Author S. K. Nicholas

As the sun sinks like a shiny coin in a wishing well, she switches on her headlights then lights a cigarette. Gives her a bellyache, and makes her want more wine, if for no other reason than for a little Dutch courage. As the road takes her to that place, she tries figuring out how long it’s been but can’t quite seem to do the math. Which is stupid, just has to be, and yet the shape of her life is not what it once was. She remembers some moments, and yet others are gone, almost as if they were never there to begin with. That day she last saw him, she buried it the day after. Did her best to convince herself it held no meaning, but as she crawls to a standstill in traffic, she realises just how much of a poor job she made of it. Yeah, she went long stretches of time without thinking of him, at times almost seemed to forget about him completely, and yet how obvious it now was to see how much she’d veered off the beaten track. Where once there had been love, there were now only vague reminders of what she thought she remembered love to be. She could still see beauty, she knew that much, but love? Flicking ash into the road, she stares out the window at those walking past on the sidewalk. Lovers. Families. Friends on their way to bars and clubs. And just where was she on her way to? To visit the ghost of a man she had once called her familiar? And for what purpose? To rediscover some lost version of herself? To see if that version wasn’t lost at all but right there with her where it had always been? As the traffic picks up, she drops her cigarette and puts her foot down. She doesn’t want to go. Wants to turn back and find a store where she can buy more wine and disappear for the night, and yet she keeps edging closer, and the closer she gets, the stranger the sensations that stir within.

A Journal for Damned Lovers UK

A Journal for Damned Lovers US

Anthology UK / Anthology US