Two -really- short stories.

She peels off the dying skin on the soles of her feet, she peels away the layers and blisters and sees the smoothness underneath, peels away the age until it hurts and her nails are crusted with skin and parts of heel.

Perhaps she is trying to be reborn, perhaps she is a phoenix who is burnt before flying and killed before living, perhaps mutilation and flakes of skin are her way of feeling her birth.

She isn't thinking, subconscious and that's why the exposed softness is pink but not bleeding. She's been running, you can tell because her feet are cracked and she's peeling off layers.

It was a long run, up and down the mountain, stop. Breathe. the world was spread out and it was caught vulnerable, frozen. Buildings never rose, they were. Stop, rest. Breathe. Her feet were cracking. The insides of her tennis shoes had skin on them again. Breathe. Run, pant her knees knocked together as the world melded into one, and her skin was shining. There was much too little oxygen so high up. The air conditioner reaches her bones. She takes off her shoes and peels away the dead.

***

The window is lit, turn off the candle already. Look at the face on the cracks of your glasses. Take them off, you don't need to see to visualise. Visualise the red in white, green in white. Light lit. Take it apart till it's nothing but the limbs of a so-called image, so-called flashes of momentary conducted-constructed impulses, so-called light refracts, bounces backwards, flip it back. Your so-called sight is warped.

Look out the window. Look at the city that has been expanding for centuries. It used to be that the silhouettes of castles weren't there. But now they can be lit, if just for a half-second, before the lightning leaves as flamboyantly as it comes.

You have this coffee. You need this coffee. Dear Lord let me stay awake. He is coming by plane, by ocean vessel - the sea is miles away and the sky is infinite. Let me stay awake. He is coming by car, by blood vessel, but he isn't here so turn off the lights to feel relieved when they turn on. Let the Morse code light away the town, let the Morse code be gnawed on. Let the Morse code be unnamed. Don't pay tribute to the dead.

Sleep doesn't loom, it hangs. It descends at the pace of fog, it is fog. It is smoke that doesn't make you cough but rather blurs your sight. Red into white. Blue into white. Dissect it like you have done already. Sleep lingers, sleep has two fingers over your face, sleep is smoke. It's fog, it's epilepsy. It's a castle lit by half-seen lightning, leaves as flamboyantly as it comes.