Flash Fiction Friday: When Worlds End

Chuck Wendig is finally back on the job with our weekly challenges, and for reasons that don't take a lot of parsing, our challenge this week was to write an apocalypse. We weren't supposed to do the usual apocalypse, though, but instead to come up with a whole new sort, which I didn't really do. Instead, I picked up on something he said about writing "your uniquely-you" apocalypse, and that got me to thinking about how one person's world can end while everyone else's goes on. I was also thinking about the book I just finished about "Wicked Women" of the frontier, and got some ideas going in my head. So you don't really get a story about an apocalypse, just one human's personal end of the world, in right about 1000 words.

When Worlds End

I read the book of Revelation when I was a little girl, and found there a story of how the end of the world that turned out to be rubbish. Well, I don't actually know that. It’s just that we don’t get to see THE WORLD end very often. But I know that worlds end every day. What matters is what happens next.

My world ended on a March afternoon on a pass in the Rocky Mountains, standing in the snow next to what was left of a train. An avalanche had come down and caught the tail end of our train, putting a halt to forward progress for the time being, as everyone gawked over the edge of a cliff .

“It’s not so bad. Just the caboose and one car,” the conductor said. "Not the end of the world."

“It sounded like the end of the world when that snow came down, but I reckon you're right. Joe wasn’t in the caboose,” the fireman answered, and they walked off.

It wasn’t much to them. But that car had been carrying passengers, the ones with cheap tickets. It had gone over the cliff under a load of snow, and I wasn’t fool enough to think anyone in it would be dug out alive, if they were dug out at all. But I wanted to run down there anyway, because that car had held my world: my family. That one car lost was the end of the world, as far as I was concerned.

I wasn’t dead because I was always wandering off when I shouldn’t, as Ma would say. Only, this time, I guess it was good that I did, though just then I wished I’d died when the world ended.

But I’d been off in the observation car with the friends I’d made in my wanderings. I wasn’t supposed to be there, but Belle and Suzy were bent on showing me the sights. I guess they hadn’t had a youngster to play with for a long time, and we were having a good time admiring the new snow, when we got knocked down by a sudden stop.

I don’t think I understood how completely my world had ended until the rescue train came. That was when the railroad people discovered that I was supposed to have been in the car that was lost, and that now I was an orphan. I probably wasn’t supposed to hear their discussion of what to do with me.

“We can take her on into town and find someone to take her in.”

“Let Belle and Suzy take her with them. Kate’s always got room for one more.”

“She’s too young. Look at her. Just a skinny kid!”

“Some like 'em that way.” The men shrugged and moved off, leaving me shaking with cold, fear, and fury.

I wasn’t stupid. I’d learned a lot from Belle and Suzy on the long train trip, and I knew what they did for a living. I remembered Belle telling me, “The ones with weird tastes, those are the ones to watch out for. Me and Suzy, we’ve learned. We won’t do any of that. It just leads to a heap of hurting.” I was pretty sure that a skinny 12-year-old would be in for a heap of hurting in their business.

So before I even got on that train, I vowed that whatever I did, I wouldn’t go to Kate. I’d find my own way.

I started by insisting that they not put me off the train in that tiny mountain town. Our tickets had been through to San Francisco, and I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Then I said that the railroad owed me for the luggage I’d lost. I got lucky there.

The storm that ruined our train trapped everyone in town for a week. The one hotel wasn’t big enough to give me a room of my own, and since I wouldn’t let them send me to the “boarding house” with Belle and Suzy, the railroad folks found a couple from the train to take me in.

The luck came when I found out that Mr. Carlyle was a lawyer. He had his own grudge against the railroads, though I never found out what it was, and he said he liked a challenge. So he set to work on my case, and he didn’t drop it or me when we got to the coast. I went on staying with him and his wife while he fought the railroad, and got me a nice cash settlement, not just for my baggage, which was all I’d thought about, but for the loss of my family. I didn’t think the weather was the railroad’s fault, but Mr. Carlyle said that the pass was known to be unsafe in winter, so it was a matter of poor judgment to have sent the train over it in a snowstorm, and he made the case that they did it to save the cost of delays, and for a wonder the judge agreed.

With the winnings, I set myself up in business. That wasn’t easy to do, being female and young, but I was stubborn. I also let Mr. Carlyle help me. He was male and old—fifty, at least—and it wasn’t so hard for him. Never mind what business; it was profitable and I was good at it.

By the time I was 16, I was had built a new world from the remains of the one that ended on Rollins Pass. I’d grown and filled out, and I could pass for 21, which let me take control of my empire when Mr. Carlyle died that winter. I promised to take care of his widow, and I did, even after the world ended again.

It wasn’t just my world that ended that April. The flames that ate San Francisco after the earthquake devoured my business and my home, and sent me to a tent in Golden Gate Park with Mrs. Carlyle in tow. Plenty of people thought it was the end of the world, but I knew better. Worlds never end, not really. And this time I knew how to rebuild.

###

I'm sorry I have no photos of a train in the snowy mountains. But here are a couple of a mountain train ride, followed by some nice snowy terrain!

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2017
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Friday Flash: Occupational Hazards

This week's Wendig Challenge was simple: write a car chase. That's it. Any genre, however you want to do it, as long as the whole point of the story is a car chase. Naturally, I didn't do it the usual way. He gave us 2000 words; I was merciful and stopped at 1260.

Occupational Hazards

Hank and Aleysha studied the evidence they’d gathered to date.

“I don’t think it’s enough to satisfy the police, let alone a lawyer,” Hank said.

“It has to be enough! I don’t think there’s any more to be had!”

“There is one way.”

Aleysha considered the documents in the case one more time and tried to pretend he hadn’t spoken. The silence grew. “It’s too dangerous,” she said.

“It's too dangerous to leave this guy on the loose. He’ll do it again. You know he will.” Silence. “If we can spook him into acting, we’ll have him,” Hank urged. “I’ll even bring in the cops to do the arrest.”

“Good idea.” Her sarcasm was wasted on him.

#

The plan was simple enough. They would leak their discoveries where Carl “The Cooler” Swenson would hear of them, and he’d come after them. He’d cooled enough enemies in a permanent sort of way that they knew he’d do it. They just had to be sure Swenson got wind of it at the right time, so they could be ready, as they had no desire to be his next victims.

By the time they were done—with Officers Smith and Jones at the table, at Aleysha’s insistence—their plan was bullet-proof. Keenly aware that she and Hank were not, Aleysha put the officers on speed-dial. Then they just had to wait for Monday.

Carl the Cooler didn’t wait for Monday, however he got the info. He came for them on Sunday, and not only were the officers not in place, but Hank and Aleysha found nothing between them and the killer but a bit of lycra.

