Author: fionagreywrites (Page 30 of 31)

The Savoy Ghost

February 19, 2020 / fionagreywrites

I have successfully distracted Thesis Cat with a giant cardboard box. Time enough for a quick jot of words inspired by one of this week’s Odd Prompts spare challenges. Huzzah! Creative writing has such a different mental flavor.

This week’s prompt: “The ghost of the Savoy at Mussoorie haunts not for justice, but for…”

“Sorry to interrupt, but I’ve never been to India before,” I said to the woman seated on the heavily embroidered chair in the Savoy’s lobby. “I don’t know if it’s the thing to do here. Tipping, I mean. Do you know?”

She looked up from her book, her eyes wide and surprised. She blinked before opening her mouth. I had the feeling she didn’t talk much, and her voice confirmed it, rusty with disuse.

“American, aren’t you?” She nodded her own confirmation at my outfit before I could reply. “One of your dollars should do it these days, I believe.”

Her voice was properly British, reminiscent of tea and crumpets. She was dressed in a rather old-fashioned getup, but the wide-brimmed hat was practical for the sun, and I’m sure the dress was cool in the heat. A proper lady, even sitting stiffly upright while reading. Straight out of the Empire, that one.

“Thanks,” I said, annoyed with myself for passing judgment when she’d been so helpful. “Listen, can I buy you a drink, maybe a scone, as a thank you? I’d have gone through hundreds, and been swarmed.”

The woman set down her book and reached back to smooth a curl, looking amused. “Thank you, but I must decline.”

“As you wish,” I said, surprised at the depth of hurt I felt at a stranger’s slight. My face must have shone it as I picked my bag up from the tile floor.

“I do apologize if I’ve offended you. It’s not what you think,” the woman said, standing and smoothing her long skirt. “I’m much past such mundane needs as the flesh requires.”

“Ah,” I mumbled, unsure what to say. “Um, that sounds nice.”

She walked with me as I headed toward the check in counter. I was starting to wonder if I’d made a mistake. India was known for spiritualism, sure, but this was a business trip.

“It’s been so long.”

Her voice improved with use, I noticed.

“No one’s noticed me in ever so long.”

I gave her a sideways glance, questioning. She smiled sadly, her face wan under her enormous straw hat.

“I only wanted to play the grand piano,” she said, and her voice was soft, grief-stricken.

“One last time, like my darling and I used to spend our evenings before he was taken from me. I shouldn’t have minded being murdered so much if I’d been able to play just one more time.”

She looked at me again, and this time I noticed the hollows in her cheeks, her sunken eyes, her skin that tightened and discolored before my gaze.

“I couldn’t find him without the music. It’s been so long. I can’t remember the song any longer.”

I stopped walking and stared at the woman turned wraith, her dress now faded and flimsy rags, her clenched hands skeletal.

She bared her teeth at me in what must have once been a smile, turned, and walked through the lobby’s grand piano.

Thesis Cat, Continued

February 18, 2020 / fionagreywrites

Did I say you could take a break, human?

Meet Thesis Cat

February 17, 2020 / fionagreywrites

Writing for fun has been sadly postponed for the short term. I’ve missed my writing prompt last week – a true tragedy, as I work with so many engineers and have a plethora of stories to share – and am not convinced I’ll get to this week’s either.

Why, you might ask?

Because when I pause thesis work and look over the edge of my computer, I see this.

Taking a break? Temporarily distracted by plotting Peter and June’s next adventure? Thesis cat says no.

And with that, back to work.

Luck

February 4, 2020 / fionagreywrites

Cass grinned and leaned forward, cool wind whipping tendrils of hair back from her face as she picked up speed. The ancient motorcycle was the only sound as she flew down the highway, watching for debris and scattered lumps of useless metal and glass that used to be useful transport.

It had been one hundred days since the lights went out, one hundred days since reliable water came pouring from pipes on demand. One hundred days since reliable, instant medical care became archaic and obsolete.

One hundred days since anyone had last seen or heard a moving vehicle, had seen air traffic plunging through the sky. One hundred days since food riots began, idiots starving while surrounded by edible plants that grew in sidewalk cracks and weedy front lawns, plantain and dandelion everywhere if you only knew to look.

