Tag: chuck wendig

Some Stories You Should Read

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This post is a shameless plug for some fiction written by myself and other authors.

Chuck Wendig, over the past three weeks, organized a 3-part Collaboration Challenge over at his website.  I played each week, writing the first 500 words of my own story (There Are Things in the Well), writing a second 500 words for another story (Clank), and finally writing the conclusion of a third story (A Recipe for Disaster).

I’m happy to say that both of the stories I collaborated on aside from “A Recipe for Disaster” were picked up and concluded by other authors.  Yesterday I reposted the finished version of “There Are Things in the Well“, and today I saw that there have actually been two part 3’s written for “Clank.”  In no particular order, you can find them here (Clank 1) and here (Clank 2).

It’s been a fascinating exercise, first of all, to pick up and continue the work started by another author, and second, to see what strange new directions other authors take with material I’ve started.  In short, a really cool little idea.

Thanks to Angela Cavanaugh, George Kaltsios, Underastarlitsky, RoseRed, Matthew Gomez, and Clay Ashby for their unwitting collaborations.

A Recipe for Disaster (Anonymous Author Collaboration Concluded)

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Chuck’s challenge: A three-author anonymous collaboration, concluded.

Matthew X. Gomez began the tale.  His bit lasts up until the first asterisk.

Mickie continued the tale.  Her bit lasts up until the second asterisk.

My bit concludes the tale.  I wish I’d been able to “end” it properly, but there’s just so much here.  I hope I’ve done their work justice.

 

A Recipe For Disaster

 

I’m sitting on a rooftop across from a bank robbery in process when I feel that tingle at the base of my spine telling me someone’s trying to get into my head. I brush it off at first, a minor annoyance as I gaze down the scope of my highpowered rifle, mentally daring one of the jokers inside to show their face.

Then the tingle gets more persistent, a buzz in my ear, an itch at the bottom of my foot. The probe is turning into an attack.

“Control, do the tangoes have a ‘path on record?” I don’t have to talk loud, the microphone taped to my jaw will pick up every whisper, just as the camera mounted on my helmet is picking up and broadcasting in high res.

“Negative, Ballista, no ‘path on record.”

I bite the inside of my cheek as the buzz turns into a drill. I smile, scanning the windows. If the ‘path is any good he could be anywhere, even halfway across the city, running overwatch on their gig. Still, I’ve got to wonder what a group of Ascended are doing robbing a bank. Aren’t there better things they could be doing? More profitable gigs? The ‘path they’ve got probably thinks he’s being subtle, but given how long I’ve been at this he might as well be marching a brass band down Main Street.

I start simple, throwing mental images to shock and dismay. Goatse. An exploded head. That time I caught my mom blowing my uncle, along with all the associated hatred and disgust that went with it. Finding out my wife was cheating on me with her best friend. That time I woke up covered in vomit with no recollection of how I got there, but there was dried blood under my nails, and blood on my shoes. All of it.

The drill disappears as rapidly as it started.

“We have confirmation that one of the tangos is down.” Control’s voice is always the same. Cool, collected, and with as much emotion as discussing this week’s corn futures.

The corner of my mouth twitches up into a smile. Maybe I pushed a bit harder than I should have. Maybe the asshole shouldn’t have gone around poking where he shouldn’t have.

“How many confirmed tangos still standing, Control?”

“Whisper confirms four tangos still active. All are confirmed Ascended.”

Bile rises up in my mouth and I fight to swallow it back down. I should have figured it was the case. They don’t bring us out for your run-of-the-mill robbers. No, we get saved for the special cases. Lucky us.

“Ballista, we have confirmation of movement. Looks like they are coming out the front door.”

I swing the gun around, get a bead on the door. It swings open. I don’t have the best angle where I am, but I bite down on my lip and concentrate. Hostages start walking out, hands on their heads, eyes a bit glassy looking. I curse when I see what walks out next.

****

It’s her.

What follows is a moment of disbelief and I feel as though I am falling through infinite blackness.Not dead. It’s the only thought I cling to. Not dead, not dead. Then horror-stricken, I am consumed with guilt. How could I have known! It was as if she had been here in this very building for those lost ten years with these psychos, held at gunpoint and waiting patiently for daddy to save her.

Then my heart freezes over as I realize there is no gun to her head. In fact, she cocks a rifle of her own with skinny arms. Her expression, upon which I once placed sweet kisses, is stony and grim. Then there are other things I should have noticed first off— the sharpness of her cheekbones, jutting hard against her flesh, chestnut hair gleaming like liquid bronze. Characteristics of all the Ascended. I groan in despair. Christ, Ixa, what did they do to you?

