This is a very old, unfinished story, disinterred, gutted, and refleshed. Red (1244 words) I was eighteen and as wild as the ocean when I met Maximilian. My sisters and I used to go barefoot into town, our hair blowing behind us like banners, sea salt on our lips. We were creatures of a different element to the people who herded their children past, burdened with rubber rings and windbreaks and lotions to block out the sun.
Max’s eyes were the blue of a summer sea and he strode the promenade with the assurance of a prince. His beauty put a hook in my soul; I felt it tugging at me as I dashed past with my sisters, pulling my gaze back to him.
I told my grandmother all about him the next night as she wove white flowers in my red hair and forced me into the high-heeled shoes that pinched my feet. “Handsome is as handsome does,” she said. “Now go along with your sisters, Stella, and sing your best.”
Our voices rose in the faded theatre, ebbed and flowed, rang out like ships’ bells. Max sat in the front row, a faraway look on his face. He waited for me outside the theatre.
“From now on, you’ll only sing for me,” he said. “And I’ll turn your voice into gold.”
My sisters laughed at him. They sung for whom they pleased. But I agreed, and he was right.
By our wedding day, he was rich, his music label famous. Max pricked his finger pinning on his buttonhole flower. As he placed the gold band on my finger, a drop of his blood smeared there, looking black in the stained glass light.
When I tried to sing at the reception, nothing but a croak came out.
“Never mind,” said Max, smiling at me. “It doesn’t matter now.” I looked into his calm eyes and knew he’d be my anchor. He hasn’t changed a bit since then.
The package of dye came in the post this morning. I don’t know where from. Perhaps one of my sisters sent it.
Yesterday I was sitting here, brushing out my hair, wondering when it got so grey. I wore the clothes that Max chose for me; grey wool skirt, grey cashmere jumper, pearls around my neck. I looked around our room with its magnolia walls, and beige carpet, and black and white photos and decided I was going to dye my hair red again. It took me half an hour to open the front door. I paced the shining parquet of the hall, and paused with my hand hovering over the doorknob, fear drumming in my chest. Finally, I went out.
I’m a long way from my sisters now, living in a maze of concrete and brick. Noone goes barefoot here. Noone strolls. I tiptoed along the streets like a woman walking on knives. The air tasted of rubber and tarmac and dirt, and I coughed and coughed until I was hoarse. I went into the chemist’s and read the warnings on the boxes of dyes, about rashes and open cuts and damage to your eyes. I wanted to ask the woman behind the counter about them, but she looked me up and down, and when I opened my mouth I couldn’t make anything come out. I tiptoed back home again as fast as I could go. So this morning, I smiled when I found the package.
I’ve made sure the house is spotless, except for the bathroom; I’ll do that after the dye. Max doesn’t work hard all day to come home to a messy place. I gather up the package, and some old towels and a comb and go into our white bathroom. I’ve never taken my wedding ring off, but perhaps I should for this? Max told me it was unique, specially made. I twist it hard, but it’s stuck. It doesn’t move with soap, so on it will stay.
There are instructions in the dye package, written in a copperplate hand. They tell me that once I put it on, the dye will take some time to work. For the first time in a long time, I get my battered old radio out of its hiding place at the back of the wardrobe, a little music to keep me company. My condition, as Max calls it, hasn’t changed since the wedding reception. When I try to sing, I can only croak like a frog. Sales of my records soared when he announced that there could never be any more. Max bought me a platinum ankle chain to celebrate. He told me the sales would only peak higher if I died.
Inside the package are several bottles. One of them smells of salt and breezes, seaweed oil I think. Another is sealed up with wax and I have to get a sharp knife from the kitchen to open it, and a bowl to mix in. I feel like a witch as stir the dye potion. I massage it into to my hair, and comb it through. The radio plays one of my favourite songs, and I croak along until my voice becomes a whisper. I’ve been been so careful, but there are red splashes all over the bathroom. It’s going to take a while to clean, but Max comes home late these days. He’s making a move from business to politics. His friends tell me he’s got a silver tongue, and he’s rising fast. He can talk anybody round.
I get into the shower to rinse out the colour. It is as though I am standing in a frothing bath of blood. I rinse it all down the drain and comb out my hair. I open the window to let out the steam, go into the bedroom and put on some old clothes. I bend under the sink to get out the bleach and the scrubbing brush, and when I stand up there is a young woman in the bathroom with me, hair redder than a danger signal. Just my reflection in the mirror over the sink, but her expression is furious.
“What are you doing?” she says.
I think about it as I scrub the walls and I turn the radio up louder.
I don’t hear Max come in until he is behind me in the room. There are still old towels piled about, the dirty bowl, the bottles, the knife. But he doesn’t even notice the mess. He’s staring at my hair.
“You’ll have to change that back,” he says. “It’s not the right look for the newest MP’s wife.”
“I don’t think I can,” I say.
“Never mind,” he says. “We’ll get it cut. Something sensible.” Max strokes my head gently, then there is a tug and a swish. He has picked up the knife and sliced off great lengths of my hair.
“No!” I shout. I shove at Max, surprising him enough to grab the knife. I make a cut on my finger above my wedding ring, blood flows and now the ring slips loose. I throw it to the floor, scramble away from Max’s grasp.
Max looks up at me, his eyes pleading. They are still the blue of a summer sea, but now I see the surface glitter and the cold depths. He opens his mouth, and nothing but a thin croak comes out.
Outside, the dirty air is filled with blackbird song. My voice rises to meet it, ringing like a ship’s bell as I go to find my sisters.
