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Xeriscaping

By Alex Seise

She slapped the back of her blistered, red hand to her forehead and pressed hard, pulling the skin across beads of gathered sweat. They melted away in salty smears.

Around the small rocky ledge where she toiled, currents of bubbling water crashed and frothed. The air smelled terrible, thick and grotesque like aerosolized kerosene.

Only it was not the air; it was the mist that rose from the ocean that swirled and foamed around her. An ocean that teemed with poisoned saltwater, the same sea that flamed and flared on hot summer days. It’d been years since the Crack. Yet somehow, the loosened rivulets of petroleum continued to seep into the churning water, mixing away and keeping aquatic life at bay.

She breathed deep and turned to look back on her rude rocky funnel, coughing quietly. The rocks would catch rainwater, alright; the entire ledge was a feat of xeriscaping. Every drop was precious these days…

The woman coughed again before crouching into her knees and staring out over the acrid waves.

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Agog

By Alex Seise

Hair akimbo and pupils twisted tight, she stood agog, clutching the brand new purse with fear-paled knuckles. Her other fingers clumsily grasped the pleated plaid skirt that dangled toward the floor.

Staring off into the crowd beyond the door, the girl took a short, shallow breath, hunched her shoulders and prepared to dash.

“BEEP! BEEP!” The alarm sounded before she even moved toward the threshold. Security rushed forward and seized another young woman who’d just scurried from the shop, holding her arms as she tried to wiggle free. “BEE-EEP!”

The girl ran forward, her heart pounding even more ferociously than her violet Mary Janes.

One of my favorite tasks is brand development.  I enjoy it with such fervent passion, and I find it both challenging and relaxing at the same time.  (It’s a paradox, much like myself.  Perhaps that’s the root from which my affinity for it stems?)

In any case, I’ve recently been working on logos for several clients to help boost their new or revamped brands. Often times, I’ll create 10+ concepts before my client falls head over heels with a design, whittling through 3-4 at a clip until I nail perfection. The swooning’s wonderful for that final design, but what about the other nine who don’t make the chop?

Word to the wise: never toss a design aside. Tuck it away, yes; but never get rid of it.

Case in point: the rings you see up by my name were a chopped element from a recent project.  I fell so madly in love with them that I wound up repurposing the duo for my own branding.  What do you think?  There’s some deep symbolism in this little image that I wanted to share:

• I wear a silver white gold band as my wedding ring, plus a shiny hematite thumb loop to remember my journeys to date. They look just like the two bands up top.
• Right between the linked rings is a splash of green–the same hue found in the irises of my eyes!  Plus, my abundant love for all things floral is tinged an herbal verdant shade, so there’s double the punch on the hue front.
• Finally, there’s a twist of symbolism in the linkage itself. The design is fluid and strong, much like my professionalism. I pride myself on going above and beyond for each and every client, and when you link in with my talents, you get 110%. Always, forever–that’s my promise.

Have a great weekend!

– – –

Brume

By Alex Seise

“Lock the shutters, Jimmy, includin’ the ones o’er by the sides o’ the hearth,” she whispered as her fingers frantically pulled on a black iron latch attached to the panes suspended above the porch sill. “I just saw a gray brume formin’ by the edge of the trees. Jimmy, hurry. It’ll be here in just a…”

But just then, there was a rap at the door. The harsh knock cut through her words with the bladed indifference of a heavy cleaver’s edge.

– – –

Funambulist

By Alex Seise

[Today, I went old school: I busted out a feather quill and some rad red ink to pen the entry for funambulist. No text here, just a few angled shots of the resulting story. Enjoy!]

– – –

Gibber

By Alex Seise

“So, what’s the gibber on the lane?”

The woman in the ruffled plaid cardigan didn’t look up from her stack of papers. She just shrugged.

“Oh, come on. You can spill. I know you weren’t outside gardening for the past two hours. You were listening, Sophia. You always listen.”

The flaxy sculpture that was the lady’s tight, silver bun jerked from side to side.

“Sophia, Sophia… Don’t make me pull it out of you.” The words paused in the heavy afternoon air. “Again. You didn’t like it when I yanked ’em from you last time. Remember?”

The woman blinked. Then, she lifted her eyes from the handful of bills and old, wrinkled documents to the window sill. Outside, a tall oak creaked in the breeze. Elegant as a monarch, she turned on the carpet and faced her companion.

