Auspicious Pudding, Part I

Pianos. Penguins. Pandas. Ty rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

“Oh my God.”

Jasper wormed around in his sleeping bag. “What’s up?” he said muzzily.

“If a flock of crows is a murder,” Ty said quietly, “And a flock of rooks is a parliament, what’s a flock of magpies?”

“A tidings. Or a charm.” Jasper fumbled about in the grass next to his head, located his wire-rim glasses, and hooked them over his ears. “Or sometimes, also a murder.” He looked up. “Holy God.”

“That’s what I said,” muttered Ty. The trees circling their campsite were covered in a flock of black and white birds. Branches swayed and sagged beneath their weight as they quorked and shat and preened. Endless pairs of dark eyes stared down and through him.

“There must be at least a hundred of them.” He looked more closely. Most of the birds were clutching green sprigs in their talons or beaks, maybe for their nests?

“An auspex would count them, and tell us the future.”

Ty glanced at Jasper, who was fastidiously settling his deerstalker on his bald head, his long fingers quivering. Jasper hoarded obscurities like they were two-for-one coupons. Was he taking the piss, as Effie would say?

“Don’t need an ‘auspex’ to tell us that,” said Ty, thinking of the twisted mass growing in his gut. In the movies, an alien would just hatch and burst out of your chest. Over quick. Industrial light and magic.

“I could do it, I think. There are several instructive folk rhymes to that purpose. Presuming the total number of birds divided cleanly into a number between one and ten. The real question is; what are they doing here?”

“Creeping me out?”

“Magpies are not indigenous to the area. They’ve come from somewhere else.”

Jasper unzipped his bag and stood. The magpies launched into the sky, a swirling flock, buzzing the old man like a swarm of bees.

Ty reached up and tugged Jasper to his knees. “Mistook you for a scarecrow,” he half-yelled over the burr of wings, “They’ll be gone in a minute.” He watched the birds circling directly overhead, wincing, then punched himself twice on the arm, trying to shake off the dread infusing his bones. That’s two for flinching.

“I should have counted them,” Jasper said, distraught.

“Call it a hundred. Ten by ten, nice and round. What’s ten?”

“Gold. Or a time of joyous bliss. Or, the Devil himself.”

Ty shook his head. Never one answer when three would do. Something plopped on his shoulder: a leafy sprig. More bits fell in a sudden pelting storm.

“Oh what the hell,” Ty shouted in exasperation. Both men ducked under the barrage. The rain of greenery was gentle, almost like a blessing. Ty found himself thinking distractedly of rice thrown at weddings. And then it was done.

Jasper picked up a bent blade adorned with small circular leaves. “Pennyroyal. Pudding grass if you want to get colloquial. I don’t know what they’d want with it; certainly not to eat.”

“Just saving it to heckle—” Ty exhaled as his stomach cramped tight. He rode out each pulsation of pain, biting the side of his tongue and clenching his fists. Jasper watched him worriedly, the unasked question plain in his pursed lips and half-raised eyebrows.

“Fine,” he managed, straightening. “No problem.” His eyes widened. “I take that back. Big problem.”

The unimpressive stand of birches they’d camped in had transformed into a hardwood forest, ancient trees rising forbiddingly tall, bedecked in verdant lichen and moss. The light overhead had taken on a cool quality, filtered through the layers of canopy.

“It’s a weald. Well, now we know from whence the magpies came.”

“Which is?”

To be continued on Wednesday….

Hidden Freak, Part 2

This week we’re writing a Round Robin story. S.C. Green posted part 1 on Monday. Amy McLane will post the conclusion on Friday. For now, though, settle in for part 2 in our tale of circus weirdness…

Hidden Freak, Part 2

Fix reached the edge of the woods first. Bobby ducked beneath an elm branch and stopped beside him.

“Whatcha waiting for?” Bobby reached both hands up to grasp the branch and let his tall frame fall forward.

