Tag Archive | verse: misc: urban

The Magical Disaster, a story beginning written off of a 7th Sanctum prompt

From this prompt generator: http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=writeprompt


We survived the magical disaster by hiding in her bank, or that’s what they thought.

We used the same trick we always did: play off of people’s assumptions. We crawled out from under a table and staggered out of the building with the two dozen people who’d been hiding in there. We looked woozy – I really was woozy, and Sharna’s expertise was in faking any number of illnesses and weakness. And we were genuinely surprised by the chaos outside.

We looked a little strange, but even the people hiding in strong stone buildings like the bank had been affected by the backlash. We looked a little lost, but that was easily explained by the wooziness. The hardest part to explain would have been our ID’s, and there was such a mess outside that nobody cared, not even the police.

The sweetest part of the mess? One of those police looked Sharna straight in the face and didn’t recognize her. Her face had been on wanted posters all over town…

…but that had been back home. I wondered how long it would be before they realized that the magical catastrophe had opened doors into other worlds? By then, I was sure, we’d already have vanished into this world and be working on another con.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1062784.html. You can comment here or there.

If a Tree Grows in the Forest… a drabble

Written to [profile] kiarrith‘s prompt here

The thing was, the industrial areas of the city hadn’t been abandoned that long. 15 years since the last manufacturing business folded in the area, sure, seven since the last start-up trying to use the old spaces fizzled out. But there were hobos and drifters, skaters and hippies. There was always someone wandering through the space. Leticia walked through herself, Tuesdays and Thursdays when she didn’t have much time between work and classes.

Which is how she knew something was up when she encountered the oak grove. It was Tuesday, which meant she’d last been through this cut-through – between the old Gleason Works building and the even older Lomb plant, where the workers of both had once shared bag lunches and a brief bit of unfiltered sunlight – it had last been only 5 days ago.

Last week, the courtyard had been full of weeds, a little bit of trash, with a beaten path straight through the middle.

Today, there were five oak trees in a circle where a picnic table had once stood. They weren’t small trees, either; the smallest one was too big for Letitia to encircle with her arms.

She walked around the trees cautiously. This had to be some sort of trick, some sort of urban graffiti gone supremely weird. Trees just didn’t grow overnight. Not in a vacant lot, not anywhere.

Her foot hit something hard. Letita knelt down to look, perplexed beyond caution.

A piece of metal twisted out of the weeds, so rusted it fell apart in her hands. Another piece of metal caught her eye, white and pitted. In the flat metal, a heart was etched, dirt rubbed deep into the lines.

Letita felt chill. She knew this heart. If she pulled the rest of the metal out of the weeds, it would say QW + ZX. She’d puzzled over those initials and the heart’s wobbly arrow for months. They’d been carved into the picnic table, the table that had stood where the oak trees now grew.

Slowly, her heart in her throat, Letita turned around to look at the city skyline.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/987764.html. You can comment here or there.

Passing Dreams, written for last week’s @MicroBookends

(I didn’t win, so here’s last week’s microfic at 110 words. Check out the MicroBookEnd page for the photo and prompt.)

“Big freaking deal.” Jenny and the rest of the mean kids kicked at the chalk letters. “So you have a list. Ooh, I see, it’s a ‘wish list.’” Jenny snorted. “Cute.”

Trying to get them to help had been dumb.

“Here, let me see.” Jenny snatched the chalk out of Maris’ hand. “You wished for a new dog? Right.” She scribbled at the bottom of the list. “Twenty dollars. Uh. What?” She jumped, but the list was already pulling her in, replacing her with a twenty, the way it had given a dog when it had taken Maris’ brother.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/954938.html. You can comment here or there.

Quick, Click, written for last week’s @MicroBookends

(I didn’t win, so here’s last week’s microfic at 110 words. Check out the MicroBookEnd page for the photo and prompt.)

Urban vampires live among us.

The rural breed is nearly extinct; vampires like hectic fear and the country is slower, tireder. The last rural vampire retired to a farm college where he feeds quietly off of grad students.

Urban vampires, however, live on. They dwell in the places between mirrors, in the arching walls of glass, in streetlight reflectors: not in the shadows, but in the excess of light.

It’s said that they love elevators. They can be seen there sometimes, hiding behind your stacked reflections. A camera might capture them – or release them.

But perhaps there is no need to fear, and it is all just a legend.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/951980.html. You can comment here or there.