“Good. Talk.”

Resignation brimming along the edges of her sad, gray eyes, the woman reached into the glass of minty water, took the quivering pair of teeth that giggled when her fingertips brushed along their gums and slid them into her mouth.

“Better, Sophia. Much better.” This time, the voice fell from  the woman’s own mouth. “Now, spill, old girl.”

– – –

Sodality

By Alex Seise

“Those ones?” He twitched his head twice in the direction of the fire engine-red building that stood behind his back. Saying that it stood was an act of spoken kindness; the heap of painted wood and grimy glass barely managed to hold itself upright under the caress of gravity. “We don’t mess with the sodality bottled up in there. They stick to themselves, and we among us. A bunch of Coke heads, that’s what they are.” He leaned in and grimaced in the boy’s face. “And what is the only thing we drink, boy?”

“Dr. Pepper.” Jimmy whispered through his soft, brown teeth. “Only, ever.”

– – –

Cabotage

By Alex Seise

“Neither your business nor your kind are welcome here, madame.” The scribe turned on the bronze heel of his heavy right slipper. “Good day to you, and may you find the seas outside our harbor swift and favorable.”

But the trader, gnarled by age and thickened by wisdom, snagged his silk-clad shoulder and spun him around. The scribe let out a surprised “Oof!” and dropped his oversized ostrich feather quill. It slid between the dock’s planks and fell into the dark green water far below.

“Yeh wahn’t be tahlkin’ to Agnorious Dilkins wit’ sucha dis-er-pectful tahngue.” She leaned in and pressed her good eye—the violet one, not the gray, unseeing orb on her left side—against the scribe’s own cheek. It left a wet spot on his jowl, but he didn’t care about that. He thought only of the stench. The woman’s breath reeked of cabbage and sour whiskey, and he thought he might heave. “I’ve cahme tuh sell meh wares, writer mahn. You wahn’t be tellin’ me no atter all I been t’rough.”

“What you’ve been through matters little here on our shores.” The scribe wriggled free from her grasp and scowled, angry at the loss of his favorite quill at the hands of such a troublesome visitor. “Our laws of cabotage forbid any from the Isle of Wykler from mooring, disembarking, peddling or purchasing on our docks. Your very presence here is illegal. If it weren’t also illegal to confine your type, I’d have had the guards haul you off the moment you stepped off your… Ship.” He shifted his disdainful glance from the woman’s cockeyed clipper to either side, making sure they were out of earshot. “I’ve heard wretched stories about your kind, and if you asked me politely, which you have not, I might so much as share one or two tales.”

No sooner had he said the word ‘tales,’ the scribe’s face fell blank and his mouth became stuck in the open position. For once, he was wordless and breathless. The man silently fell to his left and tumbled straight down into the water; his entrails followed with a splashy plop.

Agnorious shrugged as she withdrew the fiber-thin acorbonial filament into her gray shawl. Wielded properly, the tool could cut through a man’s thick, wiry abdomen; from any other angle, it was soft as silk. “Tales, meh friend? I dahn’t needa hear th’m. I’m in ’em.”

– – –

Dalles

By Alex Seise

They flung themselves through the alleyways and brickwork that separated the buildings from the bungalows, colliding and cracking with speed-induced clumsy chaos.

Each fell from the sky, once; now, the clouds who birthed them and hammered them into intricate glazed weaves were little more than distantly distended mothers, care-free monsters who’d tossed their charges toward the cold, rocky ground. “There’ll be more,” they whispered as they flung the flakes with post-partum disinterest. “None exactly like you, but more close enough. Alone, you do not matter; you only melt.” The clouds’ hushed musings iced colder and even harsher than the gray reaches of the stratosphere where they hung.

But as the crystals tumbled through the civilization, racing along looping suspended urban dalles and dancing perilously close to the shovel-shaved paths lined with crunchy pearl salt and flows of thick, gooey gray sludge, they did not care about melting; they cared only about mattering.

“One matters little.” Their words echoed in a chorus of a trillion. “But we are many.”

The state of emergency lasted exactly six hours that night. Of the eight plows that scoured the small Midwestern town’s streets, only seven returned home; one slid on an icy patch. The red truck collided directly into a gnarly gray elm, snapping its bright yellow scraper in the process and rendering the vehicle powerless against the snow.