Prompt: Shangri-la
The Himalayans were a torturous environment; cliffs as sheer the edge of a blade, peaks like jagged fangs, and cold that can kill. Gregory Kline led his team fearlessly through that foreboding landscape, intent on pushing through. To setting foot in places where no man has walked before.
And he was sure they would succeed. They were six hundred miles from the nearest civilization and had been re-supplied by helicopter twice already, and every member of the team was still in excellent condition. No signs of frostbite or hypothermia, no accidents. Kline grinned under his thick scarf.
Which is exactly when the ice underneath him cracked with a sound like thunder. The world tilted violently sideways and the expedition leader stumbled and fell. Ropes napped tight as Kline’s weight pulled against the ice climbers he was tethered to. Ice shivered apart and one by one they slide into the crevasse in a line, boots kicking for purchase on the smooth ice, flailing with ice picks.
It was Oscar who saved their lives. Someone had lost hold of their ice pick, sliding adown the slope alongside them. Oscar managed to grab it as it slid past him and raise it alongside his own pick. With a cry he brought them both down and felt them bite. The tethered line of sliding men and women came to a halt with a jarring snap. One at a time they each found purchase of their own, taking the strain off of Oscar.
Kline dangled at the bottom of the slope, hanging over what would have been a fatal drop. He looked up, heard Oscar shouting for the team to spread themselves out and tie themselves off. For an Arizona native, the man was surprisingly natural on the ice.
Kline looked down, knowing that he would have to wait for the others to secure themselves before they could pull him to safety. As he dangled, rotating slowly on the ropes that tethered him to his team, Kline marveled at the ice. So much more beautiful than a simple ice cube, the ice sparkled in blue, indigo and violet. He smiled at a rare flash of deep green in the ice, then his breath caught.
A glassy boulder of ice reflected green-gold light up at him, colors he had never before seen in all his years mountain climbing. Kline blinked his eyes rapidly. Maybe he was going snow-blind…maybe it was fatigue…but it almost looked like a reflection in the ice. A reflection of a green valley.
“There’s something down here!” He shouted.
“What is it?” He heard Oscar shout back, his voice ricocheting off of the chasm walls like a pinball. Kline smiled briefly. It had been a long time since his first days on the mountain, shouting from the peaks to hear his own voice. But because he didn’t engage in those amateur jokes any longer, didn’t mean he still couldn’t be amused by them.
His smile faded as he stared at the reflection below him. This was either an amazing discovery, or he was hallucinating. “I’m not sure! I want to climb down and get a better look!”
Oscar organized the team and they got Kline hauled up onto the slope so they could begin an organized descent. It took four hours to climb back up the slope to where the ice had first shattered and collect gear that had been left behind and then to climb back down and make the final descent to the bottom of the chasm.
Kline was almost certain that as soon as they reached bottom that there would be nothing to see. Nothing more than a trick of the light played on senses scrambled by fear and adrenalin from his near-death. Under the ledge where he’d dangled, the late afternoon light had passed the point where it could shine to the bottom. But there was light…
The eastern end of the crevasse was pinched shut by the slow movement of the eons, but the western end was open; a tall but narrow shaft winding away. Light like fire was tingeing the icy walls with warmer colors.
“Do you see that, Greg?” Oscar said quietly, stepping up besides Kline. He nodded. “Good, I thought maybe I was going nuts. This is what you saw, too, right?”
They chuckled together. “Well, we could still both be nuts. Let’s check it out while we still have light,” Kline said.
They moved on in silence, intrigued by the beautiful light spilling into the chasm. When they stepped out of the opening, they had to raise their hands to cover their eyes. The late sunlight poured into a vast valley, glinting off the ice on western rim. Below them lay a green and lush valley, a sparkling lake in the center.
When the powers of speech returned, Hamilton breathed, “I saw this valley from up top...there was nothing but ice and snow…”
“Look!” Said Oscar. “Houses! …Tended fields…and those trees. They were planted! It’s a God-damned orchard…”
Kline unzipped his parka and pulled his frozen gloves off his hands with his teeth; it was much warmer in the valley. “Well, everyone, lets go check it out… It’s like…. It’s like, Shangri-la…”
There was even a path from the crevice winding down the slopes of the valley, switching back over hills covered in grass and clover. No one spoke as they made their way to the valley floor. Something about this valley seemed, odd, special, maybe sacred.
“Holy shit, a welcoming committee,” Oscar said. Near the bottom of the hill a group of people were waiting. Their dress and manner instantly brought the word ‘peasants’ to mind. They wore simple, homespun clothes, worn, but well-cared for. Their faces were round and sun-darkened, creased at the eyes and around the mouths with deep lines. They bowed deeply as Kline and his team neared them.
Kline looked over his shoulder at the expedition, shrugged, then turned towards the peasants and bowed in return. Behind him, Oscar and the others mimicked. The valley-folk straightened, smiling and came forward, babbling quickly in a language Kline had never heard before. Grasping arms and wrists they coaxed the team forward and into their village.
“Abe? You still have the camera, right?” Kline asked. Behind him, gently nudged along by several of the peasants, the young man patted the bulging pocket of his pack.
“If it didn’t get broken in the fall, yeah. Do you think it’ll spook the natives?”
Oscar chuckled. “Yeah, wouldn’t want to make them think we were stealing their souls, now.”
Kline was torn between frowning and laughing along. “Good point. Be discrete; get a few pictures when you think you can do it without anyone noticing. At the very least we’ll get some shots from the edge of the valley when we leave.”
“If the camera’s not busted…” Abe muttered.
They were taken to a long low building, like a lodge. The peasants pulled at their clothes, and after some initial resistance, Kline realized they were only trying to remove their bulky cold-weather clothes. They weren’t really necessary any more, so he relented and encouraged his team to do likewise. He was no diplomat, but his mother and law always seemed to take offense if he did not offer to take her coat when she came to visit. He grinned at the idea of treating this whole village like his mother in law, but considering how carefully he tread around that woman, it couldn’t hurt.
They were treated to a feast by the village people, presided over by an elder so ancient and withered that Kline couldn’t be sure if they were man or woman. The food was excellent and copious, but not exotic, at least not to the area. They ate the same sort of fare Kline found in the Himalayan communities all around the mountain. He was vaguely disappointed; he’d almost been expecting roast yeti.
Kline could see his team trying to mingle, introducing themselves in loud and over-enunciated English. Oscar was perhaps having the most success communicating, employing grand hand gestures and not a few sound effects. Kline choked on his water when he saw Oscar wind milling his arms, crying out as he played out an exaggerated version of their fall this morning. A smiling old woman thumped him the back, murmuring in her incomprehensible language until he could breathe again. He thanked her with tone of voice and expression, knowing that it would be a long time before his words meant anything to his people. Probably not until National Geographic got here.
The lodge was turned into sleeping quarters, with thick blankets laid out on the floor for each of them and the fire pits stoked for the night. Smiling and bowing, the villagers backed their way out and left them alone. Kline lay back on a blanket, pulling another over his legs and feeling the pleasant drowsiness of a good meal. And satisfaction at his discovery. He hadn’t discovered a place where no man had set before, but he thought that these people and their amazing valley high above the earth might be even better.
Kline was woken by nature’s call. At first, he couldn’t make sense of his surroundings. Not that he had forgotten where he was – on the contrary, he’d been dreaming that he was receiving a noble prize (he wasn’t sure if they gave them out for this, but he hoped) for his discovery here – but that his surroundings looked nothing like the lodge he’d fallen asleep in. It was misty and hot, damp. Kline groaned, his skin itched to the point of burning.
But only for a moment. He blinked away the sleep and saw the carved beams laid out above him and his team laid out below them. Sleep seemed distant, so he resolved to take Abe’s camera and get some snapshots after doing his business. He paused as he crept over to Abe’s sleeping form, suddenly realizing that he had no idea where these people went to go pee, and hoped he didn’t cause an incident with his ignorance. He hoped that he could find someplace to relieve himself that they wouldn’t find until he could figure out a way to politely use hand-signs to ask where the bathroom was.
The camera was right next to Abe. He must have taken it out during the feat, maybe he’d even gotten some photos unnoticed during the commotion. He grabbed the camera, but the strap was looped around Abe’s hand. Kline gently lifted it and slipped the camera off, but he felt something slick and warm. He held his fingers up and in the dim light of the fire pit’s embers, he saw a dark stain. He smelled it and took in the metallic scent of warm blood.
“…Abe…?” He jerked the blanket back and felt his gorge rise. The young man’s skin was mostly eaten away, dissolved as if by acid.
“Ungh… what’s up, boss?” Abe blinked sleepily, obviously unaware of his condition. How could he not feel it? Kline turned away, certain he was going to vomit. He braced his hands on the floor and the burning itch suddenly returned. With a scream, he saw that his own hands were almost fleshless, eaten away nearly to the bone.
Screams echoed off the sides of the valley, but it was far too remote for them to be heard by even bestial ears. The village in the valley faded away as the creature closed its illusory mouth. Perhaps in another few decades some beast would wander this way again, and the creature would unfold its trap and let its meal walk right in.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Jam Tomorrow
Prompt: The day that never comes
The last thing that Lance Corporal Jarrod Timberlake said to his bunkmates before collapsing onto his bunk was “I’m not getting up until tomorrow.” The Iraqi heat and pure exhaustion had not allowed for any other conversation.
When he woke up it was accompanied by a great deal of dizziness, like some of the hangovers he had had not long after arriving in the Middle East. After pulling early patrol the night after another wild bender, Timberlake had sworn off drinking. Well…sworn off getting drunk. Well…getting really drunk at least.
“Come on, Timberlake, get up.”
The words were quiet and amused rather than the booming and painful sound he expected given the hung over feeling. But he was not hung over. He had not been drinking last night at all. He’d had a late patrol, so it hadn’t been an option.
The owner of the quiet and amused voice, Private Dillon, helped Timberlake to his feet. He mumbled a thanks to the burly private and was grateful for once at the routine drilled into him during boot camp. He showered, shaved and dressed automatically, which was good because everything looked just a little blurry still.
But the numbers on his watch were clear enough.
“Dillon? Why the hell did you get me up at five am?”
Dillon smiled, “Because you have an early patrol. You didn’t look like you were getting up on your own…” he shrugged and went back to polishing his boots.
“I had late patrol last night, they don’t schedule you for an early one the next day. Not even the United States Army is that cruel.” Timberlake wandered over to the schedule tacked to the wall by the door and felt his mouth droop open. He was clearly marked for an early patrol.
“You had a late patrol the night before last, not yesterday,” the ever-helpful Dillon replied. “Says right there, ‘September 5th: Timberlake, Jarrod. Patrol – zero six hundred.’”
“It’s the 4th,” Timberlake corrected absently. He still felt a little out of it, and his vision was still blurry like when you opened your eyes underwater. He was able to focus on his watch after a moment and saw that he was wrong again. Something was wrong… did he have a heat stroke?
Timberlake thought about asking to see the base doc, but decided to wait on it. It was not long before six in the morning now, and he didn’t exactly expect to wake feeling alert and happy. It would pass. He hoped.
Timberlake, Dillon and two other privates, Arnolds and Henriquez, climbed into a hummvee, checked their patrol route, and rumbled into the Iraqi dawn. Timberlake opted for the back seat, leaning his helmeted head against the vibrating glass of the window. The rising sun turned the vehicle into an oven, but did nothing for his head, except change his metaphor for his blurred vision from being underwater to seeing the whole world through a heat shimmer.
