Bargain Shopping
September 8, 2009 at 1:37 pm (short stories) (bargain, costume, ian, online, sale, shopping, springfield, superhero)
Ian Rollands is working on his masters in sociology at community college, works part-time for Eugene Bud at the barber shop, and spends his free time doing homework and swimming. He is also a superhero. As Ambush, he has the ability to duplicate himself. This story takes place early on in his supercareer.
–
He’d never been able to say no to a sale.
He could blame his mother for that, really. She’d brought him up with a love of bargain shopping, yard sales, and thrift stores. It had been necessary for them, really: living with little meant learning to spend little. But even though they hadn’t always had everything they needed, they had always had a sense of class that was miraculously supported by extremely savvy purchases. Bargain shopping was a great ally. Still, he also knew full well that bargain shopping often meant stupid shopping.
With a heavy sigh, Ian Rollands leaned back in his desk chair and clicked through the catalog again.
See, that was the problem with buying things cheap: you started buying things because they were cheap. Walk into a thrift store with no clear purpose or intention, and you came out with stained glass fish and broken wind chimes. Ian’s mother had taught him how to avoid the trap that so many people fell into when confronted with inexpensive items. Know your goal, achieve the goal, and leave as soon as possible.
The motto worked pretty well for superwork, too. Ian had muttered the words to himself more than once when stopping a bank robbery.
Which led him to his current predicament, really. Because he was a superhero now, and a dang good one, if he did say so himself. And any decent superhero needed a costume. One that could be bought with the barely-existent remains of his paycheck from the barber shop, after things like food and utilities and rent had been accounted for.
That only left him a few options. Cheap options. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, extending the motion to run his fingers through his shaggy blonde hair before staring at the computer screen again, as if hoping that the gaudy purple logo would have changed in the last minute. It hadn’t. It was still there in the corner, rotating and sparkling and looking completely tacky.
“Superquick!Costuming,” he muttered to himself, still slightly incredulous. He could even hear the exclamation point when he pronounced it. It was bargain shopping at its worst. You could get everything on this site. They offered basic outfits, capes, gloves, utility belts, visors, even a design-and-print logo service. An entire superhero look, available for Ian’s mix-and-match pleasure.
It seemed…wrong, somehow. He’d heard stories about how the great superheroes like Galileo got their suits. Those outfits had been works of love, made by hand, designed specifically for the person wearing them. They became the superhero, and the outside world couldn’t recognize one without the other. Buying pieces of a suit from a bulk company seemed…
Well. Cheap. And depressingly practical. Which was the whole point, really.
Ian wandered aimlessly through the Superquick!Costuming catalog again. The “2 for 1!” heading on the cape section drew his eye for a split second before he hurried on to another page. No capes. He’d been very firm with himself on the subject, because any hero he had ever made fun of had a cape. He had standards. Besides, they would be a pain and a half to replicate accurately. No, he needed something…simpler. More basic.
He went straight past the accessory section, which advertised utility belts, mustaches, and golden halos. Somewhere in the back of his cranium where the remains of his pride lived, he could feel a headache forming.
With a sense of impending resignation, he clicked over to the bodysuit section. The colors of the modeled suits on the first page hurt his eyes. Who wore that color of purple? Especially in spandex? It boggled the mind. He refused to look like Old Glory in his twenties. Apparently, paisleys were in this season. Ian spared a moment to consider the ramifications of killing off a “fashion designer” for the sake of the poor, oppressed, aesthetically-concerned superhero. He could use the catalog as evidential support in court.
It was worth thinking about. But it didn’t solve his current problem. Ian clicked to the next page of basic bodysuits, and the next, feeling more and more frustrated with every pass. Was it always this hard? Had Galileo and Stone and the other great superhero icons of the age had this much trouble finding something in a color they liked? Finally, with a sense of desperation, Ian scrolled down and hit the very last page number in the section.
Two items appeared. One was a bright pink suit with fake abs painted onto it in red. There was a cracked heart design over the chest. Ian stared at it for a moment with the morbid fascination usually reserved for car wrecks and couples fighting in public before his eyes finally slid over to the very last bodysuit item available in the Superquick!Costuming catalog.
Oh. That was…not half bad, actually.
It was black. And that was all, really. Just a black bodysuit. He did a quick scroll through the specifics. Hardened polymer, not spandex. Gloves included. No frills, no logos, no painted abs. Easy to replicate, hard to see in a dark alley, and completely without pretension.
And on sale. It could be his, for only 13.99, plus shipping!
Almost without realizing it, Ian began to smile. Well, it was no stunning fashion statement or anything, but it would do. With a renewed sense of purpose, he returned to the accessory section. Feeling led by a kind of inspiration, he once again clicked to the very last page, and once again found exactly what he was looking for.
He’d need something to cover the eyes. His duplicates’ milky blue gazes had to be covered up for any kind of ruse to be effective. The simple black visor would do just the trick.
With a sense of accomplishment, Ian rushed to place his orders, plugged in his credit information, and bought the two items. The sense of adrenaline stayed with him, as if he’d just beaten someone in a race.
He had a supersuit. It was simplistic, yes, and completely without any distinguishing marks or significant style. But it was efficient, and understated. And…well. Cheap.
It was him.
Sitting there in his tiny little Springfield apartment, listening to the furnace turning on and the traffic outside, feeling cramped and tired and overworked, Ian Rollands became a genuine superhero. He was no superstar, but he’d do the best with what he had, and he’d be good at it. Somehow, he didn’t think that anyone—not even Galileo– could do more than that.
In that moment, Ian Rollands truly became Ambush.
It was time to save the world.
Right after he called his mom and told her about the great deal he’d just gotten. He’d never been able to say no to a sale.
Dreaming, Eyes Open
September 7, 2009 at 11:39 am (short stories) (dream, galaxy, girl, nightmare, stars, storm)
Some kind of storm was building out on the horizon. She wasn’t sure why there should be a storm at all, really, or even where the horizon ended and the nearness began. But she did know that the huge, massed, yellow-bellied clouds were slowly, oh so slowly, coming towards her. She felt an odd reluctance at the thought, and she deliberately lifted her eyes away from the dull flashes of lightning deep within the belly of the stormy beast.
The view above her was much more pleasant, in any case. She leaned back to settle on the grass and took a deep breath of the warm, sweet air. The sky above her was all dark purple-black, and shiny with stars and galaxies, soft with the velvet of half-formed wishes. It was like looking into a pool of water that never ended, that just consisted of ripples all the way down, deeper and deeper into…something. Or maybe nothing. She thought, for a moment, that maybe it was supposed to be both. Almost despite herself, her eyes twitched to watch the coming thunderheads, just for a second.
It wasn’t fair. She didn’t want to leave this place. Whatever it was. Better than where she’d been before, anyway, of that she was sure.
Where she’d been before was…she didn’t want to think about that, either. Besides, not thinking about it was easier. She couldn’t remember much of it anyway, except for a big blast of light, and a sound almost like a voice. Maybe hers? She wasn’t sure; she’d never heard it. She didn’t really want to know anyway.
Her eyes drifted towards the storm again. It was getting closer; she could feel the first wisps of water in the wind that tugged playfully at the ends of her hair.
A nightmare.
The word wandered through her head and stuck on the big, black-yellow bruise of a cloud moving in from the horizon. Yes, that seemed right. Nightmares, coming to block out the pretty swirl of galaxies and nebulae in the sky that seemed just a breadth away from her outstretched fingertips.
Well. That would make this a dream, then. The idea didn’t disturb her as it probably should have. It did seem a bit like a dream. A good one, at least. Her head lolled back and she watched the stars again. She noted absently that they moved a little; the swirls and whorls of far-off stars and planets glided silently in concentric circles, meshing and moving and somehow never meeting.
