Plot Medics 

These are hoodoos. The rest of my comments are at the end of the story.

Red Rock West (1000 words)

Red tracked the fugitive up into the foothills. The runaway had brushed out his hefty footprints and got in amongst a crowd of hoodoos, so it was tricky picking him out. Red slid from his mule’s saddle holding a rope, dropped a noose over a rocky pillar and tied the other end round his wrist. Then he waited for the sun to go down.

“One barrel I took,” said the troll, when it woke up, “for my brother’s century party.”

“Uh huh. I s’pose your poor sick granmama was there too,” said Red.

“I’ve been in service to Birchbane for ten years, never seen him drink a drop. Didn’t think he’d miss it, the joyless old turd.”

“You broke the law. Picked a bad time for it too, with the new Baron wanting to make his mark. Come quietly, and you’ll most likely get a few years hard labour. Unless you can pay the absolution fine.”

“Haven’t got any money.” The troll fumbled at the loop around his neck. “What’s to stop me taking this off and leaving you out here with a broken leg?”

Red shrugged. “Try it. That’s elf-made. Long as I live, it’ll do what I want. I hear trolls can last a while without breathing.” He patted his mule. “Old Obstinate can drag you til you come round.”

They plodded over the star-lit scrubland. “We’re going west,” said the troll. “Birchbane’s place is east.”

“The Baron wants all prisoners taken to him for sentencing by Longest Day,”  said Red.

“Through the Badlands?”

“I’m getting paid forty gold to go through. Are you going to try and scare me with some old tall tales?”

They travelled on in silence until sunrise turned the troll to stone.

#

Red had heard the water in the Badlands was salty and stunk like rotten eggs. They stopped at a rickety trading post on the border that was open day and night. Red went in, the troll shuffling after him at the end of the rope.

The slick-haired clerk told Red, “All the fresh water your mule can carry for twenty silver.”

“Uh huh. And you’ll throw in the other mule I could buy for that?” said Red.

“Lot of demand here, sir. Pushes up the prices. You’ll be getting a big reward when you hand over that ugly rock you got there.”

Red gripped the rope, but the troll didn’t move. “I’ll take that water now.”

“New Baron’s coming down hard,” said the clerk, filling a canteen. “Heard they caught a rock that stole a cart and broke it into a bunch of pebbles.”

The troll still didn’t move, but Red could feel him shaking through the rope.

#

They passed through bare hills like striped jelly moulds, by dead pools reflecting the stars, over cracked plains covered in salt that glittered and crunched like frost. The troll didn’t say much, just looked around. Red was glad of his shade to sleep in when the sun hammered down.

“A couple more nights, I reckon,” said Red as they took a break to eat.  “You’ve given me no trouble. I’ll put in a good word for you with the Baron.”

The troll shrugged. “I think my sentence has been decided. I’m glad I took the best barrel, and my brother got to drink it.”

Red sucked from a canteen. “We’re getting low on water, that bastard sold me short. I think I see grass over there, reeds maybe. Could be fresh water.”

“I wouldn’t...” the troll said.

“What?”

“Never mind. The sun’s coming up soon.”

“Bring the mule,” said Red. Obstinate had other ideas. He dug in his hooves, rolled his eyes and made a racket.  The troll slung all the canteens over his shoulders and they went on foot.

There was a big pond, a few silky ripples spreading on it. Red bent to taste the water. It was sweet and cool after the warm, leathery-tasting stuff they’d been drinking. There were more lazy ripples and then something whipped out the pond like a riled snake, and wrapped itself around Red’s ankle. He jerked back, trying to prise it off, as suckers sunk into his skin. Another tentacle lashed around his leg. Red struggled for the knife on his belt, was yanked and dragged, cool water closing over his head. He thrashed around, trying to pull free, but there was nothing to brace against. His chest burned with the need for air.

There was a tug at his wrist, then a wrench. The elf rope. Red grabbed onto it with both hands. The beast still gripped his ankles and legs, but the pull on the rope was unstoppable. It dragged them both to the surface, Red glimpsing dinner plate eyes and a razor-eged beak. The beast let go and Red skimmed over the pond at the end of the rope, gouged a trough through the reeds and on through the sandy soil. Then the sun came up.
 
The troll was frozen in a flat out run, rope in hand. Red stood in his shade, shook dirt and stones out of uncomfortable places and thought.

That night, Red said, “All you had to do was stand still. That elf rope’s got no power when I’m dead. Two minutes, you’d have been stone and that beast couldn’t’ve touched you.”

