Dream Dark Stories

Tag: writing

  • Whoooo, Now What?

    I finished it. Finally finished it. After pages and pages had been pillaged, bagged, smoked, rewrote, gouged, burned, reversed, jumbled, rewritten again, and again, smashed to oblivion, and finally written again. It’s finished. 

    I sigh with a joyous breath of calm and scan through, marking everything, editing every sentence, and character that’s gleaming out from every page.  I smile with a slight grimace, unsure, where’s this unsurity ensuing from? Why don’t I celebrate? I’m done. But there’s so much more to this isnt there?

    Why did I rush this? Why did I dedicate the last two and a half years to this, and then, here near the end, blast through with an urgent rapping at the helm? I’d scoured every page front and back, edited from beginning to end, and gave my friend a rounded, well-thought-out, polished version of his life story. Commas are in place, run-on sentences excised, paragraphs etched and modeled to represent the best of this man. I didn’t want to take away the easy-going nature of John’s character and spirit, so I let him write from his point of view as it is when it is. Something is moving in his writing as though he remembers these old memories and moments as though they happened in the now. I find it comforting, and I enjoy the way he recalls this and that so effortlessly. And now I’m done.

    So why is there a hollow feeling within? Why does my heart feel heavy? I’m proud of my work and being finished, but there’s a salt to the air and my breath holds.

    He’s dying, matter of fact. Two weeks ago, he’d told me of his diagnosis. I felt stunned, distraught,  and a harrowing sadness digging deeper than I’d expected. He hadn’t smiled, giving this information; if so, it was meek and quick, but he told me sincerely and with not a quiver in his throat. I tried to stay collected and calm, remembering I’m not dying, well, not like he is, and this isn’t about me. But then I think of him and how he’s become a surrogate father and a great friend, how he’s introduced me to the calmness of being and gentleness of the heart that leaves me feeling cleansed and detoxed of the poisons from my past. He’s taught me how to allow forgiveness from others and what it means to be humble. He’s shown me humility and grace, and I’m left here, not knowing what to say to him to thank him.

    Now, thinking in the darkness, writing this out, I think I know why I pushed it out quickly, like ripping a band-aid off.  I’m afraid of saying goodbye, but want to give him the gift of a finished book before he’s gone.

    It seems contradictory to the unspoken wants left behind, meaning plenty but never being mentioned, and to die with what’s to come.

    C’est La Vie

    NOSCE TE IPSUM

    I

  • To Write or Not to Write.

    It is like pulling teeth with a screwdriver. Writing that is. I’ll have these tendrils of an idea that I try to grasp and spin, but it runs from my hands like slippery sinew. I hesitate and cower at the helm with pen in hand, waiting to scribble something better than nothing. But I pause and tremble at the thought. Why?

    Because I’m not who I used to be, and the shell of what I’ve become is dry and brittle. My mind is something else nowadays, too, that leaves me shielding away from what i dream of doing on a daily but still I hesitate and leave it bare. 

    It’s not that I’m incapable, I’m nervous of what I’m capable of or not now, anxious that it’s senseless dribble seeking an ear, meaning to be read.  I wait. Take the pen to paper and let it go. The everlasting joys of writing eeks out like a clogged fountain pen spurting out bits and pieces. It’s not effortless anymore. I take to that helm so delicately, nervous that I’ll pierce through the otherside looking for a better route but that’s not right. Is it?

    It clammers at the head, chisels at my heart and begs to be splayed out. What to do?

    C’est La Vie

    NOSCE TE IPSUM

  • Write Godammit!!