An unfortunate reaction to antibiotics meant I spent about a week lying down, sometimes watching the ceiling spin round. It seems to have scrambled my brain too, because I had two flash stories die on me halfway through before I wrote this one. And this one doesn't meet our definition of flash. I hope you won't mind getting a bigger slice of fiction this Friday. Enjoy!
The Balance Sheet (1713 words) It’s all about the balance sheet, as Prentice told me in our last, strange conversation. I killed a man and I got caught. I had my reasons, but Explora Ltd protects its most valuable property, and Morgan was Project Manager. There’s no resources to bang up guilty men and feed them when they’re not earning their keep. They forced me into a armoured scuttler with a month’s worth of nutrition and sent me out into the Howling Wastes to look for Annabelle Tinker’s mobile base.
You want to set up in a place like this long term, you need someone who knows how to work with rocks and dirt and plants. That’s why I’m here. I’m a mason and a smith and a farmer. Everyone here’s got to be a multipurpose tool. The first thing they had me do was put in a well with an Archimedes screw for a water supply and start growing crops. Seemed pretty low tech, but I wasn’t complaining. I trust low tech.
Tinker’s an engineer and a biologist. She was out in the Wastes with boxes that beep and flash, looking for money. She might not see it that way, but you can bet Explora does. Prentice told me Explora had once made a fortune from some alien cocoon polymer, so it’s worth the expense of keeping a biologist on the staff. While she was out tracking some big, gliding creatures the worst storm recorded blew through, Tinker stopped calling in, and they couldn’t make her base come back by remote command. The company lost a lot of expensive kit. Tinker is Kate Prentice’s sister.
On a nice day out in the Wastes you get blue sky over grey dust, and it’s fuck-I’m-dying-of-heatstroke in the shade. On a bad day the roaring winds are freighted with grit that’ll strip you to the bone. If I go back without finding the gear, I’ll be shot. And if I die looking, the scuttler’s biosense will pick it up and stomp back on its pistoning legs to HQ, so no loss to them. They could send the scuttler out on its own to look, but there’s always the chance that a pair of human eyes will make all the difference.
It’s kind of restful out here. The first few days, I can’t see anything out the cockpit but roaring sand. Now it’s day twenty, the storm’s settled and it’s wide open blue and grey. I’ve thought over my killing Morgan, and I still don’t regret it. I know he killed Prentice. Our last conversation, she and I were playing chess in what passes for the bar, Prentice playing worse than usual.
She kept looking at me, taking in breath to speak, and sighing it out again.
“What’s up Prentice? Books looking bad? No bonus for us this turn? What about those big beasties your sister was following?”
Prentice stared at me, frowning fiercely. “Bonuses? Fat chance. It’s always about the balance sheet with this company. D’you know how much it costs to send a ship out here? S’a lot. More than all of us’re worth.”
“Uh huh. You’re pretty drunk. Want to skip the chess and get properly shit-faced?”
She shakes her head. I don’t think it’s no to the drink. “Remember the Nightside stock crash? Th’company took a big hit. There’s accounts for everything, if you look hard enough.” She lowered her voice and leaned forward. “I found something.”
“What is it?”
“The first time...” She jumped as Morgan appeared at our table, bad enough to spill her drink.
“Need a word,” he said. “Just got a message from your sister.”
That was the last time anyone saw her alive. Morgan proclaimed her dead of a heart attack. He’s also the doctor.
I knew enough to program the scuttler for a spiral sweep, starting at Tinker’s last known location. I’m now on the far arm of the arc, furthest from HQ and I am sick of rattling about in this metal pod. I open the door, and step down. The heat presses against my skin. The air is still, and it’s so quiet it makes my ears ring. I start walking, kicking up puffs of dust. I can see all around to the curve of the horizon. It’s stupid to talk about this place like it’s malevolent. It just is what it is, and it is completely fucking obvious that it’s a place in which people are not supposed to be. So why did I get out here? I look around again, and see the faintest set of caterpillar track marks in the dust. The storm didn’t get this far. I get back in the scuttler and point it in the direction of the trail.
At first I think it’s just a speck on the cockpit glass. High up, a kite shape, sailing in the breeze. As I follow the tracks, and the grey dust shades into red, there are more of the creatures, wheeling in a flock And in the distance, on the ground, something glints. It’s Tinker’s mobile base rumbling into the distance.
Puffs of dust spurt up in front of the scuttler. Some kind of volcanic activity? A tiny dust devil forerunner to a storm? No, Tinker’s base is firing on me. I don’t know if her comms are bust, but I buzz her anyway.
”What the fuck? Tinker, if you can hear me, it’s Crewkerne. I’m here to help you.”
No response. Tinker’s base squats on its tracks, motionless. For the second time today, I get out of the scuttler. I stand with my arms outstretched and turn around slowly, so if she’s looking she can see it’s just me, no weapon, no tricks.
A ramp lowers from the base and I let out my breath. A lean sunburned woman stands at the top, holding a gun on me in shaking hands.
“Pleased to see me?” I shout across the distance.
“Come closer. I’m not getting out,” she says.
I walk up to the bottom of the ramp.
“Crewkerne?” she says, squinting at me. “You’re, uh, you were Kate’s friend.” She lowers the gun a bit. “She said you cheat like a bastard at chess.”
I shrug. “How can you cheat at chess?”
She looks down. A drop of water splashes from her eyes to the metal of the ramp.
“So, what’s wrong with your base?” I ask. “Comms out? Nav busted? I’m not so great with that, but the scuttler’s repair systems can fix it.”
