Archives

The Jury, a story for #ThimblefulThursday

Jun2

“I don’t like him.” Steven clearly had a group agreeing with him already – four of the 12 refugees in their little haven were nodding along. Steven’s reasons were obvious; Mal equally so. The rest had their own logic.

“I don’t think ‘like’ really enters into it,” Connie countered. She could see four others siding with her – including Inga, the reason Steven & Mal were against this.

“I think with all of us crammed in here, like is pretty damn important,” Steve argued. “Besides, I don’t trust him, and that definitely matters.” He wasn’t looking at Connie; he was looking at Dave and LaTasha, who both were still on the fence. “How did he survive out there? He doesn’t look like he’s been going all that hungry. What if some other group trusted him, let him in…”

“Hey!” Inga glared at Steven. “Spurious much?”

“I’m just saying…”

Connie cleared her throat. “Regardless… It doesn’t actually matter.”

“Bullshit it doesn’t.” Mal glared at her. “He can’t be trusted; he can’t come in.”

“None of us filled out an application. None of us were voted on,” Connie insisted. “We found this place. It’s not like we owned it, before.” She caught LaTasha’s eye. She’d nearly swayed her. “We were looking for a safe haven. And we found it.”

“Exactly!” Steven glared at her. “WE found it. Let him find his own.”

He’d nearly convinced Dave. Connie dropped her voice to counter his shouting.

“There’s nothing nearby. We’ve all looked. Guys… he’s a human being, and we’re human beings. We have to let him in.”

“Do we just let everyone in, then?” Mal spat. “Where does it end?”

Ing jumped to her feet. “This is ridiculous! I’ll be out there. Waiting.” She ignored Steven & Mal calling to her and swung the door open.

She stopped just outside. “You bastards. All your arguing… and he’s just gone.”

Connie was pretty sure she was the only one that heard LaTasha mutter “Case closed.”

This is written to May 19th’s Thimbleful Thursday prompt

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1115942.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Behind the Door

Jun1

That door!

It tingled when she walked by; on grey days, it shone. Garish yellow in a black wall, it stood out against bracketing brownstones. In the sunshine, it was an ugly door, but boring.

In the rain, it moved, but only when she wasn’t looking: she’d glance away and hear hinges squeak, peek back and see it cracked open, look away only to see it closed when she looked back. It tingled; it piqued the curiosity.

She waited in the rain, pretending not to watch.

The doorknob turned. The door creaked open. She held her breath, peeked sidelong.

“Curiosity,” a voice slurked out of the oily shadows. “How rare. How strange.” It tingled, ached, prickled. She turned slowly to face the shadow in the doorway.

“How delicious.” She had no time, no breath, to scream. A gulp, and she was devoured.

The yellow door tingled, sometimes, in the rain. But the house behind it shone in the sun, and the doors inside were endless.


I started a new occasional thing on Thimbleful Thursday, since I got the prompts prescheduled through next September.

Tell-Me Tuesday asks a question: this week‘s prompt was “Who’s behind the door?”

165 words, just barely in the limit.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1115829.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Key

May31

Content warning: implied gore

The key could have been there for months. I’ve always been a bit of a packrat with small things – my purse, you know, my attache, my keychain. My apartment might be tidy and free of clutter – at 100 feet square, it’s kind of got to be – but you could find a door to Narnia in my purse and not be all that surprised.

And my keychain? Keys from every place I’ve ever lived or worked or even crashed. I’m a compulsive key-copier, not because I want to break in anywhere, just… I like having them.

This one was pink. It looked like some sort of office key, thick and official and Do Not Duplicate… and pink.

And it was new.

I found it Saturday, while looking for the key to my mother’s place – feeding her dogs while she’s out of town, crashing there ’cause the guest room is three times the size of my apartment. And now that I have it, I’ve been trying it in every door I can get away with trying it in.

Today I found the door it opens.

And I’m feeling like Bluebeard’s wife, except nobody warned me.

The question is, if I call the cops – and I really ought to, I really, really ought to – how do I explain how I just happened to have the key? When I don’t even remember, myself, how it got here?

Written to the prompt here: https://promptuarium.wordpress.com/2015/12/23/new-key/

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1115074.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Seconds to Love

May31

He was late.

Ruth shifted from foot to foot while she scanned the museum.

He’d always been late, she supposed: her friends had been born with soulmate timers that read eighteen, twenty, maybe twenty-two years. Ruth’s had read twenty-six years, three days, and 13 hours.

Now it read 30 seconds, and her “blind date,” the love of her life, was late. Didn’t he have a timer, too? Ruth had heard horror stories, one-way loves…

“Put your hands up. Stay cool and nobody gets hurt!” A strong grip pulled Ruth against a sturdy body. The wrist against her throat beeped 0:00.

Written to the prompt here: https://promptuarium.wordpress.com/2016/05/30/countdown-to-love/. 100 words.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1114766.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

#ThrowbackThursday: an Icon-flash

May26

May 26, 2012: I was working through a flash fiction for every icon I had (unsurprisingly, I never finished).

This one was for this icon:

Shooting Star

Icon by [personal profile] later_tuesday

Yeah, the first one of the Asteroid-hits took us by surprise. I mean, shooting stars didn’t hit the earth that hard very frequently, and when they did – crater, some rock, that was it.

