Mind on Fire Books

There’s a magnetism in a face that never blinks—an invitation to peer beyond pigment and canvas into a story half-told. In this faded portrait, nicotine stains the shadows and ash dusts the dusk that pools in his hollowed eyes. Ash always seems to find a way into the picture, lingering like a memory. A single light bulb hums, walls sweat, and every cigarette ember feels like a whispered secret.

What drives a man to sip embalming fluid instead of bourbon? What ghosts swim in rooms built from regret? In the flash piece below, step inside that silent confession and listen to the only witness brave enough to hear it, while ash quietly settles all around.

Ashmouth

The man in the painting doesn’t blink.

He’s stitched together from nicotine and dusk, jaw slack, eyes hollowed like someone scooped out the soul and forgot to refill it. His cigarette hangs like a confession—half-spoken, half-burned. The smoke doesn’t rise; it coils. It clings. It whispers.

The drink in his hand isn’t for pleasure. It’s embalming fluid. He’s preserving something—maybe a memory, maybe a mistake. Maybe her.

She left him with a mouth full of ash and a room full of echoes. Now he drinks to keep the ghosts quiet. But they’re learning to swim through the ashes of his past.

The walls sweat. The light bulb hums like a dying insect. He stares forward, past the frame, past the viewer, past the point of return.

And then he speaks.

But only the smoke listens.

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