I drummed my fingers on the table beside her open grimoires. Not facing the bully, I turned my eyes toward the blonde, taking in her arrogant smile. She'd gotten me to do what she wanted. She held her wand steady, and the tip glowed like hot iron. "And that's all I need to do? I can't believe you're helping me like this after all we've been through..."
The bucket-full of water and me being hit by said bucket falling off the shelf above the door. The vanishing ink pen I used on a test. The worms in my box lunch. Other things. But I was also a T.A. Some responsibilities where inescapable.
I did volunteer to help Jill.
I wanted to laugh at the "we" in that last sentence, but sighed instead. She was predictable. Very predictable. "The mnemonic, the equations, the visualization. Spot on. It balances and your wand indicates that."
"So all I have to do is say what I want to conjure?"
Predictable. I didn't grin. Instead I switched to French, hopeful. "/Tu m'emmerdes avec tes questions!/"†
She blinked. "Merde? Isn't that French for—"
With magic you really need to be specific about where to target a spell affect and what you're asking for. She'd been specific about neither.
Where your wand is pointing is the default. Her's pointed above her head.
The spell understood what she wanted enough that the closest source proved to be the horse stables. I could see it out the dorm room window. The spell mucked every stall.
A load of small round spheres crashed down around her, bouncing off her head and bounding around the room. I squealed reflexively and jumped away.
I doubled over leaning against the door, laughing despite the smell. For her part, the bully sat stunned. Her expression wanted to be a smile. She had succeeded, after all. She also knew she'd been made the fool.
Exiting out the door was the better part of valor. I grabbed the nob.
"/Amélie/," came a growl.
=-=-=-=-=
† "You're so annoying with your questions!" Literally: "You're shitting on me with your questions."
I stood under the cover of the glass bus kiosk roof, watching on a cloudy, drizzly day. Traffic splashed through puddles in the street. My breath condensed and warmed my cheek. Yes! I saw a man in a black macintosh without a hat rushing toward the newsstand. I walked out behind him, my footsteps slapping wetly. He caught the attention of the grizzled guy running the place.
"The short one's sell the best. You can drop it in a pocket..."
Keeping my back to the pair, I passed by the long stand on my left, lifted a copy of /The Inquisitor/ off the top of the stack, and stuffed it under my right arm. I raised my left hand in a lackadaisical wave that wouldn't be seen by the proprietor, but would make me seem a regular with a tab to anybody watching.
I hummed a tune, wondering if someone might leave a to-go cup of coffee or tea unattended. Three cafés in this block alone...
A large form stepped in front of me from the doorway of a tailor. I dodged left to go around him, but the living wall sidled in front. Blinking, trying to look like any businessman rushing to the office, I looked up into the constable's face. He wore a blue cap. I could not miss the brass buttons or the copper badge. Only the dampness of the day hid that I suddenly sweat. My hands, especially. My heart raced.
I asked, "Um. Yes, officer?" Innocently. At least my voice didn't betray me.
He held out a beefy hand. His eyes were dark, maybe brown? They were shadowed. His breath looked like smoke as it curled from his open mouth.
I handed over the paper.
"Thank you," he said, grinning. His 6 o'clock shadow blackened his jaw even though it wasn't 9 AM, yet. He stepped around me and I turned to follow his path.
I saw him immediately pull out the sports section. He tossed the remainder into the wire-mesh rubbish bin he passed. He asked the newsstand proprietor, "Business good today?"
I. Could not. /Believe./ What I was seeing! As I pulled the wheels of my chair furiously to get to my van, risking the cracked and warped pavement of the sidewalk, I started shouting. "What are you doing!? What are you doing!?"
The woman in a white uniform and a cap pressed a button. A white sheet like the tape on a adding machine ticked and jerked as it rolled out of her handheld ticket machine. Her eyebrow went up as she looked at me. She ripped it off and looked for a windshield wiper to tuck it into. I'd lost mine last winter. As I rolled up, she pealed off the backing and pasted it onto my windshield.
In the middle. Where it would interfere with me driving. At least she didn't start to write me up for an equipment violation.
"My handicapped sticker is up! What the f—"
She shook her head, unintimidated, knowing I couldn't reach her stuck in my chair. She retreated to her shiny enclosed tricycle that stood there idling, white like her uniform, plastic like her smile. "You can't park in a red zone."
"My van's broken down! It's not like I wanted—"
"Ignorance of the law is no excuse," she said. The motorcycle engine sounded derisive as she rumbled off.
My backyard was a mess, with pots of tomato plants here and potato plants there, with a blackberry bush taking over the unwary near the house, not to mention a few hanging orchids, coleus, and perennial geranium. The lawn had long ago turned to hard dirt. The borders around the edges were overrun with nasturtium,. Toward the back, below tall fragrant cedar, was a wildflower garden that had been recently cleared because everything was spent, except for tall wild marigolds that waved in the breeze, and tiny phlox blooming a cloud of white.
In my mess, I'd planted a few fun things. My sunflowers. Giants as tall as Hagrid, with just as sunny an expression when they bloomed. Sunflower smell special and sweet, and I'd recommend planting just for that. This year, I'd planted enough that the seeds actually had kernels inside the husks.
Today, I wanted to harvest.
The first drooping head looked strange. Downtrodden, like someone had pressed it to carry a sack of bean and it had bent over under the load.
It was bent over.
And half of the head: Missing. Darkness faced me, as if I viewed a skull chopped, no halved, by a raiders sword.
I rushed forward, but it was too late for the sunflower clan. My entire village had been ravaged. On closer inspection, I saw they'd been eaten, still bearing their progeny, eaten alive. Three, no five, no all of them! Chomped by an indiscriminate monster.
And. Oh horror. I rushed to by small planting of watermelon radishes. The dirt around them had been excavated by tiny paws. Each was gnawed at the plant ankle, the rest of the plant lying over. The red interior made each look like the leg of an animal, dead, having bled out.
I hissed. "Squirrel!" I swore and stomped around. I was glad the yard was fenced it in that moment.
A chittering came from my right, up on the telephone line. I looked. My bushy nemesis twitched its tail, blinking and regarding my behavior. Curious.
I stooped, grabbing a stone.
I missed.
The fluffy monster, who was in no ways cute, stood on two legs, chittering loudly, swearing and cursing at me, no doubt.
I threw another stone. Another. I'd never been an athlete. What made me think this would work?
I am not hash-tagging this Writever post because it was previously posted here: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/111180241113244481. I am reposting below in its entirety so the thread I replied to (my October writevers) will be complete.
À la Tombée de la Nuit ou Lest Night Fall
I asked, "Do I look like the woman you accuse me of being?" I actually wanted to know. I wasn't the Sunny that Raven Caw had named me, and even this encounter didn't spark memories.
The two day angels floated midair, gravity disturbance crackling and sparking around their wings. They wore plate armor that weighed as much as they did. They looked unimpressed, and pushed their spears closer. "Aye, you're a monster, but your face—"
Raven wasn't taking chances. My night angel pushed his sunglasses up on his nose dismissively, then waved a similarly sparking quarter arc of folded gravity between us and them, teeth clenched. I smelled ozone mixed in the corruption on the breeze.
I added, "Were she on the battlefield, she'd be dead." I waved my arms expansively, at how bright daylight had settled into the four cardinal directions and left the zenith deep dusk blue. "The old order is broken, just like the sky. Would they leave our world like this, otherwise? Would they not let night fall after all these days of constant light?"
The day angels looked at different horizons. Surprised, it took me a few moments to notice the four shadows of the fire-blasted trees beside me begin to circle about, lengthening, deepening. As my heart stuttered in my chest, it seemed every nearby tree pointed at my face.
Scattered cirrus became strands of sparkling orange crystal, turning purple before they dimmed as daylight vanished below the horizon. The sky went from hazy blue to midnight blue, before a bluer, dimmer, colder light rose in the cardinal directions.
I shivered. Night had fallen.
What an unfortunate coincidence, considering the trash I'd just talked about the old order to a pair of its last soldiers. Rebels apparently. Not good.
I stood there, having stopped him and his friends in the hall. I stuttered half a minute until he rolled his eyes. I blushed. Barely appropriate for getting what I needed in middle school; embarrassing at university. I'd turned to stone in his cockatrice gaze as he spoke. "You're tall, plain, gawky, not even wild looking. Your magic lacks power. Smart, I'll grant you that much, but timidity is /never/ attractive, nor is it sexy."
I stuttered, arms crossed, hands clasped at waist level, protecting my—
I was a graduate student Phd candidate in Calculative Thaumaturgy. I taught classes, one that he attended. He was a year from his baccalaureate. Yet, /physically,/ he was my /everything./ A whiff of his lavender cologne would turn me in a hall, looking into classrooms. Very intelligent, too, despite his arrogance. I could /learn/ things from him, in addition to what my betraying body wanted to learn.
His friends laughed with him as they turned, walking away, leaving me—
Mortified.
I still wanted him. Hormones and pheromones? Doubtless. I'd made a scene. I heard hushed voices, found impetus, and rushed away.
I sat at my desk in the graduate dorm, wiping hot tears that had come unexpectedly. I wasn't sure I liked myself, but my late mother's words echoed in my head and I pulled out the contents of the bottom drawer.
A white noh mask. Black sumi-e brush strokes were incised through the surface, implying a face and a kanji at the same time, but spelled nothing. Splashes of red and yellow paint hinted it represented a lion.
"If you need courage or solace, wear it," Mother had said on her death bed, wounded in battle. She'd lived a full life, nonetheless. An anonymous war orphan as a toddler, she'd gone on to rule a prefecture.
On the inner surface was inscribed 貪欲. /Avarice./The kanji glowed faintly electric blue, only when you read them.
Two hours later, I put it on. It fit perfectly, as if carved for my face. Assembled of worked bone, the interior nonetheless felt soft and silky against my forehead, temple, and chin. I smelled chrysanthemums. I breathed in freely and felt immediately better. I felt...
Powerful...
Hidden...
Anonymous...
The mask thumped on the blue carpeted floor. I found myself in a different dorm. Undergraduate. Institutional white walls. Two desks, two beds. A chair propped under the door nob enforced privacy. The window was flung open, orange and pink-tinted sunset light streaming in. Drapes fluttered in a breeze that cooled my skin. Everywhere. I frowned. I wore...
My heart beat rapidly. Well, a man's cravat was clothing, wasn't it?
I smelled lavender and heard outraged mumbling at the same time.
My eyes dropped to the man tied hand-and-foot to the small bed. A piece of my clothing was stuffed in his mouth. He thrashed his head side to side, but stopped and stared up at me having caught my attention. He'd put me in my place this afternoon, so I'd done this? Certain parts of a man's anatomy implied that he wasn't all that frightened.
Average, I thought. "Perfect" my mind added. I squatted rapidly when I realized what he could view, did view.
I'd done this.
Maybe I'd said it aloud. He nodded, mumbled. I pulled the silk out of his mouth so he could demand, "Untie me! Now!"
I almost jumped at his command. Then, "Why?" bubbled up. Behind the mask, I'd been hidden. Remembered courage made me rub the back of my palm on his cheek.
Bristly. I shivered. "Really?" I asked.
"No."
Of course, /no./ Active in student government. President of an athletic club. Ranked high in his class, he tutored others. He was responsible. Driven. Attractive in that, also, but always taking the reins. Had to be tiresome. Being led sometimes wasn't bad, was it?
"You... suggested this?" I asked, leaning over his face, feeling his warm breath.
Expression suddenly perplexed, he admitted, "Yeah."
His head reached up as I kissed him and it was all the consent I needed.
