Archive | April 20, 2013

K is for Stolen Karma, a story for the Giraffe Call

Apr20

For [profile] stryck‘s prompt “Kleptomania,” and @KissofJudas’ prompt “Karma, and what comes of it.

He liked to steal.

Kyrie had started small – pens and school supplies, cookies and lunch. He had been eight, then.

By high school, he’d moved on to small jewelry at the mall, and pick-pocketing in crowded places. By the time he graduated, he had three pawn shops that fenced his stuff for him, and an incredibly nice apartment in a building owned by one of the pawn owners.

Kyrie had a short attention span, and moved quickly on from small-change stuff to bigger things. Burgling houses was no fun – he liked the human contact, the actual threat and challenge of things where he could, at any moment, get seriously caught.

(Not that he wanted to get caught. Not that he’d liked it, the couple times early on when he had. He was still banned from the biggest mall in town – not that they ever noticed him, now, when he came in. Stolen gold necklaces bought a lot of nice clothes and a new haircut.)

Burgling the houses of the wealthy when they were home, now, that was fun. Tons of fun. Slipping in and out again while they watched TV, while they argued, while they fucked the cabana boy…

…that had been his mistake. The fucking (ha) cabana boy.

And now, now Kyrie was caught again. Now he was caught, and the fucking (ha, ha) rich cougar lady was, oh, fuck, a rich Cougar lady. These knots around his wrists and ankles were awfully tight, and the woman was licking her lips and, gods help him, purring, purring at him. Cougars couldn’t purr, could they?

“Karma’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

“Sorry, ma’am?” He swallowed hard. Her teeth were sharp!

“You’ve been stealing for a while, I think, haven’t you?”

“A little while,” he allowed.

“And now I’ve stolen you.”

Continued – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/530235.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/515755.html. You can comment here or there.

J is for the Last Jubilee, a story for the Giraffe Call

Apr20

For several prompts, primarily J is for Jubilee, from [personal profile] sharpeningthebones.

The party hadn’t been going on for all that long, at least not in a global scale of things. Only a year or two.

It was the Last Jubilee. It was the Final Party. It had begun the day that D.C. fell. And it was going to go on until they ran out of gin and juice, or until they all died, whichever came last.

When Joey had begun the party, she’d expected it to last maybe a couple days. A week, maybe. She’d opened up all the doors of her house and invited everyone she knew to the party.

What else could she do? D.C. was down. New York had already fallen. So had L.A., London, Madrid. The gods were like locusts, devouring everything – and everything they didn’t kill, the so-called heroes were eating.

What use were carefully hoarded supplies against a crisis like this? What use was it living when everyone else was dying? Joey had gotten as drunk as she could, as stoned as she could handle, and then she had started calling people.

For everyone that didn’t answer, she took a shot. For everyone that did, she snorted a line.

It took her three weeks to call – or text, or e-mail, or skype – everyone she knew. Three weeks that she didn’t remember when they were happening, much less afterwards.

And then, then she started the party. “Invite everyone you knew,” she’d told her friends. “Bring ’em all.” It couldn’t have been that many people.

At first, only a couple people showed up. So Joey opened up the bar, and the fridge, and did a little surreptitious magic to keep the booze flowing and the food coming.

She spent the next week toasting the dead, and greeting her guests. The week after that, she spent meeting her new friends. And the week after that… even newer friends.

That had been two years ago. The booze kept flowing. The food kept coming. And the new friends kept coming.

If the world was going to go and end on them, Joey thought, well, then, they were going to see it out with the best wake they could.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/515397.html. You can comment here or there.

A Summary of Recent Writing

Apr20

Weeklies
Tasty Tuesday: Butternut Soup
WebLit Wednesday: K.A.Jones (LJ)
Side Story Saturday: No-one said it would be easy ()

Other Personal Stuff
Lampshades, Lasers, and Lobster, oh my (Personal foo)
How to stock Your Disaster Pantry (link)

Signal Boosts
ItsaMella’s Icon Day (LJ)
K Orion Fray’s April Prompt Call
Finch’s Iron Poet

Giraffe Call Is Open!

We are $10 from the next incentive level and All Prompts Will be Written.

Prompts from A-Z (LJ)
A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I
Signal Boost Poem: The Works of Thorne from A-Z (LJ)

Last Giraffe Calls
Fae Apoc:
Monsters (LJ)
Why Swords (LJ)
Other:
The Black Tower and its Council (LJ)
Questioned (LJ)
Veils (LJ)
Mud Fight (LJ), Stranded World, after Ax Fight.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/515186.html. You can comment here or there.

No-one said it would be easy

Apr20

No-on said it would be easy.
But no-one said it would be this hard.

Aelgifu sat in the break room, nursing her infant son while trying to figure out her biology homework.

Siggie was having a moody time of it lately, whiny and demanding whenever she left him with other people – even other-Mom, Io – for too long. His older sisters, in turn, were taking turns being as bratty as they could manage. None of them liked the apartment. None of them liked the day care. And, to a one, they all – even, on days like this, Ayla – wanted to go back to the Village, where all their friends were.

Nothing ever worth doing is easy.. Ayla kissed her son on the top of his head, and counted her blessings once again.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/514984.html. You can comment here or there.