dreamszilla

Scruffy music teacher Charles Meistersinger witnesses a murder, and tries to solve the case before his own unpleasant secrets are dredged up. Image generated with OpenAI An intimate group, just nine people, had gathered in the hall. They filled two ragged rows of mismatched chairs arranged in a semicircle before a low stage. Despite lively social media promotion and posters in the local bookshop, the Society had attracted only a small, though ardent, audience of poetry devotees. Someone had turned down the all lights, except for a tall lamp positioned stage left which cast a dramatic yellow pool around the speaker. Thomas Pantile stood on the stage in the improvised spotlight and lifted his gaze towards his darkened audience. Opening a small, well-worn notebook, he flipped through its leaves with an intent gaze, finally alighting on the page he was looking for. Raising his voice a notch more, into that zone of artful declaration suitable for poetry, he began: ‘And so at...

A troubled fugitive finds solace in the home of a man with mysterious talents akin to magic. Image generated with OpenAI Sebbi fell in step with the red-haired man who lived outside the walls, and caught him round the shoulders, pinning his arms to his sides. Though Sebbi wore a crucifix and believed in compassion, he flashed his knife before pressing its cold iron blade against the red-haired man's pale throat. He was desperate enough to make this threat, and maybe desperate enough to follow it through. In a moment of unplanned lucidity, Sebbi had escaped his Norse captors, evading the bryti overseers by bolting into the forest while they were busy with the late autumn slaughter, the screaming pigs. The sun was going down on his third day without proper food and the cold left Sebbi's limbs burning; the temperature was dropping, and the wind had already chapped his skin, split his lips. He did not think he would survive another night in the open. "To live y...

Arthur, a psychiatrist who struggles to see inside his own soul, laments the state of his marriage. Image generated with OpenAI As a child, Arthur was mesmerized by the golden plaques affixed to building facades. Endlessly, he would ask his nanny to decipher the mysterious titles etched under the plexiglass: "Psychologist, psychiatrist, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst." The little boy would bounce with joy upon hearing those strange sounds. His nanny, a young woman of Moroccan origin, had explained in her own words the nature of their work: "They're specialists who heal your mood. They talk and talk, tell lots of stories, and that's how sad people forget all their problems and end up laughing!" Naturally, young Arthur became convinced that these beautiful golden plaques were prizes won at some World Championship of Jokes. He vowed that when he grew up, he would become a super joke champion to earn the same awards. This was how Dr. Arthur Launay...