Fix said nothing. Just spit.

“Scared?” Bobby knew which button to push.

“I ain’t scared.” Fix’s bicep swelled as he squeezed his right hand into a fist. He sniffed and curled his lip like a gash. “Just looking for the right way in.”

Bobby kicked away a pine cone. “Uh-huh.” And he strode off toward the big top.

The fence surrounding the carnival was rickety at best. Easy pickings. The hardest part for Bobby would be to slip his height through unnoticed.

Fix followed him out from the cover of the woods, his steps scuffing the dirt faster to keep up. Neither spoke. Bobby kept his hands tucked in his pockets and felt his pulse knocking at his temple. Thinking and doing are two different things. But Bobby was determined in the doing.

The carnival hadn’t officially opened. Come dark, the place would swarm with the townspeople, curious to see anything outside the daily drudge of their dull lives. But now, midday on an otherwise sleepy Thursday, the grounds were all but quiet.

“Going through the front door, dumbass?”

Bobby hated when Fix took that tone. Same one he’d heard his whole life, teased and knocked around. So he didn’t answer. Just kept walking, listening to the wind rustling back in the woods and the occasional sound from the tents and trailers ahead.  When he got close enough, he rounded the chain link and headed toward the back. Later, the action would be inside the big tent, sure. But Bobby knew the trailers were the place to start. Bobby searched beyond the fence for signs they’d been seen or trouble to get into. Fix followed, marking his path with globs of rancid spit.

“There,” Fix said, and Bobby looked to where he pointed. The break in the chain link that would let them slip through. Disappointment twisted Bobby’s stomach. He wished he’d seen it first. He ducked his head beneath the chain and the other six feet of him followed. Fix had more trouble with his bulk. He masked his pain with indifference as the metal scraped his spine; but Bobby saw. Bobby knew.

Inside, they both stood rooted, looking. Listening. A line of road-worn trailers circled the back of the lot. Cheap, splintered siding and windows pocked with rock holes.

“Which one you think’s got the clowns?” Fix whispered. He cracked his knuckles real slow.

Bobby shook his head, his eyes trained toward the end of the line, on the shiny Gulfstream with the plaid curtains flapping out the windows. Clowns or freaks, he didn’t care. That trailer was the one that called him. Three wooden steps led to its metal door. He’d have to bend nearly in half to get through.

“Come on,” he whispered. He had no doubt Fix would follow.

To be continued…

The Heist

The red-tail hawk coasted on an updraft of arid wind. Clark harnessed the bird, using her sharp yellow eyes to search for the 6:15 train running late out of Jerome. The hawk screamed defiance, but then her hunting instinct took over. Prey was prey, after all.

She spotted the long black beast approaching the cut crossing Stolen Horse Gulch and banked, preparing to dive and snatch the snake in her claws.

Clark crashed back into his body. His legs were numb, his hands sweating a storm inside his leather gloves. Catching his nerves, Pally snorted and shifted beneath him. Clark ran a soothing hand along the horses’ neck. The big pinto gelding always had been too clever for his own good.

“Well?” Foss prodded, his face wrinkled in disgust. The rancid oil he used to wax his mustache gleamed in the slanted afternoon sunlight.

“Let’s go.”

Clark put his heels to Pally, acutely aware of how Foss watched him, like a cur he wanted to kick, but didn’t dare in case the dog was rabid. This might be the crime that made him part of the McLaren Gang, but Clark would never be one of them, no matter what he did. Foss, Slim, even McLaren himself— they would never believe that he was only half a skinwalker. And wasn’t that always the way of it. Clark never caught himself a break, just the scraggedy tail ends of ‘em. Couldn’t get into any school. Tried his hand at farming, but even his dirt crops had been poor— fields rocky and thoroughly studded with caliche, a bastard clay that was too coarse to be useful and too tough for anything but weeds. He’d considered looking for his mother’s people, but Daddy swore up and down that they were all gone. Everyone said Mama was a Navaho or else maybe Yavapai but Daddy claimed her “O’Odham from Snaketown,” which made no sense any way you spread it, seeing as there was no such place and no such people—not that he’d ever heard tell of, anyway. He wondered what she’d think of him now, joining a band of toughs to take this train. Granted, if McLaren hadn’t managed to board in Jerome, there’d be no heist at all.