One hundred days since she’d lost hope of ever reconnecting with her family, of seeing the farm again. Home, nearly fifteen hundred miles away.

It was a stroke of sheer luck that she’d made it out of the city before most people realized the apocalypse had come for them all, that help wasn’t coming.

A rabbit’s foot to have scrounged the right supplies from the back of a crashed pickup, from a driver who no longer cared who used his camping gear and dehydrated eggs. A windfall to score boots bought on credit she’d never see the bill for, store dark and empty with half-filled shelves, a lone clerk scrupulously writing down card numbers, unsure and confused when his technology no longer worked.

More good fortune to have made it through the desert, blinding and dry. A truck filled with filtered water discovered halfway through, abandoned and alone, door hanging open, footprints leading into the sand.

The hand of fate to have found the bike in yesterday’s dying light, old enough to work after an EMP strike, fully fueled and lovingly maintained. The skeleton nearby held emaciated hands against where its heart used to be, desiccated tendons the last threads holding interlaced bones in a gruesome weave of phalanges.

The favor of the gods to feed on a chicken pecking around the shed that contained the same motorcycle her father had taught her to ride. She’d stuffed her face after roasting the bird, a luxurious waste when soup could have gone much farther, its eggs boiled and stored in her backpack.

Petals off a four-leaf clover, luck blowing in the wind against her face. Cass closed her eyes and wondered if she’d make it back home after all.

She opened them in time to see a black cat dart across the road, freezing to hiss at the bike’s roar. With a thump, Cass was airborne, flying against gravity, stars of fate tossed into the skies and spun like a prophet’s emphatic hand gesture.

She smashed down into the road, benediction gone with the last mechanized wheel still spinning, ribs crushed along her right side and the pain so sharp she thought she’d split herself in two.

Cass wheezed a laugh, blood flecking over her face and pouring down her chin, a road vampire who’d run out of time.

It was the one hundredth day, after all. She should have known the apocalypse would eventually come to claim its due.

Laundromat

January 25, 2020 / fionagreywrites

A long week at work and a whole lot of thesis procrastination resulted in several stories tumbling out all at once this weekend. Read Strays and Whodunnit? if you’re so inclined, but this week’s official Odd Prompt challenge was from nother Mike.

“At the coin laundry, you had just put your clothes in the washer and sat down when one of the big dryer doors opened and a voice called out…”

I hate the laundromat. Who doesn’t? Trekking through mushy, dirty snow, lugging oddly-shaped bags and boxes. Hoping you don’t drop anything clean on an ancient linoleum floor, covered in stains decades old. Scrounging for quarters and hoping they aren’t Canadian coins that roll through the return endlessly.

Weird encounters with strangers, hoping they don’t think trading a Canadian coin for a real quarter is an invitation. Wondering why their clothes are being pretreated to remove bloodstains, choosing to believe they must be a doctor or a butcher.

The whole deal makes me understand why people used to avoid taking baths. Being clean is hard, and even I have to admit we have it way easier than the days of washboards and brushing clothes. It’s certainly less stinky with public hygiene being generally accepted. But there’s something about it that brings out my inner, muddy three-year-old self.

Don’t get me wrong. I love having clean clothes. I just hate the process. But it’s not up to me when I do laundry anymore, no matter how I feel about it.

So I got a great big whiff of rancid gym clothes when I finally made it there with my haul, bag nearly bigger than I am, staggering with every step, carefully not dropping or squashing the box in my free hand. I slammed the lid down with a wrinkled nose, sighed, yank it back up, and drop a candy-coated pod inside.

I slumped down on a mustard-yellow plastic chair that must’ve been there since the seventies. It’s cracked, but I trust its resilience. It’s survived this long, and I know I only have five undisturbed minutes to get a catnap in before the dryer door opens.

My spine popped in the lower vertebrae pleasantly, and I smiled as I settled in by the dryer labeled out of order, knowing I’m safe to let my guard down in public. She only texts me to come when she knows I’ll be alone in the laundromat.

Must be nice to foresee situations like that, but she won’t share anything else.

