Ark Vandal

“Signs of the Jagged Edge” by Ark Vandal

His bedroom door shuts with a groaning creak, trapping all the lingering light from the hallway behind it. Ashley counts the receding footsteps: one, two, three. The fourth would have his mom right outside her own bedroom. It’s 7 pm on a Friday night, and this means three things: first, his dad’s stuck working a late shift at the only clinic in town (a lot of good it does, people still died anyhow); this also means his mother will shut herself in her bedroom all night, smoking up the house and drinking the whiskey equivalent of a flood. The...

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“Out of the box.” by Ark Vandal

Submitted to Contest #83

The house hunkers on its rough rocky hill, listing and tilting to its side, and as the ocean slaps at the hill, spraying fine drops in the air when it surges upwards, the house almost seems to reach for it. The house is made of windows; glass and metal and nothing else, overgrown with climbing vines and almost bare poison oak, still shedding the last of its deep red leaves. This is where my life may end. At least, the life I have lived for all of my sixteen years. The horses slow at the foot of the hill and send the lantern swinging in its p...

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“I Am Not” by Ark Vandal

Submitted to Contest #68

My very first memory is also my last. Its vague in places but vivid in others. We sat on a sandy beach—he and I—watching the spread of paint the rising sun had streaked across the sky. Hues of gold and pink, orange, the shade of candlelight. I still smell the salt of the ocean on the wind and the quiet scent of perfume in the crook of his neck. We sat and played and cried and laughed till the sky cloaked itself in black and stars brightened into being above us. I can’t remember his name. I can’t recall his face. Only that he was important to...

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“The Iris” by Ark Vandal

Submitted to Contest #67

X marks the spot. He threw the knife at the red inked cross on the map where it sank in with a dull thud. Bullseye. Thirty years he’d searched. Thirty years of ridicule and obsessive need, and he had found it. The Iris was within reach. That elusive treasure hidden by the best of the best during the golden age of pirates. Bracken retrieved the locket from the pocket at his breast and opened it. The words inside were words to live by. ‘Calm as a gentle breeze.’ They reminded him of a past long gone but not forgotten, and of the family he had ...

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“Eyes Tight Shut.” by Ark Vandal

Submitted to Contest #67

The sum of a man’s worth was far less than Kalen had thought. Five credits. That was his worth. His masters sold him for five measly credits. Not even enough for a full day’s meal. The skin of his neck chafed where the metal collar bit into his skin and his wrists oozed hot blood down his fingertips to the soft, beaten earth. The sky was dark, cloudy, and his breaths came out as steam into the icy air, burning up and out his dry throat. Kalen heard nothing, but the shivering howls of the wind and the jangle of the chains around his ...

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