Isaac Kaaren
Bio
Astrophile and wannabe wizard, I am an exhausted typist for my daydreams.
Stories (14/0)
Concrete Walls
Sitting idly at my desk at work, I was struck by a sudden, indelible need to do something worthwhile, to give something of myself. Armed with a few days off over the course of the week and a love of the arts, I landed on volunteering at an art gallery.
By Isaac Kaaren2 years ago in Motivation
The Brain Patron
I am a brain patron. It’s an easy job if you have a beating heart and aren’t too squeamish about needles and the state of your own brain. The pay isn’t amazing but it leaves me plenty of time to read or to write or just take a nice nap in the quiet, dim room.
By Isaac Kaaren2 years ago in Fiction
Look Through the Eyes of Its Skull
Kill the beast, look through the eyes of its skull, and you will see the way home. That’s what the fae-mother told you in exchange for a memory and the pin in your hair. You don’t remember what you gave away, but you remember the tale she told you and the red arrow she placed in your pocket.
By Isaac Kaaren2 years ago in Fiction
The Voice of Weskam Station
Hubert Malcolm Davies was always the voice of Weskam Station. This tiny station, native to a village remarkable only for its lack of remarkability, saw the same faces pass every day. At dawn, the children embarked toward the schools of the neighboring towns, the adults off to work at their various locales, and the elders set out to brunch with their friends in the more sizable cities. But in the evening they would all return to the sound of Hubert's grandfatherly voice welcoming them back home.
By Isaac Kaaren2 years ago in Fiction
Transient Mind
Back when Cohen was being wheeled through the hospital, his heart was beating out of his chest. All at once it was fending off the disease, accelerating with his nerves, and drawing on the residual chaos of an endless cast of masked personnel handing him off through a tangle of elevators and corridors. But now, alone in the silence of his ward, the pulsing thumped through his head like the body of a drum, nearly masking the beeping of the machines.
By Isaac Kaaren2 years ago in Fiction
Starship-Killer on the Loom
They killed the starship-killer; I’m just lucky they didn’t kill me too. Warband ships are funny like that. They’ll throw you down and cut you up on the steel floor, smash the ship-killer drive, grind it under their boots, and kick the shrapnel in your eyes. They’ll lock you up and make you grovel for your life and in the end they let you live.
By Isaac Kaaren2 years ago in Fiction
Monachopsis
You walk to the bus station in the rain, your left hand in a fist as it almost always is, simultaneously very aware of everything around you yet lost in another world. You stomp in every puddle, hoping you’ll fall through, peek through every bush and thicket, looking for something askew. But everything is hopelessly normal just like it always is.
By Isaac Kaaren2 years ago in Fiction
The Sunshield's Heat
After a time I knew better than to wear my uniform on the train. Somehow the protestors and demonstrators had enough time and energy each and every morning to gather at the station and harass anyone with the Sunshield patch on their jumpsuit.
By Isaac Kaaren2 years ago in Futurism