“I thought about it,” said the troll.

Red sighed. “I got to bring you in. I can’t go back on my word.”

#

The Baron was short and looked like he had a temper to match. His guards hustled the troll away.

“I may have more work for you,” the Baron said to Red.  “Getting rid of the ... criminal element.”

“I serve the law,” said Red as he collected his gold.

The trial was short and pointless. Red said what he could, but the troll was sentenced to shattering.

“Unless,” said the Baron, laughing, “anyone sees fit to pay the troll’s absolution. It’s fifty gold.”

“Uh huh.” said Red. “That’d be me.”

[End]

A while back, I wailed to my boyfriend "It's my turn to write the Friday Flash. What should I write?" He set me the challenge of writing a story that included beer, World of Warcraft and a squid. I didn't use it right away, but it sat there fermenting in the back-brain and this is what came out. Of course, if it was true to WoW, Red would have killed the troll and stolen its trousers, but that would have made for a very short story, even for flash.

Foreign Student (955 Words)

I could feel someone standing there.

I wasn’t used to being disturbed.  I like this café because, for central London, it’s not that crowded. It’s also comfortingly cavelike, there are plenty of other women, and the sirens are muffled. 

“Do you mind?”

Something about the voice, or the emphasis, suggested she was foreign.  Probably why she’d chosen to sit at my table when there were still empty ones.  But I’d already made that non-committal hand gesture that says, sure, there’s no-one else in the seat,  sit there if you must, but don’t expect any kind of interaction, OK? 

I waited for the zone of interference caused by her presence to fade, but it got worse.  I could feel her looking at me, getting ready to speak.

Obviously the book wasn’t enough.  Damn.  Should have had the laptop out, it’s a much more effective barrier.  I bent my head lower, glared at the page, but of course I couldn’t concentrate.  When she finally spoke it was almost a relief. 

“I would like to ask you something.”

Oh, no, not a god-botherer.  Please.  Not today.  I looked up, bared-teeth smile ready to fend her off, but there was none of that shiny earnest look they get.  She had her head tilted a little, and nothing but polite interest on her face.  A neat, pale, not terribly noticeable sort of face, although her eyes were a little, I don’t know.  You don’t stare into a stranger’s eyes so I’m not sure what made them different.

“Mmm?”

“I am studying this place.”

Ah, a student.  Definitely foreign.  Well, OK then, if it didn’t take too long.  “All right,” I said. 

“When I sit down;” she paused, the head-tilt altered slightly, then she went on, “when I sat down, you were uncomfortable.  May I ask why?”

I was suddenly embarrassed.  Such an obvious question, but I never thought about it.  It’s the way you are, in a public place.  Isn’t it?  “Well, I don’t know you.  I thought…um…”

“Please.  I am studying behaviour.  I would be most grateful if you would explain to me.”

“You’re a sociology student?”

“I am,” pause, head-tilt, “an anthropologist.”

“Oh.”  I thought anthropologists just studied Amazonian tribes and stuff, but presumably there weren’t that many Amazonian tribes left, maybe nowadays they had to do normal people.  Then I thought how patronising and generally obnoxious that thought was.  Damn. 

I felt I should apologise for something but instead I said, “Um, OK.  Well, I suppose, I’m wary of getting into a conversation with someone I don’t know.”

I expected her to take out a notebook or some nifty little electronic gadget, but she didn’t.  “What is it you fear?”

“That they’ll be boring.  Sorry.”

“You fear boredom.”

“Yes.  I only get an hour for lunch, and I don’t want to have to listen to someone going on.”

“What else do you fear?”

“They might ask me for money.”

“You object to being…touched up?  No.  A soft touch?  Is that right?”

“Well, yes, it’s annoying.  I mean, some of them are genuine, but I hate being hassled when I’m having a quiet coffee.  And I’m worried that they might get nasty if I say no.”

“Nasty.”

“Yes, you know, yell.  Go for me with a knife.” 

“Are there other fears?”

“They might come on to me.  I mean, not usually, with women, but, you know.”

“A sexual approach?”

“Yeah.”

“Why is this worrying?”

“In case they don’t want to take no for an answer.  Make a scene.  Or turn out to be a psycho and follow me home or something.” 

This was becoming a little disturbing.  How paranoid was I, for goodness’ sake?

“Interesting.”  Head tilt.  “You have had these experiences?”

“Well, I’ve had people ask me for money.”

“Did you refuse?”

I could feel myself blushing.  “Yes.”