    The pen sits heavy in my hand, palms are sweaty and the page glares up at me with a resonance that has me shield my eyes and shake my head. I stare aimlessly down and struggle to bring the fountain head down with my squinted eyes. There’s a vibrating of tenuous pressure leaving me quivering with fear of what will take place when pen meets paper. I hesitate for only a brief moment and take aim assaulting the screaming bleached sheet. The scribbling is chaotic, misshapen but growing and gnashing at the words while they crawl away at what was once a clean piece. My heart sits heavy, presses against my ribs and agonizingly begs for more. It begins to take shape though, a resonating beam of self issues from the sheet and screams for more, hollers for a pedestal and burrows further in. What grows is not beauty,  nor decrepit. It heaves with a shudder and breaths its first breath. Something becomes from nothing and takes forefront of the mind, the heart, and bleeds everlasting.

    C’est La Vie

    NOSCE TE IPSUM

  • To Lose Your Mind.

    My feet are falling from the ground. Encapsulated within a bubble of fright and damage, let asunder the brain so tender. Take a twisted flicker flame to the tinder box of my mind like flint to the matchbox and let it torch my sky a’light. Darkness shrouds the curtain that drapes over my soul entrapped within the basket called life like a bacon wrapped souffle waiting for devouring teeth gnashing, gnawing, feeding off of my heart trembling, floundering, and drowning, gagging down truth like a button nosed ass. Frozen in silence, breathing gasping upon skin on skin, waiting for the cold to relinquish, and let me feel.  Clawing inside, allowing the ghost to take front and center, how did I lose it so badly? Lose it so freely and epically? How oh how? Let’s go with a guess and call it crawling inside to die a shamed death of something forgotten and dead no longer clawing for life’s surging light but that’s just looking too closely. A call on the light, the moon, the shining pot of gold that is the sun, for the light brings salvation, a cleansing, and something brighter to unfold.

    C’est La Vie

    NOSCE TE IPSUM

  • A Day in Thought

    I’m off alone in silence not minding the serenade that collapses before me. Hold me. I don’t know what keeps me wrapped within. I’m shattered to think that I’m done, that my brain has gone kaput, but the words don’t seem to meet my head with the fingers tapping and tapping. I sit and freeze. Unaware. Frightened by the littlest movement. Unmoved. And then I meet a wall tall and bearing down with gritted smile shit teeth. This is my brain snapping…my brain losing sight of what’s in front of me. I sit still and silent letting the cacophony of sound above drench over me burden me with your movement…blank.

    Staring off, bemused and bored unfixed, loosely hanging, dangling without an attachment to the gripping sense of sensibility. The stone and fury , the hurry and storm, constant relations to be bequeathed.

    I ponder the thought that leads me astray, the things that reflect within the benefit of the outside picture. I take to the sky, take to the freedom that has been unregistered and laid at the feet of the helm. I ponder to think, to think to be amiss and remiss the absolute before me. I risk the fall of what lays ahead. I ponder to think, to be aligned with you and me forever to be. I ponder, wonder, and dream, dream of this being rectified and realigned to fit the setting and project a fuller me.

    C’est La Vie

    NOSCE TE IPSUM

    ‘Know Thyself’

  • Day Two Hundred and Ninety-Six, February 16th, 2025 & Prompt Soup #0.75

    What food would you say is your specialty?

    Hi-ho and hello.

    It’s been too long since I’ve truly delved into myself with cooking but I guess I’d say my go to and specialty would be green Chili.

    Simple as that.

    A Poem by Matthew Berg

    A darkened blanket, space included, stars sparse and the light dwindles.

    Shrouded in cotton, Adorned in twilights last dying light.

    A flitter and flutter, a last dying gasp at the decay of it all.

    The heart’s dwindling rhythm loses traction from its groove.

    A quiet example of detriment and extinguished salvation. 

    C’est La Vie

    NOSCE TE IPSUM

    ‘KNOW THYSELF’

  • Day One Hundred & Seventy-Three, June 21st, 2024

    Hi-ho and hello.

    ENJOI!!!

    The more I write the easier it comes, the quicker the collection of everything in my mind is able to go to the floor and be swept up in an ordered manner. The thing is…it’s it just more and more practice that took nearly half a year.

