From Moon_fox‘s prompt.

“The job fairy ain’t going to come give you a job,” Francis’ father used to say, or “the dishes fairy ain’t gonna wash the dishes.” The homework fairy wasn’t going to do his homework, and the wish fairy wasn’t going to make stuff happen.

Francis couldn’t help but laugh, then, when the packages started appearing all over the city. At first, people thought it was glitter-bombing, some sort of very strange flash mob thing, something silly and innocuous. A few paranoid people thought maybe that it was a strange way to spread anthrax or something else nasty and weaponized. Some people (and somewhere deep in his heart, Francis was one of those people), just believed.

Believed in the Magic Fairy, and the Hope Fairy, and the Love Fairy. Believed in the pancakes delivered to them them, little white boxes wrapped up in ribbons. Believed when they opened the box, when they saw the tiny glass globes inside, that there was something for them.

And maybe it was the belief, and maybe there really was a Hope Fairy, but people became less depressed, and more happy. In this Rust Belt city, people being optimistic was a novel thing, a bright light of sunshine in a grey town. It lit up the whole place.

And maybe the belief and the hope fueled things, and maybe there really was a Love Fairy, but people started acting kinder to each other, started being a little more considerate, a little less cut-throat. Francis brought dinner for the old lady next door. His neighbor saved him a parking spot Monday night. A girl who’d never given him the time of day smiled at him.

And maybe that all just made things seem magical, but when Francis found his feet floating a foot off the ground, holding the hands of the girl, that girl, he had to laugh… and call his father. And tell him, “Dad, I gotta tell you, but the Magic Fairy just showed up.”

And Dad, Dad just laughed. “So did the cleaning fairy, son. Guess I was wrong.” He chuckled again, a little wry. “But, tell you what, son, I still ain’t seen no job fairies.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/223523.html. You can comment here or there.

For EllenMillion‘s prompt.

“I want to tell a story.”

It wasn’t what Miss Kelley was expecting to hear from her students, and certainly not from this particular student, shy and a bit slow to learn. She looked down at Diandru thoughtfully. “What kind of story, Di?”

“I had a dream,” the very earnest child told her. “And it was like a movie, with everything very clear and bright, and there were explosions and gunshots and people were crying. And there was a dragon.”

“It sounds like a very interesting dream.” Miss Kelley found herself leaning forward, intrigued by the suggestion of a story.

“It was really cool. But I don’t know how to draw it and I’m not very good with letters yet.” Diandru held up a few crayon drawings. “They don’t look right.”

“Well, then.” Miss Kelly patted the bench next to her. “Let’s figure out how to tell this story, then, you and I, okay?”

“Okay.” Diandru scrambled up next to the teacher, and the two began to plot.

So it was that, at storytime the next day, Diandru began to speak, in a voice as clear as a bell, holding up illustrations drawn by Miss Kelly, labeled in painstaking handwriting by Diandru.

“The dragon came into town in the middle of the night. It was very cold, so cold that his fire wouldn’t light.”

The children leaned forward, intrigued, even those who wanted to be dismissive.

“He was looking for a warm place, somewhere that would make his steam turn back into fire. Dragons don’t like the cold, you know. Like Miss Carpenter’s snake.”

The children nodded. Snakes didn’t like the cold. They knew this to be true.

“There was a building on fire. It was in the part of town where the firemen took their time, a scary neighborhood where people shot just to hear their guns.”

The kids shivered, and nodded. They knew those neighborhoods. Some of them lived there.

“And the dragon saw this building, and its fire – it was a house,” Diandru hurried to add, but managed not to break the flow of the story anyway, “with people trying to get out. And the dragon settled down around the house, soaking up the fire like a cat in the sunlight.”

The children smiled at the image, but leaned in. “What about the people?” demanded a classmate.

“Well, they shot at it. That’s what people did in that neighborhood.”

“That was silly!”

“Yep. It was very silly, because the dragon didn’t even notice. It just kept soaking up the fire, eating it up, getting warmer and warmer… so that by the time the firemen showed up, the fire was all gone, and the people were saved.”

“And what about the people who had shot at the dragon?”

“Well, they felt really silly about shooting at something that was helping,” Diandru answered, holding up the picture labeled “feeling silly.” “And they threw all their guns into the lake…. Where the lake monster ate them for dinner!”

As the children giggled happily, Diandru hugged Miss Kelley’s legs. Looking down at the small child, the teach couldn’t help a giggle of her own. “Next week,” she whispered, “we can tell them the story of the Lake Monster.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/221276.html. You can comment here or there.

For skjam‘s prompt.

“HENRY JOHN CHRISTCHURCH, YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO RECEIVE A BRIDE!”