Dillon had decided to ride up top, leaning on the machinegun, and Arnolds and Henriquez where in the front, chatting amiably about the poker game from yesterday afternoon. Timberlake ignored them until he felt a tingling on his wrist. He rubbed at his wrist, expecting to shoo off some biting fly (the desert had its own nasty bugs, he’d been sorry to find out), but felt nothing. It took a moment longer for him to realize that he had not even felt the band of his watch. He looked down, confused, and saw that circling his wrist was a blurred line.
It had the shape and the color of his watch, but as he watched, it grew more and more indistinct, and then he was simply staring at his naked wrist. “What the hell…?”
Henriquez turned in the front passenger seat, bracing his hand on the headrest of the driver’s seat. “What’s up?”
Timberlake opened his mouth, but he wasn’t sure what he could say. He wasn’t sure he believed what he’d just seen himself, let alone convince others it had happened as well. But his eyes caught on Henriquez’s wrist, circled by a darkening blurry line.
“That’s my watch…” Timberlake said. “How the fuck did you get my watch, Henry?”
The private flinched, pulling his hand away as if the other soldier was going to lunge for it. “Hey, if you loved the watch so much, you should quit the game when you ran out of money.” He frowned. Normally Timberlake and Henriquez got along just fine. “…you can play for it again tonight if you want to win it back.”
Timberlake, shook his head, more to shake off this persistent wrong feeling than to respond. “No…it’s okay…Sorry, Henry. I’m just out of it today.”
“Sure, no problem…You want the radio on?”
“No, I’m cool. Thanks…” Timberlake shook his head more slowly this time. “I’m gonna get some air.”
The others nodded while Timberlake clambered up from the cab to the back of the hummvee, to sit with Dillon. He found a relatively comfortable place to perch and clutched his rifle to his chest like a life-preserver. “Strange question for you, Dillon: What day is it?” Thursday, September fourth, two-thousand and eight.
“It’s Friday, man! And you and I, lucky fucks that we are, get this weekend off!” Dillon leaned casually on the machinegun, a cigarette clenched between his lips. That’s why he liked to ride up top.
“Okay, Dillon, this is going to sound fucked up, but it doesn’t feel like today. Like, yesterday was the third, and today should be the fourth, but it’s not. It’s tomorrow.” Timberlake wrung his hands around the barrel of his rifle. He knew he sounded crazy, but hell, he felt crazy right now. But Dillon had gone through boot with him, if anyone could understand, it would be the big Texan.
Dillon frowned, but that was just his thinking face. At least he was taking this seriously. “So, like, you don’t remember yesterday?”
“I remember yesterday, but yesterday was Wednesday, not Thursday. Today, should be Thursday and tomorrow is Friday.”
“But today is Friday,” Dillon drawled.
“That’s what I’m saying: this is tomorrow, not today,” Timberlake sighed. This was crazy, but rather than sounding ridiculous once spoken, like the night fears of children when looked at in the light of day, the idea grew in strength.
“I dunno, Jarrod… I remember yesterday and it was the fourth.” He crouched on the back of the hummer and pushed his helmet back, frowning even more deeply, trying to make this make sense for his friend’s sake.
“Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today…” Timberlake muttered.
“What’s that?”
Timberlake spoke up over the road noise. “Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today. It’s something from Alice in Wonderland or something. Like, if you’re going to have jam tomorrow you don’t, because when it’s tomorrow, it’s not tomorrow anymore, it’s today. Get it?”
“Man, I never got Alice in Wonderland,” Dillon shook his head.
Timberlake was determined to lay it out for his friend, to make it make sense so he at least wouldn’t be alone in this crazy idea, but he didn’t say anything. Dillon was getting blurry. Everything was blurry, just a little bit, but Dillon was getting really blurry. Like the watch.
“Mike!?”
Timberlake grabbed at the burly private, but he even felt blurry and indistinct. The blurred shape lost definition and color until it was a shapeless blob. Then it began to clear. Color and form returned, but Dillon didn’t.
“You okay, Timberlake?” Henriquez asked.
“What are you doing up here, Henry?”
The little Latino looked strangely at the corporal. “Uh…dude, we came up here to ditch Parkinson. She never shuts up.”
Timberlake craned his head to look into the cab of the bouncing vehicle. Arnolds was stuck driving, unable to escape Parkinson, a woman who had decided to fend off the men of the unit by being as annoying as she possibly could.
“Where’s Dillon!?” Timberlake demanded. He had almost had him convinced, almost had an ally in making sense of the impossible.
The color drained from Henriquez’s face and his bemused expression melted away. “Dude…Dillon’s dead.” He stared at Timberlake with real concern. “Yesterday, man. Suicide bomber. Happened right after the poker game…You okay, amigo?”
Timberlake stared ahead. Yesterday he and Dillon had been on late patrol. He’d been by the big Texan’s side every hour of the day.
Henriquez looked around, as if to make sure that no one could overhear him, perched as he was on the back of an armored jeep rumbling along a remote desert road. “It’s not your fault, Timberlake.”
Timberlake looked up, shocked.
“He went out to get a pack of smokes, but you were still wiped out from the late patrol the night before. Amigo, if you had gone with him, you’d have both been blown away…” He clapped his hand on Timberlake’s shoulder awkwardly.
“Everything’s changing…” He mumbled.
But Henriquez, worried and listening closely caught the comment. “Aint truer words ever been spoken.”
“Because this is tomorrow. It hasn’t happened yet… when things happen today, it changes what’s happening now, in tomorrow.” All the fuzziness, the blurriness, it was because tomorrow was still being shaped by today. That’s why nothing stayed still, because it was all changing moment to moment. Butterflies flapping their wings and all that shit.
Henriquez frowned, not a thoughtful expression on his face. “Uh, yeah… too deep for me though. I’m glad you volunteered to speak at the wake, not me.”
Yeah, he would have volunteered to speak at the wake. And once he got stateside he’d go see Dillon’s family in Texas. The big man talked about them so damned much, Timberlake felt like he knew them, like they were his family too.
Machinegun fire ripped into the silence. Cursing, Henriquez stood up and grabbed the machinegun’s grip, adding its chatter to the sudden storm of noise. Timberlake grabbed his rifle and searched for targets, dusty shapes in the scrub at the side of the road. He aimed and fired, grateful once again for the responses battered into his body by boot camp. No matter how strange or out of place he was, his body knew what to do.
Gunfire drowned out all thought, until some kind of explosive went off next to the hummvee, throwing Timberlake over the side. At least he was already used to being dizzy and peering through clouded vision, he hardly felt any different.
The gunfire went on and then Henriquez came sliding through the rough sand to his side. “Oh, shit, shit, shit, man… This area was supposed to be clear. It was clear a few days ago…must have snuck in yesterday.” Henriquez fired a few rounds, changed clips, fired again. “We gotta get you up, man.”
Timberlake smiled. He’d just though of something funny. Hell, he was dying, why not share it? “I’ll get up tomorrow…or yesterday…but not today.”
Jarrod Timberlake woke up to the sound of snoring. Only one, very large, set of nostrils on the base made a sound like that. Or else a helicopter was landing outside the bunkhouse. The Lance Corporal propped himself up in bed and looked around. Mike Dillon was lying on the bunk next to his, legs sticking out over the end of the bed, snoring like a band saw.
Timberlake checked his watch – wrapped snugly around his wrist once again – and saw the date: Thursday September fourth, two thousand and eight. It was a big day today.
The last thing that Lance Corporal Jarrod Timberlake said to his bunkmates before collapsing onto his bunk was “I’m not getting up until tomorrow.” The Iraqi heat and pure exhaustion had not allowed for any other conversation.
When he woke up it was accompanied by a great deal of dizziness, like some of the hangovers he had had not long after arriving in the Middle East. After pulling early patrol the night after another wild bender, Timberlake had sworn off drinking. Well…sworn off getting drunk. Well…getting really drunk at least.
“Come on, Timberlake, get up.”
The words were quiet and amused rather than the booming and painful sound he expected given the hung over feeling. But he was not hung over. He had not been drinking last night at all. He’d had a late patrol, so it hadn’t been an option.
The owner of the quiet and amused voice, Private Dillon, helped Timberlake to his feet. He mumbled a thanks to the burly private and was grateful for once at the routine drilled into him during boot camp. He showered, shaved and dressed automatically, which was good because everything looked just a little blurry still.
But the numbers on his watch were clear enough.
“Dillon? Why the hell did you get me up at five am?”
Dillon smiled, “Because you have an early patrol. You didn’t look like you were getting up on your own…” he shrugged and went back to polishing his boots.
“I had late patrol last night, they don’t schedule you for an early one the next day. Not even the United States Army is that cruel.” Timberlake wandered over to the schedule tacked to the wall by the door and felt his mouth droop open. He was clearly marked for an early patrol.
“You had a late patrol the night before last, not yesterday,” the ever-helpful Dillon replied. “Says right there, ‘September 5th: Timberlake, Jarrod. Patrol – zero six hundred.’”
“It’s the 4th,” Timberlake corrected absently. He still felt a little out of it, and his vision was still blurry like when you opened your eyes underwater. He was able to focus on his watch after a moment and saw that he was wrong again. Something was wrong… did he have a heat stroke?
Timberlake thought about asking to see the base doc, but decided to wait on it. It was not long before six in the morning now, and he didn’t exactly expect to wake feeling alert and happy. It would pass. He hoped.
Timberlake, Dillon and two other privates, Arnolds and Henriquez, climbed into a hummvee, checked their patrol route, and rumbled into the Iraqi dawn. Timberlake opted for the back seat, leaning his helmeted head against the vibrating glass of the window. The rising sun turned the vehicle into an oven, but did nothing for his head, except change his metaphor for his blurred vision from being underwater to seeing the whole world through a heat shimmer.
Dillon had decided to ride up top, leaning on the machinegun, and Arnolds and Henriquez where in the front, chatting amiably about the poker game from yesterday afternoon. Timberlake ignored them until he felt a tingling on his wrist. He rubbed at his wrist, expecting to shoo off some biting fly (the desert had its own nasty bugs, he’d been sorry to find out), but felt nothing. It took a moment longer for him to realize that he had not even felt the band of his watch. He looked down, confused, and saw that circling his wrist was a blurred line.
It had the shape and the color of his watch, but as he watched, it grew more and more indistinct, and then he was simply staring at his naked wrist. “What the hell…?”
Henriquez turned in the front passenger seat, bracing his hand on the headrest of the driver’s seat. “What’s up?”
Timberlake opened his mouth, but he wasn’t sure what he could say. He wasn’t sure he believed what he’d just seen himself, let alone convince others it had happened as well. But his eyes caught on Henriquez’s wrist, circled by a darkening blurry line.
“That’s my watch…” Timberlake said. “How the fuck did you get my watch, Henry?”
The private flinched, pulling his hand away as if the other soldier was going to lunge for it. “Hey, if you loved the watch so much, you should quit the game when you ran out of money.” He frowned. Normally Timberlake and Henriquez got along just fine. “…you can play for it again tonight if you want to win it back.”
Timberlake, shook his head, more to shake off this persistent wrong feeling than to respond. “No…it’s okay…Sorry, Henry. I’m just out of it today.”
“Sure, no problem…You want the radio on?”
“No, I’m cool. Thanks…” Timberlake shook his head more slowly this time. “I’m gonna get some air.”
The others nodded while Timberlake clambered up from the cab to the back of the hummvee, to sit with Dillon. He found a relatively comfortable place to perch and clutched his rifle to his chest like a life-preserver. “Strange question for you, Dillon: What day is it?” Thursday, September fourth, two-thousand and eight.