Never meeting. Lonely. Secluded and held in warm, comforting blackness, with only the light of other bodies for context and company.
Like her. She understood them, and she wondered if that was part of the dream too, or just part of her.
Maybe this wasn’t her dream at all. Maybe it belonged to someone else entirely. That thought gave her pause for the first time. Maybe the nightmare coming towards her on the wind was there for someone else. Even as she considered this, she knew that it couldn’t be true. It was coming for her, alright. She could feel it, behind her eyes and in the small place in her mind that wondered if she was sleeping or awake.
There was an ominous rumbling in the distance. The sound was more felt than heard. Thunder in her bones, and surely that would wake her up, wouldn’t it? But nothing changed, except that the wind grew colder.
Maybe she really was awake, then. It didn’t matter, in the end. Or maybe it did. Maybe dreams were all there was to begin with anyway.
Maybe she was always asleep. Maybe everyone was.
That must be it, she decided. This could be her dream, and still be someone else’s, everyone else’s, too. It was both.
The storm was nearly on her, now. Somehow, getting up and moving, running, trying to outpace the great outpouring of the dooming clouds never occurred to her. This wasn’t that kind of dream. She looked up at the sky again, but now half of it was covered with the dark gray storm. The thunder grew louder, and the rain began to pelt her face.
She was forced to squint a bit in order to see the stars, now. They were being blotted out, one by one. She wondered if the clusters and galaxies of lights still moved in their vast, tireless circles far above her, or if they ceased to be as soon as they were blocked from her sight.
For a moment, she wished she knew the answer. Then she would know if this was her dream, or someone else’s.
As the lightning started to crackle overhead, she had one last look at the huge, firefly-twinkling sky of revolving stars, and she had a strange, still feeling that she was looking at herself. Perhaps that was it. Maybe each of those lights, those stars floating up above her just out of reach behind the clouds, were all just girls sitting on hills. Maybe there was someone just like her, staring up and watching as one light in the thousand million grayed out, swallowed by an unseen cloud of nightmares.
In a way, that gave her comfort. At least it meant that someone was watching. Someone, at least, knew her. Even if this was just a dream. She hoped it was going better for the other lights in the sky.
And then the nightmare broke over her in lashing wind and pounding rain, and lightning scorched the sky and hurt her eyes. In the midst of the deluge and the roaring sound, she saw a bright light and heard a horrible sound, and she wondered if this wasn’t the real nightmare after all.
She closed her eyes and curled up in the wet grass, and hugged her knees to her chest and began to rock.
She remembered, now.
“Please,” she whispered, lost in the unhearing clouds and the faraway sky and the strength of the storm. “Please, don’t wake up.”
But it was too late. Because this wasn’t her dream after all, and even as her eyes began to droop, she fought the inevitable long enough to watch the clouds above her dissolve, fade away, blow into the something and the nothing of the starry sky.
And then her eyes closed, and the dream ended.
Somewhere on another hilltop, a boy looking up at the great wheeling of the cosmos saw a tiny little star go out, and wondered why the sight of it made him shiver.
Detention with Mr. Meeps
June 23, 2009 at 5:56 pm (short stories) (bullies, colors, detention, oliver, soul, springfield, substitute)
From the writing prompt, “Louder isn’t always better.” I loved being able to focus on Oliver. And though he doesn’t appear much in this (in human form, anyway), it was also fun to introduce Lex.
The sound of something large and heavy being tipped over made Oliver Meeps pause for a moment outside the classroom door. He waited there for a moment, listening intently to the clamor of voices inside. A male voice was raised in anger and then abruptly cut off; something resembling a girlish scream rang out, and then Oliver heard the familiar sound of someone being tossed into a large wastebasket. This was followed directly by a loud flatulent noise that sounded very much like an angry octopus trying to extricate itself from a mound of paper and pencil shavings.
If Mr. Meeps had learned anything from fifteen years of hero work and another five of substitute teaching, it was that timing was everything. Straightening from leaning on his cane, he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders as best he could, and entered Springfield High’s after-school detention room.
Unsurprisingly, he was immediately greeted by the guilty-looking expressions of six football players. They were all gathered around the industrial-sized trashcan over in the corner, doing a good job of blocking his view of it. The desk directly next to the trashcan was knocked over, and if there hadnt’ been two notebooks scattered like debris around the desk, a worse observer than Oliver would never have known there was a seventh student in the room.
But Oliver was a good observer, and he also had the advantage of being able to physically see the moral character of every individual in the room. He took a moment to indulge in what he privately called the “soul searching” of the room’s occupants. The small balls of color he saw coming from each of the boys all had distinct shades of very guilty purple around the edges. He knew their types well. They weren’t necessarily bad at heart; they were just unruly, disrespectful, and rarely disciplined. A few of them even had the potential to do something quite impactful with their lives, if they picked better friends to associate with.
Still, they’d been caught red-handed, as it were, and for a split second Oliver knew he had their attention. He cleared his throat softly and looked at them over the tops of his glasses with gentle, if not innocent, brown eyes. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”
They were clearly thrown by his mild manner. Another good thing he’d learned from his many experiences was to keep your voice down. Even after all these years, he could practically hear his mother’s voice murmuring, “Louder isn’t always better, dear. Sometimes the best response is the one they can barely hear.”
Oliver took a few careful steps forward, trying not to rely on his cane even though his hip was twinging painfully from an oncoming storm front. He smiled at them, quite calmly, and reached up to dust an imaginary speck of lint from his hat. “I believe,” he continued in that same even tone, “that you’ve put Mr. Laurence in the trashcan again. And unless I’m very much mistaken, that’s quite against the established detention-time rules. If you’d just remove him, then I won’t have to write you all up another detention.”
One of the boys (Oliver thought he was probably the quarterback) regained his composure and stepped forward. “Oh yeah? How you gonna make us? You’re just a substitute!”
For a moment Oliver very much felt their differences in stature; Meeps himself had always been something of a small man, even before he relied so much on his cane, and the boy before him was a good foot taller, not to mention at least a hundred pounds heavier.
If this had been a question of physical violence, Oliver would have beat a hasty retreat at this point. Fortunately, it wasn’t, and he knew full well that the poor boy had no idea who—or what—he was dealing with. He could tell just by looking at the way the boy’s colors shifted to a kind of gaudy yellow that he was bluffing, and not particularly well. He’d gotten away with this one too many times.
He’d clearly never had to deal with old Mr. M. Oliver smiled up at him without an ounce of trepidation. “Ah, I see. Just a substitute, of course. I can’t really do anything, can I?”
“That’s right,” the boy agreed with a smug look back at his friends. There was a soft popping noise from inside the wastebasket, followed by what sounded like a rat trying to claw its way up a smooth plastic wall.
Oliver nodded agreeably. “So you say. I’m sorry, what was your name?”
“Mayes,” he said proudly, in the same tone that other people used when they’d just won awards. “Billy Mayes.”
“Ah.” Meeps took some satisfaction in knowing he’d been right. “Our school’s famed quarterback, I think I’m correct in saying?”
“That’s right,” he said with a grin. Oliver could literally see his yellow-green arrogance swelling to ridiculous proportions in his chest. Several of the boys still at the trashcan made affirmative noises, and one even stepped forward to slap Billy on the back.
Oliver continued to smile, but now his eyes narrowed a bit. Someone that knew him well would have been wary of the glint that was forming at the back of his gaze. Billy Mayes had picked the wrong day to try and bulldoze the substitute teacher. Especially this substitute teacher. “Alright then, Mr. Mayes. If you can tell me why you have the right to stuff poor Lex into the trashcan, then I suppose I won’t have to give you a detention.”
Billy stared at him blankly for a moment. He was used to substitutes and teachers alike bowing before his superior athletic record. This wasn’t the out he’d been expecting. Still, he made an effort, his face screwing up in concentration until he finally answered, “…Because the guy’s a twerp?”
