Tag Archive | prompter: mb

Something Hungry

Sep20

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“What… what is this thing?”

“It’s a van.”  Autumn looked at her sisters in confusion.  “You know, driver goes here, then park, sleep goes back there?  Art supplies in the middle, passengers hold on for dear life?”

“Autumn…?” Spring raised her eyebrows.  “Have you looked at this thing?”

“I had Cousin Jimmy look under the hood for me and Aunt Caroline did a thorough inspection…?”  Autumn was hovering somewhere between offended and worried.  “Guys, the paint is a little esoteric but it’s my van, it has to be a little weird.”

“No, no, I like the paint.”  Summer patted the side of the machine lightly.  “Good van.  It looks like the dappling of sunlight on the forest floor.  Autumn, when you were painting it, did you, ah, did you paint it?” Continue reading →

Catch the Rain – a story for Patreon

Aug16

Originally posted on Patreon in August 2018 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

This story comes after  The Gardener, The Garden, and To the Garden.  It is part of the series with  First Garden.  It takes place in the Fae Apoc world during the apocalypse. ⛈️

Outside of her garden – their garden – the war was still raging.

Damkina and her people had done what they could.  They had pushed the borders of the little museum garden all the way to the edges of the city.  Now, every Welcome to Greenville sign was surrounded by greenery and flanked by a polite but closed cast-iron gate.

As good as Damkina was – and she was very good – she could not control the weather itself, and there was a drought sitting, not just over Greenville, but over much of the surrounding area.

And there was a five-god army coming towards the widest gate of the city. Continue reading →

Teaching the Geometry (of Life) – a Patreon story

Jun14

originally posted Jun 14, 2018 on Patreon⭕

Mr. Reginato had been teaching 10th-grade advanced mathematics for a very long time.  A very, very long time, but the old paper records were long since gone and, since students enjoyed his class, he didn’t seem to be a line-item on the pension fund, and the school’s test scores in mathematics grade 10 and above had always been superb – or at least as long as people knew Mr. Reginato had been there – nobody was going to talk to him about retiring.

As a matter of fact, they were paying him, it appeared, approximately $100 a year, which absolutely couldn’t be correct, but that was the number that the accountant had in her files, and nobody really wanted to ask her any questions either. Continue reading →

Loss

May31

Originally posted on Patreon in May 2018 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.
This story comes after “Securing One’s Own Legacy” and is a tale of Zenobia.  Warning: it covers grief and loss. 
⛼

Zenobia looked good in black.  And she was in no position to appreciate it.
She was actually mourning the man, although she doubted anyone in her family would believe that.

Lewis had been a sweet man, a patient man, and willing to do just about anything to keep his family off of his back, which had included a sweet but entirely sham marriage to Zenobia – a marriage he had, in the weeks before his death, explained to their pastor exactly how sham it was. Continue reading →

Shadows in the Old Park -a story for Patreon

Dec21
This went a little left turn from where I’d planned. 

I was picturing Sprucewood Nature Center, by the by, even though it’s not quite… wood-y enough. 

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The twenty-acre forest had become thick and overgrown in the decade since the world had fallen apart.

Vic remembered it from elementary school field trips, middle school solo explorations, high school one-on-one adventures with just the right second person – or at least the person that had seemed right at the time.  Several persons, several times.

Now, you couldn’t step between the trees except at the path, and the path had been blocked with a parked truck.  It looked safe.  It looked like a good place to hide out.Vic used the back wheel as a step-stool to look over the beast of a vehicle, only to end up looking at the tip of a rifle. Continue reading →