The sound of squealing breaks snapped Clark’s attention: McLaren had held up his end of the bargain.

“Think of the devil,” Clark muttered to Pally as they swept alongside the train. McLaren was spooky like that. Man gave Clark the cold shivers, truth be told.

Beside him Foss and Slim began to holler, firing into the air. Clark shook his head at the waste of bullets. Didn’t those fools reckon they’d need ‘em more in a moment? The guards weren’t going to go down without a fight. Reaching the express car, Clark dismounted, drew his piece, and approached. Foss jumped down to cover Clark as he wrenched open the cargo door.

“Holy God.”

 

And thus concludes today’s installment of THE HEIST. Tune in Wednesday for the next episode!

Foxtrot (Part I of III)

Happy Valentine’s Day! This week at the PLC we’re writing a Round Robin story. Is it a love story? I honestly don’t know.

FOXTROT

I looked at the unmarked brown paper parcel sitting on my doorstep and felt my mouth go dry. A Foxtrot was dead. I was a Foxtrot.

Sean and I had signed up to be Masks six months ago, when Serena died in the St. Mary’s bombing. Effing Pures. only thing worse to them than aliens landing on earth is aliens having babies on earth. Effing Pures, always wanting to turn back the hands of time to a past that never existed. Popular sentiment, so what.

Serena, she thought the aliens were fantastic. Thought they’d come to guide us to a higher purpose. But they don’t tell us what they want from us. They don’t seem to understand the question. That never bothered Serena. Beautiful Serena. My daughter. Sean’s  wife. She never doubted. She just wanted to help them. Losing her to a Purity attack, well it made my life a punch line to the world’s nastiest joke. I didn’t want to be myself anymore. Not Thomas Castello. Anything but that. I didn’t want to remember. The pieces that they found. And Sean, Sean just wanted to be a fist, to hurt the ones who had hurt him. So, Masks it was. Sean, being young and spry, got drafted in the week after we filed. A Beta, he confided. The muscle. The right hand man. I’m going to be a Beta. He got the parcel that Tuesday.

I never saw him again.

And now, now it was my turn. And I was a Foxtrot- the old sage, the anchor, the salt. And as soon as I put on what was in the parcel I would never be anything else again. Thomas Castello, gone forever.

I could hardly wait.

I dead-bolted the door and threw the package down on my coffee table. I sat down on the couch, then found myself sliding to my knees as I leaned forward. My joints barked, and my hands shook a little as I unwrapped my new uniform.

It was like something out of a B-movie. Black shit-kicker boots. Black socks. Tight black pants. Black bulletproof chest plate. Black shirt with long black sleeves for hiding tricks. Black gloves. Black cloak. And of course, the mask, a demon’s fixed snarl, A child’s nightmare mated with a kabuki play. The alientech miracle of plasti. When I put it on, it would meld to my flesh, ride me like a leach until I died. And join me, too, let’s not forget that. The plasti would open my mind to the rest of my unit, psychically linking us into a creature with many bodies but one mind. A Mask was Superhuman.

Or sub-human, if you wanted to get romantic about it.

I set the clothes aside to reveal a slim case at the bottom of the parcel that was, I surmised, full of weaponry. I touched the case, but didn’t open it. Cold and closed. Let it stay that way for a while.

I peeled off my old clothes. Penny loafers. Dress socks. Khaki pants. White button down. Also a uniform, also a mask. And here I was. Wrinkled, skinny-flabby, sprinkled with moles. Goodbye Thomas, I thought, as I pulled on the last set of clothes I would ever need to wear, goodbye old man.

