A.Journal

Checks

1,005 checks

Medium

Frantic but resigned, exhausted by herself.

Easy

Unconvinced, unbothered.

Challenging

He's lying, maybe even to himself.

Challenging

The mangled remains of an aborted paternal instinct have congregated around that two-headed horse like homeless men around a trash fire.

Easy

He's just a nudge away at the best of times. Push him.

Easy

A sudden emanation of cold sweat answers the thought: bad idea.

Easy

The author was five. Maybe six.

Easy

He kept them all because he's proud.

Easy

Each pen a time capsule. A version of himself with cleaner hands and hope that already a near decade-long abyss separates him from.

Medium

Differences of opinion in medical practice are just the tip of the iceberg here.

Trivial

The care placed into the organisation is itself an act of love, performed hatefully.

Medium

Inside the darkness of her silhouette, for a moment, you think you can make out her small dark eyes and sad, young features.

Medium

Is it a companion that he's looking for?

Medium

Torn between horror and desire.

Medium

Hard to tell what monkey emotions are, but those ear twitches seem relieved.

Easy

That was a terrible apology, Hershel. Listen to the poor thing! Do it properly, restore his heinous pomposity.

Trivial

But an aura of frustrated disappointment remains.

Trivial

Medium

Or you have fundamentally misjudged the depth and nature of your friend's malaise.

Easy

Easy

Easy

He wanted to keep you all around.

Medium

The closest thing you've had to human touch in a long time.

Easy

Resigned to what was then coming, now come.

Medium

But at what cost? To become the high arbiter of Human Capital, you no doubt have to trade in some of your own.

Easy

Happy to disappear into the life of another.

Challenging

Somewhere below the tram's thin floor lies her abandoned life, scattered like aircraft wreckage.

Challenging

But she's very glad you're here.

Trivial

Ultra Violeta. Who else?

Easy

Or you could leave it. A small memento -- a trace of him passing through this world.

Challenging

My Intrepid Homosexual Orgy.

Easy

Another Opera castoff. Maligned and misaligned.

Easy

Not quite an accusation, but almost.

Trivial

Medium

Unclear whether he's trying to convince himself of this or you.

Easy

Fear and relief, together.

Medium

A wound he is unable to sew shut.

Medium

A long while, by the sound of it.

Medium

Easy

A mantra repeated.

Easy

Medium

He'd give nearly anything for an excuse to do just that.

Medium

You must understand that, he means, if you're going to understand what happens later.

Formidable

Politeness, professionalism, the performance of empathy. These are the things he was taught would make a good man, or at least a correct man. In his moment of greatest extremis, they all deserted him.

Challenging

A vision of Karolina's home life suddenly flashes before you. Her father -- doting, concerned, overbearing.

Medium

The doctor's heart is a snowglobe, a thin glass shell surrounding a moment of perfect pain. You feel it in your hands now.

Medium

A weight appears to lift from his shoulders.

Medium

If it's a fairy tale, it's one he's either grown very tired of or never wanted to hear in the first place.

Medium

He briefly nurtured the hope that he'd simply misheard you. Now he must confront the reality that he's actually having a conversation with you.

Medium

You know it well -- the sensation of being formally fucked.