She shakes her head. “Comms are fine. And I took out the remote command. But you – you can’t fix this. ”
“Alright.” I wait in silence.
“I have to show you something. Come up.” I follow her up the ramp and into the cockpit. I see now that the tracks go on, she’s turned the base around to come back and meet me. It trundles on, and ahead of us is a thin, bright ribbon of water edged with flourishing trees. It marks the edge of the Wastes. In the distance, the land gets motivated enough to throw up a few green-furred mountains. And by the river is the scorched skeleton of a touchdown shanty town. The company usually sets one up for an initial exploration. Scorched, bent struts from semi-permanent tents and the twisted frames of flat-pack shacks poke out of a drift of red dirt. Bleached white branches lie scattered by the wind. When we are closer, I see they aren’t branches.
“I told Kate I found this,” said Tinker. “She called back. She said she’d looked into it and found some things out and I shouldn’t be here.” Tinker shivered. “I was on my way back and then someone told me...”
She lets me pat her shoulder, takes a deep breath. Then she lowers the ramp, and we get out.
There’s not much and too much to see. Blackened metal, melted plastic, scorched bones. Now and again, the odd remnant that survived, a cracked mug with “Sharon” painted on, a half-melted plastic horse on wheels. Tinker huddles close behind me as we look around.
“How did a fire get this out of control?” she asks.
“This site can’t have worked out. If they’d found anything worth having, we’d be digging here now.” I think back to the conversation with Prentice. “Remember the Nightside crash? Kate told me the company took a hit. It must have been cheaper to let people starve here than hire a ship to pick them up or drop more food. Especially if it’s not on a scheduled haulage run. When Explora could afford to come out here again, they started somewhere else. Then they burned this place and buried it in the dirt.”
“I was out here in that big storm. It must have uncovered it again.” says Alice. She bites her lip. “We’ve got to tell somebody.”
I think about the Archimedes screw, about the agriculture program, the stone buildings. Not a touchdown town. Things to keep the base independent of the yearly scheduled ship visits. Things a Project Manager would be responsible for. “Morgan knew. I don’t know about anybody else.”
Alice’s lets out a scream of rage. “I’m going to rip that bastard’s throat out.”
“Already done. I killed Morgan. But I used a knife. They sent me out here to look for you as punishment.”
She looks right into my eyes. Hers are a bright silvery grey. Then she says, “So we can go back?”
I shrug. When Alice and I go back to her base, my scuttler has gone. HQ have called it back.
“No going back then,” says Alice. If she hadn’t disabled her remote command, her base would be gone too. Somebody else knows, and if we go back they’re going to kill us.
We pick up tools and collect metal and anything else that looks useful from the ruined site. There are plants and animals on the green foothills. We haven’t got much food left, but I can grow things and build things and Alice is a biologist, with a base full of analytical kit. The haulage ship isn’t owned by the company and will be here in six months. Maybe that’s enough to add up and tip the balance our way this time.
Oops. After a little blip with the flash fiction, we're back. I wrote a long version of this that wasn't working at all, so instead I've distilled it down to 100 words. This is inspired in part by a New Scientist article.
Nocebo (100 words)
She sashayed by, perfectly groomed and eight moves ahead. “You see why I’m choosing her?” he asked. “It’s for the best.”
“Yes,” I said. I always said yes to him.
“You do that Voodoo,” he says. I don’t. A little Tarot reading, that’s all. But he won’t listen. We all told him what she was.
“Lift the curse”, he says now. As if I have any power.
“If you still love me...” he says. He has lost his home, money, identity. It’s not my doing. But he believes it, and that is voodoo. All I have to say is no.
Lucy's Toy (1077 words) The day after my wedding my wife told me that she decided to marry me even though Captain Clucky told her not to. Of course, I thought she was joking. As long as I’d known her, Lucy had been carrying that silly-looking toy around with its mad junkie eyes and that beak with the tongue sticking out. In fact, it was how we met.
I’d glimpsed her a few times at the SciPhantastiCon, sitting in a talk on designing steampunk mechanics, and playing the bongos in a filk session, always with the toy beside her. So when I found myself next to her at the bar, I said “Nice dinosaur, er duck chicken thing. What does it drink?”
She tucked her shiny brown hair behind her ear. “Absinthe daiquiri if he gets the chance,” she said, smiling. “But it’s a bad idea to give him anything with alcohol, caffeine or sugar. Captain Clucky, I’d like you to meet....”
“Will.”
She pushed out one of its wings/arms for me to shake.
“And how about you?” I asked.
”Oh, I’m fairly safe with caffeine,” she said with a naughty glint in her eye.
So I bought her a cup of tea and we talked for hours while I tried not to notice her fantastic tits.
The first time I met her parents was the first time I saw Lucy without it.
“Where’s the Captain?” I said as she climbed into the car.
“God, no. I’m not taking him anywhere near...” She smoothed her demure, grey skirt and tried to tuck some stray hair back in her plait.
“Hey, I’m the one who’s supposed to be nervous.”
At her parents’ house, Lucy sat bolt upright with her knees together and answered like a robot as her father asked her questions about promotions and her mother handed around tea and biscuits. I assumed it was just some moody girl thing with her dad that she hadn’t got over. He was nice enough to me, asked about my work at the local council and gave it his approval as a sensible choice. I didn’t mention my band, or the urban exploring.