The noises inside the trashcan promptly ceased. Oliver only saw the tiny ant that appeared on the rim because he was looking for it. He watched the insect for a moment as it made its way to the classroom floor, and then returned his attention to Billy. He took a moment to really consider the boy’s colors; Mayes wasn’t innately evil, but the generally scarlet tones overlaying his character spoke of natural tendencies towards cruelty and domination.
“A twerp. I see.” Oliver paused a moment to consider which tact was best, but in the end, there was really only one option. The boy’s own soul gave Oliver all the information he needed to make his point. With a long sigh, he leaned forward slightly and spoke in a low voice. “You know, Billy, when I look at you, I see a lot of things. An accomplished athlete, a natural leader. You have quite a lot of promise.”
Mayes grinned widely, but Oliver wasn’t finished yet. He looked at the sickly yellow-green color radiating from the boy’s edges and identified it easily for what it was. “I also see someone that feels like he has to impress his friends, because he’s not all sure himself that he’s the kind of man he wants to be.” A petulant flair of bruised-purple color somewhere near the middle of Billy’s chest allowed Oliver to continue, “And I think that at the end of the day, Mr. Mayes, you know full well that you’re not fulfilling your potential. And you’re angry; at yourself, or maybe your parents, or just the world for not giving you the breaks it should have. But shoving fellow students into trashcans is not the way to solve these problems, Billy.”
The boy stared at him in shock, his arrogance silenced totally by the perceptive little man before him. It was likely nothing he hadn’t heard before, but something in the quiet delivery this time seemed to have hit home. He shook his head a few times, as if trying to dislodge Oliver’s words from his brain.
Meeps looked him squarely in the eye, and though he actively chose not to fully utilize his ability to show the boy his own colors, his words had more or less the same effect as he finished, “One day, Billy, you’re going to have to face yourself in the mirror and decide what your real colors are. Why not start now and make them ones worth looking at?”
Billy stood there a moment longer, clearly thinking hard in the silent room. No one noticed when Oliver glanced down and smiled at the ant now sitting on his left shoe. When he looked back up, he was just in time to catch the moment of decision on Billy’s face as the boy reluctantly turned to the others and said, “Alright, guys. Enough is enough. Let him out.”
The right tackle went to do so, but as he glanced into the trashcan he made a startled noise and jumped back. “Hey, he’s not in here! Where’d the punk go?”
Oliver felt a dangerous shifting by his foot and groaned. “Perhaps, under the circumstances, insults wouldn’t be–”
There was a tremendous popping noise down by the floor, but instead of turning into a raging hippopotamus or an angry bird like Oliver expected, the ant merely transformed into the despondent form of Lex Laurence.
The boy looked up through his fringe of badly-gelled hair and scrambled to his feet, nearly tripping over his far-too-baggy pants. Oliver took a moment to assess the boy’s colors, but they were no different than the other times he’d seen them: angrily embarrassed pink practically lit him up like a neon sign. Without a word, the sullen young man trudged over to his abandoned desk, scooped up his scattered things, and resettled at a spot across the room, glaring daggers at his temporarily-distracted persecutors.
“Right then,” Oliver said softly. “Maybe we should all return to our seats and get on with this detention?”
Amazingly, all seven of his students did exactly as they were told, spreading out to sit in desks again. Most of them stared absently into space, the atmosphere turning thoughtful.
Eventually, though, Billy Mayes broke from his reverie. With just a quick glance at Oliver, he cleared his throat and turned instead to Lex. “Hey, uh…Lex.”
The other boy looked up out of reflex, wincing like he expected a punch. He watched Billy with wary eyes.
But no punches or insults were thrown. With careful motions, Mayes leaned over and held out his hand. “I’m…uh. I’m sorry about the whole…you know, trashcan thing. And the…the locker thing. And the pool thing. It’s not that I don’t like you or anything.” He blinked at hearing those words come out of his mouth and quickly backtracked, “Well, I don’t, but only cuz I’m popular and you’re…well, you, you know?”
To Oliver’s bemusement, Lex nodded as if that made perfect sense.
Billy continued. “It’s just…it’s kind of fun to watch. That animal thing that you do. That’s kind of cool, you know?”
Oliver held his breath for a moment, fully aware that this was as close to an attempt at reconciliation that the quarterback would ever come.
After a long beat of careful study, Lex eventually extended his own hand and gave Billy’s a quick and furtive shake. “…You think it’s cool?”
Billy shrugged. “Kinda, yeah. At least it’s not some stupid power like…like…”
“Like turning people green!” one of the other football players chipped in helpfully.
“Yeah!” Billy agreed, obviously grateful for the help. “Animals are way cooler than turning people colors!”
Oliver smiled and sat back in the teacher’s chair. He knew that, in all likelihood, this moment of inter-clique student harmony wouldn’t last. Boys would be boys, after all. But for now, he took a deep breath, and settled in to watch over the frames of his glasses as the colors in the room shifted to a shade that was almost, but not quite, the blue-gray calm of understanding.
The Sensational Mr. Poplar
June 21, 2009 at 3:38 pm (short stories) (carson cramer, empathy, saul poplar, second grade, springfield, teacher)
From the writing prompt, “Careful, I’ve heard they can sense fear.” (Saul is a new addition to the Springfield cast of characters, but I quite like him.)
“Alright, everyone! It’s time to go home!” Saul Poplar clapped his hands enthusiastically. The sound was mostly lost in the ruckus cheering of eighteen second-graders who’d just been told their weekend was in sight. In the ensuing rush of packing up, Saul made his way across the classroom to take his customary station by the back door.
He waited patiently until all eighteen students were lined up, more or less in single-file, all watching him expectantly. Timothy Green was practically standing on his teacher’s toes. The boy bounced a few times until Saul put a hand on his head and firmly anchored him to the ground. “Let’s say thank you one more time to Mr. Cramer for taking a whole day off to come tell us about being a TV personality!”
As one, the students looked over their shoulders to wave enthusiastically at their guest speaker of the day and chorused “Thank you!”
Carson Cramer waved back and beamed at them. “Thank you all for having me! And remember, no matter what Mr. Poplar tells you, being a news anchor is hard work!”
“Because news never stops!” several kids piped in, quite proud that they remembered his catch phrase.
Carson winked at them, which caused several of the girls to giggle, and then turned to start packing up the things he’d brought along to help with his demonstration.
Saul rolled his eyes affectionately, and then he reached for the coats. This had become something of a ritual for him; his empathic sense let him get a bit of a read on each kid’s mood through their possessions, at least since lunchtime when they’d last put their things on. And since the items had been sitting for a few hours, the vibes were mellowed enough that he didn’t get a headache from running across someone’s bad day, either.
He reached out and grabbed Timothy’s hat from its peg. He was completely unsurprised by the pang of sadness that echoed somewhere deep inside his chest as he pulled the hat all the way down to cover the boy’s eyes. Saul put one hand on Timothy’s shoulder for a second and re-straightened the hat with the other. “You did great today, Timothy. You were a big help to Mr. Cramer. I bet your parents would be proud of you.”
Timothy looked up at him and smiled, mind clearly on getting out of the classroom to do all the fun non-school things he had planned. “Thanks, Mr. P.” Saul knew full well that the words wouldn’t make up for Timothy’s need for the parental affection he got so rarely from his often-absent parents. But he felt the boy’s mood lift a little through the hat he still touched. It was something, anyway. Hat now properly adjusted, Timothy dashed off to his weekend.
Saul smiled after him, and then turned to the next student in line. Penny Dabbs looked up at him expectantly, and he smiled. “Hi, Penny. Have a good weekend! Eat a donut for me, alright?” He felt the brown-eyed girl’s pride in being picked as hall-monitor today still lingering in the purple wool of her scarf. Saul bent to be eye-level with her as he tied the scarf into place around her neck. His brow creased with worry; the happy emotions otherwise present were dulled, as they were so often lately, by Penny’s chronic tiredness. He spoke a little softer as he looked her in the eye. “Do your parents know you didn’t sleep very well this week?”
