love

Donna

By / November 15, 2017 / Fantasy, Surreal
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I had a lot on my plate this week and wasn’t able to write a new piece, so I’ve reposted one of my Patreon shorts from last year. It should be new for most of you. I’ll have an original story for you guys next week 🙂

Her human name was Donna. She had a husband named Bill, a son named Rob. Donna lived in the desert in a house she and Bill had built when they were young.

Her humanity was an integral part of who she was. But it was not the only part, nor even the largest part.

In a realm beyond the stars, beyond even empty space, she had been a queen, was still a queen, for in that place there was no time, so that when she eventually returned it would be as if she’d never left. She had ruled, and continued to rule, with wisdom and strength. But something was missing. Something important. Something necessary.

So she’d descended, subjected herself to the internal workings of the cosmos, taken on flesh and blood. She experienced the fullness of humanity, the highs and the lows, the joys and the sorrows. She plumbed the depths of human emotion, divined its arcane secrets. She learned what it was like to live. To breathe. To feel. Sometimes there was pain, but she found that it was always followed by relief. And sometimes there was sadness, but she found that it was always followed by joy.

Love.

That had been the most important lesson. She’d lived many happy years with her husband, her family and her friends, and she’d loved every one of them. Love sustained her. Guided her. Fulfilled her. It quickly became the source and summit of her human existence. It was what human poets wrote about, what human musicians sang about, what human philosophers dreamed about. It was the one thing that set the species apart from all the other creatures in the universe.

The linearity of time ensured that just as her life had begun, so too would it end. She suspected she had a number of good years left, but when it was time for her Earthly pilgrimage to conclude, she would let the sting of death take her, would let that last pang of loss teach her its final lesson. Then she would ascend once more to her incorporeal throne in the stars, and would carry the memory of her humanity with her.

It was part of her now, and would be evermore.

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©2017 Jeff Coleman. All rights reserved. For reproduction rights, please contact the author (who happens to be a kind and eminently reasonable man.) Unless otherwise stated, images are copyrighted by various artists and licensed by Shutterstock.

Anya Returns

By / August 1, 2017 / Fantasy, Flash Fiction, Surreal
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She stares at me with eyes of purple fire, a blazing phantom in the dark. My breath catches in my throat, and when I finally speak, it comes out a hoarse whisper.

“What happened, Anya?”

The woman I had known so many years ago grins.

“My eyes were opened.”

I wait for her to say more, but that’s all she offers in reply.

We grew up together, Anya and I. We were best friends, inseparable from the start. Our relationship turned intimate, and by the time we neared our college graduation we were already contemplating marriage.

That was when she disappeared.

Now, she rolls onto her side, pressing her body against mine, and I instantly grow hard with years of pent up longing. I have never felt an urge so strong. It overloads my synapses, drives me to the brink of madness.

This is a dream, I think. Any minute I’ll wake up. This close, I can see myself reflected in her spectral eyes.

Her family and I spent years looking for her. The police gave up in a matter of weeks for lack of evidence, but we kept searching, scouring her apartment, interviewing her friends, calling the numbers in the phone she left beside her bed.

Now, here she is again, lying in my bed as if the intervening years were nothing.

“You loved me once,” she whispers. Her breath tickles my ear. I detect the familiar smell of lavender and lilac. Her favorite scent, at odds with the feral untamed fire in her eyes.

Those flaming pupils bore into my own, extract my deepest secrets.

“I don’t understand,” I say, because there’s nothing else to say.

“Then let me help you understand.”

Her mouth opens, joins with my own. Another fire kindles, erupting to life inside my body. She leaps on top of me, hot to the touch, and I have no choice but to offer up my heart as an immolation.

“Love me now,” she says, and as our bodies become one, as the embers of an old love ignite once more, I glimpse the possessing spirit within and welcome it into myself.

Enter your email address and click "Submit" to subscribe and receive The Sign.

©2017 Jeff Coleman. All rights reserved. For reproduction rights, please contact the author (who happens to be a kind and eminently reasonable man.) Unless otherwise stated, images are copyrighted by various artists and licensed by Shutterstock.