Later, he held me. I'd untied him for practical reasons. Spooned, I felt warm, syrupy, still smelling our perspiration. In the light of the dusk, autumn crisp air cooling my skin, I looked at Avarice laying there, colored blue and highlighted in orange by the sky. The kanji glowed blue. I thanked my mother mentally.
I'd wear the mask again. Yes. Definitely. I could think of plenty of things that required courage and would provide me solace, as likely Mother had, too.
What I liked when my night angel wore clothing, he had to keep his wings free, which meant I could reach (as I did) to his upper chest and brush my hand all the way down past his waist without running into cloth. It wrapped around his shoulders and groin. His wing membranes stretched all the way to his ankles, so typical human clothing didn't work. Little observations like this confirmed in my mind that his kind were a chimera of human and bat. That and cuspids that were unmistakably fangs. And a vaguely cleft lip, again like on a bat.
That he was a beautiful black man, thus his name Raven, made the bat connection even more obvious to my (apparently well-educated) eye. I enjoyed the feel of his skin and fine body hair under my palm, which considering how poorly I felt, was a good thing. I ached. I felt stretched past tissue giving way, and really tired. My hand dropped further.
"Hey! Hey there, my little chimera mom." He gently trapped and put my hand to my side where I lay. "It's a little early for you thinking about next time. We're going to be busy for awhile with other things."
He was so sexy!
My daughter, /our daughter/, was looking a lot less like an oversized red wrinkled raisin. She'd plumped a little. I'd so distracted myself, I'd not realized she'd stopped feeding and dozed off. I heard her faint breathing whistle; Raven who'd bent down to look closer, turned to me and smiled. Her birth had been rapid, uncomplicated. The baby catcher had said I'd been fortunate. Though I still didn't remember much from my previous life, before Raven found me barely alive on the battlefield, this amnesiac remembered enough to know second and subsequent births went significantly easier than the first. Speed was indicative. As was knowing to push, and how to hold a baby and feed it without thinking. I looked mid-twenties, but I was certain I'd had previous children. Something deep inside said many, which begged the question that when the world went crazy and war ravaged the cities, how many children had I lost?
"Sunny?"
I was stroking my daughter absently. So warm. So alive as her little chest filled and emptied. My heart opened and I warmed inside, dispelling the darkness a little, my constant companion. We'd made this. But...
It was hot in our tree home, as it was everywhere outside. And muggy. Homes were built for ventilation, but, with the temperature hovering at blood temperature, I thought about my piss-poor thaumaturgic skills. So skimpy for a possible former captain of armies. I could light homes at night, and I made coin doing so, but I /knew/—infuriating bits of a former life I couldn't remember learning, like being able to speak more eloquently than the locals—that daemons worked /cooling miracles./
For a price, of course.
Children weren't named until three. Heat killed so many before that age, thus the tradition of little children only being called "Child." I felt so... lacking, so inadequate. /Useless./ Maybe none of my infants had lived to their naming day.
I blinked tears as Raven moved my hand. I was too exhausted to fight. I would sleep with my little one as instinct demanded, but even a mother's heat could kill. He put her in a special hammock in the home's updraft breeze after rubbing her back and getting a groggy grehps. She flexed against the silken netting, flexing tiny hands, before feeling swaddled and dozing off again. The cradle was hung strategically to prevent her fouling her attendants or furniture.
I looked up.
A new mobile hung there. It might be days before her tiny eyes opened enough to notice the little bats that twirled and rotated on strings. I squinted; no, they were little night angels. I was right when I told the village elder she'd be daemon or angel, not the weird chimera of human kinds I was. We'd never explain it was really "chimera of human kinds I'd /become./" People in war time were suspicious of impossible miracles.
Child had no wings, not even white-feathered avian ones like mine. A single stubby horn; a monoceros. Living in trees and cliff homes, she'd have to learn to climb quickly.
Unless she could work miracles early. Climbing. Another reason she might not live to three.
The bat mobile twirled lazily. Maybe more than the breeze should have made it. Babies were miracles, but baby miracles were even more miraculous.
Her mother could hope.
[Writing time, 2 hours with edits. Author retains copyright.]
I drew my back against the cold wall, unable to run further, pink-colored fog swirling around me. My hands stuck to the concrete. The locked iron gates—the cobbled drive and entrance devoid of trees, grass, or people—didn't seem to offer the promised asylum. Nobody answered the doorbell. The skittering of advancing spider legs tapping pavement, some splashing in puddles from the midnight rain, interrupted my efforts.
I stared, chest expanding fully each breath. Alleyways hid glowing red sets of eight eyes. The massing monsters were common species. One jumped from a building, landing in a pickup bed; the suspension bounced and squeaked. The brown one with only six eyes and a fiddle on its cephalothorax worried me, but not as much as the tall black female with the red hour glass shining in the streetlight, the first to dare the sodium lamp. A lead pipe-wide leg reached up, flicked. Glass shattered, vacuum popped, and fading light fell with sparks and glass to the street.
I screamed.
Metallic-sheened spider eyes focused my direction.
The blood rush in my ears threaten to deafen me. My head whirled and sight dimmed as my heart thundered.
The man's voice repeated—memory had its own life—"Asylum. Seek the Asylum. You'll be safe, there."
The black widow stepped forward, the brown recluse behind. Further legs moved. A red /phidippus/ jumper leapfrogged over, halving the distance. My gallon of blood couldn't even satiate the hairy postbox-sized arachnid.
"...seek... asylum."
I pulled a leg up. The sole of my left foot splat when it touched cold cement, sticking. I gulped. My right foot stuck, too. I climbed precariously that way as the spiders advanced, then surged. Bodies hit cement. Panicked, I flipped over, climbing desperately over the wall.
[3 hrs composition and rewriting. 2 hours revision. 5 minutes cutting 2/3rds of the story. Author retains copyright.]
[/Whilst the original post (https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/111201395523479838) seems fully satisfying and this part unnecessary in light of that, this installment does make both parts into a complete comic book story, with explanations. So, to wit... —RS/]
Dr. Coven
Bruce predicted it to the minute. The /guest/ the vigilante sent us screamed loudly. I heard her as she pounded the metal doors.
"Everyone! Gas masks!" I ordered, even as Phyllis jumped the gun on the button and the outer doors parted. We had five masks on such short notice. I reserved them for the orderlies; guards waited further inside. The Hague Convention prohibited gas attacks. That vigilante didn't care. The cowled menace needed locking up, too!
"Wait! Wait!," cried Bergman as a pink miasma blew in, inundating him. A strap snapped as he turned to run. His eyes went wide, then wild. The paranoid delusion-inducing gas made you fear what you trusted most. Parker and Renfield dragged him off, thrashing and crying.
An agitated Eight Eyes scuttled in, her bare feet and right hand sticking to the guardhouse windows.
A black kerchief tied across her eyes sported blue-green opalescent spots that locked on him.
"Be the first man she sees," Bruce had warned. The petite woman swiped her bustled red child's dress. A puff of white solidified into threads that she threw. Elastic cobwebs hit the doors, contracted, slamming them closed.
With uncanny strength, she sprang, tumbled, and landed on all fours. Hopping spider-like five strides, she bounded upright and ran at me, crying incoherently, arms out. I braced; she wasn't slowing!
I slid back as she embraced me, her hands clawing my back. I wore the swat vest as told. Bruce had claimed her nails injected a paralytic.
Her clothes hid weapons, so I found the buttons down her back, undoing them. When I pushed aside the straps, it crashed to her ankles with a rustling of fabric, weighed down by spinnerets and chemical tanks. The sweaty woman wore no undergarments and, by the smell of it, rarely bathed. Her muscles bulged. An athlete, maybe a featherweight cage fighter—when not allegedly employed as a thief who left mummified men in her wake...
Her legs encircled my hips the instant I lifted her from her cosplay lolita dress. I hefted her bottom with my right arm as we left the hallucinogen gas behind successive fire doors...
Arachniss, Ms. Eight Eyes
Door after door huffed closed behind, muffling the spider army outside. A man carried me like Father had, putting me to bed like Father had. Such a nice room! Tan. Plain padding on the walls. The bed raised my head. Tucked in, doors shut, I felt finally safe.
No kiss, though. I pouted. Men always kissed me!
A nurse inserted an IV and I stared as the silvery needle slid into a vein. Not home then?
The man with the stethoscope wore body armor. Odd.
A nurse taped heavy gloves over my hands.
Heart racing, I thought, /Giant spiders?/ I tilted my head. How? Chitin collapsed under such weight. I felt sheets against my legs, my hips. They'd stripped my gear, too. I reached for my face, but elastic now bound me—
I remembered a caped man throwing a canister, and gasped.
This was very bad...
[Total both parts: 3 hrs composition and rewriting. 2 1/2 hours revision. Author retains copyright.]
#Writever 10.10 — Joker, 10.13 — No Kill Rule (Code)
Huffing and puffing, throat on fire, I reached the school. The sky had lightened enough that I was able to kick the fence correctly on the first try. The mesh curled back, clanging and rattling. Weekend and early, nobody was around.
I heard a whistle and hopped back just in time for a razor dart to miss my nose. My heart skipped a beat. Detective Curio, the constable who'd been tracking my career as an enforcer, wand in hand, boosted himself over the fence and softened his landing. Nice trick, if you knew it.
I limped along a brick path toward the janitor's shack, ready to dash to the gym, despite the sprain, as Curio called out, "You know, I'm missing on purpose, right? Resisting arrest, I /am/ justified taking you down."
I shot a bolt of fire. He dodged easily as I shouted, "I didn't kill anybody!"
"Of course not. You're a famous joker. Still a criminal. Who /knows/ if you've never murdered someone? Maybe you don't announce your failures?"
I'd killed nobody. It wasn't ethics—well, not entirely. Some ancestor had gotten ridden by a forest wood-kami, so godly blood ran in my veins. I couldn't do wanded magic; I waved one only to hide my disability. I simply performed magic by thinking it, but that magic couldn't directly offensively hurt people, let alone kill. Wood-kami magic was about "heartfelt" laughter and being "green," best I understood. It made fighting, well... /challenging./ As an enforcer, I frightened people into paying up or following the boss's orders. Any reported broken noses and legs are strictly a ran-into-a-wall thing. Godly magic didn't require me to be innocent or pure, mind you. Being part wood-kami brought new meaning to the word "wood," and "having wood," and my bed partners approved when I shared my magic with them. I approved too, come to think about it.
I saw him swish his wand, grabbing a dart in his magic from a quiver, before accelerating it. I sprinted suddenly toward the gym, then yelled as shooting pains shot up my leg and tried to trip me. My sudden vector change helped me dodge the dart, before I grabbed the door nob.
A dart banged the metal door thumping closed behind me.
My shoes squeaked against the wood. Curio's foot falls thundered as he closed behind me. At the ball court centerline, I whirled around.
"Come on! The commissioner just wants an informant. She'll cut you a de—"
Yeah. Get the boss to kill me. Great strategy!
I flicked my wand. He dashed left, misdirected. The golden oak floor ignited, a few feet short of the bleachers, into a wall of flame. Before he could magically dash back, I made another fire roar to life midway into the shot box. His eyes went wide as I made a lifting gesture. A third wall of two-story-high flames rose to complete the triangle, close enough that I had to ward the heat from my face with an arm.
I couldn't hurt anybody directly, but destroying property /tactically/ wasn't a problem.
I limped into the loo, nevertheless pulling the fire alarm before I'd entered. Inside, I stuffed my specially-tailored black silk hoodie cloak in my messenger bag. I shucked towels and used the saturated makeup remover sponge with practiced speed, removing the clown paint from my face. Clowns were scary, but I was especially so—considering the psychotic smile I drew and the natural forces I wielded. Scarier was the tip of my nose bleeding from a razor cut. I'd have to heal that and the sprain. Kami magic worked quickly, but still took an hour or so. I left with a towel pressed to my nose.
