Gris Lee Stories

The clock ticks over to 4:33; I've stayed up a little too late again. I rub my eyes and close the half finished job application open on my phone. That, and the twenty other random tabs. Pictures, queries and porn. Each one marks minutes of another sleepless night. Even after clearing the cache, the thoughts don't disappear. The insistence that sleep is unnecessary leads me to open Facebook for the hundredth time that past day. Not much has changed, as expected. The same few posts with a couple of extra comments. Companies upload their scheduled ads. No one has touched that creative piece I posted. Not mine at least. The other one I shared got rave reviews. I hope the artist is happy. I hope they're proud. I'm not bitter. Okay, I'm bitter. But I'm honest. I am proud of them. Like I'm proud of my friends. I scroll back through one more time and play out their posts vicariously. Job interviews, degrees, houses, achievements, fame, glory, happiness, lov...

A horror piece I'd written to submit to anthology but forgot to submit it on time. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everyone anticipates the future, for good or bad. We as humans strive for development. We want the biggest, the newest, the best version of everything. We grow and gorge until the body of our society becomes a bloated mess, with stretch marks so thin they almost tear under the pressure. Perfection is not all it’s made out to be. Every day it was bright lights and business deals. Screams and smiles. Death and order. Repression before riots. The same three songs and adverts looped endlessly over the loudspeakers. The same three colours on everyone’s clothes. No swears. No heart. No choice. Every. Single. Fucking. Day. Only the seven of us seemed to have any sense. We tried to save them. Oh boy, did we try. Each one came back with the same response. “But…they wouldn...

Extended version of The Lizard Wizard piece for university coursework. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I sneeze for the umpteenth time from the unsettled dust sprites using my home as a shedding spot. The glass tube I’m holding slithers between my fingers, though I’m able to recover just in time to tighten my grip. The murky green liquid swirling inside sloshes and settles. My cumbersome hat flops over my eyes. I breathe a sigh of relief. The last thing I need is another accident in the workshop. There’s a reason that the nobles all refuse to keep replacing my assistants. Bah! Humans have proven useless to me anyway. I don’t once regret holing myself at the helm of this old tower. Sure, it may be cold, dim and home to horde of dust sprites but the isolation is invigorating. Also, since I’ve situated myself upon the edge of the town, I am privy to the finest view of the forest. I...

A little taster inspired by a short challenge from creative writing class. I might expand of the idea of this one day, but this is it for now. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I feel…surprisingly numb. Time and time again in my youth I wore down the hours playing all manners of murder mystery games. I played them pretty straight faced, following the procedures laid out by the gameplay mechanics. Sometimes I felt a twang of empathy for the digital victims and a sliver of satisfaction when the culprits got their comeuppance. But those games were never real. So how am I supposed to feel when it is? The sound of static overwhelms my hearing. Through the small crowd of my class, I squint to get a better look at the half of the person I could see dangling from the window. The window itself is quite literally completely covered in blood. The legs hang limp against it. I can only gather th...

“So what happened to you?” The young man didn’t want to acknowledge the dragon floating in front of him. There were too many people who had already deemed him insane by this point; he didn’t need evidence that would convince him they were right. “Hey, please talk to me. It’s lonely here…” the strange thing pouted. He grunted, shaking his head   to throw off the bad thoughts. He glanced at a peek at his surroundings, his eyes focusing anywhere but the thing he called a hallucination. To his despair however, everything was white and a little cloudy. In other words, absolutely nothing of interest. The young man sighed and gave in to curious boredom. “Because people just don’t appreciate the great taste of rat poison” he replied, his tone dripping with brutal sarcasm.  The dragon’s expression morphed into something reflecting sadness. “That’s…um…unfortunate” The creature continued to float there for a few more minutes of awkward silence. Against his best ...

In which I meet the author Darren Shan in a dream (a short challenge piece) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- He sat down beside me just as the featured act took their place upon the stage. I had a vague recollection of the performers that came prior; the snake boy, the bearded lady, the man so very, very tall. I wonder briefly if the things I thought I saw might have been a lingering remnant of my subconscious. Yet, despite the haziness, the image of the older man beside me scarfing down a jelly spider felt more vivid than I was used to. His eyes seemed intent at that moment on looking over the ginger haired figure upon the stage, sporting his own flesh and blood spider. He radiated an aura of ease within the confines of the circus tent. No gazing in awe at the colourful surroundings. No gawping at the supposed freaks inhabiting the place. Just the nonchalant munchi...

I sneeze for the umpteenth time from the unsettled dust sprites using my home as a shedding spot. The glass tube I’m holding slithers between my fingers, though I’m able to recover just in time to tighten my grip. The murky green liquid swirling inside sloshes and settles. My cumbersome hat flops over my eyes. I breathe a sigh of relief. The last thing I need is another accident in the workshop. There’s a reason that the nobles all refuse to keep replacing my assistants. Bah! Humans have proven useless to me. I don’t once regret holing myself at the helm of this old tower. Sure, it may be cold, dim and   up with dust sprites but the isolation is invigorating. Also, since I’ve situated myself upon the edge of the town, I am privy to the finest view of the forest. I removed the rotting wooden shutters to the window above my desk upon moving into the place, just so I could overlook this glory of nature every day, all day as I work. I find it inspiring. It’s also very dis...

A short challenge piece from my creative writing course. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The door of the shack clanged shut with an echo that caused Maxwell to fly into a passing moment of panic. He coddled the bundle of ingredients in his arms with the care of a new mother. Five minutes passed in silence. The old man’s aching bones stood firm as he listened carefully for the wail of sirens. Tired, ancient lungs struggled to hold in their breath. A soft whistle from the draft in the door rustled his greying auburn locks. Nought but a spider skittered across the dirt floor. Once those five minutes were up, Maxwell felt comfortable enough to utter a sigh of relief. Treading lightly, a sliver of paranoia from the panic still haunting him, Maxwell shuffled across the floor in worn through boots to the kitchen counter. At least, that’s what he considered it. The shack itself was only one roo...

It's a powerful thing, all at once the greatest excitement and the most overwhelming fear. For one with anxiety, the prospect of love is an arduous journey.  The climb starts with the crush. Those bubbles of emotion become determination, the first step. Each step after is in pursuit of something you are not entirely sure provides a positive outcome.  However, each little message, every touch, any single thought of this person is the helping hand that pulls you up that mountain.  Sometimes the summit becomes so obscured, so dark you give in and climb back down to the safety of your loneliness. If all the factors align in your favour though, the summit becomes brighter, clearer and so much more incredible than you could have hoped for.  Even greater when the hand that you reached for is the one to help over the last leg.

I held my arms crossed together as I slowly, reluctantly trudged forwards. The space around me was obscured in a shadowy fog. It created a thick enough cover so that I couldn’t tell how far away the horizon was. However, in patches it showed just enough of the outside world. The way it wavered, it distorted what I saw. Within the haze I couldn’t determine what was safe and what was a threat. I couldn’t tell who was friend or who was foe. When seen in one light they appeared trusting, speaking softly, touching gently. In another they growled, clawing at my skin, everything decaying under their touch. Sometimes the fog smelled sweet, filling my lungs with a breath of clarity. Sometimes it squeezed the life from them, glaring into my subconscious as I struggled to think, to breathe. There were times I wanted to stop. I didn’t want to look back at the memories that I no longer knew were good or bad. I didn’t want to look forward at the future that couldn’t cement a promise of fortune...