I pulled the Mask over my head. The plasti writhed on my face, and I scrabbled at my cheeks like an ape, trying to pull it off as it melded itself into my dermis. It burned. God, it burned.

Then the pain flickered out like a lost radio signal as the plasti joined my mind into the rest of the Mask. The sound in my head was like the swell of an opera and I felt a rush of humility and awe as I realized I would never be alone again. Five other minds, that was what I thought I had joined. And it was. And yet I felt them all, male, female, young, old, not just MY unit, but all units, past and future, and I, I was Foxtrot, I was all the Foxtrots before and all the Foxtrots yet to come.

Foxtrot is live, I thought into the swirling rush and hum of mind inside me.  Foxtrot is live.

 
Foxtrot Part II will be posted on Wednesday by the wonderful Amy K. Nichols. Part III will be posted Friday by the fearless S.C. Green.

The Forgiving Tree Part IV

For those that need to catch up, Part I is here, Part II is here, and Part III is here. Part V will be posted Saturday.

Landis woke. It felt almost as if someone were sitting on him. He opened his eyes a hair. Collin. Collin was sitting on him.

“You just had to come down here, didn’t you?”

Ben. Landis craned his neck. Ben and Beth stood together in front of the Forgiveness Tree. Ben gripped Beth’s forearm tightly. Terry hulked nearby.

“You don’t understand,” said Beth.

“You just had to butt in,” Ben said. “Don’t you know I was trying to protect you?”

“Ben you can’t,” she said, pulling against him as he drew her hand closer to the hollowed knot.

“Honey don’t you see? I have to.”

“NO!” Landis bucked hard. Collin slid off with a surprised grunt. Landis scrambled to his feet.

Ben rammed Beth’s hand into the hallowed knot.

“Sinner, be judged!”

Landis froze. Her hand. Collin put him in a headlock and dragged him closer. “Time you saw justice workin’ up close and personal.”

“Yes,” said Beth, “You should all see this.”

She drew out her arm, healthy and whole, down to the fingertips.

“What?” Ben let go of her.

“Looks like I’m not much of a sinner.”

“But you’re a woman,” said Ben.

“Everybody gots original sin,” said Collin.

“And you’re not a virgin, neither,” said Terry.

Landis’s stomach flipped. Ben? Or someone else? It should have been him. If he hadn’t been such a coward.

Beth glared at them, holding up her hand. “This is the judgment of the Forgiving Tree. If you think it’s wrong, maybe you should stick your other arm in there and see what happens.”

Ben and the twins shook their heads.

“Now, let’s get some things straight. Tommy was my blood. That gives me the right here. So clear out. Not you,” she added as Landis inched backward.

“I can’t believe you’re going to let him off,” Ben snarled as he backed away.

“Who said I was going to let him off? I just said you can’t do it the way you were trying to. You want Landis to be judged? Then go, and he shall be.”

They left.

“Beth, you’re an angel,” Landis blurted. He wanted to kiss her.

She shrugged, a little smile playing around her lips.

“And all that stuff about judging me was just to get them to leave, right?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.” Her hair still shimmered in the sun, but all the light was gone from her eyes. “The Forgiveness Tree doesn’t take women. Nan told me.”

“But your Nan disappeared!”

“Tree didn’t get her. But that’s another story for another day. And, you can’t be forced. That’s why I stopped Ben, before. Wouldn’t have done any good. You have to want redemption.”

“Oh.” His mouth was too dry now to say anything else.

“You loved Tommy, I know you did. And I think, Landis, that if you loved me, you would want redemption.” Beth trailed one slim finger around the lip of the hallowed knot. “So, do you?”

Landis sputtered. “Do I what?”

“Do you love me?”

The Forgiving Tree Part III

For those that need to catch up, Part I is here, Part II is here. Part IV will be posted Friday.


“What do you boys think you’re doing?” Landis’s stomach tangled into a knot, the way it always did when he heard Beth’s voice.

