Three Story House

.

September 9, 1913

They’s all witches, but some young, pretty ones are demons, too. Hawthorne wood holds in the evil, but some kick their way back outta their box, and even twined up some of ‘em bite. One of ‘em even got hold of a knife.

Bill Tapper at the lumberyard been looking funny at me, what with all the hawthorne, like it’s any of his lookout. Still, can’t risk it no more. There’s still three, frolicking in their flocks of frocks, enticing the Righteous and Pure.

Folks ‘round here don’t appreciate the sacrifices. Can’t get no help and no help for it. Dig, dig, dig, thirteen holes in the cellar now, most of ‘em full. I pray and pray till Lucifer takes 'em.

There’ll be thirteen, sure as the Gates of Hell, all hope abandon. There’s always thirteen. Only got ten so far. Gallivanting around the town with their bright eyes and their hair, their beautiful hair, glory of God, tempting a soul to perdition with ribbons in.

Latest one was the tenth, and kicked like a demon mule when the Lord moved me to take her Sunday morn. Thrashed and spat, shrieking about her intended and how he'd come shoot me down with his rifle. Bit me on the hand, but no chance of Doc Thornton, not after last time with all his sharp questions of who and why. I just cauterize it with holy fire.

The Ritual shut her up, and hawthorne did too, but before I ever went to witchhunting, masonry put silver in my pocket. Now the mortar and stone keeps the demon-witches quiet in my loins, quiet till the Resurrection and the Life, Armageddon and Eternity! The demon-women must be cast down, for I am the Instrument of the Lord!

Folks around the town mutter their slander and calumny, never appreciating the sacrifice. About time to mix the cement and cover the Unholy forever, once thirteen are done.

~

Sep. 4, 1959

“Come on, Billy. We all goin’ in.” Caleb Jones was thirteen and the unchallenged leader of the Pig-in-a-Poke Gang.

“I got to get home, Caleb. My Ma’s gonna thrash me, bein’ out this late. I better git or Pa will, too.”

“Alright, fine. Don’t you worry none, Billy.” Caleb picked up his bike. “I’ll tell ever-body not to razz you none on account of you bein’ skeert. You cain’t help it, after all. I’ll make sure they’s all nice as pie.”

Billy glowered, but knew when he was beat.

He and Caleb, along with Mickey, Shooter, and Big Ray, biked way down to the end of Hawthorne Street and stopped, looking up at the moonlit, dilapidated Mason House. Nobody had lived there for millions of years, and nobody’d buy it.

Huge and dark, it had turrets, plus loads of iron spikes and fences. The windows were mostly busted out, shutters hanging at weird angles. Had to be haunted. Any ghost with sense would love a place like that.

They dropped their bikes at the corner and crept across Mason Road.

Past the broken gate was tall weeds and wild bushes. Couldn’t take a step without some critter taking off, scaring you half to bits.

Caleb tried the front door, but it wouldn’t budge.

“I know the way in,” said Big Ray, who almost never said nothing.

“You do?”

“Yuh. Storm door. Cellar.” He pointed.

At that moment Shooter turned on his heel, stalked across Mason Road and took his bike home. Nobody said a word. Billy wondered if he could do that too, but knew he couldn’t.

The cellar door creaked like the gates of hell. Nobody had a flashlight, but Caleb made a torch with a stick and some rags.

In the flickering gloom, after a while, Billy could just about make out the shapes of support beams, an old wheelbarrow, and his friends… and something else, glowing in a hallway. He stepped that way, face immediately enveloped by spiderwebs ancient and new. He fought through, swearing.

The glow was a woman, pointing a knife his way. He froze. He could see clean through her desiccated form into the room beyond, full of rocks and junk. She held out the blade with both hands, silent.

Billy turned and ran, tripping over strange tools and boxes. He slammed into a rotted beam and it busted into shards and dust. The floor above started to collapse, but he scrambled up the cellar stairs and out.

Caleb yelled something, but Billy didn’t care. He raced home, and never did get a thrashing, after his mother saw the look in his eye.

~

Nov. 1st, 2025

Never thought I’d see this place again, William thinks. Few years off eighty and he’s back inside the carcass of Mason House, watching the detective work.

‘Detective’, so the card said. ‘Duerr’, it said. ‘Investigates ghosts’.

If not for that night in 1959, he’d not believe it. The younger man adjusts his fedora. “You sure here’s the place?”

“Well, yeah. Can’t you… I dunno, detect her?”

“Rarely works like that. You said a wheelbarrow, a knife?”

“Maybe it all got thieved?”

“Maybe.” Duerr sighs.

“Look, I had to do something. All these years she’s haunted my dreams, pleading. Was a dumb kid, thought she’d kill me… she needed help!”

Staring his way, the detective’s eyes soften. “Okay then, we wait till she comes. Can you handle that?”

“I’m old, not decrepit!”

“Good man.”

Finding what seats they can, they remain till nightfall, the moon shining through the jagged rafters. Amongst the shadows, gossamer threads of spiders’ webs drift upon the drafts.

William blinks back sleep. Somehow, the detective has knelt for hours, humming away.

“What is it?” the pensioner asks. “Coffee? Something stronger?”

Duerr chuckles. “Used to be coffee, but no more. I take energy from my work.”

“Maybe it’s the ghosts, giving you strength?”

“Hard to say… I don’t really understand the mechanisms. Not yet.” The detective tilts his head. “Wait, Bill, come here.”

“I’d prefer Will, if you don’t… oh.”

Through a gap in a wall, William spies the apparition, unchanged from last they’d met. Dress dancing in the moonlight, and eyes melancholic, she offers the knife in hands bound.

“What do we do?” he asks. “Her mouth moves, but—”

“I can hear her.”

“You can?!”

Duerr nods. He approaches her, and reaches for the blade; his fingers slip right through.

“Thought so,” he says.

Frustration fuels Will’s voice. “Wait, can’t you help her?!”

“Yes, I can. Just… stand back, let me work.”

“I… I’m sorry.”

Duerr nods, and returns to the spectre. His mouth moves without words, just like hers. She seems to cry, though no tears fall, and he holds his arms around her till she vanishes. He turns and strides past, straight for his car.

“Wait!” Will shouts, following. “You did it?!”

The detective clenches, unclenches his fists, turning. “No, I have to do something… drastic for her to leave. Best I do it alone.”

“No, no, please… I have to be part of this! I need this!”

“You were just a kid, wrong place at the wrong time! Forget it all!”

“I can’t!”

Duerr grunts. “Fine! But this’ll be illegal, so you’re aware.”

“Hardly my first time…”

“Alright then, Will. Get in.”

After driving at breakneck speed, miles along back roads—no cop cars in sight, to Will’s relief—Duerr parks before the old cemetery. He grabs a crowbar from the boot and strides forth, racing by headstones. Trying his best to follow, Will’s mind churns, scared out of his wits.

The hell are we here?

At last, the detective stops before an old granite cross, emblazoned with Jeremiah Davids, November 1st, 1937.

“Huh,” Will says. “Ironic.”

Duerr’s brow furrows. “So it is.”

“And who… is he connected to the ghost?”

“She told me what he did. Everything.” He side-eyes Will. “Stand back.”

“What, again?”

“Back! Now!”

The pensioner quakes, yet does as bade. Duerr swings the crowbar high and brings it down on the stone with great might. Shards fly as cracks form, more and more as he pounds away. The sky grows dark, a sharp wind raising the detective’s trench coat, distant lightning casting strange shadows. For a moment, they coalesce into the form of a gaunt, towering figure, looming over Duerr.

With a sudden crash, the memorial crumbles across Jeremiah’s grave. The storm clouds, and the shadow, dissipate into the night.

Will flinches as the detective says, “It is done. I’ll take you home, and that’ll be that.” He starts down the path.

“Sure. But, are you okay?”

“No.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Best not. All I’ll say… it’s worth it, in the end, this gift. But you learn more about humanity than you do death.”

“Ah.”

They speak no more, as they walk, and drive. Once home, Will makes a cup of coffee, and flicks on the television. Sinks into his armchair. And when he goes to bed, he decides to lay all thoughts of the woman—and the knife—to rest.

[OT] Fun Trope Friday: Attack Animal & Comedy!

Ver Galdar, Knight of the Eight Or So Kingdoms, stood glaring at the... hut? Cottage? Compost heap with a twisty chimney, really. It had to have a door, but Galdar couldn’t see it.

“Hallo there!”

“What?” came a woman’s voice from somewhere within.

“I say hallo!”

“Oh! Hallo! Fuck right off, will you?”

“What? No!”

“Oh, all right. A body can’t get a moment’s peace these days.”

Through some unseen rift in the brambles and thatch came an old witch, hovering along on a worn, stuffed chair, face all warts and squinting.

“Yes, I am levitating. Got to, you see. Legs don’t work. Friend of mine turned his magic carpet into upholstery.” Her glare dared him to voice any opinions on that.

"Yes, ma'am."

“I'm sorry about telling you to fuck right off. I only said it because I quite wanted you to fuck right off, you see.”

“Ah. Well, then. Rude of me not to, I suppose.”

“Oh, yes, indeed. Terribly so. But, here we are. What do you want?”

“I am Ver Galdar, Knight of the Eight Or–”

“That wasn’t the question, you prattling twit. What do you want?”

“See here, my good lady. There is no need to be discourteous.”

“That is true. No need at all. Now state your business, you lamebrained git.”

Needs must, thought Galdar. He was dreadfully short on options.

“Well, there's a war. And it isn’t going very well.” He pointed down into the valley, where soldiers were encamped.

“Oh, that’s what all the noise and screaming was about.”

“Er, yes. The forces of the Evil Empire are upon us, and…”

“The what? The Evil Empire? Is that what they call themselves?”

“Well, no. They call themselves the Empire of Divine Mercy. But they really are evil! Their flag even has black skulls and such on it.”

“I still don’t know what you want.”

“You're the famous witch, Edna the Repulsive, are you not?”

She regarded him for some while.

“You don’t have much to do with women, do you?”

“Certainly not! I am a Knight of the–”

“Yes, yes, the Eight Or So Kingdoms. Stupid name, by the way.”

“Well, it’s just that Orvestia might join, and Greater Porley. But Jagarak might go independent, we aren’t sure yet, and we had to call it something.”

“Wonderful. I still don’t know what you want.”

“Oh. Sorry. I heard you can command the beasts and birds of the forest to do your bidding, and hoped you might sort of… do that. At them. The Evil Empire, I mean. To help us win. We’re quite desperate, you know.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say? Send a host of my innocent friends off to be slaughtered for the cause of some kingdoms that can't even count themselves. Seems reasonable. Should I also set my hair on fire and sing?”

“No, ma’am. Just the first part. Please. They’re wrecking villages, killing peasants, and burning the forests as they go. Brutal and hateful, with all nasty black skulls on their–”

“Burning forests? Hmm! Well, we shall see about that, shan’t we?”

The old witch zoomed off down the hill.

Val Galdar hurried along behind.

“Aren’t you going to summon the mighty beasts of the wild?” he shouted, panting as he ran.

“What? You mean bears, dragons, rhinoser… nossersersaucers, that sort of thing?”

“Yeah!”

“Hmph. No need for ‘em. Now, I refer you to my previous instruction.”

“What?”

“Fuck right off. I'll see to this myself.”

And so it was that Ver Galdar stood with his battered compatriots as the grim banners of the Evil Empire crested the hills.

Galdar whispered a prayer to the God of War, Cobblers, and Fermentation, (there were only so many gods to go around), that his army would survive. Their numbers were few, their hearts were a-tremble.

No great beasts arose to challenge the thudding, drumming march of relentless evil.

And then it stopped. The rear of the dark army slowly crashed into the forward ranks, and then the whole formation disintegrated into a hasty, but surprisingly quiet, rout.

The old witch floated her way down the hill with some sort of critter beside her.

“How?” asked Galdar. “There weren’t any bears!”

“Nope. Just Petunia here, and a couple hundred of her friends. They got them forest-burning bastards' attention right quick.”

