcher said, his voice scrambling to put on the clothes of gentleness. "This isn't a good time to play. Go back home, go to your dad, and…"

"And do what?" the girl asked.

The butcher lifted his cleaver again, shook his head with a sigh, and brought it down on the chopping block. The sound the motion made satisfied the girl - it felt right.

"Wait thirteen days," the butcher said, without daring to look at the girl. "Finish all the rituals. Finish mourning, cleanse your body, mind, and soul. Then you can play as much as you like."

Another satisfying chop. Two small feet on the stairs in the back, retreating up and out of sight.

The girl went back home, freshly feeling like she was made up of nothing but filth. There were too many sandals there, outside the house, for this to feel like her home. When she entered, the attention she received made her feel like she was being feted.

The snake sentences slithered to her feet this time, and she imagined using a cleaver - her cleaver - to hack at them before they got to her feet. Maybe they didn't want to bite. Maybe they were just passing through. All the same, she would chop them into cubes.

#fiction #writing #creative writing #short story #flash fiction #writeblr #original fiction #short stories #short fiction #spilled ink #been playing around with an idea in my head #i'm not even sure if this is related to it #i just wrote with it in mind #and i think this piece turned out really well

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

I've decided to conclude Sulfur Dreams, the Substack I started last year. It was quite the adventure, and I'm grateful to have created it. I posted some of my best stories on there, and it helped me hone my technique.

I'm ending it as I no longer have the time that's necessary for maintaining it on a regular schedule, and I would rather not charge readers on a monthly basis as a result.

Therefore, you can no longer purchase subscriptions on Sulfur Dreams, but that also means all paywalls have been removed. If you'd like to read any of the stories that were previously paid, knock yourself out! They're all free now!

Needless to say, this is not the end of my writing journey by any means. If anything, it means I may resume posting on this blog sporadically.

I trust you will continue to support me as you always have, and I look forward to what you think of the stories I posted on the Substack over the last year.

Thank you all! See you again very soon!

#fiction #writing #writeblr #short stories #flash fiction #substack

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

Flash // Painter of Decay

Hiromi’s grandfather clicked his tongue when he saw the drawing she had completed. “It’s poor,” he said, lifting his paintbrush up to point at where the outline of the apple refused to touch the apple’s stalk.

Hiromi put the drawing down on the cardboard cover of her drawing book and connected the two lines with an acute angle. She raised the drawing again, but this time, her grandfather wouldn’t even look at it.

He sighed. "The colour doesn't even fill the apple’s outline, and besides, it’s the wrong shade of green. How is the apple lit? Is it as flat as in your drawing?"

Considering her drawing with a fresh gaze, Hiromi acceded that her grandfather was right. The simple green crayon’s colour didn't fill the apple in. And as for the lighting, well, it certainly wasn’t shaded at all.

Hiromi was a kid - a kid who was not very good at drawing and colouring, true, but she wasn't stupid.

"But your drawing is also completely wrong," Hiromi said. She was hoping her father would be back from the hospital already, because she knew he'd back her up against her grandfather.

A dreadful cough left the grandfather's lungs, and he straightened his posture in response. "What do you understand? Show me."

Hiromi pointed at his painting. "Well for one, the apple is green, but you have it all black and purple and ugly. It doesn't look anything like the apple in front of you."

"Tch," the grandfather clicked his tongue again. "It's a rotting fruit. I've painted the fruit as it rots. This is what it is, even if you cannot see it yet."

"But it's clearly not rotten. It's fresh and green, and I can pick it up and eat it now if I wanted to."

Hiromi's grandfather groaned and added a few more dark, viscous strokes to the painting in front of him. Moments later, he cleared his throat and spoke. "I would say that you will understand when you are older, but even your father couldn't understand this, so I have little hope for you."

Thank you for reading so far! The rest of the story is on the Sulfur Dreams Substack. This one is free to read, so be sure to check it out if you liked the excerpt above!

#fiction #writing #creative writing #short story #short stories #writeblr #story #my writing #spilled ink #flash fiction #short fiction #original fiction #fiction writing

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

Story // Mr Kanetkar's Office at Tribhuvan Rd

The entanglement of an office worker in Mumbai, his new colleague, and a teenager in Philadelphia.

~1700 words // 6 min read (preview) ~6700 words // 31 min read (full)

3rd February 2003, Mumbai

Mr Vishwas Kanetkar took over the seat vacated by his new colleague, Mr Singh. The computer screen in front of the seat displayed the small, blinking dash of a command prompt. Just above the prompt, a line of grey text read “Sometimes you just gotta light up, man. You won’t get it till you get it.”

