Jamieson Wolf
Number-one bestselling author
Who I Had Been – A Poem
I stepped onto
the elevator and
noticed him immediately.
He had a
shocked look on
his face and
then I watched
as his eyes
changed from the
widened gaze of
surprise to the
narrowed gaze of
contempt. A little
smirk played around
the corners of
his lips, thinned
to a small
line. When the
elevator was empty
of others, he
said to me:
“Is your name Jamie ______?”
He looked curious
at what my
answer would be.
“That used to be my name.”
I said to him.
His voice was
filled with derision.
“You used to date a girl named _______?”
I nodded, shocked
that this person
who was a
stranger to me
knew who I
was. His grin
widened and the
malicious twinkle in
his eyes brightened.
“I’m __________”
He said, as
if triumphant,
as if he
had somehow found
me wanting, even
after all these
years. Immediately, a
fog from the
past rose up
inside my head.
The fog was
brought me back
to who I had been.
Shrouded in darkness
and seduced by
shadows, I looked
at the child
that I had
been: shrouded in
fear, I wore
another’s hatred like
a mantle of
glass. The cuts
that had been
absent for so
long showed again
on my body,
slashed into my
skin with harsh
words and the
blade of a
knife. In the
fog, I heard
his laughter that
sang out whenever
he was near
me. I shook
myself out of
the fog and
looked at this
man-child that had
held onto his
hatred of me
for over twenty
years. I thought
how small his
life must be
to hold onto
that kind of
darkness.
He vibrated hatred
and his lips
curved again in
a smile that
held no warmth.
“It’s nice to see you again Jamie.”
I shook my head.
“That’s not who I am anymore.”
I said, stepping
off the elevator
and leaving him,
and what he
represented, in the
past where he
belonged.
Alaska Awakening – A Poem
The boat moved through the water,
making no sound. The only noises
were the sound of wind and
the crack of ice in the distance.
The water was almost frozen and had
taken on an almost gel-like quality.
It looked as if it would hold my weight
should I happen to fall into it,
the coldness of it carrying me onward.
There were birds flying through the
air around us and the sun
was so bright, so brilliant,
that I almost had to shield my eyes
against its luminosity.
As we approached the mountains,
the boat moving silently
though the almost frozen water,
the mountains became bigger
and the glaciers atop of them
shone in all shades of blue and white,
telling stories of how they
came to be and where they came from.
I held my husbands’ hand
and watched the mountains and glaciers
become even bigger as we moved closer
and was struck with the stories
that they could tell,
the tales that they could weave
of what had come before.
I thought to myself:
‘They were here when time began. They were here when the world was formed and have endured.’
Looking at the land before me,
thousands of miles of rock and ice
that lay uninhabited and filled the horizon,
so much larger than our boat and so much bigger
than myself.
The world back home seemed foreign
and time stood still.
I looked at the shades of blue within the ice,
at the land that had moved and shaped itself
over time immortal
and thought to myself:
‘How very small I am. I am but a second in the span of time, a pinprick of light, merely a drop of water within the ocean of the world.’
I looked at the world around me that
had been waiting for me all this time
and felt tears come to my eyes.
I could only cry as there were no words
to describe what I was seeing.
My tears fell to the water,
becoming one with the frozen waters.
My spirit sighed in contentment,
soaking up the light of that Alaskan sun,
feeling awake as it never had
before.
The Mortal Border- A Flash Fiction Story
“Do you have it?” Gale asked. He held out a small vial.
She gave him an insulted look. “Of course, I do. What do you take me for? One of your regular fucking idiots?” She held out a ghostly white finger and he watched as some of he essence filled the vial like smoke.
He almost laughed and would have, if not for the look upon her face. “No, of course not.”
“Good.” Charlotte said. “I’m not here to play around.” She made a motion with her hand that looked as if she were cutting the air. A man stepped out of the shadows. He loomed tall and looked down upon him with an unsmiling face.
“This is my associate Teddy. He will give you everything you need.” She made that motion again, as if the air around her could be cut to shreds.
