The weirdest way to usher in 2014

Christmas break has stretched long this year. We get a month off every winter, and during those weeks, I tend to get restless. Away from campus, I don't know what to do with myself. 

To give me something to do aside from marathoning British TV and talking to the cat, Joe told me to write a story. I figured I'd share it on here. It's turned out wonderfully weird. 

My instructions: I was to include an awe-inspiring and manly hero, a flying battle cat, and a dragon who consumes souls. I added some fire-breathing gerbils, a strategic reference to Doctor Who, and a princess turning to diamond. 

Magnus Morrow and the Battle Cat

Chapter One 

Magnus Morrow was surprised to discover, one gray Tuesday afternoon, that he owned a talking book named Felix, which had been a birthday present from his great-aunt Sylvia, and which, as it turned out, could tell the future--and this future included princesses, Wellington boots, and a rather foolish vicar named Stew. 

The discovery came about quite suddenly, just as he was sitting down to tea. 

"Jammie dodgers," sighed a voice to his left. "I hate jammie dodger days." 

Being a wizard of some repute (as well as a part-time professor of geometric patterns at the local university), Magnus was used to unexpected voices issuing from unexpected places in his house; nevertheless, he did jump slightly, and clutched the plate of cakes, his glasses shuddering on his nose. 

Scowling at the teapot, he set the plate on the table and said, rather rudely, "I don't see how you have anything to complain about. I've used a bag instead of tea leaves this time, so you don't go getting mucky--you complained so much when Mrs. Letherby was here to tea." 

"Not him!" the voice spoke up again, this time a little scornful. "I'm down here!"

Magnus looked. To his left was a three-legged tea table, one leg of which was broken and propped up on three or four very old, very dusty books. It was from the top one, a handsome leather tome with gold leaf, that the voice appeared to be issuing. 

"Oh, I beg your pardon," Magnus said courteously. "I'm sorry I was rude."

"It's all very well," the book sighed. "Most people get tetchy when their belongings talk to them at tea-time. Those cakes do look good, though. I miss having a mouth."

"I don't suppose," asked Magnus, "I could hand one down and put it on your cover?" 

"Oh, go on then," the book said pleasantly, "but quickly--I'm here on business."

Magnus swiftly transferred a raspberry cake onto the red leather surface, where it remained for a moment before there was a sucking noise a bit like a vacuum, and the cake vanished. The book heaved a happy sigh. 

"Right-o," it said. "I wouldn't have spoken up, normally, but as I said, it happens I'm here on business. It would be best if you read me at once. I have an urgent message from the princess."

November Short Stories: Wednesday Edition II

The moon reminded Lorelei of tears.

Soft as silver, they bubbled up in the wake of the crescent moon. The lady-in-waiting who found her pillow soaked felt her forehead and called for a doctor. Lorelei, as perplexed as she, lay in bed while the bespectacled man lifted her eyelids, prodded the fleshy underside of her arms, and peered down her throat as though into a cavern. He gave Lorelei a viscous green syrup to take every three hours, and billed the castle.

Her royal parents watched from the doorway, worry in their eyes.

Soon, a steady flow of tears bathed Lorelei's cheeks. They slid down her cheeks in curling rivers, unquenched by the steady flow of people who called with offered cures. Servants stripped her bed of the salty sheets from tears she'd shed in sleep. The king and queen called in philosophers and astronomers, foreign wizards and shamans who spilled bones across the carpet and danced through smoke. Jesters came with silly stories and tumbling acts so ridiculous, the ladies-in-waiting held their stomachs and grasped at chairs to keep from fainting of laughter. But Lorelei's tears continued. She listened to the troubadours tune their instruments and hazard the first notes of sad songs about her.

"Ahhh," said someone at last, an old woman with filmy blue eyes. Her forehead relaxed with compassion. "I understand. You know that he loves you, don't you? And you feel it."

"Who loves me?" she whispered into the midnight shadows. Her lids burned with salt.

