Month: May 2018
SCENE ONE Continue reading
By E. Kirshe
Monstress Vol. 1 compiles a compelling story into a physically beautiful book. This volume is a collection of the first six issues of the Monstress series.
The surface plot is engaging fantasy fare- we have a young woman with a mysterious past driving her current path which includes danger and dark magic. She holds a dark power- in this case a literal demon living inside her- and is caught in the middle of an old war. Liu is a fantastic storyteller. She tackles a lot of different themes in this fairly short volume and does so almost seamlessly.
About five years ago, I went to the mental hospital. I was going to hang myself. Just as I was choosing the rope, I experienced an epiphany. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea, at least, not as good as I thought it was.
Springtime was on me. The season has always been difficult. As days get longer and the light more intense, I get more and more depressed. I find myself crying, seemingly just for the hell of it. Feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness grow. I stay in bed longer and sleep during odd times of the day. Fatigue plagues me.
Soon, usually by the beginning of March, the world looks and feels dead to me. I see the flowers and the trees busting into green. I hear the birds and see the rabbits. Beauty is all around and I have no connection to it. I isolate myself. Thoughts of suicide and of absconding from home haunt me. A pall hangs over me. I know I should be doing things but cannot find the energy or ambition to undertake them. All sounds are too loud. Activity around me, any activity, grates on me like sandpaper on raw nerves. Continue reading
Photo by Brian Michael Barbeito
That night the four of us still went to Jordan’s to play Magic. It was Friday after all: What else were we gonna do?
James showed up last, buttoned to the neck in the suit he’d worn that morning, and in his James-way started getting all prissy when he saw that the rest of us had changed. (“You know, in Victorian times someone in mourning would stay in black for-” “Dude, shut the fuck up.”) We said hello to Jordan’s mom—who looked at us like her chest was imploding but couldn’t find anything to say—and climbed the stairs to the attic room we referred to as The Hole. This was a cramped, dust-smelling space no one else ever set foot in, crammed full of boxes the color of rotting olives and squeezed smaller by the ceiling beams we’d just started having to duck. We had a card table wedged near the center of the room, just below the lightbulb that spidered from the rafters.
Continue reading
There’s a blue neon cactus on the side of the road, almost turquoise, so diffuse the plasma seems to turn the night around the sign the color of a bruise and she can’t be sure if the sign reads Vacancy or No. Motel is in the middle of nowhere, east-bound strip of I-80 heading toward Utah, and it’s the middle of the week – she thinks it’s unlikely to be full and signals to the empty highway as she slides right, across weeds and rocks and into the gravel parking lot. The last hour there haven’t even been semis on the highway and it feels later than it is – just past nine with the last of the summer-green twilight just faded and the sky inky black.
Angela’s been driving eleven hours, from Los Angeles to Elko, Nevada, and beyond, no destination in mind, no cash, just credit cards and fury and a hard knot of tears in her throat. Eleven hours to make it to nowhere, driving ever since Jim came home this morning smelling of perfume and guilt but apparently past the point where he needed to make up stories for her.
Apparently he was past a lot of points. Continue reading
Recent Comments