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16-Minute Saturday

Feb2

This is written to the image prompt here for “Sixteen Minute Saturday,” something I adapted for alliteration from Ty Barbary’s 15-minute Fiction.

I’d love if more people played along!

“Well, it started out as a 20-sided die.”


The building was smoking. Terry wasn’t sure if that was on purpose or not. Hell, Terry wasn’t sure that the thing could be called a building, but what else were you going to call it?

“Fred, it’s two and a half stories tall.”

“I know! Isn’t it wicked?”

“‘Wicked’ is certainly one word for it, Fred. Fred, what the hell are you going to do with this thing?”

“Well, I was planning on living in it.” The lanky rocker shrugged. “Don’t look at me like that, Terry. I know it needs work.”

“It needs a wrecking ball.”

“Don’t be like that. Look, it needs siding.”

“An entrance.”

“Oh, that part’s easy. Come on, let me show you.”

“Fred, this isn’t my day to die.”

“Oh, come on.” He grabbed Terry’s hand and tugged. “Like I said, it need a little work on the exterior. But wait until you see the way it looks inside!”

“Fre-ed.” But the skinny bastard had an amazingly firm tug. “Have you shown Les yet?”

“Ah. About that.”

“Shit, Fred, not another one.”

“Well, it’s not… It’s not quite…. well, look, you’ve just got to look, okay?”

Terry sighed, the much-put-upon sigh that seemed to come out the most around Fred. Weren’t these guys supposed to mellow once they reached their fourth or fifth decade? Fred just got wilder. “All right, all right. What’s a 20-sided die? One of those nuts things you guys use in your games?”

“Yeah. Like this.” Fred tossed the die at Terry casually. Having been around Fred and his revolving crew of musicians for longer than anyone wanted to count Terry grabbed the thing just as easily. And then stared.

“Fred, when did you have emeralds cut into dice? And, more importantly, why?“

“That’s the thing. Well, okay, that was an entirely different thing, but you’ve really got to… here, mind your step.” Fred moved a few shingles off of a platform and jumped up four feet onto what looked like a balcony. “I need to install stairs. But I don’t think that’s going to be the problem. Here, come on.”

“Coming, coming.” The grumble was mostly habit by this point. Terry clambered up onto the platform. “You need a wrecking ball, I keep telling you.”

“No, no, come on.” The door hung at a 15-degree angle, but it swung open like it was oiled. “Watch your step; it goes down a bit just inside the door.”

“Of course it do-o-woah-does.” The “bit” was more like a foot or two. “So, what’s so good about this place on the inside that it doesn’t need to be torn down?”

“Well, for starters, there’s this.” The room. Terry blinked.

“Fred, did you lace my coffee again?”

“You know I promised never to do that. No. No, this is legit.”

“Fred, how did you pull this off?” The entryway foyer was like being inside Fred’s 20-sided emerald die. The walls were done in green brocade. The table was set with green china. The carpet was lush, oriental – and green. The whole thing looked like something out of a home decorating catalog, and like nothing that Fred had ever done in a living space, ever. “Fred, how did you get an interior decorator in here?”

“I … have no idea. Look, Terry, stay close, okay? The walls… they kind of change after a while.”

“I thought you said you built this.” Terry backed toward the exit, and ran into a solid green-covered wall. “I thought you said this was some sort of really big die.”

“Well, um. See, I guess it turned out to be more in the spirit of dice than I intended.”

“The spirit of… Fred, what?“

But Fred wasn’t there anymore. His voice echoed from far away. “They’re randomizing devices.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/468044.html. You can comment here or there.

Sweet as Sugar, Black as Sin

Jan27

To @realbrigang’s second prompt of the same name.

Warning: Implied/discussed abuse.

“He seemed like such a nice guy.”

The seven women around the table all nodded. They all had similar stories

“He seemed so sweet.”

“He was so considerate.”

“He held the doors for me. He paid for the whole date.”

“He was sweet as sugar. A real nice guy.”

“He was such a gentleman. I didn’t know they made guys like that anymore.”

“They don’t.” The seventh woman had hair as black as night and lips as red as blood. “The haven’t made men like him in a very long time, and we are all the better for it.”

The first looked at her. She had hair like spun gold and wore no make-up at all. “Are you saying…”

“She can’t be.” The third leaned forward. “My grandmother told me those stories. They’re impossible. He’s impossible.“

“Of course he is.” The seventh smiled unkindly. “You’ve all told me that already. ‘He seemed so sweet. He seemed so nice.’ That’s how he was made. And what happens next, ladies? Tell me the end of the fairy tale.”