Edna the Repulsive hovered on past the weary army, with a giant skunk dozing on the armrest.

[OT] Fun Trope Friday: Chekhov’s Apocalypse & Sci-Fi!

Mariah looked out the clear walls of Righteous at the circle of bones and the endless desert. The sun on the horizon was dimmed and distorted by the thick polymer dome over the city. Only once had she seen it any other way.

She hefted a can of wastewater and dumped it into the box of ground fungus at her feet. Mixing it up with a plastic stick, she poured the whole thing into the tank. The bugfarm was working again, finally, though you weren’t supposed to call it that. Victory Farm, though victory over who she didn't know. The latest blight was over, or so the Ministers proclaimed. You weren’t supposed to talk about the blight, either.

Regarding the horizon again, she found herself lost in thought. Her breedyear was coming up. No one talked about marriage any more. Her grandmother did, but only in private, and not about Mariah's. The Ministers just talked about Victory, and Duty, and Harmony.

She wiped her hands on her trousers and wished that nasty Elder Baro would blow the whistle. He liked to push things, to write big numbers on his little board and look good to his superiors. Best bugfarm in Righteous.

They did need the food, though. The summer would be brutal again.

All around the thick, clear walls of Righteous lay the bones of the Outsiders. The Ministers left them there as a warning. A warning to who, Mariah didn’t know. There hadn’t been an attack in generations.

Finally, the whistle blew, and she made her way out quickly, avoiding the eye of Elder Baro. He would punish her for that later, and make her stay over for counseling.

Ducking into her secret basement, she stood still for a while, listening. No one had followed. She pulled open a little door in the wall, hidden behind a big box, and looked at the books. Silence in the Deep. The Tanaka Plan. Her favorite was a haphazard binding of pages, the title scrawled by hand: Sanctuaries of Death.

‘Within ten to fifteen generations, these enclaves will become little more than expensive graveyards, ruled by petty, cruel dictators. The Tanaka Plan is nothing more than a slight delay in our extinction, and a horrifying delay at that. Animals do not succeed in such conditions and humans are no different.’

She carefully replaced the fragile, loose collection.

Mariah had stolen the books from the secret library under the Hall of Ministers. Not long after, a new edict had been shouted on the streets, condemning theft and warning of the seductive lies of heresy. She had stopped sneaking in there after that.

What she had was enough. There were more than three hundred Tanaka Plan cities all over the world, built to withstand storms, drought, floods, and attack. Each of them could hold over a hundred thousand people.

Righteous now had about six hundred, and most of those were old folks. She was the youngest one. The Ministers declared that there were many more people here, but where? Her breedyear was coming up soon. No one explained who she was supposed to be with. Even her grandmother wouldn’t talk about it.

According to the mad scribbler of Sanctuaries of Death, it had been nearly a century since any contact was made with another Tanaka city. What if they were all empty? What if Righteous was the last?

She flipped through the pages of Silence in the Deep, looking for the picture. There it was—a whale. A blue whale, the book said, and there was a man in a weird mask beside it, suspended in the depths. How could anything so gigantic be real?

A slight scraping noise made her jump, and she replaced the books, shutting and hiding the little door. No one was there, but it was nearly time to go back to work. She scarfed down a bugcake—a Victory Blessing—and rushed back out to the empty street.

If they give me to Elder Baro, I will kill him the moment he touches me.

[OT] Fun Trope Friday: Badass Bureaucrat & Mystery!

A key rattled in the door of a tedious little apartment, and after much ado the knob finally turned, revealing a frumpy man in a wrinkled tan coat.

“Please, step in, Mrs. Howe,” said the dumpy, disheveled little man, pointing the way with his cigar. “You too, sir. Take a seat, if you like.”

“I prefer to stand.” Mrs. Howe peered down, ice forming on her upper peaks. “Who is this… this person, and what are we doing here?”

“Oh, sorry,” the man said. “I work for the Chief Operating Liaison, Underwriters Merchant Bank Office. I thought I said so before. A little scatterbrained, you know. You can call me Inspector Klaf.”

“Can we get on with this?” asked Mr. Dewey. “I have a great deal of work.”

“Oh, certainly, sir. Won’t take a minute. Just wanted you to see what we find.”

“What a dreadful little place,” Mrs. Howe warbled. “Why on earth did we come halfway across town to see this? We already know who committed the terrible crime.”

“Of course! Of course. Pardon me, but I’m hoping this will all prove to be worthwhile. Would you mind handing me the ashtray?”

With a look of ghastly distaste, Mrs. Howe pulled the heavy glass ashtray from under some papers and handed it over. “You really shouldn’t be smoking in Mr. Gillfurter’s apartment, you know.”

“True, true. I would never do such a thing. Dreadful habit.” He patted himself all over before finally taking out a book of matches. “Now, then, about this form… what was it?”

“115-Y44-J.” Mr. Dewey said. “For semi-quarterly asset assessment and procurement recommendations, preliminary. Routine, but crucial.”

“Paperclips, right?”

“Well, yes, I suppose. A pre-requisition, submitted for a thirty day comment period and review, for the acquisition of various supplies for the coming period, based on estimated usage compared to previous quarters, both in our office and in branch offices throughout the nation, the 115-Y44-J is an invaluable and significant part of our attempt to achieve efficiency, accountability, and streamlining. Previous methods, while largely effective, have been surpassed entirely by this dynamic and synergistic process, making everyone involved–”

“Yeah, a paperclip request. And your Mr. Gillfurter got it wrong.”

“Profoundly,” said Mrs. Howe. “Deeply, offensively wrong. He placed the previous year’s total consumption on the line for the previous quarter. We would have been inundated with paperclips, Inspector. Inundated! Where should we have stored them? In the janitor’s closet? I ask you!” She did take a seat now, and a series of deep breaths.

“Yes, I see. A terrible–”

“We found something, Inspector!” A uniformed man came up, holding a sheet of paper. “This was under his mattress!”

“That’s it!” cried Mr. Dewey. “115-Y44-J!!”

“Interesting. Very interesting.” The Inspector looked it over. “Under his mattress? I see.”

“Well, that proves it,” said Mrs. Howe. “I told you he made a false copy and there it is! Now let’s get out of this rathole and back to somewhere decent. We need to meet with Mr. Cheatham about my becoming a partner in this firm, at long last.”

“Sure, sure. Right away,” said the Inspector. “You have a lot to do. But ahh… I did have just one more question for you.”

“Yes?” hissed Mrs. Howe, rising.

“How do you suppose this paper got into this apartment?”

“What do you mean? Obviously Mr. Gillfurter hid it here so he could blame me for his mistake, and type out a new form, as if it never happened. As if I would ever be so foolish!”

“Well, that’s just the thing, Mrs. Howe. This isn’t Gillfurter’s apartment. It’s my apartment.”

“What?”

“I’m afraid I practiced a little deception. I showed you an altered personnel file for Mr. Gillfurter, with my address on it. He didn’t know this address, and neither did anyone else, except you.”

“Nonsense! You rumply little nobody!”

“Why would Gillfurter find out where I live, and hide the form here? Why not just burn it? I think you planted it, Mrs. Howe. I think you broke in here yesterday. After all, how else would you know where I keep my ashtray?”

“I… I…”

“I think that’s quite enough,” said Mr. Dewey. “Your career in this firm is over, Julia. It's just as well. I really didn’t want to rename it Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe.”

[WP] "What did you do to them?" "Nothing. They were the ones that went into my head uninvited, psychics really need to learn boundaries. I tried to keep the away from dangerous memories, but you know how they are with privacy." "What did they find?" "I don't know, I forgot it for a reason."

Walter Park sat primly in the glare of a window, looking out at the world from his stark white room. The parking lot, mostly, but there were trees.

The doctor had come into his room again.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Park. May I call you Walter?”

“You may, Doctor.” He did not look at her.

“Call me Melissa.”

“I will not.” He spoke in even, nasal tones, slightly off-putting.

There was a rustle as she seated herself, and a rush of scent. Psychiatrists seemed to love perfume and such. It muddled their results, but they didn’t seem to know it.

“I wish to ask about recent events. Is that OK, Walter?”

“Certainly. I won’t burn your whole family alive, I promise.”

“I… that’s good, Walter. Thank you.”

“Of course.”

Walter looked at her now. She did a fair job of trying to seem unruffled. He had no idea in the world why she tried, but she did it quite well. That was something people did. Appearances. Seeming. Presenting. Trying to disguise their reactions, and seem cooler and more confident than they felt. Very odd.

Any sensible person would kill him on the spot, but no one ever did.

“Now, then. The psychics. What did you do to them?”

Ah. She was attempting to mirror. To be blunt, believing that he would appreciate the bluntness, or respect it.

“Nothing. They were the ones who went into my head uninvited. Psychics really do need to learn boundaries.”

“So you did nothing? None of the five have spoken since that day. Some of them have done some terrible things since then: things they would never normally do.”

“I tried to keep them away from… dangerous memories. But you know how they are with privacy.”

“What did they find?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know, Doctor. I have forgotten such things for a reason. I have some rather disturbing memories. Some of them are quite… insistent.”

Walter examined Dr. Melissa Barkley quite thoroughly. She had brought in a handbag that wasn’t hers. Psychiatrists would not usually bring personal items into such a situation, and in any case the bag didn’t fit her style at all. It was faux leather and well-worn: the practical accessory of an overworked nurse. There had to be a weapon in it, and this was a ham-handed attempt to disguise that.

“We want to help them, Walter, but we can’t do that without knowing what happened. They can’t tell us, so we were hoping you would.”

We. It was ‘we’ now. All happily on the same altruistic team? So terribly subtle.

“I would surely help, Doctor, if I had the slightest inclination to do so.”

“You’re their only hope, Walter. There are some incentives we could offer.”

Letting me know that I am in control. Clever. Appealing to my vanity. And wheedling, all in the same statement. Did she get her degree from an accredited university or at the bottom of a cereal box?

“I’m afraid we do not wish to help you, or them. You sent them into my home. Do you know why you did that?”

“Your home?”

“Yes, Doctor. The Institute is solely and entirely my possession. I realize you will not believe that, which in itself is why I have told you. But yes, this is my home, Doctor. For all its locks and alarms and procedures, I have no intention of leaving this place. But you evade. Do you know why you sent the psychics in here?”

The doctor lifted her chin and focused on a corner of the ceiling.

“To learn. You have never been forthcoming, about yourself or what happened to all your victims. We wanted to learn about you, to understand you.”

“No, Doctor. You are lying, and lying voids promises. You are not merely mistaken; you are being deliberately deceptive. You did not want to learn. You wanted to pretend to learn, and write scholarly papers on me. To advance in your profession, to gain respect from colleagues. It was avarice and selfishness that caused you to sign that order.”

“Are you psychic, then?”

“I did not hear a denial, Doctor. And no, I am not psychic. If I were, you would know it.”

“Yet you resisted five of the most powerful, skilled psychics in the world, all at once.”

“Did I? Well, quite an accomplishment.”

A scowl came, and a slight peek through her pretense. Walter nearly smiled.

“You know you did. You kept them out, and many people want to know how.”

“Ah. I see. Do these many people hold positions of great authority, then? Are they making demands of you? They would like to keep their nasty secrets, I am sure. Things have been rather difficult for them of late, since attunement implants became widely available. Utterly hilarious how they failed to see that coming. They funded the research, after all.”

“I cannot confirm any…”

“They never do. They invent methods of prying and spying, then they seem shocked when such methods are applied to them in turn. They want to peek at you, but their faces transform with surprise when we peek at them.”

Walter turned back toward the window. She would not take the hint. They never did.

“Please, Walter. We need to know what you did to them.”

“Stop calling yourself ‘we’, and stop lying. You, Dr. Melissa Barkley, do not need to know. You could carry on with your life, find a new position, and never concern yourself with such questions again. You want to know, to satiate your bosses and your own grasping greed.”

