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Night Chaser02:37am 22nd July - depart from London by commercial jet, business class.
00:53am 22nd July - arrive in New York an acceptable 7 minutes behind schedule.

Slaying an archangel is hard work. It takes a great deal of study, picking your mark, separating fact from legend, learning your target's tells and vulnerabilities. Even if you succeed, and when I tore Gabriel's crystal heart from his open chest I became one of the precious few who have, there is still the matter of retribution. Angels never forget the death of one of their own, and a legion of these creatures now wait to descend and deliver their vengeance. My only sanctuary is the night.

Down By The SchoolyardThere is a rather cliched phrase that states that some people live double lives. I have always found that to be an intensely misleading statement and I guess you can call it a bit of a pet peeve of mine. No one leads "double lives", they just lead fucking lives. That those lives are more complex that the singular one-track existence of lesser creatures shouldn't be a matter of duplicity, but of common sense. No one is exactly who they seem to be.

Julio is one of those who they would later say lived a double life, but it is no more true for him than anyone else. The difference in this case is that there are two of him, rather than one.

Perha

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

Deja vu. Again.I had moved here two weeks' ago, but had never visited this section of town so late at night. I had been invited to the pub by my neighbour, to make me feel welcome. An hour ago, she had phoned to say she had been asked to work overtime, and wouldn't be able to make it. Seeing as I was there, I drank a couple of cocktails. I was now walking back home.

Drunken people yelled out across the street. A couple of cars drove by, their horns blaring as the inebriated stumbled into the road. A bright yellow car stopped, flashing its headlights. A woman in a red dress banged on the window. The passenger door was opened, and a shouting match started be

MeanderingHardly a mountain, though on lowering days its head sits wreathed
By the mists of a passing front, aged and befogged as bygone elders
Doddering about – before there were names for the malaise
That hazed their thinking
And from this modest crown there slouched and sloped
A long shoulder, meandering down to meadows below
Pausing now and again to coddle a pleasant hollow
Casting a sloping pitch – enough to rush a torrent
After a sudden shower
Seldom pooling
Its glint and glimmer burble among the stones
To join a rill and plash and swirl and putter about a root
It's there I'm apt to wander

Not much of a path, hard passed a

The IdolI once saw a man on the television who was so afraid of fruits that when presented with a bowl of them, he fled the stage, knocking over the host and several other guests. Though I openly pitied the man for his obvious malady of the mind, inside, the small bit of sadism buried within all humans laughed at his bizarre affliction. How can one not find cruel amusement in the cowering of a grown man who has been confronted by nothing more than a bowl of peaches? But now I understand fear like no other. I now no longer find amusement in the terror of others, no matter how illogical.

Now, let me tell you the story of why the sound of wind whis

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

On my way homeBy Romy Lara

I exit the studio, sighing at the sight of the sun quietly hiding behind the trees and buildings. Turn to the right and keep walking. Cars are passing by, people in black suits get out from the nearest buildings; none of them care about their surroundings. I lift up my head and notice in big steel-letters the name of the company that owns that peculiar orange building in the corner of the street. It's the first time I see it. The sky is painted blue with some dabs of gray, just as if somehow the color of the concrete street had been absorbed by the clouds.

Behind me there's a couple discussing something about a house. She doesn

Demons are Smarter Than YouThe mist obediently hovers within the binding circle, coming once more and tamely to my call. How raucous it was when first I summoned it! How loudly it roared its name to the ceiling—how silent were the heavens that night. But now it is silent when it arrives, as silent as the heavens when I call, for I have bade it so. With it comes the sulfurous reek of its home and its own pets—a pair of tiny bat-winged imps no larger than my hand—and a deepening of the shadows in my basement conjury.

The fool has cast his spells of summoning again, and never were more clichéd words uttered than in this room. He thinks I am silent because he ordered

The Libra HusbandI.
they can get you
in East Hampton for wearing red shoes
on a Thursday
I don't know whether you knew
that--I mean--do you know
that?
II.
it's very hot in New York City
I like the terrible noise
you hear at night and all these terrible
drilling sounds--I never go to sleep
unless the whole pavement is jumping
outside and it's a hundred degrees
III.
when I go to New York City I see myself
--Where have you been?
--Where have you been?
--Where have you been?
--Where have you been?
this is the revolutionary costume:
I never wear this
in East Hampton.
IV.
I'm not gonna spend another winter
in East Hampton--
in the first place I can't
I just can't
I can't spend another winter
out here in the country
I can't do it
I'm telling you--I can't
I can't get my figure back
unless I hit New York City
V.
any little rat's nest
in New York City
any little mouse hole
any little rat hole
even on Tenth Avenue
I would like better
it's all a question
of who you want to

sunrise, yulethis was the year of traditions begun. the world still dark, the morning still early, i climbed into my uncle's car. we drove out to the ocean, where the rippling sea fuses with the sky. white-headed eagles were perched still in trees. they cocked back their heads, opened their hooked mouths and screamed.