It had been a good day for a ride. They’d looped well up into Marin, and as they pushed up the hill back on the San Francisco side of the Golden Gate Bridge, Aleysha congratulated herself on being fifty miles into a ride and still strong.

She and Hank saw the SUV at the same time, and recognized the driver.

“Step on it!” Hank urged. Both stood up on the pedals, topped the rise, and hooked a sharp left onto a tiny side road. Neither detective doubted for a second that Swenson had seen them, or that he had the info that had painted a large target on each of their backs.

Tired squealed behind them, accompanied by a chorus of horns. Swenson had pulled a U-turn in the middle of the busy Presidio road, indifferent to horns and cursing pedestrians alike.

Aleysha rode with her phone docked on the handlebars, serving as a GPS route tracker. She took a hand from the handlebars for long enough to punch a button and bring up phone mode.

“Call Officer Smith!” she ordered, and managed prayers to four deities as the phone rang.

No answer.

“Call Officer Jones!” She started in on some more gods, and they sped wrong way down a fortunately empty road.

They swung their bikes onto a path that cut off a loop of the road, Hank checking behind them. “That might lose—no, dammit! There he is!”

“Cut down through the construction zone,” Aleysha yelled, just as Officer Jones picked up.

“Aleysha? Is that you? What’s going on?” He sounded Sunday-afternoon sleepy.

“Swenson’s on to us. He’s after us now in a black SUV, license unknown. In the Presidio, headed for Crissy Field. We’re on our bikes.”

“On our way!” Jones sounded awake now. He didn’t need to ask if they needed backup. “Leave the line open.”

She didn’t have a hand free to end the call anyway. They were plunging down the hill toward at a reckless speed, and the ruined pavement in the construction zone under the new bridge required both hands on the grips. If they could just make the Field before—No! Another black SUV blocked the street ahead. Hank pulled a hard right under the bridge, skidding around the corner. Aleysha followed, and they bounced past some bizarre equipment, and across the torn-up ground.

“We can do this if they don’t start shooting,” Hank panted.

A drop-off put them back on pavement, and Aleysha nearly crashed when she hit bottom, skidded again, and righted herself to keep going. Amazingly, the bikes held up to the abuse. A moment later her mind registered the flat crack of a shot and the sound of a bullet that had whined just over her head when she dropped.

“What that gunfire?” Jones’ voice asked from the phone. She heard a siren in the distance, echoing the one heard from his end of the call.

“How long?” She gasped, ignoring his question. He could tell gunshots when he heard them.

“Two minutes. Can you take shelter?”

“No!”

“We need people. Traffic,” Hank yelled from in front of her. “Head for Marina.”

They blasted straight across the road and onto Mason, pushing hard up the field. Aleysha wished she’d not ridden so hard all day. She didn’t have much left for this kind of speed. Another bullet from up the hill, and the sound of a motor screaming its way through the gears, proved a good incentive to work out harder. Heads down, she and Hank swerved onto the bike path, he in front pulling, and she using her extra breath to scream at people to get out of the way and take cover.

Now Marina was in sight, with its thicker traffic. If only the light was right…

The shooting had stopped. Swenson wasn’t protecting innocent bystanders, they could bet. He believed bullets weren’t needed. Gasping for breath, Aleysha glanced over her shoulder and screamed. Both SUVs were gaining fast, and headed straight for them, ignoring the curb between street and path. They weren’t going to make it.

“Hard left!” She screamed, and Hank instantly turned down another sidewalk. No, not a sidewalk. They bounced across a bit of lawn past the Beach Hut, picked up a road, and gained speed. The SUVs went around by the road, and nearly cut them off, hotly pursued now by the police.

Hank and Aleysha put on a burst of speed, and only then realized they were on the breakwater and fast running out of road. Hank spotted an open gate, turned, and they raced down a dock. The SUV couldn’t follow, but the thugs and their bullets could.

The cyclists skidded to a halt, and didn’t stop to check what Swenson and his thugs would do. Flicking loose from their pedals, Hank and Aleysha dove from their bikes straight into the harbor. The water was ice cold, murky, and no kind of shelter. But—“Over there!” Hank called, and they struck out for the largest yacht on the outer line of boats.

Gasping for air, Hank and Aleysha clung to the swim ladder of the rear of the “Mary Roamer,” the end away from the land, and listened. A dozen sirens now converged on the docks, and a volley of gunshots died away to silence. The detectives looked at each other, waiting.


They heard the officers calling for them and, exhausted, themselves up onto the yacht, ignoring the indignant gasps of the nude sunbathers on the deck. They crossed over to the dock, and Smith ran up to give them a hand down.

“You two okay?”

They nodded, too exhausted to answer. Then, “Oh shit, the bikes!” Hank yelled.

Amazing, Aleysha thought. Who would’ve believed he could still run like that? And in his bike shoes. She watched in awe as he tackled and sat on the would-be thief, barely breathing hard. Now that was fitness.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2015

Flash Fiction Friday--Finish the Story

This is the 3rd week of a Chuck Wendig challenge, whereby I pick up a story that has been 2/3 written by two other followers of terribleminds.com and write the conclusion. I took on an interesting tale begun by JD Stoffel and continued last week by Lisa Shininger. We were each to do 500 words. I only ran over by about 50 words. Incidentally, I had to look up "eschaton" so you can too.

I'll add a link to the story I continued last week as soon as I find an ending for it.

The Reaper’s Eschaton

Part I (by JD Stoffel)

“Reap, you have to wake up.”

Charlotte, the Senior Reaping Manager, shook Reap’s shoulder, jostling her blanket of cobwebs aside.
“Ugh,” said Reap with a crackling yawn. “What time is it?”

“2014 CE,” said Charlotte. She shoved a black cloak into Reap’s grasp. Reap opened her mouth to argue, but Charlotte cut her off. “I know you wanted to sleep six more years, but we have a situation.”

“Not Xanaxes,” Reap groaned, sliding the cloak over bony shoulders.

“Xanaxes,” Charlotte confirmed. “Started the apocalypse, like I told you he would.”

Reap did some quick math, accepting a sheaf of pages. “Sixty-three years ahead of schedule. Idiot.”

“There’s your best candidate. Now move!”

Brushing aside the compulsion to come down on Charlotte for bossing around her boss, Reaper swung her scythe. The blade hummed through the air and through the fabric of reality at just the angle necessary.

A tear opened and Reap passed through.

She stood in a city park.

Her reaping staff was in evidence. They stood by, waiting for buildings to fall, meteorites to strike, the ground to swallow people whole.

“Ronald, uh,” Reap called aloud, then squinted at the pages. “Ronald Passitelli?” She botched the pronunciation, but it got the attention of a passing low-level reaper.