It was a command as iron and implacable as if she’d been holding a gun to their heads. The first licked her pink lips. “It was the seventh date. I’d… We’d…” She gestured, her cheeks as pink as her lips. “A couple times before. But this time, he was different. He said things.”

The second held her hands in front of her, her nails digging into her palms. “It was as if all the sugar was gone, and all that was left was the leaves at the bottom of the teapot. Bitter and dark.”

“He broke my hand.” The third laid the improperly-healed hand on the table.

“He broke my heart.”

“He stole everything I had.”

“He told me I should thank him. He told me that he was doing me a favor.”

“What about you.” The first spoke again. “What about you? You don’t have your own story. You don’t sound surprised.”

“I stopped being surprised by him forty-nine sad stories ago.” She shook her head. “And that one was mine. I made him. I made him to be my groom.”

As the women stared at her, fists clenched, remembering stories their grandmothers had whispered of, the seventh continued.

“And then I lost him. But with your help, ladies, I will stop him.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/462304.html. You can comment here or there.

Packing

Jan26

For @dahob’s commissioned request.

This is erotica with very little veneer of plot.

“I’m going to have to ship you.”

The man was frowning at Alisa. Alisa had learned, quickly, not to like it when the man frowned at her. It was never good, and sometimes it was rapidly very, very bad.

“I’m sorry?” she tried, but the gag in her mouth made it “Ah ahrree.”

“You certainly will be. Did you have to bite her?”

Did she have to bite her? She thought about that one, and then decided that the man was already angry at her, and nodded. Yes, she had needed to bite that obnoxious little shit. Yes, she had needed to hear her squeal. She thought she was so much better than the rest of them – and why? Because her collar weighed less? Because her chains were thinner?

“I know she’s a prat.” The man might as well have been talking to himself. He wasn’t looking at Alisa anymore, at least. He was looking at his shelf of packing material. She swallowed, and looked away. Shit. He really meant to do it. “I know she’s a miserable little bitch. But look at her, Number Seven. She’s perfect. She’s beautiful.”

What was she, then? Because he liked hearing her talk, mangled and miserable, through the gag, she tried again. “Uh Uh-ow ee?”

“What about you, indeed? You seem to dive into this lifestyle like you were born to it. You’re a gorgeous sub. You’re responsive. Even when you try to run away, you do it with style. And I’m sure your new owner will enjoy you. You’ll be able to be the jewel of his collection, which should suit you better than being one of the chorus line.” He was walking back over to her, his bootsteps echoing on the concrete. She wasn’t going to look. She wasn’t going to look. “But you are not nearly as perfect as she is, I’m afraid. Your height, for one.” He squeezed her breast until she whimpered. “These giant things. That’s not what men here are looking for.”

“Uh ee ih?”

“Yes. He’s a bit of a pervert, you see.”

“Oh, uu.”

“You’re going to have to learn to watch your mouth. The gag is coming off. Don’t try to speak.”

She closed her eyes. She wasn’t going to look. She wasn’t going to look. The gag came out, leaving her working her jaw and swallowing drool. She hated that. She hated many things about the gag, actually, but that was the worst.

“Breathing tube. Tilt your head back, and relax.” He grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, until her head was tilted as far back as it would go. “Mouth open.”

There was no point in disobeying, and no point in trying to plead. She opened her mouth while he worked something hard and unyielding down her throat.

“That’s a girl. Posture collar, to hold you where you need to go.” The thing was more than just a collar; he’d put her in it before. He buckled it around her neck, forcing her head to stay in that position, around her breasts, around her waist. She couldn’t move her spine at all when he was done buckling.

“That’s my good girl. Hood.” She didn’t have her eyes open anyway, but the hood always freaked her out. She made a worried noise in the back of her throat, around the tube that was keeping her airway open.

“You’re doing very good. Your new owner will be very happy.” The hood zipped up, leaving her in the dark. “All right. I’m strapping your arms to the bracing, and then into the box you go.”

She made low keening noises, unable to stop herself. Not the box. Not the box. But he was pinning her arms to her sides, wrapping more strapping around her, and then there was the bubble wrap.

By the time he was done wrapping her, she couldn’t have moved even without the restraints, and she couldn’t hear a thing. He patted the sole of her foot, and then there was nothing at all.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/461258.html. You can comment here or there.

