Ophelia Vang

  Gen remembered the foamy, pinkish slop that he’d slid in that day: Goh’s brains and apparently his eye. He didn’t know how important it would be then.  As hard as Gen concentrated here, he couldn’t seem to find the sack of flesh that popped like a blister under his heel the day prior. Goh couldn’t feel it himself, the representation on his ghostly figure missing as well unlike the rest of his pieces.  Gen had searched for a long time, already displeased with the several trips he’d made back and forth in his search.  “Why don’t we go back?” Goh asked cautiously, “instead of finding my head.”  He had already asked so much of the man who made it clear that he had no obligation to him and was just doing this to rid himself of a haunting. “That’s where I was cut up, after all.”   He shrugged.  “Yeah, we can try that.”  Gen’s voice had fallen back to his low grumble. The landlady’s jest had sunk his morale. He knew he wouldn’t find the piece that...

The next evening, Gen got home earlier, the sun had barely fallen from the sky by the time he had reached his stop at the train station. The crowd wasn’t quite so thick, but a considerable amount of people still passed through.  The smells were dreadful, stinging Gen’s nose with coal, rot, and that same gutter oil. He decided to partake in it this evening, stopping for some greasy fried egg burgers and even having made it early enough to pick up some fruit.  He stood at a fruit stand, debating what he was in the mood for with his small bag of food looped around the fingers of his large worker’s hand. He’d heard nothing else of his incident the night before, but one constant remained: he was tired.  As he finally reached for a pear, he noticed shifting, practically jumping back as the shadows moved to form hands, rolling over one another in waves and grabbing for each of the fruits. They turned darker and darker, pulling the fruits into the deepening shadows one by one....

“Once, when I was a kid, I was playing with an old toad on a little concrete street and my granny called me in for lunch so I covered him with some bricks. I made him a little brick house so he wouldn’t run away.”  The last time he’d told this story was when his partner and himself were only just courting, and despite having heard it and its subsequent references endlessly, Toshi cradled his glass comfortably as he leaned in to hear it. The attention from his lover only encouraged Endo to be more grandiose with both his description and gesture. After all, he was nothing if not fueled by attention, especially from people who were way out of his interpreted league.  “Little did I know that what I actually made,” A pause, brief enough to sound natural, planned enough to sound rehearsed, “was an oven. That’s literally what ovens are.”  Endo’s small audience had their reactions: Nori muttered an “oh, no…” while Toshi offered his unintentionally stern look of concern.  Non...

Photo by  Karolina Grabowska  from  Pexels   Home. It was Endo’s bar, whose inviting wooden walls he spent most of his time. It was the house he’d visit only to shower and sometimes sleep. It was his childhood countryside dwelling, the ghost of his grandmother calling him for dinner still sweeping by, caught in eternity in the wind over the fields. He never knew where his home had ended up. He even less expected it to feel so far away.  His trip to Italy had been riddled with strife and revelation alike. He’d found his beloved children, and now they were all working hard to bring them home: him, his fresh boyfriend, friends, their grandmother, and even the twins themselves put in the effort to practice his language at only seven years old.  Their grandmother had become their caretaker, just as his own had to him, and she was the one who had to break the news of his wife’s passing. It was only when he was back home that he had found a space to take it all in...

     The bathroom was difficult to enter. Filth caked every inch of the walls and floors in a crust of brown punctuated by, of course, black mold. Each of the three holes in the floor meant as toilets were shapeless from the grime. They were separated by slabs of pressed wood attached to the wall, no doors.      This wood was so rotten and unkempt that it sagged and folded like wet cardboard instead.  As she stepped inside, her rubber slippers suctioned to the ground, having to be pulled free from the muck with each step. It would have been better by this point to have pulled into an alley, but, defeated, she had already made it this far.       She tugged the packet of tissues from her coat pocket before pulling down her pants and squatting over her greatest approximation of where the toilet had once been. Even within this stench-ridden prison, she felt immediate relief.       Her urine sat in a pool on top of th...

       Diruktober is a DIR EN GREY themed inktober challenge by  re_be_ka_f . I chose to use them as writing prompts to join in on the fun.  Mode of Adam Mode of Eve accepting graciously that which was passed down: a gift of curses and contentment. blaming Eve.