The woman smiled gently, unwrapping a handkerchief from her pocket. "The moon does. He's pining for you, isn't he? No, these tears won't stop, I think, until you climb to his kingdom."

A tear rolled off of Lorelei's nose, but she took the handkerchief and turned her face to the window. Moonlight gleamed silvery along her tear-stained cheeks.

"The question is," the old wise woman said as she rose, "how to get there?"

November Short Stories: Wednesday

Hopefully Lost

After their fifth wrong turn, Monica began to feel the pressure of the growing dark.

Henry chuckled quietly, steering wheel revolving beneath his hands.

"Cornfields and more cornfields," he said, nodding out the window. "I don't think we're anywhere close to Pittsburgh."

Monica laughed nervously, tugging at a wrinkle in her pantyhose. "Maybe I should call the office and let them know we won't be making it."

"Oh, we'll make it." Henry made a slow left turn. More cornfields. "The meeting isn't until eight o'clock tomorrow morning, after all."

Silence. The pantyhose were making her itch.

"Besides," he added after a long moment, "you know.....it's been nice to finally spend some time with you."

Monica's heart skittered beneath her work blouse. "I guess we had to wait for a six-hour car ride for that, huh? I mean...um, it has been. Really nice."
The Honda revolved slowly around a turn. Henry flicked his lights on. 

"I've heard that the city by morning is quite the sight," he said quietly. 

Monica stared at the passing cornstalks and pressed her knuckles to her mouth, trying not to smile. "Is that a proposition?"

"I'd really like it to be. Though, it should be said, only the most honorable of propositions. Breakfast and a city sunrise?"

"That," she said softly, "sounds perfect."

It was darker than dark now, but she didn't jump when the tips of his fingers curled around hers. Henry sighed. "I am sorry about that wrong turn."

Monica smiled at the window. "Let's just drive."

May Short Stories: (a late) Sunday Edition

Watching Somewhere

There once was a mermaid who lives on the salt rocks outside of Somewhere, but she never sang--though that was the typical mermaid occupation. Her voice was a husky alto. The one time she had made an attempt at a bit of siren-song, she saw the sailors glancing down in confusion, mouthing questions to one another through the spray. Embarrassed, she ducked down against the rocks and waited mute until the ship made its treacherous way onward.

Her hair couldn't even stream into the foam in typical mermaid fashion: it was cut short--for athletics--and the older merfolk got together on their front porches as she passed, shaking their heads like rudders when they saw the lipstick she wore.

One night, she met a sailor bobbing along the ocean floor.

His eyes were closed, his head floating listlessly from side to side. But he must have sensed her presence, because his eyes slowly opened.

The mermaid didn't move. A bubble slipped from his lips, and then he smiled. The lips trembled, seeming to mouth a bemused question.

She wondered later if she should have tried to rescue him.

May Short Stories: Saturday Edition

                At the age of ten, Emma asked her father to turn her into a bird.

                “I can’t, starling,” he said sadly, crumpling the curls at her neck. “I’m not that kind of magician.”

                “But you’re a magician,” she said. “You can fly.”

                “Yes, I can fly. But you, my darling, won’t ever be a bird.” He squeezed her cheek. “I couldn’t allow that.”

                But Emma couldn’t give up on the idea. In the evening, she hung in the window, staring out at the great expanse of soft blue. It pulled her soul into a glorious ache, a sting tracing shivers down her arms. Her father found her and carried her to bed, his face tucked into a frown.

                “No more flying,” he said softly as he tucked her in.

                “No more?” Emma asked yearningly.

                “No, starling. No more, ever. You must stay my little girl. You can’t turn into a bird.”

                He kissed her forehead and left the room, his wand twirling lazily in his hand. Emma turned her face to the window, where the horizon glowed turquoise.

                She promised her father she wouldn’t try to fly again. But she dreamed of starlings. 

May Short Stories: Friday Edition

I am so dead, thought Alexander Craw, at 2:37 on a Sunday afternoon, just before the fuse blew.