Changing Verses

Jan23

This is to several of [profile] lilfuff‘s Prompts

I do not know the title(s) of the book(s) the narrator references, but I recall reading at least one, possibly two, about characters stepping into a D&D-like world.

The borders moved at night, usually on the nights when both the moons were dark.

It wasn’t like those books I’d read as a kid, the ones about living in a roleplaying game. There weren’t dark lines on the ground. The world hadn’t reshaped itself into hexes. And, whatever the rules were – and only a select few were actually told – we didn’t, quite, have to limit our movement to gridlines.

That much was different.

Considering what we had, though, I think I would have taken the solid black lines.

You’d wake up in the morning, and you’d have finally gotten used to the ‘verse you were living in. You understood the rules. Maybe you’d found someone who had been a fan, or who had all the books. They knew what was going on, and they could share. Or, if you were particularly lucky (or particularly unlucky), you’d ended up in a ‘verse you yourself knew by heart.

(Don’t think that could be unlucky? Think how popular Vampires have been recently. And Zombies. Those ‘verses aren’t any fun at all).

So you knew what was going on, again, enough to function. And then you’d wake up to find that the border had shifted, and your house – or your place of work, or the corner grocery store, or all of it – was suddenly in another ‘verse.

Sometimes the borders were easy to cross and you could manage commuting between ‘verses to get to work (if your job still existed). Sometimes, however, they were damn near impossible, and you’d find yourself on an epic quest for The Right Key just so you could get a gallon of milk.

Crossovers weren’t nearly as much fun as they’d seemed in the fics.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/459996.html. You can comment here or there.

Eralon Explains

Jan22

To [personal profile] flofx‘s Commissioned Continuation of The Second Restriction

It had taken a week for the temple to settle down.

In that time, the Lesser High Priest of the Evening had been induced to return the Oracle and the Duty Scribe to their rightful places in the temple, and every priest in the nation, or so it seemed, had gone over their interpretation of the Oracle’s words.

In that time, no Oracle had taken the holy seat, and none had attempted any of the other six methods of contacting the gods. The priests were, although they would never admit it, playing it safe.

Finally, however, tradition and the weight of a holy bureaucracy insisted that they put the girl back on the chair, and call forth Eralon’s voice again.

She rolled her eyes back in her head, and her voice became thick and deep. “You think to question me?”

“Err, blessed light upon the morning, blessed waters we shall not sully, of course we do not question you.” The Higher High Priest of Evening was not going to be outdone by a mere Lesser High Priest; he stepped to the front of the dais to speak, perhaps not entirely mindful enough of the thin line of red tiles, or having forgotten their purpose. “We simply seek clarification as to the Oracle’s words.”

“Are not the Oracle’s words mine? Are her throat and her lips not the vessels you have chosen through which to hear me?”

“Well, yes, oh highest light on the sky…” The Higher High Priest stepped forward again, heedless of others around him stepping back. “But it’s just… it is, to us, strange, to hear you contradict that which you have said before. And are not the restrictions holy and to be kept, regardless of all else?”

“The restrictions and the requirements I gave you are holy and of the highest importance.”

“But, oh brightly shining…” The Higher High Priest got no further. The Lesser High Priest found it promising that he did not burst into flames, but simply sigh and fall to the ground. Three burly acolytes pulled him away from the dais, and, with considerably more caution, the Lesser High Priest of the Evening stepped forward, mindful to keep his toes behind the red line of tile.

“Oh brightly shining beacon in the sky, we thank you for correcting our ignorance. Know that the second restriction shall be stricken from the books, and that none shall be required to build bridges where the path should be passable by foot.”

“Good.” The voice of the god in the oracle sounded sullen. “It’s a silly restriction. There are far better things to spend your money on, your time, and your energy.”

“We thank you, oh sun of the morning. Ah… what about the third requirement?”

The Oracle’s head swiveled until the god’s glance was firmly upon the Lesser High Priest. “That one stays. Know you not why you are required to do so?”

“Ah…” He didn’t dare look down, but he did shuffle backwards as subtly as he could. “No, exalted lord.”

“Well then.” The Oracle crossed her legs and leaned forward. “Get this vessel some water, and get your scribe some more ink. Today, Eralon will educate you.”

The Lesser High Priest of Evening scrambled to do as his god had bade him. He had a feeling this was going to be an interesting evening.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/458750.html. You can comment here or there.

The Darkness in the Shadows

Jan21

For [personal profile] kc_obrien‘s Prompt

Don’t get me wrong, I like being a troll.