All too soon, the dryer door bangs open, and I open my eyes reluctantly. The voice that emerges from inside the portal is like walking on cracked New Hampshire crushed gravel roads mixed with broken glass and sticky rock candy that melts to your shoes on hot days.

“You have it?” A delicately clawed hand emerges, brown and covered in scattered scales that look like peeling leather.

“Not only do I have it, they were testing a new flavor and giving out samples,” I answer.

I pull out the box, slightly battered despite my best efforts. “Brown butter sea salt caramel popcorn on top of vanilla bean cake and brown butter bourbon frosting. You want the lemon meringue cupcake first, or the new one?”

“New!” The voice cackles, the tackiness pulling at my ears like those price stickers you never quite get off dishes, undertones like sugar about to burn, sharp and crackling. The hand’s imperious, beckoning and eager.

“Tell me what mop corn is,” the voice instructs. It rolls around the room, swirling around my head, and splinters the glass under the out of order sign on her dryer on its way back. I hand over the cupcake.

“Pop corn,” I correct. “It’s from a plant known as corn or maize. You dry it out, and then heat it so it puffs up and is edible. When that happens, it happens fast, so it explodes with a popping noise.”

I hear crunching from inside the dryer. I don’t look, and try not to think about why it’s so loud. That’s part of the deal. Never look, and try not to imagine.

“It is a weapon?” The hand beckons for the lemon meringue, claws dancing impatiently. Light flashes multicolored on the water-stained drop ceiling, too fast for my eyes to follow, so I don’t try.

“No, it’s just a snack food. There are different flavors.” I have to stop myself from pondering how weird it is to be explaining common movie nibbles to a creature from another dimension.

The slurping stops, although the dryer makes it echo for a few more seconds. This time her voice is static and firecrackers, squealing brakes and screaming cows. “I want to try a doughnut next. With sprinkles.”

There’s a pop, painful like a rapid altitude change, and she’s gone. I reach to open the washer, eager for clothes I know will be perfectly clean and dry, unwrinkled and lightly scented with soothing lavender. They’ll be perfect until I wear them.

Then a heaviness weighs into the air. She’s never come back before, and I tense, uncertain.

The roar of an avalanche and a landslide combined echo through the room, the crashing of a seven-car pile up with horns blaring and tires melting rubber onto the road, skidding out of control.

“I also desire more weaponized corn.”

Strays

January 25, 2020 / fionagreywrites

One of this week’s spare prompts: Dragons are real, and there’s now one curled up at your front door like a stray cat demanding a home.

Lisa wandered through the house, scrolling through the surveillance system app on her phone.

“I managed to get back in,” she told her boyfriend, who sat at his desk staring at his laptop.

Jack grunted but didn’t look up from the spreadsheet. “Make sure you write down the password this time.”

She shrugged and flopped onto the couch, flipping through video clips. “We don’t use the front door much. It’s all package delivery and wildlife. You know how we thought there was a stray cat crapping in the flower garden? Turns out there are three different ones.”

“You trying to distract me from your Amazon habit?” Jack asked. He frowned and started typing. “No, that’s not right.”

“I’m deleting the past month and a half and it’s only been two deliveries so far,” Lisa said primly, and draped her free arm over her head.

“Mmm-hmm,” Jack answered, still typing. “Must not be far in.”

“Cat, cat, delivery guy, cat. Oh, did you know we have a possum in the area? He’s kind of cute. All fat and waddles.”

“Mmm.”

“Cat, delivery guy. Who has chickens? Oh, wow. Coyote. Didn’t expect that.” She paused. “Oh, man. That poor chicken.”

Only the click of keys answered her this time.

“Babe.”

“Yeah.”

“Babe, come look at this and tell me what you see.”

“I really don’t care about your Amazon habit as long as it’s affordable,” Jack said. “I’m just teasing you.”

“No, really, babe.” Lisa’s voice was high-pitched. She sat up and planted her feet, staring at her phone. “I need you to tell me I’m not crazy.”

“I’m sure it’s just more wildlife,” Jack said.

“That’s the problem.”

He looked up finally but didn’t move from his padded chair. “We can call an exterminator if you’re freaked out.”