A glance at his identification aura gave his name. Jim said, “You looking for Ron?” Reap nodded. “Oh, thank God. He’s over by the fountain. Electrocution in about five, so watch out.”

“Thanks, Jim,” said Reap. “Just handle that load.” She pointed at the collection of souls trailing behind the junior reaper. “I’ve got Ron.”

With a relieved sigh, Jim swiped his scythe to reach the Below. Reap paid him no mind, focusing on the now-identified Ron.

Ronald Passitelli stood ankle deep in the large basin of the fountain. A bland young man in a dress shirt and khakis, now soaked, he reached out toward a child. The child took refuge from the hell raining down from the sky in the bulky fountain sculpture.

“C’mon,” said Ron. “It isn’t safe.”

“Where’s my mommy?” cried the child.

“I don’t know,” Ron admitted. “Let’s find her together.” He made another grab but the child dodged around the fountain.”

“Ronald,” Reap boomed in a voice only moderately intimidating. She did not want to blow the man’s simple mind.

Ron looked at her, able to see Reap now that she had spoken to him, and gaped. “Oh, no,” he said, knees quivering a bit. “I’m not ready!”

Reap rolled her eyes, an impressive feat with empty eye sockets. Humans gave her a lot of practice. “I don’t want to reap you.”

“But you’re the Grim-”

“Yes, but we haven’t the time. Some ancient schlub of a god no one remembers named Xanaxes kicked off the apocalypse early, and you’re the only one who can stop it.”

Ron gaped again when the child in the fountain screeched, “I am not a schlub!”

“Oh, great,” Reap muttered. Xanaxes had found the chosen one first. “Ron, run!”

Part II (by  Lisa Shininger)

Of course, he didn’t.

Xanaxes wailed, so Ron turned his vacant expression on the fake toddler instead.

“Oh, come on.” All these humans ever did was gawp at things. Reap whipped the sleeve of her cloak around her bony hand and tugged on the back of Ron’s shirt to pull him out of the fountain.

Xanaxes sploshed through the water and wrapped two chubby arms around the man’s legs. “No! I got him fair and square!”

“Yeah, well…”

It took just a flick of the scythe’s handle against Xanaxes’ curly dark head for the god’s body to slacken and drop back into the fountain. Reap tightened her grip on Ron’s shirt and lifted him clear.
“Look, like I said, we haven’t much time. You’re Chosen, it’s an honor, blah blah. Close your mouth before you choke on brimstone.”

Ron did, but not before asking, “What am I chosen for?”

You would think that "you’re the only one who can stop it" covered all the bases. You couldn’t assume anything with humans, though.

“For saving me from a literal eternity of paperwork. Let’s go.”

There were rules upon rules for how Reap was allowed to act while Above. Even during emergencies, she was authorized to interact only with the humans on her lists. She wasn’t supposed to scare the birds who went out of their way to shit on her cloak–no matter how rude they were about it. She definitely wasn’t allowed to use the scythe for anything but traveling, not even dealing with recalcitrant toddler gods. But in for a penny…

Ron dropped to the ground like a sack of meat. Reap slashed at the air beside him.

“Abs, turn off the heat. Live one coming through!” she called, before twisting the scythe to open the seam to the pit enough to let Ron drop through.

Her aim wasn’t the greatest. They slipped into the next world a few inches off an ash-strewn floor. It crunched lightly under Ron’s body.

Abaddon stood a few feet away with his hand still on the shut-off valve. His chitinous skin gleamed. His black eyes did, too. His wings, his robe, the army of locusts screeching behind him. In fact, everything down here gleamed, like it was all covered in a thin film of oil, which it probably was.
He pointed at Ron, who had progressed not just to consciousness but to looking around in terror. “Chosen?”

“Yep. Ron … something.”

Abs grinned. He always loved these things. “So, what do you need?”

Reap blew a stray flake of ash off her sleeve. “You guys doing the brimstone for this Xanaxes creep?”
“No, we’re still on the Icelandic contract. It’s probably Lucy.”

“It’s the same pit, though, right? Can’t he just sacrifice himself here, save us a few minutes? We’re up to my skull with souls to process already.”

Ron made a squalling noise. “Wait, sacrifice?”

Abs laughed his horrible deafening chitter and looked fondly at Ron. “They really don’t remember anything, do they?”

Part III (by me)

"Stop scaring him," Reap said. "He'll do what he has to do."

"Don't count on it," Ron said.  He was looking around now, and seemed to be developing a backbone.

What rotten timing, Reap thought. If the fellow didn't take the jump, she was going to be stuck processing souls for eternity. And then there was the paperwork for dealing with an apocalypse. Plus the trouble she was in for using her scythe in an unauthorized manner. Several eternities. Ron whoever he was didn't look like he cared about her problems.

"Come on. We're going to find Lucy, and find where you're supposed to jump."

He planted his feet stubbornly. "I'm not jumping off anything, and you can't make me."

Drat! The toddler god really had gotten him. The man's simple face had taken on that look, the one small children got when defying the adults who were just trying to keep them alive. Though in this case Reap wanted him dead, which he was going to be no matter what. She just wanted to make sure he did it in the way that would stop the Apocalypse and save her a few millennia of paperwork.

She hoisted him by the scruff of the neck. "Let's go." She could take him to the brink, and did. The hitch was, he had to take the leap himself or it wouldn’t work. She started talking, working on his sense of public duty, destiny, fame, whatever. They were standing about ten feet back from the brink now, Reap running arguments at top speed and checking the eternal clock every third word.

“Time’s running out, you fool!” Reap snarled it. “You’re dead no matter what, but if you don’t charge over there and jump in the next 30 seconds, so is every other person on earth.” She finally had Ron’s full attention.

“I’m dead?”

It wasn’t strictly true, but close. “Yes!” He’d be dead soon enough, even if he didn’t jump, so it wasn’t a lie.

“If I’m dead it won’t hurt.” He didn’t phrase it as a question, so Reap didn’t have to answer. That was good, because lying to the Sacrifice meant more paperwork.  He took a few wobbly steps toward the brink, and stood there, unable to make the leap. Ron might believe he wasn’t going to notice when he dove into the lava. But on some level his body knew better.

He was going to funk it. Reap could see that. She stepped up closer behind him, seeing his knees were shaking with terror. She couldn’t push him. But she could encourage him.

“Watch out! Snakes!” She screamed it as loudly as possible, and it worked. Ron leapt instinctively out of the way of the snakes…and went over the edge. Reap took a look into the pit, which flared and belched. It was working. She turned.