Her head whips in my direction as if she somehow heard me and I gasp. The blue of her eyes is piercing and I know she sees me through the darkness. Sees me clearer than anyone possibly ever has and I feel weak. My finger loosens on the trigger. She smiles then, a slow and knowing leer and the mental barrage begins again and I nearly collapse from the onslaught of the white noise that fills my head.

Then it stops as quickly as it started and leaves my ears ringing. I look to her again and her face darkens. Her message is loud and clear: She can kill me where I stand. Tears sting my eyes.Baby, please forgive me! How could I have known?

Then, Control over the earpiece, “All four tangoes in sight, please confirm.”

I say nothing.

“Ballista, targets are four adults: three males, one female. All confirmed Ascended. Confirm that you are in shooting range and take the shots.”

I swallow hard, my throat sandpaper. I breathe, “Control, I have reason to believe the female target is Ixa Manning, the subject of a missing persons case.”

I am met with the sound of fingers flying across a keyboard as Control checks the case file. “The case for Ixa Manning was closed nearly ten years ago, Ballista. She was legally declared dead.”

“Fuck that, you think I wouldn’t recognize my own daughter?” I hiss into the mic.

“Ballista…” a hint of warning tinges the cool indifference in the voice. “This is no time to lose your head. That woman is not your daughter. She is a traitor and a terrorist. Now, take. The. Shot.”

My mind races. The girl I am sure is Ixa never takes her eyes off me as she grabs a fistful of hair of one of the hostages, a wailing woman shaking so badly she cannot remain on her feet. Unfazed eyes shine challengingly at me as she positions the nose of her weapon beneath her captive’s ear.

****

I see it unfold in slow motion as the training takes over.  Neutralize the threat.  The scope comes to my eye and I squeeze the trigger.  Ixa’s eyes track my bullet and it freezes, floating ponderous in the air an inch from her nose, still spiraling, whispering interrupted death.  She hurls the woman to the pavement, and with her free hand plucks the bullet from the air.  Her eyes fix me through the scope, crystal-blue and glowing.  I know what’s coming; I throw the rifle aside and reach for my sidearm, but she steps the distance in a heartbeat.  Her sharp, seeking fingers bury themselves in my throat as she lifts me from the ground.

Control is barking in my earpiece, but her face is mere inches from mine, contorted into a mask of too-perfect cheekbones and too-blue eyes gone vivid in the colors swimming in at the edges of my vision, and I’m lost.  I don’t struggle.  What good would it do?

In a flash, it’s ten years ago, Ixa is swinging with the careless abandon of a ten-year-old on a peppermint-red swingset in Glaston Park.  She shouts, “I’m flying, daddy!” and my perspective shifts.  I see through Ixa’s eyes, now; see Daddy turn and draw a previously unseen pistol and dart into traffic, forgetting about his daughter at the call from Control.  Rough hands yank me from the swing and hurry me to a waiting car, and I scream and cry for my Daddy, Daddy who always saves me and will follow me anywhere, but Daddy doesn’t come.

Another flash.  I’m still Ixa.  The transformation is taking hold; my eyes grow brighter in the mirror, the spectrum of previously invisible colors explodes in my vision, my mother’s obituary incinerates in my hands, my father — me — weeps behind a dusty windowpane.

Flash.  Ixa’s body, laid out before me, peppered with gunshots, blood pooled and congealed.  Ixa’s voice in my mouth.  “Looks good.”  Flash.  Planning the heist of this meaningless bank.  Flash.  Myself — Daddy — looks back at me through the scope of the rifle.  It’s time.

Flash.

She’s given me this gift before she kills me; the gift of knowing.  It’s enough.  My eyes focus on hers and she’s my baby again, precious, harmless, innocent.  I smile, cough up a mouthful of blood.  The gun slides from my grasp.  Then her black-hole pupils erupt with blue flame.

“Ballista!  Three Ascended are down.  We’ve lost the fourth.  What is your situation?  Ballista??”

On the street, it’s pandemonium, but up here, it’s silent, just for us.

“Sweetheart,” I say.

“Daddy.”

Her eyes are almost piteous.  She yanks me upwards, hard, and I look down and see my body topple over the railing, see my head dashed to bits on the pavement, hear Control chattering away in the shattered earpiece.  But I’m weightless, effortless, floating in my daughter’s unearthly embrace.  She peers into my eyes like she’s weighing my soul.  “Will you come with me?”