“It’s Friday, man! And you and I, lucky fucks that we are, get this weekend off!” Dillon leaned casually on the machinegun, a cigarette clenched between his lips. That’s why he liked to ride up top.
“Okay, Dillon, this is going to sound fucked up, but it doesn’t feel like today. Like, yesterday was the third, and today should be the fourth, but it’s not. It’s tomorrow.” Timberlake wrung his hands around the barrel of his rifle. He knew he sounded crazy, but hell, he felt crazy right now. But Dillon had gone through boot with him, if anyone could understand, it would be the big Texan.
Dillon frowned, but that was just his thinking face. At least he was taking this seriously. “So, like, you don’t remember yesterday?”
“I remember yesterday, but yesterday was Wednesday, not Thursday. Today, should be Thursday and tomorrow is Friday.”
“But today is Friday,” Dillon drawled.
“That’s what I’m saying: this is tomorrow, not today,” Timberlake sighed. This was crazy, but rather than sounding ridiculous once spoken, like the night fears of children when looked at in the light of day, the idea grew in strength.
“I dunno, Jarrod… I remember yesterday and it was the fourth.” He crouched on the back of the hummer and pushed his helmet back, frowning even more deeply, trying to make this make sense for his friend’s sake.
“Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today…” Timberlake muttered.
“What’s that?”
Timberlake spoke up over the road noise. “Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today. It’s something from Alice in Wonderland or something. Like, if you’re going to have jam tomorrow you don’t, because when it’s tomorrow, it’s not tomorrow anymore, it’s today. Get it?”
“Man, I never got Alice in Wonderland,” Dillon shook his head.
Timberlake was determined to lay it out for his friend, to make it make sense so he at least wouldn’t be alone in this crazy idea, but he didn’t say anything. Dillon was getting blurry. Everything was blurry, just a little bit, but Dillon was getting really blurry. Like the watch.
“Mike!?”
Timberlake grabbed at the burly private, but he even felt blurry and indistinct. The blurred shape lost definition and color until it was a shapeless blob. Then it began to clear. Color and form returned, but Dillon didn’t.
“You okay, Timberlake?” Henriquez asked.
“What are you doing up here, Henry?”
The little Latino looked strangely at the corporal. “Uh…dude, we came up here to ditch Parkinson. She never shuts up.”
Timberlake craned his head to look into the cab of the bouncing vehicle. Arnolds was stuck driving, unable to escape Parkinson, a woman who had decided to fend off the men of the unit by being as annoying as she possibly could.
“Where’s Dillon!?” Timberlake demanded. He had almost had him convinced, almost had an ally in making sense of the impossible.
The color drained from Henriquez’s face and his bemused expression melted away. “Dude…Dillon’s dead.” He stared at Timberlake with real concern. “Yesterday, man. Suicide bomber. Happened right after the poker game…You okay, amigo?”
Timberlake stared ahead. Yesterday he and Dillon had been on late patrol. He’d been by the big Texan’s side every hour of the day.
Henriquez looked around, as if to make sure that no one could overhear him, perched as he was on the back of an armored jeep rumbling along a remote desert road. “It’s not your fault, Timberlake.”
Timberlake looked up, shocked.
“He went out to get a pack of smokes, but you were still wiped out from the late patrol the night before. Amigo, if you had gone with him, you’d have both been blown away…” He clapped his hand on Timberlake’s shoulder awkwardly.
“Everything’s changing…” He mumbled.
But Henriquez, worried and listening closely caught the comment. “Aint truer words ever been spoken.”
“Because this is tomorrow. It hasn’t happened yet… when things happen today, it changes what’s happening now, in tomorrow.” All the fuzziness, the blurriness, it was because tomorrow was still being shaped by today. That’s why nothing stayed still, because it was all changing moment to moment. Butterflies flapping their wings and all that shit.
Henriquez frowned, not a thoughtful expression on his face. “Uh, yeah… too deep for me though. I’m glad you volunteered to speak at the wake, not me.”
Yeah, he would have volunteered to speak at the wake. And once he got stateside he’d go see Dillon’s family in Texas. The big man talked about them so damned much, Timberlake felt like he knew them, like they were his family too.
Machinegun fire ripped into the silence. Cursing, Henriquez stood up and grabbed the machinegun’s grip, adding its chatter to the sudden storm of noise. Timberlake grabbed his rifle and searched for targets, dusty shapes in the scrub at the side of the road. He aimed and fired, grateful once again for the responses battered into his body by boot camp. No matter how strange or out of place he was, his body knew what to do.
Gunfire drowned out all thought, until some kind of explosive went off next to the hummvee, throwing Timberlake over the side. At least he was already used to being dizzy and peering through clouded vision, he hardly felt any different.
The gunfire went on and then Henriquez came sliding through the rough sand to his side. “Oh, shit, shit, shit, man… This area was supposed to be clear. It was clear a few days ago…must have snuck in yesterday.” Henriquez fired a few rounds, changed clips, fired again. “We gotta get you up, man.”
Timberlake smiled. He’d just though of something funny. Hell, he was dying, why not share it? “I’ll get up tomorrow…or yesterday…but not today.”
Jarrod Timberlake woke up to the sound of snoring. Only one, very large, set of nostrils on the base made a sound like that. Or else a helicopter was landing outside the bunkhouse. The Lance Corporal propped himself up in bed and looked around. Mike Dillon was lying on the bunk next to his, legs sticking out over the end of the bed, snoring like a band saw.
Timberlake checked his watch – wrapped snugly around his wrist once again – and saw the date: Thursday September fourth, two thousand and eight. It was a big day today.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Luck
Prompt: A story about good or bad luck
Arthur Huxley walked briskly down the street towards the café. He had a two hour block set aside during the afternoon and he intended to spend every possible minute of it with Christine. He considered it his greatest piece of luck to have hired the beautiful receptionist and that he had drawn her into this affair so easily. I’m the luckiest man in the world, he thought as he hurried along the sidewalk.
Arthur didn’t notice the aging Jamaican he knocked aside. Scarecrow thin, with clothes that were once colorful and now faded, long dreadlocks and a sorrowful brown face, the man blended in with the dispossessed masses and the other crazies. Arthur was vaguely aware that the man shouted something about voodoo and made some sort of hand gesture behind his back, but this was New York. Everyone flipped everyone off. If he greeted Christine with a raised middle-finger, she might not even notice.
He spied her waiting just inside the café that was their rendezvous. In each hand she held a cup of coffee, as thoughtful in those little things as she was between the sheets. His mind raced ahead to the hotel where he would soon be experiencing her…thoughtfulness, but he was jarred from those pleasant thoughts by a white splatter of shit as some passing bird vented its bowls on the shoulder of his suit. His seven hundred dollar suit.
Arthur closed the last distance to his mistress cursing, the smile gone from his face.
“Hi,” he said brusquely.
“Here, let me help,” she said. Thoughtful.
Christine juggled the coffee, trying to hand him one of the small napkins that was curled around the cups. He reached for them, snagged one too quickly, and pulled the coffee cup from her hand. The lid popped ajar and scalding coffee splashed his hand.
“Motherfucker!”
Christine winced at the curse as much as for her part in burning Arthur.
“I’m sorry, Arthur. Really, I am.” She took the rest of the napkins more carefully and helped to wipe his hand. “I’ll go get some more napkins.”
He followed her inside and took the proffered napkins into the bathroom to clean up the bird shit. Well, these things happened, and it was only a few minutes. He still had most of the afternoon, and he was sure that as soon as he had Christine naked and squealing that he would forget all about these annoyances.
Except the faucet was broken. He wiped up the stinking crap as best he could with dry napkins and paper towels.
“Your sink is broken,” he accused the barista as he walked out of the café. “Let’s get out of here,” he told Christine.
“Looks like you’re having a bad day, hun,” She smiled at him and leaned close. “I’ve been thinking and…I’m willing to try that…that thing you asked about.” She blushed, looking very shy and very vulnerable. Arthur was considerably cheered and was half-tempted to throw her down and do that thing right there on the sidewalk.
He settled for a passionate kiss and a not-so-subtle grope. The screeching of tires and the honking of horns shattered his rising good mood.
“Arthur!?”
He looked around wildly, but the voice was clear. A car was stopped dead in the middle of the street, cars stalled bumper to bumper behind it, the cacophony of horns not loud enough to drown out the sound of his wife yelling. She stared out the window, leveling a gorgon’s gaze at Arthur.
“You bastard!”
Christine pulled away, the pretty blush gone, her cheeks pale now.
“I…I should go…” she stammered. Christine turned on her heel and trotted quickly away without looking back. Arthur knew that he’d never get her back in the sack now.
“Don’t bother coming home, you two-timing scum!” Arthur flinched, turning back to face his furious wife.
“Wait! Janice! I…I can explain!” He started towards the car, but the tinted window was already rolling up, shutting him out.
“Explain it to my lawyer!” With a screech of tires, Janice lurched into motion, smacking the side mirror against a parked cab and shattering it. She was driving his car of course.
“Wait!” Arthur stepped out into the street to give chase. He wasn’t sure what he could do to salvage this situation, but if there was salvaging to be done he would have to talk to Janice to do it.
Unfortunately, with the sudden dam in traffic gone, two cabs tried to slide into the vacuum. But Arthur had also stepped out into that space. He turned just in time to see the two cabbies looking, not at him, but at each other, multi-language curses flying, and then he was hit.
The crunching metal and the brittle snap that accompanied incredible pain blended together. More horns were honking, more people were cursing, but the only thing that Arthur could hear was one tall, scarecrow-thin man bending over him.
“Bad luck, mon…”
Arthur Huxley walked briskly down the street towards the café. He had a two hour block set aside during the afternoon and he intended to spend every possible minute of it with Christine. He considered it his greatest piece of luck to have hired the beautiful receptionist and that he had drawn her into this affair so easily. I’m the luckiest man in the world, he thought as he hurried along the sidewalk.
Arthur didn’t notice the aging Jamaican he knocked aside. Scarecrow thin, with clothes that were once colorful and now faded, long dreadlocks and a sorrowful brown face, the man blended in with the dispossessed masses and the other crazies. Arthur was vaguely aware that the man shouted something about voodoo and made some sort of hand gesture behind his back, but this was New York. Everyone flipped everyone off. If he greeted Christine with a raised middle-finger, she might not even notice.
He spied her waiting just inside the café that was their rendezvous. In each hand she held a cup of coffee, as thoughtful in those little things as she was between the sheets. His mind raced ahead to the hotel where he would soon be experiencing her…thoughtfulness, but he was jarred from those pleasant thoughts by a white splatter of shit as some passing bird vented its bowls on the shoulder of his suit. His seven hundred dollar suit.
Arthur closed the last distance to his mistress cursing, the smile gone from his face.
“Hi,” he said brusquely.
“Here, let me help,” she said. Thoughtful.
Christine juggled the coffee, trying to hand him one of the small napkins that was curled around the cups. He reached for them, snagged one too quickly, and pulled the coffee cup from her hand. The lid popped ajar and scalding coffee splashed his hand.
“Motherfucker!”
Christine winced at the curse as much as for her part in burning Arthur.
“I’m sorry, Arthur. Really, I am.” She took the rest of the napkins more carefully and helped to wipe his hand. “I’ll go get some more napkins.”
He followed her inside and took the proffered napkins into the bathroom to clean up the bird shit. Well, these things happened, and it was only a few minutes. He still had most of the afternoon, and he was sure that as soon as he had Christine naked and squealing that he would forget all about these annoyances.