Captain Clucky had his own tuxedo for the wedding, and sat in the front row. Lucy got one of her nieces to pretend she owned him. Lucy glanced at him before she said “I will”. He - no for frak’s sake – it, was sitting on a chair next to Lucy’s sister, Caroline, with some other mad-looking tuxed up toy with long rabbit ears and a sharp-toothed grin. I grinned back.
Lucy got her promotion. She got up at six, dressed in grey, and came home at eight looking as grey as her suit. Some nights she’d grab the Captain, make herself a huge gin and tonic and sit in a knot in front of the fire, clutching him. Other nights she’d look at him, and say “Damn good idea”. She’d pick him up, and her drumsticks, I’d get my guitar and we’d all go down into the basement and make a loud kind of music.
“Are you ok, Luce?” I asked on one of the gin nights.
“This job,” she said, slurring. “It’s like I have to shut off one half of my personality. Just like the old days.”
“The old days?”
“Caroline knows.”
After a year, the gin nights happened almost all the time. I found myself watching Kelly in accounts, the sway of her tight little arse and the swing of her long blonde hair, and wondering. One evening I came back from my nine to five to find Lucy already home, dancing around the basement, swigging beer.
“Are you ok, Luce?”
“Oh, yeah. Much better.” She was red in the face, her hair wild. She looked great.
“Did you take the day off?”
“Kind of. The Captain was right, that job was killing me. I quit.”
“What the hell Luce? You should have talked to me first.”
“Look, don’t worry. I’ve got enough savings to pay the mortgage for a few months. I just need a bit of a break. Alright?”
I grabbed her, and she grabbed me back. It was a good night. It was a great month, until Luce told me that she was starting a mechanic’s course at the local college. Captain Clucky had told her to go for it.
“For God’s sake Luce, you’re a grown woman. You don’t need to hide behind a toy to make decisions. If you want to do this course, great. It’s nice to see you happy again.”
“You don’t understand.”
“You’ve got some problem with your Dad, you’re old enough to sort it out. You don’t need some stupid prop.”
“I’ll be able to get work at the end of the course, fixing things. It won’t be as much money, but I know I’m going to like it. Until then I’ve got a job, at the supermarket,” she said. “It’ll cover most of my half of the bills. It’ll work out.” And she looked at that bloody toy again, for reassurance.
It was like a switch flipped. My head spun, I grabbed Captain Clucky, and I flung him into the fire.
“Just fucking grow up!” I shouted.
Lucy howled, a sound of raw agony. She reached towards the flames. I held her, struggling, in one arm while I tried to fish the toy out with the poker with the other. It was no good, whatever the Captain was made of burned too fast. Lucy got up and brushed herself down.
“Sorry,” she said. “That was really silly.” She went upstairs, into the spare room and I followed.
“What are you doing?” I asked as she booted up the computer.
”Job hunting.”
Lucy found one. She got up at six, dressed in grey, and came home at eight. When she got in she cooked the dinner, and cleaned the house, and went to bed and got up and did it all over again. That’s all she did. Finally, I realised she wasn’t punishing me. There was nothing else left.
I phoned Caroline. “Can you come over? I think your sister needs to see you.”
“Of course. Is Lucy ok?”
“I burnt... look, that rabbit toy thing at the wedding. Is that yours?”
“You may address him as Cedric the Wise.” There was an echo of Lucy’s old teasing tone that made my eyes sting.
“Bring him too. Please. And I hope you and Lucy used to share your toys.”
Just so there's no misunderstanding, I love "Pride and Prejudice".
The Unadventures of Mary Sue Flowershine (1096 words)
“There she is,” said a fake-tanned blonde, standing in a little group of friends. “The new girl.”
Mary Sue kept her head down, letting her soft shiny brown hair swing forward to hide her pensive face with its snowy skin and unfathomable green eyes. She had been dreading her first day in the new sixth form. So far she’d made it to lunch.
“What has she got on?” asked another girl. “I mean, who wears ankle-length skirts?”
“Someone more interesting than you,” said a male voice, thoughtfully.
Mary Sue didn’t dare turn her head to see who was speaking. She’d find out soon enough. She strode purposefully on her long legs out of the college gates and down into the town.
It was a typical new town; its heart was tied into a tedious little circle inside a ring road, fenced around with red-brick insurance offices hemming in a shopping mall. Where were were the woods and fields that she spent hours wandering, composing poetry, her soul soothed by the scent of grass and whisper of leaves? No gentle deer here to come to her hand. She lingered in front of a florist and gazed through the window at the deep red roses, severed from their roots.
“Are you lost?” said a familiar male voice.
“Yes. And no,” said Mary Sue. A tall, slim boy with silver blond hair and glacier blue eyes stood looking down at her. He wore a leather jacket and black jeans.
“You are interesting,” he said. “But you look sad,” he said.
Mary Sue blinked back tears. Why did her father have to die? Why did her mother have to move to this miserable town? And why did her life have to be like this?
“I... ”
A screech of brakes, a girl’s shriek and a thump drowned out her voice. Mary Sue sped towards the noise. The fake-tanned blonde was lying on the pavement, bleeding from her thigh. Her friends huddled around, screaming and crying.
“One of you phone an ambulance,” said Mary Sue, tearing a strip from the bottom of her skirt to bind the blonde’s leg.
The girls gawped at her.
“You heard her,” said the boy. He gazed at Mary Sue over the prone blonde. “I’m Xavier," he said. "I’d like to see you again. Under less extreme circumstances.”
”That would be nice.”
“Th – thank you,” stammered the blonde. “You helped me. None of my so-called friends did.”
”That’s what I do. Apparently,” sighed Mary Sue.
