Fiction
Muscle Memory
Dark Memoirs - Index Sentimentality is a curse. Apatheia (Freedom from Emotion). The goal of Diogenes. Intense sentimental attachments do not make for betterment in this mortal coil. Whether it is to objects, places, or especially, people, it breeds vulnerability to suffering and loss.
By Paul Stewart27 days ago in Chapters
Dragon Horse. Content Warning.
The first technique Aroon's grandfather teaches her is how to take a hit. The only way to strengthen a sword is to keep beating and beating the blade. His knee slams into her solar plexus, sucking all the air out of her lungs and squeezing enough tears out of her eyes to blur her vision in one swift move.
By Wen Xiaosheng27 days ago in Chapters
A Necessary Absence
Dark Memoirs - Index It feels like the right time to talk about the one who got away. That lover from high school you thought you’d grow old with, the white-picket-fence life already imagined. A fumbled fuck behind the bike shed, bright-eyed and convinced it would become the romance of the century. Romeo and Juliet, without the feuding families or the suicide.
By Paul Stewart29 days ago in Chapters
Close Enough
Dark Memoirs - Index "And at last, becoming a complete misanthrope, he used to live, spending his time in walking about the mountains; feeding on grasses and plants, and in consequence of these habits, he was attacked by the dropsy, and so then he returned to the city, and asked the physicians, in a riddle, whether they were able to produce a drought after wet weather. And as they did not understand him, he shut himself up in a stable for oxen, and covered himself with cow-dung, hoping to cause the wet to evaporate from him, by the warmth that this produced. And as he did himself no good in this way, he died, having lived seventy years;" - Diogenes of Sinope
By Paul Stewart29 days ago in Chapters
Errors That Persist
Dark Memoirs - Index "Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity." - Xunzi People seem fascinated by the idea that there must be a hierarchy — that I must be damaged goods or working for a “big bad.” This is the real world, of course. Besides, I lack nothing — money, freedom, or immunity from consequence. Why would I need a financial backer, or why would I blindly follow the directions of another?
By Paul Stewart29 days ago in Chapters
Pulse Ledger
Dark Memoirs - Index Many are the paths the destitute and desperate can follow to reach me. Some whisper my name like a prayer; others barely dare acknowledge I exist. In ancient texts, you may find my name murmured beside Anubis and Hermes, though I was never simply a guide. Their devotion to peace is unbecoming. My interests are entirely self-serving, a hunger dressed in the robes of ritual. I eat the insincere, the spineless who parade their postulation before neighbours, playing priest to their own hollow lives. I drink the essence of a life the way men drink wine — blood drawn warm, direct from source.
By Paul Stewart29 days ago in Chapters