Mr Singh lifted his backpack off the cracked-tile floor and slung it over his shoulder. “We have to have chai sometime and talk about work, Mr Kanetkar,” he said. “I’m sure there’s a lot you could teach me.”

Mr Kanetkar cracked his knuckles over the keyboard and grinned at his colleague. “You have a lot of catching up to do, Mr Singh. You know, before you, I worked with Surve Madam. We were a better partnership than Tendulkar and Ganguly.”

The young, turbaned Mr Singh made a thumbs-up gesture showing that he was impressed. He disappeared through the rotting doorframe and into the corridor outside, into a passage that lay dark under the barely-powered light bulb.

Back in the office, a new word emerged on the screen, conjured out of Mr Kanetkar’s steady typing.

“Where?” 

Moments later, a response spooled out like cut-up lace.

“Party at Cransway, at Lia’s place. Smells of grass and alcohol. Bathroom smells of vomit. Hanging out in a dark corner, pretending to enjoy the music. Music is not great, but maybe it’ll grow on me. I think one of Lia’s friends is checking me out.”

Mr Kanetkar smacked his lips and grimaced in disappointment. He typed out another message on the screen, which went to a teenage boy’s mind on the other side of the world.

“Trevor, what is this? You were going to study for the Physics test due in 2 days. Why are you at a party?”

It was morning in Mr Kanetkar’s office, but the tubelight was still on from last night’s shift. The ceiling fan’s rotating shadows swung all across the office. Mr Kanetkar pressed the seventh switch in a mess of wires and switches, which turned the tubelight off, and he rummaged through one of the file cabinets in the room.

By the time he returned to his wood-framed, plastic-mesh chair, more thoughts from Trevor unspooled on his yellowed CRT monitor.

“The party seemed like a nice place. A little scary, but I made up my mind to not be scared. I wanted to go, so I went.”

Mr Kanetkar had retrieved a file (‘Say no to drugs’) from the cabinet, but he put it away and typed, “Nonsense. They are doing drugs and beer at that party. Your parents raised you better than this.”

“My parents are not going to find out,” the reply read.

“Get out right now and go straight home,” Mr Kanetkar typed in. He followed up his command with more text, which wasn’t meant for Trevor’s conscious mind. “--no-repeat --importance:500”.

In Philadelphia, on the other side of the world, 15-year-old Trevor put down the almost-empty red cup. He slid through the rhythm-soaked crowd and got out to be hit by the chill of a winter’s night. Hands in his pockets, he walked home with Avril Lavigne playing in his head.

In Mumbai, Mr Kanetkar entered a fresh command into the computer, which brought up  Trevor’s actions for that day. He read message after message, all of which built up a sequence of events for him. That day, Trevor went to school, got home, got his homework done, did the dishes, was called by Lia to come to the party, and then, he said yes to the invitation.

Mr Kanetkar grumbled. “What did you do, Mr Singh?” He pressed the ‘n’ key to go to the next page of the on-screen report.

While at the party, Trevor had been approached by a girl named Beth. She had said that she hoped Trevor didn’t mind her checking him out. Trevor had replied that he didn’t.

Then, they had talked about music, agreeing that neither of them liked the band playing at the party. Trevor preferred music that most people didn’t - music from the 1980s that he got on old hand-me-down cassettes from his older cousin Darren.

Two songs later, Trevor and Beth had agreed to a movie date. They were going to watch a horror movie called Final Destination 2. With the plan confirmed, Beth had floated away to another group, and that was where Mr Kanetkar had taken over his shift.

Presently in Philadelphia, Trevor crashed on the bed with his boots still on. Darkness had taken over from twilight, and Trevor felt an urge to dial Beth’s telephone number.

Mr Kanetkar jabbed his fingers into the keyboard, spelling out his next instruction. “Tell Beth that you have to cancel the movie date.”

Trevor told Beth that he had to cancel the movie date. He sounded vaguely drunk and tired, and he told Beth that he hadn’t been thinking straight earlier.

On the other side of the call, Beth sounded disappointed. She asked him if something was wrong. Trevor replied that he had other plans. They navigated their way to goodbyes and hung up the call.

Mr Kanetkar typed into the computer while referring to the yellow file that he balanced on his lap.