#
After Xavier’s tragic death on their wedding night, Mary Sue moved to the big city. On her very first day, she came out of a coffee shop and bumped into a man running down the street. They were both knocked to the ground and covered in a fountain of hot cappuccino. The man sprang up with supernatural speed, and helped her to her feet. He was tall, with long black hair pulled into a ponytail, and bright green eyes over angular cheekbones.
He looked her up and down. “There’s something about you,” he said. “Can you run?”
Mary Sue shrugged. She’d always been fast on her feet, although she never trained.
“Then help me. I’m chasing someone. Well, something. You go that way. We’ll trap it in the alley.”
Mary Sue ran, dodging pedestrians and cars and blurring past windows, with bemused shoppers gawking out. She cut round the city block to the other end of the narrow passage.
Something huge, green and slimy slashed a claw at her. Mary Sue leapt aside, and threw the remainder of her hot coffee, still clutched in her hand, in the creature’s eyes. It howled and writhed.
The tall man appeared from the other end of the alley and drew a sword from beneath his black leather trenchcoat. With one swift blow, he struck off the creature’s head.
“I could use an assistant with your... talents,” he said, green eyes sparkling. He held out his hand. “Arial Bold. Private Investigator. Amongst other things.”
Mary Sue shook hands.
”Well, how about it?” he said. “Do you want the job? It’ll be exciting.” His eyes smouldered with unspoken promises.
“Let’s see,” said Mary Sue.
#
She and Arial parted, heartbroken. A chance discovery revealed her daemon heritage, and with his elven blood, a moment of ecstasy between them would have killed them both. She moved back to the quiet little village where her mother still lived, and where she’d wandered the woods as a girl. She applied as an assistant in the bakery. The baker said she’d never seen such light fingers with pastry. Mary Sue sighed, but took the job.
The first morning she was working there, the door opened with a merry jingle, and a tall, handsome man with sad brown eyes came in, holding the hands of two little blonde girls.
“How can I help you today?” asked Mary Sue, waving at the girls. “Are you looking for something sweet?”
“Do you have anything that will tempt me?” said the man, raising an eyebrow. “A wholemeal loaf. And two chocolate cookies for my girls.”
Mary Sue danced the cookies over the counter and the girls giggled.
When he’d gone, the other assistant Becky rushed up. “Do you know who that was? That’s Darcy Huntingdon-Black, from the manor. It’s so sad, his wife died two years ago. He’s very rich, but terribly haughty. He almost smiled at you.”
“Oh great hairy arses on fire,” said Mary Sue. She took off her apron and threw it on the floor. “I’m not going through all that again.”
“But where are you going?” said Becky.
“Back to the city. I’m going to get a job as a sales executive and be bad at it and be bored out of my mind. I’m going to screw up an account and be reprimanded and be terrified that I’m going to get fired, because then I’ll have to go and look for another shitty job that I don’t want. I’m going to get unattractively drunk and in that state I’m going to finally get laid, probably by a bloke from marketing who farts and forgets my birthday and cheats on me. Maybe if I get lucky I’ll find out what I actually like doing, meet some women who have their own lives, and be best friends with the IT guy who’s totally right for me if only I’d notice.”
She left, slamming the door behind her.
“Wow,” said Becky. “She’s right. Why let our lives be defined by men?” She sighed. “I wish I was more like Mary Sue.”
I'm a little over word count again this week, but I'm letting the stories run to their natural length at the moment instead of cutting them to the bone. Ball and Chain (1058 words)
The humans always brought the new inmates in in daylight. No matter if a monster could bulk, shift, fade or speed their powers were diminished under the blazing eye of the sun. Tapito squinted at the latest batch from inside his cage. He recognised a curtain-lurker, a closet-hider and a big chupacabra. The last human dragged a huge shaggy beast, red-eyed and sharp-clawed at the end of a thick chain. It was something Tapito hadn’t seen before. It had to be one of the wild, outside things. A rare one.
The beast thrust his face against the bars of Tapito’s cage, drool spilling around fangs in his out-thrust jaw. “Hello lunch,” he growled. “If the human wasn’t here, I’d eat you.”
Tapito bounced up on all four feet, pulling himself up to his full twelve inches. He thrust out his chest and lifted the spines down his back. “Come and try it big boy!” he yipped back. “I’ll rip off your balls. Heuvos rancheros for breakfast.”
The human yanked on the chain, and the big monster shuffled on. “Hur hur hur. We’ll see, little mouthful.”
“I’ll be waiting. My teeth are like knives. I will bring you pain!” Tapito shouted until the other monster was out of sight. It was slow and shambling now, but they were all like that when the humans brought them in, dosed with potions to make them weak. Tapito had been dragged out from under a little human’s bed, snapping and trying to speed. Blackness had hit him and he had woken up behind bars.
Tapito ran around his cage, sniffing at the locks, sharpening his teeth on the bars, scrabbling at the floor. It was a routine. Any weakness that showed, he would use it. Another human approached the row of cages with the feed. The new inmates and the stubborn ones howled and roared and threw themselves against the bars. The humans jabbed with shiny sticks and the roars and howls became screams. Tapito remembered the shiny stick. He’d taken two of a human’s fingers the first time he’d been fed. The pain had been worth it.
He bared his teeth as a matter of principle when it was his turn. The human unlocked a small door, and poked in a bowl with the end of the stick, then locked the door again. If it was dark, Tapito could have sped through the gap. But the daylight sapped his energy. He had the scars to show what would happen if he tried. Instead, he sniffed at the offering. Pocket lint. What he would give for a juicy dust bunny. As he chewed he thought, as always, of escape.