Penny shook her head, unusually silent. Saul nodded in understanding. “Maybe you should tell them.”
“Thanks, Mr. Poplar.” Her smile was small, but genuine. She took her purple hat as he handed it to her and put it on without her usual vigor as she left the classroom.
And so the line went, as Mr. Poplar spent a moment of time with each of his kids on their way out the door. The occasional word of encouragement or gentle reprimand, always spoken at the right time in the right tone, had a marked effect on each student as they left the room. At long last, all the second-graders were gone, the classroom empty except for its teacher and its guest speaker.
With a long sigh, Saul popped his neck and then crossed the room to Carson, pausing to straighten chairs and pick up trash along the way.
His friend watched him with a thoughtful expression, and the Scot’s blue eyes twinkled with something like admiration. “You’re right brilliant with the little ones, Saul. I’ve never seen a herd of seven year olds love someone like they love you. How d’you put up with ‘em every day? I’d go mad if I had your job.”
Saul gave an easy shrug as he reached the other man’s side. The truest answer–that he could read people’s emotions through inanimate objects and thus correctly gage their mood—wasn’t really a viable response. To buy time, he spun on his heel and tossed a wadded ball of construction paper in a perfect three-point shot to the trash can in the far corner of the room. “Ah, they’re great kids. Besides, Career Week gets them all excited. They always behave better when they have speakers to impress.” He reached out his hand. “Thanks again for coming in, Carson. I know you’ve got a million things to do.”
Carson clasped the teacher’s hand with a strong grip and a smile. “Ach, it was the least I could do. Besides, this was the easy lot. I have to show a bunch of misbehaving high schoolers around the set on Monday as a reward for some science fair.”
Saul snorted at that mental image. “Careful, I’ve heard they can sense fear.”
The TV anchor shook his head a little as he snapped the final microphone case shut. “In this town, I wouldn’t doubt it. It’d be a right handy skill, though, in my business.” He chuckled to himself. “And probably in yours too, come to think of it.”
There was really no way for Saul to answer that but with a very honest, “Yeah, it really would.” He went over to collect the last two jackets on the pegs. He put on his own jacket and scarf before scooping up Carson’s long gray coat.
He actually had to close his eyes and lean against the wall for a second as a muddled ball of confusion, exhaustion and maybe a little bit of fear expanded from the center of his chest and spread out to leave his fingers tingling. His head hurt for a moment from the echoes of what must have been the killer tension headache Carson had been fighting when he donned his coat this morning.
Saul shook his head firmly and the emotions faded to a dull unease. It all took less than a few seconds, and when he turned and handed Carson his coat, his expression was clear of the emotions he now knew his friend had been feeling all day.
He handed Carson the garmet silently. The other man accepted it with a smile. “Thanks, lad.” He put his cases on a nearby desk to slip it on.
Saul watched him with new attention. Now that he looked for them, he could just see the lines around the other man’s mouth and eyes that told of his suffering through a monster headache that would have made the average person stay home from work. He could see the tiredness in Carson’s frame now, too, a slump to his normally straight shoulders that Saul felt guilty for not noticing before now.
If Saul hadn’t felt the maelstrom of unpleasantness from Carson himself, he would never believe that someone could be in that much turmoil inside and barely show a trace of it to the outside world. How the man managed to pull it off was a mystery. Impulsively, he reached out to straighten Carson’s jacket collar where it stuck up on one side. He took the opportunity to look his friend squarely in the eye. “Hey. You doing okay?”
Carson blinked, genuinely surprised by the worry in Saul’s voice. “Aye, ‘course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
When he only received a raised eyebrow in response, he sighed, and his shoulders slumped a little more under Saul’s hand. “I’m alright, really. Just haven’t been sleepin’ well, is all. You know how it is. Doctor says it’s just stress, I’ll come through it eventually.” He gave a wry grin and shook his head. “Never can fool you, can I?”
Saul let go of him to button up his own jacket. “Someone’s got to keep you on the straight and narrow. You’re too good at acting for your own good, but I could practically feel that headache from across the room.”
Carson’s mouth twitched into another smile as they headed for the door. “Are you sure you can’t sense things a wee bit after all? Because I could use you as a news story. Saul Poplar, the Sensational Second-Grade Teacher!”
“You must be having a slow news week. You’ll have to try harder than that, my friend.” He let Carson precede him through the door and paused for a second to look over the rows of desks, each one still radiating with the emotions of their occupants. To Saul, it was almost as if his class was still in the room.
The Sensational Second-Grade Teacher. Well, maybe he was. But it wasn’t only because he just happened to be able to feel his student’s emotions through their hats. The thought was a comforting one. With one last look around the room, Mr. Poplar turned off the lights and went to walk Carson to his car.
The classroom stilled, warm and empty, and though he didn’t know it, a vague outline of Saul’s compassion lingered in the doorway long after he was gone.
Leaking
May 28, 2009 at 5:41 pm (short stories) (forgetting, forgiveness, jean, john, rain, sarin, springfield)
From the writing prompt, “The roof was leaking.” This story is set farther along in the Springfield timeline than most of the others.
It had been raining now for seven days straight. Jean Knockings brushed her hair from her face and stood from the dirt floor she’d been sleeping on. She made her way to the door of the hut and looked out at the steaming jungle. The air was so thick with moisture that it felt like a wet cloth pressed against her skin. The smell of wet animal hide radiated from the walls of the hut; it would make her stomach turn if she hadn’t grown used to it months before.
The roof was leaking. The soft drip drip drip of water hitting the ground behind her played an odd counterpoint to the insistent tap tap tap of the rain beating against the sides of the hut. She knew that if she turned to look, she’d be able to see a puddle of water directly in the middle of the packed dirt floor where the rain was leaking through the hole in the alpaca skin at the pinnacle of the roof.
In a weird way, she envied that skin. The idea of being able to gouge a hole and let all the accumulated pressure in her mind pour out was more than a little appealing. After seven days, she knew this place so well that she could literally see it with her eyes closed. With absolutely perfect recall. There were days when Jean truly hated having this ability to remember everything she saw. Sometimes, she thought forgetting would be easier.
No, she admitted to herself, not sometimes. All the time.
Remembering was hard. Especially on days like this one, in weeks like this one, where she had to sit still and just wait for whatever weather crisis or local custom was currently blocking her path to blow through so she could continue on her quest. She snorted softly to herself. Quest was too civilized a word, though one she liked better. Hunt was more appropriate. A hunt for the man who had done so much damage to so many people. The man that had sent her brother to his death and left his body on the floor.
Doctor Aakil Sarin was out there somewhere, and Jean hated sitting still. After six months of being on his tail—six months of near-misses, of dashed hopes, of travel through so many countries that anyone but her would have lost count—she’d finally tracked him down to Sao Paulo in Brazil. In retrospect she should have come here first; in a lot of ways, this place was the genesis of Sarin’s madness. She supposed that in a way, it probably felt like home to him.
She’d been so close this time. Practically close enough to taste the end of her long and so far fruitless chase. She’d even seen Sarin; seen his eyes widen in recognition, seen him flee across the crowded street and into the waiting cart before she could stop him or even speak. She could see the smug smile on his face with crystal clarity when she closed her eyes, even though she’d only spotted it for a fraction of a second before the cart whisked him off towards the mountains.
The mountains where she was now stuck, waiting for the rain to stop so she could continue on her search once again.
Jean still didn’t know what she was going to do when she caught up with Sarin. What was she supposed to do to the man who’d killed her twin, who’d manipulated them both for so long that she couldn’t ever remember a time when he hadn’t had a hand in their lives?
