CarmenKern.com
writer of fantasy and other strangeness
They say seeing is believing. I didn’t know what that meant until that night. I was coming home late, later than I should, and I knew I was going to catch heck. Momma didn’t even pretend to be patient when me or my sister wasn’t home in time for dinner. I’d made it to the...
The mist crept closer, slithering across the boot prints she left behind on the soft, moist ground. She urged her legs to go faster over the uneven path. A leafless tree grabbed at the flying strands of her long silver hair as she ran past. They hung like shiny tinsel from its branches. The mist...
The path of a ghost is etched into the earth, hammered and chiseled by heeled boots, flat leather soles, and the barest of feet. I follow the prints up and over the rise. There is a man standing by the car, smartly dressed in black pants, an unblemished white shirt, and the same black tie...
In the beginning of the world, there was a bird, small and ugly, waddling on the ground, unaware it had wings. It sang to the blue skies, voice soaring and dipping, longing and magic-infused in every note. This went on for days and then weeks until the sky reached down and cradled the bird within...
The rain stopped battering against the phone booth the second he hung up, as if a giant spigot turned off. It was sudden and silent and not at all what he expected from a crossroads deal. No devil drove up in a shiny Cadillac. No one’s blood was spilled. All he had needed was a...
They say Happiness lives in that house. Normally I don’t believe nothing anyone tells me, but after walking by that door every day and staring at the sunshine color, I decide to grab an ounce of nerve and knock. I wait and sweat and fidget until finally, the door cracks open, and then swings wide....
He’d never been a man of vision. He hadn’t been much of anything until the day lightning struck him. The smell of singed wires had stayed with him for months, long after he discovered the unnatural side effects of a billion volts of energy blasting through his organs. Sure, his favorite running shoes had burn...
Ms. Royal had spent her entire life in this doorway—from the carpenter’s shop to the painter, onto the installer’s truck, and then, here, next to Mr. Turquoise. Turq, he insisted she call him. She thought nicknames a little too common, vulgar even, so she called him by his full name, at least for a few...
She passes through the labyrinth of brick walls and bright markings. She speaks to no one, for she is alone with her mission. A black feather drifts across her path, carried by the breeze from vents blowing greasy smells. At the labyrinth’s heart is a dead end, a nest, a resting place for the great...
There’s a magic in them alleys. Where the moon fills with blood, and the margins of the city seep through cracks in the cement, opening the way for other things. How do I know? I’ve seen things; felt the whoosh of air from beating wings and the tickle of fear on my neck. See, I...
In his dreams, he revved and roared and smoked his tires on hot asphalt, jumping off the start line. He boomed through gritty, naked streets toward the finish line and white handkerchiefs waving from delicate hands. He dreamed because he could…because that was all he had left. This image and more of Carmen’s...
The three sisters had grown tall and bored…of the streets and the ball of fire above them that burned the ends of their fine strands. They often complained to each other about the winds and blowing dust, for they had become quite vain after seeing their reflection in the windows across the street. But eventually,...
They looked out the window, twenty-two stories down to the empty streets. Big Foot poured a double shot of whiskey in two glasses. He took one for himself and handed the other glass to his good friend and fellow conspirator, Snuffleupagus, who, even though he had to hold the drink with his trunk, still tossed...
Two sisters sat in their mother’s living room as the rain rat-tatted on the tin roof. The one with brown eyes scrolled endlessly through the app on her phone, looking at the fake she thought was real. The one with amber eyes stared out the window and watched the storm clouds soar on black...
Here we are already rolling into the month of Love. February seemed to just show up out of the blue. Kind of like that unexpected old friend who showed up at your door with a suitcase in hand and said, “I’m here!” So Happy Valentine’s Day! I don’t consider myself much of a...
The town officials have condemned and scheduled the building behind me for demolition. Authorities say that a group of rebels have been using the building for a lab for at least seventeen months. Apparently, the tenants had been manufacturing joy and giving it away for free to those passing through their neighborhood. This illegal operation...
She hadn’t meant for the bridge to fall away under the hooves of the hero’s horse, or for the peasant girl to turn into a pumpkin instead of her chariot. I’m not an engineer, she’d said in her own defense. I’m a fairy. Sure, she had missed the mark in her last few assignments, but...
It had been twenty-three years since Charlie last saw the old homestead. His mother had signed it all over to him years ago. It was a place he didn’t intend to see ever again. Let it rot, he said with finality. But yesterday the cops had called. His wife had answered, and if it weren’t...
“It strikes me as funny that no one thought I had the situation under control,” the Princess said. “It’s not like I didn’t have an outstanding track record of saving people, blowing up the bad guys, and generally being badass before the so-called kidnapping. Ha. Kidnapping. That’s what they called it. You want the truth?...
