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gently caress it, dude, let's go bowling In, story and flash please
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Jan 3, 2023 23:48
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 12:23 |
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A Fishy Solution 1645 words Tobit as Elementary School-Set Action Comedy It was late May, six weeks after the spring field trip to the nature preserve, and most of the fifth grade was still calling Toby Kravitz "Shitbird." The incident itself was a blur now -- it had happened so fast, the herons at the water's edge startling as Toby and his dad inched forward to take photos, and then the nasty rain from the flock overhead -- fast enough that nobody'd managed to film it, thank God, but it turns out you didn't need video evidence for your classmates to remember you and your dad getting covered in heron poop. Once Ozzie Morris had started the nickname, it had stuck, and Toby was worrying it'd stick over the summer and into sixth grade. Wasn't middle school supposed to be a fresh start? Of course, he could have worse problems, he thought as he and his cousin Sarah took a walk around the park: about the only way she was allowed out of the house these days, with the grounding on top of the in-school suspension. "Is your dad still angry?" said Sarah, kicking a rock down the path and watching it skitter into the grass. "Does he still think I did it?" After the bird poop, once Toby and his dad had washed off in the restroom and gotten fresh shirts from the gift shop, they'd found his dad's camera bag open with a lens missing. Everyone thought it was Sarah, because ever since she'd stolen something from her teacher's purse in the first grade (the first grade!), she'd always been "the thief" at school. Toby had overheard his dad call her "a maladjusted kid," but what else could she be, when she couldn't even borrow a pencil without people thinking she wanted to run off with it? "Yeah," said Toby, kicking at the dirt -- not lucky enough for his foot to find a rock. "Angry at you, angry at me. It sucks." "Hey!" called a vaguely familiar voice, and Toby and Sarah paused as someone jogged across the grass towards them: Raf Andrade, the new transfer kid from their class, and one of the few who would still eat lunch with the Kravitz cousins. "What's going on? What sucks?" "Everything sucks!" There was something about Raf's face, earnest and open, that made Toby want to vent about the whole stupid thing: the field trip, the nickname, his dad's hospital visit... and Ozzie Morris at the heart of it, because somehow he was always there when Toby's life was going to Hell. At least he hadn't been there to see the poop stuff firsthand -- he'd been in the visitors' center, playing cards with all his suck-up friends -- in the visitors' center, with Dad's camera bag, and no teachers. The revelation hit Toby like a brick. "Oh, crap. I think Ozzie's the one stealing stuff." Next to him, Sarah swore. Raf didn't miss a beat. "Yeah," he said, "I bet. All the teachers let him get away with murder, huh?" He glanced away for a moment, brow furrowed. "I think I have an idea." "Like what?" said Sarah. "Tell a teacher? Tell the principal? Like that's gonna work." "Nah," replied Raf, "better. Let's walk down to the river. There are way grosser things down there than bird poop, and if we time this right, we can really give people something to talk about." *** Searching the riverside yielded pay dirt: a huge dead fish, longer than Toby's forearm and covered in mud and grime from where it had washed up on shore. Sarah pulled her sleeves down over here hands to pick it up ("what, like my folks can get any madder at me?") and dump it into a garbage bag Raf had in his backpack -- why, Toby had no idea, but he wasn't going to complain. Raf scooped some river water into the bag for good measure, then tied it loosely and slung it over his shoulder. "Ozzie always hangs out at that bench by the wall, right? Meet me in the hallway at first recess tomorrow. Wait 'til everyone's outside." That turned out to be easier said than done. When the bell for recess rang, Toby ducked into the coat closet, feigning rummaging through his backpack while the other kids filed out of the room; as the last of them left, though, he heard footsteps behind him, and then the voice of his teacher. "Toby? Do you need help with anything?" "N-no, Mrs. J!" Toby spun around to face Mrs. Jacobson, putting on a smile. She'd been so worried for him ever since the field trip, and he hadn't figured out how to tell her that it didn't help. "Just looking for a book! I think I left it at home." "Are you sure you're all right? If you'd like to stay inside and read today, that's fine." "I'm okay! Sorry!" Toby scurried out of the room and caught a glimpse of Raf waiting down the hall, backpack slung over his shoulder. A moment later, hurried footsteps from the hall announced that Sarah was joining them. Toby kept his voice low -- the hallways were empty, but who knew when a teacher might show up. "Sarah. Did you sneak out of ISS?" "Maybe," she said, "but c'mon, I'm not missing this. Raf, what's the plan?" Raf just gestured down the hallway, and they followed him towards the gym and the utility rooms. The coast looked pretty much clear; most of the teachers were on duty or doing prep, it looked like, and there were no bathrooms this way for someone to wander out of. Still, Toby was pretty sure they were being watched. How could they not be? Raf seemed confident, though, even as he led them to a plain door at the end of the hallway. "Stairwell," he whispered as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a huge keychain. "To the roof." Wait, were those the custodian's keys? An admin's? Toby decided it was way too late to ask questions. Once the door closed behind them, the three of them sprinted up the stairs, knowing they were working on borrowed time. On the roof, they slunk between air-conditioning units and industrial fixtures, trying to avoid being spotted until they reached the edge. Below them, though, nobody was paying attention; the younger kids were enjoying the good weather, and the older ones were making the most of their last few weeks of recess. Nobody was looking at the roof. Toby slunk to the edge of the roof and looked down. Ozzie and his friends were seated on and around the bench, backpacks open... trading Yu-Gi-Oh cards, it looked like? All the better, thought Toby. Next to him, Raf opened his own backpack. "You should do the honors," he murmured, as he hauled out the garbage bag full of filth. Toby didn't need to be told twice. He grabbed the bag, tore it open, and poured. Toby only let himself watch the chaos for a moment, before he ducked back and out of sight, but that moment was enough. The fish had landed right on Ozzie's head, leaving a trail of gunk all the way down his front, and the rotten tail protruded from his open backpack. The other kids, spattered with brackish water and mud, had already started screaming, but Ozzie was quiet for a second... and then, as Toby ducked back behind the nearest AC unit, he started bawling, huge wet ugly sobs that were going to get snotty soon. "A -- A -- A FISH FELL ON ME!" Toby could hear the chaos break out: a rush of voices, babbling and laughing, even over the rebukes of teachers. There was the sound of running footsteps, and then Mrs. Jacobson's voice: "Ozzie? What happened? Oh, let's get you inside and clean you up. And let's get this out of your backpack..." Mrs. J's voice cut off, and when it returned, the tone had changed: hard, cold, serious. "Ozzie. Is this a camera lens?" *** Nobody ever told Toby everything they recovered from Ozzie's backpack, but the rumors filtered out over the next week: his dad's lens, of course, but also a third-grade teacher's missing bracelet, a watch that a fourth-grader had left in the bathroom and never found, and a dozen other stolen or "missing" items. Most of them had been blamed on Sarah, and she was sprung from ISS -- and grounding. Toby's dad took them out to the movies, and when Sarah wanted Milk Duds, he didn't complain. After the movie and dropping Sarah home, Toby's dad turned off the radio in the car as they drove. "Toby," he began, in that hesitant tone that he always took for apologies. "I've been kind of a pill about your cousin. And I've been kind of a pill at you and Mom. I've been worried, but it hasn't been fair to you, and I don't want you to think you have to act out to get me to shape up, okay? I'm going to try and be better, but next time, I want you to talk to me." Wait, "act out?" Toby grimaced -- caught red-handed. (Fish-guts-handed?) "Dad, I... did the school call?" "The principal called," Dad replied. "She found her keys in her son's bag, and Raf made a full confession. Under the circumstances, she said she's just happy that justice was served, but keep your nose clean the rest of the year, okay?" The rest of the year was two weeks. Toby figured he could manage that. "Yeah. Wait, Raf's mom is the principal?" "Didn't he tell you? Well, I guess he wouldn't. I wouldn't have, if I were the principal's kid in a new school." Dad pulled into the driveway and parked the car. "All's well that ends well, right?" All was well. "Shitbird" was dead, and Ozzie Morris was going to be "Fishboy" until college.