Except the faucet was broken. He wiped up the stinking crap as best he could with dry napkins and paper towels.
“Your sink is broken,” he accused the barista as he walked out of the café. “Let’s get out of here,” he told Christine.
“Looks like you’re having a bad day, hun,” She smiled at him and leaned close. “I’ve been thinking and…I’m willing to try that…that thing you asked about.” She blushed, looking very shy and very vulnerable. Arthur was considerably cheered and was half-tempted to throw her down and do that thing right there on the sidewalk.
He settled for a passionate kiss and a not-so-subtle grope. The screeching of tires and the honking of horns shattered his rising good mood.
“Arthur!?”
He looked around wildly, but the voice was clear. A car was stopped dead in the middle of the street, cars stalled bumper to bumper behind it, the cacophony of horns not loud enough to drown out the sound of his wife yelling. She stared out the window, leveling a gorgon’s gaze at Arthur.
“You bastard!”
Christine pulled away, the pretty blush gone, her cheeks pale now.
“I…I should go…” she stammered. Christine turned on her heel and trotted quickly away without looking back. Arthur knew that he’d never get her back in the sack now.
“Don’t bother coming home, you two-timing scum!” Arthur flinched, turning back to face his furious wife.
“Wait! Janice! I…I can explain!” He started towards the car, but the tinted window was already rolling up, shutting him out.
“Explain it to my lawyer!” With a screech of tires, Janice lurched into motion, smacking the side mirror against a parked cab and shattering it. She was driving his car of course.
“Wait!” Arthur stepped out into the street to give chase. He wasn’t sure what he could do to salvage this situation, but if there was salvaging to be done he would have to talk to Janice to do it.
Unfortunately, with the sudden dam in traffic gone, two cabs tried to slide into the vacuum. But Arthur had also stepped out into that space. He turned just in time to see the two cabbies looking, not at him, but at each other, multi-language curses flying, and then he was hit.
The crunching metal and the brittle snap that accompanied incredible pain blended together. More horns were honking, more people were cursing, but the only thing that Arthur could hear was one tall, scarecrow-thin man bending over him.
“Bad luck, mon…”
Monday, August 18, 2008
Death aint so bad
Ding dong!
The doorbell chimed cheerfully just before noon. Freddy waited until he had scored another ten thousand points before he paused his game and answered. Outside was a man about twice his age wearing an orange blazer, clutching a small black book to his chest.
“Good morning, young man!” The stranger beamed. “Is your mother or father home right now?”
Freddy rolled his eyes. The religious freaks always had a way of dropping in at just the right time to ruin your day, say, when you had almost beat the high score on Bloody Rampage 3.
“Mom!” Freddy closed the door on the missionary and shouted, rather than go looking for his mother. “There’s a man at the door in a tacky blazer with a death wish!”
By the time Sandra came in from the garden out back, Freddy had already trotted back to his room and the sounds of electric carnage had begun again.
“Hello?” She said as she opened the door for the man who had been patiently waiting outside.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he said, smiling brightly. “I represent the Church of the Underworld and I was wondering if I might have a little of your time this morning?”
Sandra chewed her lower lip for a moment. She wasn’t an atheist, but she wasn’t devout either. And the garden really needed weeding… but she hated to be rude. “Just for a moment.”
She served iced tea while he sat down on one end of the couch, facing Sandra in her recliner. “Ma’am, have you heard of the Church of the Underworld?” He smiled as she nodded. “Well, I’d like to tell you a little more about it, and make an offer to you.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready to convert…” Sandra said, wringing her hands.
“Well, the question is, ma’am, are you ready to be saved? This world is a place of beauty and sorrow both. For every good thing that life provides, there is a cost and in the end we all owe.” He reached into a pocket and withdrew a pamphlet and slid it across Sandra’s coffee table. The cover was black and on the front was a cartoon caricature of a man shrugging. Above his head in warm red letters it said “Have you considered dying today?”
“All I want you to do is ask yourself ‘is death right for me?’ We all die anyways, but for most of us it’s after a long life of hard work and little reward. But what waits for us? The afterlife is a wonderful place with all of the beauty and none of the sorrow of this sad plane, especially for those of us who believe, who have a place there waiting for them.”
“Well,” Sandra hesitated. “I’m not very religious…”
“I understand, Ma’am. Changing faiths isn’t a decision to be taken lightly. And we would never want you to make a snap decision. Why don’t you talk to my partner, who can tell you a little more about the Underworld and what waits for you there.”
The missionary turned to his left and Sandra followed his eyes. At first she saw nothing, but as she strained to see what he saw, Sandra just thought she could see an intense coldness in the shape of a person. Whispers rose in the air, coiling around her like moths circling a streetlight.
She shivered and let out a small whine. Her eyes teared up and single teardrop welled up and ran down her cheek. “It’s beautiful…” she whispered.
“I know,” the religious salesman said. “I’ve seen it too, but I’ve decided to wait to make my journey there so that I can share my faith with those who suffer and don’t even know it.”
Sandra nodded in mute agreement.
“Why don’t you come to church this Sunday. You can hear Father Hulligan speak, and talk to the shades of those who’ve already reached paradise.”
“I…I think I’m ready to change faith…” Sandra said.
Freddy came out of his room, stretching. He was very close to beating the high score, but he was going to need another soda to make it. “Mom!? When’s lunch?”
He stopped in the living room. The man in the tacky orange blazer was kneeling on the floor next to his mom’s recliner. On the other side of the chair was a faint shadow. Both and man and shadow were praying and in between them, his mother slumped in her chair with the handle of an ornate dagger sticking out of her heart.
“Mom?”
The man got to his feet. “Your mom’s decided to change religion, son.” He tilted his head quizzically and smiled. “She’s much happier now. Tell me, son. Do you have a death wish?”
The doorbell chimed cheerfully just before noon. Freddy waited until he had scored another ten thousand points before he paused his game and answered. Outside was a man about twice his age wearing an orange blazer, clutching a small black book to his chest.
“Good morning, young man!” The stranger beamed. “Is your mother or father home right now?”
Freddy rolled his eyes. The religious freaks always had a way of dropping in at just the right time to ruin your day, say, when you had almost beat the high score on Bloody Rampage 3.
“Mom!” Freddy closed the door on the missionary and shouted, rather than go looking for his mother. “There’s a man at the door in a tacky blazer with a death wish!”
By the time Sandra came in from the garden out back, Freddy had already trotted back to his room and the sounds of electric carnage had begun again.
“Hello?” She said as she opened the door for the man who had been patiently waiting outside.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he said, smiling brightly. “I represent the Church of the Underworld and I was wondering if I might have a little of your time this morning?”
Sandra chewed her lower lip for a moment. She wasn’t an atheist, but she wasn’t devout either. And the garden really needed weeding… but she hated to be rude. “Just for a moment.”
She served iced tea while he sat down on one end of the couch, facing Sandra in her recliner. “Ma’am, have you heard of the Church of the Underworld?” He smiled as she nodded. “Well, I’d like to tell you a little more about it, and make an offer to you.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready to convert…” Sandra said, wringing her hands.
“Well, the question is, ma’am, are you ready to be saved? This world is a place of beauty and sorrow both. For every good thing that life provides, there is a cost and in the end we all owe.” He reached into a pocket and withdrew a pamphlet and slid it across Sandra’s coffee table. The cover was black and on the front was a cartoon caricature of a man shrugging. Above his head in warm red letters it said “Have you considered dying today?”
“All I want you to do is ask yourself ‘is death right for me?’ We all die anyways, but for most of us it’s after a long life of hard work and little reward. But what waits for us? The afterlife is a wonderful place with all of the beauty and none of the sorrow of this sad plane, especially for those of us who believe, who have a place there waiting for them.”
“Well,” Sandra hesitated. “I’m not very religious…”
“I understand, Ma’am. Changing faiths isn’t a decision to be taken lightly. And we would never want you to make a snap decision. Why don’t you talk to my partner, who can tell you a little more about the Underworld and what waits for you there.”
The missionary turned to his left and Sandra followed his eyes. At first she saw nothing, but as she strained to see what he saw, Sandra just thought she could see an intense coldness in the shape of a person. Whispers rose in the air, coiling around her like moths circling a streetlight.
She shivered and let out a small whine. Her eyes teared up and single teardrop welled up and ran down her cheek. “It’s beautiful…” she whispered.
“I know,” the religious salesman said. “I’ve seen it too, but I’ve decided to wait to make my journey there so that I can share my faith with those who suffer and don’t even know it.”
Sandra nodded in mute agreement.
“Why don’t you come to church this Sunday. You can hear Father Hulligan speak, and talk to the shades of those who’ve already reached paradise.”
“I…I think I’m ready to change faith…” Sandra said.
Freddy came out of his room, stretching. He was very close to beating the high score, but he was going to need another soda to make it. “Mom!? When’s lunch?”
He stopped in the living room. The man in the tacky orange blazer was kneeling on the floor next to his mom’s recliner. On the other side of the chair was a faint shadow. Both and man and shadow were praying and in between them, his mother slumped in her chair with the handle of an ornate dagger sticking out of her heart.
“Mom?”
The man got to his feet. “Your mom’s decided to change religion, son.” He tilted his head quizzically and smiled. “She’s much happier now. Tell me, son. Do you have a death wish?”
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Joy Ride
When the T’sa finished watering the plant that fed the machine, the Sai’ash youth leapt onto the vehicle. It leapt onto its feet and bounded through the streets of Juraidia.
The joy-rider whooped as people scattered out of the way. One leg caught the awning of a fruit stand, tipping it and scattering fruit in the streets.
The machine crashed. He looked up, dazed, saw two figures standing over him. There was no mistaking the gods of justice.
“We gave you many chances to mend your ways, boy…”
“You will get what you deserve…”
The joy-rider whooped as people scattered out of the way. One leg caught the awning of a fruit stand, tipping it and scattering fruit in the streets.
The machine crashed. He looked up, dazed, saw two figures standing over him. There was no mistaking the gods of justice.
“We gave you many chances to mend your ways, boy…”
“You will get what you deserve…”
Monday, August 4, 2008
Laser
Prompt: Anything too stupid to say is sung
He’s half man and half machine
He is…a looting machine
A mind of steel and plots and plans
He’ll steal anything if he can
His name, you can’t even say
If you wanna live don’t get in his way
He can make a tank from an ambulance
The fuckin’ zombies don’t have a chance
He’s got a laser!
And he’s coming for you…
With his laser!
Look out for his laser!
He’ll burn you down…
With his laser!
He can’t move fast on his own two feet
He’s the strangest doc you’ll ever meet
His body breaks down more than Windows
But he leaves bodies wherever he goes
He’s got a laser!
And he’s coming for you…
With his laser!
Look out for his laser!
He’ll burn you down…
With his laser!
The Warbulance is in overdrive
If you’re a zombie, he’ll burn you alive
He steals the weapons and build ‘em up
Lasers and rockets, it’s never enough
Yeah, he’s the doctor
He’s got a PhD in looting
He likes slaughter
And zombie shooting
Yeah, he’s got guns
And a big fucking laser
Frying things is fun
He’ll fry you sooner or later
He’s got a laser!
And he’s coming for you…
With his laser!
Look out for his laser!
He’ll burn you down…
With his laser!
He’s got a laser!
It’s bigger than yours
Yeah, a laser!
He’s got a laser…
He’s got a laser…
Laser!