She remembered once, when she and John were five and John had just stolen yet another of her favorite toys, that their mother had taken Jean in her lap and rocked her softly while she cried. “You have to learn how to forgive and forget, Jean.”
Jean remembered her little girl self staring up into her mother’s eyes with bewilderment. “I can’t forget, Momma. I don’t know how.”
Her mother’s expression had been one of understanding; looking back on it now, knowing what kind of man Mr. Knockings had been, Jean wondered just how much of that was empathy, because then she’d said, “Then you’re gonna have to try twice as hard to forgive people, sweetie. Because if you don’t, you’ll get eaten up on the inside. Sometimes, with John, you just have to let things go, like water out of a sieve. How much can you hold before you burst?”
Jean’s brown eyes refocused absently into the present and she blinked quickly to hold back the tears that threatened. She hadn’t cried since she found John’s body on the floor of his office. Not once in six months. “Now what, Momma?” she whispered to no one. “How can I forgive what I can’t forget?”
So many things engraved forever into her mind’s eye: thirty-two years of life with John forever half a step in front of her, underhanded deals she’d been forced time and time again to concede to, a thousand arguments with her brother that she’d never won. And the look on John’s face, that cocky smile that used to hate so much but that she now missed so much it ached. The look he’d had the very last time she’d seen him alive, when he’d walked out the door after she’d told him that she never wanted to see him again.
Famous last words. Ones that she couldn’t ever erase, now that he was dead.
The last living Knockings looked up and watched as a drop of water collected on the torn piece of skin at the apex of the roof, solidified into a drop, and fell into the puddle on the mud floor. Like water out of a sieve.
And all at once, Jean’s impressively brilliant mind finally came to the conclusion that maybe–just maybe–forgiveness wasn’t about forgetting at all. Maybe forgiveness was just letting something leak out to puddle on the floor so you could step over it and move on.
For the first time in six months, Jean let herself feel. And as soon as she did, the tears began to fall.
Drip drip drip.
In the middle of a rainstorm in the jungle of Brazil, in a tiny animal-skin hut with a leaking roof, Jean Knockings cried. She cried and cried until she couldn’t breath, until even she had lost count of the tears, and she mourned her brother. She cried for the way John had died, and for the way he’d lived. She cried for the betrayal of their family by Aakil Sarin…and as she finally began to breathe again, she found herself crying for the doctor himself. Because his life was a dark and bitter one, and he’d never had a family, not like she’d had.
When she finally straightened again, the rain hadn’t lessened. But she took a deep breath of the damp air…and smiled. She knew what she’d do now, when she caught up with Sarin.
She’d forgive him. And maybe, someday, she could forgive her brother, too. Because the bitterness and the heartache had spilled out of her a little, like water out of a sieve. Like the leaking roof above her head. Drip drip drip.
Jean didn’t have to forget. She just had to let it go in little drops until she could leave it behind. Maybe, someday, when the pressure in her head had cleared, she might even be able to forgive herself.
She could wait. With a long sigh, Jean sat back down on the dirt floor and watched the rain leak through the roof.
Saturday Morning in the Park
May 15, 2009 at 5:42 pm (short stories) (chess, eugene, evil, good, oliver, saturday, springfield)
From the writing prompt, “Destroying the world would probably be easier.” This one doesn’t need much explaining, except that these guys are two of my favorite characters ever.
It was nine o’clock on Saturday morning and the weather was beautiful, which meant that Eugene Bud was in the park. He strolled across the grass, dodged a group of kids playing Frisbee, and made his way over to the benches near the gazebo.
The old barber took a deep breath of the early summer air and let it out in a sigh of satisfaction. It was one of those clichéd perfect summer days, with the chirping birds and the light breeze and the sweet smell of grass on the air. And, because it was nine o’clock on a Saturday morning and the weather was beautiful, Oliver Meeps was waiting for him on their normal bench at the northwest corner of the gazebo. The sunlight was cooler here, deflected by the fluttering leaves of a huge old oak tree that was probably as old as Springfield itself.
Eugene lowered himself down across from his friend onto the worn white stone of the bench. “Morning, Oliver.”
The other man tipped his hat cordially, and the sunlight glinted off the rims of his glasses. “Morning, Eugene.” He reached down into the worn satchel at his feet and pulled out a wooden box: chestnut, still glossy and smooth even after years of wear. The well-oiled bronze hinges barely made a sound as the box opened onto the bench between them to reveal a hand-crafted chess set.
The two men looked at the jumble of checkerboard, black-and-white horsemen, chipped castle towers, slender kings and queens. After a long moment of consideration, Oliver looked up expectantly. “It’s the third Saturday, you know.”
Eugene blinked and raised his blue eyes from their scrutiny. “Is it? I could’ve sworn it was only the second.” He shook his head ruefully; the leaf-shaped patterns of light on his hair shifted with the movement. “Alright then. No use letting you get any more of an upper hand. I’ll take the white.”
Oliver smiled and shook his head. “You always do. Going first isn’t always best, you know.” He reached for the black pieces anyway and began to put them in their places with elegant fingers.
Eugene waved him off with the hand not busy arranging his own forces on the board. “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times. It’s a matter of principle. Who doesn’t want to be the white knight in shining armor?” He picked up one of his knights with a grin and twirled it between his fingers. “Besides,” he continued as he replaced the piece with care back into its alloted square at B-1, “It’s good strategy. Never let the opponent have the first move.”
Their banter was easy and well-rehearsed, really just a verbal precursor to the ensuing game. They both settled in, staring at the board intently. When nothing happened for several minutes, Oliver cleared his throat. “About that first move…”
“I know, I know.” Eugene was already fingering his walrus mustache, a sure sign of intense thought. Finally, he reached out for the horseman he’d displaced earlier and moved it. “Knight to A-3.”
His friend looked impressed. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you lead with the knight before. Feeling the need to change your strategy?”
“Sick of getting beat,” Bud chuckled. “You can only rely on your pawns so long before you’ve gotta accept that just because some moves are traditional doesn’t mean you have to use them.”
“Good advice,” Oliver said with a smile. “They should have you speak up at the school to motivate the kids.” He reached to his own line of pieces. “Still, sometimes traditional is best. Pawn to G-6.”
Oliver’s gaze stayed on the board, already planning two or three moves ahead in anticipation of his friend’s next move. He and Eugene had played this game more than enough to know each other’s strategies and rhythms. It was a challenge to find new attacks that wouldn’t be anticipated. It took Oliver a while to notice that once again, the other man hadn’t moved. He looked over to Bud again to see him still staring into space, and for the first time concern creased his brow, deepening the divot between his eyes. “Gene?”
Eugene’s eyes looked up in surprise at the nickname, rarely used. His bushy white eyebrows raised expectantly. “Yeah?”
“Your turn,” Oliver prompted softly.
“Ah, I’m sorry.” The barber gave a long sigh and rubbed his forehead with two fingers. “Don’t know what’s gotten into me today. I was somewhere else.”
“I could tell,” Meeps said with a soft grin. “Care to share?”
Eugene looked down at the board. His hand reached out and gently touched the top of his G-square knight. “I was just thinking,” he said slowly, in a voice much gentler than the one Oliver was used to hearing from him, “that there’s more pressure on the man that picks the white pieces.”
Philosophy wasn’t an uncommon subject for them, but it normally didn’t appear in conversation until at least the fifth turn. Oliver focused his full attention on the man across from him, the board temporarily forgotten. “How do you mean?”
Bud shrugged, eyes still on the pieces in front of him, though Oliver suspected that his mind’s eye was focused a long way off. “Well, the white knight has a lot to do, doesn’t he? Save the world, rescue the damsel in distress, slay the dragon, defeat the evil king. Seems like a lot of work, doesn’t it?” He paused a moment, then moved the knight into symmetry with its twin. “Knight to H-3.” He pointed to Oliver’s end of the board. “The black knight, though, what’s his job? All he has to do is stop the white knight from doing all that good-guy hero stuff. It’s simpler. Cleaner.”