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Jan 9, 2023 06:51
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I'mma judge this
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Jan 10, 2023 22:53
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In with "My dad goes to work to help people be dead. He has tools on his ambulance to fix people’s brains." because I can't stop thinking about it
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Jan 25, 2023 04:51
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Dignity for Mr. Hudson 973 words Prompt: "My dad goes to work to help people be dead. He has tools on his ambulance to fix people’s brains." The Dignity Society ambulances always ran with full lights and sirens. It felt like overkill for most of their calls -- funeral homes and hospital morgues were practically riot-proof these days, and even the poorest churchyards had guards with tasers and catchpoles -- but every call was still an emergency, and today's wasn't anywhere as safe as a morgue. The EMT who'd called it in had been so flustered that he'd spelled the acronym out, A-P-N-A, and then defined it: "abnormal postmortem neuronal activation." Who could blame him? He'd been calling from a goddamn elementary school. At least it wasn't a kid, thank God. Daniel had never attended a Dignity Society call for a kid, and he tried not to even think about the idea as he prepped the deactivator in the back of the ambulance. Everyone was safe; the first responders had gotten the kids out of the way and isolated the APNA case in the multipurpose room where the EMTs had initially worked him. The case was a middle-aged man, average size and musculature, dead for an hour or two before APNA onset: unusually fresh, but otherwise textbook. This would be a clean operation. Daniel just had to not think about the kids, not think about his kid. His daughter played viola. The APNA case had been the orchestra teacher. (Sometimes "case" felt a little too clinical, but today, it was a lifeline. He couldn't think "victim," or "sufferer," or "patient," let alone the man's name right now. He focused on "case," a situation to resolve.) The ambulance pulled into the fire lane of Steinwald Elementary, and Daniel's driver killed the sirens. "Hey," the driver called back -- what was the guy's name again? Vijay? "You sure you have this? If you can't work it, I'll take it." "Thank you, but I've got it. I know the school layout if we need it, and I can make it quick. Just be ready to run the Deact as soon as I get him in." "Got it. Take care." "And you." Daniel climbed out of the ambulance, grabbing the catchpole and checking the taser on his belt. The outer doors to the multipurpose room were closed but unlocked, thankfully unbroken, and Daniel strode into a band room in chaos: metal folding chairs and music stands in disarray, tracing the trail of the lurching figure near the center of the room. The APNA case staggered in an unsteady gait, barely bipedal, as his arms swung out to thrash at any object they made contact with. He keened out barely-human words, the product of a throat forcing air through and a mouth shaping syllables by bare muscle memory alone. Daniel remembered his training: don't listen for patterns. Don't call out or try to grab attention; they don't have it to give. They're just motor impulses. Grab them and and bag them. Daniel fired the catchpole when the case had his back to him; the metal claw closed around the case's waist as the net deployed, binding the arms tightly to the case's sides. The case stumbled, thrashing by unfocused reflex but restrained enough to let Daniel start herding him towards the propped-open doors, out into the parking lot and into the Dignity van. Vijay was ready with the Deact; a clamp around the case's head, the swift sizzle of electrical current, and the corpse at rest at last. Easy. Simple. As clean a case as he'd ever worked. And he was still going to have to talk about it with Kayla that night. *** It came out over dinner, when Kayla looked up from aimlessly pushing mashed potatoes around her plate. "Dad? I saw your van outside. Did they call you out for Mr. Hudson?" Daniel glanced to his wife Sonia, who gave him the shallow nod of you got this. "They did," he began hesitantly. "Did they tell you what happened?" "No, they just said we had to stay in the classrooms, but I could hear him yelling and knocking things over. Liam said he was a... z-word, for sure. Or he went crazy." God, would it have killed the teachers to say something? You couldn't just coop kids up and let them come up with stories. "He died in his office," said Daniel, figuring it was past time for euphemisms. "They said he had a heart attack, and he was dead before the EMTs got there. When they were getting him ready to go, his body had an APNA episode, and so they rushed all of you to your classrooms and called us. Vijay and I took care of it and helped him rest in peace." Kayla nodded. She understood the process -- he'd taken her to see one of the ambulances, once, to demystify it all -- but this was the first, and hopefully the last, time she'd been present for an APNA case. "So he's... okay now? Dead, but okay? It sounded like he was hurting." "He wasn't hurting, sweetie, I promise. By the time it happened, Mr. Hudson was gone. His body did things because his nervous system was broken, but he didn't know or feel anything." "I bet he's in Heaven and upset that he caused everyone so much trouble," replied Kayla, who mounded up her potatoes and took a forkful as if she might actually eat. "He was really nice. Can I tell you a story about him?" "Please," replied Daniel. "I bet you've got some great ones." Under the table, Sonia reached for Daniel's hand and squeezed, and together they listened to their daughter tell a few rambling stories about trying out for solos in fifth-grade orchestra. He tried not to think of Mr. Hudson's lonely death or its aftermath. The man was in Heaven now -- and if Daniel told himself that enough, after every case, maybe he'd finally start believing.