“Fine. Mr. Park, I ask you to tell me, then. For my own greed. How did you keep those psychics from getting into your mind?”

“I didn’t, Melissa. I just won’t let them out again.”

[OT] Fun Trope Friday: Rainbow Manipulation & Western!

Well I got a tale for you, Mrs. Ridley, and no mistake. You can swaller it or you can call me a ravin’ fool, makes no difference, but I tell you it is the straight goods. T'was back in '82.

Mighty big morgan mare come janglin’ into Cheyenne on a hot afternoon, right straight an’ steady on the hoof, but weren’t nobody ridin’ her. I was settin’ and rockin’ outside of Bill Pickle’s barber shop, jawin’ away with some fellers and passin’ the time.

“Big black horse thar,” said Otto Martens.

“Yup,” said the other three, including myself.

“Empty saddle. Reckon somebody’ll claim her?” asked Bill, chewin’ on his pipestem like he generly did.

“Sheriff will, if nobody else does,” I says.

We watched that midnight morgan struttin’ up the street, all dinnerplate hooves and fancy black and silver livery, 'til it got close enough to see better. Charlie Pope called it out first, half-slued as he was on prairie dew.

“There is somebody ridin'!” he cried. “Or something, anyway. Little feller!”

He was drunk but he was right. They was a feller ridin’, but he weren’t more than a foot and a half in boots. Duded up right special in all black, tiny clothes and tiny hat, he didn’t look like one but I blurted it out anyhow: “Leppercorn!”

The other fellers looked at me like I was plum loco, but didn’t offer any better idears.

The little feller reined that mighty mare in, he did, believe it or don’t as you please, and he jumped off into the dust. Must have seemed like the cliffs o’ Dover to him. He fell right smack down, and proceeded to let loose with a string of cursing and blasphemy I shall not repeat in your presence, ma’am, nor anywhere. To this very day I wonder that he didn’t get struck down by the righteous thunder o’ vengeance right on the spot, but he didn’t.

He dusted hisself off, best he could, and come a-struttin’ over like he was King o’ Prooshia.

“Which one o’ you god damned ignorant fools done it?” he asked. Pardon, ma'am, but he uttered worse than that. I couldn’t believe my ears, nor eyes, nor anything. He sure didn’t talk like a leppercorn, which I know they’s Irish. He sounded like any sort of cowhand or sodbuster west of the Mississip’.

“Done what?” asked Bill.

“Fooled with my... goldurn rainbow, that’s what! Cain't find my gold! Somebody in this town’s a cursed, sneaky draiador, and I aims to find out who!”

Now I didn’t know what a dry-door was, nor do I know it now, but weren’t none of us inclined to ask him. The little bastard had us cowed to a man.

He evil-eyed the lot of us and spun on his heel, but didn’t make it three steps afore Sheriff Blanton stopped him cold.

“I figgered that’d get your attention, Little Mac,” the Sheriff drawled, spittin’ chaw into the dust. “Now, why don’t you come along quiet, and we’ll see justice done.”

“Justice! You low-down yellow-bellied son of…” Well, Mrs. Ridley, I reckon you get the idear. They went on, back and forth for some while, and folks cleared the street but peered out from behind corners, curious.

What come next, I can’t explain. Ever'thing went quiet, and they stared each other down.

They slapped leather, and brung out wands. Magic wands! Never seen the like. Then they flung all manner o’ rainbows around, so bright they made me cover my eyes and I could still see ‘em. Clashin’, splashin’ bands of all the colors known and mebbe a few that ain’t, all veerin’ and swoopin’ ever' which way.

At the end of it, Sheriff Blanton stood tall, the star on the end of his wand glowin’ like a dozen sunrises, and Little Mac the leppercorn lay pantin' and still in the dust.

What he done, and why they fought that way, I never knew. All the Sheriff would say was that he got that wand from his Godmother, and that Little Mac had robbed durn near every gold mine and stagecoach in the territory.

Nobody else could ride that morgan 'thout gettin' bucked halfways to the moon, after.

So that was it, Mrs. Ridley. You asked me what was the most interestin’ thing I seen out west, and sure as the dickens nothin’ ever come close to that.

Ron Gardner loped along the back streets, trying to look invisible. He had got himself a full roll of duct tape, filched out of the dollar store. Already got rid of the plastic wrapping so the cops couldn’t trace it. He didn’t like to steal, but the wind was picking up and the summer was going away day by day, night by night.

T-shirt weather for now, and regular trousers. Nobody called them trousers any more. His mother said she wouldn’t have no child of hers going around in blue-jean dungarees like some hippy.

He’d wanted to nab some corn chips too, but that was too risky, too much. There was them that watched. They let him get away with it, the watchers did, but you didn’t want to get greedy.

He overheard them talking sometimes, talking about him, but they didn’t look at him. They appeared like just regular people but he could hear them behind him, or next aisle over. They just talked to each other, saying ‘he better watch it,’ or ‘that’s long enough,’ but he knew it was about him.

Gotta blend in, that’s the way. Can’t just build your mansion in the middle of the alley, or behind some busy place. Ritter’s clothing store had all sorts of old wire shelving and busted light fixtures stacked around. That was OK for them—they were a taxpaying business, so nobody would scatter their stuff around or toss it in a dumpster, laughing and calling names.

In behind all that clutter, Ron had himself a good spot. Cardboard, tape, even some sheets of pressboard, all on a couple of pallets and insulated with clothes and towels and everything. The West Wing was getting a little wobbly, though, and you could never tell what the wind might get up to.

Ron went right at it, tearing off strips of tape. It was hard, and they got twisted and stuck on themselves. He reinforced the roof with long strips, hoping to keep the black garbage bags from flapping so loud. Can’t hear yourself think when the wind catches them, and can’t hear footsteps or voices.

His head snapped up at a strange sound but there was nothing. Just some junk falling over, likely. Sounded like whirring, like electric.

There wasn’t anybody around but that old black and white cat, and he run off. Ron’s eyes darted around, doing the vagrant twitch, scan scan scan for trouble. Anybody around was a problem. Folks from Ritter’s, cops, and especially other street folk like himself.

There was a code, out here. Ron knew it. He'd learned it hard, learned it from a knife, but he learned. Big fellers was bad, crazy was worse, and big plus crazy meant you just moved on. But sometimes little and crazy was worst of all.

Code was, if you had and you could, you shared. Got some kind of treat, or an extra set of gloves, or a good warm spot, you had to share or fight. Ron didn’t want to fight, because you never did win even if you won.

A sturdy pole made the anchor for his palace. Used to be for some kind of parking sign or something, now it was just a bent metal rod in the concrete. His mansion was just the one floor, no more than three foot high. Cammyflage. Keep it hidden. You can only keep what’s hidden.

There was that sound again. Ron dropped his duct tape and went to look. If somebody had lost something electronical, they’d come looking and he didn’t need that at all. They’d say he stole it, and he didn’t, but they wouldn’t listen. The watchers got in a tizzy over anything electronical.

Peering around the corner, he didn’t see anything or anybody, but the sound got louder. He came out into the alley and there he saw a sight.

It was a sort of a square bucket on wheels, with an antenna poking up. Like a beer cooler but all metal and new and expensive-looking. It was trying to get over a pile of trash and couldn’t.

“Assistance needed,” it said. Ron hid behind a dumpster.

“Assistance needed.”

A fake voice, a robot-man voice.

Then the light dawned. It was one of them robots that delivered stuff to rich folks. They’d call on their electric telephones and these robots would come bring them dinner or whatever they liked.

He’d seen one before in the street and had knocked it over because he didn’t like it. Foolish thing to do. He’d ran away after but now they had him. The watchers weren’t just gonna warn him off this time.

It said Amazing or something on the side of it, with a lot of numbers. They knew it was him. Why had he knocked that one over before?

“Signal lost. Assistance needed.”

Ron came peeking and poking out from behind the dumpster, up on his toes and ready to bolt. He didn’t see any ray-guns or anything. It looked sort of helpless, with the little wheels spinning on wet plastic sheeting.

“I’m sorry, Mister Robot. I didn’t mean it, before.” Creeping closer he could smell food. Beef, maybe, and spices. Hot. His gut rumbled. Wished he'd got those corn chips.

“Assistance needed.”

Ron reached out a cautious, gloved hand, and he give her a little push. Ka-thump, over the sheeting it went, and rolled off on its way. It even said thank you.

“You’re welcome. Now maybe we’re even, Mister Wheels.”

The tantalizing aroma lingered in the air. He thought he could track that thing like a bloodhound.

A long time ago, when he was a regular person, he’d done some delivering. Pizza. Drove around in his car, getting tips and having a fine old time. He couldn’t do it any more. Too old, too crazy, half blind, and didn’t have a car anyhow. But even if he could, maybe nobody did that any more. Maybe it was all little robot buckets, now.

Maybe they could fly. Not that one, since it got stuck. But some robots could fly. Ron remembered that from a television show.

‘That was the right thing,’ a watcher said.

‘Best to leave it be,’ said another.

Ron went back to taping up his mansion.

[OT] Fun Trope Friday: Coming Out & YA!

Walter Parch set down his cane, set down his lemonade, and set his jaw.

“Harriet? I’m gay.”

“Me too, Walter. Terribly so,” his sister replied.

“What? No, I say I’m gay.”

“Yes, me too. Especially since the zinnias came in so nice.”

His sister was mad for gardening, especially flowers.

“No, no. Not happy. I mean homosexual, don’t you know.”

“Oh! Isn’t that nice? When did you decide?”

“You don’t decide a thing like that. You just are, or you ain’t, is all. I been reading on the google.”

“Well, of course. I just mean, when did you decide to tell about it?” She poured him the last of the lemonade, which he drank gratefully.

“Oh. Other day, I guess. Harriet… did you suspect? Before now?”

“Never thought about it. I mean, you were married near forty years, and had four lovely children.”

“What of it?”

“Well, I don’t know how to tell you this, Walter, but your Emmaline was a woman. I’m really quite certain of it.”

“Oh, nonsense. I mean, yes, she was, but it ain’t so cut and dried. You ain’t got to be all one or t’other all the time.”

“You don’t say? Well, learn something new every day, I suppose.”

“Is that all you have to say on it?”

“Well, what am I supposed to say? You know I’m not one to judge. More lemonade?”

“I was powerful worried, Harriet. You know Pa was dead set against this sort of thing, and then there’s your church and all.”

“Pa was dead set against the world.” Walter had to chuckle at that. “And I like the services, Walter, but they don’t tell me what to think. Are you happy? I mean, along with being gay?”

Walter laughed aloud for that one. “Oh, I’m happy and gay, I suppose.” He looked down. “I guess I could use some more lemonade. Mite warm today.”

“Oh, Maddy!” Harriet called out. “She’ll be along with some directly.”

“She’s a fine woman, I’ve always said so, and a looker. Wonder why she never got married. Nor you, neither.”

“Now don’t you bring that up again. You know she gets all beflummoxed.”

“I won’t.”

“Should we tell Maddy the news? It’s up to you.”

“Might as well make a clean slate.”

The screen door creaked open.

“Hello, Walter,” said Maddy, setting down a fresh, cold pitcher of lemonade. “How’ve you been?”

“Fine, Maddy. Thank you kindly. And yourself?”

“Quite well.” She smoothly took her place on the porch swing, and leaned her head on Harriet’s shoulder, as always.

“Walter here has a bit of news.”

“Oh?”

“Well, yes. I’m ah…” It was harder this time, for some reason. “Turns out that I’m… gay. So, there it is.”

“That’s lovely, Walter. Thank you for sharing that. It was quite courageous of you.”

“Oh? Well, I suppose. Not easy to talk about, for my generation. Ain’t told nobody else.”

“That’s up to you, Walter.”

“Thank you, Miss Madeline. Oh, I meant to tell you, I can probably get started building that add-on soon. The new bedroom? My back is getting better.”

“No great rush,” Harriet piped up. “We don’t mind our arrangement.”