He’s half man and half machine
He is…a looting machine
A mind of steel and plots and plans
He’ll steal anything if he can
His name, you can’t even say
If you wanna live don’t get in his way
He can make a tank from an ambulance
The fuckin’ zombies don’t have a chance
He’s got a laser!
And he’s coming for you…
With his laser!
Look out for his laser!
He’ll burn you down…
With his laser!
He can’t move fast on his own two feet
He’s the strangest doc you’ll ever meet
His body breaks down more than Windows
But he leaves bodies wherever he goes
He’s got a laser!
And he’s coming for you…
With his laser!
Look out for his laser!
He’ll burn you down…
With his laser!
The Warbulance is in overdrive
If you’re a zombie, he’ll burn you alive
He steals the weapons and build ‘em up
Lasers and rockets, it’s never enough
Yeah, he’s the doctor
He’s got a PhD in looting
He likes slaughter
And zombie shooting
Yeah, he’s got guns
And a big fucking laser
Frying things is fun
He’ll fry you sooner or later
He’s got a laser!
And he’s coming for you…
With his laser!
Look out for his laser!
He’ll burn you down…
With his laser!
He’s got a laser!
It’s bigger than yours
Yeah, a laser!
He’s got a laser…
He’s got a laser…
Laser!
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Waking the sleeper
Prompt: “I woke up when?”
The dream took a strange turn in the earliest hours of the morning. While he could not pin down the exact beginning of the dream, the first thing that Justin remembered was being at work. Stacks of paper appeared on his desk whenever he turned his eyes away. When he tried to sign his name on the line where it was required, either the pen would twist out of his hand, or the paper would slide itself from under his hand. When he tried to check his email, the mouse or keyboard would dance away from his grip, or else the monitor would turn around so he couldn’t see what he was reading or typing.
It was a very frustrating dream, but it was one that Justin had often enough, in one form or another. Though in his dream it was bright midday the wall clock showed it was an hour or two past morning. The clock never read the exact time and it was never the same twice, but some part of Justin’s dreaming unconscious knew it was early. That’s when the dream leapt into something else altogether.
It happened with that abrupt vagueness that all dream-transitions take. One moment he was trying to pour coffee into his mug in the break room while the stream of brown liquid flowed upward away from his cup like a magic beanstalk growing into the clouds, the next moment he was at home in his bed.
Everything had a peculiar quality, a blurriness around the edges that sometimes spread into a double of whatever he was trying to focus on like the twinned vision of a drunk. At least I’m not dreaming about work anymore, Justin thought. But it was a preliminary thought, as if he was still not quite sure that he favored this new dream to the familiar, yet frustrating, old one. He swung his legs out of bed, feeling as if the floor was too far away from him.
“You’re up.”
It was an odd little voice, coming from the floor next to the bed. Justin looked down and found that the speaker matched the voice: wizened, ancient, and small. It was a man, or maybe a goblin. Something small and wrinkled, stick thin except for a large round head and comically large ears and nose. Justin still felt strange though and didn’t laugh. Besides, his subconscious had never presented him with anything so odd before, and he did not know what to make of it.
He shrugged and yawned. He quirked an eyebrow; he’d never felt tired in a dream before. “Yes, I’m up. What are you?”
The little man-creature turned his head this way and that, looking over his shoulders so fast that his floppy ears and pointed nose bobbed. It reminded Justin of the nervous mannerisms of a park squirrel.
“You could not say the name of my people, but it means something like ‘Those who fell between the cracks.’ But we haven’t the time for this, you have been noticed and we must leave here now,” the tiny man said.
“Why? What’s your name? Noticed by who?” Justin mumbled his questions in no particular order. He would much rather have been dreaming about Melissa from Shipping.
The tiny elf, or goblin, or whatever his mind was trying to show him, grabbed his wrist and pulled him to his feet. Standing, the little man came only to his knees. “We must leave because Dark Powers seek you, and we,” here he made a noise that sounded something like an underwater bird call, “do not wish to see the Dark Powers return.” He gazed intently at Justin and he was surprised to see that the thing was near tears with fright. “Things are wakening…
“As to your other two questions, I should not answer. Names have great power and I cannot trust you with mine yet, and no wise-thinking being would dare to utter the name of the other.”
Justin had actually forgotten his other two questions, so he merely shrugged.
It was probably the sausages he’d eaten last night. Whatever the link between indigestion and strange dreams, it was strong. He stepped into slippers and belted his robe around his waist while the little man continued his squirrel imitation and shifted from foot to foot.
“We must leave now!” Justin’s strange dream-guide implored. He shrugged again; it seemed the only proper reaction to such weirdness.
Justin thought that he should maybe eat before going out, perhaps just a round of toast since his little companion seemed in such a hurry, then chuckled at the newness of being hungry in a dream.
“This way,” the little man said. “They look for you in the above-world, so I will lead you to between. They will not think to look for you closer to their powers, they will expect you to run away.” He tugged on the hem of Justin’s robe as he talked, leading him to the front door.
His own house began to take on new dimensions, only half perceived as Justin was led out of the door. All of the colors seemed just a shade off of what they should be, like he was walking in a poor copy of his own world.
“Can you not walk faster with those long legs? It took me long enough to wake you from that odd dream of yours.”
Justin smiled bemusedly. “Compared to this dream the work part is normal.”
“This is no dream, though I wish it were,” his guide responded.
Justin stopped on his front lawn, staring as the creature continued to try to pull him along by the hem of his robe. “No, I’m asleep.”
The little man turned and swiftly pinched Justin’s calf, grinning ruefully as he hopped onto one foot, cradling his smarting leg in his hands. “The Dark Powers are awake and so are you. I woke you from that dream as you were pouring that muddy liquid into the air.”
Justin stared. “I woke when?”
The dream took a strange turn in the earliest hours of the morning. While he could not pin down the exact beginning of the dream, the first thing that Justin remembered was being at work. Stacks of paper appeared on his desk whenever he turned his eyes away. When he tried to sign his name on the line where it was required, either the pen would twist out of his hand, or the paper would slide itself from under his hand. When he tried to check his email, the mouse or keyboard would dance away from his grip, or else the monitor would turn around so he couldn’t see what he was reading or typing.
It was a very frustrating dream, but it was one that Justin had often enough, in one form or another. Though in his dream it was bright midday the wall clock showed it was an hour or two past morning. The clock never read the exact time and it was never the same twice, but some part of Justin’s dreaming unconscious knew it was early. That’s when the dream leapt into something else altogether.
It happened with that abrupt vagueness that all dream-transitions take. One moment he was trying to pour coffee into his mug in the break room while the stream of brown liquid flowed upward away from his cup like a magic beanstalk growing into the clouds, the next moment he was at home in his bed.
Everything had a peculiar quality, a blurriness around the edges that sometimes spread into a double of whatever he was trying to focus on like the twinned vision of a drunk. At least I’m not dreaming about work anymore, Justin thought. But it was a preliminary thought, as if he was still not quite sure that he favored this new dream to the familiar, yet frustrating, old one. He swung his legs out of bed, feeling as if the floor was too far away from him.
“You’re up.”
It was an odd little voice, coming from the floor next to the bed. Justin looked down and found that the speaker matched the voice: wizened, ancient, and small. It was a man, or maybe a goblin. Something small and wrinkled, stick thin except for a large round head and comically large ears and nose. Justin still felt strange though and didn’t laugh. Besides, his subconscious had never presented him with anything so odd before, and he did not know what to make of it.
He shrugged and yawned. He quirked an eyebrow; he’d never felt tired in a dream before. “Yes, I’m up. What are you?”
The little man-creature turned his head this way and that, looking over his shoulders so fast that his floppy ears and pointed nose bobbed. It reminded Justin of the nervous mannerisms of a park squirrel.
“You could not say the name of my people, but it means something like ‘Those who fell between the cracks.’ But we haven’t the time for this, you have been noticed and we must leave here now,” the tiny man said.
“Why? What’s your name? Noticed by who?” Justin mumbled his questions in no particular order. He would much rather have been dreaming about Melissa from Shipping.
The tiny elf, or goblin, or whatever his mind was trying to show him, grabbed his wrist and pulled him to his feet. Standing, the little man came only to his knees. “We must leave because Dark Powers seek you, and we,” here he made a noise that sounded something like an underwater bird call, “do not wish to see the Dark Powers return.” He gazed intently at Justin and he was surprised to see that the thing was near tears with fright. “Things are wakening…
“As to your other two questions, I should not answer. Names have great power and I cannot trust you with mine yet, and no wise-thinking being would dare to utter the name of the other.”
Justin had actually forgotten his other two questions, so he merely shrugged.
It was probably the sausages he’d eaten last night. Whatever the link between indigestion and strange dreams, it was strong. He stepped into slippers and belted his robe around his waist while the little man continued his squirrel imitation and shifted from foot to foot.
“We must leave now!” Justin’s strange dream-guide implored. He shrugged again; it seemed the only proper reaction to such weirdness.
Justin thought that he should maybe eat before going out, perhaps just a round of toast since his little companion seemed in such a hurry, then chuckled at the newness of being hungry in a dream.
“This way,” the little man said. “They look for you in the above-world, so I will lead you to between. They will not think to look for you closer to their powers, they will expect you to run away.” He tugged on the hem of Justin’s robe as he talked, leading him to the front door.
His own house began to take on new dimensions, only half perceived as Justin was led out of the door. All of the colors seemed just a shade off of what they should be, like he was walking in a poor copy of his own world.
“Can you not walk faster with those long legs? It took me long enough to wake you from that odd dream of yours.”
Justin smiled bemusedly. “Compared to this dream the work part is normal.”
“This is no dream, though I wish it were,” his guide responded.
Justin stopped on his front lawn, staring as the creature continued to try to pull him along by the hem of his robe. “No, I’m asleep.”
The little man turned and swiftly pinched Justin’s calf, grinning ruefully as he hopped onto one foot, cradling his smarting leg in his hands. “The Dark Powers are awake and so are you. I woke you from that dream as you were pouring that muddy liquid into the air.”
Justin stared. “I woke when?”
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Silly
Her long-sleeve shirt clung to her like a second skin on that unusually warm November day. I found Susanna barefoot and bent over in the Adirondack chair in her mom’s backyard, with her face a few inches above the grass.
But that pleasant sight was swept out of my mind by the arrival of a gigantic meteor! The fiery ball crashed into the earth with tremendous force, throwing a shockwave like a hot wind in our faces.
In the distance we could see something climbing out of the flaming crater – a giant lizard! Susanna clung to me, too frightened even to scream, and we thought that we were doomed.
To our great joy, our saviors appeared. Gigantic woolen socks descended the miles from space. Not panty hose, always running at the first sign of trouble, or gym socks who break into a sweat when faced with any hard work, but good woolen socks.
We watched as the lizard and the socks battled, and finally, the lizard tore the socks to pieces and ate them. It devoured every last acre of wool greedily, but that was its doom. Choking on the thick wool, the lizard died.
But those woolen socks were great. I know. I wore a pair of them that night on the blind baggage of the overland, and that overland went west.
But that pleasant sight was swept out of my mind by the arrival of a gigantic meteor! The fiery ball crashed into the earth with tremendous force, throwing a shockwave like a hot wind in our faces.
In the distance we could see something climbing out of the flaming crater – a giant lizard! Susanna clung to me, too frightened even to scream, and we thought that we were doomed.
To our great joy, our saviors appeared. Gigantic woolen socks descended the miles from space. Not panty hose, always running at the first sign of trouble, or gym socks who break into a sweat when faced with any hard work, but good woolen socks.