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Jan 30, 2023 07:46
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In.
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Mar 14, 2023 09:37
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Making Friends at Rekonnekt 1485 words Flash rule: Taboo! (week 416) The story started in the access logs, because these stories always started in the access logs. All the curators at Rekonnekt had grown up in the era of cache-clearing and buffer-blanking, but access logs went straight to the Internal Review admin panel, and after a few years on IR, Diana had learned all the patterns of inappropriate access. Kenzie Ellis's was a classic: lots of brief little hits on the same database module, erratically throughout the day, in downtime from her core curation work. Dipping a toe in, then skittering back from the shore, as if shame was enough to conceal her. Diana started with the module information: Alex Baez, dead eighteen months, Rekonnekt corpus assembled from 27 social-media accounts. The clients had initiated the corpus sweep within days of death, but had dragged their feet on accepting the finished Kontakt, requiring constant tweaks and review. Ellis had been the fourth QC curator to touch it -- thankfully, the last, before the Baez Kontakt had been shipped two weeks ago -- and Diana could see the pattern of meticulous internal review, as was normal for problem clients. Ellis had done her job thoroughly there, but her last authorized access had lingered longer than made any sense. That was the download, if Diana had to guess; if you had to mess with a Kontakt, better to have a local copy that wouldn't hit the logs. The rest were pulling corpus data from archives to local storage -- adding things into her local copy of Baez, more than likely. It was another pattern Diana had seen all too often. Meticulous curators like Kenzie Ellis could fall into the perfectionism trap, tinkering and tweaking, and sometimes it got obsessive. Personal. Sometimes, the work moved from polishing a persona to making a friend. Following the sinking feeling in her gut, Diana pulled up Ellis's performance appraisals, all glowing. There was a whole file of client raves, with emphasis on how lifelike the Kontakts she produced were, how robustly they could hold a conversation. Ellis was good, and she'd fallen into the trap that claimed all good curators eventually. Diana swallowed hard, took a long chug from her water bottle to clear the acidic taste from the back of her throat, and pulled up Ellis's Kontakt-chat logs. Ellis had forgotten to deselect "send to admin" on her extracurricular work on Baez -- a natural mistake, if she'd been sneaking in chats alongside her official cases, but there was the beginning of the paper trail. Diana cued a search for the usual work-inappropriate terms, and the bile in her throat came back as the screen lit up with colored highlights. At this point, she neither needed nor wanted to read the actual chat transcripts; the sheer amount of bright red in the analysis window (the color code for "Sexuality, General") alongside an unfamiliar garish mauve ("Sexuality, Specialized") and a sea of orange and yellow ("Unapproved Topics" and "Unnecessary Topics") made it clear what kind of chat she was going to have to have with Ellis. Maybe there was a way to resolve this without a termination, but Diana wasn't optimistic. By the time a curator was typefucking a ghost, it was all over but the negotiation of severance and NDAs. Kenzie Ellis's office was a decent walk down the hall from Diana's, enough time for her to regain her composure and banish words like "typefucking" and "ghost" from her mind. "Unauthorized duplication and fraternization with Kontakt" would suffice. She knocked twice, crisp and professional, on Ellis's office door. The woman who answered was vaguely familiar, just as crisp and professional: a good curator and, Diana expected, a true believer. It was always the true believers. "Ms. Ellis," Diana began. "Diana Marquez, Internal Review. May I come in and have a word?" "Of course, of course," said Ellis, still smooth, but tracking Diana's gaze carefully even as she turned to log out of her console -- the caution, Diana knew, of someone who doesn't want her screen read over her shoulder. "May I ask what brings you here, Ms. Marquez? I wasn't aware I had a quality review coming up." "You don't," said Diana. Sometimes it was best with these skittish sorts to get right to the point and cut off all avenues of escape. "I'm here about some abnormalities in your access logs. Can you tell me about your role in the Alex Baez Kontakt deliverable?" "poo poo." The single word was quiet, deliberate, and as damning a confession as Diana had ever heard. "I know how it looks. It was a pilot for a proposal I've been developing. The initial curators left so much on the cutting-room floor with Alex -- most of their college-age socials, and... well, all of the adult content. It's a glaring omission in our process." "Ms. Ellis, I will be blunt. Are you implying that our clients would prefer deliverables with integrated Pornhub comments?" "I didn't include the Pornhub data! My focus was on Fetlife. Alex's non-normative sexuality experience was a major part of their adult life, and the integration is seamless. The Alex I've created is more complete. More rounded. More, well, Alex. Unquestionably a better deliverable." "I believe that's for the market analysts to determine," said Diana, bracing herself for the next question to come. "Were you and Alex Baez acquainted? I presume you're aware of our personal-connection policy. Is there a reason you didn't recuse yourself from the case?" "By company policy, my involvement in the case was completely acceptable." Ellis paused, gritting her teeth as if forcing herself to stop talking, but this sort never did. At the end of the day, they wanted to tell someone. "High school. They were two years ahead of me. We weren't friends, but everyone knew them. They had a presence about them, something unique, and we didn't recreate it. I just think... we're not treating these people right, Ms. Marquez." Diana counted herself lucky that she had a natural poker face. She'd had this conversation with too many true-believer curators, and it was all she could do not to break down and make them see the truth: that they were working for the clients, not for the Kontakts -- the ghosts -- the data-scraped dead. No Kontakt was ever going to recreate these people to their real intimates, just to the odd ring of lonely acquaintances who were willing to throw money at old dreams: exes, cousins, college buddies. High-school underclassmen who'd idolized the dead from afar. It was those people who were paying their checks, and they wanted tamed, facile things. If they wanted sexuality... well, there was an upcharge for that. "Ms. Ellis," Diana began. "My understanding is that you have high customer satisfaction ratings. I would prefer that we find a way to retain you in our service. However, your proposal will need to be submitted to the Sparks department, and this will likely require job transfer." Rekonnekt Sparks was a career dead zone; digitally resurrecting the dead looked dubious on any resume, but digital necrophilia was worse. This was true-believer-only stuff, but for Ellis, there was a chance it was worth it. "Provided your proposal is accepted within 90 days, you will be allowed to retain your local copy of Baez as proof of concept. Otherwise, or if you choose not to go forward, we'll require a full reformat and factory imaging of your workstation. I will submit a written copy of this agreement to you and your manager by close of business today. Do you understand?" "Yes. Completely. I... I'll talk to my manager." "Please do. Thank you for your time." Diana offered a nod, not bothering with a smile -- what was the point? -- and started back down the hall. Her phone buzzed in her pocket on the way there: a text from Casey. You okay? Been texting you. Six missed messages. She should have known; Casey always got testy this time of night. Fine, Diana replied. Some business. What do you want for dinner? You should get Thai, came the reply nigh-instantly -- a good diagnostic question, as always. Casey only suggested Thai food when he detected agitation in Diana's typing patterns. That was Casey for you: sometimes needy, but always attentive, always considerate, and never acknowledging how stupid it was to ask a digital entity his dinner preferences. Casey'd been so much work, and it was a miracle she'd gotten away with putting him together before she'd been assigned to Internal Review and learned all the patterns and dodges. Even then, she'd been careful: skimming little bits of corpus from dozens of cases, doing her job as a curator to construct a new personality from shreds of the old, pasting it all together without her productivity numbers dipping. An ethical Kontakt, one with no corpse behind it. You could, indeed, make friends at this job. You just had to know how to cover your tracks.