Oliver weighed his response carefully as he returned his attention to the game. His next move would be predictable, if reliable. He sat back in his seat a bit and looked out over the park. “You’re right, you know,” he remarked thoughtfully. “Destroying the world would probably be easier. Saving it is so much work. Pawn to B-5.”
“I never said ‘easier’, just ’simpler’,” Eugene noted. “Pawn to B-4. You really think it’d be easier?”
This time it was Oliver who looked away from the game for a long moment. At last, his brown eyes rested on the two pawns, now deadlocked in the middle of the board. He reached out and brushed an imaginary speck of dust off the white one. “It would have to be, wouldn’t it? To save the world, you have to care enough about the people in it to think it’s worth it.”
There was a long moment of silence after that. Both men were pulled in their minds to far-off places: one to a marketplace in Serbia, with a gun in his hand, and the other to a long-gone kitchen table, and the sound of children laughing.
“Harder,” Eugene finally agreed. His voice was a little gruff. “But still right.”
Oliver nodded slowly in agreement, and the two men shared a moment of understanding despite all the things that would never be known or said between them.
Then Eugene cleared his throat and leaned forward. “Alright, enough of that. It’s time for me to kick your scrawny historian behind at chess. Pawn to C-2!”
“It’s my move, you barbarian barber!”
It was nine thirty on Saturday morning and the weather was beautiful. And so Eugene Bud, former CIA agent, and Oliver Meeps, former superhero, were playing chess in the park. Two white knights, chipped and worn around the edges, but still standing firmly in their squares, looking out at the far-off black kings on the horizon.
Midnight Visitor
January 28, 2009 at 4:24 pm (short stories) (barber, curtains, eugene, ninja, springfield)
From the writing prompt, “Why was it always the curtains?” This story introduces Eugene Bud, Springfield’s accomplished barber, who used to be a CIA agent.
The knife sliced through the air with an utter lack of sound.
Knives never made much noise in real life, until they made contact and it was too late for you to care. Silent knives were wielded by good assassins, who made so little noise themselves that they could actually be said to produce an absence of sound so complete that people actually couldn’t hear it, even if they wanted to.
Still, silent knives (even those wielded by the very best assassins) did sometimes catch a bare sliver of moonlight that glinted from between the gingham curtains a second before they made contact with their target.
Fortunately for Eugene Bud, skilled barber and former CIA agent, this knife was the moonlight-catching type. He moved faster than he’d had to in nearly fifteen years and tumbled rather gracelessly to his bedroom floor, just managing to avoid getting caught in his blankets on the way down. He heard a dull ripping noise as the knife embedded itself in his pillow, where his head had rested a bare two second before.
He’d liked that pillow. It had just flattened to fit his head.
Working on muscle memory entirely, his body flattened momentarily on the floor while his hand reached under the bed for the gun he kept there. Above him, the dark shape of the assassin loomed in the shadowed bedroom, balancing lightly on the balls of its feet in the middle of the dipping mattress. From what little could be seen, he seemed to be wearing a black mask, and he held himself like someone who was so good at what he didn’t that he didn’t need to look like he was good at what he did.
Eugene felt a little flattered, despite the early hour and the creaking joints and the ripped pillow. It was good to know that someone still thought he was dangerous enough to send a real ninja after him.
Even if he’d been retired from the agency for fifteen years, it was hard to take the agency out of the guy. Still, it was a heckuva inconvenience. He’d retired for a whole host of reasons, and a full night of assassin-free sleep had been one of them.
Eugene’s scrabbling fingers came up empty, and he realized too late that the gun was under the other side of the bed. His attacker seemed to realize his helpless state at nearly the same time, and Eugene barely had time to roll sideways and lurch to his feet before the ninja came at him silently, knife glinting again.
It was never wise to attack an armed opponent bare-handed. Especially when you were bare-handed, tired, and very much feeling all sixty eight of your long years. There was only one way to deal with this kind of situation, and it was a tactic that old Mr. B knew well.
When all else fails, he heard his old instructor say clearly, Cheat.
And if there was one thing a ninja couldn’t handle during a late-night ambush attack on a supposedly honorable target, it was dishonorable conduct. So, Eugene gave his biggest smile. “Evening!”
The other man paused in his attack, momentarily stymied by this utter breach of the sacred tradition of silent mortal combat.
“Nice night, isn’t it? You’re a bit late, though. And your entrance needs work; don’t they teach you to blacken your blades any more?” Eugene smiled wider and reached behind him into the gingham curtains, hoping to find something to use as a weapon. His fingers just brushed the end of his old metal ruler, resting where he’d left it on the window seat from sketching earlier that day.
His opponent got over his apparent mental distress and lunged again just as Eugene grabbed the ruler firmly in hand and ducked to avoid the knife’s glittering arc. Above him, he could hear the curtain rip.
Why was it always the curtains? Eugene had been in countless fights for his life over the years, and yet no matter where they were staged: in hotel rooms, parlors, secret lairs, sun rooms, verandas, even pool houses, at some point someone would duck, and the curtain would get ripped.
It was like some kind of universal law of mortal combat. Darkness, blood, only one man walks away, a curtain always gets ripped. Eugene found that he hadn’t missed this kind of thing; not one whit, even though he always told himself that he did.
With the ease of long experience in dirty fighting, he thwapped the other man soundly across the knee cap with his metal ruler. Hardly a debilitating blow (though twenty years ago it would have been), but certainly one painful enough to convince the ninja to take a surprised step backwards, which was all Eugene needed.
He moved with a sudden speed and power that no one in Springfield would imagine possible for Old Mr. B. Before his attacker knew what hit him, Eugene had landed a solid upper cut to his chin, followed by a quick, precise smack of the ruler edge along his hand. The knife dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers to the carpet and lay there, glowing dimly in the moonlight from the now uncovered window.
Eugene knew better than to give his opponent time to regroup, and so his aggressive blows were as quick and accurate as he could make them these days.
Unsurprisingly, he ended up with a fair amount of bruises and a black eye in return. A good ninja (just like a good CIA agent) hated being backed into a corner. Still, it was only a matter of time. With a move that was part judo and part sheer dumb luck, Eugene blocked the other man’s spinning kick, grabbed him by his airborn leg, and used his own momentum to toss the startled ninja right out of his bedroom window.
The sound of breaking glass shattered the silence of the neighborhood with the intensity of a gunshot. Eugene retrieved the discarded knife and hopped out onto the dark lawn, carefully avoiding the broken glass in the window frame, to stand above the defeated and slightly shredded assassin, who was just sitting up in the grass.
“You’re lucky that was a ground floor window,” the old barber told him calmly, spinning the blade in his hand. “Otherwise, you’d have more than some scrapes and bruises to deal with.” He leaned down and pressed the blade very lightly at the junction between shoulder and neck, where it would puncture an artery if anyone moved too quickly.
The other man lay deathly still on the lawn, aware that he was beaten. His breath hissed from behind his mask, the only words that a true ninja was allowed to speak in combat. “Kill me then.”
Eugene looked down into dark eyes that glittered with a vehemence and hardness that he had once felt with his own bones. There was something of himself in this poor assassin, this misguided man who ran about at night killing for what he thought was a better cause.
All at once, Eugene Bud felt very, very tired, and very old…and much wiser than he used to be. Darkness, blood, and a ripped curtain, he thought. But why can’t both men walk away every once in a while?
With creaking joints and a little groan, he stood. “Go,” he said simply. “And may your ancestors be honored by your brave combat.”