It was not the e-mail Hank was expecting to see in his inbox. Any other day, he would have deleted it as SPAM, but there had been that contest he’d entered a few months back. He hadn’t thought it was for a wife, but, well, there’s been a long list of prizes (he’d been interested in the IPad more than anything). So he clicked.

The e-mail, once read, looked surprisingly legitimate, especially considering the all-caps hysteria of its subject line. Go to this place, present ID proving that he was, indeed Henry John Christchurch, collect mail-order bride.

There had to be a catch, of course, but the attached photos were of a very lovely woman, dark-haired, exotic looking. From some country up in the frozen north, he was sure, and, more than anything, he was curious how they’d pull off the swap. Present him with some ugly girl and say she’d had a hard time since she left her homeland? Tell him that the picture was only representative?

Mika, it said her name was. Curious to see who he’d really meet, Hank packed an overnight bag and drove to the location, a couple hours outside his hometown.

The sleek businessman who greeted him at the door confirmed all of Hank’s suspicions. This was some sort of scam, some sort of time-share-thing. Wife-share? no, that was something else. Hank let the suit lead him into a posh conference room, and sat to wait.

The girl who came to meet him didn’t look like the photos; if anything, she looked prettier. Beautiful. Stunning.

“My husband,” she murmured, in accented but comprehendible English. “Will you take your bride?” Indeed, she was even dressed in a white dress, the sort of beaded confection Hank’s female co-workers drooled over.

“Uh…”

Yes, yes was the appropriate answer. She was gorgeous. She was perfect. Hank hoped she could cook; he’d never gotten beyond burning beans-in-a-can himself.

So married they were – the sleek suit provided a priest – and Hank took his Mika home. She could cook. She could clean, although she did better directing a cleaning service. She could also, it appeared, work, and had US citizenship, and soon had a job which kept her out late and meant they were back to eating burned beans and take-out. And she could, much to Hank’s surprise, fuck like a demon, like a wild thing, and no matter what late hours she kept or how much pizza they ate, Hank remained deliriously happy. No matter how much more she earned then him, or how the house slowly became hers, not his, he stayed happy. No matter how tired and worn-out he seemed to feel, and how she seemed to grow more and more lively, Hank stayed happy.

And died happy, a smile on his face at the funeral and his lovely wife radiant, sniffing gently into her handkerchief.

Mika missed this one. He’d been sweeter than the most, though the papers had suggested he wouldn’t be. She waited a month before she called her broker, the slick man in the suit, and murmured to him, quietly, in Sweedish, “it is time to begin the Gift Delivery again.”

She’d always found it appropriate that, in Swedish, “gift” meant “poison…” and “wife.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/217108.html. You can comment here or there.

For ysabetwordmith‘s prompt

Commenters: 0

The war in Afghanistan had been getting really tricky.

Carl heard it was worse over in Africa and other parts of the Middle East – even down in Western Europe – where every mass grave for the last forty years had been dug up from inside. The unhallowed dead were rising all over the world, and they were, it seemed, really, really hungry.

Here, the worst problem was the MIA. They hadn’t been laid to rest with proper rites because they hadn’t been laid to rest at all, and they’d come back when nobody was expecting them, slipping into their old units and wreaking havoc. Their chaplain was working overtime, and he’d enlisted the help of an imam from a nearby village and a rabbi they’d had to smuggle in.

And now they were being shambled towards by seventeen dead Afghanis – all but three of them young women – two French soldiers that had gone missing years ago, and a guy from their unit.

“Shit,” Carl grunted, “sorry, chaplain. That’s Joe Ellis.”

“How can you tell?” The poor guy sounded like he was about to lose it, and Carl couldn’t blame him. There wasn’t much left of Joe’s face to identify him.

“The boots. And the tattoo on the hand. I don’t know how you’re going to deal with this one, father. He’s an atheist.”

“What ever happened to ‘no atheists in foxholes?’” the chaplain muttered.

“Joe used to go on about that. Said that that was because people have been trained to pray when they’re scared, not because they suddenly believe. ‘Everyone is afraid,’ he’d say, ‘it’s part of being human.’” Of course, what was left of Joe wasn’t anywhere near human, but Carl was trying hard not to think too much about that.

“Fear.” The chaplain nodded thankfully. “Cover me?”

“I’ve got your back.” Hoping that the little man knew what he was doing, Carl followed him on his crab-skitter across the field. The imam was laying the girls to rest, but Joe, or what was left of him, was trying to chew on someone who had once been his best buddy. While Carl helped the kid hold him off, the chaplain prayed.

“We come to the end of our life as a release, as a respite. We come to the end of our lives as a chance to lay down our burdens, to set aside fear. For in the time after death, truly there can be no more pain, and no more fear. There is nothing left to be afraid of.”

