Shadows

I haven't posted any fiction for a while, so here's a story. It's the one posted over at Big White Box not that long ago.

Shadows

As she lies beneath crisp white sheets, I imagine Grand-mère's eighty-nine years of memories repeating over and over in her mind, jumbled by time. When she's remembering a good one, the crinkles around her eyes are a myriad of tiny smiles. I wonder if she's thinking of someone she knew, someone long dead, someone she hopes to see soon. Or is it her garden in Strasbourg, the cathedral looming high behind? "Dat shade vas a shade from God," she'd often say.

Last year I was in Strasbourg, in that shade, Mom explaining, pointing, a good tour guide but not knowledgeable enough to know when silence said more. I wanted silence, to feel the cool of that shadow on my cheek, to think about Grand-mère feeling it, too, back when she was my age, back when she was striving to feed her young family on puny vegetables grown in the cathedral's shadow, her neighbors calling, "Janine, how goes it?" in the dialect of Strasbourg, and Grand-mère's answer, "The weeds, they grow."

And she grew. Struggled, fought, endured. Thrived on it all.

Me? I collect my paychecks, shop the shops, glide along, untested, unchallenged. Could I have done what she did? Not just survived, but thrived, as she did? I need my microwave, my cell phone, my laptop. She had her wood-burning stove and her hands, strong and competent.

Now, her hand nearly weightless in mine, Grand-mère's wandering in a memory. "Have some potatoes," she says. And I remember her potatoes, sautéed brown with onions or creamed in a casserole, potatoes fixed a hundred different ways. I'd eaten them all, but have no recipes, only the flavor memories on my tongue.

"Don't fret, Liebchen," she whispers, her touch light as a butterfly wing. "The shade, it grows."

Big White Box

One of my writing groups (I'm in three; just sayin') has an experiment going on. We've set up a website where we showcase authors and their work. This has been live for a few months now. I'm just getting around to posting about it.

Big White Box 

Our featured authors so far include Brad Walseth, Jim C. Hines, Frances McNamara, and Eric Larson. If you are or know of someone who'd like to be featured, please use the contact form on the main page. Alternatively, you could leave suggestions here and I'll forward them to the group.

We're also putting up our own short fiction. Each Sunday (or thereabouts) our webmaster posts a story under Big White Blog. Today's story - "Shadows" - is by me! The stories are mostly less than 500 words. I think we each have three or four pieces up there so far. There's no common theme or genre, so hopefully you'll find something you like.

We're also trying our hands at running writing contests. Our first one closed recently. That's all I'm going to say about it until we complete the judging process.

So, if you're looking for something short to read, try our Big White Blog. If you like what you see, please tell your friends. ;-)

New Inkwell Entry

I had today off from The Day Job. I planned to work on a short story that has a deadline of September 26. Instead I dithered. A lot. Reorganized my Safari bookmarks. Cleaned up the laptop desktop. Read over the stories and story fragments from two recent NaNoWriMo rebel years (2012 and 2013). Copied out the pieces that looked promising.

One of those stories was set in The Inkwell world. (See the tab at the top of this page. It's a story I wrote jointly with Dixiegirl, started during NaNo 2009). So I did a rough revision and posted it HERE.

That September 26 short story? No progress. I believe I have effectively spent my day in that well-known phenomenon: displacement activities. Well, it's not bedtime yet...

Memories of a One-eyed Teddy Bear

I have another Library group homework to share.  Items were prompts for this one.  Our instructor brought in a mixed group of stuff:  a transistor radio with only AM, a well-loved teddy bear with only one eye, several framed pictures (one was a birthday party), and other things I don't remember.  We were to choose one and write a story about it - no more than 500 words.  I picked the one-eyed bear.  I seem to be on a violence kick; have no idea why. 

Memories of a One-eyed Teddy Bear

Pudge, a scruffy white rabbit with a black circle around one eye, suggested a trip to the copse at the end of the lane.  It was a beautiful July day and the shade under the trees was inviting.

They went, a mismatched cluster meandering down the dusty road.

