Betrothed side-story

He had given up hope on having a good family life.

He was destined to be alone, his very presence a cause of death.

Grief lingered on his skin.

The laughter had faded from his eyes.

Sometimes he woke in the morning and didn’t want to get out of bed. Terrified of living the rest of his own life.

His parents were constant in their insistence that he marry and have children. They wanted a legitimate heir.

But all of his wives kept dying.

They would barely enter his house, and then they would be dead.

Never by his hand, as the rumors suggested, but it kept happening and he remained without a wife, much less a lifemate.

He imagined what it would be like in the future, all alone, his parents long gone.

And it was a scary prospect. Because all the dead wives had resulted in his friends distancing themselves from him.

He knew it wasn’t their fault. They had to follow the orders of their parents. And their parents didn’t want to risk their precious family lines being disrupted by a school friend that seemed to have been cursed by the heavens.

And he was beginning to believe that he was cursed.

Otherwise, how could he have so many dead wives?

dead wives vs dead brides: I figure a wife is someone that’s been married and has moved into the life. A bride is the transition phase between a fiancée and a wife.

He’d been through four weddings and four funerals. Had witnessed joy turn to grief four times and it had wrecked something in him.

Whenever he’d thought of his adult life, he’d imagined a happy home. A nest for children to grow, and then a warm companionship that would last him until he … Read the rest “SHORT FIC: Betrothed side-story”

TITLE: A Snapshot In Time<br>
AUTHOR: Harper Kingsley<br>
GENRE: aftermath of a fall, introspection

When I first woke up, everything was in shades of black and white. Color was slow to seep back into the world, and it was like her hair was blond and her dress was pink. Then the hair and dresses of the other women popped into focus, while the sky above them still looked like an expanse of pure white. Not a single speck of blue in sight.

The bug resting against my face had looked massive as it made its approach. Landing ever so gently on the tip of my nose, where it for some reason decided to stay. I was just relieved it wasn’t running around all over on my face.

That’s the most hateful part of bugs. The suddenness of their appearance. The way they could be just there, purely noticeable. Then they can do whatever. Jump up. Fly. Skitter under the furniture. Disappear.

But I couldn’t move.

I lay there on the ground face up, body splayed out haphazardly. The shock didn’t give me the option to feel pain.

I was hoping someone was calling an ambulance. I definitely didn’t want them to flop me around and paralyze me or something.

But it was eerie to look up and see them standing over me as the green slipped back onto the grass. To notice the complete soullessness of their gazes as they looked down at me. As they spoke to each other over top of me and I didn’t see a single one showing concern.

I stared at them, these semi-familiar strangers. There was the sense that I knew them, but I could not identify the relationship at the moment.

A pain was building in my body, centered on … Read the rest “SHORT FIC: A Snapshot In Time”

TITLE: In a Paper World Full of Paper People<br>
AUTHOR: Harper Kingsley<br>
GENRE: science fiction, introspection

It was called "paper skin," though its real scientific name was something long and largely unpronounceable. Everyone knew what paper skin was though. The fear of it was an ever growing concern. A rising stress level that left parents weeping in the night as they feared they or their children would be infected.

It was highly communicable. Lingering on hard surfaces for four hours and in fabric for close to ten. And once it got inside the human body, its effects were swift and devastating.

Blood that refused to clot and skin layers that became thin and brittle to the point that simply touching anything with an edge could cause the skin to split open.

A person with paper skin could die from a paper cut. A simple touch could cause the inside to come outside as the person bled and bled.

It was horrifying to watch. But hard to look away. Because there was no cure, no vaccine, no treatment other than to never let the infected ever come to harm.

The victims of paper skin lived in bubbles or muffled themselves with layers of cloth. They kept bandages on them at all times and carried injectors full of drugs that were supposed to help their blood coagulate. But in the end, it was a paper towel to hold back a river. Even if it took years, no one survived paper skin.

They were separated. Segregated. Surrounded by people wearing hazardous material suits, because their blood always seemed to want out of their bodies, and their blood carried the infection that was taking their lives.

People feared having paper skin. Dreaded it and fought the inevitably of it, this human plague that was … Read the rest “SHORT FICTION: In a Paper World Full of Paper People”