“I don’t think an exterminator can handle this.” She got up and handed him the phone. “Watch it.”

His eyebrows rose. “There’s got to be a reasonable explanation.”

“What, a deformed bat?” Lisa gave him her patented look.

It didn’t work this time. He seized on it with evident relief, settling back into his chair and handing her the phone. “Yeah. Definitely. You know bats eat bugs, right? That means fewer crawly things and fewer spiders. They’re good to have around.”

She perched on the armchair next to his desk and scrolled through her phone. “The so-called deformed bat seems to have taken care of the rest of the wildlife over the past month. Ate a skunk yesterday.”

“See? Like I said. Good to have around.”

“Bats don’t eat skunks.”

Jack was resolute. “Dragons aren’t real.”

Her phone buzzed with an alert. “Babe.”

“Hmm?”

“Babe, the baby dragon’s back on our front porch.” She looked at him with pleading eyes. “It’s so cold, and I think he’s hungry.”

Whodunnit?

January 25, 2020 / fionagreywrites

One of this week’s spare Odd Prompts challenges: A dragon begins terrorizing the neighborhood and a minion delivers a message: a sacrifice is demanded. That’s it. Just “a sacrifice”. What (or who, depending on your mood) do you sacrifice to appease the dragon?

Joe gazed around at his neighborhood, wondering how the disaster looming in the sky had hit so hard and fast in just a week.

Across the street, Mary sobbed over her husband’s body, her hair askew and still half in curlers. He’d never seen her less than perfect and proud before, but evacuations did that to everybody. She must have been right by the door to escape the conflagration that used to be her home. Her husband, not so lucky.

Joe averted his eyes from the other man’s body. He’d offer Mary the guest room in a few minutes, but wasn’t sure it’d do any good. It’d only be a matter of time before the dragon swooped down again, and they still hadn’t figured out the puzzle.

The problem was, no one knew what the minion meant. This little guy showed up, literally out of nowhere, half the size of a normal human and wearing a tunic and those weird turned up boots with jingle bells on them, of all things.

“Balandton the Great demands a sacrifice!” the minion squeaked out, and the whole neighborhood watch group turned and stared. Just in time to watch him wink out of existence. Joe had never seen a group that big collectively doubt their own sanity.

They’d been meeting to figure out what to do about the dragon, but everything they’d tried so far just caused more fires and death. He was numb to it, after a week of shock, but he knew one thing.

Dragons were definitely real.

The first meeting had resulted in the weedy guy two houses up stepping out into the street, sword in hand. He’d tried to challenge the great lizard, but his hand had been in the middle of the first swing when it was left behind in the road, a single bite severing hand and sword from the rest of the dragon’s snack.

Joe knew another thing. Dragons had sharp teeth.

Every day since, the minion popped up for exactly five seconds at the neighborhood watch meeting to squeak out the same refrain. “Balandton the Great demands a sacrifice!”

They’d tried to ask questions, but he just repeated that blather and disappeared. No real answers.

The first time someone suggested a virgin, the dirty looks had shamed the person right back to their house. Joe had thought every father with a young daughter was ready to go for the shotguns that were all of a sudden commonplace for everyday carry in the neighborhood.

Now? Five days later?

Now, everyone was numb. Everyone just wanted it to stop. Everyone was starting to run out of food, because the local blockade on the neighborhood wasn’t willing to truck in food for the humans that would just be destroyed by the dragon.

Joe took a step toward his grieving neighbor, then stopped when he saw the woman down the street heading toward Mary with a purposeful look. They were friends, he thought, and better a friend to grieve with than a near stranger.

He headed into the house and grabbed his tablet. Overwatch be damned. There was nothing he could do about it if the Great Balandton showed up anyway. He might as well finish that book he’d started last week before he got eaten.

Half an hour later, he’d settled into the backyard patio, a cold beer in front of him. He heard a loud thump from the roof and tensed but kept reading, skimming his eyes faster over the page. If he was going to die, he wanted to know who the murderer was.

A hissing came from behind him, the blast of hot air ruffling his too-long hair. “What is thisss?”

