Unpublished Story - The Detritus

[Over the past four years or so I have written a number of short stories. I submitted these stories to a magazines and literary journals but they were not accepted for publication. I figured I would put them up here.]

Edward had surrounded himself with the detritus of many ages. 

Not garbage but tools he did not know how to use yet. Old quiet cat cable and network switches. Fried display systems and half used packets of proprietary documentation stationary. In the bathroom, perched on the sink side: gallon jugs of laboratory calibration solution concentrate, long expired and off-color. Screw top vials, empty and clean. Cast off glass-headed vacuum tubes, chip boards and diodes. Notebooks and binders filled with sketches and observations. Hard-handed and cryptic ink. Obsolete, already transcribed and worthless. 

Unpublished Story - Wendy

[Over the past four years or so I have written a number of short stories. I submitted these stories to a magazines and literary journals but they were not accepted for publication. I figured I would put them up here.]

Nearing thirty, he found himself living a mundane and pointless life out in the forgotten expanse of the country. It was good, and he wasted his days reading and writing and not doing much at all. When he tried to remember how he had come out there, what decisions he had made that led him to that place, he had a vague recollection of escaping some strife, of trying to make a move for the better but these decisions seemed far off now and made by someone else entirely.

Insomnia 13 May 2019

Frequently I'll wake up in the middle of the night and lay in bed for an hour or two just thinking. I have heard this happens to old people a lot.

Mostly my thoughts are negative. This is probably not a good thing, to be stewing in your hatred in the dark like this for an extended period (or at all).

But it is sort of a bad and a good thing. Being all alone in the dark like that reminds you of the base state of life: inaction, solitude, emptiness. It is almost a religious state.

I hated it when this happened what I had a job: it meant I would wake up in the morning and still be exhausted but would have to go through all the motions of the day, push through the commute and work and small talk on reduced rest.

Now - when this insomnia happens - it is still offputting, but I can work with it.

I'll put down some of my thoughts here, thoughts that I had while in that state.

No claims that they are interesting. I figure it is sort of like looking through a kaleidoscope in an unlit room.