A goblin, a critter, a beastie of the night. I like being one of the gutter-people, the shadow-monsters, the whispers you don’t want to hear.

The light shines brightest down here. We have no light of our own, you see. So every spark of light that we receive is cherished, nourished, and polished until it shines, shines brighter than anything in your world.

And we collect it. Soft words and gentle whispers, sweet murmurs and the smile of a young lady. Diamonds and gold jewelry. A single pearl. A single happy tear.

That’s what we are. The thing you don’t want to know is behind you. The thing that you pass, not looking, the shadow you don’t squint into. We’re your collective shiny guilt, the puddle that mucks up your clean shoes, the gust of wind when you’ve just gotten your hair done.

We are everything, everything dirty and nasty and dark that you fear. And we love your bright bits, your earrings and your laughter, your brand new jacket and that hope you hold close to your chest. We collect them, shine them, and hang them in our gutter homes, our basement bowers, for light and warmth.

And while you drop your hopes into the gutter for us, the way you drop a couple pennies in a cup, we shine them up and hope they will keep the deepest dark away.

Because the light may shine brightest down here, but the shadows, oh. The shadows are like you’ve never seen.

Pray to your gods that you never have cause to find out just how dark.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/456956.html. You can comment here or there.

The Second Restriction

Jan17

For Rix_Scaedu‘s prompt.

Thanks to @Skysailor99 for the country & god names.

“There’s a problem with the second restriction.”

The country of Foros had a lot of gods, and, like any good nation with a lot of gods, it had a lot of priests.

Several dozen of them were, at the moment, staring at their holiest of holy oracles.

The oracles were not supposed to say things like that. They weren’t, for one things, supposed to be capable of that much coherence. The ones who could hear the god Eralon – or any of the gods, but Eralon liked to talk the most – they tended to go mad very quickly. And the rest could be induced to simulate madness with the right smoke.

The Lesser High Priest of the Evening was the first to recover. “Ye who is blessed with the voice of the gods, ye who sees the truth to save us weaker vessels from that which would break us, say again, please?”

The oracle looked at the Lesser High Priest of the Evening. He was a clever man, brighter than his superiors, and did not flinch when he felt the eyes of divinity looking back at him. “The second restriction of Eralon. There is a problem with it.”

Eralon, of all of their myriad gods, had given them the most stringent restrictions and the most elaborate requirements. “Oh voice of the gods, please tell us what the problem is, that we might correct it.”

He had never been all that fond of the second restriction, after all. Several of the others made sense, and, of those that didn’t actively help make Foros a better place, only the second and the seventh seemed to make it worse.

“It’s wrong.” Her eyes rolled back in her head, and when they focused on the Lesser High Priest of the Evening again, the oracle’s gaze – and her voice – were her own again. “It’s not a restriction at all. The girl who relayed it just had an allergy to frogs.”

The temple erupted into shouting. Showing wisdom that would probably save his life on more occasions than this one, the Lesser High Priest of the Evening grabbed the oracle and the duty scribe, and got them both out of the temple before someone could erase this conversation from the records.

Possibly someone with an allergy to frogs. Or someone with a bridge-making business.

Eralon Explains

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/455232.html. You can comment here or there.

Falling

Jan17

For [personal profile] kelkyag‘s prompt

I remember falling.

They’ll tell you I can’t have possibly remembered anything. They’ll tell you that I was too young.

They’ll tell you there wasn’t any falling involved. It was a one-story house, and the windows were low to the ground.

But then again, how did a 2-year-old survive when nobody else did?

I’ve never wondered.

They’ll tell you that was because I was too young to have formed attachments. They’ll tell you that’s because I don’t really remember my family.

They’re going to tell you a lot of shit about me. And you’re going to listen, aren’t you? Because you’re the grown-ups. And I’m a kid.

But I remember falling. I remember the first fall. The second fall. I remember every. Single. Time.

They put me on a train at the end of the autumn. Comes this time every year. The families can handle me in the spring, in the summer. But when the leaves start to change, they get nervous.

I can’t say I blame them. All they have to go on is stories, after all. Whispers. The things that they’re told, the lies that they’re fed to comfort them. But even the slimiest grown-up knows, somewhere, when they’re being lied to.

So they put me on a train. City to country. Country to burbs. Burbs to… well, where am I going this time?

And what have they told you about the fires?

I remember falling.

But I remember flying, too. The flying always comes before the falling. And the fire comes in between.

And they’ll tell you I don’t remember anything at all.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/454475.html. You can comment here or there.