Joe set his tablet on the table next to his beer with reluctance. Just one more page and he’d know if his guess was right. “It’s a tablet. I use it for reading ebooks.”

A snakelike head snaked down toward him, the size of a full-grown sheep before shearing. The neck was thicker than most tree trunks, sinuous as it eased through the pergola’s vines. Joe swallowed, eyeing the dragon with glum acceptance of his fate.

“What is an ebooks?” the dragon asked. Faceted eyes the size of grapefruits glittered with avarice, fixed on the screen. A long tongue snaked out as shining, scaled eyelids blinked a single time.

“Electronic books,” Joe said. He wondered if he would have time to reach out and turn one more page before the dragon could kill him. “Thousands of books that you can read and carry with you on one device. You just plug it in. This is smaller than a hardback. Some you have to pay for, but there are tons of old books online for free.”

“Free?” The dragon’s head pulled back in surprise, his orange eyes fixing on Joe with suspicion.

Joe swallowed again, unused to feeling like prey. He was having trouble opening his mouth to answer. “Yes. It’s a copyright thing…” His voice gave out as the dragon’s head swooped toward him.

“Marxus!” The dragon roared.

The minion popped onto Joe’s patio, the squeaky little bastard. “My Lord Balandton?”

“Get it.” The dragon pulled his head back through the pergola. A hole in the vines shone bright light onto the table. A crunching noise came from the roof and uneven winds shook Joe out of his frozen stupor as the dragon rose into the air.

Marxus the minion snatched Joe’s tablet. “Balandton the Great, Philosopher of the Honored Asprenica Bookwyrm Clan, accepts your sacrifice!”

The minion poofed out of existence. Joe could hear the neighbors coming, a murmur on the wind, not yet daring to come too close and certainly expecting to find only his corpse at best.

He reached out a shaking hand and drained his beer, the condensation dripping down its sides matching the sweat rolling down his face.

“Damn,” he said. “I really wanted to know who did it.”

A Holiday, but Not for Slacking

January 20, 2020 / fionagreywrites

Took some time to run away this weekend, including visiting a distillery on the anniversary of prohibition’s start. I didn’t know the irony until afterward, but love it all the same.

But I promise, I’m not slacking. This weekend I’ve managed to get a lot done. Two short stories posted here for Odd Prompts to start.

June and Peter’s story now has some notes on improving Peter’s character. Poor lad needs more depth, desperately, and I’ve deprived him. Also a few plot holes to shore up, and solidified some thoughts that will make several scenes stronger, adding detail and building tension.

I really need to figure out a title for that one, but instead I outlined the next book. I’m a plotter, it seems, but I’ll change half of it as I go and get better ideas. Silly characters, insisting upon their own ways.

A trilogy’s outlined for a story that’s been floating around the back of my head. It’s rough, but enough I can get pressing on short notice when I have time.

A series I’m exploring for short stories on mismatched holidays and colors burst into my head for one of the holidays I’ve been struggling with. I’m too American for the 4th of July to be anything other than red, white, and blue, but the point is incongruity.

And then there’s the thesis annotated bibliography, which is…lingering, but coming together. More work starting tomorrow, as I’ve a few days yet.

Lauren and William will just have to hang on in Ironhaven, I suppose. I’m happy with this amount of work.

The Scent of Burning Stars

January 18, 2020 / fionagreywrites

This is one of the prompts I submitted for this week’s Odd Prompts challenge.

The stars look different from the vantage point of space, away from atmosphere and pollutants, microsatellites and fragments of debris cluttering the hopes of astronomers for decades.

They glow, the stars, in helix patterns and spirals, shining reds and purples and blues, glowing vortexes and streaks of golden stardust. Swirls of asteroid hurtle past, forming rings and eyes, glittering auras too numerous to form constellations.

I’m privileged to have seen this from above the azure oceans, greens and browns and blues and shining lights of the planet I used to call home. There aren’t many of us who have made it up here, with the robots coming to take the dangerous space jobs.