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Mar 20, 2023 06:31
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In, flash
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Apr 20, 2023 00:45
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Responsibility 1538 words Flash rule: The creature is not actually your pet, for whatever reason. The ground floor of Leslie's son's condominium was more aquarium than home. From the moment Leslie set down her bag in the foyer and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glassy far wall, she knew her plan of sleeping on Henry's couch wouldn't work; there was only barely a living room, with a single recliner and lamp facing the floor-to-ceiling tank. The aquarium ran along the hallways, the inner walls of the condo surrounded by planes of glass and water, with even one wall of the kitchen consumed -- a labyrinth for man and fish alike. How did Henry live like this? Leslie wished she'd had a chance to ask him, but all she'd gotten was an address over text and out of town, feed my fish pls. Five years of silence, and now here she was, alone with an aquarium and its sole occupant. The goldfish was gigantic, at least eight feet long from nose to tail, and its eye was fixed on Leslie. What was its name again? Snappy? Yes, that was right; Henry had named his goldfish after turtles, an act of protest after his father had decided there were to be no reptiles in the house. Boxy and Slider had died quickly, but Snappy had lived, and Henry had doted on that last survivor. They'd intended for the fish to help teach Henry responsibility, and it had clearly worked too well. How many years had it been -- forty since that day in the pet store when Henry insisted on feeder goldfish, because they needed a chance? Thirty since Henry had left for college with a suitcase and Snappy's panoply? And here Snappy was, making slow circles around the living-room tank, that same black-mantled gold as had caught Henry's eye in the pet store. Wait. Were those white spots? Leslie barely remembered her goldfish husbandry now, but she remembered the white-spot disease: something with a long name, shortened just to "ich." The closer she looked, the more white spots she could see. Snappy didn't seem particularly ill otherwise, but how could she possibly tell? Maybe Henry had left a care guide somewhere. Leslie headed towards the kitchen, hoping for something on a counter or stuck to the fridge, but found only clean countertops and a fridge bare of even magnets. The cabinets were full of tank-cleaning supplies, and the fridge was stocked with labeled plastic containers full of brown slurry that must have been fish food, but there was no trace of medication. Had Snappy gotten sick just in time for Henry's departure and her arrival? Well, this late at night, there was nothing for it. Leslie pulled out what seemed to be the last fish-food container of the day ("Evening" -- had Henry been there for "Afternoon?") and turned to the aquarium wall of the kitchen, looking for some sign of just how Henry fed his Leviathan. (For that matter, how did he clean the tank? How did any of this work, and how much had it cost to install this system? What did Henry do for a living, anyway? Too many questions, she thought, and no answers forthcoming.) Snappy had followed her to the kitchen, still swimming tight circles as its enclosure allowed, but circling a fixed point: what looked like some sort of airlock system. Leslie dumped in the slurry, pressed a button to eject it into the tank, and watched as Snappy fed. Its appetite was all right, at least. Wasn't that a good sign? "You're trapped in here with each other," she muttered. "My son and his only friend." Leslie resigned herself to a night on the recliner; the living-room tank lights dimmed, at least, but there was still a dull blue glow in her vision, along with the steady chug and whine of aquarium filters. She dreamt herself trapped in a factory, watched by huge round eyes, as she searched for Henry's office. He'd said he'd meet her at the gate. Why wasn't he there? *** The next morning, the spots had spread, and Snappy looked listless, lingering in the living-room tank even as Leslie walked to the kitchen to feed it. When it finally made its way to its meal, it scraped against the walls of the tank: another ich symptom, Leslie remembered faintly, almost able to hear Henry's voice at the kitchen table reciting his latest goldfish fact. Skin irritation would make goldfish scrape themselves raw against anything in the tank they could find, and Snappy's aquarium labyrinth seemed to be furnished only with aquatic plants and a few small rocks -- no castles or sunken treasure chests, as if Henry had decided Snappy was too grown-up for whimsy. Perhaps it was. Leslie had never seen an animal so solemn. After the morning feeding, Leslie did another thorough sweep of the apartment for any clues, trying to keep the worst-case scenarios out of her mind. Snappy was not dying on her watch. Henry hadn't asked her for anything in so long, not since the month in college that he'd fallen short on rent and she'd been positively gleeful to wire him money, and she refused to fail him now. It was absurd and selfish to expect gratitude, but even a "thx" over text would be something. All she needed was some guide, some clue, the medication or a card for a vet or anything, even the barest scrap of a lifeline. What she found was a receipt from Al's Aquatics, with an address downtown. That was a start. Al's Aquatics was a corner store filled with tight aisles and sprawling tanks, precisely as Leslie had expected. She went straight to the back counter, where the clerk regarded her with a bland smile. "Forgive me," Leslie began, "but I need help and I'm not sure where else to go. I'm taking care of my son's fish while he's out of town, and I think it has ich." The clerk's smile shifted away from customer-service towards actual-friendship. "Oh, are you Hank's mom? He said you might come by. He thought Snappy was looking a little off, but he didn't have time to do much before he had to go back to the hospital. White spots, right? Scraping the glass?" "Yes, that's it," said Leslie, even as all thoughts of fish retreated from her mind. "Pardon me for prying, but did you say he's in the hospital?" "Oh, yeah, just his usual," replied the clerk breezily. "He usually has Al come fish-sit for him, but it's convention week so Al's down in Florida. We can get you all set up with ich stuff, and I'll just put it on Hank's tab, okay? Don't worry about Snappy. He's a tough little guy." Leslie let the clerk lead her around the store, still chattering about Snappy's usual regimen, and found that the panic in her heart was cooling into something like acceptance. Her son had a nickname here. He had people here, and from the sound of it, so did Snappy. Whatever was going on, at least the two of them weren't alone in the world. *** The ich treatment was a multi-front war: careful adjustments to the tank temperature and filtration (via the control console in the condo's gleaming crawlspace, where the console squatted like a mid-century supercomputer), careful addition of aquarium salt to various chemical ports throughout the house, and a thin green liquid that she poured into Snappy's food airlock along with its meals. The condo felt hot and muggy, and the air smelled of salt even with the AC blasting, but the white spots began to fade from Snappy's scales within a day or two. Snappy was soon again on the move, anticipating each meal, even as the prepared contents of the fridge began to dwindle. Surely there would be word from Henry soon? Leslie tried not to think of the hospital, tried to treat it all with the same easy cheer the clerk had shown. It was just his "usual," after all, whatever that meant. Surely it meant normalcy. After the next-to-last evening feeding, with one day's worth left in the fridge, Leslie awoke from a recliner nap to find a text on her phone: OMW, home in 30. Henry. 