After the feed, they were let out, watery-eyed under the sun’s fire, to exercise. The bogeys and the lurkers clung to to the shade of the guard-towers and the high, concrete walls. The wind blew in the smell of the desert outside.
As Tapito trotted aroud the dusty yard, the new chupacabra hissed at him, threat vibrating all down his scaly body. Tapito bared his teeth in a manic grin and hunched down for a pounce. Another chupa, an old lag butted the new one aside. “No trouble, Tapito,” she said, keeping her eyes low. “He just got here.”
“Looked to me like he was asking for trouble, Surita,” said Tapito.
“He’ll learn. Leave him his cojones.”
“Ok. For you.”
Surita hurried the new chupacabra away.
“Hey ‘Pito,” Elmer the bogeyman shuffled up. “Seen the new boy? Big ‘un.”
“Yeah, I met him. He threatened to eat me for lunch.”
They looked over to where the shaggy beast had cornered a key-stealing gremlin. The little creature cowered, long ears drooping. Shaggy looked around to make sure the humans weren’t watching, plucked up the gremlin and swallowed him whole.
”Hey!” yelled Tapito, streaking across the yard. He barrelled into Shaggy’s stomach as fast as he could, head first. “Spit him out!”
Shaggy bent over, retching. The key gremlin rolled out of his mouth, covered in ooze. It scurried away to hide behind a Black Dog. The humans were paying attention now. They barked at each other, and one of them ran in with a shiny stick.
”Big mistake, little mouthful,” said Shaggy. “I’m the Swallowing Shadow. You think this prison will hold me after nightfall? I can go wherever I please. I’m coming for you. And I’ll be hungry.” He howled as the human prodded him and dragged him away on a chain.
“The Swallowing Shadow. Huh, never heard of it,” said Elmer.
“Big mouth, no balls,” said Tapito, but he was worried. Maybe he’d never seen one of those monsters before because they didn’t stay caught. Maybe what it said was true.
Tapito circled in his cage as the sun went down and the stars blazed in the black sky. His sharp toenails clicked on the metal floor as he paced. He would not fall asleep. Now it was dark his big ears could hear every sound, his big eyes tracked every movement.
“Hello supper,” growled a voice in his ear. Tapito leaped so high he banged his head on the top of his cage. Shaggy pushed his head through the bars as if they weren’t there, and opened his mouth like a giant scoop. He shovelled his jaw relentlessly towards Tapito. Tapito scrabbled backwards, feeling the cold steel of his cage pressing against his spine. He couldn’t slide through solid things, like Shaggy. There was nowhere left to go. He gathered his strength, and sped straight down Shaggy’s throat. It was black and sticky. Thick muscle squeezed around him, cracking a rib as he was forced down into the huge monster’s stomach.
Tapito held his breath until a fizzy black tide rose before his eyes. Then he started slashing with the teeth he sharpened every day on steel bars. Shaggy bellowed and howled, but Tapito kept it up until he could smell the clean night breeze. Good. He’d held on long enough for Shaggy to slide out through the prison walls.
Tapito crawled out of the tattered hole in Shaggy’s belly. The big monster moaned weakly.
”I must keep my promises,” said Tapito. “But since you set me free, I will only take one of your balls.” The Swallowing Shadow’s shriek was still echoing off the hills as Tapito sped into freedom.
This one comes from a dream fragment.
Three Blue Things (658 words)
It started with a little girl’s balloon. It caught Alice’s eye as she hurried through the park. The bright sunshine gleamed on the pearly blue rubber, stretched thin against the thunder purple sky. Alice smiled. It was amazing that everyone’s kids demanded total immersion games, but they still liked balloons. Outlined in summer storm-light it was significant, iconic. As she tried to work out what it meant, it burst with a loud bang. She jumped. For a second afterwards her shoulders relaxed, she breathed from the bottom of her lungs, the sunlight warmed her back. Then the little girl started crying, a cold wind whipped the clouds over the sun. Alice shivered, and strode on to the transit station. She had a holiday to earn. #
Alice and her friend Chloe jogged along the assigned pedway, next to the river. Summer storms were months gone. It was dark at four and the embankment was strung with coloured Christmas lights and glittered with threedee stars. The ads from the sponsors hung in the air, gaudier than the real lights and festooned with virtual tinsel.
Sophie and Chloe weaved around worried-looking people lugging bagfuls of gifts.
“I don’t know how you do it,” puffed Chloe. “I’ve only got one job and I’m clinging on to my sanity by my fingernails. I hope your holiday is worth it.”
“The jobs are boring, but they’re not hard,” said Alice. “I spend most of the time day-dreaming about the trip. Mentally packing my bags.” She swigged from her water bottle. “It’s weird though. I’ll be thinking about hiking boots and a tent and suddenly find that my brain is throwing in my grandmother’s photos, my dad’s tools and that odd little toy my great aunts knitted for me.”
“Stripy Jim? I thought you loved that toy.”
“I do.”
They collapsed gratefully on the bench that marked the end of their run.
“You’ve never been that far away before, have you?” asked Chloe. “Maybe you’re a bit nervous.”
Alice laughed. “Yes, it’s like I think someone’s going to steal my favourite stuff while I’m gone. I’m not even sure why I want to go. I just know I have to.”
“Hey, everybody needs a bit of adventure. The only holiday I’m going to get is three days over Christmas. And you know what that’ll be like.”
