Arwyn Sherman
Bio
swamp creature that writes stories / chao incarnate
occasionally leaves the bog to forage
IG: feral.x.creature
Stories (22/0)
The Forest
Grandpa always says to be careful walking home after dark. Mama always scoffs, claims it’s superstition and there’s nothing to worry about but even she stays indoors after dark. The path to our house is through a thick patch of woods, barren now since its winter. Our footprints stark in the snow as we trek to the small clearing that houses our cabin. With the sun going early nowadays, I end up walking home when all these ghosts and creatures are supposed to be out and about. Most days, I run as fast as I can from the corner the bus drops me off at and the front door but today I sprained my ankle chasing Claudia around so I begin my trek home on a slow limp, the forest heavy and silent around me. I think about what the bus driver must see, a small girl, bundled in an unevenly knitted scarf and her grandfather’s old beat up work jacket, tumbling into the dark slice of a trailhead. The woods, swallowing me whole as the sky darkens.
By Arwyn Sherman4 months ago in Fiction
Femme and Fatale
I developed an allergy to make up in late 2020 after ten years of wearing it. To this day I'm not sure what caused it. What I do know is that I cannot wear make up without getting an eczema like rash across my eyes. A not-cool and irritable raccoon mask.
By Arwyn Sherman5 months ago in Confessions
Summer
Summer is Tasia’s favorite season, the long days of heat and freedom; scorching sidewalks for the neighborhood kids to run their bikes along. They became a pack during the hotter months, roving from one yard to the next, etching chalk drawings down the cul-de-sac. Banding together until school scattered them, like seeds flung into the wind they blew to their own social circles, own cliques that satellite independently. But suburbia in the summer meant parents who worked and couldn’t give rides to anyone’s friends' houses, isolated pods that turned to one another to shake out the boredom that reeked from their pores.
By Arwyn Sherman5 months ago in Fiction
In Our Hollow Heart We Sing
CN: Includes themes of su*cide, grief, and loss What the movies get wrong about high school is that it is, for the most part, incredibly boring. No lush gossip crews and bounding parties that rival a rave. Just classes and awkward texts, muted hang outs while you wait for the bus to take you home or to your after school job. Maybe there are other people who have the live fast die young life of the Disney channel but Marie had yet to find it. Not that she hadn’t looked, making sure her hair was cut in the new style, pants the right fit with a crop top that barely made the school dress code. She’d tried. But the classes remain monotonous and the teacher’s uninspiring, hers confusing and at times abrasive. It wasn’t their fault though, Marie just hated learning anything that didn’t affect her day to day life. Besides health class, which taught her everything she could possibly want to know about the ways her brain could fail her and render her melancholic-ly depressed or starkly insane, not much was applicable. Her mother cautioned that in the future these other things would be relevant but Marie didn’t much care for concerns of in college or when you’re grown up. Considering her brother hadn’t made it to either of those milestones, preferring instead to intentionally exit existence in front of a semi truck before his sixteenth birthday, Marie was not particularly concerned about making any long term plans.
By Arwyn Sherman6 months ago in Fiction
The Beachcombers
The clouds are low and heavy in the sky, rolling in like a storm of wild horses cantering across the plains. Lailah doesn’t mind the cold, the fall is one of the few times one can go to the beach and not be overrun by tourists in Maine. The sand chills her toes, makes the pads of her feet numb as she trots along the opening that feeds into the Kennebec river. Rachel isn’t far behind, barely visible through the fog but loudly thundering towards Lailah, her screech echoing along the empty sand as she hits washed up seaweed.
By Arwyn Sherman7 months ago in Horror
A Place of Darkness
When Shelbi asks to go into the tunnels I immediately say no. She’s standing at my front door with her lips pouting, arms littered with the cheap plastic jewelry from the gas station down the street. We spent hours over the summer scrounging the couches and inner recesses of our mother’s apartments trying to find quarters to spend there. Now, with the first day of sixth grade approaching and our respective homes mined of any stray coins, she’s asking to go into the waterway.
By Arwyn Sherman7 months ago in Fiction
Ori v. Dragon
Ori came from the streets. Or, more accurately, from the porch. Set outside by an overwhelmed owner, she waited all night in the rain until discovered by Sucker #1 (me) who promptly threw her and her filthy cage into my car and drove off after a twelve hour overnight shift. She was a shivering timid thing who curled up against my neck for the ride, watching the sun come up as we parked at my house. My intent was to drive her to the shelter after some sleep but she caught my eye for too long and, after a few beats of uninterrupted contact, decided she was part of my menagerie.
By Arwyn Sherman7 months ago in Petlife
Congress Street Luxury
My first apartment was a dirty two bedroom on the top floor of a business that didn't sell anything but stale chips and late night meetings. My mail was stolen regularly and I took smoke breaks by a house people entered and exited through a busted window. The entire building smelled of stale blunts and filth. I loved it.
By Arwyn Sherman8 months ago in Journal
Baloo
The cat looked rough, the patchy fluff of outdoor living and dirt on his light color paws. He was an orange tabby cat, but to my seven year old eyes he was a tiger. Majestic, keen on exploration, and powerful. I watched him from the back door of my southern California home, nose pressed against the warm glass. With nonchalant swagger, he hopped up on the wooden fence that supported the low hanging avocado tree branch and part of me wondered if cats like avocado too. I knew our cats ate dry food from the pantry, but this cat seemed a little more wild than them.
By Arwyn Sherman8 months ago in Families