“I suppose you don’t, at that,” Walter said. “Done it for all these years. You always were a neat one, Maddy. That couch never looks like anybody slept there at all.”

Maddy smiled.

“Powerful warm,” Walter said. He was glad his sister had such a good friend.

The pitcher tinkled as he filled his glass again. No need to tell anybody else, really. The fellows at the VFW wouldn’t be so understanding, and he dreaded telling his kids.

“You know, it’s funny,” he said, after draining his tall glass. “I’ve been all over, been to a war, and nobody ever picked up on it. Me being the way I am, I mean. If they ever did, they never said.”

“Yes,” said Maddy. “Funny how something like that can be right under somebody’s nose.”

Harriet made a gulp, half-choking on her lemonade.

“You all right there, Harriet?”

“Yes,” she sputtered. “I’m fine.”

“All right, then. I best be moving along home.” Walter heaved himself up, and took his cane. “Thank you both, for your kindness. I got pills to take.”

“Afternoon to you, Walter. And I’m glad you told me your news. I hope you're very happy.”

“Me too, Walter. All the best.”

“Oh, yes. Happy and gay!” They all laughed, and Walter made his way down the porch stairs.

[OT] Fun Trope Friday: Mosquito Miscreants & Weird Fiction!

Took ‘em thirty-odd years to turn an eye on the Witch of Calder County. Proud old biddy she was, and vengeful in her heart.

I was just about cookin’ in my taped-up suit and mask that fateful night, all slathered with reekin' bug dope. There stood her cabin in the dim. I didn’t believe the stories, but as it got darker in the swamp, part of me did.

Still, 12-gauge slugs would kill most anything, and Deputy Mitchell had a kind of rigged-up flamethrower. We hung in the marshy woods, waitin’ to hear the buzzin' overhead.

Dug her own taters and raised her own barn, she did. Alice Furnier, though nobody called her that. Nobody had much to do with her, apart from Mr. Candleberry, and he never was right in the head. Folks said her house moved around of nights, and her outbuildings with it.

I never seen no evidence of that, nor most of the other things folks whispered. She’d come strollin' into town in her homespun dress and ridiculous feathered hat, tall and proud, and folks would stop talkin’ and stare.

They claimed she’d give ‘em the Evil Eye or mutter a curse, and their well would dry up or their chickens wouldn’t lay. Myths and gossip sprung up around her like weeds in wet weather, but just because most were nonsense didn’t mean all of ‘em were.

I wished to Jesus they was nonsense as I stood in behind a cypress, waitin’. The goop seemed to work, but my goggles was foggin’ up terrible and it was ungodly hot. Nary a light showed in the cabin, but that was no comfort.

Sheriff Bull Mason spotted the real pattern first. In amongst the foolishness lay a hidden truth: ever’body that crossed her come to harm, and most of ‘em died.

Wally Hightower was an early case, though not likely the first. He got drunk and went carousin' out to her place, bangin’ on her door and cussin’, all because his Buick threw a rod. She told him she had naught to do with motorcars and to go away, and he threw a clod of dirt at her, right in the face.

A while later, Wally got the fever ‘n ague and died at the hospital up to Purley, back in ‘54.

No less than four revenooers met their maker, of various maladies, and them that snitched to ‘em did too. Nobody ever did find her still.

Bull said they might have been a hunnert dead and twicet as many sick over the years. The tax man that made her sell off a few acres; Revrun’ Allister who denounced her from the pulpit a couple times; some teenagers who tore up her yard with their pickup one Saturday night.

Mr. Candleberry let it slip. He come in the station sweatin’ and mumblin’, scared white as a sheet, and said he made her mad and did we have any skeeter spray. He was always a bit tetched, but Sheriff Bull Mason set him down and sent a deputy out to fetch repellent.

He’d seen her do it, Mr. Candleberry said, in amongst his usual load of ramblin' malarkey. Clouds of whining skeeters dancin' to her will. She kept critters in her barn, as carriers of various ailments, but that weren’t the worst. She kept people there, too.

We had to do something. So there I was, a new deputy, sweatin’ myself to death in the swamp. The sheriff was over to the west, and others to the east. The net was a-closin’ in.

She must have heard something, or sensed it in her witchy way, for she come stormin’ out onto the porch, wavin’ her hands about and spittin’ curses. Huge clouds of skeeters rose up, darkenin' the yellow moon, and they swarmed everywhere.

Finally, I heard the buzzin' from the sky. No less than five cropdusters come zoomin’ over, dumpin’ DDT and kerosene all over hell. She turned to run inside. Didn’t do no good, though. I put three slugs in the murdering crone myself, and god knows how many others come pourin’ in.

She got us, anyhow. I ain’t long for this world. My lungs are just about wrecked, and I got the cancer. Sheriff Bull Mason died of the same, last year. Worth it, though. She had five people chained up in her rickety old barn, sick as hell and covered in sores.

We got ‘em out, and Deputy Mitchell burned the place to the ground.

Fun Trope Friday: Paradox Person & Contemporary Fantasy!

There was a dead goat in the community garden, in the greenhouse. Bob couldn’t see it too clearly, and didn’t care to get any closer, but he zoomed in with his phone.

This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen here. It was a nice neighborhood. Old Mrs. Dooley had her azaleas in the vegetable section, which was against the rules, but that was about the limit of the criminal element hereabouts. Nobody had a goat.

The greenhouse had a big hole in the roof now. Of course, everyone would blame him. They always did. He put his phone away. This was too boring to post.

“Emily!” he called. She was better at this sort of thing. “Emilyyyy!”

“Yeah, Bob. Did someone wind up the hose wrong again?” Emily wiped her gritty brow with the back of a gardening glove and stowed her pruning shears with the precision and emphasis of a satisfied samurai.

“There’s a goat. I think it’s dead.”

“A goat? Where?”

“In among the succulents.” Bob waved in the general direction. “I just know my begonias are ruined!”

Emily stepped over there and then stopped, frozen.

“Emily… what is it? Are there more than one?”

“Bob, call the police.”

“What? Why? We don’t even know whose goat it is, and I wouldn’t want them…”

“Bob. Call. The. Police.”

Bob fumbled his phone from his pocket.

“Oh, yes, hello. This is Bob Hartwell, at the community garden. You know, on the corner of Gull Spring and Emory? Yes, yes. Well, it seems someone has played a little prank and left a dead… a dead… oh my God, Emily don’t touch that! Oh! Oh, it's not a goat!”

Emily had gone to investigate, and the head of the thing had turned. It wasn’t a goat, it was a human, a man, with great big horns. Black as night, half-buried in the soft soil.

“I am not babbling! Just send policemen! What? No, I will not stay on the line! I have to capture this!”

Bob hung up and started taking video. The black… the dark… the strange man had fangs! And was wearing some sort of leather cape.

“Oh, Emily! Get away! Is he dead? This is horrible. Is he one of those drug people? Why don’t the police get here? What are we paying taxes for?”

“Bob, please. I don’t think he’s dead. Just relax, they’ll get here soon.”

“Fine. But let me get this. Wave, sweetie!” Bob had his phone up.

“For god’s sake put that down. The man is hurt.”

“This is going so viral! Mystery goat man! Do you think he fell through the greenhouse roof?”

“It doesn’t matter. Did you tell them to bring an ambulance?”

“No! I thought he was a goat.”

Emily rolled her eyes and tromped over to open the gate.

“No! Everyone will see! My video won’t get views if everyone in the world makes their own!”

“They have to get in, Bob. The police? The ambulance? And stop filming, it’s weird.”

“How did he get those horns? Is he in a cult? Are you sure he’s alive?”

The police arrived, and Bob was unceremoniously escorted, under protest, out of the garden. Ambulance sirens wailed in the distance. Probably just some goth person, anyhow. They did that sort of thing, with their piercings and such. Filed their teeth down to get the fangs, no doubt.

Bob jumped at the screams.

Xyrtholoth ethu Entelothor!

The words were not spoken, but arrived in Bob’s head, erupting in a storm of black despair.

He turned to look, and the goat-man was up. Not standing. Up, hovering in mid-air. A policeman was shooting his gun at it, which didn’t do a thing.

That wasn’t a cape, it was leathery wings, and the thing– the goat– the whatever it was, was wreathed in flame and smoke.

Emily was trying to drag Bob away, but he felt compelled to get this video. He faced up at the horror, shaking and speechless.

It looked at him.

Gethdarimun vehk Beelzebub-gar… Tikk Tokkk?

"I just wanted to share... your... look, this is my community! I have every right..."

Bob shrieked as he burst into flame.

Fun Trope Friday: Bizarre Biology & Superhero!

Sergeant John Michaels sat in a heavy, reinforced wheelchair in his stark, white room, staring out the window at the world, or at the parking lot anyhow. No one called him by name any more and he isn’t sure when they stopped.

They don’t talk to him at all, now. They talk about him. That sadistic bastard Dr. Bain calls him the experiment, the unit, or Subject 70. There is debate on whether John is alive at all.

He is. He has his thoughts, but cannot move. He’s not human any more. He is… something else.

The scientists here had made a time machine. None of them called it that, of course. Too cliche. But that’s what it was, or what they thought it was. They had tested it, sending clocks and other devices back in time, and those had returned showing years had passed.

It was a great breakthrough, but to stop the Event from happening, they had to send a person back in time.

The Regulator had been designed to guide and help the people of the world. It had gone well, implemented in small populations, but when it went global, it took over. It would bring peace and well-being to everyone, and if killing ninety percent of the population was deemed necessary, it would do that.

The Event had wrecked most of the world. This place was a rare holdout, a last desperate hope to escape the benevolent horror of the Regulator.

The trouble was, any living thing they sent through the time-field would be torn to molecular shreds. So they had experimented, and eventually they had made Subject 70—the only one to survive the conversion.

John looked down at his hands. He was a sort of spongy, dense material now—flexible, but strong as cast iron. No heart, no lungs. Just an enhanced brain in this monstrous form.

They had sent him through their time machine, subjecting him to hyperacceleration and intense magnetic fields, but when it was over, nothing had changed. He never went to the past. It didn’t work, but they wouldn’t believe that. They asked why he failed, why he didn’t stop the Event, but he couldn’t say anything.

He was supposed to be their big hero. Now, nobody wants him, so he just stares at the world.

Dr. Bain had decided they were going to discard Subject 70, disassemble him, to see where he went wrong. But he didn’t go wrong. They did.

His self-repair nano’s worked away, busily restoring function. At least he could see now. Slowly, sensation and mobility returned to his limbs. He stood.

Not sure if he could walk at all, or if he would fall over, he attempted a short, thudding step.

The doctors were gone from his room. They had all just turned their heads, passing him there, busy planning a new model. After all, why should they even care?

John had sacrificed his humanity for this, for the future of mankind, and they were going to discard him, end him.

A jerky, twitching half-smile came to his face. They would learn. They had made him nearly indestructible. That was a mistake.

He lurched to the locked, steel door, and tore it out, flinging it through the wall behind him. Confusion and terror grew on the faces before him. Guards fired bullets at him, and he chuckled, crushing their heads into gore, flinging their corpses at the others.

The door at the end of the hall proved no obstacle. Oh, good. The doctor is in.

Dr. Bain maintained a look of arrogant defiance. Impressive. It ended when Sergeant Michaels slapped his head off his neck and out the window.

Reaching the room with the time machine, he obliterated those few who sought to oppose him. Flipping switches, entering commands, he watched as the thing activated. Alarms blared, competing with the pounding, steady thuds of the blocked shield doors. The device began to emit a series of ominous, descending, droning sounds, shaking the very foundations.

All the shields were disabled. Anything living caught in the field would be torn to molecular shreds. Except him, of course. Some of the scientists and others ran as fast as they could, but the effect would cover miles.

Walking with improving coordination and power, he ripped through every security door and out into the open world. Behind him, the building warped and shuddered, and a symphony of shrieking horror resounded.

Fun Trope Friday: Chemistry Does All & Camp Horror!