Alice, relaxed and weary, sipped her water and watched the festoons of lights. They hung against the winter sky like a coded message, written in red, yellow, green, white, blue. Behind them the rising trail of a ship slashed across the sky. A pop burst on the cold air as a light winked out. Alice and Chloe jumped. With a firecracker series of pops, every blue light in the string exploded.
“What the hell?” said Chloe.
“Must be something wrong with the blue ones,” said Alice. “Power rating too low or something. Let’s go back. I’ve got wine in the house. Fancy a drink?” #
Alice settled into her seat on the ship. Her main luggage had been stowed. At the last moment, she’d thrown one photo album and her dad’s knife into her suitcase. She’d also tucked Stripy Jim into her handbag with her ID and entpod. She’d booked a window seat. Six months of three jobs, she made damned sure she was in the right place to get a good view. The noise at takeoff battered at her eadrums, the acceleration shoved her back into her chair. The businessman in the next seat flicked through the inflight ezine on his screen in a bored way, and then took out his comp and started working on a spreadsheet. Alice turned to look out the window. It was all worth it. As the deep blue of the sky zoned into star-studded black, the ship turned towards the gate and Alice got a perfect view of the Earth. A bright blue ball in the dark, pumped up and filled to bursting.
This story will be read at the Liars' League event on Tuesday May 12th.
This one came from quite a few places: the Liars' League April event, a random phrase from the We Feel Fine program, and some doodling about with word associations. Put 'em all together and I'm back in the Weird West, or home on the strange. Lonestar on the Bridge (973 words) “You got nothing to say about this, Lonestar?” asks Finnegan.
I shrug. What’s the point? There’s nothing you can say when you’ve been as thoroughly set up as I have. Serves me right, I s’pose. I breezed into River Bend two years ago looking for a hook to hang my heart on. I gave it away to the first man who smiled at me, Ed Hutchins. Big mistake. Now here I am, shuffling my feet in the dust in the main square, with all the townsfolk sweating in the sun and waiting for my sentence.
“Damned Shifty!” shouts the schoolmarm at the back. “Run her out of our town.”
“Send her out the hard way,” says Lennie. I heard his grandfather is from the Red Rock Clan, but he can’t shift. Not many of our people can.
A chant starts up. “Bridge! Bridge! Bridge!”
“Last chance,” Finnegan says. I’ve watched his hawkish face over a poker table many a time. He’s good at being unreadable, but I know he wants to hear me say I didn’t do it. A man’s dead. I didn’t kill him, but I stole the key to his strongbox and I gave it to Ed and it all went wrong from there. I shake my head.
“All right then,” Finnegan announces to the crowd. “No confession and no defence. She walks the bridge.” He sighs. “Lennie, leave the pitchfork.”
“There could be griffins up there,” says Lennie. Fat lot of good a pitchfork would do him. He’s going to jab me with it if he gets a chance.
They force a potion down my throat, to stop me shifting for at least a day. Then Finnegan marches me up the steep steps in the bluff behind the town. It’s a long, hot climb and only the most determined gawkers and Lennie and the other bridge guards are still with us by the time we get to the top. It’s cooler up here, tendrils of mist drift about.
The bridge doesn’t look so bad. It’s rope, of course, but the boards are in good repair, and there’s no wind to swing it. The other side is lost in the haze.
Finnegan squeezes my shoulder. “If you get across, you can come back the long way round,” he says.
“Don’t try turning back,” says Lennie. “We’ll be waiting.”
Sure enough, he pokes me in the ribs with the pitchfork, and I step onto the bridge. It sways a little. I hang on to the ropes and concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.
Nobody knows what’s on the bridge. Hardly anyone comes back, and if they do they won’t say a thing about it. I heard some idiot talking about a troll. I met a few in my wanderings, most of ‘em just want to be left alone. There’s a great yawning drop below the bridge, not a sheltered damp place for a troll to squat.
It’s kind of peaceful up here; my whole body takes a deep breath and stretches. I’ve been in River Bend too long.
The fog is thicker now. When I glance back, I can’t see the start but I can hear Lennie and his crew laughing.
Finnegan’s done the best he can for me. The people look to him to keep the peace and the evidence pointed to me. They all knew I was part Clan; I can’t change my black hair, and I didn’t change the name my mother gave me. But I didn’t declare myself a Shifty and I got found out. They’re afraid of us. I’m lucky not to be choking at the end of a rope.
A distant screech makes me look up, but I can’t see anything in the fog. I walk on.
I bet there’s others in town; it’s a big place. The straight folks still believe a lot of plain wrong things about us. They think we can shift into any shape we like. They’re getting us mixed up with old Clan stories about lurking beasts that turn into a tent or or a patch of fog or a pond and wait for food to walk right in.
The bridge quivers like a live thing under my feet. The ropes thrum in a way that has nothing to do with me. I pick up my pace, half-jogging.
Us Shifties just get one form, and it’s handed out by tricky luck. Everyone wants a bear, or a wolf or an eagle. Me, the terror of River Bend, I can do a mouse.
The bridge really starts to move now, swinging from side to side. I wrap my arms in the ropes and hang on tight. It gets faster, and I’m afraid it will twist right over. If I could shift I might survive the fall, but the potion won’t wear off for a while. A raucous screech echoes behind me and the movement stops.
When I’ve stopped shaking, I unwrap myself from the ropes and move on. I can see blackness in the fog, the bulk of rock at the other side, and I run as fast as I can, hands skimming the ropes, planks shaking under my feet. Overhead, I hear the whumpf sound of great wings beating. And as I see firm ground in sight, there is also a golden bulk of fur and feathers, a sharp beak curved like a scythe, bright orange saucer eyes.