The Haircut – Patreon

“Are you sure?” Cyan ran shaking hands through the new hair-cut. It was short, shorter than Cy had ever dared before, but just long enough, or so Mary assured, that it could be made girly when the urge or the need arose.

“Cy, with your folks, nobody can ever be sure of anything. But, in a normal world, yes. If they’re being stupid, you can show them how it curls up so cutely when you want it to. And if they’re not, you can slick it back and do the manly thing when you want to. Days you’re feeling middle-of-the-road, the curls are easy to tame down once you get out of the house.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Look, everything will be easier when you can get out of the house – but this, this is hair. It doesn’t have to be hard or anything.” Mary fluffed the back of Cy’s hair. “This should be fine.”

“Psst.”

Cyan and Mary both ignored the voice coming from the alley. It didn’t do to talk to strangers, not in this neighborhood.

“And besides,” Mary continued, “your mom when through her pixie cut stage, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, but my dad-”

“You want easy?” The voice in the alley was not to be ignored. “I can make you look the way you want to, kid.”

“-my dad hated it. My dad hates everything.”

“Come on, someone transitional like you, wanna be red one day, green another.” Now the alley-way voice had resolved itself into a shadowy figure. “I got what you need.”

It wasn’t going to shut up and it wasn’t going to go away. Cyan looked directly at the shadow. “I know better than to make deals with fairies.” The haircut would have to be enough, for now.

K for kleptēs, a continuation of the Giraffe Call (@rix_scaedu)

For Rix_Scaedu‘s commissioned continuation of K for Stolen Karma.

Kyrie was in a panic. A true, honest-to-goodness freak-out panic. He pulled against the ropes, even though they were cutting into his wrists, tugged and yanked and just gave in to the hysteria. He shouted at the woman, incoherent nonsense that really boiled down to “let me go, let me go, I’ll do anything, just let me go.”

She stopped his screams with a kiss that left him almost choking on her tongue. “If you are not quiet, I will make you be quiet.”

It took a moment for that to get through the panic, and then Kyrie shut his mouth and nodded. When she seemed unlikely to rip any part of him out (She had claws. And when she had kissed him, her teeth had been far too sharp), he swallowed, and tried words. “You stole me?”

“I did.” She rested her hand possessively on his stomach, the tips of her claws just beginning to pierce his skin. Kyrie fought to hold still. “As I said, Karma is a bitch.”

“So… when I steal things.” He swallowed, and tried again. “If I stole things, I would sell them. Fence them, I guess.”

“There are people I know who move stolen goods – and stolen people. I could, indeed, fence you.”

Kyrie had gone still, and not just because of the claws breaking his skin. “You don’t sound like that’s what you want to do.” Please, don’t let it be what she wanted to do.

“No. You’re correct. But I’m not sure you wouldn’t prefer being fenced.”

Kyrie swallowed. This was not going well. “I’m sure we can work out some sort of deal…” When in doubt, bargain. “Did I steal something from you in the past? Something you want back?”

“Honey, if you’d manage to steal from me, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’d be trying to negotiate with worms, if anything.”

He couldn’t help but shudder, driving her claws deeper into his stomach. He’d had marks get angry before, but that was nothing like this. They’d yell, they’d swear, they’d threaten to call the police. Nobody had ever told him, cold-blooded and entirely serious, that he could be dead.

Then again, he’d never been stupid enough to steal from a Kin before, as far as he knew.

She was watching him, licking her lips. He had to say something. He had to keep her talking. If she was talking, she wasn’t eating him. “What are you going to do with me?” That, he considered, might not have been the best choice of conversational topics. On the other hand, it was near and dear to his heart – and the intestines her claws were getting closer to.

“You’re a very good thief, are you not? And, from what I’ve heard, an even better blackmailer.”

“I do those things.” No use in denying it.

“It’s a rush for you? Like the kill?” Her tongue kept darting out, brushing against her lips.

“You could call it that.” He shrugged, barely a twitch of his shoulders – he couldn’t do much else, but he wanted her thinking of anything but the blood on his stomach. “I think of it like base jumping, or any other extreme sport. It is a rush, yeah.”

“Very good.” She leaned down until her lips brushed against his throat. “Then, little thief, you are going to work for me now. And I’ve got the adrenaline rush of a lifetime for you.”

Watching her, feeling her sharp teeth against his throat, Kyrie was pretty sure he’d have preferred being fenced.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/530235.html. You can comment here or there.

