I took a stone from my pocket. It was meaningless, the kind of pretty thing she would have liked. It was also a life. I put the first of many on the shelf upon which we had laid Chuwa’s necklace of stones and shells.
I lifted his head, heedless of the greasy blood matting it, dragging him to the cliff’s edge as he struggled.
“Please! I have done nothing!”
“This isn’t about you!” In my anger, I threw him to the ground, and for a second it looked like he’d go over. He clawed at the rock and managed to hold himself back from the edge. Continue reading “Chuwa’s Judgment”
Write a three-paragraph story, starting every paragraph with the same sentence.
Photography by David Graham at https://www.flickr.com/photos/animal168/ .
Through a series of events, I somehow committed myself to writing a story titled “The Poop Train.”
I leaned against the observation glass and looked down at the bands of Jupiter from low orbit. After a moment, I pointed. “There. Right there. See it? Find that storm, the swirl on the equator; it’s just passing left of it.”
“What . . . that little ripple?” Maya looked disappointed. I’d promised to show her monsters, after all.
“Wait for it. There’s only one reason they come so close to the surface. Any minute now.”
We watched, and we waited. The bands bulged and tore as the gas serpent breached the atmosphere. It twisted and lashed, flinging an enormous crystal from its tail, with a motion like the crack of a whip. Bracing myself into a seat, I pulled a laptop over to me on its swivel mount, programming a drone to intercept the crystal.
“That was … but the storms! They’re supposed to be huge! How big was that thing?”
“That one? There’s no guessing how long, it’s rare to see the whole thing break cover at once. It looked to be a couple of dozen kilometers across, so maybe seven, eight hundred–”
“Eight hundred?!”
“–Kilometers long . . . they get pretty big.”
“But we’re safe up here?”
“Oh, yeah. It can’t breach a thousandth of the distance it’d take to reach us. That’s a lot of gravity down there.” I pushed out of the chair, floating to her, and folded her in my arms. As I caught her, our mismatched momentum started us spinning. I touched a toe to the window briefly, to steady the spin; a lifetime working in space, and such things were natural to me.
Not her, though. She was clumsy in space and had gotten caught floating without a handhold in reach more than once. The first time she had come on board, she leaped into the cockpit like she was diving into a pool, and struck her head on the navigation console. Now she was timid and ready to panic until I steadied us.
“What is that stuff? Why do they throw it like that?”
“It’s fuel for the tunneling drive, purer than any synthetic process can produce. It’s poison to them and can break down violently under pressure, so they get rid of it. They do a better job preserving their habitat than humans do.”
“So . . . it’s poop?”
“It’s Heisenium seven.”
“Yeah, but Heisenium seven is poop.”
“It’s not . . . alright. Yes. It’s poop. I’m the conductor of the poop train, all right?”
She giggled, her hands flattening against my chest. “Sorry I teased you.”
I could never stay angry at her. My eyes softened at her caress, and I was about to make a few interesting suggestions on how to spend our time in orbit when an orange star caught my eye, hardening my expression. I braced my back against the glass, pushed her towards her seat. “Strap in.” Continue reading “The Poop Train”
A quick little story about dating an agent of death.
I saw her, again. Every day, riding the 45T. I normally got off at the tracks, the last stop inside the city.
Today, I was curious. She never spoke and was always alone. I couldn’t tell why. She was cute, with short black hair, blue eyes, and adorable freckles, a little on the slender side. She might have been in her early thirties, a little on the slim side.
I didn’t care. Today, I didn’t get off on my stop. The bus was almost empty at this point, just me and her. “Do you mind if I sit?”
She didn’t respond, just looked out the window.
“Ah, miss?”
She seemed to start, and looked around, not meeting my eyes. Only after she realized the bus was empty did she look at me. She seemed surprised to find me looking straight at her. “Are you speaking to me?” Continue reading “Gentle Death”
My last body could see infrared and ultraviolet, but I can’t decide what to get next.
“I have no idea. But I’m going civilian, and I can’t keep the law-enforcement upgrades. They said they’d cover half of the switch to a civilian model.”
Doctor Ferraz was small and always smiling, but her cheer didn’t ring false. She seemed genuinely excited about her job. Of course, she also had pointed ears, naturally shimmering blue hair, and a bone structure entirely too elfin to be a coincidence. It was obvious she had some enthusiasm for body modification, almost beyond the bounds of professionalism. It was easy for me to overlook – I wouldn’t want a tattoo from an artist that had no tattoos, and I wouldn’t want a body mod from a doctor who’d never used one.
“So you just built for the job?”
“Biocapacitors charged one Taser shock a week from bioelectric fields. Muscle mass, tendon strength, and bone density beyond the civilian limits. Infra-red and ultraviolet vision. I can see where people were sitting, if a car was recently driven, people moving in the dark. Continue reading “Transition”
What is that smell? And why are you wearing that?