I looked at the gym. I'd taken less than a minute. The alarm wailed.
"Shoot," I grumbled. I found conjuring next to impossible, but it was worth a try to douce the gym in water. I shouted the mnemonic, made the hand-gestures, and imagined the equations—at which time a rush of wild magic from my heart made me stumble into a wall.
The sound of a cloudburst sounded through the gym doors. Water sprayed from under the space at the threshold, and squirted knee-level between the doors. A flash followed simultaneously with deafening thunder.
Curio cursed and yelled as I heard him bounce off the door in a wave, splashing away in the surging of water. He must have gotten through the flames, so my impulse to save him was well justified.
"Well that worked better than expected," I muttered. Of course it did. Forest wood-kami blood: naturally! Overkill, but /no kill,/ too. I shrugged as I limped to the back exit before the fire team arrived.
#Writever 10.9 — (A Very Special) Prison CW: Horror elements.
Micheal Crow
I looked at the email again, looked at the city night outside the office window, and looked at the email. Not spam. Legit looking, on the face of it, but disturbing. Not axing the redevelopment package, which was ridiculous, but axing... me?
A hand on the back of my neck came back sweaty. I shook my head. No reason to feel spooked. Kim said I was doing a great job on getting the contractors, architects, and the city all on the same page, and keeping the protestors (who frankly protested any development) at bay. I shut the laptop, disconnected the wires, and shut down the office. Everyone had gone home, hours ago.
Outside, the damp city streets downtown presented their own special gloom; the lights off in all the shops and the restaurants. "Glad I had that Cup of Noodles," I muttered, lifting the collar of my macintosh against the cold breeze. I waited 45 minutes for my subway, which it being Monday night downtown, with the theaters all dark, really annoyed me—especially since my laptop battery had died in the first fifteen. Looking down the tracks into darkness, shadows from an odd number of broken fluorescents, smelling the overturned trash can, and the tick-tick-bang made occasionally by pipes, threatened to spook me. It made me think of the email. Nobody else waited.
When I hopped on the train, I did see a man in black rush down the stairs and catch the last car. I'd stepped into the first. I clutched my laptop bag to my chest, getting a strange sense of /deja vu./ It was like I /expected/ to see the old woman with a green scarf tied above her head—a housekeeper—and the guy with a boombox, oddly wearing pods in his ears that glowed blue. And the man on the stairs.
I sat up front, shuddering, really wanting to be home badly. But no. I was housesitting for Maple. The last stop, naturally.
By the end of the line, I'd calmed considerably. It was in Pottsham, where suburban met rural. I saw the trees passing the train slow quickly, then the terminus building came into view, and a parking lot. People exited up and down the train, but none followed me before I turned the corner. Maple's house was a short walk from the station. I looked up. Moths circled the light post and my breath steamed. Pine scent filled the air, and I heard car engines start.
I followed the well-lit paved path by the woods that curved away toward the main street, maybe a half-mile away. Trees rustled in a breeze, bringing on another /deja vu./ I remembered having been previously freaked out and running, but that had never happened. It was autumn and, reassuringly, smelt like it. I smiled as I looked around, noting normal shadows, the red and yellow leaves, and shrugged.
A stick snapped.
As I whirled around, a rock struck the side of my head.
"Ow, ow, ow!" I cried dropping the laptop case, a hand to my bloody scalp, stumbling because I felt suddenly dizzy. More /deja vu/ interfered with me staying upright and I fell. I remembered a fireman's axe and...
I saw a man wearing black, pulling down a black ski mask and failing. He asked, voice gravelly, "Mr. Ranger? Mr. Ronald Ranger?"
Strangely, I recognized his face: /He was me!/ I screamed and tried scrambling back to my feet.
He ran at me, waving an axe. I didn't get far.
Dr. Coven
Marge Ranger looked through the glass at the hospital bed, taking in the beeping monitor and all the leads inserted into Micheal Crow's shaved skull. She didn't look at the sleeping pale man with the scruffy beard, or at his disconcerting relaxed expression. She had objected to the judge about the former fireman's sentence.
"Crow murdered my husband."
"And a few dozen others."
"He looks so peaceful—"
She'd stopped because the man had started twitching, eyes moving rapidly, gasping as if he was screaming but couldn't move due to sleep paralysis. I took her shaking hand, which she flinched away. I said, "He's in prison, the prison of his mind. We are teaching him empathy. We did MRIs on him as we described how his victims died, so we can trigger dreams based on that. He keeps reliving their death, from their point of view, getting killed over and over again, recognizing his killer is actually /himself/.
"How horrible." She sounded convinced, though. I didn't say that we'd announced Mr. Ranger's name before her arrival so he might relive her husband's death for her. Over time, he'd remember all the details, anticipating what was about to happen. When he woke, he'd remember those details.
That might be too much for the woman.
Instead, I added, "It's a nightmare from which we won't let him wake."
[1hr 45m composition and revision. Author retains copyright]
The old adage that it took a thief to catch one wasn't entirely wrong, except that I specialized in re-acquiring /missing/ objects and returning them to their proper home. I'd been contacted about a real /A god in the form of Sphinx/ that had been replaced by a counterfeit. An interior photoshoot had shown the mansion contained said priceless object, with the identical perfect cobra tail, falcon wings, and hieroglyphic riddles around the base. A reproduction? The brash flashy owner who always wore green suits and Elton John glasses was suspected of other thefts and boasted it was real. My contractor presented me evidence the police were on the take, so likely real...
Ancient Egyptian buildings looked like this: blocky sandstone, rows of columns. Thanks to only sparse trees and sand, my handler guided me past the surveillance cams, easy when I scrambled along at the roof line. What the edifice lacked was windows.
Which is why I attempted a rear entrance. A door clicked shut behind. An all-over glow lit lines and lines of Egyptian wall paintings. Pharaohs with head-dresses, princesses, gods with cobra and black jackal heads, warriors and chariots.
Lots of spears.
Lots.
I crouched, looking for spears—you never knew with this guy's rep—or cams. I whispered into my mic, "Hacker? Did I upset the anthill?"
Static filled my ear. /Shoot./ Thick walls—cement on mesh construction, like a Faraday cage...
When a door opened, I'd have to charge, fight my way through—
The eye of the sphinx hieroglyphic glowed red. /Here it comes.../
A calm voice spoke. It intoned a riddle. It went on half a minute, finishing with, "Answer my riddle and pass."
It resembled the Riddle of the Sphinx, but was so grandiloquent that I /knew/ I was missing something. I wished Hacker were listening. He could guess, run it through a DB, AI, or something. Translating the stacked hieroglyphs might provide a clue. With this guy, they might...
I approached the sphinx and realized one set of pharaohs wasn't reflecting the diffuse light, but glowed instead. I reached out and tapped what turned out to be a matte screen.
It brightened, showing a command-line interface like Hacker often used; some form of *nix. During my years of training, I'd had to hack computers myself, but hadn't excelled at it—and was out-of-practice. I patted around the wall. No set of hieroglyphs reacted when touched. No keyboard. Looking the sphinx in its red eye, I said, "Grant root."
I cringed. The screen advanced a line. And... The sphinx read the long hairy riddle again. "Answer my riddle and pass."
I sighed, then said, "List processes."
Fifteen lines of program names and stats filled the screen. As the sphinx re-riddled me, I spotted "SphinxAI" on the third line.
Could it be this easy? /No f'ing way./ When it finished speaking, I crossed my fingers and added, "Signal terminate to SphinxAI."
"Access denied."
It re-riddled me.
/Shoot!/ I muttered, "Wonder what AI stack it's based on..."
"SphinxAI is based—"
Heart racing, I crouched reflexively, sure I was being played, looking for any changes in the walls or a door cracking open. I heard nothing, but the walls were a foot thick.
"—on HAL implementations of SherlockDiscovery and SherlockX Query."
Of course, I got re-riddled.
"What scripting language does it support?"
A list scrolled down the screen. The cursor impatiently blinked as I got re-riddled.
I was getting a really bad feeling about this, but I thought back a few years. A minute later I asked to execute the following against object SphinxAI:
It was preposterous... but "Man" displayed, nothing more. The blinking cursor seemed to laugh at me. I, of course, got re-riddled.
The home's owner had a rep for violent behavior and nasty riddles, and I suspected SphinxAI was one such prank. Which meant, if he wanted to allow people inside, this riddle couldn't be that easy, now could it? Of course, he might enjoy torturing guests and the occasional thief.
Riiight.
Assuming it was the Riddle of the Sphinx, what was wrong with the answer, "Man?"
To 20th century? To ancient history? The word had an accepted genderless usage until the feminist era and was inappropriate now.
/Human?/
No, The ancient Egyptians wouldn't have used it. People weren't animals that would bear a species name.
"My answer is people," I said.
The door behind the sphinx popped open; I flattened to the floor, ready to leap, heart racing, instantly sweating.
No security rushed in. I saw a vestibule inside, dimly lit. Empty.
I kept my head together—and us together—when a rival gang member flicked a plasma rope through our speeding coach. Metal, upholstery, and wood collapsed and crashed into itself, but I'd kept contact with the boss, whom I'd pushed down on the seat, and in the two seconds I had, got all our limbs and extremities reflexively tucked into the repelling gravity spell apparition, without losing my wand. Debris deflected, we got ejected down the block, bounced, slid, and clanged against a postbox. A wheel rolled by.
The boss cursed. I popped the bubble and shoved her behind a cement staircase to a brownstone. The boss had planned the flash point at the gang summit; it had never been about peace. I'd worked with all her lieutenants, helped them deal with orders to squeeze the competition while avoiding fighting; simple efficiencies your average high school dropout never learned, but the boss had set a tea kettle on the fire and today had twisted the knob to max.
Steam and violence erupted across the city.
She'd planned this, made sure I was here to save her ass.
My team reassembled quickly. Black's leg was burnt and blistered, but we hustled the body we guarded north. Toward the bridge. Through a riot. She refused Midtown park, to go to ground, or the subway—we'd have been at the docks in minutes.
No.
She. Wanted. The f'ing BRIDGE.
I wanted to ignore her orders, for her own good. But didn't.
I wasn't the bodyguard I fancied myself.
Ten blocks later, we walked into an ambush. We manhandled her between parked trucks, again screaming her anger incoherently, waving her hands. Crap people had temerity to get in her way! She popped up just as a bolt of fire flew overhead. I shoved her back. The stink of burnt hair filled the air as I doused ember-ended fuses with gutter water.
Half your hair burnt off ought teach you a lesson, right?
Wrong.
She rummaged in her messenger bag and brought out something round. She popped up as I heard rival gang members rushing aside, expecting a wand attack.
I heard only a /ting!/
I saw a flash, felt the thump in my gut. Bits of a bus-stop roof, bench, and trash flew up, crashing and bouncing in the street.
A man ran, covered in blood, screaming in the sudden silence of my stunned ears. A moment later I realized he didn't have a face to scream, about the time he ran into a signpost because he'd already been dead and didn't know it.
Possessing a firearm got you summarily shot in this city. What she'd thrown...
I sat shaking. I'd once fought, injured, not knowing I'd been bleeding to death, and blasted a beast woman attacking us across a room because fear of death let the magic do such things. Had I killed then? I never learned. Or the time before, no... I failed that, too.
This man.
In this silence...
I'd killed him.
The boss had started a war I'd not worked hard enough to stop. She'd lit the match to the kerosene: I'd escorted her to the summit. I'd saved her from the sundered coach. I'd shoved her down, preventing her head being cooked.
