Brad MacDuff

A spotlight sweeps across the sky – a cosmic windshield wiper, a metronome of things without beat. It swings, back and forth, so loud in its brightness that it can be heard with eyes closed. …

Some nights he manages to fight the call. He closes his eyes and finds sleep before the rumbling in his blood drives him from bed. Some nights he can sleep, and some nights he can even dream. H…

He looked for it; lifted his feet and scanned the gleaming sidewalk. He spun, full circle, searching for the smallest life that could feel pain.

She lay awake, thinking about nothing and everything; of cotton and chaos, of hyacinth and thistles. Traffic droned outside. Traffic always droned. Headlights cast patterns across the ceiling; …

It was darker than a carload of assholes, and smelled much the same. Pulpmills and breweries – the air was thick with their stink; the city sweated it in the shady spots, oozed through alleys l…

The horns outside tell you you’re awake. Cars never honk in your dreams; they just run you down and lay you flat. You know you’re awake, but you keep your eyes closed. You want to hold on to th…

The moon is full. It paints the night around it a velvety purple and Venus is a beauty mark on the left cheek of the sky. It seems to hang, this frosty sphere, high above the apex of it all.
…

"It’s easy," he says. "Like riding a bike."

"I can’t ride a bike," she says. "I never learned."

"Can you dance?"

"A little."

"Then it’s like dancing. You just have to let yourself g…

My grandfather used to tell me that the ocean was hidden inside every shell.

"If you hold a shell to your ear, you can hear the waves," he’d said.

"Shells remember their homes. They neve…

She awakens in the grass again – wine stained teeth and tear stained eyes. She wears the juice of kumquats like sticky orange gloves – the same glossy sugar coats her lips. There is a song in h…

You’re not convinced that someone doesn’t reach into your head at night and steal your dreams. Some nights they cut them up and slip them back in, other nights they just leave an empty space – …

The boy spoke to his shadow because he knew it would listen. People were different. They could feign interest and go elsewhere in their minds. His shadow though, it was always attentive, always…

His shadow had a different voice beneath the moon. It was cold, like the light that cast it.

"What is it you want?" his shadow asked.

"I want to know what to do," the boy said.

"In wha…

The woods were blacker than the space behind his eyes. The boy could not see his shadow, there was no light to cast it.

"Are you there?" he asked.

"Yes," said several voices from several…

The boy walked, eyes closed against the darkness, until time was a word that rolled around in his mind – nothing more than a collection of letters and sound. Where did it come from? Whose word …

The boy closed his eyes before stepping into the forest. He knew what darkness awaited, and did not want it to seep beneath his lids. The whispering was gone. The shadows of the world were left…

The mists closed softly behind the boy – they stole his senses and filled the world with hushed white. He could feel the ground beneath his feet, pressing up against each foot as he walked. The…

The boy stood before the abyss, before his shadow, before himself. The darkness swallowed the sublime and devoured infinity. It was all.

"What is this," whispered the boy.

"This is what s…

If one ceases to learn even the simplest of things, the spirit begins to atrophy. Passion dies. Bitterness breeds. Stagnation blossoms, and with it, the meaning of life is lost.

Tony was only four letters long, but he had two syllables. He was proud of that fact. Other names as long had one syllable; Neil, Chad, Jeff, Brad, Kyle – they were all suckers. So were all the…