It took far longer than expected to get there.  Shiny Knight kept dropping his sword.  His armor prevented him bending to pick it up.  Tiny Dragon would stand on the blade and taunt him until All In Red, the lion with a bright red coat with shiny silver buttons and the unofficial leader of the group, made Dragon give way.  Bear wandered to the edge of the road to smell the flowers.  Pudge nibbled leaves in case they were food.

They welcomed the coolness of the copse and the fresh water from the gurgling stream they found there.  Tiny Dragon flitted over the water, dove in and emerged with a small silver fish in his jaws.  All In Red napped under a large oak.

The light turned orange as the sun set.  They decided to spend the night under the trees.  An adventure!

The first unicorn appeared at moonrise.  She snorted and stamped around the group before trotting off down the lane. 

Tiny Dragon quivered in fear, pushed up hard against Shiny Knight's leg.  "Unicorns.  Nasty.  We must go." 

Pudge wiggled his nose.  "But who knows the way in the dark?"

No one answered. 

"It was only one," said Shiny Knight, so stiff in his armor he could only swing his arms forward and back in a slicing motion.  His sword was long, with many nicks. 

All In Red settled it.  "Their horns get tangled in the branches.  We're safe here."  He growled softly to emphasize his words.

Bear had his doubts.  He'd heard unicorns lived in forests.  They must be used to trees.  And they were territorial. 

Knight knew, too, and said as much, but his voice was muffled by his face plate so All In Red found it easy to pretend he hadn't heard.

The others fell into restless sleep.  Bear stayed alert under a beech tree.

And so it was Bear who gave the alarm when the unicorn returned with her friends.

Knight slashed at a bay unicorn.  It turned and kicked him in the chest with both hooves.  Knight's armor rang like a dinner bell and he fell back into the dead leaves.

After that Bear's memories were disjointed, mere flashes.  A dappled grey unicorn with All In Red's coat dangling from his mouth, Red's stuffing wafting among the branches.  Pudge skewered and shaken on a glistening black horn.  Bear's last memory of the fierce battle was a silver horn heading toward him.

He woke to the morning songbirds.  All around him were the bodies of his friends, the ground torn up by many hooves.  The world was aslant, cockeyed.

Bear still has nightmares.

Isabel and the Grenade

Here's another piece of short fiction, this one written for the Library writing group homework.  We were instructed to write an opening sentence, then to pass it to the person next to us!  We were also to include some reference(s) to spring (the season).  Total length of no more than 500 words.

The opening line was written by Jeff.  The rest is my fault.

Isabel and the Grenade

Isabel pulled the pin on the hand grenade and slipped it into the library's book drop.  She ran like hell down the curve of the driveway.  Please work, please work.  Someone found a cache of old weapons and brought them to Michael, who'd scratched his head through the short grey bristle he called hair and declared them salvageable. 

She dove in front of the large brick sign that announced to the dictator-crushed world this was the Greater Metro Library, landed sprawling across bright pink tulips as the serenity of the spring morning was shattered.  Fragments from what was now a hole Josh could drive his Hummer through pattered down around her.  A smokey dust cloud followed.  Isabel lurched to her feet, staggered to the sidewalk, turned to gape at the damage and tried to look surprised, not elated.  It worked!  

As she steadied her footing and tossed long blond curls from her face, the black Hummer barreled past and did indeed fit into the opening she'd made for it.  A pipe of some kind scraped along one side, but Josh, Gerson, Kiko, Michael and Shelby were in.  She heard glass shatter as Josh accelerated through the lobby doors on the way to the conference room where there was an oh-so-secret meeting with The Dictator Himself, the Ministers of War and Economy, and the heads of agencies everyone knew existed but didn't dare mention.

Isabel held her breath.  The rattle of the AK 47s sounded distant, like old videos, like toys.  The screams, as short as they were, tore into her chest.  She fell to her knees, head hanging, fingers grasping the moist soil.  Why did it hurt, hearing the monsters die?  Gasping, retching, struggling to breath, she felt large hands grab her shoulders.  She was hauled upright.  Forced around.  The security guard kept one hand painfully gripping her shoulder.  The other held a gun to her temple.

"At this range it'll kill you," he said conversationally.

