Gerald’s phone rang. He snatched it off the table he’d been staring at for the past hour, waiting dully for the call. He swiped his thumb and raised it to his ear, mouth suddenly dry.
He hesitated. “Damon?” His voice cracked on the second syllable. He stared at the mahogany surface’s relentless shine, faint lemon wafting from his housekeeper’s polish.
“Your son is fine,” a deep, mechanical voice echoed down the
line. The voice was the nightmare of every parent who hadn’t been quite
suspicious enough.
He clenched his free hand around the carved chair arm, trying
to consciously loosen his grasp on the phone before it shattered through sheer
willpower and frustration.
The voice said nothing. Its silence said everything.
“I want my son back,” Gerald said. He was proud that his
voice didn’t quaver.
Maniacal, metallic laughter came booming through the line. “It’s
good to want things.”
Gerald glanced up. Joe wasn’t just his business partner. He’d
helped raise Damon after Lisa died in childbirth. The company wouldn’t have lasted
this long without his advice and support. Joe was critical in a crisis, always
knowing who to call. But this time, Joe shook his head and looked away.
“Listen carefully,” the modulated voice demanded. “You have
until three o’clock. The bomb strapped to your son explodes then, unless you send
ten million dollars to the following bank account.” The voice rattled off a
number.
“We have hacked your phone. The timer is linked to it. Send
the money if you want to see your son alive again. We will know.”
“No cops!” The phone beeped monotonously at him several times
before Gerald realized the voice had disconnected.
Joe stared at the dark wooden floor. “This one’s weird,
Gerald.”
He barely heard his friend. Blinking rapidly, he thought
hard. “Three is only twenty minutes away.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t do it,” Joe said.
“He’s my son,” Gerald said fondly.
He looked up and saw Mindy, the housekeeper, hesitating in
the entrance to the room. She held a plate of homemade cookies. Waving her in,
he snagged a still-warm shortbread. The cookie broke into sandy pieces across
his tongue. The flavor of butter filled his mouth.
“I’ve got it,” Gerald said. “The timer is linked to my phone. I just have to hack my phone and make sure it never reaches three P.M.”
Joe sighed, and slumped over the table. He stretched out a
hand and Mindy pushed the plate toward him.
“Geohack it. Travel backward through time zones,” Joe suggested. He tapped a macaron against the blue plate, scattering grainy white desiccated flakes of coconut across the shining wood.
Mindy shook her head. “You’re overcomplicating it. Just
break the phone.”
Damon peeked his head around the hallway entrance. “That only works if the kidnappers are telling the truth.”
“Huh,” Gerald said, tapping his fingers. “Excellent point. C’mere, you.” He hugged his son, feeling the soft hair under his hand.
“I like this game, Dad.” Damon wriggled away. “But I want a
cookie now.”
Gerald let him go. Twelve years old meant cookies would
always win.
His eyes followed Damon as he ran outside, chocolate chip
firmly in hand.
Mindy met his gaze after a few moments. Her unblinking blue eyes made Gerald uncomfortable. “I can’t believe you play a game called ‘Contingency Planning’ with him.”
“To be fair, he knows it as ‘Outsmarting Dad,’” Gerald
protested.
Joe scraped his chair back but didn’t stand. “You really
think there’s a threat because the company grew so big so fast?”
Gerald shrugged and yawned. “I’d rather he be prepared for
anything. And he loved the voice modulator.”
“He certainly can think on his feet,” Mindy said. “He’s a
kid, and runs circles around me.”
“Around most people, the precocious brat.” Joe shook his head again. “It has still got to be the weirdest game I’ve ever heard of.”
“You try entertaining a tiny genius,” Gerald retorted.
In the next room, they heard the tones of the clock striking
three.
This week, I challenged Cedar Sanderson to explain the woman blowing smoke rings without an obvious mechanism. Leigh Kimmel asked me to explore what happens between the sounds…
In the distance, the tower clock began ringing the song for eleven bells, cutting through the evening darkness. The deep, melodious noise only made her swallow a thin trickle of bile threatening to make her retch. Anya glowered down at the tools in her hands before jabbing the flexible wires into her bun of unruly hair.
“Of course I have everything I need,” she snapped, jerking
her head toward the hooded figure seated in the corner of the room. “You taught
me, after all.”
The figure was still on a heavy wooden chair, face shrouded,
hands knotted and swollen with age.