A bag of money landed on the table with a solid thunk! that made him jump.
She let out a shrill cackle that scratched at his skin like a hand of nails. “Are the living always so jumpy? Or is it just you?” She said.
She made that cutting motion one final time and was gone as if she had never been there.
Teddy said nothing. Gale sighed, took the bag of money and left while he still had all his limbs intact.
*
“We’re running out of time.” Jax said.
Gale’s voice was tense when he replied. “I know.”
“You probably shouldn’t have taken her money.”
“I know, but when have you ever known me to turn down a client?”
Jax stroked his left cheek. “You never do. But this time, you should have.”
“You know the rules. They come to me to live again. They pay me and I find them a body. Simple as that.”
Jax gave him a hard look, narrowing his green eyes and looking even more beautiful to Gale. “You know it’s not that simple.”
“Fine, do you want the advert text? Live beyond the mortal border of skin!”
Jax gave him an even harder look reducing his eyes to slits. “You know it’s not that simple, Gale! Why’d you take her fucking money? You have to find a body that is willing to take a soul across the border of its skin. We’ve been over this before.”
Gale took Jax’s face in his hands. “Why are you so upset?”
“You didn’t know her when she was alive, Gale. She’s not called the black widow for nothing. She cut the necks of nine husbands. Your week is almost up. What are you going to do if you don’t find a body?”
Gale shivered. “I don’t know. I’ve looked in all the normal places. Morgue’s, funeral parlors, you know. But I can’t find any shell willing to take her beyond the barrier of its skin.” He frowned in worry.
“How much time do you have left?”
Gale swallowed thickly. “I have one day.”
*
He tried not to pace. He tried but wasn’t doing a very good job. He knew that he would not be able to find a body for the Black Widow. He had communicated with every cadaver that he could find, male or female, and no one wanted to even consider it.
People didn’t know that the skin also held its own magic within its barriers. Only spirits that were welcome could cross. Gale had carried the tiny vial and tried to see if any bodies would take her spirit, if the skin would let her live again. He hadn’t found any takers.
“I don’t know what to do.” Gale whispered urgently.
Jax had a thoughtful look on his face. “What kind of body does it have to be?”
Turning, Gale gave him a look of confusion. “What do you mean? A body is a body, any body will do.”
“Yes, but does it have to be…human? She just wants to live again, right? If you say that any body will do…”
“…I just need to find one.”
Jax narrowed his eyes and looked into the dark corners of their bedsit. “You say that she was called the Black Widow?”
“Yes, she was.”
“Then this will do nicely.” Jax said, grabbing a tea cup and reaching into the dark with it. He brought his hands back into the light and Gale saw a black spider quivering inside the cup. “You say that there is a magic inside the skin, the mortal barrier, but what if the creature isn’t mortal? There would be no such resistance, would there?”
A look of dawning comprehension came over Gale’s face. “I really do love how your brain works. But there is one concern.”
“What is that?”
“I’ve only ever used human spirits and human bodies. There is no telling what will happen if I try to put a human spirit inside that of an insect.”
“What is the alternative?”
“Teddy returns with Charlotte’s spirit and he kills me.”
“Well, we can’t have that, now can we?”
“No, I suppose not.”
Gale reached into his jacket and took out the vial containing the fingerprint of Charlotte’s spirit. Gently, he undid the stopper and poured the contents over the spider.
The spider began to glow, the black softening to grey as if it were made of shadows. The glowing intensified and Gale knew that the spirit was taking over that of the spiders. When it stopped, they both looked down into the cup.
Charlotte blinked her eyes. “Well, I must say, I feel marvellous. Wait, why are there eight of you, Gale?”
“Well, you said you wanted another body. I found you one.”
Charlotte made a cutting motion with one of her legs. “What body did you find for me Gale?” She contorted herself and looked. “You absolute bastard! We had a deal!”
“The deal was to find you a body. I have done so.”