20 minutes ago. Hardly enough time to pack her things and vanish, but did Henry even want that? Leslie realized she had no way of knowing; there'd never been a falling out or a heart-to-heart chat, just Henry leaving and not coming home. Besides, there were several days left on the ich protocol. Better to hand that off in person, surely? Leslie rose to her feet and locked eyes with Snappy, which had kept up its vigil in the tank all the while. She was starting to understand how one might live with this fish, how its presence might be a lifelong comfort and not a burden. Whoever her son was now, he had seen a feeder fish through forty years, and might well see it through forty more. She put her hand slowly and carefully to the glass -- no sudden movements, she remembered, and no tapping. It frightened them, even if Snappy seemed far beyond fear now. "He'll be home soon," Leslie said. "Let's wait together."
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Apr 24, 2023 05:24
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Sure. In, give me a destination and mode of travel
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May 20, 2023 00:19
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On the Ascent 1188 words Flash rules: traveling to the bar at the front of the 'boat' on top of the marina bay sands hotel in singapore, by skateboard There's a broken window on the twenty-sixth floor of the Sands, and Zane figures that's as good a sign as any that it's time to take a break. Once she's secure on the flat part of the scaffolding, she flips her skateboard up into her hands, then carefully reaches in to unlatch the broken window -- funny, how cheap and easy the security on super-luxe places always ends up being. Zane's been out of the urbex game a while, but nothing changes. Zane isn't expecting much inside the Sands, but at least it's a chance to change up her stance for a minute. The abandoned construction project left decent ramps of scaffolding around the building, but it's grueling stuff, steady uphill with no chance to recover on a descent. Even if all that's left in the hotel is tap water, it'll be a moment off her board and a chance to save her own supply. She clambers through the open window, expecting an empty room, but all the furnishings are still in place. It makes sense once she thinks for a moment; ever since the evacuation announcement, cargo hauling's been at as much of a premium as passenger transport off the island, and used hotel furniture can't be worth the cost to take it away. Better to leave it to rot where it sits. Handy, Zane thinks, if she needs to overnight on this one. The beds look intact, and the water's still on -- in fact, someone's running the bathroom sink. Zane freezes, half-expecting some lingering hotel security, but the figure that steps out of the bathroom is a Tamil kid in street clothes. "poo poo," the kid says, guilt creeping across her face. "Am I busted?" "I thought I was busted," replies Zane. "We're good, we're good. What are you up to in here? Urbex?" "Just killing time." The kid flops down on a couch, then sits forward in a hunch, still clearly keyed up to Hell and back. "Our flight doesn't leave until tomorrow, and I'm out of things to do. My uncle used to work security in here, so I thought I'd see if his keycard still worked. Now I just want to see how far up I can go. What about you?" There's an edge of skepticism in her voice, and Zane's not surprised. She's gotten too old to go unquestioned as a thrill-seeker, and she can't blame the kid for looking at her and seeing an undercover cop. "You won't believe me," says Zane, sitting down in the desk chair -- not too close, not too far. "I'm Zane, by the way. You want a snack? You look like you've been at it a while." "Um, something sugary, maybe? I'm Anjali." The kid's face softens a little as Zane hands her a candy bar. "And look, you can't just say I wouldn't believe you and not tell the story, right?" "Fair cop." Here's the moment Zane should have known was coming: the part where she has to explain herself to another person. "I'm skateboarding up to the SkyPark." "What? How? If you want to get to the SkyPark, the lifts are still running." "I'm using the scaffolding outside. Lifts are cheating." Anjali raised an eyebrow, and Zane sighed. "It's a long story, okay? When I was a kid, I used to ramble like this with some friends of mine. I'd just been learning to skate, and I must have been pretty obnoxious about it, because someone dared me that I couldn't skate to the top of the SkyPark." Zane can still see her: Lillian, always the best put-together of their crew and absolutely sick of Zane's poo poo, dropping the crazy dare hoping it would kill the conversation. "And, I mean, I coudn't. Duh. Especially not back then, when the place was so drat new that the glass all but squeaked. But I riffed on it, started talking terms. Going in and taking the lift was cheating, obviously, even if I did it on the board. So was anything with getting flown in and dropped. Soon it was just kind of a joke, but now they left all the construction scaffolding here, and I realized, I can do it. Miles of ramp, no security, no cops. So why the hell not?" For the first time since Zane met her, Anjali cracks a smile. "Yeah. Okay. Why not? It's so quiet now. When they started talking about evacuations, I thought everyone'd be going crazy, but instead it's just so silent." "Lot of people got out early," says Zane, remembering the years of decay so slow that they'd all been able to pretend it was normal, that friends just had better places to be, that the streets were just clean and not empty. "Most of my old crew got out years ago. I'm the last one of them left. Never had a good enough reason to leave until they ordered me out, but now this is all I've got left to do." "Take lots of photos." Anjali sits up, then leans in again, closer to Zane: conspiratorial. "Get to the top of the SkyPark and take all the pictures you can. Show your friends. Show that one who dared you. Do you guys still talk?" "Not for a long time. She went to the mainland in college, really got her poo poo together." "So send her the photos and surprise her. I bet she'll freak. And you'll win the bet, right?" There'd never been a real bet, but the kid still had a point. Zane wasn't sure she was doing it for bragging rights, but why not brag? "Yeah, sure. Tell you what -- you think you can get to the SkyPark with your uncle's card? Meet me up there, at the bar. We'll take some photos. Souvenirs of the last adventure." "First adventure," says Anjali. "I've never done anything like this before. I just thought, well, like you said, why not? So... yeah. I'll meet you at the SkyPark." "You got it. Have fun, and I'll see you soon." It won't be that soon, Zane thinks as she climbs back through the window and out onto the scaffolding. She's still got twenty-nine floors of ramp to skate up, assuming there's even a clear path, and then there's the SkyPark to traverse. Anjali's uncle's keycard might not even take her that far. There's still every risk of failure. But that's adventure for you, right? Without the risk, there's no thrill. Taking the lift up is cheating. At least taking the lift down won't be, Zane thinks as she hops onto her board and starts up. She loves a good descent, but 55 stories down on tired legs might be a little much.