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

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.

E is for Euphoric

For Rix_Scaedu‘s prompt.

“What did you do, Eustace?”

“Why does it have to be my fault?” Said at-fault fella stepped back, hands raised, trying to look innocent. He wasn’t very good at it. It was the thought that counted, right?

“Because there are two of us who live in this apartment.” Emily clearly wasn’t counting thoughts. “And I know I didn’t do it.”

“Maybe it’s a burglar?” He tilted his head towards the couch, and the mess all around the coffee table.

“A burglar that, what, came with a key?” Emily, in turn, tilted her head towards the locked and deadbolted door, the windows with their security grates, the view indicating that, as they had been yesterday, they were still on the twenty-ninth floor. “Or flew?” She looked down at their unwanted guest. “Well, I could believe flew, if the windows were open.”

“See? See?” Eustace flailed with both hands. “See? It could entirely have been not my fault.”

“Eustace. There is a stoned elf on our couch.”

“Euphoric. It’s not stoned, it’s on euphorics.”

“Why are you calling it it?”

“Have you looked under its fur?”

“….no?” Emily wasn’t quite that curious. “Besides, since when do elves have fur?”

“Since when do elves ride the Metro? I’m not entirely sure it’s an elf. You can get the ears tipped by any good cosmetic surgeon.”

“And what about under its fur?”

“Well, I can’t think of a surgeon that would do that, but maybe an angry girlfriend. But I think that explains the euphorics.”

“…Eustace. You’re saying that the euphoric elf on our couch is… a eunuch?”

“Exactly.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/511698.html. You can comment here or there.

Little Fears and Little Hopes

This is a continuation of The Darkness in the Shadows (LJ) to [personal profile] kc_obrien‘s commissioned continuation.

Dawn was threatening, waving its red flag of war at the edge of the horizon.

Up aboveground, the good people of the world would be waking up, cleaning off their dreams, putting on their day-skins.

Down on the streets, the monsters were slipping back into the cracks, back into their basement caves. They cradled the last few night-time whispers, gathering them like grain before the storm, like fruit before the frost. The days could be so very long, down in the gutter.

It was a clear night, the sort where dawn would burn its way clear of the night time faster than expected. There were no clouds to shroud the world, to protect it for a few precious moments. And that sort of dawn would burn the creatures who thrived on the night.

Still, they lingered. It had been a lean night, too cold, too bleak for many passers-by, too deep into winter for much hope, for many shining dreams. They would be hungry through the day. They would start nibbling on what little they could see through the grates, if they went to their caves hungry.

And that way lay trouble. That way lay madness. One nibble, then another. One daytime theft, and then you were slipping out during the rain storms. One early riser grabbing too much, and then everyone was whispering in the ears of the nine-to-fivers.

There was a place for the monsters, and that place was in the gutters. Everyone had to remember that for the world to work properly.

They knew that.

And yet this little monster lingered, peeking out from under the stairs, waiting. It was a hungry troll, near to starving, for the big fears often eat first, and the little ones eat what’s left.

A girl stumbled down the street, feet sore, body exhausted, her short dress no coverage at all against the cold. Somewhere, someone made a noise like a wolf-whistle. Somewhere else, someone made a noise like a gunshot.

The little troll licked his lips. She was bright, and shiny, and full of hope, but the fear was beginning to overwhelm her. He could taste the tiniest hopes, and he licked at them, like a creature might lick at moss.

It scooted out of the darkness a little. She stumbled on a piece of ice and fell forward. The trolls, the monsters, the nightmares, all inched forward hungrily. If she fell…

The little troll snuck out a little further. If she fell, she would fall nearest its hole.

Fear surged in the woman, and hope. She could see the bus. If she could only make it to the bus on time, she could get home in time. If she could get home in time…

The little troll ate up the hope. Yes, yes. Wish for the bus to slow down. It’s always late, it’s always slow. Wish a little more. Run a little faster.

Run a little faster in those silly shoes. The road is smoother than you think. The road is fine.

The sun was rising, but she was right there, right there. The little troll reached out… just as the girl tripped and fell.

Dawn was the time for pushing things. The time for hope, and the time for fear. Dawn was the time when some people just vanished. Just fell into holes, the people said. Fell between the cracks.

Dawn was a lean time, but sometimes, the creatures underground got fat as the sun snuck through the clouds.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/470276.html. You can comment here or there.