Tag Archive | verse: misc: urban

Burning Summer Quest, a story for the Giraffe Call

Jan26

For moon_fox‘s prompt

Probably goes with Strange Neighbors (LJ) [After the Fairy Road (here on LJ)]

It was the hottest summer on record. It may have been the hottest summer ever. The sidewalk was melting. The roads were sticky. Even the devout were wearing bikinis, and you don’t want to know what the sinners were wearing. Fry an egg? You could cook a roast on the hood of the car.

And our air conditioner was on the fritz. We had six so-called adults, two cats, three rats (the domestic sort), and one small child in a four-bedroom house, we had eaten all the popsicles, and our air conditioner was spitting out lukewarm air.

So Jordan and I went on a quest.

We went to Wal-mart: sold out. K-Mart: sold out. Target? Mobbed AND sold out. Ames, the corner store, the grocery store, the overpriced appliance store behind the carpet place. We drove around the city in shrinking concentric circles (at least the AC in my old Ford still worked), stopping at every place that might, possibly, in some universe, sell us an AC unit. I cried at the Rent-a-Center guy (he was unimpressed). Jordan threatened the pawn shop guy (likewise unimpressed); we offered to buy one off an old lady with three sticking out of her windows (in our defense, she was at least holding a garage sale).

And then, as we were heading home in defeat, wondering how we were going to tell the roomies (never mind the toddler, the cats, and the rats) that we had failed – Failed! on our epic quest! – Jordan slammed on the brakes.

There, right there in the heart of the third-worst neighborhood in town, in a place I swear was a braid joint just yesterday, was a small store with a smaller sign: “Mr. Ting knows what you need.”

“Well,” Jordan shrugged, “at this point, anything is worth a shot, right?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/246121.html. You can comment here or there.

Strange Neighbors

Jan25

For anke‘s prompt(s)

After the Fairy Road from the last Giraffe Call.

The park in the middle of the city had always been creepy, but, in its heyday, it had also been beautiful. Children had, once, played there, and the overgrowth that filled up its four quadrants had once been tamed, with tiny footpaths wriggling through like snakes. Now, only the desperate or rushed used the main roads, and only the fairies could find the foot-paths.

The apartment building on Milton, overlooking the park, had also seen better days. In its heyday, it had been a fine luxury building, and the suite size and facade still showed that. The rooms were large, the building was passably well-upkept, but the rich neighborhoods had moved North, leaving the Stanton Arms behind.

The tragedy of the park hadn’t helped, of course; no-one with children wanted to be near there. Anyone with sensitivity either was drawn there or repulsed, like magnets, depending on pole. And normal people, inasmuch as there were such things as normal people, for the most part had either heard the rumors, seen the crime rates, or just “knew” it wasn’t a good place; the reputation of the park clung to the building like coal dust from a smokestack.

That left the Arms to college students who couldn’t afford better, out-of-towners who didn’t know any better, fae who knew things about the park even the most sensitive human didn’t, the sensitive who could stand the ghosts, and Errol’s cousin Carolina, who ran an Etsy shop specializing in “genuine” fake magical artifacts with real punch.

That meant, of course, than anyone who had any sort of shady magical deal they wished to engage in ended up at the Arms and the park, seeking someone with just the right twist for their corkscrew. Which was, as Errol and his cousin well knew, one hell of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/243615.html. You can comment here or there.

…on my parade, a story for the Giraffe Call

Jan19

For [personal profile] sarah_tv‘s prompt.

No matter how much they tormented him, Eilon insisted to the last that it had not been intentional. With no proof, no Law against it, and a seeming inability to force the truth out of him, the Jiminies had to let him go – but they held a grudge against the narrow-hipped dryad boy as long as their memory held out.

Luckily for Eilon, the length of a Jiminiy’s memory was just barely longer than the next shiny thing, and that meant he only had to lay low (harder than you’d think for a dryad in the city; he spent most the time hiding in penthouse gardens) for a couple months. It did mean he missed Christmas, but that’s what he got, I suppose, for messing with the Macy’s Day Parade.

He shouldn’t have been awake at all, really. Dryad, as I pointed out to him in the time, generally meant “dormant in the winter like a good tree.” And, indeed, he got in more trouble in winter than any three boys or three hundred trees ought to.

But he claimed that, never mind the name that called him an oak tree, he was more of a conifer (hence hiding in someone’s shrubbery for the winter, though I admit I thought that was a euphemism at first), and thus could get away with staying up and out all winter.

And raining on parades. No matter how many times he denied it, no matter how quickly the Jiminies forgot the whole thing, I knew, deep in my heart, that it had to have been Eilon responsible for that spot rainstorm in the midst of the parade. For one, I was busy laying down a flood of rainbows on a political float. For another, no-one else in the city had his skill with rainstorms.

And for a third, no-one but Eilon had the hatred for the Jiminies that he did. And no-one else would else would have the pinecones to do it again the next year, with the scars on his bark still fading.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/237223.html. You can comment here or there.