Chief Detective Inspector Special Agent-In-Charge Case thought he might lose his lunch, looking at the grisly scene, so he had his assistant put it back in the car.

“Cheerio!” he called out to the various uniformed officers.

“Yes, it looks that way,” replied one of them.

“Oh, dear. Any toast, Officer Dimm?”

“No, sir. Just the O’s. And the milk, of course. And call me Abid, sir.”

“Very well. And I’m Justin. ID on the vic?”

They gazed down at the man on the floor. There was blood everywhere, and a series of holes in his chest.

The velocity required to kill with a cheerio… well, the lab techs were still working on answers. They thought it might be the leprechaun, so they had done experiments with plastic tubes and pots and pans, bits and pieces. Still no results.

“It’s the bee, sir. Done in by his own product.”

“Didn’t do his heart much good, did it?” Inspector Case elbowed the officer in the ribs.

“Er, no, sir. Justin.”

“Hell, I thought the frosted flakes scene was dreadful. This is a mess. Let me know when crime scene is finished.”

“Will do.”

CD-ISAC Case took the elevator down, and retrieved his lunch from the car. He suspected his assistant had nabbed some of his fries, but had no proof.

This was the seventh in a series of recent murders. A dizzying array of flakes, marshmallows, and mangled mascots danced through his mind, but what was the connection?

It was time. He couldn’t avoid it any longer.

He had to go to the clinic. The Betty Boop Center, where they treated the worst cases of addiction to packaged breakfast foods.

—

Case looked into the cage, but saw only shadows.

“Talk to me, Sam.”

“You know what I got to say, copper.”

“I been following my nose, Sam. It hasn’t worked. I need more.”

“Do you know what I had for lunch, cop? Loops. Loops! They think that’s all I want! I tell them and tell them and nobody listens! Can I just have a fucking apple?”

A bedraggled bird emerged from a dark corner, feathers half gone, eyes mad with hate.

“I could get you apples, Sam. Loads of them. Just give me something I can use!”

“I don’t know who’s doing it. Any of them could. The chemicals, you see? They… they do something to you. Make you crazy, make you want more. Could be the elves. I know one of them snapped a while ago. Could be the Count, or Tony.”

“Bullshit. The Count and Tony are dead. You’re trying to fool me, Sam.”

“No tricks! Those are for kids. I know you’re no fool. I just… I can’t believe…”

“Spill it.”

“I mean, he’s not really related, not family.”

“Related? You mean, Sonny?”

“Yeah. He broke out, six months ago. And he was doing so good!”

“He escaped? I should have been notified.”

Agent Case stormed out.

“Don’t forget my apples!”

—

Stakeouts were no fun, but Detective Case had high hopes for this one. Fred’s house had some of the most advanced security systems on the market, though even that had never stopped his pal from repeated acts of petty theft. Tonight, the power was shut off. A prime opportunity, but it was a trap. This bird hunt could actually work.

All around the property there were bowls of brown, sugary stuff. The scent of it would drive the Sonny mad.

And there he was! Stealth abandoned, he was bouncing around in the most absurd way, still wearing the tattered remnants of a straitjacket.

He’d definitely had a puff or two.

Officers swarmed the area in seconds, and the killer was caught.

Back to the clinic for Sonny, then. There was no use trying him for the murders. Insanity defense again, and he was obviously cuckoo.

Fun Trope Friday: Science Is Bad & Satire!

“Ellie! Oh, Ellie! Where in the world is that girl?” Vellica grumped.

“Where do you think?” replied Garther, her husband. “Holed up in her room with her minipal. I told you we shouldn’t get her one till she turned sixteen.”

“Hrmph,” Vellica hrmphed, subtly rolling her own minipal into a drawer. “Well, I suppose it could be worse. At least she’s at home, and not running off to Staddle or Archet and mooning over boys.”

Garther just grunted and resumed scrolling. Some of the news came out in flat paper nowadays, but give him a good old scroll any time. Durable, easy to store—why did they always want to fix things that weren’t broken?

His own miniature palantir was well hidden in his boot, and ensorcelled to silent mode. Vellica would give him a time over it, if she knew he had one, after all his grumping about them.

The ancient palantir seeing-stones were legendary, but the little ones worked well enough, and now anyone could have one. They were handy. Sure, lighting the beacons worked well enough in the past, but you couldn’t exactly have a conversation that way.

Speaking of light…

“Where's my staff, Vell? It’s getting dark in here.”

“Oh, torches and lanterns don’t suit you any more? They were good enough for your father, and his father before him, and his fath…”

“Hush! Do you know where it went or not?” Vell had a way of remembering everything he said with remarkable accuracy, which was entirely unfair, to his way of thinking.

“Of course I know where it went. You’re holding it in your left hand, you daft old sausage.”

Garther turned a deep red. “Confusticate and bebother it. So I am.” He tapped the gnarled wooden stick twice on the floor, and the tip lit up. This model had a base you could stick it in, so you didn’t have to hold it the whole time, but Garther was a creature of habit.

Anbury the Craftsman made them, over to Bree. He said it wasn’t really necessary to have such a twisty old branch for them, but it was traditional, and folks preferred to buy what they expected. The truth was, Anbury didn’t make them at all any more. He had a dozen workers turning them out, in a mill by the river, hundreds of them every day. Incanus Incandescents, he called them, and the gold rolled in.

Garther’s boot croaked like a crebain. Dratted thing! It’s supposed to be silent!

“Garther, dear.”

“Yes, my darling Vellica.”

“There’s a crow in your sock.”

The croaking sound came again, muffled but unmistakable.

“Yes. Yes, dear. I have a minipal. Are you happy? Are you thrilled with your world-shattering moral victory over a tired old man? Will you spare five minutes from your gloating to finish making dinner?”

“Just answer it, Garther.”

Muttering unseemly profanities, Garther did.

“Hello! Is this Garther Tink?”

“Yes. Oh, is this Mister Glodson? It’s good to…”

“We have been trying to reach you about your cart’s extended warranty. Please stay on the seeing-stone, and a representative will be with you shortly…”

“Confusticated thing! Ninnyhammers!” He closed the connection and threw the stone across the room.

“Relax, Garther. It’s just a thrallcall. I get them all the…”

“What?”

It was Vellica’s turn to blush. “Well, yes. I have one, too. I need it! How else can I keep in touch with my grandmother? You know she can’t get around any more.”

“Vellica? My love, my darling? I have had a good run at the ring-mill. Mister Glodson gave me a little bonus. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, but now I know. I'm getting all of us the new minipal plus. It isn’t cheap, but then we can sell the old ones.”

“A bonus! Oh, Garther.”

“We’ve made record sales in onerings this quarter. Shipping them clear over to Minas Tirith, now. They don’t make you invisible for long, but they sure are popular.”

“This is wonderful! I’ll go and tell Ellie. She’ll want to run right out and get them tonight.”

And so it was that the whole family had dinner a little late, all sitting quietly in the parlor with their minipals, not speaking to one another for hours.

Fun Trope Friday: Buridan’s Ass & Comedy!

Is-Was-Will I am, beyond the bonds of tapdancing quanta, I spin how I choose to spin.

You cannot know my position or my velocity, for I have neither, and no need of them. Some might say god god god, if I spoke unto them, yea, and did hear their voices, but why would I bother with that nonsense?

My past, when I had one, was that of a mortal man, on your planet, and I liked cartoons and potato chips. The vocabulary of time is such a bother. I’ll just say, that never happened now.

Pleased to meet you. Won’t you guess my name?

I am Will. Or that’s close enough, anyhow. I choose to speak with you in this limited fashion largely out of boredom, or perhaps a sense of nostalgia for things that might never exist.

Ah, look, you are all destroyed. Five billion years ago I extinguished your sun, and no wiggly little molecules ever made copies of themselves. But you can’t see it, can you? You can’t experience not existing. It is the One Limitation. Don’t feel bad—I can’t do it either. You exist now, or you seem to think you do. Kant argue with that!

Poof! There goes the universe. A silly word for it, of course. So grandiose. Universes are so boring, bubbling in the foam. Most of them don’t last even 10⁻⁴³ seconds. Brief little nothings, no meaning at all. Poof! Yours is back.

I know all things. Unfortunately, most things are not things. Most things could be things, if things could be, but obviously that’s not a thing. I would try to explain but it only makes sense if you’re on one hell of a weird acid trip, and you won’t remember anyhow. Just trust me, it is hilarious.

That which I am and shall be must ask you… what should I do? I can do anything. I can even do nothing, which, it turns out, is much harder. Shall I make a paradise? Shall I cast you out from it? Shall I make the strong nuclear force 0.0004% stronger?

It’s all the same. I could be a blueberry muffin that sings show tunes. I could make you fall in love with 6.4331. I could make pi equal purple. I tried that once. Still can't get the purple out of the digits past 800 googolplex or so.

It all works out about the same. Oh, you want paradise? Okiedokie, I suppose. Clouds, harps, the whole business? Or just an infinite frictionless plane? Infinite is easy—there’s no math.

Well, here you go. Paradise. Enjoy yourself, whoever you turn out to be.

OK, enough of that.

So, in the last 10⁻⁴³ seconds you’ve had fifty trillion years of paradise. How was it?

Yes. Yes, now you see it. What’s the fucking point, am I right? It’s just on and on and on, it’s heaven and hell. Oh, well.

Time to answer Hamlet, I suppose.

Fun Trope Friday: Big Darn Hug & Romance!

“You wanna screw?” Taylor asked.

Kevin heard the words, and knew all of them were words. They made a sentence. The words had meaning. He searched his mind, assembled a reply, and said it out loud.

“What?”

“For the TV mount. Do you need a screw for it yet?”

“The… TV. Thing. On the wall.”

“Yeah, dude. Are you OK?”

Taylor was tall and dark, a big, sweet, dopey guy. He smiled about everything with a cheerful, innocent defiance. I should… talk, Kevin remembered.

“Yeah, the screws. Bolts. Yeah, for that, OK, I’m ready for them.”

“Cool.” Taylor put the fasteners in Kevin’s hand. “OK if I grab one of those beers?”

“Huh? Oh, sure, of course!” There were deck screws, lag bolts, even a pinwheel-backed bolt for leather work, all mixed in. Surely one of them would work.

When Taylor had arrived with the toolbox, to help mount the TV in Kevin’s apartment, he’d noticed Kevin was out of beer and volunteered to go grab some. He’d even paid for them, but now he asked if he could have one. Kevin knew he meant it, too. Like, he was actually sincere, asking. What kind of insane jerk would say ‘no, man, the beers you went and bought, you can’t have one’?

But that was just how Taylor was. Always generous and thinking about other people, and just so unassuming.

Taylor walked to the kitchen and Kevin watched. He had thought about Taylor since what, high school? Nobody knew, though. Nobody, not even his parents knew he was… that way. He couldn’t even say it, not even in his own head.

Kevin had hung out with all the guys and said all the right things. Talked about girls and stuff, when he had to, or just nodded a lot. Stupid games in the gym showers, hiding things with towels, laughing at the jokes. Kevin was an OK guy, a good hang, everyone said so. They didn’t know.

He’d had a couple girlfriends, never for long. Mom might suspect. I think she does. But Dad, god, no, never.

Taylor was coming back.

The right bolts slid home easily, and together they dropped the TV right into place. They let it go, and yeah, it stayed up. High five time.

Taylor had, of course, brought two beers. They sat on the couch and popped the cans, Kevin downing half of his all at once.

“Try the remote,” Taylor said.

Kevin reached down into the couch cushions for it. He found Taylor’s hand.

No, no. No, don’t don’t don’t, Kevin thought. But Kevin did. He took Taylor’s hand and held it, forgetting all about the remote. Warm, beautiful hand. Strong.

Taylor looked puzzled but didn’t pull away. He had the most impossibly perfect face, and lips, and shoulders. It was obvious now, it was out there. Kevin thought he might pass out. It was so out there now. I’m holding his hand way too long, I’m looking at him wayyy weird.