We watched as the lizard and the socks battled, and finally, the lizard tore the socks to pieces and ate them. It devoured every last acre of wool greedily, but that was its doom. Choking on the thick wool, the lizard died.
But those woolen socks were great. I know. I wore a pair of them that night on the blind baggage of the overland, and that overland went west.
Cortex Dump
Prompt: A case of mistaken identity.
The explosion was jarring, throwing Agent Darnig Kelton to the street. It was a close call. This was without a doubt the most dangerous assignment that the Bureau of Peace Enforcement had ever given Kelton, and the terrorist Skaro the most dangerous threat to tranquility in the Confederacy of Sentient Beings.
Kelton cursed, borrowing heavily from a Vastin street dialect when his vocabulary of Galactic Standard epithets ran out. He knew that Skaro had been armed, but he had counted on him being unwilling to detonate his bomb with so few innocent sentients near by.
The BPE Agent had nearly gotten close enough to bring into play the tools of his trade and end the terrorist’s spree of violence. But that had also been close enough for the bomb to nearly kill him. Kelton had almost triggered the implant laced through his cerebral cortex that would download his consciousness into a blank clone. Though he hadn’t cortex-dumped, he was still glad that the Bureau’s top agents were provided with copies of their own bodies for such use. It was a dangerous job.
Kelton ran an internal systems check as he pulled himself to his feet. Nano-computers imbedded throughout his nervous system reported in, cataloguing the damage to his body from the blast, and the status of his specialized implants. He tuned out the damage report except for one flashing red indicator. His clone implant was malfunctioning. Good thing he hadn’t needed to cortex-dump after all.
He looked around the scene of the carnage regretfully. If he only he hadn’t rushed in. There were several charred corpses, but the zeta radiation of the pulse bomb would make even genetic identity confirmation time-consuming. Kelton didn’t think that Skaro was among the bodies though. He had slipped away…for now.
Kelton fumbled through the charred rags of his clothes, but was unable to find his personal satcom so he settled for calling in an erasure crew from a public terminal. He waited until his ident code was accepted, then looked around for something more dignified than blackened shreds of cloth to wear back into the Bureau headquarters.
Kelton purchased a synth-slick jacket and a cheap nylon singlet from a slightly charred vendroid on the street, leaving the unrecognizable remains of his burned clothes for the erasure crew.
Kelton’s ident code opened the hatch-seal on his personal floater and started the engine. He activated the auto-return and the navigation computer began the trip back to the Bureau of Peace Enforcement main office, while Kelton reclined in the cockpit. He ached badly, his body responding as slowly as if it were a new clone, but he was grateful. As close as he was to the blast, he had feared death or crippling. That the zeta radiation had merely reduced his uniform to ash and burned his skin was a miracle. He toggled a green switch and let the floater’s built-in surgery suite tend his wounds.
The floater piloted itself to the parking hangar while Kelton mounted the five steps to the main doors of the BPE. He looked over his shoulder as the mirrored doors of the Bureau slid open at his approach. People were staring at him, but Kelton shrugged. Most likely they were surprised to see someone dressed in attire purchased from a vendroid walking into the seat of the most powerful agency in the Confederacy.
Kelton ignored the murmured conversations around him as he stalked across the security lobby towards the bank of lifts. His aural implants detected the elevated stress patterns in the voices around him and he scowled. Yes, he’d lost Skaro again! He hated gossip.
As he neared the security station in front of the lifts, a sudden shuffle of movement brought Kelton out of his brooding. Security officers were bolting from their stations, taking offensive positions in front of the lift station.
Kelton turned as the claxon blared, his eyes sweeping the lobby for the threat security had detected.
“Skaro! Stop where you are!” one of the security squad bellowed, his voice filtered through his loudspeaker implant. Kelton cursed, Skaro would never have been so stupid to follow him right into the heart of the Bureau of Peace Enforcement. He tried to trigger his chargers, but his body still felt oddly unresponsive after the blast and his implants did not respond.
Discarding Vastin swearing as too mild, Kelton spat out the worst Kurg insult he could pronounce without mandibles and began to back toward the security line.
“Don’t take another step, Skaro!” The amplified command rang in ears already battered by an explosion and Kelton felt the familiar-dangerous tingle of a targeting field playing over him. He turned and saw that that weapon implants were glowing bright blue on the security force’s shoulders.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Kelton demanded. As an agent of the BPE, he was not used to being threatened.
“We have a kill order! Fire!”
Fear was overshadowed by confusion. Who did they think he was? As the glow of the chargers flared, Kelton looked into the lead trooper’s mirrored eyes. In the shiny silver orbs, he saw the wrong face. Skaro looked back out at him.
The cortex-dump! Had he triggered the implant after all? There’d been a malfunction… the clone-disorientation he’d felt… Kelton’s last thought was one of bitter regret. I’ve mistaken myself for me.
The explosion was jarring, throwing Agent Darnig Kelton to the street. It was a close call. This was without a doubt the most dangerous assignment that the Bureau of Peace Enforcement had ever given Kelton, and the terrorist Skaro the most dangerous threat to tranquility in the Confederacy of Sentient Beings.
Kelton cursed, borrowing heavily from a Vastin street dialect when his vocabulary of Galactic Standard epithets ran out. He knew that Skaro had been armed, but he had counted on him being unwilling to detonate his bomb with so few innocent sentients near by.
The BPE Agent had nearly gotten close enough to bring into play the tools of his trade and end the terrorist’s spree of violence. But that had also been close enough for the bomb to nearly kill him. Kelton had almost triggered the implant laced through his cerebral cortex that would download his consciousness into a blank clone. Though he hadn’t cortex-dumped, he was still glad that the Bureau’s top agents were provided with copies of their own bodies for such use. It was a dangerous job.
Kelton ran an internal systems check as he pulled himself to his feet. Nano-computers imbedded throughout his nervous system reported in, cataloguing the damage to his body from the blast, and the status of his specialized implants. He tuned out the damage report except for one flashing red indicator. His clone implant was malfunctioning. Good thing he hadn’t needed to cortex-dump after all.
He looked around the scene of the carnage regretfully. If he only he hadn’t rushed in. There were several charred corpses, but the zeta radiation of the pulse bomb would make even genetic identity confirmation time-consuming. Kelton didn’t think that Skaro was among the bodies though. He had slipped away…for now.
Kelton fumbled through the charred rags of his clothes, but was unable to find his personal satcom so he settled for calling in an erasure crew from a public terminal. He waited until his ident code was accepted, then looked around for something more dignified than blackened shreds of cloth to wear back into the Bureau headquarters.
Kelton purchased a synth-slick jacket and a cheap nylon singlet from a slightly charred vendroid on the street, leaving the unrecognizable remains of his burned clothes for the erasure crew.
Kelton’s ident code opened the hatch-seal on his personal floater and started the engine. He activated the auto-return and the navigation computer began the trip back to the Bureau of Peace Enforcement main office, while Kelton reclined in the cockpit. He ached badly, his body responding as slowly as if it were a new clone, but he was grateful. As close as he was to the blast, he had feared death or crippling. That the zeta radiation had merely reduced his uniform to ash and burned his skin was a miracle. He toggled a green switch and let the floater’s built-in surgery suite tend his wounds.
The floater piloted itself to the parking hangar while Kelton mounted the five steps to the main doors of the BPE. He looked over his shoulder as the mirrored doors of the Bureau slid open at his approach. People were staring at him, but Kelton shrugged. Most likely they were surprised to see someone dressed in attire purchased from a vendroid walking into the seat of the most powerful agency in the Confederacy.
Kelton ignored the murmured conversations around him as he stalked across the security lobby towards the bank of lifts. His aural implants detected the elevated stress patterns in the voices around him and he scowled. Yes, he’d lost Skaro again! He hated gossip.
As he neared the security station in front of the lifts, a sudden shuffle of movement brought Kelton out of his brooding. Security officers were bolting from their stations, taking offensive positions in front of the lift station.
Kelton turned as the claxon blared, his eyes sweeping the lobby for the threat security had detected.
“Skaro! Stop where you are!” one of the security squad bellowed, his voice filtered through his loudspeaker implant. Kelton cursed, Skaro would never have been so stupid to follow him right into the heart of the Bureau of Peace Enforcement. He tried to trigger his chargers, but his body still felt oddly unresponsive after the blast and his implants did not respond.
Discarding Vastin swearing as too mild, Kelton spat out the worst Kurg insult he could pronounce without mandibles and began to back toward the security line.
“Don’t take another step, Skaro!” The amplified command rang in ears already battered by an explosion and Kelton felt the familiar-dangerous tingle of a targeting field playing over him. He turned and saw that that weapon implants were glowing bright blue on the security force’s shoulders.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Kelton demanded. As an agent of the BPE, he was not used to being threatened.
“We have a kill order! Fire!”
Fear was overshadowed by confusion. Who did they think he was? As the glow of the chargers flared, Kelton looked into the lead trooper’s mirrored eyes. In the shiny silver orbs, he saw the wrong face. Skaro looked back out at him.
The cortex-dump! Had he triggered the implant after all? There’d been a malfunction… the clone-disorientation he’d felt… Kelton’s last thought was one of bitter regret. I’ve mistaken myself for me.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
The Three Brothers
Prompt: A fable
Once there were three spiders that lived in a tree. Of all the hundreds of their siblings, only these three brothers we left.
Together, they spun a beautiful web. It was very strong, so that even the largest flies would not break strands when they were caught. It was very wide as well, stretching between the two largest branches in the whole tree. And it was also very beautiful. The web was silvery in the light in the afternoon, beaded with dew like diamonds in the morning and evening, and at night it was totally invisible.
The three spiders were very happy.
The three spiders were crouched in the center of their web, pleased that they had not been eaten by their mother and proud of the web that they had built. As one they felt a tremor in their web. Something was caught and thrashing around attempting to escape.
“Our first catch!” Said one of the brothers happily.
“Which one of us shall eat it?” Said the second brother.
The third brother looked at the other spiders. He pointed one of his long legs at his youngest brother. “You are the smallest of us. You should eat the fly.”
The other two spiders agreed. The third brother was the largest of them all. The first brother thanked him profusely and scuttled along the web towards the vibrations. In time they quieted and the spider returned, well-fed and happy.
Before long, the spiders felt another insect land in the web. Its struggles shook the web mightily. “It must be a very large fly!” exclaimed the youngest.
“Or maybe even a bee!” said the second brother. “Which one of us shall eat it?”
Again, the third brother looked at his last siblings. “I am still the largest spider in the web.” He pointed his leg at his middle brother. “You should eat this catch; you are very small.”
“You are right! Thank you, brother!” The second brother clamored over the web to eat the juicy meal. The younger brother remained with his eldest sibling, beaming at him. He was very proud of his older brother who was very generous and kind.
When the middle brother returned to the center of the web, the oldest was cleaning his mandibles. Wound in the center was an eight-legged husk.
“What happened to our brother?” The second spider asked.
“I could not eat him when he was so small. It would hardly be worth it.” The largest spider said. “Tell me, brother, was the catch very juicy? You look much bigger..."
Once there were three spiders that lived in a tree. Of all the hundreds of their siblings, only these three brothers we left.
Together, they spun a beautiful web. It was very strong, so that even the largest flies would not break strands when they were caught. It was very wide as well, stretching between the two largest branches in the whole tree. And it was also very beautiful. The web was silvery in the light in the afternoon, beaded with dew like diamonds in the morning and evening, and at night it was totally invisible.
The three spiders were very happy.