At 10:13, Alex sat down to a comfortable, if tardy, breakfast of eggs and oatmeal. It was an awkward pairing at best, and with puffy, griddle-burned eggs that sucked the spit out of his mouth, he was soon relegated to drinking orange juice and having a staring contest with his baby sister, Chelsea, who was still young enough to stare without it being weird.

At 10:27, the kitchen window opened, and Alex' mother screamed and dropped the frying pan as their neighbor Jane ninja-somersaulted onto the linoleum.
Jane crashed into the table, making the orange juice wobble in the pitcher. She picked herself up and pointed at Alex. She was dressed completely in black, a black bandanna tied around her mouth. She looked like a cartoon bank robber.
"You," she said, "are needed on a mission."
Alex adjusted his glasses.
"To where?" he asked. He was used to Jane's dramatics.
She stuck her chin in the air and gave him a triumphant smile. "The town square."

At 12:03, Alex discovered exactly what Jane's vendetta in the town square consisted of. Their local Girl Scouts were doing a public fundraiser for an animal hospital in the city. And Jane hated the animal hospital. She took personal offense at the high number of rabbits and cats put to sleep there.
"They're nothing but moneymaking murderers," she hissed, watching the Girl Scouts, on a stage especially built for the performance, through narrowed eyes. The stage was propped up on cinder blocks, though they had been disguised--poorly--with streamers and pictures of frolicking cats. Jane and Alex crouched in the parking lot behind Alex' car, watching the activity in the square. Alex felt admittedly dubious about the mission. But then, Jane was his best friend.
Abruptly, she jumped up and opened the trunk, removing a suitcase. "It's go time. Are you ready?"
When he didn't answer, she glanced back at him and rolled her eyes. "Calm down. We're not doing anything illegal. Not in the purest sense." She threw him the suitcase, which he caught with clumsy hands.
"What is the impure sense of 'illegal'?" he asked. Jane ignored him, removing a second suitcase from the trunk.
"Now, your job is to follow me and be quiet."

Jane's suitcases were full of tomatoes.
"Tomatoes," said Alex.
"Yes," she said with satisfaction.
"Why tomatoes?"
"They tend," she said, "to be good for explosions."

He wasn't exactly sure how she got the wires hooked up with such apparent ease, crossing them over one another like snakes with biting metal jaws, until it became what would, Jane assured him, be an electric tomatoey circuit of doom. He watched her hands crossing back and forth, and they were quick and devious. He noticed she had a widow's peak.
Alex squatted beside her. "So why did you want me for the mission?"
"Your car, primarily, since I don't have one." Jane paused, her mouth pursing thoughtfully. "And the moral support. And the brains. Crap! Where did I forget to connect it?"
"Right here," Alex said, finding the alligator clip that still dangled amid the mess of wires.
"Besides," she added, "what's more fun than sabotaging Girl Scouts with someone like you?"
She completed the circuit and sat back on her heels, eyeing it critically. Alex' insides performed a tap dance. Tappity tappity tap...

At 1:49, they waited. Jane drew pictures in the dirt. She drew an owl and a sun and a crooked ring of stars, and Alex watched her again. He noticed the way her lashes curled onto her cheek, and realized suddenly that she was beautiful.
"Thanks for coming with me," Jane said softly. "There's no one else whose window I could have chosen who wouldn't have told me to get lost."
She stopped drawing and pulled her knees to her chest.
"It means something, that you've followed my crazy whim out here."
Somehow, their hands found one another. And squeezed.
"It's time to go," said Jane, letting go, and pulling her bandanna over her chin.

At 2:21, everything was in place.
They waited, their breaths scratching against the hot air. Jane had led the way, wriggling on her belly beneath the stage, and Alex followed with some confusion. Above them, the Girl Scout leader's voice droned on like a wasp. Every now and then, scattered applause responded, a bored acknowledgement. Alex suppressed the urge to join in.

At 2:29, Jane whispered, "It's time. Let's give them their finale."