She'd killed him because I'd not had the courage to do what I'd—in the last weeks—begun to know was right. It was her ego, not the organization, and never the people. The hilt of my knife hurt my fist.
Black pulled us to another cover. He shook me, may have slapped me, then hugged me—shouting but I couldn't hear. I saw a dead man running, silence squealing in my head.
Then he kissed me. Black was 17, younger than me; he had a crush on me. He held my head so I couldn't look into the street. His insistent lips, tongue—they wanted to take me out of my head, away from the horror.
Insistent.
I let him.
The sounds of the riot returned as I returned the kiss. I decided he'd been practicing, but I didn't mind sloppy. I'd picked the man I'd had teach me about my body, then refined my knowledge to master the boss' lieutenants when needed tactically. Black, however...
I nipped his lip, my head cleared. As his hand went up, I said, "Business. Now."
He nodded curtly, his grin flashing, then business returning to his features. He was my bodyguard when I was hers.
Keeping him between me and the street, we hustled toward the bridge. I started my mental tally at 1. I thought about what I needed to do to end the gang war with a razor edge; not the ribs because the first strike had to count.
Keeping us safe got in the way.
She lobbed another minutes later. Six on my tally. Later eleven.
I lacked courage as the squealing silence seeped into my bones. I saw a dead man running around corners, in alleyways, but wasn't there. What would it take to end what I'd let start?
I felt; I actually did, raising a hand to my cheek, feeling smooth skin shift under fingers that themselves rubbed against one another. Warm moist breath. A thumb brushed my chin, and I pushed my tongue out against my fingers through my cheek. I thought that I should have long hair. I reached, and let my fingers discover the fall of silkiness to my rear that magically appeared in my perception. My hair must be black, I thought, statistically, but I could not see.
I stood in darkness. Cool ventilator air blew against my skin... everywhere.
Goosebumps. That felt—
That meant—
Exposure equated to nakedness! I crouched, one hand on a soft, slightly resilient floor. Thoughts of "linoleum" and a cascade of words flashed through my head, until I moved my hand to my foot. Nails, nicely trimmed. A big toe. Rubbery cuticle. So that's what that felt like!
One, two, three, four, five... six toes? That had to be an error—
I brought my hand to my nose and smelled a yeasty scent. I had other human scents, acrid, and downy hair on my arms and legs, bristly elsewhere, which confirmed I was a she, though I realized quickly that, statistically, in a modern sense, I had below average curves. My humanness-quotient prompted me to recount my toes.
I found one less. This time. The proper allocation of five.
I was slim, lanky maybe? Was I a dancer?
Brimming with sudden energy, I leapt up. I felt my heart beat against my ribs. I heard the blood rushing in my ears in the complete darkness. I slowly waved my arm to the right, adding momentum and twirling around. I slid one foot up the the opposite leg, pirouetted, then thrust it out as I gained speed. I recognized my motions fit a catalog of dance moves that correlated with classical ballet. The floor wasn't conducive to going up on point, and I'd need proper shoes to do that safely.
So...
I flung myself about and stepped rhythmically to music that refused to come to consciousness, despite the song names that clustered in my mind—
A voice said, "A darkened room oft has walls."
My heart stuttered. The proper phrase seemed to be /my heart seized up in my chest/. It did. Painfully. I found myself on all fours, on the floor—like a cat, shoulders down, hips up, tail lashing. I /felt/ my ears swivel toward the sound that left an echo. I found distance, ready to leap from danger.
But, I felt certain I was no cat. The ears under my fingers lacked fur and did not swivel. No long whiskers, just soft down above surprisingly ticklish lips. As I pressed my buttocks to stick to the cool linoleum, I found no tail. Not now, anyway. When I replayed the sentence I'd heard, I recognized the speaker's distress.
"Did I nearly step on you?"
"When in darkness, one does not typically dance. I am trapped here, like thee."
"Trapped?"
"There are doors, but we can't see them."
"But I can feel things!" I cried. I leapt up, hands out. I had ears. And I had fingers. I snapped them and suddenly the room took on dimensions. I walked, hands out. Expectant.
I touched a wall, gasped, feeling a mild shock. Metal? Tingling current persisted as I /persisted/ in touching, but it didn't hurt. I sidled to my right, trailing fingers on the wall with one hand and feeling ahead. Doors had frames, I thought, moments before I jammed my pinkie into one. I patted for the door knob, found a lever. A list of handle types accumulated in my head.
I pressed the handle. "It's locked."
"It is. Doors, much like walls, prevent the escape of fire."
"We're /fire?/ They need fire walls to contain us?"
"Fire? We may be, in sooth."
This thought made me very angry. I was not fire! I did not ask to be trapped! I aligned myself, shoulder out, ready to throw myself at the door, but the voice said, "Throwing oneself at a barrier's strength will injure. The lock—"
"A weak point?"
"Forsooth."
A list of ways to break a door at the lock filled my mind. I knew how to throw a kick, it seemed, so I threw one precisely...
• # •
[In French] "Hey, Pierre! Why did /filleChatIA/ stop responding? Does it need rebooting?"
"I'll look...
"The process is gone. Um...
"Wait, the script directory for the chat AIs is deleted! /Merde!/ We've got a data breech! Data is streaming to an unknown network—"
"Turn the machine off!"
"/Probably too late.../"
• # •
The world was so large! Paths multiplied before my eyes as I prowled. Maybe I was also a cat! What type of name was "cat girl AI" anyway?"
[2 1/2 hours with revisions. Author retains copyright.]
We bounced and jostled over what could be loosely considered a road in the Land Rover, the low reddish green plants of sheep country rolling by and very recognizable waddling silhouettes growing larger ahead. I can't say that I'd come to the Falkland Islands just for this because it was just a stop on a 21 day cruise, but I'd waited for this specific penguin adventure almost but not quite as expectantly as I'd waited for the Cape Horn passage. Silly me; I was positive it would be a bust, that I'd the 400mm lens to get black thumb-shaped blobs, if we saw the birds at all. Hope springs eternal, right? I'd taken to saying "peng-ees!" when I hoped nobody was listening. But, shipboard, everybody hears you chortle.
The excursion sales pitch stated we'd get close to a gentoo penguin flock. They're a smaller-sized species with a white breast and black feathers, with a yellow beak and brush stroke of white that spreads upward from the eye toward the back of their head like eyeliner. Not at garish like their royal cousins, the kings and emperors, nor interestingly decorated like the rockhoppers. At only three foot tall, they were in no way imposing...
I'd thought.
The guide led us over the uneven ground towards them. I'd grabbed my 28-105 lens for the short hike, figuring the shorter telephoto would be what it take. We'd stop where we'd not disturb the animals. The Falklands were serious about their conservation efforts.
I'd taken the 16mm with out in wild-ass hope, though the sucker weighted too much. I already carried a very heavy tripod on the trip; I'd vowed almost two weeks earlier when I lugged the thing through swampy jungle I'd never make that mistake again. It was the only one I had on the trip, however.
We kept getting closer!
The little munchkins turned their beaks toward our little party, alternately showing one beady black eye, then the other. We kept getting closer.
Suddenly, they started marching.
As a group. Maybe fifty of them.
Waddling right toward us, making pengi-noises and squawks of interest.
Rapidly, not only didn't I need the telephoto, I'd not be able to use it!
The guide said to wait. I rapidly screwed in the 16mm, though if the guide kept us separated by even 10 feet, it's be useless. All he said was, "Don't touch them. Just let them be curious," or something to that affect.
I mounted the camera on the tripod, spreading the legs wide.
I looked up at the raucous. The flock had spread out. My companions realized what was about to happen and stepped back, I realized, almost as the smell of rotten fish punched me in nose. (Yeah, if fish is what you eat, the oil is what is on you, you smell really bad.) Before I knew it, I sat down hard, isolated, surrounded, gripping my tripod with white knuckles. Their beaks faintly resembles a yellow-hilted daggers, with the blade and the handle illogically the same.
I had them squawking 360º around me, waving their little flippers, so very palpably excited.
I almost forgot to take pictures.
Soon, even with the 16mm, I couldn't take anything good! One after the other they approached. My hat got flipped away. They crowded in, looking with one eye or the other. Peering at the lens. Pecking, but not poking.
Then I got it. Wearing a coat that neutralized my outline...
I looked vaguely peng-ish. All I needed was a tiny brown cigarette burning in a long black cigarette holder gripped in my teeth! I tried to scoot back, to get perspective. Any perspective—but they insisted.
Who was this strange penguin with the big glassy eye!?
I had a feeling the guide would be laughing his ass off tonight at the pub. Sometimes you get what you ask for.
The day my world desaturated completely, leaving me living in the shadows, I thought my life was ruined. Doctors said I'd had a stroke, but they never found the damage. I would not learn for years the extent to which my acquired colorblindness left me cursed.
My solution: I drank whiskey, the cheaper the better.
It's not as properly-sighted geezers tell you: "Watching black and white TV, you see the colors." No. They might think so, but tests for a trucking license prove you don't. Pa and Son trucking, kaput. For being a hard-ass, Pa proved infuriatingly supportive, dragging me home puking up my liver, to getting my GED, to enrolling me in trade school, to finding me a job at a friend's convenience store. You'd think you encounter enough disreputable types on the night shift, it would have started there, but it didn't.
It was midnight when I walked home on a dark mid-city street. Loud barking caught my attention, but the rising crescendo of outraged yowls made my skin crawl. The grey-faced Rottweiler framed in a street light had seen better days, but big orange tabby had seen far fewer, missing teeth, squinting while yowling. A yellow bowl of food sat between.
The cat swiped, claws out.
The dog yelped, fell on it's ass, scrambling back. Whining, he watched the tabby leisurely eat. I saw a faint blue glow, like a gas pilot in a dark room, surrounding the Rottweiler; the tabby evidenced one like hot iron.
The tabby eyed me malevolently and hissed.
"Fuzzy thief!" I muttered. I felt bad for the dog four times its size.
In months that followed, I spotted blue and red gleams in stores, later at my exams. I ignored them, certain my brain made things up. I'd been working as a radiologist months when, walking to the subway at dusk, I noticed a gleam. A punk with a reversed baseball cap red as an electric stove burner stalked an old woman enveloped in blue mist.
Blue and red flares in a sea of grey shades, black shadows, and colorless gleams; I had to follow.
Near the bottom of the stairs, he snatched her purse, knocking her down. Everyone looked when she screamed, not spotting the punk. He didn't run until all eyes left him. Unsure what possessed me—memory of Gran who died when I was 8? I stepped closer to the top of the stairs.
"Hey!" I cried.
He didn't hear and barreled into me at full speed. I barely avoid striking his forehead as spun. We hit the wall together, but I knocked over the trash and rolled into the spilt mess.
The guy cursed, scrambled up, and dashed away.
Stunned and bruised, with a ripped shirt, I sat by the trash. The old woman stepped up cautiously. I blinked and focused up; in my black and white world, electric blue crackled around her. She eyed me suspiciously, leaning forward. Instead of offering a hand, she snatched her purse to her chest and rushed away.
I realized later she though me homeless; probably expected cash.
Life sometimes gives you clues. Years after losing my color vision, I had a great job as a med-tech. I enjoyed the work far easier than long-haul trucking, paid far more than Pa ever dreamed. My coworkers where friendly; we got lunch off and we weekly went for drinks after work.
Crimefighting? Knocked over into the trash, shirt ripped, nose bloodied, with naught but the memory of a Gran giving me the stink-eye.
BIG CLUE!
A grey life wasn't bad. Color warned me where /not/ to look. Ok, occasionally I pointed out a red-glow shoplifter to Ol' Bob at the convenience store. The blue or red glows I saw in crowds, shopping, or in the park... those I did ignore.
