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Conscious Stream From The Chemical PlantThe following is a non-fictional account of a conscious stream that took place during my exploration of a water treatment plant.

I was at the office, looking at the wall-sized whiteboard. Around 200 buildings stared back at me, numbered and color-coded. I've been to pretty much all of them, but one unfamiliar number stuck out to me. #41. What a boring number. MUD Platte West, that's a Metropolitain Utilities District. I look up the address and drive. Just to go see it. And by the way, this isn't even a slow day for me, this is mostly what I do.

I drive West for 35 minutes, which is forever in Omaha time. One road, Q St, hills, mead

Forgiveness EconomicsGenesis

But for the small purple stain on its border, the banknote was non-descript.

It had a value but men value things in different ways and by different means. It had a value, but its value is not it's story.

It landed on the church plate face up, coming to rest softly on the flat silver base amongst the loose change like it was tossed to the cloth of a gambling table, soundless but with a small sense of resignation. A man paying for luck, a man asking his God for a favor.

It came from the wallet of a small sad man, who feared the Good Lord daily. The banknote was the weekly price of his penance, the bill of sale for those half-remembe

Gnome Noir  "I did it for the money and I did it for the girl.
        Well, I didn't get the money – and I didn't get the girl."
::  Walter Neff - Double Indemnity
So I point the flintlock at the guy – and that's no easy thing, big musket like that on a little gnome like me – and I peer down the sight. Not many people know what it's like to stare at a man through a glass. But in those sacred moments, the whole world takes a breath and it's just you and him. I line up the shot, and I think about the girl, and--

What? That is the start. What do you want, Sheriff, my life story?

Alright, well, I'm Gniles Brody the Third – that's

Whale Songs of the PacificListen, the girls swallowed by whales are the ones that grow up lucky.

Listen, no one will warn you about the little boys with the magpie eyes and the fists swinging splinters of glass. No one will warn you that their smiles are sweeter than their words are sweeter than their souls are sweeter than their intentions. No one will warn you of the sheer weight of the world.

Listen, sometimes girls are fragile. Sometimes girls are frothy. Sometimes girls let boys nuzzle "I love you"s into their necks and sometimes girls drink the wine of believing them.

Listen, sometimes the boys really are sweet, and little girls' tart puckered mouths can't ta

2: the first questionThe first thing I noticed was the fez on her lap. I saw it as I scanned the tube for empty seats; a flash of red in the corner of my eye. It perched delicately on her thighs like a small, unassuming puppy that stared at passerby with large eyes, silently daring them to challenge its right to be there. I gaped at it; the train started forward with a jerk and I had to grab onto the metal pole in front of me to keep my balance. The ungainly motion of my body lurching forward caught the eye of the fez's owner; I saw her look up at me quickly, then duck her eyes down to her hands, which were diminutive and pale and folded neatly in her lap, ju

You Can Say That Again*Flash fiction Island style

I

Jesus saves! I cast you out in the name of Jesus! So screams the preacher man slamming his palm against foreheads to drive out demons. Not more than a few feet away from the pulpit, an eighteen year-old member of his congregation claps her hands and shouts hallelujah!

Jesus' name is again invoked a few days later as they lay sweating and groaning in the back seat of a rented car.

-See me and come live with me is two different ting

II

The girl is pretty in an unrefined way, brash and loud and totally unselfconscious.
Baby powder coats her neck, chest and back, vi

6.12There are days when I recall the litany of your kisses over my shoulders and I wonder, numbly disconsolate, how I ever maintained my disbelief in god, when your movements over me were so profoundly biblical, when my name filtering between the fog of our joined breaths was so much like a prayer - when I would think, for those minutes or hours or days we spent locked in the grip of fever, unaware of the movement of those heavenly bodies outside the reach of our bed, that there was hope for me after all. That I could be saved.

I remember so clearly the feeling of loving you and I wonder at what point, when it was, the exact moment, when that lo

The pig carcass filled most of the stainless tub where the delivery men had laid it. Freshly slaughtered, but not butchered, it had taken four of them to lift it there. None of them spoke to Rinnovi, only pausing for him to sign for the animal before they left.

On the way to the door, one of the men pointed at the stickers affixed to virtually every item in the house; black typewritten names and addresses on white shipping labels. The leader of the group nudged him and shook his head 'no', before hurrying him out the door.

Rinnovi poured a scotch, and turned on the kitchen vid display, his own visage peering back at him with a smile. He fro

A Name You Can Trust Indignant? Disgruntled? Need an attorney who won't back down (no matter how many mafia hit men are on your trail)? Need to sue the smirk off that jerk who dared to diagnose you with anger issues? Tired of “justice” getting in the way of the benefits that you deserve? If you want passionate, aggressive, and ruthlessly persistent legal representation, it’s time you called Winier Trust, an attorney who will stop at nothing (nothing!) to insure you win your case.

