TJTimmins

When we met you lit a spark and whispered kerosene in my ear.

Darkness slowly recedes, and a hallway materializes before him, though dimly lit itself. Where he was prior – who he was prior – is a vague memory of an uncertainty. An entity, surely, one comprised of conflictions and regrets and joys and, one who was suddenly very hollow. He raises a hand and examined it for a moment, turning the appendage and glancing at the palm. The skin was paper smooth, resilient to lines or wrinkles of any sort even as he began to curl the fingers in upon themselves. A laugh escaped him as he realized the implications therein. No lifeline. No loveline. He was an empty vessel waiting to be filled. Even the

When she was young she'd gone to church each Sunday. She was a good girl. The sermons were boring and the congregation reeked unapologetically of squandered potential and cats. The wafers were stale but they were food – what's more, they were her Saviour. After Communion, she made a game of turning them over in her mouth for as long as she could. She would slide them below her tongue for Amens and watching the clock to see how long it took for the perfect circle to become an indecipherable clot. This transient transubstantiation was a certainty each week, the slow degradation of something so Holy into nothingness. A small joy for which

Of the seven babysitters Bobbie McPherson had had in the year and a half of his being in the Big City, Mr. Peters – Ed – was his favourite. He didn't know if it was because Ed wasn't a teenaged girl like five of the others, or because he didn't smell like Old Mr. Nijinsky. Bobbie thought that maybe it was because Ed would take him on adventures. They'd never ventured further than around the corner for ice cream, but they had ventured around the corner for ice cream! It was enough to get in a child's good graces. Bobbie's parents were gone on a four day trip to New Orleans to investigate possible jobs. The family was looking at mo

This isn't like it was before. A world of dreams and little else, sliding frantically from one set of arms to the next. Praying that the embrace would somehow provide enough warmth to heat the frozen remnant of a soul long since dormant. Thinking, fool, that there was not enough worth salvaging. Risking all for the faintest of benefits to others. Propping up a soul you deem worth saving, and damning your own. Its memory is only a fading remnant of a warm summer night in these years of winter, after all. A drowning pariah on an island sinking with each passing day. Looking constantly back, feeling warmth only in the dying ember of a long aban