#WEP: December Flash Fiction Challenge

This December challenge wraps up the year of artistic inspiration from some great works of art. The WEP is open to all, following the simple rules:

1. SUBMIT your name to the list below on December 1 thru the 15th. Add your link (URL)
2. POST your entry, put WEP is in the TITLE along with The Narcissus badge within your entry.
3. STATE feedback preferences and word count at the end of your entry.
4. READ other entries, giving feedback if requested.
5. SHARE THE CHALLENGE on social media. Tweets are ready on the WEP blog.

PLEASE NOTE: ENTRIES CLOSE Dec. 15th @ midnight (NY Time - check WEP blog clock)
ALL GENRES WELCOME except erotica - 1,000 words maximum

My story for this month's challenge is maybe cheating a little--I didn't write it for the challenge, but I decided that the common understanding of Narcissus and narcissism fits well enough, even if the story doesn't relate to the painting. I wrote this while trekking in Nepal last month, highlighting a character who certainly thinks a little too well of himself. And while Monday isn't my usual day for sharing flash fiction, it was my best bet for fitting within the time frame.

Snow Dragon

The thing was impossible. James Whitherspoon the Third had absolutely no doubt of that, so the shock was complete when it proved to be true.

Whitherspoon knew dragons; had fought them and tried to learn their language from any who would tolerate teaching him. But the dragons had all been in the low hills. They hated the cold. Whitherspoon was not up here in the snows to meet dragons.

So what in the name of all that was holy was this one doing sitting on a glacier? And it was pure white, nearly invisible against the snows, rather than the brilliant ruby and emerald of the low-land dragons. Whitherspoon stomped his booted feet more securely into the snow, stared again at the dragon to ensure it was really there, and looked around for his porters. They would surely know what was up with this strangely misplaced creature.

Perhaps they did. The porters were merely small dark specks well down the mountain slope. Whatever they knew of snow dragons, they clearly didn’t care to meet one.

So what? It was he, James Whitherspoon, not some unlettered local bearers of burdens, who had spent a lifetime studying dragons. Not for him terror and flight.

Whitherspoon continued to slog upwards through the snow and ice. When he was near enough to be heard, he planted his hiking staff, folded his hands on the knob at the top, and called out, “Greetings to you, oh dragon of the high places!”

It was a polite enough greeting, but the only response was a small puff of smoke from the creature’s nostrils, and a stomp of the left forefoot in a manner that might suggest irritation.

Not that Whitherspoon noticed or cared. He focused on the smoke: It must mean that at this altitude, or in this deep snow, the dragon couldn’t flame. Probably the thing was lost and in trouble. Whitherspoon managed to work himself up to quite a sympathy for the poor, lost dragon, which he would of course save from the horrific fate that awaited it in the high-altitude snows.

The self-proclaimed scholar approached closer. The dragon stamped first the left, then the right front foot. Whitherspoon took another step forward, again struck his pose with his staff.

“Can I help you, Master Dragon?” He maintained the respectful form of address, but there is no denying that the nature of the question was condescending, at the least. Certainly the dragon seemed to think so. It shook its head, uttered something int he dragon tongue that Whitherspoon was pretty sure was a curse, and finally deigned to speak in English.

“Leave my mountain at once.”

Leave the mountain? Or what? Whitherspoon actually laughed. “Leave, or you’ll warm me with your breath? Fire is what I crave most here, you know. If you haven’t noticed, it’s cold.”

“I warn you again: You do not belong here. Your companions are wise. They know where they are not welcome.”

Whitherspoon dismissed a vague memory of how hard it had been to find any porters willing to cross this particular pass. Still full of confidence in his own learning, he persisted.

“I can help you find your way back to the warmer lands, where you can thrive.” You fool was in his tone and his heart, if not in his words.

The dragon huffed. As Whitherspoon expected, only a trickle of heavy smoke emerged from the nostrils that, in the lowlands, could incinerate an explorer/scholar in one huff.

