Author S. K. Nicholas

Pottering from room to room, I forget where I am. What day is it? What year? Memories from a time before flicker behind my eyes, and my mouth tastes like dust. I’m caught between two worlds; a ghost in the machine unable to find meaning other than in the outlines of what’s already been. Stumbling Read more

In the corner of the middle room, behind some boxes of my books, I glimpsed a dead spider. It was big. Its legs thick. Somehow, it frightened me more than the sight of a living one, and even though I knew it couldn’t move, I found myself trembling. It appeared sexual. It made me think Read more

Today was the dreariest of days. The sky was an ocean of greyness, and all I could smell was seaweed despite living hundreds of miles from the sea. I remember watching this program on TV once about an old boy who had never visited the coast. He was in his ‘70s and spent his entire Read more

Waking for work at five past four in the morning, I cursed my luck and jumped out of bed before having the chance to close my eyes and fall back asleep. It’s always so tempting because I want nothing more than to sleep. I was doing so well before I was born. Getting dressed and Read more

Wrapped in a dressing gown, I’m standing on the doorstep watching the snow turn to rain then back to snow. The bright colour of the day has gone from the sky, and the droplets metamorphosing into snowflakes are each illuminated by the glow of the streetlight on the opposite side of the road. It’s a Read more

Standing in the doorway of the bedroom, I take photos that will one day be as lost as the most distant stars in the sky. Y’know, the ones whose light has yet to reach us and probably never will. The room, cold and stale, is eerily quiet. In the beginning, our cries of fucking gave Read more

In the morning, I spent some time moving from room to room, soaking up the memories contained within the walls that housed me for nearly two years. I was entirely in the nude. Not for any weird, ritualistic reason. I was about to have a shower, yet before the beads of water soaked my skin, Read more

On some plane not too dissimilar to this one, all of the unresolved moments from my life shimmer like fresh snow beneath moonlight. It’s cold and as silent as the grave, and as I squint my eyes through the smoke of my cigarette, the features of her face come alive once again. It’s 2 am. Read more

I spent most of the day drinking coffee while sifting through artefacts from my thirty-something year journey through life. Each item I inspected, whether valued or not, held varying residual energy levels connected to the places and people that were once the still point of my turning world. Scrutinizing them in my hands, those I Read more

I’ll be moving out in less than a week. Her, a few days after that. It’s amicable. All the usual loose ends, tied up. Bills. Outstanding rent. Et cetera, et cetera. I spent most of the weekend chucking shit away. For the next few days, I’ll ponder the lost routines, but not lost love. There Read more