“You’d make a mess of it, wouldn’t you? Remember when you spilt your Pepsi all over the lobby? Back when you went to Jurassic Park 2 with your parents?”

Trevor lay on his back and stared pointedly at the ceiling fan, letting his mind wander.

Mr Kanetkar sighed. “Exam in two days, and this boy wants to go watch movies.” 

He consulted diagnostics on the screen to go over Trevor’s hydration, bladder, and fatigue levels. It was now safe for Trevor to fall asleep, but Mr Kanetkar made sure to fetch a trio of files from Cabinet CA-5, which he would feed into Trevor’s half-conscious mind.

It was only after Trevor was satisfactorily asleep that Mr Kanetkar put all the files aside and pulled out his tiffin box. 

The four containers of the tiffin box shared space on the table with the dusty keyboard, three differently-coloured pens, and a small notepad he’d bought for a handful of rupees down the street. 

One of the tiffin box containers held chapatis, another had spiced eggplant, the third had steamed rice, and the fourth had dal. Mr Kanetkar ate slowly and made sure to wipe the inner surface of each container clean.

After lunch, Mr Kanetkar stretched, made sure that Trevor was asleep, and then went out of the room to greet Mr Parmar, the owner of the sewing machine repair shop down the corridor. 

He had met Mr Parmar a decade ago, and the two shared a camaraderie now. Dozens of firms and employees had come and gone in that decrepit building on Tribhuvan Road, but Mr Kanetkar and Mr Parmar had persisted. They joked that they had a survivors’ bond.

Later, Mr Kanetkar went to the balcony at the end of the first floor corridor. He lit up a cigarette and watched the cloudless skies. He reflected on the sun-baked dust and the missing off-season showers. No rain until the monsoon now.

He waited for the sun to turn a cooler ochre and then retreated into the dark of the corridor. He slid open the deadbolt on his office door and took his seat after a bout of stretching.

In Philadelphia, Trevor lay asleep and dreamt of being flung across an endless corn field. Falling sideways was exhilarating, and every time he alighted on the ground, he had only a couple of moments to think before he was flung again.

Mr Kanetkar sipped on his chai, which was brought to him in a small glass by a pre-teen boy employed by the local chaiwallah. Shortly after six, a curt knock on the door signalled Mr Singh, who entered with the same grin on his face as when he had left the office that morning. His armpits were lined with sweat and his cologne was deadenned by the metal lick of the local train.

They exchanged pleasantries, and Mr Kanetkar made way for Mr Singh to take over.

On the other side of the world, Trevor neared the end of his sleep. He was going to wake up, and once he did, Mr Singh would guide him through the rest of the day.

It was time for Mr Kanetkar to go home.

When Mr Kanetkar got home, he found his wife putting on a sari, ready to go out. Mr Kanetkar did not want to know why,  but she told him anyway - it was Shashank’s birthday. 

He replied that he did not know who Shashank was. She clarified that Shashank is the boy who lives one floor downstairs, and that Shashank had personally asked her to come to his birthday party with ‘uncle’.

Mr Kanetkar clicked his tongue. “His parents probably made him go around the building inviting everyone. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Still, we have to go,” Mrs Kanetkar said.

So Mr Kanetkar went to the boisterous birthday party, where he wished Shashank a happy birthday, gave him a ₹500 note, ruffled his hair, and then went into the back to talk to the other ‘uncles’ of the building.

“Will you have some with us, Mr Kanetkar?” Shashank’s father asked him, leaving out any words that might mean liquor.

“No, no, thank you. Maybe next time.”

“What next time? Next time will be next year!”

4th February 2003

Minutes after taking over his shift, Mr Kanetkar ran to the first floor balcony and searched for Mr Singh in the street below. He caught sight of Mr Singh’s maroon turban, but only as it disappeared down Tribhuvan Road in the direction of Lamington Road. It was too late to call after him now, so Mr Kanetkar groaned and returned to his office.

According to the logs on the computer, Trevor had called Beth and told her that he’d had a change in plans. They then went to an afternoon showing of Final Destination 2. In the dark cinema hall, Beth had touched Trevor several times on the arm, and even on the thigh. Later in the film, the two had even kissed each other.

All of this had happened under Mr Singh’s supervision, and now Mr Kanetkar believed that he had been left to clean up the mess.

Continue reading here!

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

Story // Mr Kanetkar's Office at Tribhuvan Rd

The entanglement of an office worker in Mumbai, his new colleague, and a teenager in Philadelphia.

