Author S. K. Nicholas

x and i: a novel

a journal for damned lovers vol 1-3

Prose

  • X Beats the Devil

    Herbie ran as fast as his little legs would allow. He ran so fast that the bumbling bumblebees couldn’t keep up with him, nor the scuttling spiders or the fledgling field mice who had been drawn to her song and now to his. With that incy-wincy nose of his, he sniffed out the scent of… Read more

  • Age of Innocence

    I dreamt of an age of innocence, of a time before the decay in my heart had yet to flower, yet when I awoke the dream was gone, and the taste of innocence was no more. What was left was an aching sense of being ill at ease in a body that’s as unfamiliar to… Read more

  • Funny Cigarettes

    As she puckers and pouts down some subway far beneath the stabbing grounds of North London, I stick my hand down my trousers and whip it out. There are ghosts and werewolves lurking in every shadow, not to mention the blurred faces of suicidal strangers with nothing to lose, but my bladder screams to be… Read more

  • Pinch It

    Those empty vessels that slide away your tights, and those itchy, nicotine-stained fingers that pinch and squeeze your fleshy bits until you come three times like a lady. In a bathroom that’s never been cleaned, there are lines of coke that zigzag across a shattered mirror the same way God’s taken the time to etch… Read more

  • Neither I Nor X

    There are bones in the garden. They rattle in my sleep and play tunes upon my teeth, but once I wake, they’re as dead as the pets they once lived within. The ground’s frosty. When I place my feet on it, my balls go rock hard and tiny. As tiny as Elton John’s Tiny Dancer,… Read more

  • Not X and I

    Notre-Dame burns and there are piglets on my mind, so many juicy, well-fed piglets. They burn too. Like a scrunched-up newspaper stuffed through someone’s letterbox and set alight at three in the morning down some quiet cul-de-sac off the beaten track. It’s one of those mornings where you drift for hours on end not quite… Read more

  • Electric Blue

    The birds cut through the sky like a one-armed scissor slicing through velvet. They parted the electric blue curtain and X followed, laughing, singing and dancing as if she had never before done any of the three. Kicking off her shoes, she ran upon the grass leaving footsteps of flowers, for wherever she went, she… Read more

  • Flaming Sun

    Fetching the clothes scattered about the ground, I found myself shifting between two worlds; between what had been and what had yet to become, and all the time her song was a tidal wave, drowning me in love. Getting dressed as quick as I could, the summer sun beat upon my burnt skin. The pain… Read more

  • Spiritual Womb

    With Herbie sitting in the palm of her open hand, X spun in circles and the world spun with her, as did the stars and the planets and all the moons, for she was the centre of all things, just as she always had been. With his little paws raised high to the sun, Herbie called… Read more

  • The World Spun

    With her name escaping my lips, I opened my eyes to view a sky that knew only the meaning of beginning. It bore the face of God, and the face of God was just like my own. Not as ginger, mind you, but similar. Getting to my feet, I raised my hands as high as… Read more