Tag: weird

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.

 

Bull Rush

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Chuck’s challenge this week:  Nothing but Action.

Action is a thing I struggle with, so this was an exercise I desperately needed.  I really like the beginning of this one… I have to confess I couldn’t think of an action-y way to end it.  The ending suffers a bit for that, I’m afraid.  And to my wife, when she reads it… I just couldn’t work the duck into it.  I’ll break that thing out later.

 

Bull Rush

Checking the figures on his monitor one last time, Taurie breathes deep and jabs the needle into his thigh.  The clear solution oozes in and he feels a slimy cold spread through his leg.  He hears a distant crunch as they kick in the downstairs door.  He mashes the red button to arm the failsafe, throws his chair through the window, and dives out.  He drops two stories, tucks, rolls, and cracks his skull on the side of a dumpster.

The agents kick his door in and flood his room like cockroaches, sweeping through his apartment in a frenzied buzz of intercom chatter.  It’s only seconds before an agent spies the window, shards of glass still clinging to the frame, drapes floating lazily in the breeze.

Taurie blinks the stars away and lurches to his feet.  Twenty feet above him, he sees a suit and sunglasses speak into its wrist and disappear back into his apartment. He jogs to the street, then lapses in judgment for a fraction of a second and looks back toward his building.

The smear of blood on his forehead gives him away.  Taurie sees the guy in the camouflage shorts and handlebar mustache, and Handlebars sees Taurie see him.  As if a starter pistol had gone off, they both break into a dead run.  Nondescript faces and bodies fly at Taurie as he hurtles down the sidewalk, brushing them aside or ducking around them as best as he can, knowing that he’s only creating an empty wake for Handlebars to follow him in.  He doesn’t even have to look behind him to know that the guy is closing.  Taurie’s short, and Handlebars has the benefit of not having to pick an escape route.  So Taurie hurls himself into the street.

A cab lurches to a heavy halt but can’t stop in time; Taurie tumbles across its hood, pirouettes and dashes in a jagged arc across four lanes to a chorus of honks and shouts.  A passing bus clips his heel but doesn’t slow down.  He hazards a glance over his shoulder as he makes the far sidewalk.  Handlebars, initially slowed by the detour into the street, is now closing the gap between them, aided by his long strides and the fact that all of the traffic is now stopped.  In the open, he’ll be caught in seconds, not minutes.  Taurie spots a bellhop pushing a luggage rack out through the doors of the Grand.  He aims a shoulder at the guy’s midsection, sending him sprawling.  He grabs the trundle, yanks it sideways behind him and wedges it in the door.

Handlebars grabs his hand through the stack of suitcases and flowered dresses just as Taurie turns to bolt through the lobby.  He twists Taurie’s wrist backwards; Taurie yelps in pain and collapses backward into a foul-smelling duffel bag, kept upright and pinned in an iron grip.

“It’s over, Conway,” Handlebars says, his ludicrous facial hair twisting into some sort of fuzzy alien punctuation mark.

Taurie aims a mule-kick at the stack of luggage; it topples over and crashes down on Handlebars.  His hand comes free, and Taurie bolts through the lobby —

And then the building is shaking like the inside of a bass drum with the percussive force of a massive explosion.  Through one of the floor-length glass panes, Taurie sees the roof of his building belching fire and smoke into the sky.  He has only a moment of panic to realize that the inhibitor signal is probably about to cease, and then Taurie is gone and the Tank takes over.

Handlebars has extricated himself from the tangle of mothballed dresses and hardshelled suitcases and he sees Taurie stop short across the lobby.  The kid doubles over and begins pounding on the floor, his shirt stretching and snapping, his neck and shoulders and arms bulging like he’s been suddenly pumped full of hot air.  Handlebars’s mouth goes dry and his stomach turns.  He unholsters his pistol and fires off a tranq dart — then a second, for good measure.  The thing that used to be Taurie peers ponderously at the feathers sprouting from its butt and rounds on him.

The scrawny kid is gone; in his place is a golden-eyed monster the size of three linebackers, snorting and snarling with great bull nostrils and great bull horns sprouting from his sweat-matted hair.

Now it’s Handlebars’s turn to run.  He stumbles into the street but the Tank is on him in the blink of an eye.  He feels his ankle caught as if in cement, and then the world turns a half flip and he’s dangling upside-down, staring into the inverted face of Taurie-Tank.  Its bulging eyes bore into his, protruding snout exploring his face, horns jabbing into his collarbones.  Its breath smells of rancid meat and ashes; he gets lightheaded breathing it in.  This is the end, Handlebars thinks, and then he hears the pock-pock of gunfire, feels warm spray spatter his cheek, tastes iron on his tongue.  The monster drops him on his face and he feels consciousness slip away as the Tank leaps toward the dark-suited agents across the street, stomping a crater in a sedan along the way.

****

Taurie wakes up in a stainless steel room, cuffed to a bed.  There’s pain in his shoulder, but it’s faint and distant.  In the corner stands Handlebars, his ankle in a cast and a bandage over one eye.

“Welcome back.”

Taurie asks the only question that matters.  “Did I kill anybody?”

“Is that what you’re worried about?”

“What should I be worried about?”

Handlebars shrugs.  “Whether or not you ever see daylight again.”

Taurie folds his arms, or tries to.  The handcuff clatters at his wrist.  “You want my research.  I’m not giving it to you.  Why do you think I blew up my apartment?”

Handlebars smiles.  “We already have your research.”  He hobbles into the light, his unbandaged eye turning gold.

 

Neon Carrots

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Aaand this one brings me firmly back into the wonderful wacky territory of WTF.