Five Junior Reaping Managers stood by the door, arms loaded with piles of paper. With a deep sigh and a repentant bowing of her head, Reap led them to her office. Four piles of souls to process, and another, larger pile, to explain her illicit use of the scythe.

“I’ll be here forever,” she moaned, taking up a quill.

###

Flash Fiction Friday: We're all Human, even when we're not.

This week Chuck Wendig gave us a theme for our flash fiction challenge.  It's a theme that definitely lends itself to the fantasy/SF genres, and I decided not to fight it this week.  So it's back to my man Xavier Xanthum, Space Explorer, and his sidekick Larry the glowing eyeballs (read about their first appearance here).  The theme, as indicated in the post title, is "We're all human, even when we're not."  I immediately thought of Larry.

It's Only Human

Xavier Xanthum, Space Explorer, gazed at the communications console.

“Larry, I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“You will figure it out, Xavier.  You have to.”  Larry’s voice came from the speakers embedded in every wall of the command pod, but his eyeballs were right at Xavier’s shoulder.

“Can’t you just fix it?”

“The error lies outside the parameters of my programming.”

Xavier narrowed his own eyes.  When Larry started to sound like a computer, Xavier always suspected he was up to something.  It was hard to read a pair of glowing eyeballs that may or may not have existed outside Xavier’s own head.

“I see.”  Xavier was pretty sure he did see.  Larry must want him to push himself to solve the problem and be less dependent on the ship’s computer.  Larry got that way at times, like a fussy parent who periodically decided he’d been too protective. Fine.  He’d play along.  The glitch in in the Translator Module wouldn’t be life-threatening unless they encountered hostile aliens.  Since that had only happened a few times in Xavier’s extensive travels, he wasn’t worried.  And a problem to solve would keep him from boredom, the biggest threat on long trips.

Two days later Xavier was less sanguine.  Nothing seemed to fix the glitch in the Translator.  It worked, in the most basic sense, which seemed to be why Larry couldn’t fix it.

It was just that when they ran tests, it translated everything using the foulest possible language.  Xavier had spent time in the dive bars of a hundred spaceports, where people who had spent too much time alone congregated.  He knew how to curse in several interstellar languages, but the Translator Mod was making him blush, no matter what language it translated to or from.

And then, about the time he’d decided to leave it for the techs on Zebulon Five, the failure of the TM mattered after all.  Larry noticed first, of course, since he was the senses and sensors of the Wanderlust.  “Vessel approaching in Sector 7.”  Larry’s voice was calm.  Too calm?

“What registration?”  Xavier stood up from the console and stretched.  He was on the 352nd possible fix for the Translator Mod, and it still had the worst potty-mouth he’d ever heard.

“None recognized.  Ship design is uncataloged.”

 “Then you’d better step in and fix this thing, because if we’re going to make first contact—”  He didn’t finish the sentence.

“It is possible that the choice of vocabulary will not matter to the aliens.”

“Do you want to bet on it?  That kind of language always matters, one way or another, Larry.  Even to the sorts who use it themselves.  Meeting a stranger with the suggestion that they—well, never mind.  It wouldn’t go over well.  It’s only human to resent that sort of thing.”

“The vessel does not contain humans,” Larry pointed out.

“I don’t think that matters.  We’re all human about some things.  And I don’t want to experiment.”

“I take your point.  I will attempt fix on the TM, though as I have told you, the problem is outside the parameters of my programming.”

“I thought you were just pretending!”

“No, Xavier.  But perhaps I can learn.”

“Necessity is the mother of invention, they say.  How long until we are in radio range?”

“Approximately 3 hours and 22 minutes, at the current speed and trajectory.  Do you wish to change course?”

Xavier thought about it.  “No.  But we might slow a bit.  Buy a little extra time.  If we run, they might take that the wrong way.”  Dealing with uncontacted aliens was always tricky.

Larry adjusted the thrusters, then fell to work on the TM’s diagnostics.

This left Xavier with nothing to do but worry.  So he hunted up the ship’s cat, a young tabby he’d named Kringle after it appeared on Christmas, and took a nap, soothed by the purring feline.

“Xavier, I require your assistance for testing.”  Larry’s voice awakened him.  Testing sounded promising.  Xavier made his way back to the command pod, and glanced at the monitor screens.  The alien ship was much closer.

“Shouldn’t they be farther off than that?”

“They seem to have increased their speed.”

“Are we ready for an attack?”  It was a sort of silly question.  The Wanderlust was an explorer’s ship, armed only against trivial attacks.  He was too broke for any serious photon cannons or the like.

“Test the TM,” Larry said, which was an answer of sorts.

Xavier fiddled with the settings and spoke a greeting in the language of Gamma Three.  It came out mostly okay, though he thought the word choice could have been more diplomatic.  “Better.  Set to maximum tact.”  He tested it again, translating a greeting from English to the three other languages he knew.  “I think it will do.”  He relaxed a bit.

“Assuming that their intentions are peaceful,” Larry commented.  Xavier sat up again. 

“What?”

“A peaceful greeting does little good if those contacted are looking for prey.  I fear I tested the TM with them.  They seem to have reacted badly.”

Xavier sat very still. 

“I am sorry, Xavier.”

“To err is human, Larry.”

“I'm not human.”

“Close enough, I guess.  What do we do now?”

“I have experimented with course changes, and they match our moves.”

“Hyperspace jump?”

“We are too close to the gravity well.”

“Then we’d better hope that the Translator can work miracles,” Xavier muttered.

“It is my hope also.”  Larry was at his least computer-like now.  “It was to that end that I worked.”

“You want to live.”  Xavier said it flatly.

“It’s only human,” Larry agreed.

###

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass 2014

Continued here.

Friday Flash Fiction: Cleats

This week, Chuck Wendig gave us a list of 50 computer-generated characters (a little repetitious, but with some interesting ones).  Our mission: pick 5 and write up to 1500 words about them.  I used a random-number generator to pick six (five plus a spare, so I could reject one that just didn't work).  Here's their story.  I'll tell you who they are at the end.

Cleats

Alex laced up the soccer shoes.  Not a bad fit, and they were only a little worn, not like the first pair he’d found at the thrift store.  Those had been ready for the dumpster.  He looked around.  No one was paying any attention to the skinny kid by the shoe bin.

He’d worn his baggy sweatshirt to give him a place to hide the shoes, but as he looked from the nearly-new cleats on his feet to the ragged sneakers he’d been wearing, Alex got a better idea.  It would be a bit awkward, because the cleats made walking on hard surfaces a little weird, but lots of the kids wore them into McD’s and places after games, and no one paid any attention.

With a final glance around, he made up his mind.  He dumped his old sneakers into the bin and stood up.  “Exchange isn’t stealing,” he told himself.