Teaching for the Future, a story for the Giraffe Call

Jan17

To EllenMillion‘s prompt.

The apocalypse was the last thing I was expecting when I went back to school.

Let’s be honest, I really wasn’t expecting much of anything except an escape from reality.

I liked being a student. I was good at it, I enjoyed it, and, unlike the work world, it enjoyed me back. So, when I got sick of grunt jobs, miserably low-paying crap, and all the bullshit that went along with the Real World, I went back to college. No better way to get out of planning for the future, right?

You’d think that being a Perpetual Student would have ill-prepared me for the apocalypse, but, as it turned out, you’d be wrong. I like learning, too, you see. And classes only fill so much of your time. And college campuses are full of people who like to teach you things.

All of which combined to turn me into sort of a post-apocalyptic Jane of All Trades.

Step One: Fail at the Real World. Check.

Step Two: Drop back into college with a vengeance. Check.

Step Three: End of the world. Check.

The Botany department has a cabin out past the edge of the town where they do field studies. By the time the armies overran the town, I was already out there, with two Botany students and a pre-med guy who tagged along.

We did some shopping first, of course, and then some more shopping, afterwards. It’s interesting the things people will leave behind when they’re panic-shopping. It’s interesting how much use you can get out of those things.

Now the four of us are running a school. It amuses me, a little, that I’ve gone from real-world dropout to teacher, but those that remain need a lot of teaching. And they have a lot to teach, too, or they wouldn’t have made it through the first three passes.

Everyone takes turns, teacher and student. And everyone – everyone – takes notes.

We’re planning for the future, here, after all.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/454050.html. You can comment here or there.

The Light World and its Shadows

Jan11

For [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith‘s commissioned continuation of Day Twin, Night Twin, after The Dark and Light Mirror.

This really needs at least 500 words more, perhaps 1000, and it would be, like, a real story.

Life in the dark was everything Ella had imagined it would be, everything the stories had told, and all of that times a thousand.

It was darker, for one. The daylight people had no concept of true darkness, true night. Their stories spoke of the shadows, the echos, the hidden places. Their stories told of a little bit of mischief, like boggins and boggarts. People who dogged their steps and put salt in their coffee, soured their milk and sometimes made easily-foil-able plots.

And maybe that was the nature of the Evil Twins. But those who never crossed over, and the land in which the sinister-born lived… that was another story altogether.

That was a story of night time, where the sun shone through only in cracks. It was a story of trouble, where goodness-to-your-fellow-beings was not a watchword but a way to get mugged. It was a story of caution, of being the strongest of the strong or the canniest of the canny.

And Ava’s foster mother was all of those things.

In her own land, she wasn’t the bumbling, easily-fooled twin that she’d seemed in the daylight. In her own shadows, she wasn’t a sketch of a boogeyman; she was the boogeyman. She was the darkness. She was, Ella found, more than a little bit terrifying.

At first, Ella thought she had been caught. “Ava!” her foster-mother shouted when she returned home, home that was an echo, a mirror, a dark-shadow of the home she’d just left. “Ava, where the hell have you been?”

“I’ve been out.” She was used to being rebellious, being snotty. She was not used to having her mother – her foster-mother, though they looked just the same – be snotty right back. “Well, isn’t that good. Come here and help me with this bomb.”

“This what?” Ella’s heart jumped. She was in the right place, all right.

—

Life in the dayside was so much brighter than Ava had ever imagined. It was cleaner, for one. Cleaner and sweeter, and everyone wore such lovely things, as if they were in an ancient, forbidden fairy tale, and everyone spoke so very kindly and politely. Nobody turned up their nose at her. Nobody shook their head at her pretty white dress, nobody tried to get it messy.

The nighttime people had no idea how much smoother things could go if they were only nice to each other. She smiled and nodded and tried out her pleases and thank yous, and found that they were fun to say, when people said back to you.

It was so sweet. She’d heard a rumor, here and there, of the things the Evil Twins saw. They thought the daylight was foolish, born to be taunted and bothered, born to have every step that they took dogged by the mischief of the dark. They thought that only their little petty troubles kept the world stable.

And maybe that was true of the Good Twins. Maybe that was the nature of the those that had a bit of evil in them. But those who never came near the dark, and in the land where the daylight thrived… that was another story altogether.

And it was a story Ava was born to be the star of. She threw back her head and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. She had come into her own… and she was going to rule it.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/446985.html. You can comment here or there.