The man stared at him incredulously for a brief instant. Then the sound of waking neighbors and the spill of lights onto the lawn chased him off into the darkness with life intact, and Eugene watched him go with a faraway feeling in his bones and a little smile on his face.
He waved at the neighbors popping out of their doors. “Just a break-in! Scared the idiot off. I’m fine! Go back to bed!” Before anyone could respond, he turned and went back into his room through the window.
He’d need new curtains, and a new picture window, and a new alarm system.
That could all wait until the morning. With a slow shake of his head, Mr. B went to get a new pillow to get some ninja-free sleep on the sofa. He looked at the ruined gingham remains on his carpet and heaved a sigh.
Maybe, this time, he’d just get blinds.
Dinosaurs in the Fridge
January 19, 2009 at 6:34 pm (short stories) (brian/trudy, dinosaurs, parenthood, springfield, triplets)
The result of the prompt, “There was a dinosaur in the fridge.” Though Brian and Trudy live in Springfield, neither of them have superpowers. This story takes place several years down the road in their relationship; in most of the stories they aren’t married yet.
There was a dinosaur in the fridge. More accurately, there were sixteen of them, carefully vacuum-sealed and covered in plastic, all shoved into a little cardboard box.
Brian Branch was rather unsettled by this.
To be clear, he wasn’t at all unsettled by the dinosaurs themselves—ever since Trudy had gotten pregnant, there was always a box of the oddly-shaped chicken nuggets to be found in their freezer. It was by far the oddest craving Brian had ever heard about, and it didn’t appear anywhere in his stack of helpful parenting books. But then, when had anything about their lives been normal?
No, the problem was, this wasn’t the freezer. It was the fridge, and didn’t she know that these things could go bad after a couple days if they weren’t properly cooled? Did she want to give their unborn children food poisoning?
He picked up the offending box and opened the freezer, intent on returning it to its proper place next to three other identical boxes which were neatly stacked between the toaster pastries on one side and the gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream on the other. Brian took a moment to enjoy the utter orderliness of the freezer, if for no other reason than it was the only place in the house where he could find things in the same place he put them anymore.
Except for the renegade box of dinosaur chicken, anyway. There was no room for it in the freezer. Utterly stymied by this failing of his organizational system, he looked down at the cartoony packaging as one would an explosive device.
Brian took a moment to steel himself, taking a deep breath before closing the freezer door, dinosaurs still in hand. For a second he just stood there, staring at the eggshell-white surface with his back to the kitchen, trying to pretend that everything was this nice and clean.
He knew better.
With a sigh, he finally turned and faced the sight of a kitchen so messy it looked more like one of his students’ Algebra binders. Things were strewn all over the place—makings for ice cream sundaes were spread haphazardly across the small table, between piles of papers from his Algebra II class that had once been neatly stacked, and were now skewed and slightly sticky. Dishes were piled in the sink (Brian looked away before he had to battle his insatiable need to scrub them all immediately); the dishwasher was open, revealing rows of color-coordinated sippy cups, pacifiers, and washable play toys. The fact that none of them had been used yet didn’t matter; Brian had read the consumer reports about all the germs that lived in department stores. Those things were getting washed at least twice before any child of his used them.
A muffled thump from the direction of the living room sounded. Hesitantly, Brian moved out of the kitchen, ducking under the drying laundry strung across the doorway. “Trudy?”
He tripped over a stack of new parenting magazines two steps in, the chicken nuggets going flying. As he picked himself up off the floor (they really needed a new vacuum, he could see crumbs in the carpet, for heaven’s sake!), he had a fleeting sense of vertigo as he realized that this was what the house looked like before Trudy gave birth to triplets.
It took him a moment to locate the box of dinosaurs, over by the couch.
Then his gaze fell to what was on the couch, and he suddenly found himself a lot less worried about decomposing chicken nuggets.
Trudy was sound asleep, one side of her face pressed into the arm of the couch, her red hair a complete mess. She’d tipped slightly in her sleep, as she tended to do these days, so that her back was pressed against the couch in a subconscious attempt to straighten out her protesting spine. Her feet, which had started out laying on the ever-present ice packs for her ankles, were now pointing in opposite directions. One was resting on the carpet, and Brian couldn’t help but notice that the sock was inside out.
Their lives really were getting out of control.
Still, she was beautiful. Maybe the most beautiful he’d ever seen her. She never believed him when he told her that; she’d look down at her stomach (which was now approximately the size of a Volkswagen) and bemoan the loss of her figure and her ever increasing waistline. As far as Brian was concerned, he was looking at all four of his favorite people in the same place, and that view was hard to beat.
His gaze drifted back to the floor, and for the first time he noticed that the dinosaurs weren’t alone. A bowl of half-melted ice cream sat within arm’s reach of the couch. Brian realized with horror that there were three scoops in the bowl, which meant that she’d left the empty carton in the freezer. Something inside his chest clenched terribly, and he took a deep breath to calm himself.
Pick your battles, he chanted to himself, taking his therapy to heart. There are more important things. There are bigger messes. There are… it wasn’t working. You’re going to go insane, but it’ll probably be worth it.
He reached out to pick up the bowl, intent on putting it in the sink, washing it along with all the other dishes in the sink, and then putting the freshly washed dishes into their neatly color-coded cupboard homes.
That was when he saw the book. It was splayed open, leaning partly against the couch, its pages getting bent from its own weight. This was the source of the sound he’d heard, then. Trudy must have dropped it when she fell asleep—or, more likely, she’d had it balanced on her stomach and it had just slid off.
If there was one thing Brian hated more than room-temperature chicken nuggets (and to be fair, that ranked high on his list of things he hated), it was a book with bent pages. Without any kind of conscious decision, he scooped up the poor mangled paperback and smoothed out the cover with his hands. It was only then that he read the title.
“Baby names?” he murmured thoughtfully, looking at his sleeping wife’s face. They’d agreed to talk about names next month; apparently, Trudy was getting a head start. Unable to resist, he found the handful of pages marked with bright green sticky notes and opened up to the first one.
Trudy had helpfully highlighted the ones she liked. Though why she liked Bartholomew, he had no idea. Or Barbara. Or Bradley. It sounded like she was casting for a soap opera. Why not name one Blanche and get it over with?
Momentarily forgetting about the chicken (an admittedly big step for him), he settled onto the floor and flipped through her other selections, aware that he’d never get away with this if she was awake to stop him. Her other choices were equally alarming to him. Lance? Lillith? Laurence?
“Oh,” he breathed out with horrified understanding. Oh, she was picking triplet names. She wanted them to be those horrible parents who gave all of their children matching names, because apparently having two identical siblings didn’t single you out for enough playground mockery and enforced togetherness already.
Brian was willing to admit that he might have some latent bitterness from his own playground experiences to deal with. Still, Lillith was a really terrible name.
He looked through her other highlighted selections with a quick eye, unable to bear any more psychological trauma. Wendy, Wesley, Willard. He put the book down and stared at it, slightly green around the gills. Then he saw that he’d missed a marked page; he’d only read from six pages, but there were seven sticky notes. With a kind of resignation that can only be achieved by an OCD man who couldn’t leave a sticky note un-looked at, he opened the book again.
There was only one name highlighted on the page. He let his finger trace it. “Oliver,” he said thoughtfully. Then he said it again, as if getting used to the weight of the word on his tongue. “Oliver. Oliver Branch.”
That wasn’t bad. Quite good, actually. Classy. He smiled despite himself. “Oliver Branch,” he proclaimed to the empty air of the messy living room. It was an odd moment of peace in the chaos of married life and expected parenthood. He let himself feel it, a kind of contentment that ran bone-deep. Maybe, he thought, this was something of fatherhood.