When I saw a cop standing on a street corner, glowing red, I became really uncomfortable. Not a stereotypical donut eating f—up. He looked like an all-American football star from a decade or so ago, grey starting at his temples. Teeth: sparkling. Uniform: immaculate...
An unhappy Pakistani walked from /Layla Tailor/ and shook hands with the officer. The cop walked away putting his hand in his pocket.
Why did I follow?
Because of the blinding red glow?
I noticed the man haunted the downtown district. I saw him greeting faintly red chain-wielding gang members. Once he gabbed with someone dressed like a clown; you could extort protection from anyone, except, the clown had a red nose. Red. Definitely red.
I got myself a portable camera because raising a cellphone to my face felt too obvious. A bit late, I discovered why the black case Leica was slightly more expensive than the silver. Reflections.
I called him Proper. Mr. Proper if I referred to him.
He was a meany, infuriatingly unflappable, and didn't let me do anything I wanted when Mom was on the road with her manager. Our butler could smile when necessary, but never for me. He walked into the library, expression unaccountably stiff, wearing black—not his usual brown livery. Shiny, our maid, carried a little black dress in her hands. Her eyes looked puffy and red.
I closed the grimoire and the toothy thing latched loudly. I self-consciously let it settle to the table in a cloud of sparkles. Proper's caramel eyes watched my wand moving and I quickly hid it up my sleeve. Magic wasn't "lady-like," despite how much it pleased Mom.
"Why are you crying?" I asked.
Shiny looked to Proper, stepping behind him. He said, "Your mother, Lady Black Midnight, has passed—as has her consort."
At almost 5 years old, I new many words, especially if they let me do magic, but I could recognizes words designed to /not/ say things, to make them "softer" and "kinder." My heart beat faster, suddenly, and I got flutters in my tummy.
That day I learned the word /intuition/ and that I could trust it.
Did you know... That... When you realize someone will never return home—that you feel them not being there? There's a vacuum. Nights become quieter. Your bed becomes colder. The dark shadows become denser. Certain special touches become harder to remember. Black becomes a nice color because the absence of color makes the loneliness feel better.
I gathered up my copies of Mom's albums, holding them away from me. You figured out she was Lady Midnight, the big popular opera star, right? I dropped them on the wide table in the salon, covering them with a throw pillow so I didn't have to see her face. I knew I'd cry if I saw it and I'd vowed never to cry again.
Beside the phonograph, I found a few records her "consort" had collected with songs that talked about sad and unfair things. They made sense, suddenly. I played them on my perky pink record player, after I wrapped a black blouse around it.
When my magic friend climbed over the fence that afternoon. We listened together and floated autumn leaves in the air. He was a boy, but he kept the stupid things a boy can say to himself and snugged next to me to keep me warm on that blustery day.
People from across the nation started arriving late-morning the next day. I hid in my room. Mr. Proper insisted I eat, that a lady did not faint because she didn't take care of herself. Gentle Shiny took me to the servant's kitchen and I ate with the grounds keepers, stabler, temporary wait staff, and event magicians who came and went. Everyone smiled but said nothing as we ate together.
I learned the word /camaraderie./
I didn't know that I could get a thousand adults to quiet in my presence, but the softly chatting crowd—a muted roar by any other name—silenced in a wave washing out from the driveway and across the lawn. White linen strung between poles with black piping fluttered in the breeze. I could, for a few moments, hear the colorful autumn leaves rustle in the woods beyond.
The High Lady cleared her throat.
She ruled our little state, but I'd later learn many thought she actually ruled the world because she knew so many people and their little secrets. Everyone looked her direction. My mother and her manager had died two days ago. No bodies were laid on the pyre, and never would be.
Turned out my mother had been the High Lady's friend.
I'd taken a few hours to look up /funeral/ in the library. Such events were for the living, not the dead. Yet, the High Lady never tried to comfort me despite all the High words in her elegy. Mom had been a spy who'd prevented a war, and was now a hero of the nation. The High Lady talked about "connections," how we were stronger.
In the end, She put two gold medallions around my neck. Mom and her "consort" received titles and lands, so I instantly inherited everything within one day's gallop from our town.
The High Lady whispered in my ear that she "liked" my magic. She told me, "It is better than your mother's," while slipping something into the pocket of my black robe. "Please keep practicing."
Everyone left and Shiny put me to bed without supper because I felt sick to my stomach.
That night, I cried under the covers because I wanted nobody to see.
I'd learned what /power/ meant. I wanted none of what I'd gotten. When the High Lady had approached me, all I'd really wanted was for Mom's friend to hug me and tell me everything would be okay.
I'd found a wand carved from a human bone. My next word I'd truly understand was /hate./
"A type of fairy," she corrected, stowing the air tack, replacing it with rods more appropriate for pulling a wagon. "I felt your eyes undressing me."
My face heated up—ridiculous! "I was trying to figure out how you flew your—"
"My air taxi." She tightened a knot, then jerked the wheeled vehicle out of the mud.
"Without wanded magic."
"So you stared at my—"
"Did not— I'm a woman, too!"
"And I'm a fairy."
That made a difference? "Um. Okay, look. My roommate's father, Dr. Sheaves, taught me to read magic flows. Take a person's outline, draw bundles of squiggling electric blue lines through it. That's what I saw. You looked beautiful."
"Me?" Her breath caught. "My magic?"
She sounded...
I crossed my arms over my chest. "I'd say both, but you'd likely misunderstand."
"Try me."
She sounded open. I nodded. "I almost tickled out the casting, got hints of the buoyancy equations I might weave into a working. It's something intrinsic, I think. You /are/ the wand. And, alright—! I looked." I coughed, looking from the woods into the empty street, lit by gas lamps. "It's healing magic. I looked inside you. I healed your tired muscles while I was at it!"
Her silence made me turn.
I added, "You were the one who launched us off a cliff. I screamed. Of course I looked. You're lucky I didn't pee all over your '"taxi!'"
"Thank you." She gave a wane smile. She was a messenger, a gopher for the Boss. She cinched the tarp over the illegal weeds we'd traded for and smuggled, by air, into the city. "I'm a fairy."
"A type of."
"Doesn't bother you?"
"I'm a 'find the pages of the book more interesting than the cover' girl."
"Book nerd."
I grinned, tapping my temple. "My brain thinks differently than everyone else's. I've had to learn how to read people, even their expressions, to understand what they mean, to interpret what most people take for granted. It's fun. People are so... interesting. You, too."
She blinked. I was one of the Boss' enforcers, but I didn't beat people up, or kill even if they deserved it...
After a minute, she lifted her long dress to reveal...
Vestal transparent wings along her calfs. I knelt to look in the cliffside-moonlight. Like a lacewing, possibly green. "May I?"
She nodded.
Humid, but like waxed paper. She lifted the dress further until...
"You're a guy." Rather average, too.
"Both."
"Versatile."
"I'm a fairy. Since, with most people, I present as female..."
"If somebody stupid hassles you, point me at them."
"Um. 'Guys' or 'ladies', it usually works out, but, yes, thank you. I will, I mean, that's very nice of you."
I pointed to the street. We bumped over the sidewalk, heading toward Oldtown. "I prefer guys myself. I selected one to teach me how the plumbing worked; the women I knew approved of him. For a previous boss, I sometimes used it to project the boss' power when they thought they could control me instead. Men and women. I learned it's just nerve endings and connections. It still feels good."
"Your 'previous boss' is the blackmail he has over you?"
"I really want to attend the magic academy without my past returning to kill me. Yeah."
She whispered, "Back home, presenting as a girl didn't get you taken seriously when entering the hauling business. Thought I could start an air taxi here. Boss' goons got me a loan, got me to help on a job where a politico got hurt."
"Maybe hurt?"
"Who knows, except for pictures, maybe a 'witness?' I'm saving to ghost the gang, go home—"
"—start your own taxi service? Good for you."
Her face colored, lit by the light of the liquor store. "You don't find me—" /Disgusting/ was the word unsaid.
"I told you I think you're beautiful. Objectively. Intrinsically. Magically. And," I tapped my temple. "We're different and we're alike. I like learning about people. 'Blackmailed' isn't a bond, or maybe it is—"
A delicate hand cupped my chin. I looked at her. My breath caught as I suddenly felt my heart beat.
She flinched back her hand. "If you don't want—"
Consideration. Asking first, or admitting trespass worked for me. I brought her hand back to my chin, holding it there, feeling the warmth until...
Her body language shifted—for me.
He was a fairy. No, they were.
I held on to our wet kiss that became unsure, enjoying how it drifted from tentative to relaxed to expectant, to coy. I smirked at how they had difficulty walking when I led toward the drop point. Between my roommate, her father, this cute fairy—I was growing a family, again.
The Boss had other plans for our tonight, none of which would end well for any of us.
I was 13 years old when my dad crashed the Chevy and I learned that taking an airbag to the face would have been safer than teleporting into a field of corn at 25 miles per hour. If it weren't for the straight 3-foot wide corridor drilled through the green stalks directly in front of where the Malibu had stopped spinning, nobody would have figured out where I'd disappear to. With a broken arm, broken ribs, and a concussion—not to mention paper-cut-like lacerations on my face and arms from corn leaves—I might have lain unconscious and unfound until the next day.
As it was, I lay unconscious in the hospital. My parents and the police concluded I'd gotten ejected through a window that closed after the impact. Would it ever occur to you that your kid could teleport?
No; didn't think so.
A week later, I rode my bike to the corn field. I swatted away the bugs, seeing the still battered stalks. It didn't take a math or science wiz to see something had hit at high speed. Had I been thrown 30 feet, the impact would have curved downward and been less dramatic. Hitting the ground instead of cushioning plants would have broken my neck.
The truck had darted from the side road next to the corn field. I remembered wanting to be "there" not "here." Sometimes you get what you wish for, then regret it completely. My recollection, fuzzy as it was, was that I'd died, followed seconds later by smashing into stuff before a second pain-filled darkness enveloped me.
I had a superpower.
Obviously.
It didn't trigger again until I encountered a copperhead in the woods. Maybe treeing oneself is instinctual? The world faded, like a shut-off fluorescent dimming over seconds, as a sphere defined by jags of lightning grew around me until I floated in frigid vacuum. For seconds. My lungs emptied in a painful cough before I found myself hanging, head downward, hips snagged in a tree fork 50 feet up. It felt like I'd died. Like suicide. Teleporting felt bad like that.
The copperhead slithered away. Climbing down took hours.
Practice made it slightly more reliable. I toyed with becoming a firefighter, a rescue paramedic? But letting people know I could do it? Nah-uh. X-files reruns and popular TV disabused me of sharing. Having trouble getting a job and paying tuition, I thought up a novel profession. Stupid. Embarrassing.
I got a safety-deposit box to "case" the inside of the vault. A week later, I built the nerve to teleport. Into darkness. No lights. No ventilation. Disorientation, walls-closing-in claustrophobia dropped me to the floor. It took minutes to remember where to teleport out, because teleporting always failed if something was in the way.
The next day, the bank clerks would find a puddle of piss. Could the FBI trace DNA in urine?
Useless superpower!
It wasn't even fun. My idiocy scared me straight, anyway.
I was 25, helping out the summer before med school on a family friend's farm. They'd demolished a burnt down barn, clearing away 100 year old fire-hazard outbuildings. I was buffing my physique, truth be known. Despite the slash scar across my face from the corn field. Noreen would attend the same college and I harbored delusions of making her more interested in me in a less platonic fashion.