across an empty parking lot where once a cat had followed us. over driftwood pale with frost and sand hardened by the cold, we walked. our breath came out of us in thin plumes. it rose above us and hung there like smoke signals to the gods.

there were gulls on the water, gulls sifting through sand, gulls with their grey backs and fa

comfort, crawfish boils, and port vincentand you and me, we got the whole of
Saturday, you and me, we got car grease
streaked straight up to our grins and

let's high five when you triumph over
mom's sneaky nose, her teasing and coy and
i wanna be that kind of wife to a man

like you. i wanna be the kind of woman worth
changing with, sacrificing for, going crazy
over as the years collect in bank rolls of nickels.

i've been called a menagerie of names by
the older, the wiser, the wrinkled; they
call me pretty girl, sweetheart, dollface,

sugarplum as i stir splenda into their
brewed coffees, but they ain't got nothin'

on your horse master hands, the ones that could

don't get tired of elephants yetI've had my crippling moments.
They'd either start in my stomach
with an ache like broken glass
or stab me right in the catharsis,
somewhere near my heart or breath
or maybe my left foot.

I wouldn't know how it feels
to hurt to walk, but I imagine
with a destination like farther,
it's no pilgrimage.
So take the burden off your back.
Life is not a sandstorm
and your lungs are only a mirage
if you expect to see your breath
every time you breathe.
So take a breath

back, just one step

and listen with your smoke signals.
Help is on the way.
I just can't promise
it knows much about this lifetime.
It's the same way I could never promise
elephan

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

It starts with a flash-bang and a Majulahi.
June's hauled her here again and
she's tapping at my classroom window,
A gazillion tiny fingers rapping in succession
(When she said "invitation" I didn't realise she meant
soaking half the country, the spike in umbrella prices has
nothing to do with me)
What's worse than an impatient child
is one with the whole atmosphere as her battering ram
when she tries to say something the urgency brims over
and one million exclamation marks
is beginning to sound like static frazzling
out on the pavements

ii.
She is without choice: when Cloud mother tips her out
she must go, and go she will
caught in an obtuse cycle, fought over

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SurrenderNew love, equals new pain
Another someone for my corroded soul to crave
As if I needed more confusion
As if I needed one more thing to keep me awake

The barriers used to be strong
well mortared by cynicism
I wasn't happy but I was calm,
unspooled. I was safe.

Now you've got me crafting conversations in my head
(I'm always clever and you always laugh)
you've got me
watching the phone, hoping you'll call
(wondering where you are
when you're not home)
checking my messages
plundering my convictions on thoughts of you

It's not in me to surrender
but I'm wise enough to know
I've lost this fight

Here, I've named this sleeping pi

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You Can Say That Again

by *leyghan, Jun 20, 2011, 6:08:06 PM
Literature / Prose / Fiction / Humor / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

*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, visible in her low cut top.

Her rival, five years her senior, cuts her eye in contempt. 'Country booboo,' she thinks. 'She look like fish ready to fry.  Plus she skin ashy and she look like she doan know how to use hot-comb.'

Despite her belief in her superiority, her man doesn't come back.

-Puss and dog no have de same luck

III

The little boy is a-tremble with anticipation and fear.  Mustn't get caught.  He was in for a good lickin if he was.  Ah but the alluring scent of the mangoes on the vendor's tray―promising tongue-tying sweetness, is more than he can bear.  He can already feel the weight of the mango; his teeth ripping into the gold-green skin and into the pulpy flesh―feel the juice spurt into his mouth.

'Watch de tray,' his uncle had said before going down the road to the local shop to get himself a beer.  'But don't you eat me mangoes, dey is for sale.'

'Jus one,' the little boy promises himself glancing anxiously down the road.  Then two mangoes later, 'jus one more.'

-You kyaan put mongoose to watch chicken

You Can Say That Againby *leyghan

Literature / Prose / Fiction / Humor / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

We have a lot of amusing colloquial sayings on my Island. Decided to have a little fun with a few. Hope you like.

Edit: Gotta I'm surprised to see this get a DD but yay! It's always nice to be recognized.

Thanks so much to *xlntwtch for the suggestion and to ^thorns for the feature. And thanks to everyone who faved and commented.

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-10-03

You Can Say That Again by *leyghan The suggester writes, "Three island sayings are explained here, in a wonderful flash vignette written by a talented islander. This is flash fiction at its finest, both informative and informal." ( Suggested by *xlntwtch and Featured by `thorns )