Then his eyes focused on the now absolutely uneatable, defrosted, no doubt slightly soggy box of dinosaur chicken nuggets on the floor. His shudder of revulsion shook him out of his pleasant stupor. With a heavy sigh, Brian stood, leaving the book where it had landed. He scooped up the melted ice cream and went to the kitchen to find his trusty rubber gloves. The box was probably contaminated; he’d have to put it in the outside garbage to keep Trudy clear of the impending salmonella outbreak.
Mission in mind, Brian set about his task. Parenthood phantoms would just have to wait. Sometimes, you just had to deal with the dinosaurs in the fridge first.
Acid Rain
January 2, 2009 at 5:14 pm (short stories) (dystopia, scifi)
Acid rain paints the pale sky with dirty streaks, soot on over-taxed, over-worked, over-bleached air that can barely sustain a human breath.
His fingers scrabble for purchase on pock-marked, acid-stripped metal, find no traction, return bloodied to his side. His lungs heave, desperate for clean air and real oxygen and life-giving breath that no longer exists, not anywhere in the world, and especially not here in this dark corrosive capital of poison machinery.
There’s the clash of metal crashing on metal behind him. It’s a rusted sound, old and tired and mean and relentless, and it haunts his head as it has haunted his dreams for years, ever since they realized that it was too late and that they were going to lose against a never-ending army of beeps and clicks and silver arms and acid fumes.
He looks at the blood on his hands and can’t remember which battle, which fight for his life, for the lives of others it’s from, until he remembers that it’s from the wall in front of him that he can’t climb, that’s being eaten away even as he watches by the acid rain drip-dripping down.
The gloves on his hands are all shredded, exposing bloody tender fingertips to stinging acid that pelts against his bio-suit, tap-tap-tapping against his plastic shell over and over again, trying to leak in, sneak past his defenses, dissolve him from the core.
He can’t run any more. The big boots on his feet are heavy and the suit is stuffy and he’s running out of air, out of life, out of will, out of sanity, all taken away by the gray sky and smoking factories and the rusted sound of metal crashing against metal growing louder all the time behind him.
And so he turns and puts his back against the old dissolving wall that won’t let him climb it and sees the big silver-rust-emotionless-pitiless-ruthless spider wobbling towards him on its eight skinny, barely-there metal legs and thinks that out of all the deaths he would have thought about, dreamed about for the human race, this one is too sad and gray and hopeless to really be right.
But nothing’s right anymore anyway, and the acid rain is running down his visor, in streams so thick that everything is distorted and he can already feel it starting to eat away at the tips of his fingers, the edges of his brain, the borders of his soul, and maybe the acid is really just his loneliness, his deep and dark and desperate aloneness that never ever goes away.
Because he’s the last one, he knows it, feels it in his bones like he hasn’t felt anything else since a long time ago, before they made a race of metal servants that consumed and consumed and obliterated and stripped the sky until all the world was just acid and rust and metal and armies of thoughtless metal soldiers and no men or women or children at all any more, except for him.
And now, the metal spider, a scout, not even a soldier, not even meant to kill before everything became a thing that kills, raises one long rusty leg and prepares to send the electric shock that will stop his heart, cease his blood from pumping, finally turn his brain off like a bad circuit in the big machine of the universe.
He closes his eyes once last time, and he thinks of grass, and flowers, and a blue sky and a soft summer rain that healed the earth instead of destroying it. And he thinks of a sweet voice, and a song floating on a waft of lazy summer air, and a smile, and a feeling deep inside his chest, warm, like love.
The Garden (All Shattered)
December 30, 2008 at 5:07 pm (short stories) (insanity, yuka (yuki/alia))
“Light…all away…”
Yuki finds her in the garden. It’s the first place he looks these days. Something about the flowers and the sun seems to draw her here, even if she can’t really see them anymore.
“Where did all the colors go? Pretty colors…”
She twirls around, her white dress swirling after her. There’s a single white rose in her hands, and he thinks for a second that if the sound was muted, this would be his perfect picture of Alia. But the words trickle through, like water out of a broken sieve, like blood out of torn skin. He can smell the blood before he catches sight of it. It’s dripping down her arm. She must have caught herself on a thorn.
“Rain, rain, go away…” she giggles, spins again, the blood-stained petals floating after her as she sings. “All the darkness all around me.”
He reaches out to catch her hand, still her crazy spinning and make the world solid for her, only to barely stop himself in time. She hates him sneaking up on her. He never knows if she’ll let him near her or scream in fear. He wonders sometimes if she sees the demon underneath his skin on the days she screams. His words are soft and gentle, out of habit. “Alia, come inside.”
Today is a good day. She smiles when she sees him, that smile that takes his breath away because just for an instant it’s his Alia standing there, not her fragmented shadow. Then she giggles again and his soul feels a little sick.
“Pretty boy all wrapped in silver…”
He wonders, too, what she sees on days like this, the days she smiles at him. He thinks maybe his soul is like paper wrapped around his demon, like gift wrap around a present no one actually wants to receive. It makes him wonder if she doesn’t understand him better now than she ever did before. Yuki shivers in the sunlight.
“The shadows go away,” she tells him, and she takes his hand and lifts his arm to spin underneath it, dancing like they never did before. “Silver man all shiny. Where are the shadow men?”
He stops her with a hand to her waist, frozen for a second in what could almost be a waltz if one of them wasn’t insane. He looks carefully at her bloodied fingers; the cuts are deep. “Come on, Alia. We should go inside. You need to sleep…”
“No!” she screams, and in a second the moment of near-normalcy is over and she’s wrenching away from him, scrambling backwards, holding her head. “No! Walls around me, closing up my brain!” She huddles into a tiny ball by the rose bushes, smearing blood on her face as her hands clutch at her hair. “All dark…all dark.”
Yuki closes his eyes for a second, trying to find strength he doesn’t think he has anymore. He’s lost count of how often they’ve replayed this scene. It still hurts every time. He reaches out despite himself, wishes he could brush her hair back from her face, hold her hand, embrace her until the big cruel world just went away and left them both alone. “Alia…”
She beats at his hands, frantic, with none of the strength or accuracy he remembers her having. “Get away get away get away! Monster! Monster! Big black monster, all wrapped up!”
He grabs her wrists, looks into eyes that he used to know better than his own to find them filled with terror and confusion. His soul breaks somewhere in the middle of his chest, because he knows what she’s looking at and knows she sees the truth.
“Shadows coming!” She breaks away again, but she only goes a few feet before she crumples to the ground, like the world is so heavy on her shoulders that her bones are breaking. “Shadows coming…”
“Alia…” Very, very carefully, Yuki kneels beside her. “There are no shadows.” He knows somewhere inside him that this is a lie, but it is a lie that calms her almost instantly. He makes a soothing noise and reaches out to once more take her hand. “The shadows are dead. I promise.”
“No shadows?” She looks up at him at last, and he knows she will believe him. He wonders, of all things she can see so clearly now, why this lie is one thing she cannot.
“No,” he whispers, as he helps her to her feet. “Never any shadows.”
She looks at him helplessly, now clinging to the hand that seconds ago seemed to burn her. “Silver man goes away. Big big world…scary…”
He gives a little smile. “The world’s not that big. And we only have to walk a couple steps, alright? Just a little ways.” She doesn’t say anything, and so he takes her hand and tugs her a little, guiding her along the rock path back to the house. This is their life now, his and hers, and it is nothing like how he imagined it, when he let the thought cross his mind back in the days when she was the smarter and the braver and the steadier of the two of them. Yuki now knows that he never thought she would need taking care of, least of all by him.
They move silently into the house, quiet and still and sad and heavy with her madness and his desperation and the love, the history that chains him here, to her.
A vase in the living room is broken, its shards scattered, glittering, across the carpet, the red rose it had been holding laid across the pieces like some kind of sacrifice. She always breaks things.
“Broken world, all shattered…”
Yuki looks at his Alia and thinks that she has never made more sense.