The twins froze. Landis tensed his legs and then threw himself backwards, twisting out of Terry and Collin’s hands. He skidded on his back through the dirt, rolled onto his side and staggered up like a drunken jack-in-the-box. Beth stood watching them all with her hands on her hips, her strawberry blond hair falling loose around her shoulders. Landis knew he should run, by the way she looked at him. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t play the coward to her again. He wiped at the sweat beading on his forehead and tried to look more cool and casual, and less like he had just escaped being maimed by a pair of cripples.

“Go home Beth,” said Ben, “This don’t concern you.”

“That’s funny, I seem to remember Tommy being MY brother, not yours.” Beth tossed back her hair.

“If you loved him, you’d know how much we need to do th-”

If I loved him?” she suddenly screamed, “If? Go to hell, Benjamin Baines, you redneck idiot. You don’t know a thing that can’t be found in the bottom of a whiskey bottle.”

Ben sneered and pointed at her with his stump of an arm. “You made me what I am.”

Landis looked between the two of them. Ben, and Beth? Oh no. No.

“Men make themselves,” she said.

“Like him?” Ben said, pointing at Landis, “Running off to college, leaving Tubs to die? You think that makes a man? I’ll make you, you mouthy little princess.” He started toward her.

Landis didn’t know he was going to punch Ben in the face. He just did it, stepping into the swing to increase the momentum, striking Ben where he was weakest, in the bridge of the nose, broken once years before by an errant softball Tubs chucked in a tantrum. The bone gave way with a crunch. Blood streamed down Ben’s face. He turned to Landis, shocked, his eyes wide and wondering, as if the blow had woken him from some twilight fugue. He touched the divot of his upper lip with his fingertips and stared at how they came away crimson.

“You aren’t the law,” said Landis. “You aren’t justice.”

“I’m the only one here who cares about justice.” said Ben flatly.

Landis opened his mouth to retort.

“No!” cried Beth.

Landis was turning to her with a confused look on his face when he felt something hard slam into the back of his head. His knees buckled.

The world went white.

“That’s not true Benny,” said Terry. “Collin and I care about justice plenty.”

Gray.

“Yup,” said Collin, dropping the fallen oak branch he had used to brain Landis with. It lay inches from Landis’s face. His eyes were pulled into the snaking curves and whorls of bark, whorls like a tornado, like a maelstrom, like

Black.

Parlour Games, Part Two

By Amy K. Nichols

This week we’re writing a round robin story. This is part two. Click here to read part one. Check back Friday for part three.

PART TWO

Tensen looked past me and her smile dropped. “Come on.”

Before I could turn to see the trouble, she’d pulled me to my feet and we were scrambling further down the alley.

“What’s wrong?”

“Sentries.”

I’d only seen a sentry once, when I was like four or five. I was walking down Capshaw Canal with my parents. A scruffy man ran through the crowds, pushing and yelling. His clothes were torn and his face panicked. My mom put her arms around me and turned me away, but I wiggled around to see. I watched the crowds move out of the sentry’s way. I saw the eye search the man out. Saw the long arms pluck him from where he crouched. The man hung like a rag in the sentry’s grip. My dad put his arm on my shoulder. Don’t worry, honey. They wouldn’t take him if he didn’t deserve it.

I choked. “How do they know?”

Tensen’s voice remained cool. “Maybe they don’t.”

We ran into the shadows, around the bend and beyond the reach of their torchlight eyes. Tensen led the way. I’d never been down this far before. The alley’s walls gave way to blackness. The pavement grew soft under my shoes. I didn’t want to know what coated the concrete.

“Wait here a  sec.” Tensen let got of my arm.

I clutched after her but my hands grasped only air. “Why? Where are you going?”

“Toughen up, Shi. I’m just going to make sure it’s safe.”