“China is Here,” a story for the Giraffe Call

Jan15

For [personal profile] the_vulture‘s Prompt.

I think this is a monologue directly after Through the Cracks (LJ), which makes that one a bit more sinister.

For which I apologize. This was intended to be fanciful. O_O

We came with you, you see.

We came with you from England, from Germany, from Poland, from Italy. We came with you from China, from Japan, from Vietnam and Korea. We came from Africa, from the Middle East.

Long before that, we came over on a land bridge, through Russia. Longer still before that, we came out of the trees with you.

We have always been here. We seep in the culture, soaking it in, becoming it, and then we tell it back to you. We become your myths and your stories, and then bring them with you to the new world, your baggage you can never lose, your monkey you will never get off your back. Your roots in your cultural heritage. Your memories of a simpler time (how I love how you do that. As if your nightmare monsters spoke of a “simpler” time. As if your warning stories warned of, what, easier threats?)

Germany is here. Poland is here, China, England, Russia. Every fear and every monster you have ever dreamed up, every explanation for every bump in the night, every silly rhyme to soothe a colicky baby. All of them are here with you, carried like rats in the boats, carried like fleas on the rats, carried like a priceless heirloom in your pocket. We have been following you for millennia.

And now it is our turn to lead.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/233114.html. You can comment here or there.

Rediscovering the City, a story for the Giraffe Call (@kissofjudas)

Jan14

To starlitdestiny‘s prompt

Safe to say, nobody was expecting a city to pop up between Rochester and Syracuse.

And I don’t mean, “pop up” like one of the small towns there along 5-and-20 got delusions of grandeur, called themselves a city, and got businesses to move in. I mean, right there, just north of the Thruway, bam, in the middle of the morning commute, there was a city.

This caused three accidents and a good deal of confusion, mass drug testing in several factories, and then a state-wide (or at least the important parts of the state, up by the lake) holiday as we all tried to figure out what was going on.

It wasn’t a small city, not by any means, but unlike the ones that had grown up naturally around here, this one was contained. It had a shell, if you will, a tall wall, nearly as high as the buildings, and arching in as it went up, so that it really seemed like most of an egg, with just a couple towers poking out of the jagged top. One gate sat slightly ajar, off if giant hinges. No more inviting than a broken window in an abandoned house, but that will call to some people, I suppose.

The brains from the colleges went in first, and then a few farmers who knew the area, instruments ready, cameras and note pads and that curiosity that makes us human. Some were already muttering about aliens – that sort of thing didn’t just appear, you know, and the architecture looked strange, the lines and the materials nothing we were used to, at least not on first glance.

I’m a stonecutter, though, and I know my blocks. I went in with the second batch – for not other justification than that it was my family’s land the city had settled on, or at least a corner of it – and ran my hands over the pink-and-brown patterns, felt the weather in her joints and the places where decay had set in. She wasn’t a young city, not by far. But we could refurbish her. We could make her live again.

Routes 5-and-20 parallel the NYS Thruway a short distance south of said hiway, both running parallel to Lake Ontario’s coastline across the widest part of the state. The area between cities on these routs is primarily rural/agricultural.

See also this map

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/231725.html. You can comment here or there.

The Dark Places, the numbered streets, a story for the Giraffe Call (@Shutsumon)

Jan13

To @Shutsumon’s prompt.

There were places in the heart of the city even the cops didn’t go, at least not without seven of their buddies and semi-automatic weapons, full body armour and a chopper overhead.

There were places, darker places, where they didn’t go even with that sort of back-up, places where the roads had so fallen into disrepair or intentional sabotage that the large police cruisers could not make it in, where the buildings leaned so close together that flying a chopper in there would be suicide one way or the other. Dark places, everyone said. Scary places. Places where those people lived.

Ance had grown up in a safe locked community, but the safe locked community had overlooked, on one side, the cheap side, Ance’s family’s side, one of those dark places, the place called “the numbered streets.” Since childhood, looking out the bulletproof glass down on the buildings that seemed so much older, so much more dignified, so beautifully scarred, Ance had wondered about the dark places.

He’d contented himself, in his late teens and early twenties, with dating scarred men and dark women, people with Pasts, people with Issues, with urban spelunking in places where the ambulances might still go, with Extreme Sports with a net and a safe helmet. He’d contented himself with courting danger instead of consummating the deal, with buying her flowers and leaving after a kiss.

And he’d contented his journalism career similarly, with “edgy” pieces that were simply rehashed pap, with “investigation journalism” that investigated nothing, with pieces that had a safety net, that the public could accept. He contented himself with pretending to be brave, at least for a while.

At home in his mother’s locked community for a holiday visit, however, looking out from his old room into the Dark Place, Ance could no longer be content with cheap wine and plastic roses, with safety nets and faux edginess. Taking his recorder and telling no-one, he headed into the numbered streets.

At first, he felt like someone would stop him when he reached a certain point, a guard, an ogre (he’d always been a bit fanciful), something. Or that there would be a line telling him where the point of no return was, like on the carefully-groomed mountains he climbed.