Winier Trust is more than just an attorney; he's your personal advocate. Trust works beside you not only as a legal representative, but as a close and c

Creature - Ch.1The Pie Shop

Ms. Trinket's Pie Emporium was a tiny five-table diner squashed between a convenience store and highway 93. It had a bright painted sign and screen doors – no air-conditioning – and its bathrooms were pit toilets in a row by the road. Behind it the Rocky Mountains rose from sloping green hills to jagged snowy peaks that brushed the sky. They were immense and other worldly, and as Hannah knew they were also dotted in flowers. Chiming Bells, violet Penstemons, nodding Beargrass and Glacier Lilies would all be clinging to the mammoth rocks, and they were also all either potted or growing wild in front of the Emporium. Han

The ElementsI.
Wine as red as stained glass
is lifted up & tilted back

Empty cups
touch wood like thunder
having given up grace

II.
Blue veins
thread across wrists & palms
spent vessels returning to the heart

Fingertips suffused with pulse
lift to lightning's loveliness

Changing GearsMy morning oats taste particularly bland this morning. I look outside the clouded windows and see the city across every inch of my vision. Buildings of all shapes and sizes are formed from copper, brass, and iron. At all times of the day, the city's Gears are churning.

The Gears are the machines that run the city, the country, possibly even the entire world. Metals are formed together to form them, robotic men designed to replace our government. Their voices boom over the industrial noises of the factories and drown seem to drown out all individual conversations. We're free, I suppose, but they all say that there was once a time when freedom

Never Told He thinks it's odd, sometimes, though he's not certain why.

A sense of dislocation, perhaps. Like cutting yourself on an unsharpened blade. He walks the immense aisles of the cathedral, footsteps echoing hollowly into the blue shadows of high vaulted ceilings and arches, stone figures watching him from above as he, in turn, watches dawn play across their carved and weathered faces. The grandeur of this place is oddly soothing in the solitude it affords him. A holy place, just hushed, here suspended in the silence after Mattins when most have shuffled out. It's a favorite moment of his, a favorite service to attend, and today it gives him p

FFM: The Wandering FireThe wandering fire danced through the streets, flickering, silver quick, vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. Some said it was the souls of the dead passing from one world to the next. In a city as large as this the deaths were high enough to account for the frequent appearances of the otherworldly flames that cavorted down the narrow streets in the night.

Rask waited in the shadow of a window ledge, his narrow frame curved into the twisted branch of a Hedya tree; its flowers already open to the moonlight and releasing the heady scent for which they were famed. This was a wealthy compound, all delicate lattice work and intricate stone ar

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BlackBlack.

I used to love that colour. My favourite. The way it makes your tongue snap if you say it with enough intensity. Black clothes always had me feeling warm, always looking good. Don't even get me started on how I loved all the lacy undergarments made with that colour. There was always something special about them, they always made my pulse rise that extra bit when a woman wore something like that.
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Submitted: July 24, 2012
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The Stoneby ~Balaria

Literature / Prose / Fiction / General Fiction / Short Stories

Mature Content

My(hopefully) entry to the Summer Contest by Daily Literature Deviations. Read more about the contest here: [link]

Word count: 2080 according to OpenOffice.

What's there to say about this piece? Seems to follow the typical dark theme that dominates my short stories. Oh well. Hope it works

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-09-18

The Stone by ~Balaria ( Suggested by `LiliWrites and Featured by `thorns )

~~joy 0 0~~

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~~neutral 0 0~~

~Karinta Sep 22, 2012 Student General Artist

Whoa.... gripping.

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~Balaria Sep 23, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Happy to hear you liked it

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*0hgravity Sep 19, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Really nice piece! Very dark but enjoyably so and you set up a nice bit of tension with "the choice".

Good work!

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~Balaria Sep 19, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

My short ones seem to have a tendency to be dark, some perhaps overly so. Glad to hear it was balanced here.

Thank you for the comment

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*0hgravity Sep 19, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

welcome!

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Mood: Wow!

~AidanValentine01 Sep 18, 2012

I love this!

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~Balaria Sep 19, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you. Glad to hear you loved it

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~Absent-Minds Sep 18, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

completely awesome. and muy unique

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~Balaria Sep 19, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thanks. Makes me happy to hear you liked it

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~Nickystar101 Sep 18, 2012

The opening and closing of this is just absolutly atounding!

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