The tomato bomb was enabled and ready to go more quickly than Alex could have imagined. Their hands fumbled on the wires as they nervously checked and rechecked the circuit.
"You hit the switch," Jane whispered. "You've earned it."
She scrambled away. Alex waited, his breath hot in the close understage air. His intestines seemed to be doing the worm. His hand was sweaty on the switch.
Time ticked on.

At 2:32, he felt Jane's hand on his back.
"Wait for my signal," she said softly. "It'll rain tomatoes out there. This is what we'll give them in return for all those helpless rabbits."

At 2:35, Alex whispered, "Jane."
He heard her shift slightly behind him. "Yeah."
"Thanks for inviting me on your mission. I think it's...it's fantastic that you care. About the rabbits. And about me."
Her answer was silence. He didn't mean to, but his head turned of its own accord. Jane was regarding him with a slight, sad smile.
"It's bizarre," she said. "But I'm a bizarre person."
"I think you're beautiful," he whispered.

At 2:36, her smile grew a little brighter, and she moved her hand upwards to stroke his cheek with her thumb. It was a little awkward in the semidark, but it was her thumb, after all. And he found he loved her thumb.

At 2:37, they realized they'd been staring at one another for an unusually long time.
"Now," Jane said suddenly. "Hit it now."
More clapping rang above their hands, followed by a rumble of steps as the Girl Scouts filed onto the stage. Without thinking, without breathing, Alex jammed the switch with a thumb and scrambled back, watching the tiny lights of the circuit light up one after another. One. Two. Three. They crowded into a back corner, crouching in the dirt as their hearts pounded, and her shoulder was bumping up against his, and she was there.
"Only seconds now," whispered Jane.
Their hands found one another again, and Alex realized just how much he liked her bizarre love for animal rights and ninja missions, the sweaty bits of hair that had puffed around her face in the heat and the way her eyes shone as they waited.
The lights bulbs were flashing on, and on and on and on, and his stomach was rising into his chest, and it was really going to happen, any moment now there would be an explosion and the flight of tomatoes through the air onto the Girl Scouts and the audience, defaming the animal hospital forever.
"Jane," said Alex, his eyes open. "I think I love you."
Jane's hand squeezed his. And even in the darkness, he caught her smile. And he turned his head then, because, really, there was no more convenient moment to kiss her.

At 2:38, the world exploded.

May Short Stories: Thursday Edition

You have to give him to me, the river burbled to Mirrea.

"Why?" she whispered. It pulsed a little, running over her bare feet like a dragon hungry for fingers and toes.

It's the only way he'll become a prince. 

There was a pause, in which the only sound was the slow throb of the waves as they rose and fell against the bank.

You do want him to become a prince, don't you? 

Mirrea clutched the jar to her chest.

"Yes," she whispered.

Then give him to me. It will be easy for you. 

"It won't be easy," she said, a little louder. "I'll think of him."

He has to grow. Don't you want him to come back and fight for you?

Mirrea's grip on the jar slackened a little. "Will you give him back?" she asked.

I'm a dangerous thing, said the river. Not all creatures survive me. 

"I think he'll die if I keep him. He's dying now." She closed her eyes, not wanting the river to see the droplets that leaked onto her cheeks. Then she opened them again. "You'll be...gentle with him? You'll give him a good current?"

There is a wind stirring. Lower him down now. 

A slight breeze curled around her cheek. Mirrea took a breath, then crouched on the cool bank. Quickly, she unscrewed the lid of the jar and leaned forward. In one motion, water fell into water; she could just make out the dark shape of a tadpole tipping into the dark river and, caught by the current, flying away.

She stood, holding the open jar against her chest with tired hands, staring down at the green waters. A leaf spiraled on the surface. Her skirts rustled in the breeze.

Daily Short Story, Monday Edition: Part II

Bringing back a story from April that I really like. 

Riding Red, Part II

The woods aren't as dark as the dovecote. There are doves here, though. They titter to one another, wheeling above the glade where Rosie lays, her hair scattered over the moss.

Rising, she makes her way to the creek, feeling her way along the foreign objects of the ground with bare feet. Sun sparkles on the rocks. Two fat trout laze in the shallows.