She swallowed hard, feeling if her eyes opened any wider they'd fall out of her head.  The guard's grey eyes darted from her face to the library.  He shook her, as if that would help her ragged breathing.

The Hummer should be coming back out.  If ... There it was.  The growl of the powerful engine.

Isabel folded her knees, slumped straight down as if she'd fainted.  The guard swore.  A single gun shot and he no longer had a face.  Isabel screamed as she was covered with his blood.

"Bel!  Bel!"  Gerson was half out the side door, one arm extended.  She stumbled, leaped, and hit him hard, both of them tumbling into the Hummer.  Shelby's long arm hauled the door closed as Josh gunned the engine. 

She looked around at the grinning faces.

The opening salvo of the Spring Revolt was theirs.

The Inkwell

Starting in December of 2009, my friend Cindy and I co-wrote a novel.  We didn't plan to.  We were having fun creating a story with some very cooperative characters and it sort of got out of hand.  Initially we thought we'd do it for about a month.  It ended up keeping us busy for more like four months.

We were posting on line as we wrote, in a thread in the National Novel Writing Month forums called The Smoking Pen.  That thread is set up for cooperative writing, and in the beginning other people were contributing as well.  When the story grabbed us and wouldn't let go, Cindy (who is known as Dixiegirl in NaNoLand), started a separate thread called The Inkwell.

In 2012, Cindy set up a writing group consisting of folks who met doing NaNoWriMo (The Asylum:  you don't have to be crazy, just committed).  On several occasions, The Inkwell has come up in conversations as an example of this or that.  Many in the group hadn't read it.  I'd say I should post that some time.

Well, that time has come.

I'm posting it.

That's why there's a new tab at the top here on my blog.  The Inkwell tab will always take you to the initial background post, whether there's a new entry or not.  On the right, under Archive, is the list of entries.  They're numbered sequentially and each is roughly 2000 words long.  Thanks to the magic of cookies, after you've read one the color should change and that can help you keep track of what you've seen.

I think the total length is about 70,000 words, so this will take a while.  I posted a lot in the last few days, but I'll slow down now, to probably just one entry per day.

I hope you enjoy our story.  We certainly had a lot of fun writing it.

A One-sided Conversation

This is another of my SPAMmers' homeworks.  The prompt was "soaked in sadness" and as always the limit was no more than 500 words.

A One-sided Conversation

You'll find it an easy recipe.  A classic.  You probably have most of the ingredients in your cabinet right now, will only have to gather one or two.  Then you'll be on your way to, well, let's use the euphemism of wedded bliss.  Why a euphemism you ask?  I'm old and don't stand with that straightforward modern nonsense.  But you'll get what you want from this one, dearie.  There's a guarantee.  You must call back about how you get on.  

Yes, dearie?  Oh, you don't seem to have any henbane?  None down by the river at all?  Tsk.  What are things coming to.  No, you can't get it from me.  You must collect it fresh during a waxing gibbous.  You thought full?  Someone said that was more powerful?  Youngsters.  Dear, you want growth, and to get that you can't harvest when everything is already at it's maximum, now, can you.  You'll just have to wait.  Do call back. 

There are no proper mandrake roots this time of year?  Have you looked?  Yes?  You have amazed me, you truly have.  One could always find good mandrake anytime it was needed back when ... sorry, you don't want to hear about how things were in the old days. 

You find the bats are diseased and you fear their noses won't work as needed.  All are covered in white fuzz.  You can substitute dried wing, of course.  You have no stock of dried bat wings in storage?  None?  In the past you've always avoided recipes that called for them?  You haven't hunted for bats since you were eight?  Tsk, tsk, dearie.  You young witches certainly ... yes, do call back. 

It didn't work and you want to know about that guarantee.  Did you mix it with his potatoes?  Did you encourage things along?  Are you sure you followed the recipe exactly?  Youngsters often get impatient about some of the more time consuming steps.  Waiting for the proper phase of the moon took longer than you planned, and having to travel for a week to locate healthy bats set you back a bit as well.  But truly, dearie, if you'd had everything at hand the mixture would have been ready to use in a month.  Yes, a month.  Did I leave that part off?  In the old days these things were just understood by all, no need for written down recipes.  You ... ah, you want to know what I left off.  Yes, dearie, of course.  It must be soaked in sadness for a double fortnight or all the rest is just a waste of time. 