“See?” Whitherspoon pointed out. “You are disarmed. You need my help. In return, I ask only that you fly me to my next destination.”

The dragon lashed its tail. “You weary me. What’s more, you insult me.” It drew in a great lungful of the frozen air.

Whitherspoon expected the dragon to drop down dead. Instead, it blew the air back out, exactly as though it breathed fire over him.

The expert on dragons was instantly encased in ice.

When a spring avalanche returned him to the village below, the look of shock and astonishment on the face of James Whitherspoon III was perfectly preserved in his ice coffin.

###

The lair of the snow dragons?

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

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#WEP: Great Wave

 It's time for the bi-monthly WEP challenge. This year's prompts are all from famous paintings, interpretation up to us, of course. Here's the June prompt:

WEP Challenge are open to anyone. Post during the 3-day posting window, then link back to the WEP post page, and visit the other writers to enjoy a bunch of great stories! Read more about it here.

920 words, FCA
 

 

Great Wave

The hooded figure was reported to have visited the same rocky point on the shore every day for a week. Always at high tide, and carrying a large pack.

It wasn’t that no one knew who it was; there were no strangers in the tiny coastal town. Nor did anyone wonder about the hood. Any sensible person outside was wearing a hooded rain parka, and rain pants as well. The question everyone was asking was what Mildred Perkins thought she was doing out there in the rain and crashing surf, and what she had in her pack.

There was some attempt to speculate that she was engaged in some form of smuggling, but that stretched the credulity of even the most imaginative gossips in the tiny town. For one thing, no one could land a boat out on the point. For another, it was broad daylight, or what passed for broad daylight in the teeth of the winter rains, not a time when smugglers usually operated. Further, as far as anyone knew she’d been alone out there all the time, though admittedly even in the interests of a great story no one had been willing to sit out in the rain and watch as long as Mildred sat on the rocks.

Archibald Quindlen had reported seeing her sitting on the rocks for two hours while he was down the tiny sand shore trying to get his engine started so he could move his boat around the point to his proper mooring. In the end he’d given up and rowed the damn thing in order to beat the tide, and because he was tired of working in the rain.

“Didn’t see a damn thing except Mildred sitting there dripping,” he grumbled.

Sarah Pritchard was quick to point out that his attention had been on his boat, not on Mildred, and she could have done nearly anything without him noticing.

Archibald had retorted that she’d just been sitting every time he looked up, and what were the odds? He might have been a little less polite than that.

Victoria Jones admitted Archibald had a point and tried to keep her own watch, but after a half an hour she conceded that watching someone sitting motionless was pretty dull work, and maybe Mildred had gone mad, anyway. Plus, it was still raining.

This situation went on for a week, during which time it never stopped raining for more than about fifteen minutes at a time. All efforts to question Mildred ran smack into the impenetrable wall of a smile so warm and calm that it appeared to hide nothing while giving nothing away.

After four days, Mildred changed her vantage point to sit on the second point over from the first. Then she began to move from one point to another, up and down the shore, sitting in one spot sometimes for hours and sometimes only for minutes. Since no tourists came to town in the pouring rain, business was slow and everyone was going crazy wondering what she was up to.

This made it harder for the townspeople to watch without being obvious, not just to themselves but to their neighbors and to Mildred. Anyway, people were losing their enthusiasm for prowling about in the rain only to learn that she was just sitting there staring at the waves. Since Mildred didn’t seem to mind, or even notice, the rain, they were forced to conclude that she really had gone mad.

“Well, what if she is mad? She’s not hurting anyone,” Charles Godfrid pointed out. “Leave the poor woman be. She seems happy enough.”

For that reason, no one was watching when the rain finally ceased and Mildred at last opened the large pack she’d been keeping dry under her voluminous rain poncho (worn over the rain parka, a common precaution on that very wet coast).