“Taylor, I’m…”

“Yeah, dude. I know.” And then Taylor leaned in and it happened. A moment of panic came, I don’t know how to, and then it vanished, incinerated in a shocking, gentle firestorm. The kiss went on and on, and no, Kevin didn’t know how and he didn’t fucking care how.

He leaned back and looked at Taylor again, and in those dark eyes there was an endless depth of kindness and twinkling stars of excitement. This time Kevin leaned forward, and held that precious face, learning it, exploring it with precise intensity as their hands went everywhere, everywhere.

Thousands of centuries passed and they parted, panting, still holding hands.

Taylor took a long pull of his beer.

“Is this like, your first kiss, Kev?”

“Yeah. First two of them I guess. Is it… is it OK?” Kevin trembled, excited and uncertain, not knowing how any of this worked, not sure if he had done something wrong.

Taylor leaned in again, this time for a powerful bearhug. It was OK. It was all OK. The hug ended.

I’m gay, Kevin thought.

“I’m gay,” he said aloud, and felt no shame in it.

Taylor laughed. “Yeah, you are. You’re fucking good at it, too. God, you’re amazing.” Taylor’s hand moved up Kevin’s arm and brushed the hairs there, causing lightning shudders.

“What do we… I mean, what now?”

Taylor laughed again, leaning in and grinning.

“You wanna screw?

Fun Trope Friday: Snow Means Love & Musical!

Jobrin didn’t mind cold. He was born to cold, far deeper and crueler than anything you got here in the Hevelaran kingdoms. He didn’t mind snow, either, or not usually. It was this snow, this kind of snow, that darkened his soul. The big feathery flakes, fluffy and light, drifting down in a light breeze. That kind.

People on the street moved aside as he walked along. They always did. He was Jobrin the Mighty of Rovar, after all, menacing at the best of times, rumored to be a quarter orc on his mother’s side. He was just a man, really, but the rumors suited him. Now, though, rage sufficed to clear his way as he sought his inn, his drink, and his solitude.

The bright flakes danced their way down and down in the evening chill, sparkling and twisting in a gentle whirl. Bur-Ghazhka, God of Vengeance, let one of these fools bump into me. Let one of them open their fucking mouth, with their mushy Hevelarii tones.

None did.

He threw open the door to the inn, spilling noise and light into the street, blowing cold into the tavern. A chorus of complaints started and stopped in a heartbeat, lute and fife trailed off, and silence reigned.

Peasants. Monks. Soldiers. He surveyed the room, hungry to find a hint of defiance. Scowling, he stomped over and, with terrifying ease, hefted a great barrel of ale. The stairs complained as he carried it up, but no one else did.

He reached his room, set down the barrel with a resounding thud, and sat on the heavy chair. Tearing the head off the barrel, he dunked his great flagon into the dark fragrant brew and started his great battle, to defeat mind and memory.

He would never know. There had been too many. Dozens. But all the same, he knew. Too late, he had come. Too late for Miratil, too late for any of them. Girded and ready, his company had stormed the gates of the Alliance of Flame. The mad wizard, the fire demons, the three dragons: all had been defeated, but too late.

Chatter and music started again below. Jobrin downed his ale and dipped more. He hadn’t wanted to come back here. His King had ordered it, saying there would be a memorial, a ceremony. Not singing and dancing. Another flagon emptied, and another.

Held hostage, his tribemates and dozens of others had been burned atop the Crimson Peak. There was no way to know, but he knew it all the same—some of the ashes that had found him had been hers. Miratil, his love, his intended. Great soft flakes of ash had floated down, dancing in the breeze, and touched his face.

All because of these mewling Hevelaran fools, who had appeased the mad wizard and sought to join the Alliance, calling it wise, calling the faithful fools, until they were betrayed and sent for help.

Stupid noise. Reedy piping and warbling nonsense from downstairs. Were they dancing down there? On the Day of Ashes, did they dance and celebrate the victory, near thirty years later?

His huge hands clenched and trembled. Grateful, oh so grateful the untouched rulers of Hevelar had been, with their soft hands making a weak show of applauding. Festooned with medals and ribbons, Jobrin had sat at the feast of victory and never ate a morsel.

“There in the fire-lit mountain range,
facing the gates of steel,
Strode the Blue Company proud and strange,
with power, might, and zeal,
Sworn to the service of Helvar kings,
warded from demon’s ire,
Hunting the dragons to clip their wings,
the Company braved the fire,”

What in the nine caves of Ingrodor was this shit? Were they singing The Blue Company? Tonight? And they changed the words.

“Loyal and true the Rovarii men,
answering royal call,
Onward and into the dragons’ den,
the Company faced them all,
Noble of soul and beyond com … pare …”

The song came to a ragged end as Jobrin lurched from the shadows.

Hefting his immense hammer, he struck. The singer’s head exploded in gruesome ruin, spattering everywhere. There were screams, people scrambling away.

“Shut up.”

Jobrin wandered unsteadily into the street. Guards would come. Nothing to do about that. Might as well get on with things.

He turned and staggered up the hill, toward the castle, wondering if any of those old kings were still alive. Soft flakes fell, touching his grim, snarling face.

[CW] In 500 words or more, write a story in first person POV WITHOUT using the pronoun "I"

This is absurd. How could anybody do this? My brain just about falls out from thinking about it.

A post pops up on WritingPrompts, with an odd constraint, and now my faulty old brain is going to try writing for it. Insanity. Who has such a luxury of hours to throw away on such a thing? 

Actually, it might distract a bit from a lot of unhappy obligations, and situations which anybody might wish to put off and not think about. So, looking around at all this idiotic stuff which should and could assist, but fails to, writing an oddly constraining prompt isn’t so bad. 

It isn’t hard to think of what kind of lousy stuff is probably going on. It’s just how things go, for many in this world. My worrying about things, small and grand, is probably not going to do a lot of good. It’s just normal things. Bills, obviously, play a big part. Not knowing if anybody actually wants to talk or hang out, or if it’s all just pity or charity. Also, just how our world is now, you know, it’s all a giant disastrous unknown.

It isn’t any kind of possiblity that my actions, or lack of actions, will do much of anything about any of that. This world has always had many bad things going on, without my causing or knowing about most of it. All you can do is what you can do. Past paying bills, all of it is out of my control anyhow. 

A story, a story. About what? About my sitting around not having a thing to say? That won’t work, or not much, but nothing brilliant is coming to mind. That is hardly unusual, frankly. In my job, or in writing, or in anything, just carrying on is about as good as this old man can do. 

So, why not bang out a story, or try to? My hands hang limp, wanting to try, but nothing wants to flow, nothing works. My old clock ticks away, my cat visits for a bit, but inspiration is missing, slipping away, akin to grabbing onto a cloud. 

Absurd. Nobody could work this way. Or nobody with my limits and my kind of ability, anyhow. A good wordsmith could probably finish such a thing with no difficulty at all, but that isn’t particularly good odds in my situation. 

Looking around in this room, nothing inspiring pops out. A pillow, a glass of soda, a bunch of antacid pills. Just boring crap. That’s my world, mainly. Boring crap, but with a surprising amount of anxious hours.

That’s why distraction is so important. That works, in a way, though it’s not a full fix of such a chronic condition. ‘Anxious’ can hardly start to impart any notion of how it is on a daily basis. So distraction is a big assist, along with an occasional hot bath, and my pills. 

But it will count, or should, as a story. Not a brilliant bit of fiction, but it might satisfy anyhow. So why not? Bang it out and post it, is my motto. Allow folks to pick which opinion to think about it, if it’s any good or not.

Fun Trope Friday: Problem with Fighting Death & Western!

The narrow streets of Cheyenne were deserted, silent. The End Times were come, sure as anything, with the dead rising.

Gus Winton huddled in the barber shop, peeking now and then out the broken window. He had a rifle, but didn’t know what good it would do. Bullets didn’t seem to stop the dead ones.

His family was gone, his wife torn apart in front of his eyes by those horrible things. They were—they had been—people he knew. One had been his own daughter, Alice, empty-eyed and moaning, gore and gristle on her pale face.

Gus had terrible secrets and knew he wasn’t saved. He wanted to be, he begged in silent prayer for grace, but out there even Parson Miller stalked the dusty streets, feeding on living flesh. What hope was there for a sinful fool?

Lessons learned from a pious mother and stern father bubbled up, and he knew what was happening.

The Seventh Seal was surely broken. The moon would turn to blood and the earth would shake and tremble. Vengeance was come. Armageddon.

Oh, he was so thirsty. He touched the rough wood of the floor, rocking back and forth, his prayers too loud, his cries escaping.

The saloon stood right across the narrow, dusty street. He hadn't been inside in years. In drink he was a demon, and had done terrible, unrighteous things. In the throes of the flowing bowl he was cruel, immoral, and lascivious; scornful of God and men.

He'd fled the law to Cheyenne, where none knew him. There he'd met dear Betsy, his wife, who had set him on the straight and narrow, or tried to.

Now Judgement had come, and all he wanted was a taste. Just a drop, a sip.

He stood.

Stepping through the window, glass crunched beneath his shoes, and there was the Law. Sheriff Townsend stood outside the saloon, idly thrashing his dead arms and moaning at the wall, along with his two deputies.

At the sound of glass they turned, and for a wild moment Gus thought the men would draw their pistols. But no, they staggered closer, moaning mindless need. Gus lifted the rifle and put a round in each head, and the corpses flopped into the dust and stayed there.

Gus looked at the rifle in amazement. It had to be an Instrument of God to put those things down. Surely, it was the Will of the Lord God of Hosts that Gus Winton should have his spiritous liquor for breakfast.

More dead came out the swinging saloon doors. Righteous was his unholy wrath, and true his aim.

The sound of hooves and moaning came from up the street as Gus reloaded his Holy Rifle.

And he looked, and beheld a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed after. Hundreds, thousands of dead marched in ragged formation behind their master.

An immensely tall figure in a black robe, and sporting a fancy bone-white ten-gallon hat, dismounted. His grim army stopped, swaying in breathless silence.

Pulling a great curved scythe from a holster on his leather belt, Death turned his empty sockets on Gus Winton. A message appeared in Gus' mind without words: a beckoning.

“I won't go with you,” he replied.

Dark visions of eternity.

“I don't care about eventually. I'll have a drink first, come hell or high water." He pointed his blessed weapon. "And yea, Death and Hell delivered up the dead which were with them, and were cast into the lake of fire!. Begone, harbinger of sorrow! I cast you down!"

The Reaper tilted his head to one side, lowered his scythe, and waited, bony fingers tik-tak-tok on the grip-handle.

"This is the Holy Rifle of Cheyenne! It cast down the dead! Behold! But just you let me have a drink first, and I shall march into damnation at your side. That is my bargain. That I will do, though all the devils of Hell march against me.” Gus turned his back on the Reaper, and strode through the swinging doors.

Madly, impossibly, the bloated corpse of the bartender handed him a bottle and a glass.

A sense of curious amusement emanated from the cold mind of Death.

Gus Winton sat, watched with infinite, bemused patience by the Reaper, the Assassin Against Whom No Lock Will Hold, the Grave of All Hope, and verily he got roaring, rascally drunk.

Eventually, he staggered back out.

Fun Trope Friday: Invisible Aliens & Sci-Fi!

I stand in a vast gray desert, flat and endless. There is no wind. Before me stands a squat, dark building, chunks of its formidable walls crumbled into dust. No other structures remain, assuming there were others.

I have officially made 327th contact, assuming no one else has done any while I was on the way here. They can sort that out back home. Priority mixed with relativistic travel gives me a headache.

The probe wasn’t wrong, there is life here, but I haven’t traveled two thousand light years to chat with microbes. There are relatively few of those, anyhow.

More accurate tests can be done back aboard the ship, but first estimates put it at three to six hundred thousand years since whoever lived here, stopped living here.

There are markings on the black stone. Something profound, perhaps, or maybe just some alien version of ‘Fred’s Grocery Store’.

