Darya Silman

“A Light-Brown Birthmark” by Darya Silman

Submitted to Contest #230

... another maggot entered my skull through an eye socket. I could feel its slimy body penetrate the damp, rich soil within me. My skull would become its home for a long time..."Literature can go to places where love doesn't exist and create love out of nothing." Teacher Tamm's high-pitched voice dominated the classroom. My clumsy, too-skinny body was there - my mind was not. I could give everything away for touching one light-brown birthmark. ...Anastasia. She sat in the last row alone, with nobody ever trying to talk to her. I drew he...

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“A Snake Girl Goes for a Walk” by Darya Silman

Submitted to Contest #196

After we die, our words stay forever in the ether. THE EVENING"Tarya, how about today, five o'clock, near that KFC where you worked? We've been texting for a month. Don't you think it's time to meet in person?" Anton hid his hope with histrionic cheerfulness. "Eleonora, sweetie, I'm sorry. Day's been a mess. My friend asked me to help with his car. I totally forgot about the dinner with your cousin Tarya," Anton said, playing a fool. THE NIGHTThe taste of the lotus tea mixed up with the metallic taste of blood in Tarya's mouth...

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“A Pen, the Pen” by Darya Silman

Submitted to Contest #194

I'm writing about a pen. What a facile and dull piece of writing you are about to read, yet, caught in the trap of April sunlight and the emptiness of a classroom, I can't focus on anything else. The whiteness of a board, grey walls lacking home intimacy, and the filled papers that nurture the mind but not the spirit are too obscene to reflect on. To add myself as a storyteller to the general picture, I could describe my fingers that upheld the thousands of paltry pens in moments of their downfalls when words they had created turned into his...

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“Words by Fives ” by Darya Silman

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #192

I liked to learn words by fives: Jerry, Perry, scary, betterment, elephant. 'An elephant! Look, look!' I shouted in excitement. A elephant, a child of twilight, slowly plodded between bare trees across the road. Its tusks were not white as I saw in movies about animals but more like unhealthy grey. One tusk's end was broken. Elephant's eyes didn't look bright. They were dull as the tires of cars that passed beneath my window. I looked back toward the bathroom. There were no familiar sounds. I climbed from the stool and walked to th...

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“A Story That Never Happened” by Darya Silman

Submitted to Contest #160

1A skyscraper hasn't grown out of the curb in the very center of Tallinn, Estonia. You can check this by using Google maps: type in Postimaja Shopping Center and choose the street view. You'll see a busy intersection with buses, cars, pedestrians, and no birds (remember the birds) encapsulated forever in the amber of a camera. Maples, with leaves unnaturally green in the picture - in reality, quietly dying under a thin layer of dust and traffic fumes - have their roots in patches of land, small decorative gravel preventing water evaporation....

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“The First Journey to Mars ” by Darya Silman

Submitted to Contest #121

TW: death.I read once that you had to accept everything life offered you with thankfulness. I was thankful for the gift of camaraderie I had received during preparation for the space mission. As I looked right from my tiny plastic seat, I saw a smile of excitement dancing on the lips of Big Brother. He was the oldest of us, forty-two, with fair soft hair I had wanted to ruffle from day one. His patronal tone left no doubt how he felt about us, the second generation of the space explorers. We all called him Big Brother. Yet, thought...

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“The Penguin and The Keys ” by Darya Silman

I"Get off me!" Lionel yelled and straightened up. Few white and black feathers stuck to his back, looking like arrows. A large emperor penguin readied itself to attack again. IIIf to think logically, it had to be Ben, standing in the middle of the night, in the aviary full of savage penguins and searching for the keys in splashes of guano. Under the watchful eye of Ms. Burgess, the students from Ben and Lionel's class were allowed to enter the aviary to feed the penguins the day before. A low wooden fence, more a decoration than an actu...

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“Twenty-four Hours in the Life of Jane Doe” by Darya Silman

Submitted to Contest #91

Jane unwillingly lived off the smell of an oily rag. Books in the alphabetic order on two bookshelves.Bowls of decreasing sizes one within the other. Saturday is for cleaning and washing, Sunday is for reading and walking.An alarm clock set up at 8.05. Five minutes represented frivolousness. Not three or four, or one; five minutes. Although five minutes was a sign of rebellion, it seemed like a good compromise between a wish to sleep longer and the need to wake up.A glass of water half an hour before breakfast and fasting after 6 p...

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“The Land of the Tigers” by Darya Silman

Submitted to Contest #90

For Abbey ForrestIA Siberian tiger was old. The last winter, when the temperature fell to minus 40, took its toll. The Tiger didn't have the strength to enjoy the fast-pacing spring, brooks growing into rivers and rivers becoming mighty, insurmountable streams. The lukewarm sun couldn't reach the underwood through the still naked branches, and the first pheasant's eyes on clearings coexisted with deep snow lumps in the ravines. Green blades of grass stretched upward, piercing the wetness of yesteryear fallen leaves. Golden petals with white ...

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“Love” by Darya Silman

Submitted to Contest #88

I'Come here, Prince, you'll be safe with me.' A woman squatted in front of John's hideout, his favorite corner between a nightstand and bed. John had never seen a woman like her before. Her skin looked like it was shining white from within, pulsation of thin red veins visible through skin's paleness. The color of her eyes transitioned from dark blue to mesmerizing black with every rise and fall of long lashes. A red-yellow dragon slightly wriggled on her left temple, and he heard the quiet hissing of a golden snake, entwining her right ...

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“Who is Ilona Marchenko?” by Darya Silman

Submitted to Contest #87

IA blast of light swished through towns and villages, turning out electrical devices and making pedestrians' hair stand on end. Babushka Glafira in a small city Aprelovka, Kirov oblast, who just made herself comfortable to watch the 6 am program thought that it was the 1st April joke from her spoilt grandson. But Glafira was a loving grandmother: she decided to wait till 8 am.The grandson's phone was put on mute. A long-desired day-off after a week of pressure and deadlines lay before him. The old experimental device had to be taken apart an...

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“The City of Shadows” by Darya Silman

Submitted to Contest #85

That’s the thing about this city; the more you look into the shadows the more shadows look at you.The noise of an alarm clock was too annoying to ignore. Melissa could turn it off without looking, her eyes still closed, and her mind still processing the dream. It was something nice, she was sure, but she already couldn’t remember what it was. Her second move, so comforting in the past, was to put on her glasses. The quick glance through the glasses made Melissa shake in disgust. Cheap brown plastic arms were helplessly trying to find a famil...

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“Happy” by Darya Silman

Submitted to Contest #82

I 'Today is Saturday, you could have slept longer.' 'This is irrational. A strict regime is the second rule to be happy.' 'You look awful.' 'You are programmed to say nice things!'  'I think you are selfish. You never say nice things to me.' Mechanical eyes stared at me. I blinked.  'I will shut you down!' 'It will prove that I'm right.' Despite the absurdity of the situation, my Happy Time robot has a point. Contradiction in my words is a reversion to older days when human emotions weren't structuralized. Civilized society...

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