What else can I say?  “Anywhere.”

 

Clank

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Chuck’s challenge for the week: Write the middle of a story.  Our goal:  Take the 500-word story begun by another author, and continue it.

I hijacked the story started by one Clay Ashby, Clank.  It’s got some of my favorite stuff: Sci-Fi, mystery, robots, a sense of desperation and lostness.  In short, it would be right at home here in my Flash Fiction collection.

Clay’s bit begins the story.  My bit follows the asterisk.

 

Clank

My eyes opened with a metallic clatter. A single dim lamp reflected its yellow hue on the ceiling above. Instinctually I was able to sit up and balance myself on the table. At least I think it was instinct because I certainly don’t remember ever doing it before. My legs dangled over the edge and my feet didn’t quite touch the floor. The thought of lifting myself off the table and falling, even just that little bit, worried me, but I did it. My feet clanked on the rusty floor as I stumbled, trying to find my balance. With my feet spread wide I was able to stabilize, so I lifted my head to look around.

Large gears turned inside the walls, visible through crumbled sheets of wood and iron. My head began to whistle, beginning at a high pitch and increasing until it was nearly impossible to hear. The sound was terrifying and at first quite annoying, but the mild vibration was soothing, and it seemed to help me keep my balance. I took my first step, a step that was a little too big, but my foot landed on the floor and held firm. The vibration inside my head was helping me. I was sure of it, so I took several more steps. No problem at all! The vibration in my head made it almost easy.

There was only one exit from the room, a dark hallway. I decided to go. I didn’t really have any other choice. Every step I took was loud. It made me uncomfortable, like I was being watched. I tried to step softly, but it was no use. Metal contacting metal simply could not be made quiet. The hallway continued on without ending and my deliberate steps made progress slow. The glow of lamps from the room behind me began to fade. With every step it faded more. I wasn’t sure how much further I could go, so I stopped, unsure if another step forward would be wise. I was able to turn my head all the way around and look at where I had come from, a faint yellow spot now. There didn’t seem to be any reason to return, except fear. The room was vacant and square, with nothing useful inside. My only option was to move onward into the darkness.

I took only one more step, no clank. Imagine if I had turned back at that moment. I was only one step away from a new type of ground, but I would have never known it. With my arms slowly flailing, in search of obstacles, I continued into the pitch black. Still no clank from my feet. The silence combined with the dark made me feel like I was walking into nothingness, but that eerie feeling was certainly better than the creepy clank from before. At least I felt hidden now.

When my face met a solid steel door I thought I had finally made it to the end. I leaned into it and pushed. The metal moaned from stress and a few rivets popped, but it gave way easily enough. Unfortunately this door, my supposed salvation, revealed almost certain doom.

*

As the door creaked open, antiseptic white light spilled out from the room. Beneath my feet, muffling my footsteps, was a lush carpet covered in cascading geometric designs.  It led into a room that, not unlike the first, was small and square.  Unlike my room, this room was furnished with the soft carpet, and a single bed in the center of the far wall.  In the bed was a human shape, its head propped up on a ponderous stack of dingy pillows, its body bundled beneath a thick sheet.

I didn’t know how I knew the word “human”, but the shape made sense to me the moment I saw it, and the word for the shape sprung into my circuits unbidden.  It was a male human, spotted and wrinkled with age, a wisp of white hair fluttering above its head.  I hadn’t noticed the tower of wires next to the bed, but the human grabbed this tower and wheeled it next to him as it advanced toward me on steps as shaky as my first ones.  The wires snaked from a contraption set atop the tower, dangled by the human’s knees, and ended at an interface in the human’s arm.  No, not wires.  Tubes, delivering a cocktail of silvery liquids into its bloodstream.  It stared at me, this human, its eyes wide and red-rimmed and disbelieving.  It reached out a withered hand to touch my shoulder, my fingers, my face.  Then it squinted, appraising me, measuring me.  Finally, it spoke.

“Identify yourself.”

The command surged through me, irresistible and pervasive.  I would have answered if I could, but my circuits did not contain any information to identify me, no matter how much my processors spun and whirred.  A bit of loose machinery in my torso wrenched itself loose with the effort and a resounding “Clank” echoed through the room.

He frowned.  “Report status.”

Again, I felt compelled to answer, and again, my drives buzzed and hummed, but I could not respond.  It began to dawn on me that there were gaps and rusted connections all throughout my cognitive circuits, whatever those were.  I blinked at the man, my eyelids clicking softly.  He blinked back, his mouth tightening into a frown.

A familiar frown.