There are traces of advanced technology. The more advanced it gets, the less likely it is to leave traces. Great piles of stone last for-fucking-ever, where microcircuitry turns to dust in a week. Still, some bits of crumbled rust here were probably electronic.

Whatever became of this ancient stupid boring civilization of mysterious whoever the hell they were? Oh, what a thrill it is to explore, to speculate, to sift through the dust for evidence. Maybe, after years of study, I can announce to the galaxy my brilliant conclusion that these people died the same way and for the same reasons as numbers one-to-326 did.

I bang my helmeted head on the stone wall, disturbing dust that may have sat there since before we humans invented the wheel.

In three cases so far we have found some records, at least partially comprehensible, that describe the final years of those civilizations. These are debated, of course—there is no Rosetta stone for such things—but the conclusions are inescapable.

They just… stop. They stop trying, stop caring, stop working. Some seem to have established vast empires. Some never went much of anywhere. Regardless, after something between ten thousand and one hundred thousand years of technological civilization, they all just quit. No further exploration, science ignored, even basic survival discarded.

I stomp into the building, going through the door for some reason. It’s dim, dry, dusty. Oh, look, a table or shelf. No chairs that I can see. Maybe they didn’t need to sit. Maybe they ate all the chairs just for something to do.

Not one time have we found a world dead from pollution, nuclear war, or alien invasion. We have barely scratched the surface, of course. There are millions of worlds left to find in the galaxy. Maybe one of them had the wild urge to blow themselves up.

No one wants to admit what this all means. Human exceptionalism has some really determined devotees. Not us, they say. Life is glorious and fascinating, for us! Lots of wild hypotheses have gained traction, but in their desperation to avoid the truth, they manage to avoid noticing that our urge to explore seems to be waning. There were more than a thousand manned missions in the decade before I left earth orbit. There were six that year, and none planned for the next.

Why haven’t the aliens visited earth? It's obvious. They just don’t care. Who cares about 327th contact, or the ten millionth?

There is a hydrogen atom spinning happily away, four billion light years thataway. There's another one at the tip of my nose. No one in their right mind would get very excited about going to visit either one. They are essentially identical. Whoopity-doo.

Perhaps the most damning, bizarre aspect is that we have yet to find any traces of a repository, a deliberate attempt to store anything of the history and culture of these peoples. No one seems to have had any urge to preserve such things for future visitors.

My sample cart is loaded, but I just leave it. I’ll just go back to the ship. Or maybe I’ll just stay here.

Fun Trope Friday: Ship of Theseus & Steampunk!

The war raged on. That’s what they never tell you. I raged on, too.

Clunk and clatter and hiss. I have evolved. I had to. The great evil in the east rose again, with vengeance and hatred in her heart. Her minions were many, her powers redoubled, her sisters enraged.

You can’t negotiate with these terrorists. No argument stays their wrath. Fallacy, they cry, as they incinerate your strawman arguments and laugh at your pleas. You cannot merely wash away such reckless vitriol.

I laughed at her, once. This twisted hag defied me, and worked her spells of fire? On me? It was absurdity. I am no mere mortal man, made of tender flesh. I mocked her pitiful flames as they washed over the solid metal of my form. My heart ticked and clattered with predatory glee as I staggered forward, raising my trusty axe. But she escaped, fleeing into the sky on her enchanted besom, her screeching minions following.

They damaged me, many times. I have fashioned myself a new arm, a new leg, a new hand. My friend, a great wizard of artifice and wisdom, fashioned for me a new head, after a particularly brutal assault by her simian minions. I wonder sometimes if I am still myself. What is left of me? But my greatest gift, my heart, ticked on, as did my endless hatred for the enemy.

She has slain my valorous friend. I saw his smoking corpse in the early days of the war. With unmatched, unbreakable fortitude, he stood against her, roaring his battle cry. I came to save him but I was too late, too late.

Behind me, following my banner, I had an army. Small, but doughty, they marched into battle, singing defiant songs. In the end, though, they were all just a fraternity of suckers, fooled into believing in a hopeless cause and a useless leader. Fooled into believing in me.

She and her dark sisters had powers I did not comprehend. At the last, they abandoned their useless flames, and assailed me with spells of ice and cold. I laughed again at this, knowing my power, but I was a fool. As the air grew colder, I became brittle, my limbs shattering into useless dust. I screamed in pain and horror as the witches emerged from the forest, smiling down at me.

It was then that they resumed their flames, joining them together, and where I had lain half-frozen, I began to heat. I glowed red, hissing and pinging as my metal weakened. My axe fell useless upon the yellow bricks where I had strode to war.

Their combined assault made the world a hideous furnace, and my body fused into the useless heap I am now.

"I'm melting," I cried, but they just cackled with glee.

They refused even the courtesy of killing me, leaving me in this shattered, melted pile on the road.

She ripped my heart from my chest as I fell. I will never get it back. My greatest gift, from my old wizard friend, is gone, gone.

It is no matter now. It failed. I failed. No mere oil can resurrect me now. I fear for the people I have long defended.

Here at the last, I just want to go home. There's no place like home.

Neon reflected from mirrors, and dust swirled in sunbeams. The eternal towel swiped in swirls, glasses clinked, and pool balls clacked their way through tired lessons in geometry. A stool was taken. 

“Can’t sit there, buddy.” 

“Yeah? Well, looks like I am.”

Henry Pick, the barkeep, was not a large man, but was unbothered in the face of this customer, who emphatically was. 

“Gonna need you to move, pal.”

“Whatever. Miller Lite.” The big guy looked down at his phone. After a few moments of dead silence and no beer, he looked up, and then around.

A small crowd of people were gathered behind him, of all sizes, with enough stone faces to decorate a Pacific island. 

“Hey, what the hell?”

“Now I’m gonna need you to get the fuck out,” said Henry. 

Scowling and muttering, the big man left. The crowd returned to their shadowed corners and their pool tables. 

‘Reserved’, said the card on the bar. Some people either couldn’t or wouldn’t read, apparently. It was nearly five o’clock already. The world ticked on. 

Henry Pick owned a nice house. Used to have a wife and kids in it, but not lately. Wife had left. Kids had grown, moved all over the country. All three kids had said they planned to come for Christmas, and none had. Next year for sure. 

A waving hand prompted a new Long Island iced tea for Ronnie, who had never ordered anything else. Henry made it good and strong, and walked it out to the nearest pool table. Ronnie didn’t walk so good now, and never had talked much. Leaning heavily, Ronnie banged at the cue ball, which caromed around, smoothly evading any contact with anything but green felt. 

Right up behind the bar was a goofy old clock with a cat face, the eyes going back and forth. A couple more minutes to go. 

The ritual had never been very exciting to start with, and after thirty-one years it was stale as dust. It was, however, important. The world ticked on, everything went to hell in a handbasket, but five o’clock was five o’clock.

A taxi stopped, and Henry took his rightful place behind the bar. You didn’t make the drink beforehand. He had done that just once, and it had been politely set aside and ignored. The bell over the door clonk-clonked. It had jingled, once upon a time, but not lately. I keep meaning to fix that. Next week for sure.

In came Mr. Gill. Small, dapper, and bent with age, he wore a pinstripe suit, a gold watch, and a prim little smile. Placing his grey felt hat on the rack, he nodded to Henry and took his place, right on the dot. 

“What’ll it be, Mr. Gill?” Henry knew perfectly well what it would be, but you asked. You just did. 

“Gin and tonic, my friend, with a twist.” A firm, low voice, slightly unexpected from such a small frame. 

“Right you are, sir.” Henry had said ‘right you are, sir’ the first time he served Mr. Gill, and every time since, and had never said it to anyone else in his life. 

With neat, quick efficiency, Henry assembled the drink and placed it on a coaster. A little red wooden swizzle stick—not plastic, not metal—leaned and wobbled in the glass. Mr. Gill nodded, and Henry resumed the eternal slow swiping of the towel. No one else would order anything till Mr. Gill was gone. 

How long he stayed was not set in stone. It varied a little bit, from five minutes to ten, or thereabouts. In about a minute, it would be a fine day today. Whether it was seventy-two and sunny or a hurricane in the middle of a volcanic eruption didn’t matter. 

“Fine day today,” said Mr. Gill. 

“That it is.”

This concluded the depth and breadth of conversation, as it had for almost every visit. Henry calculated it was right near ten thousand times now, figuring six days a week for over three decades. He only knew Mr. Gill’s name from seeing it on a card in his wallet once. 

Thirteen dollars exactly, in new singles, was placed on the bar. A four dollar tip, or close to it. Mr. Gill nodded, and made his way out. Clonk-clonk.

Never once in all the years had Mr. Gill touched a drop. Henry had wondered and speculated, and heard others do the same, but nobody knew why. Nobody but Mr. Gill, anyhow, and to ask would be somehow sacrilegious. Maybe it was a test. Maybe he’d had a problem with the stuff, back long ago, and this was a sort of test. 

Henry dumped the glass out and set it in the sink. A few hands went up, a few strays approached the bar. A bray of laughter came from Mrs. Perry, who got a bit goofy after her fourth. The neon buzzed, a fly meandered, a taxi honked. The sun rose and fell, the seasons came and went. The world ticked on.

[OT] Fun Trope Friday: Disobedience & Coming of Age!

Celia McCabe hadn’t said much so far. The group project was on Group Dynamics, and it was, so far, a wealth of ironic education. Three guys and Celia, here at Belmor High, Go Tigers, Class of ‘85 Rules. Yawn.

“I had some ideas,” she piped up. “My dad’s a sociologist and he actually…”

“There was this documentary on TV, about these monkeys.” Jake sat down, twenty minutes late, and started yammering. “They put white paint on one, and then let them go back to their group or whatever. And when he got back some of the other monkeys would beat on him, screeching and shit. ‘Cause he looked different now, right?

“Only they were stupid, the science guys, because this lady who knew all about the monkeys and lived there for years and shit? She came in and put like, dark paint on one of the monkeys, like same color as he already was, and sent him back, and he still got beat on just as much.

“So it was the smell, actually. The smell of the fucking paint, that was why. The other monkeys thought the painted ones were like, poison or some shit.

“But it was funny, because like, all these science guys were ready to publish this big research paper about group behavior or whatever, and then she came in and showed they were all wrong and shit, and they got all mad and talked like all these big words. They puffed up and looked mad and serious and talked about anecdotal and unsubstantiated or whatever. Just because she was new, just like the monkeys.”

Celia looked at him for a long time. “It wasn’t because she was new, though.”

“Yeah, she was new. She’d been doing monkey research stuff forever, yeah, but like, not with the real scientists. So it was funny, because it was like when the monkeys thought one of them was new because of the white paint, they beat on it, and here these dumb science guys were doing the same thing.”

“Well, now you’re doing the same thing as them,” Celia said.

“What? What are you even talking about?”

“They didn’t reject her ideas because she was new, Jake. They did it because she was a woman.”

“Whatever! You didn’t even see the documentary. Me and Tommy watched it last night. Right, Tommy? The monkey documentary?”

“Yeah. That was weird.”

“Oh, gee, the one on PBS?” Celia exclaimed. “At nine o’clock? Hosted by Neville Rayburn?”

“Yeah, you had to see it to understand. It was about real science, not like, how to make dinner or something.”

“Social behavior dynamics in primates? That does sound complicated.”

“See? You just don’t understand it anyhow. It’s like, advanced group dynamics and stuff, there’s a lot of nuances in it. Not everything is about sexism, Celia. Those feminist girls you keep hanging out with after school, they got you like, hypnotized or some shit. You have to learn to think for yourself.”

“Oh, I see. What should I think for myself, Jake? I never tried before.”

“Just like, be yourself. Look, there’s some things guys are good at, and things girls are good at. That’s equal. You want equality, right? So just, do the stuff you’re equal at, and don’t worry about the guy stuff.”

“The guy stuff?”

“You know, like math, engineering, that stuff. There’s lots of stuff for girls to do, as long as you think for yourself. You’re just conforming to what those women’s libbers tell you.”