    But what wait, it’s not that simple is it’s im over here forgetting day after day still behind even if it’s a day, I’m still behind.

    But the writing is still easier .. jesus I just want to write pt. 3 finally, finally out of my little hole and needing to get back into the gold of my art and craft.

    C’est La Vie

    Good night and good morning, good morning and good night. May the day before you be blissful, and may that night that gently caresses you and brain dream effortlessly.

    I truly thank you for your support and continued coming back in again, Thank You.

    NOSCE TE IPSUM

  • Day One Hundred and Thirty-One, May 10th, 2024

    Hi-ho and hello.

    I come today with something short, brief, and encapsulating things figured and the humor or, I guess we can call it irony. But then again there’s context… A nuance to the whole of what I share today. So to start with I was an odd kid, I had friends most definitely, some were decent, some were brief, others ruinous. And oddly the memories are not of friends, the thing I’m going to talk about today it’s not connected to the friends that were my age, which I find odd.

    The thing is though once middle school started I noticed that it was more than easy to talk to an adult, it was easier to convey the perspective and the ideas with those that were not my peers…hahaha, though there were a handful of people the same age that somewhat got it, somewhat understood the humor or direction of what the conversation entailed. But for some odd f****** reason when it came to talking to teachers especially the English ones, talking was effortless.

    It was the start of actually feeling like I was in the skin I belonged in. There was this ability in being able to relate with something outside of me and the understanding of the nuances within storytelling, the riveting displays of character, theme, environment, sociological elements, psychological barriers that created such variables to the telling of each story through growing up, this became more and more exciting.

    Once High school came I was able to find two very inspiring and motivating people. Of course, they were both English instructors. They aired to building up my own collection, curious endeavours, great reads, and unexpected journeys.

    Now here is the thing they both taught, both nearing an identical phrasing and a sentimental variation which was this: Write everyday, no matter what, at least 3,000 words a day.

    It took me a minute, took a couple of years as a matter of fact, but finally I’ve grasped the flow that fits and I manage close to 4,000 words give or take a couple.

    I’m grateful for this teaching, grateful for what it’s brought to me in keeping creative, dreaming, and sharing the ideas that come at a whim. I don’t know what day of the hundred and thirty something that we’re at today, but I’ve made mention of following my dream and doing everything I can to at least maintain a partial grasp if not a good and prevalent grasp to that dream. So I share, and I will continue to write, in hopes that like most people who are here on WordPress we hope that we affect and help at least someone. Even if it’s just one. So to you I thank you.

    Write. Write to the heart’s desire and be you, don’t shy away from who you can be, trust it, don’t squander your soul. It deserves more, give it the time.

    C’est La Vie

    Good night and good morning, good morning and good night. May the serenity of that voice that comes in on the last track for the playlist shared, I hope you take that with your heart today and I hope that your morning, day, and the night cherishes your heart and your wants.

    Nosce Te Ipsum

  • Day Sixty, February 29th, 2024

    Hello and Hi-ho

    I’ve been feeling guilty for my friend and the memoir. Given he’s writing and I’m editing, I feel that there’s an expectation to hat it’d be whipped up and finalized sooner. However this is merely my own fear, given we’ve shared many a discussion of life and the pursuit and an understanding it may take time, more time than expected. So why the guilt?

    I think of Neil Gaiman’s ‘View From the Cheap Seats’ an autobiographical that covers life and growing, writing and love, comics and being a husband, parent, and the tribulations that transpire throughout. But, I’m here to discuss Harlan Ellison, his soapbox, and the project he went on to show and demystify the idea of what it is to be a writer. Ellison would go from bookstore to bookstore at numerous locations throughout the U.S. to show the practice, the duration of idea to finger to paper, to being posted on the glass windows at whichever spot he’d be at and voila. 100 short stories later and I think, this should be like that right? 100 short stories, a little over a year of our project and I’ve made just a slight dent to the whole of what’s wanted for this memoir. But then in truth, there are long durations where Ellison admits, he’d wander, whether it was in mind or body, he’d putz about pondering the next page, next chapter, that next step. Gaiman does, King, well I don’t know, he whips them out like I eat, but I feel even he’d drift in thought, pause for a moment, maybe a day and get back to it. But that’s what it is to be writing. Thought, planning, silent and invisible outlines draped across our eyes, while we take a scalpel to it and partition, splice, and rearrange what is wanted.