Slowly, and at first uncertainly, the zombie that had once been Joe lay down on the ground. As the chaplain kept talking, Joe’s body reached for a lighter, and, with a beatific smile on what was left of his face, set himself on fire.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/168426.html. You can comment here or there.

For KC_OBrien‘s prompt.

Commenters: 4

I keep the house.

That’s what my master set me to do, and that’s what I do. The other four and I, we keep the house. We keep it clean, we keep it safe, we keep it well-equipped. We keep it ready for the master’s return. We keep it as clean and pristine and prepared as it was the day he left. That is what we do, and what we have always done.

It has been a very long time, I’ll admit, since the master last returned. It has been months, no, not months, years? No, more than that. Decades. They do tend to fade after a while. Osana’s body faded first, and we buried her under her beloved rosebushes. Then Yuri, under the pavers in front. By the time it was my turn, we knew that death would not remove us from our duties; Yuri still kept the yard tidy and perfect. Anja still kept the house pristine. And it was not that hard for them to make a spot under the porch for me, so that I could continue to answer the door as I had always done.

Decades passed, I believe, although it could be as long as a century. Without bodies, there was little to mark the passage of time. Gregor redecorated every once in a while from the magazines he found, spending the house accounts that he still kept. Osana planted new herbs, and left bundles of goodies whenever a new neighbor moved in. We did what the master wanted. What the master had told us to do.

I think we all knew, by then, that the master wasn’t coming back. What was left of our bodies was crumbling to dust, and we watched the children of the neighborhood grow up, move away, and be replaced by new children. The world had moved on and, somewhere in there, our master had left. But I don’t think any of us really considered that some day, someone else might try to live in our house.

We chased off the first people the realtor brought by, with quiet little things, little spooks and pranks. By the fourth couple, we were getting more carried away, breaking stairs, exploding radiators (Yuri hated the former and Anja hated the latter). But then there were the Abbots… and when they showed up, we realized the flaw in our plan. Because the people that could not be chased away by our antics… well, they are not the sort of people we wanted to live with.

We cannot help but keep the house clean, upkept, and stocked. But these people, these people… They try my patience. They try our resources. They try the definition of humanity.

…do you think, if they died, we’d be free of them, or would they merely haunt our place, then, in their slovenly mess?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/156910.html. You can comment here or there.

For Wyld_Dandelyon‘s prompt.

Commenters: 4

The old school was haunted.

No classes had been taught there since the flood, nearly two years ago now; most of the town had packed up and left, not enthused enough about the town to tough it through, not rich enough to just pour money on the problem to fix things, not picturesque enough to get the TV crews and the charity money they brought with them.

Macy’s family had been one of only a couple that had stayed – Macy’s, and Joe’s, and Fidel’s. Their fathers split the town between them, salvaging what they could and selling it at flea markets on the weekends. Their mothers grew what they could, and canned and preserved and made do the way their grandmothers and great-grandmothers did. The electric company still sent them power, as long as they paid, and the water company still sent them water, and if that was all they had, well, it was better than a lot of people did, or at least that’s what Macy’s mom had said.

Macy and Joe and Fidel, sometimes they helped their dads scavenge, or work on cleaning up or building up their homesteads, and sometimes they helped watched their little brothers and sisters, or helped their moms in the kitchen, though all of them would rather be pulling siding off a rotting building than turning the crank on the food mill. And when they could get away and do what they wanted, they went down to the old school.

Their dads wouldn’t touch it, so they’d done what they could, pulled the books that had survived up to the top floor and dried out the ones that were only a little damp, thrown everything else in the dumpsters so the whole place stopped smelling of damp and misery and sewage, run the janitor’s hoses and soap through the whole first floor until it gleamed. There was no-one to tell them to do it, but there was no-one to tell them not to, either, so it was their place, their fort. Their flooded-out swampy dreams.

Fidel said that’s what it was haunting the place – ghosts of finals they’d never get to take, and the ones they hadn’t cared as much about, ghosts of the dreams they’d had of scholarships, and college, and a better life, all washed away with the damn river. Joe said it was memories, their friends that had died, the ones that had just left with what they could take. They didn’t touch the lockers of those friends, and wouldn’t help their dads clean out those houses.

Macy thought they were both right, and both wrong. When she was alone there, in the third-floor room they’d made into a library, she could hear them. Mrs. Proctor, who’d made sure all the kids were out and safe and gotten hit by a floating road sign. Mr. Talbot, who’d had a heart attack and drowned in three inches of water. Mrs. Gonzalez, who’d been sobbing when she packed up and left. She could hear their lessons, the ones they’d already taught her and the ones they’d never gotten to. And as long as she could hear them teach her, she could still learn.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/156179.html. You can comment here or there.