Anya had always hated this room with no fireplace, where drafts
leaked through thin walls. She’d tried to patch the gaps with plaster, but it
cracked and dropped off with every change of the seasons. The walls reeked of
cabbage and stale sweat, but was all they could afford. The red-faced landlord
hadn’t raised their rates since Gruen’s hands became too stiff to work, but it
meant she’d become whipcord thin and sleep-deprived trying to make up for a
master thief’s skills.
“Magic,” the voice urged, reedy and thin. Gruen’s unkempt
beard poked out from under the cowl, grey with yellowed streaks. “You did not
succeed in skiving the preventative spell.”
She frowned and stamped her feet to hide her nerves,
wiggling her close-fitting leggings and tunic, dark colors mismatched to blend
into the night. Anya bent to tighten a bootlace. “I won’t steal from the neighbors,”
she muttered to the wooden floor, swept as clean as she could get it.
The chair creaked as Gruen leaned forward, his dusty face emerging from the hood, bulbous nose first. His sour breath wafted directly into her face as she straightened. Long practice kept her from flinching. “That potion Mistress Kira drank yesterday would have kept the tower’s magic from affecting you if you’d gotten to the bottle first. I need this to work, girl.”
“We both do,” Anya replied, and flexed long, thin fingers
before pulling on kidskin leather gloves. She’d risked filching them from an affluent
halfwit’s belt earlier this week after her practiced eye saw they were exactly
her size. They’d help her keep her grip tonight.
She swung a leg up on the windowsill. Gruen’s voice stopped
her again. “You must be in by midnight, girl.”
“We’ve gone over the plan several dozen times,” Anya
replied, and dropped out of sight. She landed crouched on the roof several feet
below, a practiced landing that kept any thumps to the stairwell. That kept
from directly annoying the neighbors, who didn’t need to know their neighbors had
less than normal jobs.
Clambering over a small wall that served no purpose but to
hold a honeysuckle vine and a bird’s nest, Anya took a deep breath in the star-strewn
night, away from the stink of the streets. She much preferred transiting the
flat rooftops.
She loped her way across the city, thankful most of the buildings were only a few feet apart with each leap. She’d heard a tale from one of the other orphans that some king had mandated the city’s buildings be the same height and color, pale stone that from street level only looked filthy with mud and soot from cooking fires. Anya herself thought the legend was stupid, a ridiculous thing only some rich fool would care about. In her mind, that made it all the more likely to be true.
Her ankles ached with the thirtieth landing, but Anya could
see her goal only a few hundred craken away now. The great stone tower loomed
over the rest of the city, built from dark speckled stone that contrasted with
everything else. It held the bells that rumbled through the city each hour, but
was rumored to hold secrets as well. Not just secrets, but magics, too.
Gruen wasn’t getting any younger. She wasn’t sure how much more gratitude his former students would continue to supply. A few gifts to tide them over had been appreciated. This information was significant enough it felt like a final payment, from apprentice to master, a final graduation.
If it were true.
Anya slowed, breath coming harder now, as she reached the final rooftop. Her eyes measured distances and angles in the dark night. The dark tower was further away than her usual jumps between rooftops. Stepping back, she took a running leap and wondered if she was truly mad.
She sailed through the air and seized the arched arrow-slit window with an outstretched arm. Her right side burned with the strain as the rest of her body thumped solidly against the stone. She’d distributed her weight across the stone during impact correctly, like falling forward. There’d been no way to practice the landing, or even the distance. Anya had nearly let go at the shock. She hadn’t anticipated being unable to breathe.
Wheezing, she scrambled through the narrow window with
burning lungs. If she had been eating more regularly, she would have been stuck
wiggling, waiting spiderlike for the morning guards to see her against the tower.
Or worse, exhausted from hanging on, flattened against the ground and buried in
Pauper’s Field.
She wasn’t sure even Gruen would mourn her, even though he certainly
wouldn’t survive her loss.
She held the thought of Gruen in her mind as she sagged
against the stone stairs inside the tower. She may not like him much, but Anya certainly
owed him. Why, she’d not even have a trade if it weren’t for him teaching her
the thieving craft.
If she could get this potion, his skill would be restored. She was sure of it. He’d be able to teach her so much more. Flexible fingers grown supple with restored youth would train her the things he tried to describe with increasing frustration.
Anya leveraged her body up with one hand pressed against a frozen, glittering stone floor. The granite tower was musty and cold, each step frosted over. This odd speckled stone held the cold more than the pale stone, it seemed. She gazed around with dismay, and realized she’d leave a distinct trail, even in the dim light that strained through the narrow windows.
