Jason Sheehan
Bio
I am a conservation biologist, but words and creativity have always been my favourite tools. I like to integrate possibility with fiction in what I write. A spark quickly sets fire to my mind.
Many thanks, and please consider sharing.
Achievements (1)
Stories (25/0)
Is This Dystopia?
Fantasy is a fickle thing. Sugar to our minds, sweet and oh so addictive. It permeates us all in some way. From when the wheels first begin to turn and our brains start to think, fantasy fills our thoughts, allowing us to see our world and make sense of it. To understand people as characters, and why they do as they do. Fantasy is fickle, but so too is our reality.
By Jason Sheehan3 years ago in Geeks
- Top Story - September 2021
Diary of a MisanthropeTop Story - September 2021
The first time I really questioned my species was underwater. With a nasty cut seeping red blotches into a blue expanse I could feel my heart pumping, my body reacting to all that self-preservation hyped by film, television, and literature. While Homo aquaticus has never been, and isn’t yet a thing, the wilds of underwater have this capacity to make you remember some ancestral sense of vulnerability. It is, after all, not an environment suited to the spongy bags in our chest. But it is a wondrous place, and when afforded the moment to reflect on this, underwater salts the eyes into tears. Tears of both joy and mourning.
By Jason Sheehan3 years ago in Wander
Miscreant
He knew he’d made a mistake even before the stone left his hand. Henry was tired. Great crevices carved his eyelids. A blackness more thorough than that perceived of him threatened his sunken features, and all of it was nothing compared to the weight that tugged his brow. That is what madness does to a person, and he must be mad. Why else would they mock him so?
By Jason Sheehan3 years ago in Fiction
Act 2
It’s 1995. A five-year-old sings broken lines of Jingle Bells while his father warms him in the night air with big, bear arms. The timbre of the crowd is rich under candlelight. His dad’s oaky rasp chief amongst them. Dominic doesn’t know all the words, but the jingle bells bit is easy enough. He is enthusiastic as any child is at Christmas, his voice coarse as smoky air is sucked down with each inhale.
By Jason Sheehan3 years ago in Fiction
Chloros
“Ninety-four. Ninety-five. Ninety-six.” Each curving line was a bold maroon in the wet, the yellow between them closer to gold, almost amber. The Eucalyptus tree stretched over sixty metres across the ground now. A mountain ash Dad called it, the torn up roots leaving a hole beneath them that could bury a car. As Viri stood where the forestry team had started carving up the trunk her head reached the very centre of the growth rings she was counting.
By Jason Sheehan3 years ago in Fiction
Prelude
Her name was Dylan. The first time I saw her I was wearing someone else’s sweat. The guy next to me looked so stupid in that sombrero, bare chested with pupils like dinner plates. Every time he jumped I was coated in a fresh trail of his lather. It ruined the gig for me. I doubt he even noticed.
By Jason Sheehan3 years ago in Fiction
Gladys' Glades
They say some heroes don’t wear capes. Others order them off Amazon. Gladys was one such hero. Her self-assigned status punctuated by the golden cape donned proudly over her shoulders on the town billboard. Her printed arm pointing casually to her renowned farm, Gladys’ Glades, on the outskirts of the nearby state forest. A dreamy place discussed as though the realm of deities, which was to say it had a reputation.
By Jason Sheehan3 years ago in Fiction
- Third Place in Deep Dive Challenge
The Well-hydrated Chicken
The well-hydrated chicken does not answer to ‘The well-hydrated chicken.’ Stumbling through the front door I could murder the gumboot that trips me. My fists clench uncontrollably in jagged balls. My back tenses as I tower over it, jaws clenched as a role of invective streams off my tongue. Silenced.
By Jason Sheehan3 years ago in Fiction
Absolute Magnitude
The steam wand has never been as magical as it sounds. For Ezy, the crack and whistle of the steam was a moment of respite. A brief few seconds in which she was relieved of expectation. No need for eye contact. No need to acknowledge a new customer. It was an unspoken window of concentration in which she could exhale and forget why it was she kept doing this.
By Jason Sheehan3 years ago in Fiction
Spud
I always knew I would suffer a vegetable-related death. It’s hereditary. My grandpa had his head replaced by a cabbage after an accident with a produce truck. My great-uncle had quite literally choked on an artichoke. An older cousin had drowned after passing out in a bowl of stewed onions, and more recently my dad had an unfortunate incident with a soup of purple carrots. Apparently some people can have a rare allergy to the pigment in a purple carrot’s skin. Anthocyanin it's called. Perhaps that was why the Dutch liked them orange.
By Jason Sheehan3 years ago in Fiction