I am very, very still. The griffin opens its beak.
“That was Lennie shaking the bridge,” it says in Finnegan’s voice. “I ran him off.”
“Uh. Th - thanks.”
“If I thought you did it, I’d’ve let you drop.”
He shifts back to his rangy human form, and holds out a hand to help me off the bridge. He smiles, sudden and sunny. It’s a much better smile than Ed’s.
This story was written by picking from the "Creative Block" by Lou Harry. I got the word "naked", advice about limiting choices, and "a man walks into a bar".
Also, I'm still stuck on bad puns this week. I'd say I'm sorry but I think we all know that's not true.
Trouble, a Bruin (989 words)
I wander into the bar still trailing fen grass around my bare ankles. The men in there, and it is mostly men, look confused by a woman starting out the evening naked. A fire is roaring and lamps are lit.
I lean against the counter. “A whisky, if you please. If you can make it hot, so much the better.”
The barman looks me up and down. “You got money? I don’t see no pockets.”
Trouble looms in though the door, upright on his hind legs. Outside the fog is thick as cream and beads of water gleam in his shaggy black fur. He’s been paying off our ride. Men eye him slant-ways. They might’ve seen a Bruin before. They’ll definitely have heard stories.
Trouble unslings our money bag. “A beer. A good one,” he growls, making the barman jump.
The man hustles with our drinks. “Come from the other side of the Fens?”
“Shortcut,” Trouble snorts. He glares down his muzzle at me. I shrug. I’d always wanted to see whether the stories about the Fens were true. Turns out, they are.
“Lucky this time, Serena,” says Trouble.
“Oh, stop griping. The Gillymen spotted our distress flare and here we are. Everything’s fine.”
“Undress flare.” He huffs, which is his way of laughing.
Trouble can usually sniff his way out of anything. But when the fog came down five days into the Fens, we stumbled about, falling into sucking, sludgy pools and having to ditch most of our kit to get out. The fog does something funny to your head; even Trouble lost his sense of direction out there. Our trail back was gone, the other side too far to scent. No use sitting tight and waiting for sunshine, either. A Grand Slinker can hang around for weeks. We had some oil, and a flint and steel, but the only combustibles left were my clothes. A Gillyman on a raft, poling towards us at speed, had been a most welcome sight.
A bosomy waitress shoves a smelly blanket at me. “Put that round you, or you’ll piss Suzy off.” She nods to a small stage where a woman is flashing her frilly knickers under a short skirt.
“Thanks.”
“Blankets ain’t free,” she says. “Twenty big ones.”
That’s all we’ve got left. “For that I’ll take a shirt, a coat, trousers and boots, thank you.”
She pouts, but leaves me wrapped in the blanket and goes off. The barman settles his face into a blank expression. That is when I know we’re in trouble. The waitress is talking to five bulky men in the corner. Twenty big ones is a chunk of cash around these parts, and I must be touching hypothermic to own up to having it. People will pay a lot of money for a slave Bruin, no matter what the law says. And I’d be another tragic accident in the Fens.
Trouble flicks his ears at me. He’s quick to my mood changes; he says he can smell them. I can see him running through his options. “Lot of people here,” he says to the bartender, but for my benefit. “With guns.”
I nod to show I understand. We run or kick off and we’re likely to get perforated.
“The Gillies come out of the Fens in the fog,” says the bartender. “Take some smoked fish now and again. Guns scare ‘em off.”
Trouble orders another beer and I poke him in the ribs.
“Don’t get settled in. We’ve got to get back out there and find the rest of our haul - er – stuff.”
He grunts, looking puzzled.
“You lose something?” says the bosomy waitress. She hands me a bundle of clothes. The leather coat is suprisingly good apart from the bullet holes.
“We dropped some of our things out there in the Fens. Valuables. Trouble should be able to sniff them out. Maybe some of you folks could help us look? We’ll pay you, of course.”
“Sure,” she says with a broad smile. “We just love to help out.”
I go into a back room and dress. I take the blanket too, and we all head out into the fog.
Trouble leads the way, loping along on all fours, pretending to sniff at the ground. When he glances up at me I give him a signal and we drop, roll in opposite directions, and take off running.
“Get them!” a man shouts and there is a lot of splashing and swearing.The fog is now more cheese than cream, but some idiot still lets off a gun, and everyone yells at him.
When my lungs are burning, and I’ve climbed out of a few pools, I wrap myself in the blanket, lie down and wait. A Gillyman paddles by silently with webbed hands, eyes as wide as the moon. I listen to the townsfolk sloshing and stumbling. There’s no way they can catch Trouble.
Even out here, soaked and wrapped up, my scent will carry. Trouble looms out of the mist on quiet, padding feet. When he’s hugged me warm, he starts sniffing his way back along our trail to the town. We run into another Gillyman on a raft and he agrees to take us further down to a friendlier settlement.
“See,” I say to Trouble. “Your options aren’t limited to fight or flight. There’s negotiation and deception too.”
He makes a rude sound.
“Oh come on, grumpy boots. I’ve got some clothes now, and a blanket.”
“Huh.”
”But you understand how that worked, right? They think we’re stupid. I give them a reason not to kill us in the bar, lure them into the Fens with lies of ill-gotten gains. Even if they don’t buy that, we’re oblingingly walking to where they can kill me out of sight, and drug or chain you, but first they’re going to make sure there isn’t any loot....”
“I remember for next time.” He huffs. “Perhaps tomorrow.”
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