~1700 words // 6 min read (preview) ~6700 words // 31 min read (full)

3rd February 2003, Mumbai

Mr Vishwas Kanetkar took over the seat vacated by his new colleague, Mr Singh. The computer screen in front of the seat displayed the small, blinking dash of a command prompt. Just above the prompt, a line of grey text read “Sometimes you just gotta light up, man. You won’t get it till you get it.”

Mr Singh lifted his backpack off the cracked-tile floor and slung it over his shoulder. “We have to have chai sometime and talk about work, Mr Kanetkar,” he said. “I’m sure there’s a lot you could teach me.”

Mr Kanetkar cracked his knuckles over the keyboard and grinned at his colleague. “You have a lot of catching up to do, Mr Singh. You know, before you, I worked with Surve Madam. We were a better partnership than Tendulkar and Ganguly.”

The young, turbaned Mr Singh made a thumbs-up gesture showing that he was impressed. He disappeared through the rotting doorframe and into the corridor outside, into a passage that lay dark under the barely-powered light bulb.

Back in the office, a new word emerged on the screen, conjured out of Mr Kanetkar’s steady typing.

“Where?” 

Moments later, a response spooled out like cut-up lace.

“Party at Cransway, at Lia’s place. Smells of grass and alcohol. Bathroom smells of vomit. Hanging out in a dark corner, pretending to enjoy the music. Music is not great, but maybe it’ll grow on me. I think one of Lia’s friends is checking me out.”

Mr Kanetkar smacked his lips and grimaced in disappointment. He typed out another message on the screen, which went to a teenage boy’s mind on the other side of the world.

“Trevor, what is this? You were going to study for the Physics test due in 2 days. Why are you at a party?”

It was morning in Mr Kanetkar’s office, but the tubelight was still on from last night’s shift. The ceiling fan’s rotating shadows swung all across the office. Mr Kanetkar pressed the seventh switch in a mess of wires and switches, which turned the tubelight off, and he rummaged through one of the file cabinets in the room.

By the time he returned to his wood-framed, plastic-mesh chair, more thoughts from Trevor unspooled on his yellowed CRT monitor.

“The party seemed like a nice place. A little scary, but I made up my mind to not be scared. I wanted to go, so I went.”

Mr Kanetkar had retrieved a file (‘Say no to drugs’) from the cabinet, but he put it away and typed, “Nonsense. They are doing drugs and beer at that party. Your parents raised you better than this.”

“My parents are not going to find out,” the reply read.

“Get out right now and go straight home,” Mr Kanetkar typed in. He followed up his command with more text, which wasn’t meant for Trevor’s conscious mind. “--no-repeat --importance:500”.

In Philadelphia, on the other side of the world, 15-year-old Trevor put down the almost-empty red cup. He slid through the rhythm-soaked crowd and got out to be hit by the chill of a winter’s night. Hands in his pockets, he walked home with Avril Lavigne playing in his head.

In Mumbai, Mr Kanetkar entered a fresh command into the computer, which brought up  Trevor’s actions for that day. He read message after message, all of which built up a sequence of events for him. That day, Trevor went to school, got home, got his homework done, did the dishes, was called by Lia to come to the party, and then, he said yes to the invitation.

Mr Kanetkar grumbled. “What did you do, Mr Singh?” He pressed the ‘n’ key to go to the next page of the on-screen report.

While at the party, Trevor had been approached by a girl named Beth. She had said that she hoped Trevor didn’t mind her checking him out. Trevor had replied that he didn’t.

Then, they had talked about music, agreeing that neither of them liked the band playing at the party. Trevor preferred music that most people didn’t - music from the 1980s that he got on old hand-me-down cassettes from his older cousin Darren.

Two songs later, Trevor and Beth had agreed to a movie date. They were going to watch a horror movie called Final Destination 2. With the plan confirmed, Beth had floated away to another group, and that was where Mr Kanetkar had taken over his shift.

Presently in Philadelphia, Trevor crashed on the bed with his boots still on. Darkness had taken over from twilight, and Trevor felt an urge to dial Beth’s telephone number.

Mr Kanetkar jabbed his fingers into the keyboard, spelling out his next instruction. “Tell Beth that you have to cancel the movie date.”

Trevor told Beth that he had to cancel the movie date. He sounded vaguely drunk and tired, and he told Beth that he hadn’t been thinking straight earlier.

On the other side of the call, Beth sounded disappointed. She asked him if something was wrong. Trevor replied that he had other plans. They navigated their way to goodbyes and hung up the call.