Her aunts were wrong. The woods aren't a silent place.

Rosie settles on a boulder, letting the warm water trickle over her feet. Her lips still remember the goodbye kiss he gave her this morning.

"You must be hungry," she teased.

He laughed, squeezing her. "The better to eat you up."

"Eat you up," call the doves, wheeling above her.

Daily Short Story: Saturday Edition

Winter

After he left, Pia named him Winter.

The winter boy treasured her heart like a robin's nest. Somehow, without her permission, he found his way in, without knocking, without her even noticing that he stood outside. Her fingers grew chilly. She pressed closer to him, shivering, begging for kisses.

The winter boy was icily beautiful, made of coolness, and smoothness, and sweetness. But he didn't fill her.

Instead, she emptied.

His going was hard and quick: a splinter, a needle, a puff of freezing air.

She laid her barricade's first bricks. Her heart stopped noticing the chill.

Daily Short Story: Friday Edition

Autumn

Fall turned Pia vibrant like the trees lining the street. She thrived off of romance. When he forgot it, she invented some for the both of them.

Walks quickly turned grudging, though, and she worried at the ache in her chest. She felt bruised like a fallen leaf, sap running dry and dull down her shoulders.

Maybe, a whisper suggested, it wasn't really love. 

Not-real-love, as it turned out, just wore her down. The two of them faded away. She lost her autumn color.

She ducked away in a secret place, wishing she hadn't glanced his way, asked him for a midnight walk, worn a blue dress and danced.

He didn't seem to mind.

(A Little Late) Daily Short Story: Thursday Edition

The Weather Up There


Jonah Simmons is too tall.

"Getting to be such a big boy," his mother crooned nervously to him in his infancy, hitching the diaper up around his chubby legs.

"He's tall for his age," said irritating acquaintances, eyeing Jonah as he hulked miserably beside his mother, caught in the act of shopping for extra-long jeans.

"He takes after his father's side," Mrs. Simmons whispers in the cool cucumber-sandwich air of the tea room. 

The girl across the street has hair the color of milky tea. It hangs down her back like a rippling curtain, a place to hide as she peeps shyly out at Jonah. They talk over the white fence that boxes in the Simmons' yard, their fingers searching between the spaces where the paint has grown gritty with dust. 

The girl's name is Mia. Her smiles flashes through the curtain of hair. He can see the curl of her eyelashes, the freckles on her nose, a smudge of makeup on her cheek. 

"How tall are you?" Jonah whispers through the fence. 

Mia's eyes smile a secret as she whispers the number back. 

Just his height. 

Daily Short Story: Wednesday Edition

Spring

"He likes you," the whisper told Pia. Her heart nudged forward, opening like a blossom in spring.

The bud strained to open. Her rib cage was outlined in vines. They snaked down her arms, tendriling around her fingers and bursting into bloom when he first kissed her. 

Dizzy, she spun in breathless circles, unconscious of the blossoms in her hair. The petals sloughed off like skin.

Soon, though, Pia grew up. When he left three months later, she didn't feel terribly sorry. The flowers were already closing, storing away like sleepy eyes. 

Daily Short Story: Monday Edition

Riding Red


"Don't go into the woods," whisper the flutter of wings in the dovecote rafters. The words fall dry and cool to the floor, mingling with feathers and stale straw. 

The doves are mimicking Rosie's aunts. On this side of the mountains, Rosie has heard, they're mimicking-birds, and they always mock the voice they hear the most. On Jonagold Farm, that is certainly the voices of her three aunts.

"Dangerous. Dark trees, no straight paths."

"Terrible wild animals."

"Poor Amos," whispers Aunt Miranda through tightly pursed lips. "Leaving his child fatherless."

"My father died in the woods," Rosie tells the boy. It's dark in the dovecote. All she can see is his nose, outlined in moonlight, and his eyes gleaming silver. Everything else is shadow. 

"It's not dangerous," he says.

Rosie holds her breath when his hand touches hers, his palm as rough as a stone. 

"I'll show you the way."