With her gone, I felt the darkness slink around me. I reached out, taking halting steps until I felt the solid safety of the wall at my back. As my eyes searched the dark, my fingers traced the mortar grooves. The chiseled sound of my fingers against the stone sent shivers through my arms and up my neck. The more I heard that sound, the more I felt my fingers against the stone, the more I wanted to dig. The more I had to dig.

I turned my back to the shadows and pressed my hands against the wall. My eyes saw nothing, but my fingers scanned the surface, felt the pockmarks and crevices. I curled my fingers and the stone gave way, crumbling into piles at my feet. Then the urge overtook me. All I wanted was my hands in and the wall down. I dug in. My breath came in gasps as I worked, my blind eyes blinking away the dust.

“Shishi? Oh my God.”

I stopped digging and turned.

Tensen stood before me, green as a glowmite, holding her arms up before her. I stumbled toward her, tripping over the piles of stone.

Every hair on her arms, every eyelash and eyebrow, every hair on her head glowed green. She looked at me and I held up my hands. Her light confirmed what I already knew. Claws. Pickaxe fingers. Forearms of steel.

24 to 48 hours, my ass.

…TO BE CONTINUED

Parlour Games

This week at PLC we’re going to write fiction instead of just talking about it.

NO.

Yeah.

But rather than each of us writing a micro-piece, we decided to do a continuing piece of fiction round-robin style, with a 500 count word limit per part. For some strange reason the suckers that host this blog with me my associates elected me to kick things off, so without further ado, I present,

PART ONE

As soon as I put the trans in my mouth, I knew it was a mistake.

It felt like a hot poker on my tongue. It tasted like a hunk of iron that had been marinated in a garbage can. I gave Tensen a tear-glazed look of panic. She grinned, her teeth smeared with silver. That metallic smile was the future. It was us, or would be, if I would stop being a chickenshit and just eat the damn thing.

I swallowed. It dropped down my throat with a sizzle, sending electric shocks through my body. First my left arm twitched. Then my right leg kicked a warning. Fingers on my face, Tensen pressing a pen between my teeth. I gripped it, bent forward just as my torso tried to buck off my appendages. My ass rattled on the concrete.

Nothing came out though, thank God.

Tensen gripped my arm and hauled me upright. I spat out the pen. It bounced, teethmarks in the plastic.

“Not so bad, eh?” Tensen picked up her soda cup, popped the lid, and rummaged through the ice inside, digging out a lemon wedge. “Here.”

“No chaser,” I croaked. This much dignity I could scrape together, at least. Like a lemon was going to cut through that taste of pennies and rotten hamburger meat anyway.

“Suit yourself.” She bit down on the wedge, made a face. “Ugh, that’s almost worse.”

I looked out of the alley we were hanging out in, at all the suits squealing down Chevron Lane. No time to look at the two gutters spazzing out on the concrete, and really who’d want to look anyway? I glanced at my hands, half expecting them to be different, knowing they wouldn’t be.“So, when do you think it’ll happen?”

“Oh, soon. 24-48 hours. Least, that’s what the guy said.”

“Long enough for him to vanish off the face of the earth if it’s bunk.” I picked up the chomped pen and flexed it in my hands.

“It’s not. I told you, when Lady Cadbury-Heinz was getting ready for her Coming Out, she left hers on the vanity when she went to get her hair done. I smelled it, Shishi. I almost licked it. This stuff smelled exactly the same.”

“If you even touched it, she’d have known, she’d have murdered you on the spot.” I hated when she called me Shishi.

“You can smell something without touching it.” She leaned her head back against the brick wall. “Don’t be a crap.”

“I bet you’ll get wings,” I said. I knew that’s what she wanted. To fly up out of the Artificial Levels. To see the sun. Not that you needed wings to get out of the AL. You just needed trans.

“Who knows what we’ll get.” She flashed her quicksilver smile. “That’s half the fun of trans, right? Angels, weres, spooks. We could turn out to be anything.

…TO BE CONTINUED