The very first board game based on the work of Neil Gaiman!
‘A Study in Emerald’ the board game takes as its inspiration the world conjured up by Neil Gaiman in the award winning short story. This is an alternative reality where fiction has become fact. The Old Ones have not only returned but…
Luna’s lover
Alice was in love, she had been for a long time.
It was a love at first sight, she figured, though she’d been too young when she first saw her love, to really remember this now. Once a month her lover would appear to her in the night. Silver and full and completely naked. Those nights, Alice would sneak out of the house to talk, and run, and –eventually- make love.
Never was she happier.
Wilderbeesties
Gracefully the wilderbeesties roam through my backyard.
How they got there I don’t know, and I’ve thought really hard.
t’s weird I guess,
I should be worried,
But look at them they’re beautiful.
All big and horny
With such an excellent shade of deep-purple.
I sit down on my sitty-down-chair
Put my legs into the air
And smile.
Looking at the wilderbeesties
Just a little while.
Graffiti
It’s dark out tonight. I know this because I don’t see very much. Though, in a way, that could also mean my eyes aren’t working quite right anymore. Perhaps that’s the case. But I doubt it. For some reason –stupidity- I’ve chosen to walk through the darkest part of the city on my way back home today. It wasn’t easy to get here. I’ve had to take quite a detour –actually, come to think of it; I could have been home by now. Not that I’d want to be home. Too many questions to answer, too many things to say.
I know there won’t be more than one question. I know there’s only one thing for me to say. But it’s a big thing to say to a simple question. And I’m just not quite up for it. Maybe that’s why I’m here, walking through the dark, secretly hoping someone, or something, will see me. I might get mugged, or the police will see me and bring me home, or I’ll meet the Doctor and he’ll help me make everything all-right. Anything, really, anything would help. Just so I could have something else to say.
It’s just such a stupid conversation to have, you know? With your parents, or anyone for that matter. There’s a whole lot of people that’ll want to know. Many of them will have seen it one facebook, of course. Hell, there is a very big chance my phone would already been vibrating like crazy with texts and calls and apps and thingymadoos. If I hadn’t turned it off, of course.
I’m still not sure what I think about it, of course. I mean… I loved him. I think. But I’m not devastated. I’m not heartbroken.
I’m not crying. Really. Just some tears running over my face. I had that when I read the Fault In Our Stars. Nothing new.
It starts to rain, right as I pass one of the rare streetlights on my journey. I stop under it for a moment, my hoodie up to protect me from the water. At least the tears won’t get noticed now.
I tucked my hands into the pockets of my jeans, in them I felt the keys to my home, a wallet, and the phone I’d turned off as soon as I left his house. I contemplate turning it on. Maybe he called to say how wrong he was. Maybe it was nothing but a sick joke he took too far. He did that, sometimes. I had loved him for it.
I don’t though. Partly because I can’t stand the thought of having to explain to Joseph, or Marlissa, or whomever else thinks it a good idea to call me right now, how it happened and how I feel. But mostly because I’m not even quite sure if I want him to have called.
I look up from my feet; I spend a lot of time staring at them when I walk. It’s the broody thing to do. When I notice someone has written graffiti on the wall beneath the lamp. It reads:
FIRST I LOST MY MIND
THEN I LOST MY INNOCENCE
NOW I’VE LOST YOU
THOUGH I’M STILL TRYING TO GET THE FIRST TWO BACK
I smile.
Sometimes the words on the walls can help you. If you look for them. I keep walking through the darkness, making my way home.
When I get home my mother asks me: “How was your date?”
I smile, still, as I reply:
“We had dinner, he paid. He took me back to his home, tried to take my innocence. But I kept that. Then he dumped me, and I found my mind again. All in all, the best date I’ll ever have with him.”
My mom nods, and doesn’t say anything. But I can see she’s happy.
Epitaph
When I die
Give what’s left of me away
To children
And old men that wait to die.
And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you.
And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give them
What you need to give to me.
I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.
Look for me
In the people I’ve known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live on your eyes
And not on your mind.
You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands,
By letting
Bodies touch bodies,
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.
Love doesn’t die,
People do.
So, when all that’s left of me
Is love,
Give me away.
- Merritt Malloy
“
| — | (via nprfreshair and elysemarshall) |
Marina Abramovic meets Ulay
“Marina Abramovic and Ulay started an intense love story in the 70s, performing art out of the van they lived in. When they felt the relationship had run its course, they decided to walk the Great Wall of China, each from one end, meeting for one last big hug in the middle and never seeing each other again. at her 2010 MoMa retrospective Marina performed ‘The Artist Is Present’ as part of the show, a minute of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her. Ulay arrived without her knowing it and this is what happened.”
The water
When I was a baby I was thrown into the deep end of a pool and told to swim. I, of course, did what I was told –you do in situations like that. I fought to stay afloat as my eyes got used to the chlorine and water in them. That was the first time I looked around. I found myself in a pool so large I couldn’t imagine there was an end to it. Above me strange creatures did to other babies what had just been done to me. Throw them in the water, and told them to swim. Most babies listened, some didn’t. They hit the bottom and stayed there, forever. At the time I thought them fools. Now I respect them. They were the original rebels.
The babies around me all started swimming towards the end of the pool, some of them fighting to stay afloat, like me. Others racing along as if they had been taught how to swim from the beginning. All heading in the same direction. I joined them, I had to.
People die.
People die.
This is a fact.
This is the fact. The one thing I can claim to be true, people die, and though not all of them have yet died, I can say for sure all of them will. There is no afterlife. There is no hope for us to live forever. We can’t. We could live for a very long time, I grant you that. But time is not infinite, and when time ends, so will we. Though, in all honesty, we’ll probably have ended a long time before that.
This fact makes our lives, and therefore the concept of living, pointless. We are born, we die, and in-between we struggle. Sure, we’ve given this struggle a pretty name, called it a miracle, dressed it up nicely, and pretend it’s worth something. But it isn’t. In the end.
A man born in this world is about as likely to make an impact on society in his lifetime, as I am of being struck by a lightning bolt and meteor as I finish this…
