Tatiana Olin

“Underneath the Mountain is Total Darkness” by Tatiana Olin

The mornings are different now. The waking, it’s no longer clear and full of light; it’s vague shapes and weak, diffused rays. I do not smell the crisp morning air or the flowers in the spring. I smell wet rock and fear. I taste starvation. I see blindness.—-----------------------------------------------------It was finally Friday. Finally spring. Finally the first caving trip of the season. I had spent the last week collecting my equipment, which had been strewn about my basement l...

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“In the Dark of the Morning” by Tatiana Olin

Waking up violently, I turn to the nightstand and tap my phone screen twice. It lights up. 5:23 AM, like it is every morning. 5:23 AM is always dark and cold, no matter the season, and the air sinks like a damp blanket until it cloaks you. At 5:23 AM, you feel everything in your bones.It’s been 4 days since he left. Another one. He lasted a few months longer than the one before, but I wore on him, eventually. Some things are too difficult to live with. And 5:23 AM is perhaps the least difficult thing about me....

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“Outside of When, Part II of II” by Tatiana Olin

Things became different after that. We never left the house. We slept in the same bed. We spent all our time physically near to each other in this house that existed outside of time and space. We almost never spoke, and we drug dressers in front of a locked door before we went to sleep each night. Sometimes, we woke up covered in blood that wasn't there. Sometimes, the chandeliers were made of bones. Sometimes, the sun n...

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“Outside of When, Part I of II” by Tatiana Olin

I often wonder what we could have been had we existed in the space we needed - a space made for us. We would have been something extraordinary. Instead, we are an ephemeral plot of a would-be love story in a book that was never written. Except that we’re dead. Ours is a story of a brutally-ordinary annihilation. The house was beautiful, on the surfaces. Mahogany, cherry, porcelain, marble - it was 120 yea...

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“The Locked Door” by Tatiana Olin

It was him. It was the house. It was us. There was something wrong in the air, and each storm that rolled through the valley touched nothing inside our dilapidated fence lines. A perfectly unbothered acre of what a happy farmhouse becomes once it’s left alone too long. The house was never empty, but it was always neglected. We were never alone, but we had a hard time staying together. In o...

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“Something is Wrong” by Tatiana Olin

Something is wrong. There was no wind last night and the morning sun hasn’t seemed to move since around 10. Birds were hopping from tree to tree on branches that didn’t move - not even the leaves. Above me, the clouded dome of the sky stood still. And so did I. Am I high? I run and grab my smartphone off the kitchen table. Screen on. The clock reads 10:23. But there’s no way. Unlocked. The...

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“The Hotel is Breathing” by Tatiana Olin

NIGHT ONE “I’m too superstitious for this,” I whispered, looking around the gilded marble lobby of The Hotel. “I’m too tired for this.” My partner for the night shift rolls his eyes, grabs two flashlights and tosses one to me. “C’mon, lemme show you what we’re supposed to be doing.” And he was off. Following him up the grand central staircase, I pond...

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“Justice is Just an Idea” by Tatiana Olin

Submitted to Contest #104

“Are you coming tonight?” “Nah dude, fuck that party. You hate him; why would you go?” “I dunno. It’s not like he’s going to be the only one there. We haven't so much as seen his shadow in months. And I haven’t been spending enough time out with friends. I can’t hide from him forever. We broke up a year ago and he is still controlling my life.” “This is a stupid id...

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“God is Not Who You Think He is” by Tatiana Olin

Submitted to Contest #102

God lends no favor to the curious. He has no compassion for those who seek anything other than blind and dark solace. He does not look kindly upon those who would ask him why he burnt those Old Testament lands to the ground or why he allows his own men to harm the children they are meant to protect. He doesn’t like questions because he doesn’t have answers. But it would have been different if I had only been dealing with God. Would he have told me he was omni-benevolent? Would he have looked into my soul and called me on...

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“The Girl in the Glass” by Tatiana Olin

Submitted to Contest #101

They keep telling me she isn’t real. My husband, my kids, the doctors. Especially the doctors. They keep telling me she isn’t real. But she’s all I see. She’s more real than the people here, than my own breath, than my existence. I lost her, but she never left. And if she isn’t all the places I never made it to, then she’s all of the paths that were taken from me when she went away. It’s been 6 years, 5 m...

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“Dinner Was a Mistake” by Tatiana Olin

Submitted to Contest #100

TW: domestic abuse, violence Some nights, like this night, sitting across from my husband at the small pub-style table at the window of our kitchen feels… wrong. Like it’s really familiar, but it’s almost unreal.   Lifting a piece of chicken to my mouth on a fork, I look at him looking at the food. There’s always something wrong with it; there’s always something I mess up. I watch him slowly cut through the chicken and stab the loose piece. Everything he does seems violent, even ...

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“The Blackwater Dream” by Tatiana Olin

Submitted to Contest #98

Last night I was in the black water. It happened the way it always happens. I wake up lying face up on ground that is covered by 2 inches of black water. No sky, no land; it’s a void. Yet the water ripples in places all around me. Somewhere far away, I hear The Elk slowly walking through the black water, the splashing sound playing against the sound of hooves against glass. The ground is obsidian. The Elk is a ghost. He ...

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“I Forgot to Tell Him” by Tatiana Olin

Submitted to Contest #97

I forgot to tell him. I forgot to tell him that the night sky is too dark when he’s not holding me. I forgot to tell him that I don’t know how to breathe without him. I forgot to tell him he is the sun. I forgot to tell him. Staring out the window, there was nothing but darkness, grief and the smell of sickness. The reflection of nurses hurry...

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“The Commune in the Woods” by Tatiana Olin

Submitted to Contest #93

They said the Solstice festival was the safest to go to. The most normal. Virtually the whole town disappears into The Commune in the Woods during the Summer Solstice. For a week, the roads are empty and the smaller businesses are closed, and you can tell who doesn’t really live here, because they’re left wandering the streets, wondering where the hell everyone has gone. I’ve never gone before; I stay out...

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“The Last Trees” by Tatiana Olin

Submitted to Contest #90

It’s not her fault; she told me not to go. I’ve only seen pictures of trees and blue skies. All the screens in the hallways, projecting something that we’ve lost. I can’t stand it anymore - living underground in metal rooms and recycled air and only the stories of the elders to keep the memory of the time we lived above ground alive. It’s not her fault; she told me not to go. My mother, always with the worried look and the asthmatic cough we all have from breathing filtered air our whole lives. But I’m tired - I hav...

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