She bit her lip. The sharp pain from a slightly chipped front tooth brought her focus back, as it always did. She was on a deadline. It didn’t look like guards came here often anyway.
The intel had said to go up from roof height, so she did, taking each stone step with trepidation. She hadn’t thought getting in the narrow window would be quite so difficult, and had planned to exit the same way. She wasn’t sure if a higher level would work to get onto the nearest building’s roof. Would it be too high?
The door with the crescent moon, the former student had whispered. He’d looked over his shoulder as he shared his information a week prior in the grubby apartment, as if worried a guard would come crashing through the battered, barred wooden door.
She paused at the landing and saw the door she sought was painted with a mosaic of patterned, intertwined lines. A crescent moon stood starkly in the middle, opalescent but unadorned. It reflected the starlight, glowing faintly.
Anya waited, heart rapid, hoping no guards would come by on
patrol. Gruen’s student had been so certain. Use the noise of the bells to
cover the sound of breaking in. Get out with the quarter chime to avoid the
guards.
It must be getting close. Time to be ready. She reached up and tugged on the flexible metal wires in her hair. The lockpicks snagged, loosening her bun.
The bell’s song began, high above her, and she felt a few hairs tear free as she yanked the last pick free and dropped to her knees. She could feel the reverberation through the stone, and didn’t like what the intermittent humming did to her fingertips.
The crescent moon on the door began to glow as she and inserted the picks into a star-shaped silver keyhole, leaning against the door. She closed her eyes and refused to look at the sinuous lines. If she didn’t see them moving, it wasn’t happening.
She had only the time of the song, and then until the twelfth bell to get inside. The longest song, the witching hour, the chill tones of mourning for the dead. Midnight was sacred to the stars.
Anya felt a drop of nervous sweat trickle down her forehead as she worked the lock, hands steady and implements sure even as her pulse pounded in her neck. The balance needed to be precise, a light touch only, gentle pressure to ease the lock open like a lover.
The pins of the lock caught, one, two, three, four,
desperate moments as the bells’ eeriest song began to close. She raked her pick
desperately back and forth, jamming it into the lock as far as she could.
Failure was not an option.
With a click, the last pin raised. The lock turned as her hands slid automatically.
The door cracked and she fell inside, eyes opening in
startlement. The door’s crescent moon blazed like the sun, shattering the
darkness within.
Anya gazed up into a tattooed face with pointed ears and dark green, watchful eyes. Above her in the tower, the bells ended their song and tolled out the hour.
It was not midnight, she realized with horror and confusion. It was the tones of the clock striking three.
Thesis Cat would like to get this finished herself, thank you.
nother Mike, who wrote about Aphrodite riding sidesaddle on a goose, challenged me with this: “He was bent over, praying, with his hands together, when the other hands grasped his in support. He blinked, and then noticed that the hands holding his were blue…”
I sat down intending this to be a monkey’s paw, “be careful what you wish for” story. One in which Jonas wishes to hide his problems, and looks up to find a zombie’s blue, rotting hands happy to distract him. I’ll have to explore undead religious proclivities another time, because this spilled out instead.
Jonas
froze in horror, as a resounding crash echoed within the cavernous Guildhouse.
The wooden balconies populated with heads poking from each of the cubbies,
peering into the open middle where the great loomworks rested.
The
loomworks never rested long, only stripped of their precious weaving long
enough to deliver the highborns’ work and restring for the next commission. The
list of commissions was very long, and the only reason an orphan off the streets
had ever been taught to read or figure.
He
was one of the few thin, limber, light enough to clamber up to the adjustable
fiddly bits at the top and resize the work. He was not entrusted with the weaving.
Guildmaster did not permit soiled hands such as his to handle the delicate base
fabrics or tapestries hung upon the great loomworks.
He
turned, every inch a momentous effort of sheer will, creeping unwilling eyes to
stare at the wreckage of wood collapsed upon the lobby. He’d just adjusted the
frame, and clearly something had gone horribly, miserably wrong.
No
one else moved. The weavers at the small looms on the balconies stared openmouthed.
Guild Officials stared from the trading desk, where they displayed sample wares
and bargained for gold.
A small, pudgy, redheaded boy on the third floor balcony snickered into the clattering silence, rocking back and forth on elbows propped on the rickety balcony. He clearly knew the punishments the Guildmaster liked to give. No one would spare a thought for the orphan boy’s cries.