       Diruktober is a DIR EN GREY themed inktober challenge by  re_be_ka_f . I chose to use them as writing prompts to join in on the fun.  Vinushka: Official Video by DIR EN GREY Concrete rubble was exceptionally aesthetically Brutalist. Most people found it uncomfortable or even disheartening. The rubble was a reminder that constantly loomed over us of the work that had to be done to rebuild,  and yet it didn't stop anyone from trying.  Over and over the human condition remains the same, and I wonder if people will imagine what it was like to be me when these events are written in our history.  Eternally, life is a cycle.  Just as prosperity, time, and the ability to be unbothered by death over a long period of exposure to its horrors were all cyclical.  It's the same reason we can sit finding anything we could hope to laugh about among gunfire and bombs with our morning tea. We had no choice. We especially had no choice to find ...

       Diruktober is a DIR EN GREY themed inktober challenge by  re_be_ka_f . I chose to use them as writing prompts to join in on the fun.  Twilight on your hospital table.  Your mind has been fading for a long time.  It’s been hard for your loving family as you forget their faces one by one.  It was even harder when you started furiously masturbating as they gathered to say their goodbyes.  Benevolent Nurse brought her hand to her mouth to cover her gasp. She then politely offered to hold open the door, inviting your family to leave.  Most of them shuffled out in shame except your son, who quietly waited for the door to close.  Benevolent Nurse watched as your son, carefully and with only respect of your memory in mind, pulled the hospital pillow from behind your head.  He placed it over your face, a glance toward the nurse of desperation begged for an agreement of silence. She didn’t protest, struck by the fear of witne...

       Diruktober is a DIR EN GREY themed inktober challenge by  re_be_ka_f . I chose to use them as writing prompts to join in on the fun.  Photo by Janik on Unsplash Dr. Greenwood and his small team of researchers had been a few weeks deep into their month-long expedition in the rainforests of the Congo. The challenges had been excruciating, from finding transportation and resources, all very limited in such a remote area, to the physical challenges of temperature and insects.  The Doctor had been set on researching rare plants in the little-documented part of the forest. He hoped to find anything: flowers that bloomed once a millennia to spew fetid stench or vines that produced bioluminescence that could light his path to the awards that would praise his discoveries.  What he never expected was that the key to his discovery would be carnivorous.  That was discovered when a desperate shriek led them to poor young Erica whose arm was being ...

      Diruktober is a DIR EN GREY themed inktober challenge by  re_be_ka_f . I chose to use them as writing prompts to join in on the fun.  100% Dirt Promotional Image  Even though it wasn’t a particularly mainstream gig, I found myself giddy at how official and clean everything looked. I should have been prepared for the aesthetic of simply everything in the world of fashion.  The director of it all came in while the few other models were finishing up with makeup and styling. He greeted the small crew preparing the set and seemed so present. The collective room must have been pretending not to notice, but as the man approached, hidden by his façade of fashion, the breath in my lungs went frigid and impossible to move.  He apologetically shifted the coffee he held to one hand in order to extend the other out to greet me. He was one of those confusing people whose energy would put one with a stronger constitution at ease. Mine was not so strong, an...

     Diruktober is a DIR EN GREY themed inktober challenge by  re_be_ka_f . I chose to use them as writing prompts to join in on the fun.  DIR EN GREY Cage music video Nothing feels so much as home as being bound by her leather straps in this tiny cage. My body tightens into itself as she spits on me in disgust.  This is what true love feels like. The tender care of my childhood. Having no control feels normal, even when she laughs as I shamefully dribble piss down my legs.  “Mother, please use me as your toilet again,” I cry. 

    Diruktober is a DIR EN GREY themed inktober challenge by  re_be_ka_f . I chose to use them as writing prompts to join in on the fun.  Two Monstrous Nuclear Stockpiles cassette art A distress signal from an unknown ship had them gear up. It was their job, after all, as a space vigilante duo.   Distress signals always had both Yo-Yo and Kaz defensive. Sometimes it just meant they had to spare some water or food. Other times it meant they were too late. Either way, they usually gained something or other out of it.  With Yo-Yo in his violent yellow straps to match Kaz's electric pink ones, they loaded their belts and backs with oxygen, sustenance, and the highest quality smoke and mirrors they could find in their searches.  Of course, Yo-Yo's trusty laser piztol was included, a hefty metal weapon shined to perfection, engraved with silver thorned vines throughout. It stayed on his hip.  Once the calm but clumsy Kaz docked their makeshift ship...