Arwyn Sherman
swamp creature that writes stories / chao incarnate
occasionally leaves the bog to forage
IG: feral.x.witch
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.
Arwyn ShermanPublished 27 days 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.
Arwyn ShermanPublished 30 days 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.
Arwyn ShermanPublished about a month 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.
Arwyn ShermanPublished about a month ago in Petlife
the violence within the heart
salmon I’ve been asked to name the thing inside myself that hates me and all i can think of is how awkwardly big your mouth is but
Arwyn ShermanPublished 2 months ago in Poets
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.
Arwyn ShermanPublished 2 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.
Arwyn ShermanPublished 2 months ago in Families
Mistaken Identity
“You have to take in that cat, it’s homeless,” John says, propped like usual on my cement steps, one hand curled around a cigarette, the other pointing to a gray puff of fat smoke that darts around my housemate’s parked car.
Arwyn ShermanPublished 3 months ago in Petlife