The storm blew itself out late in the morning, and by noon the sun was shining. Young Joshua Pritchard ran down to the shore to see what treasures the high tide had brought, and noticed Mildred was eating a sandwich. That made perfect sense to Joshua, who was ten and starting to develop a frightening appetite. He briefly considered going and asking if she had anything to share, but his mother had told him not to go near the poor crazy woman. Anyway, his attention was caught by some very promising bits of fishing net and he forgot all about her. The next time he looked up, she’d gone off to some other spot for watching the breakers.

By two, the sun and breeze had dried things pretty well, and Mildred had found the place she wanted to stop.

No one at all saw when she opened the backpack again. This time she pulled out not her lunch, but an easel, a large drawing pad, and a box of paints.

She began to work.

It took weeks, sitting out storms, then waiting until it was just dry enough to not soak the canvas. She could work only until the calm changed the scene too much, then had to wait for the next storm. No one paid any attention to her now. Mildred was just “like that, you know,” they said, and left her alone.

At last she was satisfied, and stopped going to the shore.

Mildred’s detailed study of a single tiny portion of the surf took first prize at the country fair. “Great wave,” one of the judges wrote in the notes.

***

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

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Flashback Friday: The Gods' Own Keeper

I'm off celebrating my youngest son's university graduation. While I'm busy, I hope you enjoy this story from 2015!

 

The Gods' Own Keeper

Osbert Godskeeper scurried across the Great Hall of Chaotica. Orgo and Hempto were fighting again, and Osbert had no desire to get caught between those two. Neither had learned the control proper to a god, and Orgo tended to leak lightning when he got mad. Hempto was worse. He smoked. Not his pipe, which was bad enough--the gods’ herb of choice stunk, as far as Osbert was concerned. But when Hempto was upset, smoke came out of every orifice. It stunk even worse than his pipe, or Chacto the Great's cigars, and it burned. Hempto was a fire god, and nothing but trouble.

 

When he had reached the far end of the hall and the safety of his office, Osbert’s manner changed. No longer a frightened, scurrying figure, he stood erect and took firm hold of his microphone, scowling fiercely at the battling behemoths.

 

"Orgo and Hempto! You two will stop that NOW!" His amplified voice boomed across the hall, and the battling gods screeched to an abrupt halt, abashed. “Now, clean up the mess you made, then go to your rooms and behave yourselves,” Osbert continued, and watched, arms crossed, until the blushing gods started to right the overturned furniture, and put out the fires Orgo’s lightning had caused. Someone opened a window high on the wall—one of the bird gods, Osbert thought—and let the smoke out until the air cleared enough to see across the hall.

 

His job done for the moment, Osbert slumped back onto his desk chair, waving away a mosquito that buzzed by his ear. There were insects all over Chaotica, there being so many kinds of them on earth. They drove him mad, as if the larger and more boisterous gods weren’t doing a good enough job of that. Every kind of being on earth had to have its own god here in Chaotica, plus all the extras like Orgo and Hempto. The humans added to the chaos by inventing gods by the dozen, one for every neighborhood, Osbert sometimes thought. Chacto was one of those, god of some little island where they grew a lot of tobacco.

 

Keeping this menagerie of gods in order was tough. When the Church of Eternal Peace had made him their head priest and told him he was the one who would manage the gods, he hadn’t understood that they had meant it literally. For the last century, he’d been stuck here in Chaotica, breaking up fights between gods, keeping the predator gods from eating the prey gods, and always sleeping with a fire extinguisher and a bucket of water by his cot, because Orgo had far too little self-control for a lightning god.

 

When Osbert opened his eyes again, he saw the divine prototype of the gastropods had left a thick slime trail across the great hall. Sna the god of slugs and snails lacked a great deal more than self-control, though he lacked that, too. Like the creatures who worshiped him, he was just a slimy blob, and shed that slime wherever he went, like some kind of drooling infant. By now he was, as usual, somewhere halfway up the far wall. The raccoon god stood below him, a shaker of chocolate sprinkles in paw. Where did the gods get this stuff, anyway? Osbert had a feeling that if he ever got time to return to his kitchen, he’d find he was missing his chocolate sprinkles.