Fictional Biology

I am astounded by some people's lack of understanding of basic human biology.  The mens who think wimmens can control fertility and not get pregnant if we don't want to.  And THIS GUY, who thinks wimmens have tiny dead babies in our wombs.  

Ladies, we are carrying the future zombie apocalypse!

One day the signal will pass among the wimmens.  Those dead babies will be born.  Wimmens will use their magic necromancy powers and turn all the little dead babies into Tall Hot Zombies.  (Of course they'll be Hot, we wimmens aren't dumb.)  The Tall Hot Zombies will then eat the brains and junk of those mens who lack an accurate understanding of human reproductive biology.

Now I see why these mens are so afeared of us wimmens.

End of The World

In my SPAMmers writing group we have "homework" based on a predecided prompt with a limit of 500 words.  Those who do it read their work at the meeting.  For our meeting last night the prompt (decided months ago) was "end of the world."  Vic posted his effort here .  I decided to post mine, too, partly because someone said I needed to write more stuff like it. 


Working title: "Bike"  


Deidra and I were strolling down the sidewalk.  A matte black motorcycle was parked in front of the drug store.  I stopped.

"What?  Coffee, remember?"

I rarely paused for anything on my way for coffee.  "It's beautiful."  I held out my arm.  "Look at those sleek lines." 

"Crazy woman.  It's a motorcycle!"

"A Ducati. Work of art."

"Black ugliness.  The coffee shop?" 

I waved her on.  "I've never seen one live before."  I moved closer.  "See how the curves make it look like it's already going fast?"

She stood there, hands on hips, rolling her eyes.  "No."

"Look at that Harley over there.  See how clunky it is?" 

"They're machines, Vonda."

I resigned myself to never getting her to understand.

Deidra was tapping her foot.  "That's it.  I'm going."

"I'll be there soon."  My breathing had slowed, my back muscles relaxed; physical reactions to such a pretty thing.

A dark haired man stepped up next to me.  His clothes matched the bike; matte black jacket and pants.  His unzipped jacket showed a pale green shirt underneath with the top four buttons undone, revealing significant chest hair.  I had a vague sense he was clean shaven with a nicely shaped chin, laughing eyes.  Chest hair.  I felt like I'd won the lotto.  Bike and man.

"Like what you see?"

"Yes."  Simple answers are sometimes the best.

"Would you like a ride?"

"I love to look at them, but I'm terrified of riding."

He looked me over.  Slowly.  Grinned.  "Bikes?  Men?"

"Bikes."  I smiled, one corner of my mouth higher than the other.  "It takes a long time for me to be comfortable enough to ride a man."

"I've never backed off from a challenge."

I raised an expensively plucked eyebrow.  "Oh?"

"Interested in some iced coffee?  There's a shop just up the street."  He pointed in the opposite direction Deidra had gone.

I was attracted to this man.  Dangerously so.  I should say no thanks and go; I wasn't always sensible when viewing beauty.  "I'd love to.  I'm Vonda."

"BJ.  Let's ride there."

"Hold on."

"Backing off from the challenge already?  We've barely begun."

I took several deep breaths.  Looked into BJ's inviting brown eyes.  I really wanted to have my fingers entwined in his chest hair.  "Not the bike."

"Shame."  He tipped an imaginary hat, strode over and mounted.  I felt the motion of his hips as he settled on the seat.  Felt my hips wanting to respond.

He looked hard at me.  "Sure you don't want to come?"

Oh, I wanted to come all right.  Just not out here in public.

He winked as if he knew what I'd just thought.  "You did say bikes terrified you.  Shouldn't push you."  He twisted a bit, patted the seat behind him.  "Join me.  Get the feel."

I hesitated.

"I won't start the engine."

Oh, honey, the engine's already revving.

"Come on, sweetheart.  It's not the end of the world."

I stepped forward.