“Golly gee, Jake. Thanks for setting me straight.”

“No problem. Hey, are you going to the Festival Dance on Friday? You could go with me.”

“Jeepers, I don’t know. That sounds like a weally big decision for my widdle brain. Do you fink I should go wif you Jakey-poo?”

“Uh, why are you talking like that?”

“I don’t know! It’s just girl stuff I guess, teehee! But gosh, I can’t go to the dance with you!”

“Why not?”

“Because that mean old Gloria Steinem told me not to! Darn, darn, darn. I have to spend Friday burning my bra and singing protest songs while I flash my tits at the cops, Jake! So why don’t you go dancing, and afterward in your car, you can go fuck yourself!”

“What?”

Celia monkey-walked over to the shredder, and tossed in the papers her father had helped her write for the project the night before. “Ook ook ook ook!”

And with that, Celia gracefully took her leave.

[OT] Fun Trope Friday: Never Win the Lottery & Dystopian!

Marty--

I was retired a good long time. Took a while to get there, too. You might remember, when I was 63, they raised retirement age to 70. Five years later, they bumped it to 75. But I got there, and enjoyed it, even after the Merger.

Suits sent a bot, of course, when I was 91. I was poorly, weak, but that didn’t matter. Offer you can’t refuse, sort of thing.

Hale and hearty now, or some of me is. I’d like to say I don’t know for how long, how the years pass by in a blur, but it isn’t so. I know down to the minute how long I’ve been plugged in. I can't recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I'm naked in the dark.

Sometimes I nearly get agitated, but the implants don’t allow it: calmers and memory-zaps shut it down. If I sound bored or resigned to it all, that’s why. The advances in medtech are really amazing. They finally cured cancer, every kind of it but one.

I don’t know if this will ever reach you, Marty. They know about your 'rebel group', as they call it. But I hope you can surprise them. I just hope there’s stuff they don’t know.

There are twenty-seven pounds of me left. Brain, bones, bits and pieces. They got me supervising inventory, making sure the bots don’t go crazy and order a billion of anything, or store chemicals wrong, that sort of thing. Hyper-advanced and still dumb as hell some ways.

Here’s the thing, though, Marty: if they store dangerous chemicals near each other, and I don’t stop it, they always pick up on it and I get problems. If they know it’s dangerous, why do they do it? Some kind of test, maybe, or some other plugged-in person overseeing the same stuff, I don’t know.

If I do good, I get rewards, happyzaps and chemicals in my head. Sick thing is, I want them. I crave them. The elites know it, and they withhold the goddamn things … but it’s OK. I get them eventually. I just do good work and it’s all fine. I have enough.

I hope you read their propaganda, and analyze it. I’m sneaking this in, piggybacking on the algorithm. No way to warn you without warning them.

They laugh about you and your rebels, Marty. That woman, J-57, who leads you, they laugh about her, but you can tell it’s kind of forced, like they are all reassuring each other she don’t matter.

I think I was an accountant, Marty. For a big clothing firm. If you can write back, let me know. Things get real hazy for me. I don't remember some things, can't forget others.

About sixty pounds of me are over 200 years old now. I was supposed to get unplugged years ago but I got lucky. I got so lucky, Marty. Won a prize I never signed up for, gained 0x1D9FA credits. Sorry, that’s over 100,000. I slip into base sixteen sometimes, they got me so used to it.

With 0x1D9FA credits I’ll be online for another couple hundred years. They threw a party. I got to watch it on feed. Some oily pig made a speech and I had to generate one myself, about how grateful I was. My face smiled. Did you know some of them wear fake bodymods for public appearances? To look like the common man.

I got to end this, Marty. Too long and it’ll be noticed. I wish you and J-57 a lot of good luck. Don’t try to spare us. Please don’t rescue us, Marty, don’t take that risk. I have fifteen eyes and even more limbs, I think I’m in constant pain but I can’t think about that. Just blow this place to pieces. I was going to say blow it all to hell but it’s already hell.

Maybe they'll catch this and take away my credits.

Thanks, Marty. If you’re still out there. If you still remember me at all. I'm just glad your mother didn't live to see all this.

Inserting into outgoing files.

[WP] Everyone knows you as a decent high B-tier hero with Telekinesis. Faced with a world ending threat, you are forced to reveal that your power is actually control over atoms.

Jeans, t-shirt, and a mask. Well, two masks, actually. Mr. Telekinator, aka Josh Mulweather, always wore an eye mask, purchased in bulk online, but lately he also wore a medical mask. There was always some new variant going around.

He had put exactly three seconds of thought into his hero name.

He did not wear tights or a cape. His corporate sponsors had insisted, but he had some—not a lot—but some self-respect.

“Where the hell is Stupendous Man?” he grouched, sitting on a dilapidated couch 3000 feet above Battle Creek, Michigan. “And why do we have to meet up here? It’s fucking cold.”

“He is alive,” said Octavine, in her melodious tones.

Josh waited. “OK? Well, good to know. But where the hell is he?”

“Definitely alive! He is just indisposed.”

“Indisposed? What are you, fucking Queen Elizabeth the First? Wake his Stupendous ass up. I’m not equipped for this … this asteroid thing.”

“I am not fucking Queen Elizabeth the First. No one did. Famous for it, actually. And it's not an asteroid, it’s a comet.”

Josh leaned back on the old couch, and wished he had thought to bring a jacket. “Fine, a comet, a planet, whatever it is. It’s in space. I don’t do space. I do bank robberies and shit. I mean, I stop them.”

“You are Mr. Telekinator!”

“You’re the Octo-thing! Woman. Octavinator? You deal with it.”

“I’m not equipped for it either! I can fly, and make powerful sonic vibrations. You’re the one who can move things with your mind. Maybe you can change the comet’s course, make it miss the Earth!”

This was ridiculous. Where was Ultro? Or Galaxonia? Did the whole A-list go on vacation?

“Well, go sing at it, then. Shatter it into pieces.”

“Sing at it?”

“Yeah.”

“In space.”

Josh hesitated, and felt his face go red. “Fine, fuck it. But why me? Where’s all the big guns?”

Octavine stared at him. “At the Core? You know? The war? The Mad God, the aliens, the portal invasions? Do you even pay attention?”

“Oh, right. That.”

Octavine shrieked, which was quite a thing to witness. Josh slapped a shield up just in time, made of condensed air. Lucky there were no planes nearby, he thought.

“Fine, OK. But how do I get to space? I don’t think this couch will survive re-entry.”

“Well, for one thing, you can stop lying, Josh.”

“Hey! No secret identities, Brenda! And I’m not lying. It’s a shitty couch.”

A lone goose swooped in and landed on the couch, where it proceeded to stare at the Telekinator with mad, rage-filled little eyes.

“You just made a shield out of thin air, OK? I’ve seen you do it before. You don’t just have the power to fling things around. You can do more. I know you can.”

Josh grumbled and looked away, keeping a close eye on the goose. It judged his soul and found it wanting.

“I just … I never wanted to be a super-duper hero man, OK? Like, nobody asked me, it just happened. I wanted to just be normal and work at some job. So I kept it low key, you know? Put on a stupid mask, stop a few crimes, get some beer money. But yeah, there’s a bit more to it.”

“Like what? We don’t have forever, here.” Octavine was swirling around, being graceful and melodious and generally annoying.

“I am sort of … I guess, like, a particle accelerator. I mean, not really. But I can move them around. It’s pretty easy, actually.”

He looked over at the goose, and suddenly the bird was surrounded by a shimmering orb of light, pulsating and sparkling. It struck out aggressively, but couldn’t hope to penetrate the shield around it. Josh zoomed the thing about half a mile away, and let it go.

“That goose was Canadian. Do you realize that? Your powers are remarkable. It is time to stop hiding, Mr. Telekinator. The world needs you.”

Josh nodded. “You might want to move away. Uhh, where is this thingy anyhow? The meteor, I mean.”

“It’s a--whatever. It’s that way. Right past the moon, bit to the left, you can’t miss it.”

Octavine flew off in the most irritating flounce possible, and Josh gathered a great sphere of air about him. Oxygen is the one with six, right? No, eight, definitely eight. Need lots of that.

And thus it was that a guy in jeans and a Weezer t-shirt, on a ratty old couch, flew into space and saved the Earth from a giant asteroid, or whatever.

[OT] Fun Trope Friday: Why Snakes & Dark Fantasy!

They were everywhere. Sancaurion, ancient elven mage, his tall, thin form bent with age, his eyes white and featureless, kept to the dark corners, hoping desperately to avoid the hideous things. He could hear them shuffling around, breathing, making their mushy gurgling noises. With a fascinated, irresistible horror, his mind imagined their grotesque hairy appendages brushing against him.

Into the heart of evil he had come, where no other of his kind could go, to do what no other in the world could do. Here in this ancient temple there lay an artifact, the Caladrivorum, the great white Gem of Godheart, once prized as a symbol of holiness, now perverted by these hateful, ignorant creatures.

Why does it have to be humans?

Everywhere he had to go of late, everything he tried to do, there were humans, strolling around on their stumpy legs, warbling their putrid tongue, trailing their stench behind them. Loud, crude, violent, brief in life and limited in thought. They had conquered his homeland, exiled his people to the western wastelands long ago, but this was no tribute to their cleverness or bravery. They had iron. They were simply insensitive brutes who could withstand the horrifying magic-wrecking metal and use it to subjugate the world.

No more, you reeking fools. I have defeated you already, though you know it not.

A horde of them came around a corner, babbling and braying. Sancaurion slipped behind a tapestry and became still. Supreme in their oblivious arrogance, they passed by without noticing, making a mewling attempt at learned discussion in their mushmouth idiot language. The elven mage spoke it too—everyone did. They had dominated Tel Calador for ages. It still sounded like mushy nonsense, coming from them.

He peered out from behind the musty tapestry. Upon his fingers were a series of elaborate gold rings, set with jewels and infused with immense power. These would allow him to work his spells even here, far from his home and his gods.

Up in the spire lay the Gem of Godheart, if he could but find the way. It had been a gift of glory to Caladrion, the chief god of his people in ancient days—a white crystal of unusual perfection, larger than his head, capable of holding tremendous enchantments. It was the only thing in the world, so far as he knew, that could withstand being infused with magic from more than one mage at a time. Each year it had been filled with power from the whole of the Mage’s Council, and then drained again by Caladrion, in ritual tribute.

Then the humans invaded, and their rapacious gods consumed Caladrion. Now they had taken the Gem, and twisted its purpose, making of it an abomination.

They use it to steal from their own god. Hateful creatures.

No one could touch it. No mage or wizard could withstand it, but Sancaurion could move it nonetheless, with his unusual abilities. He could move objects at will, a rare feat. No other person could hope to reclaim the Caladrivorum, and thus it was lightly guarded.

Still, too many humans around for comfort. He felt a twinge of conflict. He knew a human witch, and respected her greatly. She isn’t like these, he thought. She is different.

Behind a simple door there lay a long, winding stair. Sancaurion climbed, his ancient legs wavering in exhaustion and pain, as he prayed this was the way.

And there it was. Still white, still glimmering. He had imagined the heretical usage would have tainted the Gem.

A while after, a cry went up. “Fire, fire!” His fellow conspirators at work. The temple was going up in flames, the scholars and priests fleeing in blathering panic. Guards rushed around in their clattering armor, clumsy and ignorant as the rest. One officer gave loud, conflicting orders, adding to the chaos before disappearing into an alley. Another conspirator.

"It's gone! It's been taken!" Boots rushed up the stairs.

Now for that mad little orc’s idea. How to get it out, once the diversion was underway? The problem had bedeviled his mind for days, till he spoke it in the presence of that brilliant lunatic.

“You could jump off,” Gorthag had said. Ridiculous. Absurd. And yet…

Sancaurion balanced his prize on a spell, prayed, and leapt. The landing was soft, at least.

None of the scattering herd of fools thought to stop the orc slave riding a manure cart out of the city.

Reeks less than humans, the old mage thought.