A woman in a flowery skirt and a black leotard watched unseen from behind a rack of clothes, but said nothing as the skinny 12-year-old sauntered out the door with a smile and a wave for the old lady behind the cash register.

“Didn’t you find what you needed?  Better luck next time!”  The kindness in her voice shamed Alex.  He blurted “See you later” and fled out the door.

Once on the street, he calmed down.  It had worked!  Now he could play in the game that afternoon.  He’d already missed two because he didn’t have cleats, and the ref wouldn’t let you play without them.  Smiling, he looked up, right into the pinched face of Mr. Morales, his history teacher from the previous year.  Alex’s smile vanished as Mr. Morales looked down his nose at him.

“And what have you been up to, young man?  You should be at home doing your homework.”  He claimed he called the boys “young men” to remind them that they were nearly grown.  Alex thought it was because he couldn’t remember their names.

“Nuthin,” he muttered.  “See you in school,” he added to be polite.  He started to edge away.

“No, I, ah, won’t be, ah, returning to Central this year.”

Surprise stopped Alex in his tracks.  “You won’t?”  Who would the seventh-graders play tricks on, then?

“I, ah, I’m seeking other employment at this time,” Morales said.  “Hard work makes us better people, and change is good for the soul.”  He was still watching the boy and murmuring platitudes as he entered the shop, and he almost collided with a woman coming out.  She executed a deft pirouette to avoid him, and landed on the sidewalk with her skirt swirling around her.  Morales frowned, then forgot about her and Alex as he faced the old woman behind the counter and asked for an employment application.

#

Alex was in time to join the rest of the team as they warmed up before the game.  His teammates were happy to see he had the shoes and could play at last.  He was their best forward, and they’d need him.  They were playing against Lincoln Junior High, always their toughest opponent.

Central was a rough school, and the boys on the team were not always polite.  Lincoln was on the rich side of town, and those boys were far nastier than Alex and his friends.  Jack Wright, the referee, sighed as he contemplated the two teams.  Keeping this lot in order would be no joke.  Every play would bring up some kid ready for his Oscar, claiming to have been most foully fouled, and Jack’s job was to sort out the truth of it all, assign blame, and keep the game moving.

He’d also have to stay out of the way of that big kid from Lincoln, the one who ran over everyone, including refs, all the while scanning the stands to be sure his big brother had noticed.  Jack knew the brother, too.  He was another bully, the worst sort: an adult who had put himself in a position to bully children.  The younger brother just wanted his idol to praise him, but the older one was a real bastard.  And they said the kids from Central were a bunch of toughs!

An hour later, Jack Wright was still unscathed, due to his ability to dodge and turn.  The big kid hadn’t been able to run him over even once, and had moved on to taunting the smaller boys from Central.  That would be trouble if he didn’t stop it.  Jack glanced toward the stands.  The stranger was still there, the woman with an odd outfit and an alien look, who had perched herself on the top railing.  He’d noticed her early on, dividing her attention between the kids on the field and the bully in the stands.

You’d think a teacher would be more responsible, but Morales just spewed his moralistic claptrap about hard work and prosperity, and imagined that somehow made up for his failures to actually teach his subject.  Now he had a pair of ratty shoes in his hand, and Jack spared a moment to wonder why, before turning his attention back to sorting out the latest scrum.  He listened to all the complaints, decided who was telling the truth, and issued a red card to the bullying Morales kid.  He could go sit with his brother.

Alex watched the big kid from Lincoln climb into the stands with a mixture of relief and apprehension.  He paused a moment, scanning the crowd, then made a bee-line for the top.  Why was he going to sit with Mr. Morales?   Crap, was the teacher his dad?  No, Alex could see that Morales wasn’t old enough to have a 12-year-old son.  Brother, then.

Alex’s heart nearly stopped.  He saw that Mr. Morales was holding a familiar pair of ratty sneakers.  He knew.  And soon everyone would know.  The boy began talking to the former teacher.  Mr. Morales nodded, looking from the shoes to Alex, and reached to hand them to the young bully.

Before he could complete the move, the woman who sat above them reached down, hooked the shoes out of his hand, and vanished over the back of the stands.  Mr. Morales rushed to the railing to look.

Alex had stopped running after the ball to watch the action in the stands.  He had to get back in the game when the ball bounced off his head.  The shoes were out of Morales’ hands, anyway.  Maybe he wouldn’t be in trouble just yet.  He finished up the game, moving faster and playing better than he ever had before.  After he shot the winning goal, he glanced back at the stands.  There, in the shadows underneath, stood the strange woman.  She held up the shoes, put a finger to her lips, and smiled.

For some reason, he had a friend.  He’d broken one of the commandments, been found out by the most two-faced moralistic teacher at the school, and not been turned in because someone he didn’t even know had rescued him.  He broke into a smile.

Life might be worth living after all.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2014

###

Here are my characters.  I stretched the definitions to suit my own ends.   As usual.

An aggravated thief needing a friend (Alex)

A graceful official searching for the truth (Jack Wright)

An agile, serene traveler (the unknown woman)

A strong actor searching for a family member (Morales, Jr.)

A clumsy, materialistic, moralizing teacher reaching for employment (Mr. Morales)

Flash Fiction Friday: V is for Victory?

This week's Wendig Challenge built on last week, when we all submitted first lines for stories.  We were to choose one, and write the story.  I chose the line submitted by RD Duncan, and the result is below.

 

Victory Has Its Price

I knew I was in trouble when my fingers started smoking.

It was the biggest competition of my life, and I’d been determined to win.  I started playing piano when I was two and a half, my hands so small I could barely reach from one key to the next.  And I was good.  I was always better than even the kids several years older, and it wasn’t just because I practiced more, though I did.  I was different.

By the time I was twelve, if I entered a competition most of the other kids dropped out.  Most of them wouldn’t talk to me, either.  Word on the playground was that I had sold my soul to the devil for a super-human ability to play piano.

I would have, but I hadn’t.  Wherever the talent came from, I didn’t buy it.  It felt like I was born knowing how to play.  The thing was, I didn’t know if it was normal or totally weird.  I knew most kids didn’t feel that way, but did the great ones?  Did they fight their way through a clumsy childhood and only gradually discover their talent, like my teacher said he’d done, or did they just come with it ready-made, as I seemed to have?

My mother was too proud of me to wonder at any of it.  She’d wanted to be a concert pianist, but an early onset of arthritis had ruined that plan.  She could still play, but not at that level.  And when she had me, it was like all her skill, and all her longing, poured through me.  She taught me herself until I was six, then found the best teacher in San Francisco to take over.  When I was fourteen, I graduated from the Conservatory, and we moved to New York so I could go to Julliard.