Jonas whirled and pelted from the hall, stumbling over limbs grown too long as he tore through the streets. He landed on his knees, bruising them against the cold stone floor the Temple of the Moirai.
He bent over, praying to The Three, aware the Guildmaster would punish him for breaking the great loomworks. He could not even fathom the depth of this punishment, having destroyed the primary source of this Guild District’s wealth.
Worse – if he could no longer climb with impunity, he had no value to the Guild. Jonas shuddered at the faint memory of life on the streets.
Wetness
struck his cheeks, and he blinked furiously, unwilling to admit weakness. Now
was a time for strength. He needed to prove his value to the Guild.
He
just had no idea how to do it.
Jonas
closed his eyes, hands clenched together, hoping the three statues’ cold eyes would
soften if he only prayed hard enough. He felt warm, rough hands close over his.
A man’s voice, harsh with years and commanding, begin the Chant of Respect to The
Three. Jonas stumbled over the familiar words.
“…and
– and to each our allotment, which we shall not struggle, for we know The Three
have measured what – what is to be.” Jonas opened bleary eyes, struggling not
to sniffle.
His
eyes widened further to see the hands still grasping his. Blue!
“Look
at me, boy,” the voice commanded.
Jonas
lifted his eyes to see a perfectly ordinary, study workingman. Brown eyes that
looked like they laughed often, crinkled at the edges. A tidy beard, streaked
with more white than the remaining muddy brown. And hands dyed blue, arms
streaked in paler shades up to the elbow.
The
man laughed. “It’s from the indigo, boy. The blue dye. You get used to it after
a while.”
Jonas
lowered his eyes.
“Hey
now, eyes up.”
Jonas
suspected this man could be heard over a thousand looms if he wanted, but his tone
was kind and quiet, not even echoing in the stone-walled temple.
The
bearded man took pity on him and released his hands. “Your reaction was
interesting,” the man said casually, settling back and studying the statues of The
Three.
Jonas
studied the statues, shooting the man a sideways glance, uncertain.
“As
if you were afraid of the Guildmaster.” The man studied his indigo hands, as if
examining the calluses.
Shuddering,
Jonas looked away.
“Boy,
you don’t have to worry about being strapped for this. Accidents happen.”
He couldn’t stop the panicked mewl that emerged from his throat. Accidents did not simply happen with the Guildmaster. The worst he’d done before now was eat a pear uninvited, and he’d been whipped on a weekly basis or more.
“Someday
I’ll share the stories with you, boy. Over a mead, when you’re a bit older. The
point is that you learn from your mistakes.”
The man stood up and reached out a hand. “Like learning to build looms from scratch, so you can fix them, and know when they weaken.”
Jonas stared upward, confused.
“I’m the Grand Guildmaster, boy.”
Jonas straightened, tongue-tied.
He still didn’t take the outstretched, unwavering hand.
“I’ve heard stories about this district. Bad stories, and too many of them. I’ve come to take control and fix things here.”
Jonas dared to hope. He reached
out, tentative and unsure.
The man grasped it in a firm grip.
“And if you’re to become my apprentice,
I’ll need to know your name.”
This week, I challenged Cedar Sanderson to explore theta brain wave stimulation. Leigh Kimmel asked me to explore people duplication, but I suspect I went in a different direction than intended.
“Darling, don’t forget to close the blinds,” Choi called to her husband from where she brushed her hair in the other room.
Her husband walked out of the nursery, but lingered in the hallway. “The twins are out of the light and sleeping,” Adam said. He leaned against the doorjamb, stubbing a toe repeatedly against the wooden floorboards.
“Finally.” Choi looked at her husband with exhausted eyes. “There’s
so much more work with two. I can’t believe we got duplicates.”
He coughed, and looked away. “About that.”
The hairbrush landed on the bed with a distinct thump. Choi
braced herself against the edge of the bed, ready to launch herself across the
hall. “What’s wrong?”
“We’ll be able to tell them apart now,” Adam replied. His tone was measured and reasonable. “Their personalities aren’t developed enough to be helpful otherwise.”
She glared at him, her mouth twisted. “I told you to keep them out of the sunlight!”
“They’re fine, dear. We just also might want to boost whichever one faded with a little paint. As long as neither fades entirely, right?”
“Paint.” She spat the word as if he’d suggested poison.
“Oils, maybe, or acrylics. Not watercolors. Something more permanent than mimeograph ink.”
His eyes were filled with the hope of a child who knows he won’t get a treat, but still can’t resist asking.