It happened at night, the separation. The wet snap and the gradual split and Lester’s body became thoughts and wind as he drifted out the window of the man’s loft. Lester woke miles away, alone and dark and long in the rising light of the sun. He wandered for a while, picked up food from...
I tell myself that… they won’t know I didn’t find the character that pulled the entire story together until the end, because of course there had to be a Franciscan nun showing up at his door wait…not a nun, a black dragon that blows confetti out of its nostrils I tell myself that…...
That old TV never did work, but that didn’t stop grandad from sitting out by the garage to stare at the thing for hours. It was my job to keep his glass of lemonade filled up while he was out there. He would hush me if I tried to talk to him. “Just fill the...
In the beginning of the world, there was a bird, small and ugly, waddling on the ground, unaware it had wings. It sang to the blue skies, voice soaring and dipping, longing and magic infused within every note. This went on for days and then weeks until the sky reached down and cradled the bird...
A shopping cart saved my life. Don’t look at me that way…I’m old, but I still got all my marbles. I’ve had this cart since 1978, when I had my first baby. We didn’t have the fancy strollers then and even if we did, I couldn’t afford one. I had to borrow this cart from...
He was gone long enough that the sting should’ve eased. But it hadn’t. She saw him everywhere like he’d touched everything and branded it his before leaving. It started a few weeks back, her moving out pieces of furniture from the house. Carrying lamps and vases, pictures and throw rugs across the street to the...
You don’t need to believe in urban legends or myths, to make them true. Take the multiple UFO sightings in New Mexico. You’ve heard about them, maybe even seen them for yourself—the glowing disks or triangles of light. Speculations of alien spies have been around for decades. Movies depict willowy, big-eyed beings stranded on...
Some say the Guardians of Time created this door to drive men insane. But that’s a bunch of malarkey. This is a rumor spread by those who obsess about the past or the future, who want to alter an outcome in either way. They search for keys in hopes they will unlock the door to...
You might think it strange, me sitting here, waiting for the sun to set, to watch the stars pop out one by one after I’ve just done what I’ve done. From up here, I see the house burn, flames like long tongues licking the sky. If you’ve ever started a fire, stood within fingerling...
You wouldn’t know it, but this is her home, in the penthouse suite forever rented. Not her ghost, but the blond movie star in the flesh. Rumor and time had spun a fine yarn of depression and addiction into her narrative. How convenient, she thought. For she was not so much depressed as bored with...
I sucked out the last of the slush from the bottom of my Freezie as I faced the genie. I couldn’t find his lamp, so I rubbed the gritty block wall just over his eyes—rubbing until my hands turned raw. I didn’t trust him, not for a minute. But I wanted to cover all my...
me: Did you feed him? him: I didn’t. You told me never to do that, so I didn’t. me: How did he get here? him: I don’t know. Maybe he followed me home last night. me: He’s old and rusty and his hind end sags. He needs a doctor. It’ll cost....
“You’ve had a most unusual experience, would you tell us about it?” asks the talk show host. “I heard about the Pearly Gates all my life. I had certain expectations, perhaps like most of you,” I look out at the studio audience, not for dramatic effect as some might think, but to see if...
I was parked on the 3rd level but I kept climbing, breathing my way to the 5th. The door was a grimier version of what I remember. You’re parking spot is taken by a Range Rover. Black. Spotless. Somehow, I think you’d hate that it wasn’t an old Bronco or something vintage cool––or maybe...
I’m writing your name on a bar napkin, the edges sopping from beer glass sweat. I missed work three days in a row––keep calling in sick but I’m not sure what’s wrong. Maybe gravity just stopped holding me down. This morning I passed the coffee shop, the one where I first saw you. I...
Mrs. Marcy, the neighbor from upstairs, said she saw you the other night, shivering behind the Greyhound Bus Station. I went to look for myself. There was an old man warming his hands over a burning garbage can. I asked if he’d seen a brown eyed girl with a missing pinkie finger. He didn’t answer,...
There were wildflowers, yellow and purple, growing wild in the fields. The kind of flowers you would make me pull over for. To take a picture of. Or maybe to pick a few. Two stops back I thought I saw you in a blue rusted pickup, chewing gum like it was trying to escape...
I think I came here once before. There was two or maybe five of us following lipstick clues written on recipe cards. I’d found one duck taped to the bottom of the bench, the lipstick smeared and ripped off along with the tape. We laughed, tossed it to the wind and went for shots...
Just think, you can pull it behind. Oh, you don’t have a vehicle. You have a bike. A motor bike? Oh. BMX. OK. Well, it does have a sturdy shell and the blinds mostly work. There’s even room for entertaining. You don’t entertain? Well then… *deep sigh* It’s the perfect place to hole up and...
They left it there. As if it hadn’t held all they owned––the scrounged up, the stolen and the bartered. There was a time when it was full, heaped with what they thought of as survival gear. The first day out, on the road outside the city, they knew only two things would keep them alive,...
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