If I couldn’t play it was like a physical pain.  The move across the country nearly killed me.  We drove, so it took days.  I only made it because Mom stopped in Denver and bought a portable keyboard.  After that, I sat in the back seat and played, with headphones so I wouldn’t distract her from driving.  The sound was awful, and the touch ghastly, but it was a keyboard, and I could breathe again.

By the time I’d completed my first year at Julliard, I knew I wasn’t normal.  Even there, where no one was a dilettante, I felt like the only one who really served the music.  I thought the others didn’t care, because sometimes they took a day off to go to the beach, or stood in the hall for half an hour chatting when they should have been practicing.  I couldn’t do that.  These were the most driven young musicians in America, and I made them look like a bunch of lazy bums.  At first I found that exciting.

But when I was sixteen I started to see what I really was—and to realize just how much trouble I was in.  Maybe I hadn’t sold my soul to the devil for this music.  But I became convinced that someone had.

Then I entered The Competition.  With capitals, because it was the biggest, most prestigious event anywhere, and if I won, I was set for life, pretty much.  And I was sixteen.

And for the first time in my life, I had fallen in love with something besides a piano.  He was a musician, of course—English Horn, if you must know—but he was really cute, and he would come by my practice room and try to get me to come out for coffee or a drink or whatever.

So here was a gorgeous guy asking me out, one I could really talk to about music, and I couldn’t go.  I mean I literally couldn’t go.  It had reached the point that if I left the practice room during the day I started to sweat, like a panic attack.  I was still going home to eat and sleep, but if I tried to just go have fun I could tell I would totally freak out.

I told myself—and him—that it was on account of the big Competition coming up.  He totally got that, and said he could wait.  Part of me knew it wasn’t just that, though.  The piano had a grip on me that was sucking my life out, and I didn’t dare even tell anyone, because they’d say I was crazy and probably lock me up without a piano, and I’d die.

The night of the Competition proved I was right about the piano.  It was agony to sit behind the stage while the other contestants played.  They were good, but all I could think about was my turn.  Well, that was normal.  No one competing at those things is there to listen to the music.  But what I felt was different.  My whole body ached to take over the keyboard, to play the music like it had never been played.

When my turn came at last, I walked out onto the stage, made my bow, and slid onto the piano bench.  I smoothed my long gown, adjusting everything just right.  Then I bowed over the keys for a moment, until I felt the power in me, a tingling from toes to fingertips.  I raised my head and began to play.

It was like I was possessed.  Even I had never played so well.  It was not until my fingers started to smoke, like I said, that I realized how much trouble I was in.  It was exactly like I was possessed.  I had wanted to be the best, and I was.

I couldn't stop.

Music was burning me up, and I couldn’t stop.

###

 

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass 2014

 

Friday Challenge: Ten ways of looking at. . .

This week, Chuck Wendig set us all an exercise: to describe something in ten different ways.  Anything.  I was going to punt and skip this one, but then Jemima Pett posted ten ways of looking at the A to Z Challenge.  That set me to thinking, and I ended up with . . . Ten Ways of Looking at a Book Launch.

Here's how he put it:

“I want you to take one thing and describe it ten different ways. That thing can be… anything. An object. A person. A sensation. A place. An experience. But I want you to focus on it and describe it multiple ways. Ten, as noted. Each no more than a sentence of description.”

Here are my ten sentences, describing an approaching book launch:

1.  A blast of excitement.
2.  A coiling snake-pit of stress.
3.  A mind-killing trail of minutia.
4.  A warm glow of pleasure and happiness.
5.  Burning eyeballs scorched by the search for typos.
6.  A love affair with my beautiful book.
7.  A deep soul-weariness with the project overwhelms me.
8.  A smell of clean paper and fresh ink.
9.  A torrent of tasks, which shatter and scatter my mind in a million directions.
10. The kind of goal that makes you forget that it's not a destination, but a step on the way.

Okay, I had a little trouble moving out of my mind (and my gut) and into all my senses.  But at least the exercise did capture some of the jumble of feelings the approaching event calls up!

 Here's to death by ice cream, and to Death By Ice Cream.

 

And I really am writing a story this week. But I'm first of all writing it for a group of students I'll be reading to on Saturday--I want to let them be the very first to hear it.  So all my blog fans will have to wait!

 

Flash Fiction Friday: Have You Seen the Rain?

This week's Wendig Challenge was another song-title prompt.  I went to Pandora, hooked into the Classic Rock station, and took the second song that came up (because the first was, shall I say, inappropriate).  This one made a story leap to mind at once--maybe a little too obvious, in light of the current drought in California (hard for some areas to believe, but while the Eastern US has been hit with a zillion feet of snow, and there's been flooding in England, the US Southwest has been setting records for lack of rain).  It's exactly 1000 words, including the title.

Have You Seen the Rain?

The clank of the well mechanism, delving ever deeper, had been a part of Eleanor’s world since she was born.  It never stopped, unless something broke down.  It had been a quarter of a century since rain had fallen, and only the pumps kept anyone or anything alive in Foothill.

Most people had left Foothill and the other Valley towns for the northern breadbaskets of Washington and British Columbia, shaking the dust of California off their feet with relief.  Eleanor and her father and brother remained.  They scraped a living of a sort from the parched soil, growing what heat-tolerant foods they could with the slightly brackish water the well now provided.

They couldn’t leave because there were no more machines to take them away, and the draft animals had long since died.  They hadn’t gone when the others did, because Eleanor’s father would not go.  Her mother was buried in the cemetery behind the decaying church.  She had died in the 15th year of the drought, when Eleanor was two and Zack was six.  The stock had died before that, unable to tolerate the brackish water, the heat, and the lack of forage.  Temperatures for much of the year stayed in the triple digits, day and night.  Winter was a thing of the past, and Eleanor thought rain was a myth.

The girl stood before their dwelling and watched the brilliant sunset fade in the west.  Though she knew the heat and the dust killed everything sooner or later, she loved the colors of the sunset.  Even the dry air and dust were comfortably familiar, and the setting of the sun brought a sort of freedom.  The sun was their enemy, beating them down with a physical force that made even thought an effort during its reign.  They worked in the night, when slightly lower temperatures and the absence of the brutal sun made it possible to tend their plants. 

“Come on, El!”  Zack called from the pumphouse.  “We need to haul out the water, then pick bugs.”

Eleanor made a face.  She didn’t need her brother to tell her that.  It was what they did every night.  Bugs seemed to be the only things that survived here, probably because of the small garden.  And they needed every bit of every plant, so they picked the bugs off nightly.  And because they needed every bit of protein they could get, they saved the insects.