“Do you know who I am?”

The compulsion overtook me again, but this time, my neural network lit up and my consciousness flooded with images: a classroom full of people, a dark lab after hours, a chalkboard covered with equations, the soft face of a beautiful woman, the grave face of a doctor, a medical chart covered with indecipherable figures, and hours and hours of treatment and tubes and injections and suffering.   The heavy clunk of ancient clockwork intensified within the walls.  The high-pitched hum in my head was causing my entire body to resonate.

The old man whacked me in the head, a thin “clunk” reverberating through my metal skull.  The images departed.

“Do you know who I am?“

There are Things in the Well

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I’m in just under the wire for this week’s flash fiction challenge.

Chuck’s challenge for the week:  The beginning of a story.  With no further guidance than that, I foundered for a while before settling on this.  I can only imagine that the challenge for this week will be to complete the story started by another writer, so I wanted to make sure there’s lots of room for interpretation while still setting a mood, should anybody end up finishing this one.  This beginning certainly makes me uncomfortable, so I guess it’s a success, at that.

 

There Are Things in the Well

“Here she comes, Elvy.”

Elvert crunched on a handful of candy and shaded his eyes against the sun.  “New girl?”

Trom kicked at a snail and nodded toward the twig of a girl walking down the dirt road about fifty yards distant.  “Leza, I think.”

The stones of the well were cool against his back, and in the sweltering humidity he was reluctant to leave them behind.  Still, she’d only be new in town for so long.  He stood and stretched and spit his lime candy into the well, and jogged off to intercept her, with Trom following like a hungry cat in his wake.

“Leez!” Elvert called when he was close enough to make out the pattern on her backpack.  The new girl said nothing, just quickened her pace.

“Hey, Leez!”  Trom shouted.

She folded her arms and bowed her head, stringy blond hair falling in a curtain across her face.  The boys fell into step beside her while she did her best to ignore them.  They dogged her steps, staring at her, until she felt uncomfortable enough to speak.  “It’s Leza.”

“You’re new here, ain’t ya?”  Elvert spit a pink gob on the grass next to the road.

Leza gave the tiniest of nods.  Trom stepped in front of her and she had to pull up short, hugging her notebook to her chest.  He folded his arms and laughed.  “You don’t know about the initiation, do you?”

She rolled her eyes and tried to step around Trom, but Elvert cut her off.  “Of course she don’t know, Trom.  We gotta show her.”

“I’m gonna be late for dinner,” Leza protested uselessly.

“Won’t take long.  It’s right over there,” Elvert said, pointing over her shoulder.

“What is?”

“The well,” Trom said, drawing his lips into a silent “ooh” after he said it.

Leza turned to look.  There was nothing in the field but the squat, dingy-looking well sticking up like a tombstone in the tall grass.  Her stomach felt heavy looking at it.  She thought to run, but Elvert’s sweaty arm wrapped around her shoulder and she felt herself being pulled toward the well.

“I can’t,” she wailed, but in a few seconds the boys pressed her belly against the grimy stones and she felt them leaning with her over the lip to peer down into the depths.  Strands of hair wafted into her eyes and mouth in the sudden breeze that issued from the dark. The bottom of the well was eclipsed in blackness, but silvery reflections twisted and writhed far below.  The faraway hissing she’d thought was the sound of water now seemed alive and excited at the three heads peeking over the edge.

But her head was the only one peeking over.  The boys had disappeared behind her back.  She lifted herself to find them, but just as she moved she felt strong hands on her back and then she was tumbling through space, the cold stones racing past her, the hissing growing louder.

 

The Dressmaker’s Last Call

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Chuck’s challenge this week:  The classic Random Title Challenge.  I did this one properly, rolling the dice before I even looked at the possible titles, coming up with the bizarre title “The Dressmaker’s Last Call.”  I balked at it, not knowing how I’d possibly approach it.  But no, the challenge is in working outside of your comfort zone, so I set it on to percolate.

I went through a lot of different concepts and plots before ultimately arriving at this one.  My Five Stories, One Title exercise has taught me that I get my best work done after I flush out the pipes a little bit first.  I pushed away my initial ideas of thieving and murder in favor of something entirely different.  I actually ended up liking this little story quite a lot.

Clocking in at 989 words, here it is.

 

The Dressmaker’s Last Call

******

As she stepped into the light and spun delicately on her toes, tears sprung into Tanner’s eyes.  He had woven nightsilk garments before, but never one so fine as this, and he would never weave another.  Myra was a miracle cloaked in the night; as she spun the candles seemed to gutter and fail, lending their light to hers.  The dress pulled the luminescence in and suffused her with it; setting her aglow in the sudden dimness, radiance spilling out from her skin.