“What is that smell?”
I wrestled the hip-waders off on the step, then peeled my socks off. Maya came to the open door. She was a head shorter than me, and considered plain by some. But the sparkle in her eyes and her questing mind made her shine. She came to the door now, and looked at me, watching me discard the protective gear, the poncho, the rubber gloves.
“And why are you wearing that?” Continue reading “The Stench of the Hunt”
The elf queen, hearing that yet another young hero was slain during a heroic monologue, decides she’s had enough. She gives her last magical weapon to the grizzled, no-nonsense human guard and says it’s up to him to slay the great evil.
Dire Gifts
“Dammit! Damn it all, another man dead while bragging to the enemy! Another blade lost! What do these idiots think dire blades are, Efran?”
I had not moved during her tirade. She would blow herself out and calm down. She never spoke to me, though. She spoke to her guards all the time, but never to Kirin, or Efran. I was surprised that she knew my name. “I don’t know, grace. But really, what are they? They’re not a birthright or a destiny. Just a rare and powerful tool.”
In her frustration, and being alone, she had laid across her throne. Her head laid on one arm, her knees hooked over the other. Now though, she flipped over, kneeling in the seat with her hands on the arm, and her ocean-blue eyes on mine. Her gaze was uncomfortably intense. Continue reading “Dire Gifts”
The Brave Knight has been kidnapped against his will by the Beautiful Princess, now it’s up to the Scary Dragon to go rescue him.
I awoke in bonds, hanging from my wrists. I lifted my head, taking my bearings; the inside of a cabin, perhaps a peasant dwelling. No tapestries, no trophies, no portraits, the furniture all made of unadorned wood. The wood wasn’t local, and though plain, the craftsmanship very good. A silver cross on the wall. Perhaps not a peasant’s home, but a tradesman’s, or a priest’s. Simple, but not poor.
My armor, which I had been wearing while out riding, lay piled on the table along with my sword belt. I twisted to look behind me – I had been tied to a support column, and there were cuffs of metal on my wrists, secured by a tightly fastened bolt. I could cry out, but would anybody hear me? I heard no horses or carriages, no sounds of human civilization.
Best not to alert my captor yet, if I could help it. I crouched, bracing my feet on the floor, and pushed back against the support column as hard as I could; perhaps I could break it. I strained against it with no luck, then lifted away, and slammed my back against it. “Don’t bother dear, the house is very sturdy.” I snapped my head up, and a familiar face came out from deeper within the house.
“Princess Ravencort? Karina? What the hell is going on here? Quickly, get over here and loose these shackles.”
She looked at me, a little surprised, then giggled, a sound like pure crystal. “Oh, Prince. Don’t fear. I kidnapped you.”
You live in a world where you have three names printed on your wrist – your one true friend, one true love, and one true enemy. But only one name is printed on your wrist.
“Tess? Tess, if you’re in here, let me know you’re okay.”
I looked around, cautious, each step setting me drifting a good foot in the light gravity. Someone had fired a set of boosters to slow the station’s rotation; the final firing sequence had begun, and I couldn’t afford any loose ends at this point. I moved through the station compartment by compartment, always leading with my taser. The little weapon was dialed up to quite a lethal voltage but would be safe to fire on the station.
“Malcolm. I’m in here.”
I lowered the taser and moved into the compartment. “Thank god. Tess, are you okay? Did you see anybody?”
The kick hit me square in the chest, and in the low gravity, I tumbled straight through the inner door of the airlock. Tess flew backward against a wall, then leaped off the wall back toward the airlock controls. I scrambled forward, but I wasn’t fast enough. The door was built to cut off explosive decompression, and it slammed shut before I’d gotten an inch.
This is the first story in what I call the ‘Soul’ series, based on artwork by Kleg.(DeviantArt)
Artwork: City Lights, by Kleg. (DeviantArt)
I picked up speed down the gentle incline, leaning into the wind as the skateboard carried me faster and faster. At his hour there were few pedestrians out, and I slalomed back and forth, weaving past them. A shout, a curse, a whimpery gasp of fear as I whipped by pedestrians. I ignored them.
My hair streamed in the wind. The air tasted like freedom. And my mastery over the board under my feet, the hard-won affinity for this extension of my body, that tasted even better.
Then I was there. I pivoted my board and slid until I reached a full stop. I kicked the nose up and lifted it, slipped it through the cargo netting on my pack. My other hand raised the camera from my hip, holding it before me.
I took a moment and absorbed my surroundings. Behind me, cars whizzed up and down the overpass. The sun was setting, and I stood in the single place from which I could see the entire city. From this angle, I could see fragments of the city beyond and around every high-rise and office building.
Headlights crawled up and down the roads, and the building lights shone, turning on and off. There was not a single cloud, and the wind off the mountain had swept away the smog, leaving only a faint halo around each bright city light. I was not going to get a better shot.
Prompt Inspired 