Everywhere but in their garden the soil was baked so hard it couldn’t be dug.  When Mother had died, they had been forced to spend a week’s water allotment to soften the ground enough to dig a grave.  Zack remembered it.  There were other families then, but that struggle had been the last straw, and when a government transport—the last—arrived, everyone had left but the three of them. 

When the sun began to rise at the end of the short June night, Father climbed down from the ladder he used to repair the shade structure over their garden.  “Time to go in.”

Eleanor glanced to the east.  The bright band that preceded the sun glowed over the Sierra, the mountains Father said had once been called “Nevada.”  Snowy, whatever that meant.  Eleanor had trouble imagining snow.  She took one last look toward the approaching Enemy and followed Father and Zack into the cave they had enlarged and finished, where the temperature remained tolerable even through the middle of the day.  Father turned on the light and began to prepare their meager supper, frying some of the bugs.  The light was a relic of the old days, and ran on solar power, which gave them a few hours of light in the cave before it began to fade.

They ate their dinner in weary silence.  Then Father took up a book and began to read.  A dozen antique books—real, printed books on paper—filled the place of honor along one wall, and the children had learned to read from them, but they loved best to have Father read to them, though they knew them by heart.

“‘The next day the rain poured down in torrents again, and when Mary looked out of her window the moor was almost hidden by gray mist and cloud. . .’” 

 “Father, have you ever seen the rain?” Eleanor asked.

His face grew sad, and he looked at his children with something like pity.  “Yes.  I was about Zack’s age—14—when the rain stopped.  When I was a child, it rained every winter.”

“What was it like?”

For a long time he did not answer.  Then, “Clouds built over the Sierra, which might be white with snow.  They were huge, white towers in the distance at first, but when they drew close and blocked out the sun, they turned dark and blue-black, like Aggie.”  He looked around as though expecting to see the cat, though it had vanished a year before.

“Then what?” Eleanor pressed.

“Right before the rain came, you felt a blast of cool, damp air, and a gust of wind.  Sometimes, though, the storms would play with us, making thunder and lightning and no rain.  We could see it high in the sky, but it evaporated before ever it reached us, and the lightning started fires.”

That was what had happened to the forests that once come down nearly to their town.  They had burned, huge regions at once, as the dead and dying timber yielded to scant rains and caught easily from the strikes.  Dry lightning, with no rain.

“On the best days, the rain came, like in the book, in torrents, soaking everything and filling the air with a smell—I can’t describe it.  Dust and sage, plants and animals reaching for life.  And none of it did any of us any good,” he said as though to himself.  “There will be no more rain.”  His eyes filled with tears.  “My children will never see the rain.”

##

©Rebecca M. Douglass 2014

 

 

Flash Fiction 200-word challenge: The conclusion

For the last 5 weeks I've been having fun with the Chuck Wendig 200-word challenge, wherein each writer adds 200 words to a story started by someone else.  This is my 5th and final story.  The project has been both entertaining and educational (in particular, while it is easy to add complications in 200 words, I was unable to conclude this in under 220, and that was with some serious paring down!).  I haven't managed to track all my stories (they're in the side-bar throughout late November and December), but I chose to finish with a holiday tale of a desperate rescue of Santa Claus.

For the record, my original story ("Millions of Cats") is finished here.

A Gifted Wizard

Part 1 by  Andrew Linder - Part 2 by  Caitlin McColl 
Part 3 by - Hana Frank  - Part 4 by Mozette

1.
Mary loved Christmas because it was the comfiest holiday. Sitting on the floor before a modest pile of gilded presents, surrounded by family, sipping hot cocoa—hot cocoa!—she was experiencing true, Christmas bliss. She pet the cat beside her as it nuzzled her knee. Her brother handed her a perfectly wrapped gift. She reached for it, but he yanked it away, laughing. She laughed too. This happened every year. “Mom!” she said, directing her voice toward the kitchen, “Danny’s being a jerk!”

But she snatched the present from him anyway and pulled at the ribbon. 
Then the front door burst open and a gaunt, bearded man in ripped jeans and no shirt stumbled in. He had a large, pointy hat on his head. He glanced around at the startled faces, settling on Mary’s. She knew him, and stuttered, “U-u-uncle Martin?”

He nodded. “There’s magic afoot, niece…You’re a wizard, Mary”. Seeing her confusion, he pointed at the cat. “Look, the cat can talk now.”

She looked down at Bubbles. Bubbles looked up. “Hey,” Bubbles said.

Mary stared. “Hey.”

Uncle Martin pulled a folded up hat, like his own, from his back pocket. “Here! Take this wizard hat and follow me.”

2.
Mary jumped up and with a glance over her shoulder at the confused faces of her family, she followed her uncle out into the crisp fall air. She wondered how he could be wandering around without a shirt when she was wearing a long sleeved sweater. Maybe wizards generated internal heat? "Wait! Hold up!" She jogged to catch up to him. "You can't just throw a crumpled pointy hat from a cheap Halloween costume at someone, make the cat talk, then leave again! I have questions. Lots of them!"

"I'm sure you do," Martin said nodding with brief glance at Mary as he kept walking.

"Like, did everyone else just hear Bubbles talk back then? Or do they think you're crazy for bursting in like that. They probably think I'm crazy now too!"

"No, they can't, just you can. ‘Cuz you're a-"

"You're a wizard Harry!" Mary said in her best mock-Hagrid voice. "I'm not friggin’ Harry Potter, Uncle. I’m a thirty three-year-old nursing student from Portland, not some kid in a story book with a magic wand!” She grabbed Martin’s arm and turned him to face her. “Seriously, Uncle. What’s going on?”

"There's a problem. And we need you." 



3.
"Me?" Mary let go of his arm. "Look, whatever this is about, I'd love to help. Really. But shouldn't you get a more experienced wizard?" 
Martin didn't answer. His eyes were lifted to the sky.  
"Uncle?"


The faint sound of jingling bells made her turn and look up. Huge clouds parted to reveal a team of reindeer pulling a red sled. The animals drifted down, landing beside Mary with the grace of ballet dancers.


The head reindeer nodded at her then jerked its head at the sled. "Hey Marty. We've gotta go. Like right now dude." 


"Mary." Her uncle's voice was a plea. She stood frozen, staring at the reindeer, her fingers crushing the paper wizard hat. 
"The great Wizard Claus needs our help." Martin shook his head. "Something went wrong and now he can't get back into Real Time." 


"Tell her about it on the way dude." This from one of the reindeer at the back.


"Yes. Yes of course." Martin held her arm, gently steered her towards the sled steps. "We've only got an hour left Mary." 


Well, she decided, talking reindeer and a sled were way cooler than the magic cars Harry Potter flew in.