The three spiders were crouched in the center of their web, pleased that they had not been eaten by their mother and proud of the web that they had built. As one they felt a tremor in their web. Something was caught and thrashing around attempting to escape.
“Our first catch!” Said one of the brothers happily.
“Which one of us shall eat it?” Said the second brother.
The third brother looked at the other spiders. He pointed one of his long legs at his youngest brother. “You are the smallest of us. You should eat the fly.”
The other two spiders agreed. The third brother was the largest of them all. The first brother thanked him profusely and scuttled along the web towards the vibrations. In time they quieted and the spider returned, well-fed and happy.
Before long, the spiders felt another insect land in the web. Its struggles shook the web mightily. “It must be a very large fly!” exclaimed the youngest.
“Or maybe even a bee!” said the second brother. “Which one of us shall eat it?”
Again, the third brother looked at his last siblings. “I am still the largest spider in the web.” He pointed his leg at his middle brother. “You should eat this catch; you are very small.”
“You are right! Thank you, brother!” The second brother clamored over the web to eat the juicy meal. The younger brother remained with his eldest sibling, beaming at him. He was very proud of his older brother who was very generous and kind.
When the middle brother returned to the center of the web, the oldest was cleaning his mandibles. Wound in the center was an eight-legged husk.
“What happened to our brother?” The second spider asked.
“I could not eat him when he was so small. It would hardly be worth it.” The largest spider said. “Tell me, brother, was the catch very juicy? You look much bigger..."
Monday, June 30, 2008
The end of the world...
Write Club 5
Prompt: The end of the world
Had Paige been paying attention as she ran helter-skelter through the house, she might have taken note of the TV news broadcast that was playing on the TV sets in the living room and kitchen.
“Satellite telescopes have now confirmed that the meteor that is being tracked is indeed what scientists have dubbed a ‘planet killer.’” The anchorman stared unflinchingly into the camera, his voice steady and heavy with gravitas.
Paige found the hairbrush she had been looking for, but spared only a little thought for why it had ended up in the living room rather than the bathroom, and no thought at all for the tiny tooth marks on it. A testament to her haste.
She walked past the kitchen TV without sparing a glance for the aging scientist who shared a split-screen with the grave anchorman. “We have measured the asteroid and estimate that it is roughly six times as large as the meteor believed to have ended the reign of the dinosaurs, some sixty-five million years ago.”
The anchorman’s face, if possible, became even stonier. “And this asteroid is heading towards Earth?”
“There is some question as to whether Earth’s orbit will bring it into the path of the Asteroid. As the meteor passes Jupiter, its course will be affected by that planet’s gravity. There is no way to tell at the moment.”
Paige bee-lined for the bathroom, brush gripped tightly in her hand, the television no more than a droning in the background. She reached the bathroom and stepped in front of the mirror. She smoothed her prom dress down with one hand and lifted the brush.
A dark shadow passed over the sun. Birds fell silent as if the dark shape covering the sun cast not a shadow, but a blanket of dread apprehension. Paige’s hand froze in the act of lifting the hairbrush.
Centered between her eyes like a Hindu beauty mark was a large, red pimple.
“A ZIT!!!”
Her scream sent the birds back into flight, so loud that the cloud passed over the sun as if chased away by the shrill cry, returning warm sunlight to the neighborhood.
Paige’s mother sighed without looking up from her newspaper. “Paige, it’s not the end of the world….”
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The Wait
Prompt: "Speak now or forever hold your peace."
"If you move, I'll kill him."
"If you speak, I'll kill him"
The words were as cold as the muzzle of the gun pressed to the back of Ami's head.
+++
Ami's legs ached from standing for so long, waiting. She thought that soon they would cramp up and she would totter where she stood and then it would all be over. She forced her weary, trembling muscles to be still.
The house had been dark for several hours and she could no longer tell if her eyes were open or closed, save for when the constant stream of tears rolling down her face was interrupted briefly by a blink. She had lost track of time in the darkness, only her increasingly aching legs and her own panicked thoughts providing a point of reference to guess how much time had passed.
He wants something from Daniel.
Ami didn't know what it might be, but she was sure that the man behind her - who did not seem to share her weariness given the unwavering pressure of the gun at her head - would do anything to get it. Would he torture him? Yes, she was sure he would. He was perfectly willing to torture her by forcing her to stand immobile for hours while she waited for this man to threaten, torture, and then probably kill the man she loved.
The lock turned in the door and the hinges creaked quietly. Ami almost jumped, but fear gave her more self control than she suspected was humanly possible. The door pushed open and a figure stepped into the rectangle of dim light cast from the hallway. She knew Daniel even by his silhouette.
Robbed of her sight for so long, Ami's hearing felt preternaturally sharp. Though the gun never wavered from behind her head, she heard the slightest rustle of movement behind her. Daniel stepped into the room, navigating by the dim light of the hallway towards the table with the lamp on it. She knew the man with the gun would never let him reach it.
Ami felt a chill run down her spine, but rather than shivering her, it quieted her. Her breathing slowed to a stop, her legs ceased their quivering, even the tears stopped running down her cheeks. Ami opened her mouth and drew in the most important breath she had ever taken.
"Daniel, RUN!"
There was an explosion of silence. Ami didn't hear the expected crash of the gun, nor did she see the flash of the muzzle. It was a sudden peace that came over her. She no longer needed to hear the gunshot, or to feel her aching legs relax as she fell. She only needed her eyes a moment longer.
As her vision narrowed to a distant point she saw the oh-so familiar shape of Daniel disappearing out the door. Safe.
And then Ami no longer needed her sight.
"If you move, I'll kill him."
"If you speak, I'll kill him"
The words were as cold as the muzzle of the gun pressed to the back of Ami's head.
+++
Ami's legs ached from standing for so long, waiting. She thought that soon they would cramp up and she would totter where she stood and then it would all be over. She forced her weary, trembling muscles to be still.
The house had been dark for several hours and she could no longer tell if her eyes were open or closed, save for when the constant stream of tears rolling down her face was interrupted briefly by a blink. She had lost track of time in the darkness, only her increasingly aching legs and her own panicked thoughts providing a point of reference to guess how much time had passed.
He wants something from Daniel.
Ami didn't know what it might be, but she was sure that the man behind her - who did not seem to share her weariness given the unwavering pressure of the gun at her head - would do anything to get it. Would he torture him? Yes, she was sure he would. He was perfectly willing to torture her by forcing her to stand immobile for hours while she waited for this man to threaten, torture, and then probably kill the man she loved.
The lock turned in the door and the hinges creaked quietly. Ami almost jumped, but fear gave her more self control than she suspected was humanly possible. The door pushed open and a figure stepped into the rectangle of dim light cast from the hallway. She knew Daniel even by his silhouette.
Robbed of her sight for so long, Ami's hearing felt preternaturally sharp. Though the gun never wavered from behind her head, she heard the slightest rustle of movement behind her. Daniel stepped into the room, navigating by the dim light of the hallway towards the table with the lamp on it. She knew the man with the gun would never let him reach it.
Ami felt a chill run down her spine, but rather than shivering her, it quieted her. Her breathing slowed to a stop, her legs ceased their quivering, even the tears stopped running down her cheeks. Ami opened her mouth and drew in the most important breath she had ever taken.
"Daniel, RUN!"
There was an explosion of silence. Ami didn't hear the expected crash of the gun, nor did she see the flash of the muzzle. It was a sudden peace that came over her. She no longer needed to hear the gunshot, or to feel her aching legs relax as she fell. She only needed her eyes a moment longer.
As her vision narrowed to a distant point she saw the oh-so familiar shape of Daniel disappearing out the door. Safe.
And then Ami no longer needed her sight.
Friday, June 6, 2008
A matter of time
"It's a matter of time…"
That's what Denslow had said. With his last words as a matter of fact. And Justin Smythe knew that Denslow had chosen those words carefully.
Smythe grabbed a handful of the broad, yellow plastic tape that stretched across Denslow's front door and tore it away, letting it fall around his feet. A sign driven into the lawn on a single hefty post behind him declared that this house was condemned.
That his home had been condemned so swiftly after Denslow's death made the already flimsy legal pretexts even more suspect. It was clear to Smythe that whoever it was who was behind Denslow's death, and those of four members of Parliament in the last two weeks, was making another move in their shadowy game.
Smythe retrieved the key to the front door from his pocket. Denslow had given it to him two weeks ago, just before the first assassination. It was shiny new brass, never used. Before he opened the door, Agent Smythe checked that his Walther PPK was loaded, the safety on, and the silencer tightened to the short barrel. The key scraped in the lock and he stepped inside.
He stepped over a pile of mail that had accumulated in the hall underneath the drop slot. His mentor hadn't been home for some time, it seemed. He moved through the darkened hallways, not wanting to turn on a light for fear of attracting attention to what was supposed to be an empty house. It was his nose that led Smythe on. He smelled pipe tobacco; the sweet, pungent scent he immediately associated with his mentor. Denslow always had a gently smoking pipe clenched between his teeth. The smell permeated his office at headquarters, smoking regulations be damned.
Denslow's study at home was reminiscent of his office in London. Small room on the second floor, with old books weighing down deep bookshelves, framed portraits hanging from the walls, and an antique globe perched at the corner of the desk. Smythe fought down nostalgia and renewed grief at the loss of a man who had been a second father to him. The anger that welled up against the unseen people who had orchestrated his death was more useful.
Smythe rooted through the office, riffling through papers and files, opening drawers almost at random, letting his instincts guide him. He looked at a slowly revolving carriage clock on one of the bookshelves and thought again of Denslow's last words. "It's a matter of time…"
Of course! He covered the distance to the bookshelf in two strides and scooped up the clock. He set it down on the desk and pulled the short chain on the shaded reading lamp, making sure it was tilted low, so there was no chance it might shine out the darkened window.
Urgently, the agent disassembled the clock, looking for anything out of place, any clue of what Denslow had been investigating that had bought him a death sentence. But after sifting the intricate pieces of the clock, Smythe hadn't found anything to bring him closer to understanding.
The agent blew out a long breath, fighting frustration. It would only make it harder to think. He leaned back in the office chair, feeling the way the old leather had conformed to the ample shape of his mentor. Where would Denslow hide something that important? He was unlikely to let it get far from his superbly trained eye. On consideration, the aging spy probably wouldn't have even left it in his home. Assuming it was small enough, he would have kept it on his person…
Again, Smythe stood, casting his own eyes around the room in the way Denslow had trained him. There! A tweed jacket, fragrant with tobacco smoke, hung from an old coat stand behind the office door. In the left-hand pocket, Smythe found an old gold pocket watch.
The watch clicked open softly and nestled inside, laying atop the clock face, was a carefully folded scrap of paper. Smythe moved to lift it out, but was interrupted by a noise. Most people would have assumed the slight creak was a sound natural to an old house like this, but Denslow had taught Smythe to be better than that. More aware. Someone else was in the house, and they were trying to be quiet.
The agent snapped the pocket watch closed as quietly as he could, dropping it into his pocket even as he drew his pistol. He crouched and pulled the desk lamp's plug from the wall, sinking the dim study into complete darkness once more. Outside the door, Smythe saw four people dressed in black moving silently down the hall. At each door or hallway, the figure in front would point and one of the intruders would silently slip away.
Smythe ducked back into the office and waited, listening as the quieted footsteps grew nearer. They would pass the study, and one of them was sure to enter to search. Anyone looking to get something of Denslow's would come to this room. He crouched behind the door, taking what concealment and cover it provided, waiting. A man slipped into the room, a pistol held out before him, tracking across every shadow with his eyes and the muzzle of his weapon. Smythe didn't wait long, he would be spotted here in seconds. Crouched by the outlet, he plugged the desk lamp back in.
