Horror
Not an Exception
Dark Memoirs - Index "For writers who knowingly lie, for those who substitute unbelievable human behavior for the way people really act, I have nothing but contempt. Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do—to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.
By Paul Stewart2 months ago in Chapters
Muscle Memory
Dark Memoirs - Index Sentimentality is a curse. Apatheia (Freedom from Emotion). The goal of Diogenes. Intense sentimental attachments do not make for betterment in this mortal coil. Whether it is to objects, places, or especially, people, it breeds vulnerability to suffering and loss.
By Paul Stewart2 months ago in Chapters
A Necessary Absence
Dark Memoirs - Index It feels like the right time to talk about the one who got away. That lover from high school you thought you’d grow old with, the white-picket-fence life already imagined. A fumbled fuck behind the bike shed, bright-eyed and convinced it would become the romance of the century. Romeo and Juliet, without the feuding families or the suicide.
By Paul Stewart2 months ago in Chapters
Close Enough
Dark Memoirs - Index "And at last, becoming a complete misanthrope, he used to live, spending his time in walking about the mountains; feeding on grasses and plants, and in consequence of these habits, he was attacked by the dropsy, and so then he returned to the city, and asked the physicians, in a riddle, whether they were able to produce a drought after wet weather. And as they did not understand him, he shut himself up in a stable for oxen, and covered himself with cow-dung, hoping to cause the wet to evaporate from him, by the warmth that this produced. And as he did himself no good in this way, he died, having lived seventy years;" - Diogenes of Sinope
By Paul Stewart2 months ago in Chapters
Errors That Persist
Dark Memoirs - Index "Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity." - Xunzi People seem fascinated by the idea that there must be a hierarchy — that I must be damaged goods or working for a “big bad.” This is the real world, of course. Besides, I lack nothing — money, freedom, or immunity from consequence. Why would I need a financial backer, or why would I blindly follow the directions of another?
By Paul Stewart2 months ago in Chapters
Pulse Ledger
Dark Memoirs - Index Many are the paths the destitute and desperate can follow to reach me. Some whisper my name like a prayer; others barely dare acknowledge I exist. In ancient texts, you may find my name murmured beside Anubis and Hermes, though I was never simply a guide. Their devotion to peace is unbecoming. My interests are entirely self-serving, a hunger dressed in the robes of ritual. I eat the insincere, the spineless who parade their postulation before neighbours, playing priest to their own hollow lives. I drink the essence of a life the way men drink wine — blood drawn warm, direct from source.
By Paul Stewart2 months ago in Chapters
Pared to Truth
Dark Memoirs - Index "Death may be the greatest of all human blessings." - Socrates The irony isn't lost on me that people like Socrates love to share their thoughts and feelings on death. Living, breathing people feel they have an intimate understanding of death enough to give a fair assessment of it.
By Paul Stewart2 months ago in Chapters
Fair Exchange, No Robberies. Top Story - January 2026.
Dark Memoirs - Index There are at least two kinds of people in the world: those who write this half-arsed kind of intro to a story that looks to separate the rare and the norm, and those who realise it's an overused framing device and don't.
By Paul Stewart2 months ago in Chapters