It was a long few minutes before Choi sighed. “But I did so love the smell.”
Mine was from Misha Burnett. ” A forensic necromancer interviews a murder victim. Unfortunately, the testimony of the deceased is inadmissible in court. What information could the victim provide that would give the police a lead on finding evidence that could be used to convict the killer?”
Before we get to that, Thesis Cat continues to do her job in guilt-tripping me to get back to work.
Guarding toaster pastries is important work.
Onto the story!
I stared down at my body and blew out a frustrated sigh of non-existent air. Guess I didn’t need oxygen anymore, but automatic habits die hard.
It still annoyed me further. Counting to ten didn’t help. It
was all I could do not to stamp my foot like a toddler in the midst of being
denied a cookie.
Yeah, realizing I’d never have a cookie again didn’t help the urge.
I tried again. “Hey. HEY. Heeeeeyyyyy.” I waved my hand in
front of the cop’s nose. “Look, dude, I know you can see me. Ever since that
asteroid hit, everyone can see ghosts until they cross over.”
He’d blinked at the word “dude.” Good. I’d been trying for a
reaction. Maybe offending him wouldn’t help my case, but I’d been pleading and
begging for help for twenty minutes, ever since the cops showed up.
Let me tell you, it’s really weird to walk into your
neighbor’s house, uninvited, through the wall, and ask them to call the cops because
you’ve just been murdered.
Walked right through a whole cabinet of creepy china figurines,
too. The memory made me shudder. I guess ghosts can do that, still.
“C’mon, man. I can give you a name, a description, even the
reason why and where he works. I thought I was getting out of the guy’s way. He
wanted to back into the parking space.”
I kicked my own ribcage, but my foot just passed through. The
cop put up his hand like he was trying to block me. I hoped it made him feel
freezing cold. Serves him right for ignoring me.
“I was meeting a friend for lunch and told him about what
happened. I figured at worst parking lot guy would have spit in my food. Gave
me a look and a shake of the head every time he walked past the table.”
The uniform studiously continued to study my dead body, placing
evidence markers by blood splatter. He looked everywhere but at me.
“Nametag said Devon, from Mika’s Diner. Over on Greene street.”
A throat cleared behind me. Tall, stubble, greying brown
hair, sharp blue eyes that missed nothing but looked exhausted. He wore a rumpled
suit and a faded black trench, with a badge slung around his neck on a cheap
chain. He jerked his head at me, and I heard the officer first on scene breathe
his own sigh of relief.
Lucky bastard, his exhalation had real air in it.
I followed what had to be the homicide detective into what
until an hour ago had been my living room. He sat on the couch and waved at hand
at my favorite chair like he owned the place.
I raised an eyebrow.
“You want someone to talk to you or not?” His voice reminded
me of rusty barbed wire, quick with a comeback and ready to give you tetanus if
you were too much of an idiot.
I sat.
“No one will listen,” I started. “I know exactly who did it.”
“Yeah, but don’t you watch the news, kid?” He slumped back against
the cushions, leaning on the armrest and studying me as he settled in.
I blinked. “What?”
“I’m saying Fiddler v. Tennessee,” he said. “I’m Joe,
by the way. Joe Brighton. Homicide detective. Fourth Precinct.”
“What the hell is Fiddler v. Tennessee?” I asked,
frowning. I didn’t like where this conversation was going.
“Supreme Court case. We’ve been watching it for the past couple years. Right after the asteroid hit a decade ago and everything changed, right? This guy says ghosts are no longer humans, therefore they’re no longer sentient.”
I snorted.
He nodded. “Yeah, I agree. But it’s got an impact. Means ghost
testimony doesn’t hold up in court.”
“We’re not in court,” I pointed out. “We’re in my living
room. Next to my dead body.”
“Yeah, but that uniform in there? Steve’s a good guy. He’s
wearing a body cam that records everything, all right? Means he can’t talk to
you without it getting caught on camera. That’s a problem.”
“How come you can talk to me?” I asked, stiffening with
belligerence.
He crossed his legs in a figure four. “To answer your question, what conversation?” he asked, looking around.
“I’m just getting a sense of what you were like as a person. Talk to myself all the time, you know. Part of my detecting process.”
“I’m no longer a forensic necromancer, after all. No specializing in talking to dead people and getting their testimony, not anymore. I’m just a homicide detective now.”
He tapped slender fingers together, then pressed two fingers to his mouth like he wished they were holding a cigarette.