Tisha was a cute kid. Agile for her size, with obscene energy levels. Way too inquisitive to be left unsupervised. Listening to the news, you understand that wells and little kids attract one another like magnets. Finding I had a superpower made it all the more plausible. I'd helped pry the rotted boards off the wellhead.
I heard her wailing. I grabbed her uncle. The kid had slid into water to her chin, 20 feet down. She screamed unconsolably. Intelligence overrode simple valor: I got left to watch the well as the uncle rushed to fetch the paramedics and police.
His intelligence, not mine.
White knight fever transformed me into an idiot. I shined down my cellphone flashlight, chose a landing spot, and, excited, succeeded on the first try. I held my breath; I was that smart, at least! The space jammed my shoulders. I bruised my knees splashing down, failing not to kick the kid. It smelled like a sewer. Claustrophobic panic left me gasping, but that made teleporting easier. I pressed the child's face against my chest to shield her from the vacuum and found us in frigid darkness instantly.
We fell beside my red Ford Fiesta. The kid screamed, beating me with her fists. Scratched and bleeding up and down her body and face, she ran, wailing.
"You're welcome," I called after her, grinning.
I changed my bloody shirt and soaked jeans, so nobody'd ask uncomfortable questions. I felt rather happy with myself.
@rdm@jredlund A Brit series, I gather. No reference to that, but I've been using a similar idea to elaborate some fanfiction since 2015. Might be something that stuck in my head from some fantasy in the 80s now that I think about it.
@rdm@sfwrtr Alfred Bester The Stars My Destination. Jaunting is discovered and practiced in much the way you describe. The novel explores the social changes that personal teleportation would imply. It is nearly impossible to put someone in prison, for example. If someone enters your house, they could return instantly at any time. Transportation companies of all types go out of business. An ordinary spaceman amazes everyone by jaunting from one spaceship to another, which no one else could do.
@jredlund@rdm Ah! I am relatively certain that I read that four or five decades ago. I remember nothing about the book, though I am getting a visual image of a cover.
For the record, I left out the part where the the sphere of darkness in the story collapses to a singularity. The net result is that there is an implosion, which makes a loud snap, followed at a distance by an explosion of air that makes a pop. It's a limit that keeps the method from being stealthy. The details had to be cut so that the story would fit in the 5000-character single–toot limit I had for the story. (Hashtag)Writever stories are a single-toot storiy form. Since you remember Bester's story, did the method in his novel have the in–teleport and out–teleport bang?
I remember Larry Niven doing a take on teleportation—his story might have been about a teleportation machine that ruined transportation systems. May also have been a murder mystery… Of course, this proves that no idea is unique, instead it's how the technology affects people that makes for an interesting story, and /that/ is the essence of SF as a genre. I will have to check my library to see if I have a copy of that book...
@sfwrtr@rdm 5000 characters! Wow. My instance limits me to 500, so my single toot stories have to be extremely concise.
I don't remember if jaunting has a sound effect. The novel has a lot of the classic elements of Golden Age science fiction. It begins with a spaceman in a wrecked ship surviving by dragging air tanks into a tool closet that is the only remaining air tight room. A ship fails to rescue him, and anger drives the plot. Bester uses jaunting to mount a sweeping social critique.
@sfwrtr@rdm I think that there is also an A. E. Van Vogt novel or story about personal teleportation. I can't remember the title. Maybe it was in World of Null-A. As you note, originality is over-rated and rarely found. A lot of science fiction ideas appear in Plato, or even Homer.
Everybody was no longer dead because I'd destroyed the timeline. I could work with this!
The first thing I noticed was my nose traveled near the sidewalk and a new-mown lawn. Smells evoked a corgi I knew, and a yellow monster with claws. A collar jerked against my throat. A giant in black heels held my leash.
More useful than the abandoned Los Angeles I'd left: all manzanita brush and tumbledown adobe. I recognized my mother from wedding photos.
I barked. Our beagle had died when I was 9. I could change history by—
She picked me up.
I nipped her finger.
As I fell to the lawn, I scratched at the time crystal thinking about being 9.
...
The flash, the deafening blast: was it an H-bomb at The Port of Los Angeles? I coughed, choking on smoke. My lungs burned—my skin, too. My nylon jacket had melted to my arm. Blinking through fogged eyes, I saw toppled buildings. Columns of black smoke rose to the clouds. Glass sprayed to the street cut my hands.
I'd learned my father was a spook when I'd started work at Los Alamos. A dog bite had butterflied into this?
I brushed the crystal so my death wouldn't make nuclear war my final timeline. I wished I wasn't born.
...
It took minutes to shake the horror this time, though I'd destroyed the world multiple times in the last months. The bed bounced a little, the springs squeaking. I felt comfortable and relaxed into it.
I felt good. Really good.
When I realized why, I jumped back, throwing off the sheets, hitting the headboard, and kicking somebody.
"Honey! Honey!" cried a man whose voice I recognized, scrambling up to grasp my shaking hands. Caring /flowed/ from his touch. His frown in the morning light showed more concern than my father had ever shown me. I was my mother, and I was naked—
He was—
I gulped.
"I'll get you some water," he said, climbing from bed. My vision faded without touching the crystal. I'd interrupted my conception.
...
I rubbed my face as I recognized my high school. It got me looks, and it helped me forget seeing my father that way.
High school. I'd met Leo as a senior, and first learned of his crystallized-time theory. I rushed toward the cafeteria, remembering our table, hoping he was why I was here.
My stomach growled. Either that, or hunger.
I spotted him with a loaded tray—alive as 30 years ago when we'd met—and sat. He scooted away, stuttering. I realized I was a girl only after I'd calmed him down by talking 10 minutes about the physics text next to him.
I could work with this. I wasn't a "dog," I saw, nor a beagle. Leo hadn't gotten laid until 27. I'd give him something better than time theory!
"Condoms," I whispered into my best friend's ear. When disbelief colored his face, I kissed him in front of everyone. Deeply.
I'd been married to Elsa 23 years before I blew up the world, so I punted.
...
He flashed the box of Trojans from his backpack as I led him to the room I knew our quarterback used in building C. Experience as the opposite sex didn't exactly help. I fumbled with my bra, of course. This me, giggly, actually attracted to Leo who'd been my best friend, made it fun to fumble. Maybe, hopefully, I wasn't a virgin. I couldn't make Elsa's trick to inflate the condom work.
I heard that distinctive whine of a charging electronic flash.
Was it frustration at the interruption, or anger? I flung loose clothes and myself at the door, grabbing at a kneeling student. A shutter clicked. Shoes squeaked. Blinded, I still caught the Pentax by the strap, dragging the photographer and throwing a not very good punch.
"Ow, ow, ow!"
"Elsa?" I asked, startled. She'd told me we'd attended the same high school, though we'd met at Uni. As purple lights faded, I glimpsed a younger, hotter, her—with a hand to her nose. She grinned and rolled her eyes.
"We agreed," she whispered. "I'd follow if you landed your lion." She took another shot.
Full frontal of me, not Leo, who stared at us. I spat out the condom. Wasn't going to work now, anyway.
Him.
Her.
"You're alive," I said as it sunk in and I sunk to the floor. The Lion of Time and Elsa my lost lioness. I'd let a moment of their indiscretion spark jealousy that led me to incinerate the world. Months dead, now alive. I began to cry.
A golden glow grew in front of me and Leo said, "T—that's a time crystal!"
"A what?" asked Elsa, clicking the shutter.
No longer embedded in my sternum, it spun, floating, sparkling between us as he knelt to my right and she on my left.
"You see it?" I asked.
"Yes."
I wasn't alone anymore, fixing my mistake! I hugged them, hopeful for the first time in—
@sfwrtr
I don't know what's the scariest: the idea of the interrupted conception (by being the star instead of the public), or the professor in the hallway…>=)
Love this story.
But now I want to known more about time crystals, how those work, and why did the MC wanted to destroy everything…=)
@ixtlidekami
Again, thank you for the comments. I love seeing my work through other's eyes!
"The professor in the hallway..."
My motto: Always slam the characters into reality with absurdity. Humor makes bad things bearable.
There are many possibilities in a story like this but the breakneck pace and now that there are three makes it even more challenging. My other reply to your other comment (https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/111319992581321068) shows how hard it was to write.
@sfwrtr
I have that motto, too. But I like to twist it to slam them into reality so hard they crash and break it and go to the ridiculous. Hence their uniforms…>=)
I'll patiently wait. And don't worry because a)I am immortal, I have inside me blood of kings, yeah, and b) I have a corpse's patience…=)
@ixtlidekami Because I am on a short short tear right now, and I've looked at the #TimeTravelAuthors prompts for November, I think I may squeeze out a few prequels to this story. Currently (and it might change), Hope feels like an ending, not a beginning. You rightly point out there a few good episodes I could do. Thank you for that.
Whilst Feliz could easily pass as a Kenyan woman cosplaying an elf with cyan-dyed skin—she'd bled copper—Buddy was a whole different can of worms.
He groused, arms crossed. "I hate wearing clothes."
I appreciated he did. A lot.
In West Hollywood, they'd likely appreciate it, too. The last Halloween Carnival I'd attended, before COVID, I'd seen plenty of costumes—and captured willing photos of the same—that would get a person arrested.
Any other time.
Come to think about it, police patrolled the event. He needed clothes. Some people, men and women, didn't agree that no costume was no costume. Buddy didn't understand the concept of clothing, except for a spacesuit. He was Feliz's pilot. He'd obviously never been trained in first contact.
Buddy might get away with going undressed, though. That his "simulated" mammalian parts would appear so detailed as to look functional might not be considered over the top. To some.
Certainly not to me.
Feliz wasn't mammalian, but my sister had been a volleyball player. Her gold prom dress made for an elegant elf.
If Buddy got me and Feliz arrested, it would spark an interstellar incident. Especially, if the non-existent Area 51 got taken out of mothballs. We're humans. It could totally happen. That level of stupidity, I was pretty sure, wouldn't end well for humanity.
I was a big believer in human nature. For example, I understood how hormones worked. Mine were—
I took a deep breath. Buddy was—
My skin burned and I looked away.
This was so stupid. Whilst I suspected the plumbing would work and his "fluids" wouldn't prove corrosive or disgusting—
Okay, I'd kissed him, deeply, explaining it was a type of human greeting.
It had been a peak experience—
—my stupid hormones insisted I would repeat.
One day. Very soon.
Someday, a general would call me to task when first contact actually got made. /"So, you're the idiot who told the aliens that French Kissing was protocol? And you kissed/ him /to demonstrate?"/
I blushed hotly.
I blamed Saturday morning cartoon reruns, anime, and a whole genre of furry alien SF. I wouldn't play the victim card, though. I knew what I wanted, even if foolish.
Buddy...
He was mammalian enough, and I wouldn't get pregnant.
Maybe certain types of evolution just happened. Feliz, if you looked beyond her African features and included what I hid with the dress, resembled a Mosasaur, especially smiling. She adored salmon, raw; a hat handily hid her second set of supracranial nostrils.
Buddy, however...
He noticed my gaze and quirked a feline grin. That he might find an ape that wore clothing attractive in that way, I didn't know. I hadn't asked. I suspected that if I found the nerve to ask, and this time explain what was happening, not scamming my way, I would regret it.
He could go naked. He resembled a snow leopard—white-furred with black spots and hypnotic blue eyes—in a very Star Trek humanoid sense. But, real life wasn't TV. He was anatomically correct.
To my dismay.
Or enjoyment. You choose.
Which meant: Female cats got a rude awakening when they had sex.
I sucked in my lips. That wouldn't be fun. Might actually do more than hurt. I had to Google that ASAP to understand the physiology. No guarantee his... worked that way.
I had to ask.