 

Osbert groaned and levered himself to his feet. Back at his microphone, he commanded the masked god to back off.

 

“But slugs are good if you roll them in the dirt to cover the slime,” Forbol protested. “I thought they’d be even better if you rolled them in chocolate sprinkles!”

 

“You will have to find a mortal slug to test that on. Leave Sna alone. And Sna, you will have to clean the floor, because I am NOT going to do it again! Oh, drat it!” Osbert spotted the great cat goddess Fluffy. She had the mouse god Squeak in her mouth again. “Fluffy! Put him down! Now!” The gods’ keeper let his head fall into both of his hands. It was going to be one of those days. The gods were worse than a class of kindergarteners.

 

A lot worse, and he lacked the managerial skills of Miss Cornflower, the woman who had molded Osbert and his classmates into a group of rational beings capable of learning at least a little bit. The gods refused to learn manners or common sense.

 

What would happen if he just let them fight it out? What happened to a god if another god ate it? They were immortal, right? So they’d just come right back, right? But how did that work when a god had been masticated by another and passed through the digestive tract? Osbert moaned again. His head hurt. A lot.

 

Maybe if a god died, nothing would happen. After all, most people got on just fine with no gods, or no gods that they took seriously. And with all the new gods the humans had been producing, Chaotica was getting crowded.

 

That mosquito was back, buzzing around Osbert’s ear. This time, he slapped at the creature, not thinking. The buzzing stopped.

 

Osbert looked at his hand, and froze. The mosquito god was a little smear on his palm, and it didn’t seem to be popping back to life.

 

In a few minutes, the prayers of praise and thanksgiving began to roll in. The mosquitoes that had plagued so many parts of the earth with everything from annoyance to deadly diseases had vanished.

 

Now Osbert knew what would happen if a god died. And he began to look about the great hall of Chaotica, a thoughtful look on his face.

 

The Gods’ own Keeper finally understood what power he had been given. And he never had liked rodents…

 

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

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Friday Flash: A Dangerous Thirst

 We have an all-new story for you! As a way of warming up for work on the next novel, I hunted up some random story prompts, and found an opening paragraph in my files. That paragraph is pretty much all gone, but it gave me the following story. I would categorize this as comic horror.

 

A Dangerous Thirst

Half mad with the shaking, whimpering, head-throbbing withdrawal, I charged across the room. I would have that drink. I must have that drink, and damn the cost.

I could not give up the cup of coffee the bookshelf had taken prisoner.

A direct charge at the line of leering, jeering knick-knacks did no good. They closed ranks around the steaming paper cup with its stylized and sanitized green mermaid, and I dared not reach between their ranks to claim my prize. After all, it seemed, my addiction hadn’t yet driven me to utter madness. I deeply regretted buying that bronze statuette of an ancient Greek warrior—he was small, but looked more than capable of using the sword to whack off some fingers, if not my whole hand.

The china shepherdesses cowered away from him and from me, but they kept the coffee out of reach behind them, nonetheless.

They were trying to break my addiction, and I wasn’t having it. Or perhaps they merely wished to torment me. I couldn't say.

I’m not crazy. It’s not like I thought they were talking to me. They didn’t move, either. At least, not so I could see it. But there was no denying that the coffee cup I’d set down for a moment on the edge of the shelf was now walled in by a phalanx of decorative items. Items that, until a minute ago, I’d rather liked, with all their kitschy appeal.

In any case, I’d needed something to fill the bookshelves after I’d gotten rid of the books. Who needed all that paper, when I could put anything I wanted to read onto my Kindle and save space? Books were such awful dust-catchers, too. The doctor said it would be better for my allergies to go all-digital.

Never mind that the trinkets I’d picked up at thrift stores and antique shops had to be dusted daily, something that I suppose might have saved the books.

Now I wondered. I still called that bit of furniture a bookshelf. Did it resent being demoted to a holder for china shepherdesses and pseudo-bronze statues? All those deep-down tacky things I liked in a cynical, ironic way.