There was no line except the rotting remains of an old train track, no guard except a tired-eyed girl in too little clothing who didn’t even proposition him, no ogres except a cartoon drawing in fading spray paint. There was no romance except the cracked and facing facias on buildings that had been expensive a century ago, the old man standing in the store doorway, the tall, tall woman with the red lips staring at him.

No-one stopped him. No-one questioned him. They seemed to know him, which was crazy, or to welcome him, which was crazier. He kept walking, wondering if he had gone mad. Wondering if he would feel the pull of the bungee cord pulling him out of there, if there would be a chance to back out before it really got scary. Wondering why the girl hadn’t bothered to proposition him, although even in the other parts of the city hookers never did. Maybe he wore his poverty on his sleeve. Maybe they knew that the paper barely paid him.

“Hey, stranger.” The voice came faster than he expected, and slower; he was blocks into the numbered streets and still trying to figure out what was so different from the rest of the city, but he hadn’t seen anyone come up behind him. He turned slowly, hands up, no weapon here. Only to see the thug, a kid really, staring at him, jaw dropped.

“Dude.” That was not the thug, but his friend. “Did you bring that with you? Fuck gentrification, man, we’ll take the castle.”

“The what?” Ance turned slowly, his back prickling with the armed kids’ presence behind him, wondering if this was some kind of trick, turned to see a tall silver tower, taller than the skyscrapers in the business district, impossibly narrow, twisting out of a vacant lot, rising towards the clouds, into the clouds. A tall, brutish man – an ogre, really – stood guarding the door.

“No,” he answered slowly, “but I’ll explore it.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/231289.html. You can comment here or there.

First Steps, a story for the Giraffe Call (@Dahob)

Jan13

to @DaHob’s prompt

I do not remember being born. Do you?

I don’t really remember waking up, either, that is, being aware of myself for the first time. Knowing where my “fingers” were, where my edges were. When something hurt me.

That, that is what I remember first and strongest. I remember being hurt. I remember being damaged. The pain shooting through my nerves, making me recoil backwards.

They called it an accidental fire. They almost always do. They can’t fathom, I think, that when I am hurt I must react. And when I am damaged, I have little way to fight back. Earthquakes hurt me as much as they hurt them. But a little fire, a spark here, a twist of a wire…

… I learned the hard way to be careful which portion of my body I set on fire. In some neighborhoods, the people who fill me would come quickly. In others, the hurt would spread, would threaten to damage my core before it was contained.

But I was saying. I don’t remember being born, or my first awakening, but I do remember when I realized that I existed.

Before then, I think there had been vague thoughts, memories and dreams, but nothing, pardon the pun, concrete. Nothing to say “all these things, they are all me.”

But the night where the monsters ran through my streets, killing my people, killing people just because they were different, the night that they streaked my sidewalks with blood, I remember that. I remember that like you’d remember someone jabbing a knife through your hand as a child.

And the day they cleared out the park on Main and South, and erected that statue to the lovely woman who stood up to the thugs, that day, the sun warming my pavement and the cheers echoing across my buildings… that is the day I remember learning what love was.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/230947.html. You can comment here or there.

Unintended Consequences, for the Giraffe Call

Oct24

For Stryck‘s prompt.

Commenters: 5

Asani kept the old place looking run-down from the front; it suited her to have the neighbors ignorant to her presence. She didn’t drive, after all, and didn’t need to leave the house all that often; when she did, she could walk down to the bus stop with none the wiser where she’d come from.

The front rooms of the house were empty, the doors closed, the windows shuttered. It meant that she could light up the back of the house as much as she wanted and, thanks to the dense foliage, even nosy neighbors were unlikely to see the lights. A yard service kept the place trimmed and painted enough to not bring down property values, but they told people (with more than a little honesty) that the house’s estate paid for the work. Asani was left to her work in quiet, and that was how she preferred it.

She liked to take walks at night, when the neighborhood had mostly gone to bed, wrapping her favorite jacket around her, an old white wool duster that, while it might have seen better days, was long, warm, and blocked the wind; besides, who was going to see her, anyway, in the middle of the night?

Late winter, early spring, those mystery days when the weather changed every fifteen minutes, she shrugged into her coat for a later-than-usual walk, walking lightly over the packed and frozen snow in the dim light of very, very early morning. She slipped down the path of trees towards the side gate, only to come face-to-face with a couple of the older boys from down the street, staring at her in frank terror.

“Shit, Jonah, I told you there was a ghost here,” the taller of the two mumbled. “Now what do we do?”

“Run?” the shorter one offered nervously. “Damn, Carter said he’d seen her, but I didn’t believe him. That lady who died, you think?”

“Gotta be. Shit, ma’am, we’re sorry.” The boys were backing towards her gate hurriedly. “We’re sorry. We’ll go leave some flowers for you, all right? Don’t spook us like you did Carter, all right?”

They were gone before Asani could say anything, leaving her wondering what had happened to Carter – and how she could use this to her advantage.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/156426.html. You can comment here or there.