    My days start with thought, planning, and almost immediately an editing to the steps I take, the writing I did the might before, what I’m doing, and what is planned to be done. What’s nearly comical, is that the more I find myself with less to do, I do more.

    I’ve found myself with two silent weeks of no Discussion Questions or subject readings for school, two minute projects, and all the time in the world to edit memoirs, paint, write for DreamDarkStories, and be a dad and husband.

    In some areas I have more success than others. Guess it turns out like that sometimes. Anyhow to those who read and if keeping track some of my stuff is dropped a little late sometimes too late so I’m going to try to drop this just a little after midnight from the last day of February.

    C’est la vie

    May you all have a wonderful night and a wonderful most glorious morning, and for those of you who are seeing the morning may it be peaceful and may the night that come be just as gentle.

    Nosce Te Ipsum

  • MS and the anger of it all…

    The ellipsis above and likely anything on my blog from day one to current is a connection to the lack of clarity that I feel in myself, not necessarily for myself but for what I’m trying to convey or say. With the last seven years being a mighty f*** all of a time, I’m finding myself struggling and I thought for a while I was struggling briefly, but that’s not the truth. I’m tired, I’m stressed, and I’m more than confused. I’m pissed. Upon

    Finding that I had MS, I didn’t expect the issues to pervade my every detail and aspect of life and everything. The worst part about it, and shame on me for even having the gall to think of it, I thought I’d have more support.

    I know right? The nerve of thinking and the dangers that came with the thought were overwhelming in that the illusion was a better aspect than that of reality. Now it’s just seen as an excuse or groaned at and disregarded in a fashion that makes every day a challenge.

    Case in point: I’m a father, husband, and writer, this means that if I have free time to write, I better make sure my family, especially my wife and son are given full and total attention. Fuck the writing. Fuck my dream and wanting to actually provide the blog with story after story. I need to have both ears pressed to my family and their beating heart.

    Though I know it’s a bit of a whine, it’s true I’m fully dedicated to my family and I definitely made some stupid mistakes that have made a reconsidering of a myriad of things but what I’ve come to knowing is that I love being a dad and I love being a husband I love being a family man in the true respects. I love being readily available for both of them I love being readily available for my teen who’s on their own journey looking for Independence… Though that Independence calls to an almost incessant asking for a bunch of free s***. Will get back to that at another point or juncture who knows.

    So the thing is my lesions are on lower part of my spine making it difficult to walk making it difficult to do certain things my knees kind of give out sometimes my hips give out but the worst aspect is I have lesions in my mother f****** brain! So when I was initially told this I didn’t really give it much thought I didn’t give it much weight cuz I was like I’m not going to let Ms knock me down very much like the commercials. And then lo and behold month by month and year by year, there was this resounding perspective that I was neglecting, I get confused, and I don’t just get confused I get lost, (as an insurance agent that’s detrimental to the f****** job). And with it I found schools become harder life has become harder and I hate acknowledging that I hate just addressing it but that’s something that I’ve realized I have to do because if not I just look like a lazy piece of crap who’s not doing anything and it’s not that. Those lesions in my brain bring a smorgasbord of nonsense words puzzle pieces oddly fitting but only for myself and no one else and I’m doing everything I can using grammarly even AI to help gained a perspective not only gain a perspective but 8 to bringing a benefit to what I’m actually trying to do.