I shook my head. Caffeine withdrawal was making me think ridiculous things, borderline hallucinations. A piece of furniture couldn’t have opinions about the uses to which it was put, and knick-knacks couldn’t keep a cup of coffee from me.

But there was that sword…

Maybe I’d just go get another cup of coffee. Starbucks was only half a block away.

That coffee cost me four-fifty. That was already a dollar over my budget, all because I’d run out of fresh beans and couldn’t make my own latte.

I’d go to the grocery store. Get more beans.

I had a deadline to meet, and no time for a trip that never took less than an hour. My neighborhood had convenience stores and Starbucks and a McDonalds on the corner, but you had to travel for good food or coffee beans. It was why I’d gotten Starbucks in the first place, instead of visiting a real coffee shop.

No, I’d have my coffee, and get that article written. If speed couldn’t do it, perhaps stealth would work.

#

No amount of sneaking up on the shelf freed my coffee. No matter what I did there seemed to be sharp edges around the cup, the warrior’s sword, a shepherd’s crook, a farmer with a sickle. I was desperate, the heat seeping from my coffee as I failed over and over to rescue the paper cup.

In the end, I gave in.

I went to the closet for that last box of books, the ones I hadn’t been able to bring myself to give away. Dragging the box into my office, I opened it and made a stack next to the shelves.

No change in the coffee situation.

Resolutely, I took up a long wooden bookend.

One by one, I knocked the guardian knick-knacks to the floor. They bounced or broke as their natures dictated. It didn’t matter. They were all headed to the dumpster, or maybe the thrift shop.

Maybe not. What if they really were possessed, and this wasn’t all just the result of my withdrawal symptoms? My swings grew faster, wilder, sending my enemies flying, scattering shards of gaudy ceramic across the floor.

The way clear, I snatched the still-warm cup, sucked down great gulps of life-giving fluid. The cup drained to the dregs, I tossed it aside with a triumphant laugh.

When my vision cleared, I gulped at the mess. Shattered china figurines, chipped wood, even the ancient warrior lay on the floor, his sword bent in the fall.

A little horrified by what I’d done, I swept up the shards, and boxed up anything worth saving. I hesitated over a couple of things. I liked that wooden cat, rendered with just enough lines and curves that there was no doubt what it was. I looked at the bookshelf and put the cat in the box. I couldn’t afford the risk.

The mess cleared, I began to file my old books on the shelves. I might have gone mad, but I wasn’t taking any more chances with my coffee.

###

Don't forget--the Pismawallops PTA Mysteries #5 is now available in all formats!

Amazon 

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Kobo

B&N Nook

Apple Books

 

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

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Home again, and a Friday Flash

I'm home from the Grand Canyon with thousands of photos to edit, and a single piece of flash fiction to share.

I wrote this story for our rafting group, and specifically for Ben Whitaker, one of our 7 amazing crew. Why Ben? Because one day, after repeated drenchings, I told him I was going to take him up a dry wash and leave him there. And so I did. Of course, I could as easily have treated any of the guides the same way--repeated washings in Colorado River water is a part of running the Canyon. Ben just got first dibs.

The story is, I hope, comprehensible to those not on the trip, but is especially meant for those who were; forgive the hint of an inside joke. For the non-Canyon folks, a few notes: my trip was with Arizona Raft Adventures, aka AZRA. The "groover" is the toilet. And the food was fantastic and abundant, with no gumbo in sight (not that there's anything wrong with gumbo), and none of our guides dodged the cooking!

Without further ado, I present:

River Revenge

“Where’s Ben?”

The question ran through camp like wind-blown sand, and no one had an answer. Few heard John’s added question, “and where’s the bag of gorp?” It didn’t matter. The intrepid, though sodden, river guide had vanished. It was his night to cook dinner, too. Rumblings of dismay echoed from the canyon walls.