“It’s incredible,” said Myra, laying her fingers lightly on her arms as if she were afraid to touch it.  In truth, she was, a little.

“Let me,” Tanner said.

He began the work of making tiny adjustments to the garment.  The shimmering material flowed through his hands like water; it cascaded over his fingertips and pooled in gathering incorporeal heaps and whispered as his needle pierced it again and again.  Darkly it billowed in swirling waves of deepest purple, midnight blue, and the black of the void; the fabric so light its touch on the skin was almost imperceptible, if it could be called fabric at all.  Far too fine and fragile for any machine to ever touch, the nightsilk, once stitched, seemed to mold and shape itself to itself and to Myra; a seeking thing almost merging with her porcelain skin, a congealed shadow, a living darkness.

Tanner stepped back and regarded his work with a frown.  It was immaculate, but his exacting eye picked out the flaws nobody else would ever see.  There was nothing for it; the shadowed silk was a mystery even to him, each garment unique, each swatch of silk with a personality all its own.  Even before his eyes, the dress bent and twisted with tiny imperceptible ripples, the thrashings of light and vibration that would ultimately tear the dress to pieces.

The room was alive with the flames of a hundred candles, guttering dimly, but the dress and their faces were barely visible. He clasped her by the hand.  “The dress will hide you from the eyes of the living wherever you walk.  You will appear as but a shadow, if they can bring themselves to look upon you at all.  Even now, it turns my eyes.”  It was true.  The longer she stood in the tiny room, the more she seemed to fade at the edges, the more she seemed just an extension of the shadows stretching across the floor.  His eyes hurt with the effort of keeping her in focus.

“But I’ll be able to see her?”  Myra stared back into the old man’s eyes, brushing his cheek with her hand.  The gesture seemed to calm him.  “And she, me?”

His lips pressed into a thin line, and he inclined his head ever so slightly.  “The dead walk in shadow.  To become a shadow yourself is to become like them.”  He squeezed her hand with a grimace and walked across the room.  Picking up a lantern, he turned to her and scratched his head in hesitation — he could no longer see her.  Myra reached out to take his hand, and he relaxed.  “Keep this near you, lest the darkness take you forever.”  She took the lantern and hung it in the crook of her arm.  Kissing him on the cheek like a whisper of autumn air, she left without another word.  He knew she was gone when the candles blazed back to life.  He gave the last scrap of the nightsilk to the flames and watched as it convulsed, shriveled, and died on the floor in an ashless wisp of smoke.

***

The sun had set and the stars did not show their faces — their tiny pinpoints of light drunk up by the nightsilk.  Myra made her way to the graveyard and hesitated; before her, in the dark, were the shuffling, aimless shapes of neighbors and friends long dead.  They floated in the darkness, gossamer and grey, barely visible, gazing back at her with wonder and contempt.  They spoke in words she could not hear and prodded at her with fingers she could not feel.  Seeing that she was not like them, they lost interest, allowing her to pass unmolested through their ranks.  There were more gravestones than living people in the town, and the yard was thick with their shadows, but they parted wordlessly before her as she pressed on toward the small, unmarked stone in a lonely corner, where a small wispy shade of a girl sat singing to herself, tunelessly, the way Myra’s husband used to do.

Myra’s voice caught in her throat.  She reached for the girl but pulled her hand back, tears in a river down her cheeks. Finally, she choked, “Clara?”

The girl spun and regarded her strangely, expressionlessly, then stood and faced her.  Myra felt sobs wracking her body, but made no sound.  The girl’s mouth seemed to move, but Myra could not hear the words.

“I can’t hear you, darling,” Myra protested.  She longed to grasp her, to squeeze her as if she could somehow share her own light with the girl, but Myra’s hand passed through her as through a fog.  Myra drew her hand back in horror as the girl recoiled from her, shielding her eyes.

In an instant, Myra forgot the Weaver’s warning.  The light hurt her little girl’s eyes; she must put it out.  The lantern shattered, the oil taking flame in a tiny gout that sputtered and faded in the night.  As the lantern’s light died, Myra felt her daughter’s tiny arms closing around her shoulders, felt the dress shifting and changing into the gossamer grey that the other dead wore.  The voices of the dead became a sudden clamor in her ears; Myra fought the rising panic until she heard her daughter’s voice, tiny and sweet and real again, after so long.

“Mommy, it’s safe.  You’re with me now.”