“And what happened?”

“Nothing.  They went away.”

Head tilt.  “Sexual approaches?”

“Well, maybe.  I wasn’t actually sure.”

“But in any case, you were disturbed by the possibility?”

“Um, sort of.  But nothing happened.  He just went back to his newspaper.”

 “Thank you,” she said.  “That is very helpful.”

“So what are you writing about?”  I said, wondering if I’d turn up as some sort of case-study, “Subject A,” pinned in words like a beetle under glass.

“Societies on the verge of…” head tilt, “disintegration. Certain behaviours, certain responses, are indicative.  Generalised paranoia.  Fear that even those who appear to conform to the societal norms are concealing violent intentions.”

“That’s a bit strong, isn’t it?”

“Strong?”

Weird how she could cope with these complicated terms but the simple ones threw her.  “Yes.  A bit extreme.  I mean, it’s just normal caution.”

“For a society in this stage, yes.”

“This stage?”  I said.

“Thank you, you have been most helpful.”  She got up, and I realised it wasn’t just her eyes.  There was something odd about the way she moved, too – not as though she was disabled, but as though she were just put together slightly differently. 

“What do you mean, this stage?”

“I must go now,” she said, and headed for the door.  The oddity of her movements was slightly more obvious from the back. 

I got up, grabbing my coat.  “Wait!  What stage?”

People were looking up from their newspapers, a swift glance, and back again.  Don’t get involved with the potentially crazy person.

She paused, hand on the door, tilted her head.  “Goodbye,” she said, and the door closed.

“Wait!”  I yelled.  “What stage?  Who are you?” And I ran out into the street, but I couldn’t see her anywhere, only a lot of people giving me a wide berth and carefully not looking at me as I stood there, yelling, with my coat trailing in the road. 

I used the August picture prompts (small versions shown below) for this one, after a minor bout of blank-brained panic.

20 Minute Megan (417 words)

The power for the gateway went out for twenty minutes. It should never have been able to happen, there were backup systems in place but budget cuts and privatisation of the London gateway network and transitional difficulties and changes of management and blah. Someone in TransTech was reluctantly seen off with a golden boot up the arse.

All Megan remembered was the star buckles on her red shoes twinkling as she ran for the gateway, late for school as always, running as always, always wanting to be faster. Her mum waving, then shouting as the indicator lights on the gateway slid to zero. A blink of black, then she was outside her school in Tokyo as usual, running as usual. She was famous for a while, the girl who was lost in the portal system, nowhere for twenty minutes. 

She still ran everywhere the gates could take her. But now sometimes she liked to stand still and look, to compose her view. She became an explorer and a talented imagist. 

When she was awake, all she remembered of the twenty minutes was that blink of black. But in her dreams, her feet still twinkled in stardust. 
                               #
Cambrax had settled long ago in a grassy spot with a big sky. The young ‘uns liked to trundle from place to place, but Cambrax reckoned standing still was the way to see things. He was so old that the stone was coming on him, but he didn’t mind. He breathed once a year, he drank a little rain and he sat firm in the ground. He was still enough that he could sense the magma sloshing about far below his feet, and hear the echoes between the stars. Everything he saw and heard was engraved on his quartz brain.

One day when he was stilled and his spark had gone back to the magma, they’d chip his brain out of his head and put it with the other Archives. And if you sang the right note, and looked the right way you’d see what he’d seen, the ordinary, the strange and the impossible. Like the comet that had blinked into the night sky, run a short arc, and blinked into blackness again. But you wouldn’t feel its love of speed like he had. It had blazed through Cambrax's veins. He still stayed on his grassy spot, but now sometimes he rumbled around on his axis. He liked to get some fresh scenery and a different angle on the sky. 

Stories about writers are often seen as a little self-indulgent - stories about genre writers by genre writers, perhaps even more so.  But having met more than one version of George, let's say I'm just...yeah.  I'm being self-indulgent.

Sue me.

Ghostwritten (999 words)

At the launch party, gossip moved to Clarice Meadows, the author considered single-handedly responsible for reviving the moribund horror genre. 

“She’s a hack,” George Fordyce said.

“I read one of her stories,” said the author whose party it was.  “Not my sort of thing, but it definitely had something.  She’s had some good reviews.” 

“From grubby little populists desperate to look ‘down with the kids’.” George gulped his wine.

“ ‘Down with the kids?’ George, if you can’t keep up with the current slang, please don’t try.”

“I was trying to make a point.”