Mr Kanetkar typed into the computer while referring to the yellow file that he balanced on his lap.

“You’d make a mess of it, wouldn’t you? Remember when you spilt your Pepsi all over the lobby? Back when you went to Jurassic Park 2 with your parents?”

Trevor lay on his back and stared pointedly at the ceiling fan, letting his mind wander.

Mr Kanetkar sighed. “Exam in two days, and this boy wants to go watch movies.” 

He consulted diagnostics on the screen to go over Trevor’s hydration, bladder, and fatigue levels. It was now safe for Trevor to fall asleep, but Mr Kanetkar made sure to fetch a trio of files from Cabinet CA-5, which he would feed into Trevor’s half-conscious mind.

It was only after Trevor was satisfactorily asleep that Mr Kanetkar put all the files aside and pulled out his tiffin box. 

The four containers of the tiffin box shared space on the table with the dusty keyboard, three differently-coloured pens, and a small notepad he’d bought for a handful of rupees down the street. 

One of the tiffin box containers held chapatis, another had spiced eggplant, the third had steamed rice, and the fourth had dal. Mr Kanetkar ate slowly and made sure to wipe the inner surface of each container clean.

After lunch, Mr Kanetkar stretched, made sure that Trevor was asleep, and then went out of the room to greet Mr Parmar, the owner of the sewing machine repair shop down the corridor. 

He had met Mr Parmar a decade ago, and the two shared a camaraderie now. Dozens of firms and employees had come and gone in that decrepit building on Tribhuvan Road, but Mr Kanetkar and Mr Parmar had persisted. They joked that they had a survivors’ bond.

Later, Mr Kanetkar went to the balcony at the end of the first floor corridor. He lit up a cigarette and watched the cloudless skies. He reflected on the sun-baked dust and the missing off-season showers. No rain until the monsoon now.

He waited for the sun to turn a cooler ochre and then retreated into the dark of the corridor. He slid open the deadbolt on his office door and took his seat after a bout of stretching.

In Philadelphia, Trevor lay asleep and dreamt of being flung across an endless corn field. Falling sideways was exhilarating, and every time he alighted on the ground, he had only a couple of moments to think before he was flung again.

Mr Kanetkar sipped on his chai, which was brought to him in a small glass by a pre-teen boy employed by the local chaiwallah. Shortly after six, a curt knock on the door signalled Mr Singh, who entered with the same grin on his face as when he had left the office that morning. His armpits were lined with sweat and his cologne was deadenned by the metal lick of the local train.

They exchanged pleasantries, and Mr Kanetkar made way for Mr Singh to take over.

On the other side of the world, Trevor neared the end of his sleep. He was going to wake up, and once he did, Mr Singh would guide him through the rest of the day.

It was time for Mr Kanetkar to go home.

When Mr Kanetkar got home, he found his wife putting on a sari, ready to go out. Mr Kanetkar did not want to know why,  but she told him anyway - it was Shashank’s birthday. 

He replied that he did not know who Shashank was. She clarified that Shashank is the boy who lives one floor downstairs, and that Shashank had personally asked her to come to his birthday party with ‘uncle’.

Mr Kanetkar clicked his tongue. “His parents probably made him go around the building inviting everyone. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Still, we have to go,” Mrs Kanetkar said.

So Mr Kanetkar went to the boisterous birthday party, where he wished Shashank a happy birthday, gave him a ₹500 note, ruffled his hair, and then went into the back to talk to the other ‘uncles’ of the building.

“Will you have some with us, Mr Kanetkar?” Shashank’s father asked him, leaving out any words that might mean liquor.

“No, no, thank you. Maybe next time.”

“What next time? Next time will be next year!”

4th February 2003

Minutes after taking over his shift, Mr Kanetkar ran to the first floor balcony and searched for Mr Singh in the street below. He caught sight of Mr Singh’s maroon turban, but only as it disappeared down Tribhuvan Road in the direction of Lamington Road. It was too late to call after him now, so Mr Kanetkar groaned and returned to his office.

According to the logs on the computer, Trevor had called Beth and told her that he’d had a change in plans. They then went to an afternoon showing of Final Destination 2. In the dark cinema hall, Beth had touched Trevor several times on the arm, and even on the thigh. Later in the film, the two had even kissed each other.

All of this had happened under Mr Singh’s supervision, and now Mr Kanetkar believed that he had been left to clean up the mess.

Continue reading here!