The intruder stiffened as the dim light flickered on, his pistol whipping towards the pool or light over the desk. Smythe stood and neatly shot him in the back of the head. As the man collapsed, Smythe wrapped his arm around his waist, keeping him from falling in a way that might make noise. He dragged the man to the desk and propped him in the chair. He stepped into the hallway, weapon raised.
The other three were in the hallway, speaking quietly. Their search of the other rooms at that end of the hall had ended quickly, implying that they had some idea of what they were looking for. As Smythe stepped out, they spotted him, each of them leveling their own pistols.
Lead filled the old hallway, ripping into yellowed wallpaper and raising a cloud of plaster dust. A vase shattered, throwing porcelain shrapnel. A priceless painting was riddled with scorched holes. Smythe threw himself across the corridor, returning fire. His shoulder slammed into the door opposite the study and stumbled into a small bathroom.
Knowing he had only moments, Smythe ripped the towel rack off of the wall and slammed his foot into the drywall. In three hard shots of his foot, he kicked through the plaster. His assailants were close behind him, but cautious. He had just enough time to tear away enough of the wall to climb through, and then dive into the bathtub.
The black-clad intruders rounded the door ready for him. Bullets sang through the air, shattering the tiles above the tub, but quickly one of them slipped into the room and saw the hole. He leaned close to it and peered through, and Smythe shot him in the back from the cover of the tub. The last of the intruders pulled back, a small woman with dark hair, the one who had been assigning the others to search the house. They both fired, bullets ricocheting from the lip of the tub, and whizzing through the air once occupied by the fleeing attacker.
Smythe leapt out of the tub and ran after her. She obviously knew something and if she got away a piece of this puzzle might be lost. She ran, firing behind her, and Smythe chased her down the corridor, firing after her. Contrary to what was seen in American movies, firing a weapon while moving is extrememly difficult and inaccurate and when your target is also moving, it's almost impossible to hit something.
The woman was lighter on her feet than Smythe, and faster. She was at the bottom of the stairs already by the time he reached the top, sliding a fresh clip into his Walther. Smythe elected not to use the stairs and instead threw himself belly-first onto the banister. He squeezed the trigger as fast as he could as he slid, knowing he would probably not hit her, but hoping to force her to take cover and stop her flight.
Smythe rolled off of the banister at the bottom of the stairs and had to take a moment to orient himself. The front door was open and from outside he could hear an engine chugging to life. As he scrambled out onto the front porch, he saw the huge construction wrecking machine roll forward on its oversized tires. He backpedaled into the house, his eyes fixed on the face of the woman behind the controls. He saw he reach for a lever, shake her head when it would not move, then select another. The long arm of the construction machine swung to the side, the dangling wrecking ball swinging beneath it like a pendulum.
The agent only just managed to throw himself into the house as the arm swung around, bringing the ball into the front wall like a medieval flail. Glass and wood exploded. Smythe pushed himself to his feet and threw off the half of a couch that had landed on his back; his pistol was gone, lost somewhere under the debris. The wrecking ball's arm was swinging back towards the house.
Glancing at what remained of the front of house and the entry stair, Smythe calculated his chances. As the machine began to bring the ball around again, he sprinted forward and dove underneath it. It smashed into the house again, the ball penetrating into the kitchen, the chain cutting into the roof behind it. He pushed himself to his feet, unmindful of the numerous cuts and abrasions sustained by flying debris and scattered glass on the floor. He raced for the stairs. The woman at the controls must have been getting the hang of them, for the ball was swinging into action much faster this time. It swept the stairs nearly out from under Smythe. The floor buckled and heaved, throwing him headlong into the bullet-scarred hallway where they had met.
Smythe heard the creaking of the great chain and knew she would be pulling it back for another swing, to bring the whole house down on top him. He rolled to his feet and lunged at the chain.
He had to admit that he enjoyed the look of surprise on the woman's face as the ball swung back out of the house, the agent standing on top of it, clutching the chain. He leapt from the ball as it passed the wrecking ball's cabin.
Even as he landed Smythe was lashing out with one foot, catching the surprised woman across the jaw. But he had to give her credit, she rolled with the blow and crawled out of the cab, jabbing and kicking. And now it was time for Smythe to be surprised. The way this woman fought…she'd been trained in the same ways as he had. She was MI6 as well.
People within his own organization were working against them.
She was good, and she used every trick they taught in MI6 combat training. But Justin Smythe had been taught personally by Arthur Denslow, and he knew tricks that weren't taught in the classes. A nerve-pinch weakened her left arm and Smythe landed a stunning blow to her neck and a kick that shattered her knee. Smythe roughly grabbed her by the collar and pulled her upright.
"Who are you?" he demanded. When her hand moved he was ready for danger, but his eyes widened at the sight of the grenade she clutched. She jerked out the pin with her numbed hand and tried to throw herself onto Smythe.
The agent thrust her away, but a foot's space was no safety from a grenade. Climbing out of the wrecking ball's cabin, Smythe kicked out at one of the long levers and the wrecking ball's arm began to swing. He leapt and grabbed the chain as it passed, riding it away from the cabin, the explosion ripping at his clothes as he sped from it.
Tumbling from the massive ball, Smythe tucked into a roll and kept his head down until the last of the debris finished raining down. When it was over, the agent pulled himself to his feet. His hand crept down to his pocket and felt the lump made by the pocket watch. It was time to find some answers.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Dulcina
Prompt:
Dulcina
As at noone Dulcina rested
In her sweete and shady bower;
Came a shepherd, and requested
In her lapp to sleepe an hour.
But from her looke
A wounde he tooke
So deepe, that for a further boone
The nymph he prayes.
Whereto shee sayes,
Forgoe me now, come to me soone.
But in vayne shee did conjure him
To depart her presence soe;
Having a thousand tongues to allure him,
And but one to bid him goe:
Where lipps invite,
And eyes delight,
And cheekes, as fresh as rose in June,
Persuade delay;
What boots, she say,
Forgoe me now, come to me soone?
He demands what time for pleasure
Can there be more fit than now:
She sayes, night gives loves that leysure,
Which the day cannot allow.
He sayes, the sight
Improves delight.
Which she denies: Night's mirkie noone
In Venus' playes
Makes bold, shee sayes;
Forgoe me now, come to me soone.
But what promise or profession
From his hands could purchase scope?
Who would sell the sweet possession
Of such beautye for a hope?
Or for the sight
Of lingering night
Forgoe the present joyes of noone?
Though ne'er so faire
Her speeches were,
Forgoe me now, come to me soone.
How, at last, agreed these lovers?
Shee was fayre; and he was young:
The tongue may tell what th' eye discovers;
Joyes unseene are never sung.
Did she consent,
Or he relent:
Accepts he night, or grants she noone;
Left he her a mayd,
Or not; she sayd
Forgoe me now, come to me soone.
The young shepherd leaned on his crook and scanned the valley for the last of his sheep. The low hills were like rising waves on a green sea, spread out in gentle ripples all the way to the river. There. Like a fleck of white foam on the crest of one of those waves was the lost sheep.
He set off to collect his wayward charge, sighing deeply. The shepherd’s legs sung with weariness as he crossed the hills, his tired footsteps plodding. His fluffy wards seemed to enjoy nothing more than to scatter across the valley, taunting him to come and herd them together again. The young shepherd wished for the hundredth time that he had a dog at his side to help him.
“There you are, all by yourself,” The youth said to the sheep. “Aren’t you all supposed to do the same thing? Then why is it that every time I turn my back, just one of you decides to wander off?”
The animal cropped at the grass on the hillside without acknowledging his presence. Sighing again, the young man scratched the sheep behind the ears and stood for a moment, enjoying the shade provided by a spreading oak on the top of the hill. He gave himself a moment of rest under the tree before tapping the wooly rebel with his crook and sending it trotting back towards the rest of the herd at the bottom of the hill.
He was about to set off after his charge, they did need constant guidance to keep them moving in the right direction after all, when he felt a cool breeze at his back. Out of all proportion to the temperature of the wind, his skin prickled with goosebumps and she shivered. He turned around slowly, knowing that he would see something more there than an old oak, but clueless as to what it would be.
There, in the deep shade beneath the thick canopy was a young woman. The noonday shadows seemed deeper and darker than they should have been, dimming the reclining shape under the tree. The shepherd drew in a long breath, but did not take another for some time as he gazed at her.
She was slender and young, her face caught between the gentle roundness of youth and the stark beauty of womanhood. Her unbound hair was long and dark, laying against her white shoulders in sable waves. She wore a dress of summer blue that flowed against the curves of her body like water. But as beautiful as she appeared to be, the shadows under the oak’s bower cast a dark mask over her face.
“G-good afternoon, my lady…” the shepherd stammered. The bleating of the sheep faded from his mind.
The woman laughed sweetly, her head tilted. The shepherd wished he could see her smile, knowing that it would be the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Why were the shadows so dark? It was noon and bright.
“Good afternoon, young sir. I am Dulcina…” She said. Her voice was as musical as her laugh. The shepherd’s heart beat faster.
“My lady… the day is hot and my work is hard…may I be so bold as to beg a favor?” His voice trembled, sounding harsh and crude in his ears after the sweetness of her laughter. But the brave words tumbled from his lips regardless. Heedless.
“Grant me the softness of your lap for just an hour of sleep.”
“Boldness deserves its reward…” Dulcina said.
Her eyes glinted through the shadows for just a moment. But a moment was all it took for him to fall in love.
He walked to her and knelt down in the grass at the edge of the shadows.
“Then let me be bolder still, dear Dulcina. I love you. Come here to me and we will lay with each other beneath the sun. I would see your face. I could ask no greater gift.”
Dulcina almost reached out to him, her heart equally stolen. But her pale fingers did not cross the line between shadow and bright sunlight.
“My love,” she said to him. “Come back tonight, after the sun has set, and I shall be yours. But I cannot come to you now.”
“Love cannot be denied,” the young shepherd insisted and he reached to take her hand. To pull her into his arms and lay with her on the sweet grass. As his fingers penetrated the shows beneath the old tree he felt only coldness, as if he were dipping his hand into a cool stream. He could not feel the softness of her hand, her caress was like smoke.
“Love cannot be denied,” Dulcina whispered, “but love can be delayed. I am not part of your world, beloved, but belong to another. If I leave these shadows and enter the light, then your world claims me and I shall be no more than a human girl, I cannot go back.”
Dulcina lowered her hand slowly, reluctantly. Though she argued delay, she longed with all her heart to give herself to him. The shepherd withdrew his hand and looked at it in awe. Awe and sadness, for his heart had been stolen by a spirit.
“Come to me tonight, dear one, and enter my world. I shall give myself to you then, and we can be together forever.”
They knelt on the grass, one in shadow and one in light, like lovers separated by a vast ocean, though no more than a blade of grass could have passed between them.
“Leave my world?” The youth moaned. His parents, his brothers and sisters, everything that he knew was here under the sun. Could he leave it all behind to follow his heart into to the shadow? Though he could not see her face, he knew the same war was being fought in her heart.
Through the day he pleaded with her to step into the light so he could see her, to join him in his world, and always she argued that he wait and come back that night. Dusk arrived and the sun was reduced to a flaming crescent on the horizon, spilling fiery rays over the green hills. Day gave way to night.
But love cannot be denied. Just as the last sunlight disappeared from the earth, two lovers stepped together into one world.
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