4.
Uncle Martin didn’t wait for her to sit down as he grabbed the reins and snapped them gently, urging the eight reindeer to take flight as gently as they had landed; pushing her back into her seat.

“So, what’s the big emergency you need me for?” she heard herself ask as he steered the team up into the sky and above the cloud cover.  The sun shone blindingly bright and made the cloud tops look like meringues fresh and ready for the oven.

“Well, like Comet said, Santa is stuck in there, he’s lost his way.” He muttered, “And right now, he’s holed up in a psych ward.  He knows who he is, but the doctors are trying to make him not believe…” he looked over at her briefly, “… and you know what will happen if he stops believing in who he is, don’t you?”

Her gut turned cool, “Oh, god… Christmas will disappear forever for all the children around the world.” Her eyes wandered to the reindeer and over the gorgeous sleigh as tears pricked her eyes, “Okay, what do I have to do?”

His eyes glimmered, “Good, you’re with me on this.”


My contribution:
“We’ll break him out,” Marty continued.  “No time for anything else.”

“But I d-don’t kn-know anything about being a wi-wi-wizard.”  She could hardly say that word even if her teeth hadn’t been chattering with the cold wind.

“Yer the decoy, darlin’ girl.”  Comet again.  “Leave the wizardin’ to Marty.”

Of course, it wasn’t quite like that.  Uncle Marty taught her a few spells, though she knew they’d never work.  At the hospital, Mary jumped out and ran in to go distract the employees.  But no one was at the front desk, and a sound of laughter suggested they were partying in a back room.  She kept moving down the long, sterile hall, skidding to a halt before a door labeled “Nicholas.”

She didn’t even pause to knock.  She shouted the unlocking spell at the door, and it flew open, revealing a fat man in a red suit.

“They took my boots, blast them,” he said.  “But these slippers will do.”  The slippers had bunnies on them.

“Come on, then.”  An explosion interrupted her, and the bars on the window blew to bits.  She got Santa shoved through just as the sleigh pulled up underneath, and followed him out, landing in a heap in the back seat as the old man took the reins. 

“Dash away all!” came the shout, and the sleigh showed what it could really do.

Chuck Wendig 200 Word Challenge--week 4

We're coming down to the end on this--just one more week to go.  It wasn't easy, but I managed to find a story I could work on that no one else had gotten to first (I should have been faster!).  This is called "In Too Deep," and was begun by Jim Franklin, continued by Lynna Landstreet and then by H. Petterson.

Parts 1-3 are here.  As well as below, because I'm not cruel.  I did notice that Part 3 is written 1st person, while the rest is 3rd person.  I chose to stick with 3rd person, since that was the majority.

In Too Deep

Jim Franklin’s original:

   The plunge into the ice-cold water hit Derry like an avalanche. A fading knowledge of the film Predator had informed him to lower his body temperature so that the alien wouldn’t see him. Though he hadn’t realised how cold the water would be, how the flow of the water would drag him away from the bank, or how his thick woolen coat and boots would become the rocks that pulled him down.

   It’s worth noting at this point that in Predator, the hero was a hardened military veteran with experience in guerrilla warfare, while Derry worked in the Accounts department for a large national fish exporter, and the most alien thing he had encountered in his life so far was the perpetual lack of sticky notes in his office. Being woefully terrible at making quick decisions, preferring an hour or two to mull over every eventuality, also goes some way to explain his poor choice of hiding place.

   His limbs stiff, his breathing now wheezy gulps, and his head now spent more time underwater as his legs struggled to move. Derry panicked, with a thought that he didn’t have hours to mull this over…. he was going to die.

Part 2, Lynna Landstreet’s continuation:

   As he floundered, the creature loomed over the water’s edge, staring down at him — so much for the hope that it wouldn’t see him! It raised some sort of complicated device to its — those were its eyes, weren’t they? Undoubtedly a weapon of some sort, and he found himself wondering which would be worse: drowning, freezing to death, being vaporized, or being eaten. But no laser bolt came, just a light that illuminated his sodden head as the creature peered through some sort of lens. The hell –? Was that some kind of camera?

   The thing opened its terrifying maw, and let out a sound somewhat like a cow being fed through a woodchipper. Or at least what Derry imagined that might sound like, not that he’d ever needed to before now. Then it made some adjustments to a device affixed to its throat, and a strange mechanical voice accompanied the bellowing: “Good evening. I observe that you have placed yourself in a context|challenge|predicament causing respiratory and circulatory distress. May I inquire as to the significance of this act among your tribe|culture|species? Are you attempting to terminate your existence, or this is an artistic performance|athletic event|mating display?”

Part 3, H. Petterson’s continuation:

    I broke the surface of the freezing water and gasped loudly. After grabbing a half of a lungful of air I retched out the other half lungful of water I had ingested under water. I looked at the creature as I crawled to the bank.

   “I didn’t understand/comprehend/grasp what you just said.” He tilted his head at me and I said slowly.

   “What do you want….why are you chasing me?” I steadied myself and stayed in a sitting position, although still freezing it was better than the ice cold water.

   “I need/require/want information from you….are you familiar with this continent?” Its translator took on a softer feminine tone. As I looked at its attire I guessed it to be female.

   “I…I live a mile away….what are you doing here?” I slowly stood up and wrung the water from my hair and wiped my face with a soaking jacket sleeve. 

   “I mean/present/offer you no harm….I…We are lost.” It looked up to the sky and seemed to be visually charting the early night’s stars. I was tempted to run, but knew it would catch me pretty instantly in my exhausted condition.

   “We are crusaders from the Freeman sector and need/require/beg your help…unfortunately.”

My continuation:

Derry gulped, and thought resentfully that the creature needn’t have been so dubious about his ability to help.  He’d been voted Most Valuable Employee in the company’s accounting department three years in a row.  He was good at what he did.

What he did had nothing to do with helping lost aliens find their way home.

“Um, where exactly did you need to go?”  Derry’s teeth were starting to chatter and his clothes were stiffening with frost.

“It is unclear/difficult/challenging. . . .”

Derry made a quick decision.  He couldn’t escape the thing, and he had to get home and get into warm, dry clothes.  “Come with me,” he said.  They made a curious pair, trudging through the snow back to Derry’s house.  The creature—she?—kept asking him about landforms he knew nothing about.  He put it—her—off with promises. 

He just had to make it home before he froze to death. He would deal with the alien later.  He had a good collection of Triple-A maps.  Surely something would do the job.  With a sigh of relief, Derry staggered in the back door, pausing only to push the thermostat up to 80 before racing for a hot shower.

 ###

Okay --someone else gets to finish this off in 200 more words!

###