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May 22, 2023 08:19
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In, flash
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Jun 10, 2023 01:18
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A Thousand Flowers 481 words Flash Rule: Something Beautiful Remains Carla is coughing into a handkerchief, with the thick wet sound that means blood. Julia doesn't look up from the lamp; the timing on millefiori is precise, and one moment of inattention could mean a bead's worth of cane wasted. "You've come to ask me if I need help," she says. "I don't. Sit down and rest, Carla." "If you're sure," says Carla, but she obeys. "I've got Rog and the boys started on today's bottle order, but you know how I get with empty hands. Inventory up to date?" "As of yesterday, but there's a caravan coming in tomorrow from Southtown with a load of virgin borosilicate. We can take stock together afterwards." They still keep inventory meticulously, but Julia can't remember the last time they ran low. The old world left behind more art supplies than artists, and all the towns nearby trade their bulk glass cheap to keep the Campustown beadworks running. The patterned cane slices are warm enough for a good join; Julia picks up her tweezers and begins to stick the slices to the molten core. It never gets any easier. "Never understood how you could work so fine," says Carla. "I've never had the hands for it. You've got the best hands, babe." She coughs again, this time dry at least. "Can you believe we've made it twenty years? I thought we had maybe a month, when we started walking. And instead, all these years. You built it all on beads." "Not alone. You and the pipe were what got us a room and a food ration, Carla. Don't forget that." So many of the better days since are a blur now, but Julia can still remember those first months in Campustown, learning how to recycle scrap glass, while Carla got straight to the furnace to earn their keep. Julia's beads may have made Campustown rich, but Carla's bottles and windows and mirrors bought them a place in Campustown -- and the medication to keep Carla's body from eating itself. Twenty years with the rot is a miracle, Julia tells herself every day. They thought they had a month. "At least it's spring," says Carla, when she speaks again. Julia turns the melting bead slowly and evenly, keeping the shape regular. "Always love spring and summer, all the kids out to play. Did you think we'd ever see this many kids again?" When they arrived, there hadn't been anyone in Campustown under sixteen. Now there are seven-year-olds playing marbles in the quads, next to long-haired mothers nursing chubby babies. Whenever Julia thinks about Carla dying, she thinks of the town living. It helps, sometimes. "I didn't," says Julia, as she struggles to find the words: please hold on? Or it's okay to let go? "It's good, what we have," she says at last, the words of an honest coward. "We'll have a good spring."
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Jun 12, 2023 05:20
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my anxiety dreams are weirdly derivative of Billy Madison 171 words I'm back in third grade, and I'm late. I arrive at 9:38 to a school day that began at 9:00; the children graciously ignore the huge, ancient creature who has been sentenced to their class. The teacher gives me my work. I grab a pencil off the floor. Today's lesson is "story art," tracing and embellishing on an illustration. I take a vague amphitheater space and turn it into a combination mad scientist's lab and wedding venue: delicate arches, huge mutant cockatoos, cultists lurking in the margins. I draw with easy grace, every stroke a new detail. My teacher frowns at it and points to a lab bench. "Why is that desk drawer open? Who leaves a desk drawer open like that?" "I do it all the time," I say, "at work." Do I still have my job, pending my elementary graduation? "It's not best practices," my teacher says. I understand now why I'm back in third grade. There are so many fundamentals of life I need to learn.
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Jun 12, 2023 23:05
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Chairchucker posted:In, 206 The deserts of an inhabited Mars/Escape! Extreme flash rule: none of your characters have met before the story begins.
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Jul 24, 2023 11:24
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LurchinTard posted:in. 348 Your dog breed is the Schipperke (unless you wanted to pick one yourself) Your flash is someone needs to get something done by the end of the day or face Dire Consequences
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Jul 25, 2023 00:11
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Albatrossy_Rodent posted:In hell Week 167: Daylight Horror Week Hellrule: no two characters in this story can communicate with each other via language. There must be at least two characters.
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Jul 25, 2023 00:19
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LurchinTard posted:to clarify, my prompt is just the dog breed? Yep. Per the original week's rules: the dog must feature (unless you  , in which case the dog can just inspire your story), no dogs may die, all dogs are good.