“Look, I need to talk to some people.  I’ll see you later.”

George glared after her.  Of course, she’d been published, now, hadn’t she?  Soon she’d be like Meadows, churning out pap for the masses, while a writer like George, a serious literary writer, was left out in the cold.

He went home, stuffing a bottle of wine in his shoulder bag.

A parcel was jammed in his letterbox.  George wrestled it out, and tore up the rejection letter. Hacks and grubbers, the lot of them.  He didn’t pander, didn’t give readers nice little fictional lollipops, he took them by the scruff and forced them to stare into the blinding light of his unique vision.

At least he would, if he could get any readers. 

He opened the bottle, and thumbed the remote.

“And next on Booklist, we’ll be talking to publishing phenomenon Clarice Meadows…”

George stared disbelievingly at the TV. 

There she was.  A slight woman with a nervous half-smile.

Oh, the faux-timidity of that smile, the calculated softness of that voice, forcing the interviewer to lean in, as though he were really interested!  Perhaps he was, perhaps he had been taken in, but George wasn’t.  George knew.

He threatened her with the remote, sneering.  He could turn her off any time.  But he wanted to hear what sort of rubbish she talked.

“You’re not what people expect of a horror writer.  Why did you decide on this particular genre?”

She laughed.  “You mean I should wear black and have really long fingernails?”

“Something like that,” the interviewer said, laughing too, how chummy they were. Bile rose in George’s throat.

“I look terrible in black and gardening wrecks my nails.” Oh, this was good, she was trying to look serious.  “Horror was my first love.  I think it’s a way of finding patterns in the terrible things that happen to us.  But really, I feel as though the stories chose me.”  She shrugged.  “ ‘The tale, not he who tells it.’  Some stories have an energy of their own.  They want to be told.”

George spat.  Stories, indeed.  It was about style, about impact.  Stories were for kids.

“I’m not generally a horror fan, but I read Shadowfold, and I could not put it down.  When’s the next in the series coming out?”

“Not for a while!  I haven’t finished it yet.”

“But now,” the interviewer twinkled, “we’ve a special treat – an extract from the unpublished manuscript!”

She started reading, stuff about living eyes in a dead tree, and footsteps without feet. 

“Bollocks!”  George shrieked, leaping to his feet and aiming the remote at her.  He accidentally hit the volume control, her words boomed out like the Voice of God, and his neighbour thumped the wall.  He turned it up full, just to show them, then turned it off.  Eyes in trees, and stories that wanted to be told, indeed. 

Two days later, George was at another launch party for a Robert somebody.  He’d never read the book but the editor was supposed to be there.  He had already rejected George’s novel, but George wanted to talk to him face to face, convince him he could improve on the rubbish he was currently publishing. George’s temper hadn’t been improved by staring at an advert for one of the wretched Meadows woman’s books all the way on the tube. 

The editor wasn’t there.  Instead, there was a flurry at the door and no, it couldn’t be.

“Clarice!”  Robert whoever said, “I can’t believe you made it.” 

“Robert, I’m so pleased for you, you really deserve this.”

They hugged.  George felt like vomiting. 

He glared at Clarice Meadows’ back.  She ought to be able to feel his contempt, burning a hole in her spine, but no, she was chatting away, oblivious.

Later, after the idiots had smarmed over her, he watched her leave.

He followed. 

He only meant to tell her what he thought, but somehow, in the alley, thinking of the poster, the recognition, the money, that should be his…his temper got the better of him. 

And he got away with it. 

He didn’t think he had at first; there were footsteps behind him, and he’d waited, fear clogging his throat, for the shout, the hand on his shoulder, but when he turned, there was no-one there.

He waited for a guilt that never came.  He watched the reports of her weeping fans with chilly derision.  He’d rid the world of a creeping poison; and the experience would surely deepen and inform his own writing. 

But now he was having problems with his work.  Things were sneaking in, things that didn’t belong there.

Stupid, melodramatic things.

He found himself, in the middle of a scene where two people sat in a car park discussing the failure of their relationship, writing about footsteps. Footsteps with no feet. 

He was tired, that’s all.  Stressed.  It wasn’t surprising, with rejections still piling up.  She was dead, surely people should be turning back to real literature? 

He went back to the scene.  There were trees around the car park. 

Some of them were dead.

They had eyes in them.  Living eyes in dead, rotting wood. 

George yelped and hit delete.

And started again.

***

Eventually his neighbour found him, rigid and whimpering at his computer, staring at his hands as they typed words he loathed, words that he could never even sell. 