Until the colonization ships are done, most people won’t make it off Earth. Most people don’t even want to leave, tied to families and homes and jobs they don’t enjoy. And the ships we’re building won’t have windows, the shuttles will land straight in the bay, automated from liftoff to transport to the stars, straight into the belly of a metal giant that will lead the people to a new land. No one leaving Earth will have this view.

I’ll never return, now, drifting on the waves of stardust, breathing in the scent of burning stars, filling my lungs with frozen starlight.

I spin myself, swirling gently, the tether snapped, too far away for the humans to survive getting me now. The bots are programmed to human safety standards. They won’t retrieve me, and I’ve gone the wrong way to join the atmosphere’s debris, a fiery human meteorite.

A last glimpse of homesick planetside existence, and I let the stars embrace me, one last time.

A Tethered Ring

January 18, 2020 / fionagreywrites

It’s week three of the More Odds Than Ends writing prompt challenge! This week, my task was from Leigh Kimmel: “Strange visit to a place at night—moonlight—castle of great magnificence etc. Daylight shews either abandonment or unrecognisable ruins—perhaps of vast antiquity.”

Savannah tipped back the last of the bottle of strawberry wine, her throat working as she balanced it above her lips. The combination of sweetness and bubbles made her lips tingle. She set the empty flask down at her feet and shoved the cork back in the neck.

“This makes it worth it,” she proclaimed triumphantly, waving her free hand in the air. Unbalanced, she kicked the bottle toward the fire and hastily reached down to grab it before it could roll into the flames.

“Primitive camping,” Savannah said with a snort. “How you talked me into this when we’re not even supposed…oh.”

Kaylee was sleeping peacefully in her camp chair, she saw, her friend’s own bottle of dandelion wine hugged in her arms like a glass teddy bear.

“Hmph,” she said to the glowing embers, and glanced around. There was plenty of dead wood in the copse of oak and plane trees, but she wasn’t sure adding more was a good idea with how much wine she’d had.

The grove was a perfect circle, with enough room for the tent she and Kaylee shared and safe enough for the small and merry fire. Its only opening showed the ruins they’d trekked all this way to see. They’d positioned their chairs toward the view.

Yawning, she blinked at the crumbled castle in front of her. Moonlight streamed down from a pitted, full globe. Only a few walls remained, with an arched entrance that led only to untidy piles of mossy rocks. A ruined tower loomed above, dark and silent, watchful.

Savannah knew the other side was obliterated to time and artillery, crushed in some battle Kaylee would know. From this angle, perfect castellation allowed anachronistic lies. She could nearly see the watchman at his post, and smiled at her brief whimsy.

“Good day to ye, mistress,” a voice said.

Savannah looked up, blinking at unexpected daylight. A haze of purple and gold streaked the sky. It looked like sundown, but she couldn’t believe she’d have slept that long, wine or no.

“Hello,” she said cautiously.

A woman stepped into the clearing, wicker basket filled with greens and mushrooms on her arm. Her long brown hair was pinned up and covered, and her long yellow dress was covered with a green tunic and belted simply around the waist.

“Are you headed to the keep? I’d be pleased for company on the walk,” the stranger said. “I am Isabella.”

Savannah looked around, her head still muddled. Kaylee was gone, as was their tent. Her comfortable chair had turned into a tree stump.

“The – the keep?” She felt her teeth begin to chatter as her jaw twitched.

The other woman looked at her with concern in her whiskey-colored eyes. “Aye, mistress. Atop the hill, of course. Dark be coming. They’ll close the gates soon. Market continues after, of course.”

Savannah’s gaze sped to the ruins. The castle shone, bright white and grey rock against the sun-streaked sky. A horse pulled a cart up a dirt path leading toward the keep, while children chased after a stray chicken and encouraged sheep through an archway filled with a bustling crowd. Manure and woodsmoke scented the air.

On the tower parapet, a guard holding a glaive leaned lazily against the castellated stone. Another paced by behind him, looking out toward the river by the way he moved.

“Mistress? Are ye well?” Isabella took a few steps toward her.

Savannah stared at the ground and thus had an excellent view of Isabella’s leather turnshoes, clearly handmade and wrapped round with leather straps.

The clearing spun around her, the perfect circle spinning into an emerald blur.

“Mistress?”

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