Gale went to the window and threw the spider into the air. Where it landed, he never knew.
Of Echoes Born by ‘Nathan Burgoine – A Book Review
There is colour all around us.
Reds can mean many things, such as the outpouring of emotion. Yellows can mean contentment and browns can represent the growth of something within us. Colour can symbolize many things, but sometimes that colour is just an echo, a faded brush stroke on a canvass, much like the emotion that conjured it. That colour becomes a spirit, a moment caught in time, a wish never fulfilled…
Colours run all throughout Of Echoes Born, the new short story collection by ‘Nathan Burgoine. I am always apprehensive when I approach a collection of short stories. Often, there are usually only two or three really good stories, a smattering of just okay stories and the rest are filler. However, every story contained in Of Echoes Born is a knockout and every one of them left me emotionally moved.
Weaving together all the stories are ruminations on colours, on what different colours mean when people see them. In the stories, we are shown the lives of people that are so real, so lifelike that it is almost as if we could reach into the pages and touch them.
The stories also feature magical realism at its finest and most beautiful. All of the stories left me breathless at the end. Burgoine has a deft hand with a pen and has crafted twelve perfect jewels, twelve perfect tales that will thrill, entrance and move you.
I was surprised by how moved I was by these stories. Each of them packed a punch but what struck me about most of them was how they could have been written about me. Quite often, the stories featured stories about the oddball, the gork or deek (geek and dork, dork and geek), the odd man out; I was and am that man.
I’ve often felt uncomfortable in my own skin. This is probably why I connected so closely to these stories. There is something for everyone within this collection including mysteries, magic and mysticism.
I won’t give you a rundown of each of the stories or tell you which story is my favourite; I loved the entire collection. Besides, I don’t want to ruin any of it for you. I want you to do what I did: open the book to page one and read. You will be amazed, you will be enthralled, you will be enchanted. It’s taken me quite a while to write a review for this book, mostly because I didn’t think I could find the right words to say how much I loved it.
I finished the book a changed person. That is the power contained within these stories. I can only hope you feel the same way.
A Patchwork of Time – A Poem
As I approach
my fortieth year,
I have been
studying my body
for signs of change.
I have been wondering:
Have I lived enough?
Have I strived on with courage?
Have I embraced my life?
I look down at everything
that makes up my body,
that has marked a moment
in my life, a memory
preserved upon my skin.
On my right wrist,
there is a marking
shaped like a scar
to remind me
that we can overcome
what scars us.
There is a marking
on my left wrist
which reminds me
that some deaths are not physical
and those too can be overcome.
It carries within it
one of my happiest memories,
so close to actual magic that
it still thrills me,
that moment when
I became a real wizard
and learned to fly.
There is a spot near my left nostril
that carries the sharp scent
of the pink lemonade
that my grandmother used to make for me.
There is a scar on my right knee
from when I went zip lining
in the congo of Costa Rica
and I can still hear the rush of wind
when I run my finger along it.
Along the curve of my lips,
there is the memory
of saying ‘I do’ to my husband;
along the edge of my right ear
is the sound of him saying the same.
Words cover my skin,
quotes from books that have stayed with me
throughout the years, written in
a cursive script, as if they were written
on the moment that I read them:
“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live…”
“Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”
“If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.”
“Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t you think?”
“Evil, however powerful it seemed, could be undone by its own appetite.”
I find each quote
at its beginning and
trace my fingers
over the words to their end.
I hold all of this within in my skin,
a patchwork of time passed
and time yet to come.
Looking down at my body
and everything it contains,
I know that I’ve lived,
that I am courageous and have strength
and that I have embraced life and everything
that it has to offer
to the fullest.
As I approach
my fortieth year,
I look at
my body and
wonder what else
life has in store…
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Jamieson Wolf has written a compelling story about navigating multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy. His story will touch your heart, make you cry, then laugh, and inspire you. A touching memoir with a bit of magic…and tarot! ~ Theresa Reed, author of The Tarot Coloring Book
Jamieson Wolf 