But words that insisted on being written.

Um. No comment.

The Screaming Abdabs (996 words)

I don’t want to get up in the night. That’s when the screaming abdabs crawl around on the carpet. If you see one, you end up in here. But the drugs They give me mess up my body, make me sleepy in the day and wide-awake at night when the abdabs and the woofs and the lurkers are in the carpets and the curtains and the walls.

Most of the time They tell us there aren’t any. But every now and again, one of Them will take one of us aside to tell what will really happen if the abdabs get you. You have to be at least two inches above the carpet so they can’t. I lowered a piece of string over the edge of the bed to check, and their snatching claws couldn’t reach higher than that.

But tonight the back door is going to be open. The nurse with the pink lipstick and the fake-nice smile is on duty, and she leaves it unlocked every Friday so her boyfriend can sneak in with pizza. They think we’re stupider than wet paper bags, but Skippity Lou has ears like a bat, and when we can, we pass messages.

I’ve worked on this for weeks. I’ve taken the wooden trains from the playroom every day and made happy choo-choo noises and looked blank-eye doped until They accepted that the trains are mine. I’m short and skinny and I’ve only got little feet. I can balance, one foot on each train and skate over the carpet in my room to the safe lino of the hall. 

Nurse Fake-nice comes into my room a little before sunset. 

“Did you read your nice story?” she asks.

It’s not a story, it’s a guided meditation. There is one in the Book for every day of the year, after the list of Rules. We have to read one every night, and tomorrow they will shine lights and put wires on my head and ask what did you dream what did you see. But I just nod.

She picks up the trains from the windowsill. “You’re not a baby any more. I’ll tidy these away.”

I feel like screaming. Instead I smile. “But I like them.”

“We must learn not to be selfish,” she says. She turns the light off from the switch outside the door. The evening sun shines on the stupid bunnies in trousers smirking  at me from the plastic-covered picture on the other side of the room. I think and I think and it gets dark.

I saw Big Eric throw a chair at a window last week and it bounced off. Everything in here is bolted and strapped down. I let my eyes get wide and I can see the rounded black shapes of the furniture. I can climb on it, but there is only a bed, a cabinet, and a chair. Not enough to get me to the door. Maybe if I stood on the bed, I could swing and jump from the light. But if I fell short, I’d land on the carpet.

There’s nothing else in here, except the Book. But the Book is very thick. I could tie it to my feet with a strip from my nightie. I can’t rip the material even with my teeth, and there are no sharp corners  on the furniture to tear it on.

I crawl to the end of the bed, stand and jump. The bolted-down chair can’t teeter over or slide. It only makes a little whumpf as I land on it. I have to stretch on tiptoe and lean right over to tip the stupid smirking bunny picture off the wall. It thumps to the floor, and I wait, with my heart banging. After a few moments I take off my nightie, hook a bit on the nail head and pull and pull. Finally it rips, the sound zip-tearing the quiet. I put the nightie back on, jump to the bed, and tie the Book to my feet with the torn strip.

I am careful with my first jump, but still it makes noise. I must hurry. My second jump is awkward, and I have to windmill my arms to stay upright. The third takes me nearly to the door, and the light flicks on.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Fake-nice stands in the dorrway.

“I needed to pee.” We’re not allowed up at night, but if you wet the bed They bend over you to slap and pinch and punish, hiding it from the cameras. She’ll believe that I’d want to go.

“Get off the Book and back into bed.  And calm down or you’ll make yourself sick.”

“I can’t get off it. The abdabs will get me.”

“You’re too old for all that nonsense.”

“I really need to pee!”

“If you won’t calm down, we’ll have to help you,” she says. But she doesn’t move to strap me in or jab me with a needle or slap me. She’s still on the very edge of the safe slippy lino. She hasn’t put one toe into my room, where I can see a forest of tiny grasping claws waving above the carpet.

She’s afraid. But she told me to get off the Book. And if one of us dies in here, there’s always an awful fuss, and people get the sack. And I suddenly see, she’s afraid of me. I slowly untie the Book from my feet, and step down onto the carpet. It’s like dropping a stone in a pond, ripples spread out as the ab-dabs make room and turn face out around me. The lurkers slide along the walls,  the woofs boom from the curtains. When I move, they move with me.

Fake-nice’s face is all big round ‘O’s. She turns and runs. I suppose she’s going somewhere with no walls, or carpets or curtains. I have plenty of time to get the others. We skippity outside, hand in hand.