Nobody expected there to be sentient life, not in that first one. And, because the government did a quick and thorough job of covering it up (I know, I was there), the rest of the world wasn’t expecting the second one, either, or the third.

By the thirty-seventh of these Shooting Stars, everybody knew. Hobos who lived in shacks in the desert knew (and I’m not counting that guy who got superpowers because the asteroid almost landed on him).

continue reading The Shooting Star Problem here.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1111547.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

#ThrowbackThursday: Alone Together

May19

May 19, 2011: [community profile] dailyprompt: “eight line poem” and “I want to be alone.”
I wrote something with placeholders for names and, as I went… I realized that the placeholders made more sense than names:

“I want to be alone.” [3] stared down at her notebook, the pencil limp in her hand.

“Now, honey, you know it don’t work that way.” [2] cuddled her briefly.

“It oughta,” she sighed.

“Now don’t let the bosses hear you talking that way,” her teammate scolded. “They’ll start thinking you’re defective, or, worse…

continue reading Alone Together here.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1107768.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

(Mis)Use of Power, a short story

May3

“This is the deal,” his mother said. She had the grim look on, the one that, when he was younger, had meant punishments he couldn’t avoid and a week of having her Disappointed in Him, which, if he’d been forced to think about it, he might have admitted was usually worse than the punishments. He squirmed, because whatever was coming, it wasn’t going to be fun.

“The deal,” he agreed cautiously…

(read on…)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1099875.html. You can comment here or there.

“I don’t believe…” a ficlet for the (long-over) Impossible Situations mini-call

Apr27

E-mail box clean out continues!
This is to a combination of LIlfluff‘s and rix_Scaedu‘s prompts here

“I don’t believe in aliens.” The elf lord stuck his chin out and glared at the gathered others. “There is life aplenty on this planet, for one. For another, the stars are gods-lights trailing across the ceiling of the world. There is no place for these ‘alien beings’ to come from.”

Others on the council nodded their heads. “There are the gods, but they do not visit this planet except in cases of extreme emergency.” A grey-haired elf ticked off points on her long fingers. “There are us, the fae of Underhill and the Hidden Vale. There are humans. There are the water-borne, who are neither fae nor human. That is more than enough for anyone to deal with.”

The messenger cleared his throat uncomfortably. Up until a week ago, he hadn’t believed in aliens either – and until half an hour ago, he hadn’t believed in elves. “Be that as it may, ma’am, sir, everyone… but the aliens want a breeding pair of unicorns, and you are our last hope of finding any.”

Tip Box 😉

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1097021.html. You can comment here or there.

Strong Enough? A side story of a fic

Apr4

Written to [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s suggestion of a continuation for this piece, written for the Dungeon and Cave call in 2014.

“Babe, I’m strong enough for whatever you want.” He could taste the beer on his belch. Could she smell it?

She wrinkled her nose. Yes. And no; she shook her head. “I don’t think you are.”

The woman walked away from Craig, the turn of her heel dismissing him. Craig let out a breath slowly, as inaudibly as he could, and did not turn to watch her.

Still, even through the noise of the bar, he could hear Rick’s answer. Maybe Rick was. Maybe Rick would walk out the other side intact. Craig didn’t know. He barely knew Rick to talk sports with him, much less…

…well, there were things you didn’t talk about with your buddies, and there were things you didn’t talk about at all. That lesson, Craig hadn’t needed to learn the hard way.

With any luck, there’d only be the one lesson he’d had to learn hard: When a certain kind of woman thinks about challenging you…

…don’t let it get to the challenge. Don’t even let it get to the thinking, if you can avoid it. Be pitiful, be lamentable, be ridiculous. But don’t let her challenge you.

Want to see more? Drop a tip in, ah, the tip handcuffs:

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1083422.html. You can comment here or there.

The “A” Warehouse

Mar30

Written to 2 prompst from this page, which are the bold-italiced sections of this ficlet

Yes, I owned the “A” warehouse. “Owned,” you see, because while I still hold the deed to the property, the property itself is gone, and where it’s fallen, I don’t think there’s anyone who cares about things like deeds.

This is a story about infamy, marriage, and being an arch-mage, although I’m forced to admit that the arch-mage part is still in the future – in the hopeful, potential future at that.

The infamy part, unfortunately, is very much in the “now,” and in all potential futures available from here, too. And the marriage – well, here’s fingers crossed and hats off to Marvipost and Tannibaun that that doesn’t turn out to be in the past.

But you were asking about “A” warehouse. Down in the lettered streets, which are now quite a bit more “down” than “streets”, may Tannibaun and Ornigzar have mercy on the souls of those poor denizens. I owned it. I kept it stocked. I understand the regulations, maybe better than most people. I helped write half those regulations, after all – and now we get back to the infamy part.

Now I see that you recognize me. I’m told my face isn’t done justice by those portraits, and I’ve never been the public one in our marriage.

But I owned the “A” warehouse – and the “C” and “F” as well. And I stoked them all. What the inhabitants of the belowland will be doing with them, now that the entire sector has fallen, I do not know. What they will do to any survivors, I can only guess. I know only that they are gone, may Marvipost and Ornigzar forgive me.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1081812.html. You can comment here or there.