Snarling, I leapt up. “You mean you can just ignore me and
that’s somehow okay?”
Joe didn’t bother making eye contact. “Exactly. And Steve and
the other uniforms have to, or they get in trouble.”
Pacing, I struggled with my options. “This is so unfair. I
should fight this in court.”
“Good luck finding a lawyer who’ll take that on,” Joe said. “Non-person,
remember? Did you add a provision in your will for hiring a lawyer to represent
your ghost’s interests posthumously?”
I choked, then remembered I didn’t have to care about that. “Did
I what?!”
He leaned back against the couch even further, like the weight on his shoulders was real and tangible. “I see you were a reader. Mysteries.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” I asked, starting to
feel the fight drain from me. “You can’t use anything I tell you.”
“Unless you find a way to get me something I can use that’s
not your direct testimony.” Joe made eye contact at last. “Don’t suppose you’ve
got anything that would help with that, do you?”
I stood firm, feet planted, and whistled high and loud. Joe
winced, but I didn’t care. I knew Wilbur would come to our whistle, no matter
how afraid he was of the strange man on the couch, or how traumatized he’d been
after seeing me stabbed.
I glared at Joe. “I do this, you take care of my dog. You
take him in or find him a nice warm home. Not some shelter that’ll put him
down, not some terrible owner that’ll make him fight.”
He nodded, once, short and sharp. “Everybody’s got a
bargain.”
Studying him with new eyes, I realized his relaxed posture was
studied tension, held to contain a tightly wound spring. “You’ve done this
before.”
A shoulder shrugged inside the trench.
I turned away at the sound of slow feet and a slight whimper.
There he was, my 155-pound bundle of oversized bloodhound joy. Covered in my
blood splatter, and maybe some attacker DNA.
“Wilbur, sit.” I gave his head a caress, trying not to
notice that I couldn’t feel his fur, that I had to hold my hand just above his
ears to keep from sticking my hand through his brain. Poor guy’d been through
enough tonight.
I looked at Joe. “He’ll sit for you if you swab his teeth. And
fur, I guess.”
He nodded, and waved over a tech I hadn’t noticed in the door.
“Bloodhound got a nose on him?” He gave Wilbur the pet I couldn’t,
scratching gently around the ears. Joe looked at me briefly over the tech’s
head, but there was compassion in the look. He knew what I wanted, but could
never have again.
“He does,” I said sadly. “He trained for it before I got
him, but his temperament was never quite right. The nose is there. But he’s a
bit of a scaredy-cat.”
The tech stood up, avoiding looking at me as she packed away
her samples from my dog.
“Wilbur,” I said. “Time to get to work.”
Joe nodded in approval, and got up to follow my bloodhound.
It was three hours later when they came back. I’d apologized to Steve the uniform by then, who made a few random nods and commented out loud to his partner what a shame it was that I’d ended like this.
I was sitting on the front porch when Joe arrived, Wilbur
bounding up behind him. He sat down on the stoop next to me, stroking the dog’s
head.
“He was a very good boy,” Joe said softly, mumbling a
little. I guess outside, he tried to keep up appearances more.
“He always is,” I said sadly, holding out a hand for Wilbur
to sniff. He didn’t seem to mind that I wasn’t corporeal.
“Led us straight to one Devon Nelson, who works at Mika’s Diner.
Idiot still had the knife in his hand, smeared with your blood. He’d tried to
wipe it off on his own shirt, thinking it would blend in since it was a dark
color.”
I leaned back and kicked my legs down the steps. “All over a
parking spot?”
“Yeah. Confessed and everything.” Joe kept his head bent over
Wilbur.
I sighed. “Feels pretty dumb. Now what?”
Joe grimaced, his face contorting on the side I could see. “Now
you either move on, or hang out and do whatever you didn’t get a chance to do
in this life.”
“I thought I’d know what to do,” I said. My voice must have
been sad, because he looked up finally.
“Nobody really does,” he said.
He stood up, and Wilbur looked at me, tongue lolling and
ready to give me a good lick.
I reached out and cupped my hand around his long, droopy ear,
wishing I could feel the warmth.
He turned to walk away and paused halfway down the cracked concrete
walk. “Come visit Wilbur anytime.”
Couldn’t argue. It wasn’t like I could feed the dog, or walk
him through the wall when he needed to go out. I watched as Joe rolled the dark
sedan’s window down for Wilbur, who loved to let his ears flop in the wind.
I wondered what it took for someone to talk to the dead each
day, and what more it cost to have to hide it.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