    Which is again another reason among too many funerals, emotional weight and depression I haven’t produced shit. Sadly and ashamed, I write to you this. It is flipping hard and not having the support makes it that much harder. I’m exhausted and though I would love to write I want to write I want to write every f****** day, I want to tell stories I want to do art, I want to show what I can do and what I can bring to the story of our community, our world, our youth. So I’m trying and I promise I’m not cussing at you I’m just emotional and instead of putting myself on a video on IG or facebook, I’m talking to you the reader I am emotional and I’m doing everything I can to get my s*** back together, because I want to be a writer for the rest of my life however short or long that may be. I want to produce a memoir for this amazing man that I met named John Walker which I’m trying to work on, I want to finish up my bachelors and steer towards a masters in English. But then comes the fallacy that I don’t belong.

  • This is… Life, so it Goes

    Work in progress/Evolving by M. R. Vega

    So I’m going to do this as just me, consider this a voice-to-text kind of message out to all of you, out to any of you, out to a reader, one reader, if many. So it goes, so it may be, that is the way right?

    I like to consider myself of…let’s call it a Jack of all trades, master of none kind of character. I’m a writer I’m a storyteller I’m an idealist I may surrealist I’m Aura Boris fiend of a character that tends to recirculate upon ideas from that of another idea within an idea within an idea. Get it?

    Because straight up and to be quite frank, I don’t know if I do I know that I have a conceived idea of what I want in life and how I want to be how I want to exude a personality and type and reality however that’s not how it works is it?.

  • A Letter

    Hello. I write to you from the darkness. Before your mind imagines a gloomed dungeon or a morose location. I’m merely in the living room, and my child sleeps beside me clicking his tongue as though he was a bat in the night without a move but the drearily waving dangle that hangs from his tired left hand. His mother, my partner isn’t anywhere nearer to being awake than the rest of the house and all that makes a sound is the groaning of the game console and the tired snoring dog. They’re all but beautiful, somberly adrift in their own palaces of whatever dreams it is that takes them away from the waking hours.

    I sigh to myself, grateful that the throat is finally recovering from another bout of bronchitis, anxious about the opportunities I face this coming week, and instead of coaxing the child and his mother off to the beds, I have them sleep where the tired heads of theirs fell but if only for the time it takes to write this.

    You, like me, are likely writers hopefully readers and often dream. I cross my fingers in dear hope that you do. Whether it’s my fate of recent developments to my health or what have you, I rarely do, least of remember but a faint Deja Vu that I grasp tightly to. Hoping I remember the horrors faced to write it down for later consumption by you and my fingers that type out day after day after the shift is done. 

    The reason I write to you instead of dropping another part to the chapters that are slowly coming to fruition in this blog, it dawned on me today that my dream is quickly becoming a reality. 

    Not only has Lady Fortuna laid her eyes on me, but has graced me with a hope for a better world that I’m making my own. I’m still a student starting my senior year in college. Among the graces of being married and having healthy children, I’ve made the dream of being a writer a goal that has met a light. I’ve managed to adapt and evolve in a way that I can take care of what I want to do while also aiming in achieving the needs that can amplify the ‘What & Why’.

    I still struggle, still yearn for a day when there’s nothing to be done, but I take from the stoics, I take from the examples left to my interpretations, and managed to develop my own form of pleasantness and joy. Maybe you call that a sappy endeavour, I think ‘so what’. Isn’t that what we all aim for? It’s quickly fleeting but easily grasped nowadays, and all I have to remind myself is that I only fail if I quit. 

    It’s Bradbury that mentions this. I personally wish the man was a grandfather of mine, likely many of us do, however, I take from the lessons he left behind just as I do when I read King, Vonnegut, or the recent one of my favorites Ms. Penny. One can only achieve greatness by taking it day by day, or like Lamont states ‘Bird by Bird’. 