Dodging campers dripping and irate over the repeated drenchings he had given them and ungrateful for the skill with which he’d kept them from unplanned swims, Ben had fled. Last seen wandering aimlessly toward the north end of camp, a bag of something tucked casually under one arm, he had vanished no one knew where.

When Rebecca commented on seeing Ben sneaking off with the gorp, everyone relaxed. “Gone off to recharge his social batteries,” most agreed.

“Gone off to gorge on snacks,” John muttered. “He hates gumbo night.”

Ben did hate gumbo night. He was also tired of being wet, and of taking the blame when the Colorado River got pissed off at all the boats bouncing so lightly over its surface, or of people speaking lightly of the big rapids. He was worn out with explaining the difference between rowing the rapids well and staying dry.

Plus, he liked gorp.

Now, a long time later, he was thoroughly dry. The gorp was gone and he was thinking fond thoughts even of gumbo. It was time to go back.

Unfortunately, Ben had no idea where he was, or where “back” was. When he turned to follow his tracks to camp, the ceaselessly blowing wind had eradicated all trace of his passage.

#

Meanwhile, with the dinner hour looming and the cook AWOL, Trip Leader Lorna had efficiently organized her crew. Bekah remained to fix the meal single-handed, in a whirlwind of chopping and cooking. Several campers tried to offer help, but were blown out of the kitchen by the gale-force slipstream of her activity. Lorna led the rest of the guides in the rescue mission, Jon and John muttering about gorp thieves while Jed worried he’d miss the bat count and Matt worried he’d miss dinner.

Not over-fond of gumbo herself, Rebecca chose to follow the searchers, announcing it was a perfect opportunity to gather material for her books. She didn’t mention that she’d seen someone follow Ben. Was that hooded and dripping figure headed for the groover—or for revenge?

Behind Rebecca, unnoticed by the highly focused seeker of stories, several more campers chose to eschew gumbo in favor of glory. Mike, Jen, and Amanda, their duel of wits drawn to a truce for the time being, found the first clue. One dropped peanut, not yet snagged by mouse or raven, suggested to them that Lorna & Co. were searching up the wrong gully. They turned right at the confluence of two dry washes.

Rebecca glanced back in time to see the Alaskans turn off, and decided to climb the ridge between the washes and watch both parties for hints on how to construct a search.

#

Far up the right wash, Ben had received a revelation in his time of need. Only one way led to the river: down. Turning to follow through on this excellent insight, he wondered if he had the strength for the return trip. So far from the river he felt himself desiccated and thinned, like the cast-off skin of a bored snake.

Suddenly, as he staggered with hunger and thirst, he found himself confronted by a figure in shades and an AZRA hoodie.

“Who? What?” Ben couldn’t form the words, his lips drained of all moisture by the salty gorp. His knees gave way.

The unknown figure pulled a high caliber weapon from behind its back, took aim, and fired.

A heavy stream of water caught Ben in the face as he fell. He opened his mouth, the life-saving liquid rehydrating his parched river-rat skin, and felt life returning as he knelt, lapping the water that ran down his face.

The weapon empty, the unknown assailant turned, still silent, and bounded down the gully.

Only Rebecca saw the hooded figure mix with the other campers enjoying happy hour. She watched Ben stagger into the arms of Jed and Matt (who reminded him he was supposed to be on KP). And she saw the three Alaskans, stymied by a pour-off even they couldn’t climb, slink back into camp seconds before Bekah called for dinner. Only then did she, too, slip back into camp, notebook in hand.

Taking stock of the dire situation, Lorna breached her secret stash of good Scotch and began pouring. A half hour later, everyone loved Bekah’s gumbo. And no one, not even Ben, cared who had pursued him with a vengeful super-soaker.

But John cut off Ben’s access to the snacks, forcing him to subsist merely on three massive meals a day for the rest of the trip.

And Rebecca slipped Beth a bag of warm bath water with a whispered “thank you” for a revenge well executed, as she reconverted the high-power watergun into an innocent pair of telescoping trekking poles.
 