Chuck’s challenge this week is a story using a color in the title.  So I went to my trusty crayon box (okay, I went to Crayola.com) and started digging.  I was initially drawn to such fancy and whimsical colors as crimson and cerulean, periwinkle and chartreuse, but for some reason, when I saw the color “Neon Carrot,” my brain grabbed hold and wouldn’t let go, like a toddler grabbing hold of my leg hair.  (What, your toddler has never grabbed onto your leg hair?  LUCKY.)

So here’s “Neon Carrots,” a tale of vindication for every child who’s ever been a little bit leery of eating his vegetables.  I tried out a bit of a different style in this one: almost fairy-taleish.  Not sure if it reads or not.  Let me know what you think.

 

Neon Carrots

Zelda poked at a carrot, imagining that it jumped a little at the prick of her fork.

Bryan lifted a forkful of carrots and revered them under the fluorescent light.  “What’s with these carrots, mom?”

Mother gave a ceremonious clearing of her throat and smiled primly at him.  “They’re the newest thing.  I saw them in the grocery store this morning, and it was as if they were begging to be eaten.  I just had to try them!”

Father winked at Bryan and stuffed a bit of pot roast into his mouth.  “She just can’t help herself, your mother.  Sees something bright and shiny and it pulls her right in.”

“Well, aren’t they something special?”  She grabbed the pot and pulled it closer; the phosphorescent goop within illuminating her face from below like a campfire storyteller’s flashlight.  The orangey-yellow glow suffused her features and lent her a slightly sickly quality.  “Neon carrots.  Isn’t science incredible?”

Bryan and Zelda shared a look of mutual misery.  Zelda pushed her plate away.  “I don’t like them.”

“You haven’t tried them, dear.”

“I don’t have to try them.  They’re disgusting.”

Father leveled a steely eye at her.  “Eat your carrots, Z.”

“What about Bryan?”

“Bryan, too.”

Bryan scowled and elbowed her under the table.  “Thanks a lot, barf-bag.”

“Eat,” said father, in a tone which brooked no further argument.

Revolted, Zelda speared a slice of carrot and brought it to her mouth, pausing to take a deep breath first.  Like most of mother’s cooking, it was overcooked and undersalted, the end result being a pasty tasteless mass in her mouth.

Mother beamed.  “You can just taste the enzymes, can’t you?  They cross-germinated these carrots with bioluminescent kelp from the deepest part of the ocean to increase their nutritional value.  The glow is just a neat side effect.  Aren’t they fun?”

Bryan chewed thoughtfully before nodding.  “They’re not bad.”

Father winked at him.  “That’s the spirit.  Zelda, what do you think?”

Zelda swallowed.  They actually weren’t all that bad.  In fact, she suddenly felt compelled to try another bite, which she did.  She narrowed her eyes and bobbed her head up and down as the earthy undertones of the root, unnoticed at first, began to burst on her tongue.  She cleaned her plate and even asked for more carrots; mother grinned knowingly at father and spooned her another heaping helping.

They didn’t have the neon carrots again for a week, but in the meantime, mother brought home luminous squash and lustrous watercress, the latest genetically modified offerings infused with deepsea kelp and released by the Kane Farmers’ Association.  The children devoured their portions each more heartily than the last, with a zeal and excitement they had never shown for their food before.  Father became suspicious; he’d never known the kids to care so much about nutrition before.  Mother was just happy they were eating their vegetables.

*****

A week passed, and one afternoon while Zelda was playing with her dolls, she looked out the window and saw Bryan digging in the backyard like a crazed dog.  She dropped her princess and ran outside.  Bryan didn’t even look at her, he just kept scrabbling at the earth with mud-crusted nails, throwing handfuls of dirt and rocks over his shoulder.  His skin was oranger than usual, but she attributed that to the clay dust hanging in the air.  “Help me dig,” he insisted.

Zelda wanted to ask, “for what,” but she realized that Bryan’s digging wasn’t so strange, and in fact she felt like digging in the ground might not be such a bad idea herself.  They worked for the better part of an hour — neither of them thought to get shovels, and the feel of the raw earth under her fingernails oddly comforted her — and in the end had dug a little trench, two feet deep and three feet across.  Wordlessly, they nodded to each other, removed their shoes, stepped into the ditch, and began to cover themselves over with dirt — first the feet, then the ankles, then the calves.  The close, damp cold of the earth felt right around her toes.  They stood there, arms flat at their sides and chins upturned toward the sun, for a full hour before Father got home from work and asked them what they were up to.

“We’re neon carrots!” Bryan called, his face shining in the fading evening sun.

“So you are, so you are,” Father laughed.  “Come on inside.  Your mom’s picked up some incandescent cauliflower to go with the lamb chops.”

*****

During his bath, Mother noticed a tiny leaf on a tinier green stem just above Bryan’s ear.  She plucked it out, assuming he’d rolled in some grass, but Bryan began to howl and thrash in pain and could not be quieted again until mother agreed to give him another helping of carrots at dinnertime.

As they sat down, Zelda brushed her hair back behind her ear, deliberately showing him the tiny sprout at the nape of her neck.  “It’ll grow back,” she whispered.

Bryan wiped his eyes and grinned at her.

*****

Some nights later, signaled perhaps by the moon or a change in the weather, they met in the yard again to dig their ditches: deeper this time and faster, their bleeding fingers seeking the depth and the quiet and the dark of the earth, their vegetated brains numb to the pain.  As they stood in the earth with just the creeping tendrils of root and branch peeking up from the tops of their heads, they smiled at each other before entombing themselves in the ground until the harvest.

The bioluminescent produce was pulled from shelves a few days later with no explanation, and the Kane Farmers’ Association vanished like a thief in the night.

Mother and Father were upset when they disappeared, but  pleasantly surprised at the newfound bounty of neon carrots sprouting in the backyard.  Soon, Mother was pregnant again, and she was positively glowing.