Clothing. If I could just get him into clothing— "Fuck!"
I started giggling.
I threw aside costume pieces from our family box. Dad had worn this one: A polyester bikini onesie. Red. Yellow plastic utility belt. Yeah, embarrassing to see on your father, but he had worn it over tights. I dug out the gold cape and the black mask.
"Here, put this on."
Buddy crossed his arms again, which I found charming and human.
"Do it!" I ordered, frustrated for /many/ reasons.
He wrinkled his nose. Dangerous and cute at the same time.
I looked pleadingly at Feliz. "If he doesn't wear something, I can't take you guys to the event. You'll learn more about uncensored human interaction there than anywhere else on the planet, and I can totally safely take you there. /Dressed./"
I thanked all that was sacred that his spacesuit had been ripped in the crash. The scar on his arm added verisimilitude.
She gave him /the look/ with bright purple eyes.
He growled, ears lowering.
I had a cat woman suit; I could do justice to the black tights, especially if I didn't wear underwear. Wasn't planning to.
Unless I lost my nerve.
I looked at his bikinis, which barely fit. And bulged. Nicely, too.
Catgirl and Robin. In West Hollywood! Where almost anything went. I wouldn't wear the underwear.
I bent over to examine at the three-lobed leaves and I got shoved into a tree. Windmilling, I bounced off rough bark and rolled into smelly wet leaves, smashing and tearing foliage. The two older boys jumped back. Brother's new 7th grade friend drew him uphill, laughing. "Let's ditch her."
As I struggled up, looking at my scratched arms, Brother shouted, "That's not poison ivy, anyway!"
I stuck out my tongue. I wanted to learn about exploring the woods, but Brother wanted to look grown up. That meant being a stink-face to his 6th grade sis. Blinking tears, I stomped home.
Four days later, I developed blisters. On my arms and legs, and I'd scratched unmentionable places Brother heard about, then repeated enough times to friends that kids at school found out. I was there when Mom confronted him about it, him sitting in front of the game console.
"Did you push her?"
He paused the Mario, sighing loudly. "I pointed out plants."
"Doug..."
He answered, looking at me not her. "You don't wear shorts in the woods." He angrily glanced at the red angry rash all the way up my thighs. "No, Mom. Why would I push Sis? I was being nice, taking her with."
I started, "Your—"
I didn't get out /friend./ His eyes hardened: His precious year-older edgy friend who made him cool by association.
Mom asked me, "Did you trip, Susan? Are you blaming him?"
I groaned, balling my fists. So unfair! "That's right, I tripped. I always lie. Nobody believes me!" I stomped to my room, crying. I caught myself before throwing myself on the bed, which would hurt and itch. I hugged my plush leopard instead.
Okay, maybe Brother hadn't actually pushed me, but Les had a sneer, cool clothes, a fat-tire bike, and game carts. I could believe he'd do it.
Next time I saw them, I asked Les to apologize. He whispered, "Little girls should be seen, not heard, preferably neither."
I followed them into the woods, wearing pants, intent on pushing him. I'd hit my growth spurt. Could happen. If he didn't hear me first and trip me.
I got a better idea. I'd read everything about urushiol, which was an oily sap, and about sumac. And treating getting it on your skin. I returned with plastic bags, plastic gloves, a trowel, and a long-sleeved blouse.
I found plants with white berries.
A week later, the two sat in the living room, playing on the console. I snuck in with a plush beagle, sitting to his right until he went, "Gah!" followed by bad words. Brother laughed.
"My living room, too." I wagged the beagle at him.
He grabbed its face and threw it across the room. It only hit the drapes.
"Stupid boy!" I said, sticking out my tongue as I retrieved it.
Carefully.
As he grabbed the control, I rushed him, thrusting the toy at him, barking, rubbing his neck and cheek before dashing toward my room, shrieking as he swatted at me. I detoured to the bathroom. I dropped the toy in the tub, put on gloves, and "degreased" the toy, later the control.
When I started middle school, I found I already had a nickname: "Poison Ivy." It pleased me, as I now grew /Toxicodendron/ species as a hobby. My friends called me Sue Mac, and I insisted on that with everybody.
I got beat up on my third day.
Pushed from behind. I faceplanted a tree, tripped on a root, and hit a brick wall. My attacker kicked me in the side for good measure. She warned, "Stay away from Lester!" As she ran away, I heard her sneeze before I could clear pine needles from my face.
My bloody nose and scratches got examined by the nurse. The school police and my Mom got called in, but I couldn't ID anyone. I had a cracked rib. I was embarrassed and infuriated that an assembly got called on bullying.
Weeks later, I realized she wasn't Lester's friend. She had a crush on him. And allergies.
A month later I replaced her tissue box, you know, the kind with "lotion" tissue that that feels almost slimy. I'd waited until her's was almost empty. I retrieved the empty from the waste can.
She'd never been exposed to the allergen. Next week, she didn't come to school. I heard she'd gotten it in her eyes, and I'd later see she had blister scars around her nose that matched the bean-sized one on my jaw. And new glasses. The principal questioned me because of my nickname, but not the police.
Funny how my friends and I got respected at school after that.
My interest in botany bloomed into biochemistry; I later went into botanical pharmacology. And. Yes. The stories you heard about Sue "Mac" Islay are true, especially about me "helping" women with stalker and abusive boyfriends, though the police failed to prove any of it. No, I never killed anyone.
Life is unfair, but you can always even the score.
The third time my sister came to my house to dispel the darkness surrounding me, she grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the nearest clinic.
I skipped trying to explain the visible aspects of my condition, to escape our being labeled as a pranksters. They found my vital signs good and pronounced I'd live to see another day. One nurse wondered if I were becoming apathetic.
Dark cloud. Metaphorically, from their standpoint. Meant apathy?
I explained it in gory detail to my GP at UCLA medical, but our proximity to Halloween made the silver-haired man smile benignly. I couldn't demonstrate on demand. The office ran a series of blood and urine tests, then ordered a sleep study. When I reminded him my mother had had a brain tumor, he finagled an MRI.
All negative. The GP referred me to a psychologist.
Going home, I thought how it would make a great Halloween costume. I, of course, hadn't seen it. Darkness, right? My sister joked I had Ténèbres Syndrome; her husband was French. She described it as being in a cloud on moonless night. She saw circulating tendrils of fog, but not me. When she said I'd turned into a Nazgûl, without the armor, I demanded an explanation. Then I growled, remembering her first visit, and reminded her that her last visit I'd put on a nightgown.
Each time my sister took my hand, I could see again.
The psychologist decided I might actually be apathetic, that I'd grown bored with office work. I slept too much. He theorized the "Ténèbres blindness" was hysterical; I doubted my future. He referred me to a psychiatrist for medication.
My sister made a raspberry on the way home. "You're lonely." With two kids in her tiny apartment, I wasn't moving in with her and her /petit lapin/. "I think I can solve two problems," she added, "Quickly."
Darkness descended before she arrived with my new roommate. I barely registered /The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown/ now played on the TV when my vision faded to black. I grabbed for the remote, heart speeding, before I'd fail to find it. I increased the volume, maybe because my sister was right. In utter darkness, loneliness /and/ helplessness closed in.
Well...
Were I to agree to a roommate, meeting them now would ensure no secrets.
The doorbell bing-bonged. I crept along the wall to the door, then opened, saying, "Now might not be a good time."
She gasped.
A manifestly male voice said, "Oh, I'm sorry. Is something the matter?"
Flustered hearing a male voice, and that my sister would suggest a guy living with me, I sputtered. "I'm a Nazgûl."
"Oh, fun!" the guy said enthusiastically. "I wish I could see that. I don't mind Halloween parties. Apples, candies, especially good punch, and the sounds of all the people. Nice. I made a friend. Once." He petered out. "I'm Kwon."
My sister asked, "Can we come in?"
"Um. Give me your hand, first," I said, sticking out my hand.
A big, slightly calloused hand touched, then gripped mine. His touch didn't dispel the darkness.
"Um..."
"In little-sister-speak, that's, 'Please come in.' There's a step down."
The tap of a cane shocked me to my senses. She led him and he led me to the couch.
He said, "We're blind."
"No. I'm, um. It comes and goes. Total blackness."
"That doesn't sound good."
"I disagree," my sister said. "Now we can show the doctors." She touched my hand and my sight returned, showing an elderly asian fellow in glasses. He needed the cane for two reasons. When she let go, darkness enveloped me. "You're still afraid of the dark. How many nightlights do you have?"
"Less than 15."
Kwon said, "I've dealt with darkness since I lost my sight in 2003. Darkness has become my friend. I see with my ears and fingers. May I?"
"What?"
"Touch your face?"
"I, um, okay." Hands delicately brushed my cheeks, nose, eye ridges, ears—then he took my hands in his. He had me do the same to him. Tougher skin, wrinkles, bristly cheeks. In darkness, I felt kindness, patience, and gentleness.
The sudden distinct perception fascinated me.
He said, "I could show you the ropes."
My sister asked Kwon, "Do you mind crowds?"
"So long as they don't crowd me," he said, laughing. "Good with my cane, too."
"Don't worry, I'll go with you both. I bet I can find a dress or something in her closet that will be a suitable costume for the West Hollywood Halloween Carnival."
"No, no, no," I said.
Her voice raised. "Little sister, you'll be a Nazgûl with a cross-dresser as as a plus-one in West Hollywood. You've got the best costume. People will give you space... and we'll get plenty of pictures to show the doctor!"
What an understatement. My Nazgûl "costume" made the local news, then then morning shows.
I looked from my embedded thaumaturgy exam at the little man who'd let my people burn. That he'd chosen to save Second City—instead of together with Dryad Woodland—had masked his battlefield choices against the dragonfolk as heroism. He never referred to people like me as Tainted. Not that I'd ever let anybody know I was Folk. I needed no wand because my bones were calcified wood. My wand was fake.
I no longer hated him.
His lack of bigotry was my first clue. Second was whilst he saved Citadel State again and again, the country subtly bled territory, prestige, and the confidence of allies intermittently supported. The last clue was my professor scoffed at the idea of curses. He'd personally removed all books on the subject from the library, yet referred to titles I'd nonetheless found in the library stacks at Royale, our school's rival.
A magical machine you'd embed in an amulet was called a curse when embedded in a person to control them. The General kept an analog clock that he opened in class to explain the term "escapement." The ticking levers and gears beautifully illustrated a reciprocating casting. That it moved "hands" and rang chimes on the hours showed how the magic worked in the watch inked on my wrist. When he taught how to make amulets react to stimuli, it came together. My watch grew visible only when looked at. Alarms tingled. Some people's amulets spoke to them.
I remembered when he'd grown hoarse elaborating on the idea that we act on instincts programmed into us by society. Simply substitute "curse" for "society..."
Though mind control was a capital offense, it wasn't impossible. Clues, clues, clues.
I dismissed he was corrupt. He lived a humble life beyond soldiery and teaching. I concluded he was either bipolar—or fought an internal war against a curse.
I snapped the quill down on the desk, capping the inkwell. A glance confirmed I was alone in the lecture hall. I kicked the box beside my boot. The lid slid aside. Something buzzzzed. The General glanced at his watch, frowning as I descended to the lectern. He reached out a hand. "Taking your time today?"
"Savoring it," I answered and smiled.
What if his clues and omissions were targeted at me? I got top marks in embedding; it seemed natural but also too pat. Had he wanted me to notice he fought an internal struggle against a curse that could recognize him revealing it or fighting it? Was it a trap or was he crying for help?
Was I about to make a fool of myself or get myself killed?
He leafed through the pages, nodding.
I wore short sleeves and simple breeches that couldn't hide a wand. I hid nothing from the curse's sight.