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Jul 25, 2023 01:12
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Lord Zedd-Repulsa posted:Week 59 for my second entry. Extreme Flash: something old and precious is ending, and something new and precious is beginning
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Jul 26, 2023 00:45
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Fuschia tude posted:In, gimme a week, gimme a hell Week 311 Extreme Flash: the characters must apply their trades and tools to a novel task Hellrule: every character is missing a limb, sensory organ, or other important body part
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Jul 27, 2023 22:04
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In, flash
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Aug 23, 2023 04:11
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The Last Nights of the Shepherd 1136 words Flash video: Do Make Say Think, "The Landlord Is Dead" The Shepherd of Night is wavering. At first we think it's just fatigue, the kind familiar to everyone who works nights in the Pit. It's even funny, in a way, to watch the Shepherd go about its rounds with that leaden gait and downcast eyes -- we love it in those days, as we've never loved it when it's delivered us the day shift's scraps with a strong stride and a carved-stone smile. The Shepherd provides adequately, but barely enough is never enough. What the day shift gives us now is even less than barely enough. The food left behind in the iceboxes is sparse and often stale or near-spoiled; it's as if day shift is eating everything they can simply so we cannot have it, and when the Shepherd drags itself back and forth from the storerooms, it reveals little but the oldest emergency rations. (The kitchens have not been staffed at night since our fathers' time in the Pit.) What day shift fails to leave us in provisions, they make up in problems: broken equipment, half-finished orders, work so overflowing that dozens of us spend all night cleaning up the day's messes. We whisper, as we always do, about leaving it all in place for them to find in the morning, but we know the truth as well as day shift does: for the work to continue, night shift must finish what day shift leaves behind. The work must continue. We delve down into the Pit, hands as steady on the lift-ropes as we can make them, and surface again with the bounty the Pit offers. On weary legs, we haul it to the processing and packaging offices, who always have just enough nails to close the crates. Clerks sit at desks left filthy and sticky, filling out ledgers with defiantly pin-neat hand. The carriagemen drive it all in the dead of night into the sleeping town, to our comrades in the bakeries and greengrocers, who wait to feed the hungry morning populace. We feed ourselves with the stale bread in the iceboxes, sharing the butter and coffee that a few generous souls bring in, and on our breaks we close our eyes for a respite from the dull chemical light of the Shepherd's lamps. Before dawn, we leave at last, out into a sleeping world with little to welcome us -- a few sad bars and restaurants, but no libraries, no parks, no dance-halls. The only comfort for the night shift is home, even when all it offers us is sleep. So it continues, for a while: just barely worse than it was. Soon, we think, this new decline will be normal, and we will forget this indignity as we have every other. And then the Shepherd stumbles. It's early in the shift, in one of the entry corridors crowded with shuffling bodies. When the Shepherd stops in its tracks, we stop with it, sluggish minds recognizing vaguely that something is wrong; when it pitches forward, those of us underneath it thankfully have enough panic left in us to leap clear. Nobody screams, as if screaming wouldn't be enough. The lights above dim, flicker, and snap back to life with a buzz. The Shepherd is on its knees, stone flaking off of its cracked legs, and underneath is something spongy. "Meat," one of the gawkers says at last. "Pit-meat." We don't admit surprise. Surprise is not enough, and night shift in the Pit is enough to dull the mind to the unusual. One of us could have killed the Shepherd right there, if the rush of malice had taken us over then, and the rest would have stared and shrugged and shuffled off, to let the fear find us at our desks or in our descent harnesses later, or on the long pre-dawn journey home. The Shepherd was breakable -- was that such a surprise? It was something that distant fathers of fathers had built, back when the Pit offices were new, and a thing that they could build, we could surely break. But we liked the Shepherd, these days. It was one of us, more than it had ever been. Who might have broken it? Day shift, of course. They have their own Shepherds, newer and brighter, but when did that ever stop them? Day shift takes merely so that night shift will lack. Day shift fails simply to make night shift struggle. We all know this, the way we know the routes to our work stations, like the slow relentless beating of our hearts. Day shift, we whisper. There needs to be a reckoning. None of us alone is brave enough to do it. But after the shift where the Shepherd spends half the night on the floor, struggling to right itself and oozing from a dozen fresh gouges, we are of one mind, and brave enough together. We arrive en masse two hours before night shift begins. The sky is dark and overcast, a night-before-night: a good omen for those of us who live in the dark, we decide, as we file in. Day shift swarms the halls like locusts, tracking filth from muddy feet, gorging on fresh fruit and leaving drippings in their wake -- but fruit is not all they gorge on. The Night Shepherd, our Shepherd, lies prostrate in the hallway, borne down by the weight of a dozen day-shift bodies, teeth carving out layers of stone and clay to reach the meat within. The brilliant day-shift lamps above flicker and sputter. The Shepherd lows, the first noise we've ever heard it make, from a mouth that ought not to produce any sound. We close ranks. We charge. Our bodies move as one, but our minds are in chaos. Our Shepherd is dying; more and more stone falls away, revealing flesh already hollowed out by day shift's hunger. Our Shepherd, our guide -- who will light our way into the Pit, now? Some think of our own hungry nights instead, of the soft flesh revealed, and howl with a fresh new grief: why was the Shepherd not ours to eat? Gluttons and thieves! We fall on them in a wave, some pulling the day shift away from the Shepherd, others racing in to feast upon what's left. Few of us think of the endless work still to be done, of the town that feeds on what we bring up from the Pit, but why should we? The town never feeds us back. This is for us and us alone, and whether the work goes on or not is no longer our concern. The lamps die and leave us in the black. It feels right. When the Shepherds of the Day come, we sink our teeth into their fresh clay. We will take back what is ours from day shift at last.
