Short, Short Story

          "We should have killed you"  His head turned, peering at me over his shoulder.
          My lips remained locked.  Gaze unchanged.  I trembled under my skin.  He couldn't see it.  Motionless.  Skin tight, constricting around each muscle.
          "You don't know why you're here, do you?"  The words grated through his throat even after he finished speaking.
          Again, nothing.  But I knew.  I wondered if he really knew what I'd done.  Or maybe he just knew what I wanted him to know.  The obvious, the story floating on the surface.
          His back remained to me, his next stab crackling over his shoulders.  "We only asked that you protect her."  The concrete ground under him as he spun towards me, expecting a response.  A confession.
          A nail in the cinder block wall.  My focus.  Eyes never drifting.  Not even as his face nearly touched mine.  His stench crawling up my nose.  Sweat threatening to jump ship and escape down my cheek.
          "She's dead, asshole."  The words lingered with his day old breath.  Yesterday's lunch hiding under this morning's coffee.
          The nail disappeared, replaced by her skin.  Smooth, pale.  Perfect.  She laid beneath me, calm now but breathing.  Once more.  Twice.  My hands trembled.  I squeezed her harder, holding her against my chest, feeling her warmth.   Then, I pulled away.  Her skin faded to blue.  Quicker than I had expected.  A color I'd never seen, but I recognized it all the same.  The color of death.
          Pressure swelled in my head.  Emotions exploded from every pore.  I thought I would feel cold, like her.  Instead, more pain thrived within me than I knew was possible.  My temples creaked under the pressure, ready to pop, yet nothing relieved the pressure.  No thoughts, no memories, nowhere to run.
          Growling echoed through the gutters of my mind, drawing me back.  The nail reappeared.  His breath rushed across my face.  His outburst long since passed.
          My eyes shifted meeting his.  The truth pushed through my lips with only enough strength to part them.  "I killed her."

I'm Back

I took a long hiatus from writing and an even longer one from this blog.  I guess I was trying to spite my face or some such saying.  A loss of several months of edits and revisions on two separate novels will do that to you.

So now that I'm back pecking around on the keyboard, I feel so much better.  The stress is gone.  The thoughts are flowing.  For all of you normal people who don't have any creative outlet like writing or painting, how do you do it?  How can you live with yourself?  With all of that pent-up anxiety.  Thoughts, emotions, stress.  All waiting to come out but instead bottled up inside to spring out on your significant other or your friend/kid/(fill in the blank here) like a goddamn relationship killing ninja.

Life is short and the world is small.  You are here -->.

Enjoy it.  Create.