Author Archive: Eric San Juan
Eric San Juan
October 30, 2023
read part 1 – read part 3 Four gardens surrounding a pool of starlight. Three ancient stone benches, a fourth crumbling. A streak across the night, moon to moon. Then, a flower of gold and red blooming on the nearest satellite. She carves. Glances up, pauses, returns to work. Rough wood, pulled from the floor of the nature sanctuary. A small piece of something greater. She seeks what is hidden within. The hidden thing. The hidden memory. Beyond the gardens and pools, harsh lights. A naked night on a naked world. Over the stone paths through the sanctuary to the gates, and then into those piercing stabs of blinding white, onto bare streets and bare homes filled with bare faces, watched over by the men…
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Eric San Juan
October 29, 2023
read part 1 – read part 2 I’ve never been a woman. “I’ve never been a woman.” He’s not sure which of them said this. I’m not sure which of them said this. Someone said this. Or maybe no one. Voices have a way of slithering into the ether, worming into the air and floating about, just being, just existing, until the moment they need to be heard. Sometimes at night, when his body froze in place and the shadows grew eyes, he’d hear the voices outside the window or just outside the bedroom door, murmuring in a language just beyond understanding, like some ancient and forgotten cant from the slums of now dead Sumerian cities, impossible voices from an impossible past when old gods…
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Eric San Juan
October 28, 2023
read part 1 Sometimes when he slept, he would half wake. A menace would hang in the air. Something would be in the room with him, just on the edges of his vision, smeared into the shadows and watching him with burning eyes. He’d try to scream but couldn’t. He first saw one when he was 11 or 12. His eyes eased opening after a night awake wondering why it felt so strange to lay on your stomach. Just outside his bedroom door, a skeleton. Not a collection of bones strung together like you’d find in a classroom. No, this was a being. A thing. A malevolent entity. It watched him sleep. Observed him. Waited for its moment to do … what? He tried to…
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Eric San Juan
October 27, 2023
He didn’t often shave. When he did, the mirror twisted and cracked, his face split between the shards, each of those infinite reflections thinking of infinite ways to die and why he was frightened by, and drawn to, each one of those endings. Instead, he drank coffee with no caffeine, because caffeine was just a rush of heartbeats and regrets, inky black, like so many nights caught in the grip of sleep paralysis, but in liquid form. From there, it was the choice: clean or unclean. Most days he was unclean. This suited him. Let the cover be the book. Let the book dictate the cover. And aren’t we all merely books made flesh? On this day it was no shave, coffee that did not…
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Eric San Juan
September 18, 2023
Image credit There have long been many studies pertaining to the effectiveness of music for all aspects of people’s lives. For example, music therapy has been proven to increase pain tolerance levels by 22 %, while another study found that music effectively reduces anxiety in ICU patients. With this in mind, factoring music into your lifestyle or making a career in music can not only give you a therapeutic outlet but also give you a greater sense of satisfaction in life. If you are exploring music, some options are available to help you get the most from this art form and enrich your life fully. Listening to Music Of course, one of the easiest ways to add music to your life is by listening to…
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