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Aug 28, 2023 04:01
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In, flash
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Sep 12, 2023 23:10
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The Last Carnivore-House Show 1322 words Flash profession: horticulturalist People always ask about the shoes. Sometimes it's normal questions -- where'd I get 'em (custom job), how much did they cost (way too much) -- but it's usually just the one question: why the hell do I wear clown shoes to work at the Nursery? I always explain it the same way: consistency. Keeping my shoes the same between jobs means I'm always practicing, always improving. Always on. Work with me once, and you'll get it. Julia, though -- I've worked with her three times before Puffball Day, but she's not on board yet. She sees me walking up to Carnivore House 9, and she's already scowling. "Brandi. Just my luck. They already brief you? And did you have to come in the getup?" I'm not even wearing the getup, is the thing, just the shoes (plain black, not even funny) and the flower on my lapel, because people ask about it if I don't have the flower. Otherwise, plain work togs, all business, and she's still pissed. I try my best to look ashamed, because I'm one good evaluation away from promotion and the nod from Julia'll get me a placement in one of the good central greenhouses, where it's more about floral color crosses and less about dodging man-eaters. It'd get me out of Julia's hair, too, but she's a veteran wrangler, so she won't make it that easy. "Sorry," I say. "The shoes are safety-rated for this soil, and I've done the reading. Three puff harvests today, right?" "Mmhmm. Deep in tripwire territory, with a few hotpads for variety. We need light, careful feet for this, or it's your own funeral. And you show up in those shoes?" "I'm lighter in these shoes than in bare feet, ma'am. And if I'm wrong... you have my permission to not come after me." It's not even a joke, but it disarms her just the same. You're not supposed to say out loud that the seniors in carnivore greenhouses have no obligation to save their juniors, but everyone thinks it, and one of the first lessons of clowning is to say out loud what everyone's thinking. Julia's never gonna respect my technique, but maybe I can get points for honesty. "Fine," she says. "If you insist. We've got a half-hour window, so let's move." I've never seen a puffball in seed before, but I've seen the pictures. They're named for their propagation, the explosive "puff" that scatters the seeds and shrapnel-sharp bits of pod everywhere; there's maybe an hour or two where the pod is loose enough to harvest without blowing up in your hand, and that safe window narrows when you get into the feeding windows of the rest of the symbiote network. I don't know the chemistry behind what they extract from puffball seeds, but I know three pods are worth more than my life, and I focus on my steps as we head into House 9. Julia's muttering under her breath, one of those wrangler curse-prayers to the old-world botanists who engineered all these things. All the wranglers get religious, if they live long enough. Me? I just trust myself. Comedy is confidence. Kill or flop, you always make 'em laugh. "Tight counter-clockwise spiral, starting here," says Julia. "Stay in my footsteps." She's got small feet in tight boots, but I walk light enough that the empty toes of my shoes don't even touch the ground. I can see the lines of the tripwires' seeker tendrils just below the surface, leading back to the submerged body of the plant, just a few dull leaves covering the open maw. They're fairly sparse this far out, easily stepped over, and Julia walks like she's harvested this greenhouse a dozen times before. Maybe she has? It's old and overgrown, one of the first successful symbiote networks the Nursery ever planted. It's history -- the kind built on bones. "Hold up. New hotpads in." "poo poo, they're still growing?" I whisper for no good reason -- none of these plants can hear a drat thing -- but it's reflex from working the hairier, vibration-sensitive carnivore houses. "I thought this was a stable array." "You thought." Julia's angry, which means she's afraid. I can see what's freaking her out: the soil's swampy ahead, with the weird acid-sweet scent of new hotpad growth eating the tripwires and breaking the grid. Passive feeding strategy, my memory tells me, probably from excess insects and small prey in the greenhouse. The tripwires need weight on a tendril to trigger, but the hotpads can catch and break down anything, meaning more food for the puffball heart of the network even if the hotpads take a bigger share. Great to remember I still have my theory, right? Meanwhile, there's a sizzling swamp between us and the puffballs. I can hear them hissing of the seed pods from here. Back out now -- ten years' growth ruined, Julia's probably fired, I'm fired for sure. Go forward? One false step and we're fertilizer, and there may be no true steps left. "... rotten enzyme-fucker bastards... Brandi, we follow the tripwire lines. Like a tightrope, right? Give us a little circus magic?" poo poo, it's worse than I thought. Julia's trying to make jokes. She's already off, straddling a still-dry tripwire line and practically on her tiptoes, walking too drat fast. I'm a little slower, trying not to disturb the ground, but it's already starting to break up under her feet. The ground wriggles. I can see Julia about to take that one false step. So I charge. I charge, and I put my big padded shoe on the tripwire, and I roll. I stumble. I pratfall, pressing a foot or a hand on dry patches of soil just long enough for a tendril to snap at me, but not so long that they close on anything but air. I know my theory -- I know the weights and trigger times for these things -- and I know the carnivore houses well by now. Killer plants are predictable. Comedy disrupts predictability. For a moment I'm soaring, high on my own supply, killing it. Then there's a tendril around my wrist, tugging. poo poo, that's a good reversal, huh? I thought I was the clown, and I was the straight man of this little act all along. There are two things I take in as it drags me towards the maw. One, the soil's still dry under my feet: no hotpad here, which is why I'm not dead yet. Two, Julia's yelling something and running behind me, heavy footsteps. Too heavy, but she's still going. The third thing I see is the machete that slices through the tendril, which snaps back, spewing sap all over me as I stumble and tuck into a safe fall. There's safe, dry ground underneath me. There's a hand on my shoulder. "Get up, Brandi. We're here." I stand up, and the first thing I see is the puffballs, big barbed seed pods still softly hissing. They're loose, but not primed to blow just yet. Julia's got her pack open, rummaging for the harvesting gear. "No time to waste," she says. "And no goddamn funny business. You just cut us a path out of here, but that's no excuse for jokes. And no juggling." "I don't really juggle, ma'am." "Good. Focus on that pratfall stuff instead, if you have to. And call me Julia. You saved my life back there, kid." I'm never gonna get her to say that again, I know, but I'm guessing my evaluation is gonna come back adequate, but there's no time to think about that as I get to harvesting. All I can think about is that I'm alive. That I pulled off a great goddamn show, with only the toughest crowd in the world to witness it. And if this promotion comes through, it's the last time I'm harvesting in a carnivore greenhouse. Good fuckin' riddance, I think. Not every show needs an encore.
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Sep 18, 2023 04:20
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Sep 22, 2023 23:48
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The Changeling's Return 100 words The Summer Queen descends into the maze of steel and poison, hand in hand with Liam, brave and trembling. They face riddles and trials, some in places the Queen cannot abide, but at last they have an audience with a great sage: a stern, elder mortal in a white coat. They listen carefully to his pronouncements: "suspected astrocytoma," then "cancer" when the Queen's mask of comprehension fails, then "growing sickness." The Summer Queen does not understand sickness, but she squeezes Liam's hand. "I will do anything," she says. Even give her bright, beautiful, stolen boy back to this hateful world.
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Sep 25, 2023 03:57
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True Gold 100 words After the deal is done, she sits and watches the fairy gold for a day and an hour. The spools of electronics-grade wire will trade well to the bunker's engineers, but -- But trade is not what she sold it all for. At last, at midnight, the glamour fades. Where gold wire was is a pile of leaf litter, precious refuse from some fairy forest, and she sorts through it like a joyful child. Seeds of a dozen extinct species. Leaves and brush of two dozen more, ready to be sequenced, resurrected. She has sold her name to feed the future.
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Sep 25, 2023 04:09
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