Author S. K. Nicholas

It’s true what Meeko says, y’know. You don’t need an audience. The only person in the world who needs to know the validity of what you think and feel is the one you find looking back in the mirror. And yet to show others the meaning of your heart and mind is the most liberating Read more

With a heave and a grunt, she bends her knees and jumps into the air. Her lanky arms wrap around the branch above us, and with the nimble agility of a cat, she pulls herself up. As she does so, Hachikō licks and slobbers over her face. This annoys her considerably, as Hachikō still has Read more

Dyed pink hair, like the kind you see on a plastic pony. Reminds me of the lightness of being I associate with childhood visits to the seaside. Y’know, deprived places that were once golden places with all those tacky shops full to the brim with cheap tat to make a simple soul smile a simple, Read more

At four in the morning, I wipe the smegma from beneath my foreskin dreaming of a door situated in the guts of a girl I used to date back in high school. She could be dead now for all I know, but in my mind, she shines as bright as the mid ‘90s. She most Read more

“What are you thinking about?” she asks, raising her arms above her head. She’s about to leap to the next branch, and in doing so, resembles a cat preparing to launch itself into the stratosphere. “Van Gogh and String Theory,” I say. Twitching her nose, she reads my face before resting her gaze upon my Read more

As Meeko and I balance on the branch that points to the ringing bells of the church like the accusing finger of a witch, Hachikō continues to snap at the fly buzzing about his nose. The claws on his little paws dig into the bark of the branch, with his tail brushing the green leaves Read more

“The presence of this door—this marker—has reinforced my belief that what I seek in life is seeking me. It’s given me a gentle reminder, if you will, that there is something else beyond the looking glass. Every so often, life has a habit of placing these signposts along the way to show me that I’m Read more

In black and white dreams, I am a trilobite. Outside the video rental store on the street that leads from the fairground to the erotic shop with black’d out windows, I spy a centipede scuttling over children’s bare feet as they splash in puddles of rainwater. Their feet are innocent, but their hands are not. Read more

“If the door you experienced in this tree is a marker, then what’s it a marker for? What piece of information has it presented to you that you were previously lacking?” “That’s a very good question,” I say. “I know it is,” she responds with a grin, “that’s why I asked it.” Behind her, the Read more

“It has?” “Yes. It’s quite simple, really, isn’t it? These doors that you pass through, they allow you to experience the dizziness of freedom. Correct?” “That’s right,” I say while touching her pale face. I say pale. In this light, it’s more like the colour of the violet clouds that cushion her porcelain features like Read more