    Now with that, I can joyously state that I finally found a groove, not per se my groove as one may, but it’s a groove that brings resolute confidence to what motivates me. My hours for work coincide with the need to breathe and be merry, which falls into the flow of being the husband and father I always aim to be, which rounds up the ending of my nights often with this. The many parts to what will become my first hope in stories. My first step to being me, the me I’ve always aimed in being. 

    So with that I close the laptop, signing off with a wish to you and yours and with a delighted thank you for the support and continued readings of DreamDarkStories.

    Thank You. M. R. Vega

  • The Blue Chair Pt. 1

    The Blue Chair Pt. One by: M. R. Vega


    The t.v still rings with that familiar hum we’ve all come to know. A warning of the impending shutdown at the bottom of the screen eludes the remaining minutes before its screen shares nothing till another person comes to stare at the box the next day. The souls within the house are tired and restless and Jacob stares at the dog. An ailing pet of fifteen years now, if not longer, can’t but help to stink and rumble unknowingly. Jacob grimaces at the smell that wafts slowly to his nose and he gazes to his right to see his wife scrunch her nose unconsciously as she’s already in her dream realm parkouring over stairs and saving humanity or their son from dire darkness. His dreams never mimic such dramatics. He’d be so lucky.

    However, the tales of the night’s endeavours always bring a smile when they ready themselves the next day. If asked what he dreamed, he grimaces and states nothing per usual, and leaves it there. He grabs the lunches, packs the car, kisses both their child and wife goodbye before moseying on back to the office, day after day to punch in policies, daydream silently, and hate the decisions that have brought him pounding in number after number, coaxing angry clients to a cool zen mood while he clenches at his teeth with a smile.

    To Dream… : Dream by Wombo

    The remote life, in comparison to his usual nightmare, keeps his soul regulated. Keeps his demeanor casual and more coagulated than he cares to admit, however, his wife would say otherwise as she feels the heat radiate from his body in the night once they find themselves in bed later than planned each night. What she doesn’t know or neglects to inquire about is what it is that truly digs within her husband. A couple of years now and he’s not had a night’s rest that hasn’t been interrupted by his bladder needing draining, his legs needing movement, or the nuanced repetition of reading yet another chapter of another book. If only he’d open his mouth if only he’d mention the shit that tramples his dreams or drowns his thoughts giving him foresight. A thing he never asked for, though, knowing him, the wife wouldn’t be amiss to think he’d had wished to have a power of a similar type as a kid.

    Jacob the angered man still glaring at his dog starts to cry, it’s subtle, almost ignored even by him until the treading tear tickles at his nose and he wipes the moistness away. Matter of fact is, this dog, the ailing pet, is dying. It’ll be quick, the heart will stop, and her body will give a last shudder in an attempt to wake one last time. Her brain will have clicked off, her eyes will flutter, her oversized torso will give one last heave of hot breath, and slowly but surely the stink of her already rotting body will begin to deteriorate. Jacob will phone his wife in a day or two that Emily is no longer, but still can’t think of the proper way to drop such a heavy note while she teaches her students about important figures of Black History Month. This is the dream of the last month, just like the one a couple months back of the grandmother saying goodbye for the last time and him not knowing what to say or how to tell her the love she brought will never be matched. How the drive for the week after and the coming funeral won’t amount to the silent grief his wife feels quietly unanswered because that’s how she is and just to be held will be all she wishes for and like usual he’ll be there but still will never know how truly lost she is now. These are the nightmares he feels and sees, these are the silent missiles he carries throughout the days and he mentions little if ever at all.

    He’s learned painfully that mentioning anything of the preordained only sullies the truth and takes fate out of it’s motion. Atop that he’s found that making certain strides, and the little nuances within those of his dreams can tell him if it’s this life or a life of another plain that will soon be lost. How can one determine where and when it’s right to warn if even Jacob can’t tell, will never be able to tell or truly know when it’ll happen?

    But then again…there goes Emily, whimpering, grappling at the last of her life and this he’s certain will be her last night. So it goes.