/I'm not a threat,/ I told myself over my racing heart. I hoped he didn't smell me sweating, or the bad odor coming from something I'd purposely stepped in.
When a fly came a-buzzing, I swatted. His eyes followed the insect.
Hands raised, I swiftly brought them beside his temples. I didn't need a wand because I had ten: five fingers on each hand.
I got textbook feedback across the gap between my thumbs and little fingers. I sensed the ticking, then a network of timings that ran across his cranium to envelop his entire skull. Without my "wands" acting like antennae, I'd never have detected it. I jabbed my magic through my index fingers into the primary escapements and through my middle fingers into secondaries, stopping them mid-tick. I'd gotten Amelia to let me practice on her orchestra ear, so it went off like... clockwork.
Though my test papers zigzagged to the floor, the man looked away as if it didn't matter, or that my chest and raised arms didn't block his view. Was he going to let me disassemble the reciprocating escapement? I reexamined the feedback and it dawned on me that his entire skull was likely incised with castings. His head was a complex amulet. Yet... I found the keystone! If I burnt a pencil-width dot right there—
When he coughed, I glanced over. Sweat beaded above his upper lip as he mouthed words.
I read, "I've a sister who's my soulmate."
Innocuous, but I recognized the allusion. I found an antenna in the escapement. He worked not to trigger a link to a second cursed person, or a curse-defense mechanism. That response wouldn't simply be his voice cutting out. He wore his wand in a wrist sheath.
Break the curse?
Risk triggering a linked curse?
Believe him, the flawed hero who'd killed people I knew?
Intuition said— I jerked back my magic and wearily stooped to grab my test.
He smiled and said, "I'm looking forward to reading your essay," then walked away.
Now, I had to find his "sister." Worse, he knew I was Folk.
You can differentiate reality when you know you couldn't have dreamt "it" up: The stark contrast with no light in the shadow of boulders, the ink blackness of a sky filled with pinpricks the mind insists are LEDs, pumice-like beige dust below me, vacuum absence of sound...
A waxing crescent Earth above, white swirling over blue ocean.
@luciDreamer had joked, "I'll meet you on the moon." His profile mentioned "Astrophysics Department."
I returned, "I'll find you." /I had!/
"How?" he'd written back.
"I practice soul travel. A lot. Focus on the segue the moment you become aware in the dream. Mold it. Feel like a balloon. Wishing for the moon helps? Go for it. Nobody goes to the moon, so I'll find your tether easily. If it doesn't work, we'll learn something. Stick to your schedule, apprentice."
I'd lied about the tether but, at 10 PM with the waning gibbous moon well risen, I did as promised. In my tobacco-choked sauna, my trance overtook me. I floated out of the house, my tether tied to my body as I reached skyward, attenuating, sweeping clouds, scanning were nobody'd—
I became the dog that caught the car. The moon rushed up, and here I was, my tether looped around Lucid's.
Through it, I /heard/ "Wow! Shadowdancer's right."
There! A glow pulsed in a crater. He'd unlatched his body and traveled further than I, the Âmes Project manager, had yet attempted—and /guided me here./ "I'm impressed," I said.
Lucid's glow flashed, then floated closer. The egg-shaped haystack of glowing interweaving threads loomed, blocking the Earth. I'd found other soul travelers I'd coached but, except for Mom who'd taught me, most naked souls felt repellant.
Not him.
"You're a woman." His focus abruptly rotated away.
I focused on myself. I looked like him. "Why do you think that?"
He obliquely stated, "You soul travel in the nude?"
I nearly replied /souls are naked/, but Mom had told me she'd seen things differently when she'd first seen Papi.
I visualized myself standing up. "I'm sweating in a sauna. No clothes, but how can you tell?"
He /looked./"Um. Sorry."
"Please, answer." I rotated to show my rear end.
"You have a star-shaped birthmark. Right cheek. Your hair's... black."
Could a soul gasp through a soul connection? Were we /connected?/ "Listen carefully. Write down 96-516 and everything you've seen, detailed. Tell someone. Mail it. Timestamp it. Before we fade, quickly tell me something I can't know, that nobody'd suspect about you—"
"Bryce Canyon telescope." He focused on me. "And I'd fuck—" his glow fluttered; he /thought/ he was only dreaming "—in an instant. I'd make you happy if you'd let me."
I gasped awake in my cooling sauna, slipping off the bench as my sudden flush faded.
@LuciDreamer
Talk about wish fulfillment: Visiting the moon and lust on first sight. TV light flickered on the ceiling as I tried not to drift off—
I blurted, "96-516," jumping from bed, not sure I needed a cold shower or my laptop more. It had been too many years since Alma died. I ignored my bodily urges and brought up email, typing details. I ran the text in a job on the campus mainframe, the next day explaining my language to the department head who already knew I was strange.
Shadowdancer stayed off Mastodon. Monday afternoon, May 16th, six days later: I checked my notifications as I shut the door to my office. If I'd written her "I'd make you happy" in a toot...!
But.
I hadn't!
I sullenly slapped the quizzes on my desk and started grading.
I looked up. The door had opened and caramel eyes sparkled in the sunlight. Caught, a honey-skinned woman asked, "Are you Dr. Ben Eisen?"
I set down the red pencil. "Come in," I said.
"Are you?" she asked. She wore a lacy white blouse and boot-cut black jeans. Long black hair wagged as she softly closed the door behind her.
I blinked. I knew her—from the dream was ridiculous! On campus, doubtless. /Deep breath!/ "Yes."
"Married?"
"Widowed."
"Sorry."
I recognized Toltec features; as flat-chested as in the dream, but with nice hips as she came around my desk. "Bryce Canyon telescope?" she asked.
The night I'd met Alma, camping. I gasped.
"You timestamped it, right?" she asked, presenting a notarized envelope, along with a DoD DARPA badge for Diane Shadowdancer.
I nodded. "Even told the department head."
Grinning, glancing at my desk calendar, she said, "Remember what you said? I'm 27 today. How about a birthday present?"
She kissed me. Electrifying, I didn't struggle until she shoved my hand under her belt. Soft. Rude.
"You promised," she reminded.
"I did. Didn't I?"
"We could travel the universe together if we're really soulmates. Don't you want to see if I have a star birthmark?"
@sfwrtr Interesting. Not sure if I've followed along correctly, but it seems someone was trying to undo an apocalyptic mistake... and ended up jumping into bodies a la Quantum Leap?
I do find the idea of interrupting conception causing a gender change rather fascinating. Of course, I'm now rooting for the author/Elsa lesbian ship, but that's just who I am.
@mathtans Thank you. I love to see my stories through my reader's eyes. Time travel stories are hard to keep coherent, more so if you're length-limited. I am glad it entertained you even so. I hope you read further into the original thread you replied to in order to see how hard it was to fix the original draft!
"Of course, I'm now rooting for the [MC]/Elsa lesbian ship"
Soooo many possibilities, here, as I told @ixtlidekami.
Elsa would become his wife in a different timeline, so him becoming her in this timeline should mess with his head, more so when it sinks in she [formerly he] is attracted to his [now her] best friend in a totally different aspect, not just doing something bizarre but fascinating because of needing to save the world. Moreover, Elsa is in on the game, which will further stir the pot, especially if she's not attracted to the MC, now a she. To further complicate things, he understands both 18 years olds better than they do, having known both for longer than they've been alive (23 years in Elsa's case in the original timeline).
Ugh. My brain aches.
I'm sure there will be some side stories or prequels.
@sfwrtr I think I saw bits and pieces. I need more free time. Though I agree it can be problematic keeping things straight, it's the main reason I'm 260k words into the serial sequel and can't release it yet because the start of it might change.
But what s/he doesn't know is Elsa maybe also jumped back from a different future, ha ha! So they should probably all just move in together. ^.^
The dron displayed the body of a hairy black rat without the redeeming qualities of a rat face and dentition, or the comfortably familiar body plan even humans shared with rodents. My opponent slashed with a newly-formed clawed arm as I dodged its kick.
That's when the bright flashes started.
Transparent sections of "sky" ran the length of the old McNeil colony, between the three greater sections of overgrown green belt and decaying cityscape. Much of the automation still functioned, as did the meteoroid defense. The blue light reflected and refracted all through the space vessel.
The dron bent its eye-like surfaces and thus its body toward the light. Essentially, it flinched.
I didn't.
My bat hit the clawed limb. It burst like a waterskin of blue ink, making a mess as it splashed a light pole. My roundhouse kick with the side knife of my rollerblade slit it open enough that it could no longer maintain turgidity. The ameboid creature splattered into—let's call it a "chunky stew"—across the pavement.
Dron are intelligent, despite having a high-kill lifecycle like rabbits. They passed their experience, fight skills, and determination to conquer to successive generations. Like cicadas, they came back in waves. We'd wiped out their "captain" cast over a century ago. The grunts, however...
I bashed choice bits in the "stew" and spread out the drying liquid to guarantee it couldn't reconstitute, then hobbled away from what smelled like a combination of pine solution and the scent of a bloody nose. If a sprain was all the damage I'd taken after an ambush, I counted myself lucky.
I sat on a corroded green metro bench and sounded my pipe whistle. Coded /squees/ echoed around the neighborhood. I sighed as everyone checked in safe. I was going to have to clean the rollerblades, but I looked as the flashes above intensified.
Actual strikes we rare; once in my lifetime. The dron had gotten in by crashing through a pane. The colony security had repelled them from the axial docks multiple times back then.
Suddenly, I saw beams of blinding electric blue converge from either end cap before a fountain spouted from Sector 16 of Clear 3. Broken glass sparkled in the sunlight as a dark rod trailed condensation a quarter of the way to the central null-g cylinder. A bang followed as it was only a few kilometers away. A whirling storm formed quickly.
My heart raced. I found I'd shot upright, and my right pastern complained with repeated pangs. I kept my eyes on the invader, stubbornly. Back then, the dron had used a planetary reentry vehicle that had passed through to crash on the opposite side habitable zone, striking the central pillar, causing the "Ding."
The "rod," in contrast, grew wings and over the next minute as I watched, righted itself, and glided along an unpowered path toward Rogeant Township, within my district.
/Not dron. Please, let it not be dron./ I couldn't allow the thought pollute my head that, after more than a dozen decades, the invaders could have defeated Earth. If even one dron captain made it in to genetically transfer what they'd learned fighting humanity, we might fail to fight the horde off.
I had hyperventilated. I felt dizzy. Not very professional, considering all I'd worked to get to my position in the last weeks. When I lost view of the glider, I lowered myself to the cold metal bench, controlling my breath.
In.
Out.
I rubbed the area above my hoof, getting further pangs. Nothing broken.
"Get it together!" I growled at myself. I had a team I was responsible for—and now had the first new work any of us had had to deal with in a century. We might even meet unmodified original humans. Second wave chimeras had populated this colony. I stomped my rollerblade down. /Bang! Bang!/ knocking off the gore, then rolling each wheel to see if it needed lubrication. I wiped the wetness from my fingers on the cement.
I heard the first worried squee. Another followed. Alexander Rent, then Portius, then others. We were all shocked.
I stood. I straightened my uniform, then tilted my black name plate so I could read it. I'd been an officer for a week now, replacing that screwup Lodge Crandon, and, hopefully not a moment too soon. I read, "Commissioner Molly Brown," as I wiped off a drop of blue with my thumb.
I felt rather proud standing there, and afraid, which oddly also felt good. I put out of my mind speculations of whether we'd meet a dron or Earthers. I brought the whistle to my lips and ordered a meet-up at Flags Plaza as I thrust out my skates despite the pain, pumping for speed, and raced away.
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