###

My photos haven't been edited yet, but I've got a couple to illustrate the story.

Up a dry wash...

And down the wet rapids.

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

Friday Flashback: Xavier Xanthum's first appearance.

Xavier Xanthum, Space Explorer, made his debut during my first April "A to Z Blogging Challenge," when I needed a post for "X". That was in 2013. Since then, I have written and shared about 18 more XX stories, and have a particular fondness for the occasionally hapless explorer. Some of what's in this one I'd totally forgotten and may not be so true in later stories.

 

Xavier and the X-Ray Eyes

Xavier Xanthum explored space.  With his Arcturian Warp drive, he’d been doing it long enough that time and age no longer had any meaning for him.  Twice he had passed through random uncertainty fields, and met himself coming.  Once he’d hit something strange, and the next ship he met told him a hundred years had passed.  He'd aged two days.

After that one, he’d sold his ship to an antique dealer for enough to buy one of the new-fangled ships with an even better faster-than-light drive, one that was guaranteed to keep him from ever being stranded in a gravity well or adrift between galaxies, both of which had happened to him in the past.

All of which is to say he'd seen plenty of weird things in his indeterminately long life.  None of them prepared him for the eyeballs.

The eyeballs first appeared in the galley.  That was where Xavier usually saw odd things, because this new ship’s robo-kitchen had some very strange menu items.  He didn't think anything of it until he'd had a good sleep and awakened to find the eyes still watching him.

He didn't know then what they could do.  He only knew that there was now some kind of alien--something--sharing his ship.  He supposed he might have picked it up in that last singularity, or maybe it--they?--came aboard from one of the planets he'd visited.  Maybe the one that he'd thought was uninhabited.  It would have been easy to miss a modest population of disembodied eyeballs.

After a week he began to notice that he was seeing things.  Not seeing things the way he did when the robo-kitchen got too imaginative.  That made him see things that were not there.  Now he was seeing things that were there, but not here.  He called it X-ray vision, but it wasn't really.  Not like the kind he'd dreamed of as a kid, that let you see through clothes and into locked safes.

But he found that he could see whatever the eyeballs were seeing, even if they were in a different part of the ship.  And they could see a wider spectrum than he could.  He stopped burning himself on his coffee, because he could see when it was too hot.  If, that is, the eyes happened to look at the coffee.

It was when the turbo-warp booster started acting up that Xavier got serious about the need to communicate with the eyes.  He couldn't fit even his face into the service tube, so he was trying to install the replacement twerger by feel, and it wasn't working.  He realized that the eyes could fit in the tube easily, and then he'd be able to "see" it all.  But he had to find a way to tell them where to go, and to keep them looking at the repair until he'd finished.  The eyes had a limited attention span, and were always drifting off after dust motes.

Xavier now had a near-perfect understanding of the air filtration system, but he needed something more.  How did you communicate with something that had no ears, and maybe even no brain? 

No, that wasn't right.  The things were flighty, but there was an intelligence there.  He tried sign language, since that was visual.

Signs meant nothing to an entity with no body.

Writing came next.  Again, beings with no corporeal presence had no way to develop a written language.  The eyeballs glanced at his message and drifted off after a dust mote.

With the ship drifting helplessly in space somewhere between the Horsehead Nebula and an unnamed star system he wanted to investigate, Xavier grew frustrated.

"Blast it all!" he exclaimed.  "How in space am I supposed to tell you what I want?"  His voice squeaked.  He wondered how long it had been since he'd spoken aloud.

The eyes turned to look at him.  And the answer appeared in his brain.

Just say it.

Unwilling to believe that the eyeballs had ears, Xavier tried an experiment first.  He thought back at them.  You know what I'm saying?

There was no response.  He said it aloud this time.

"You understand what I say?"

Of course.

Cheeky beggar.  "How can you--never mind now.  Let's fix this drive."  Years of talking to hallucinations had made it easy for him to adjust to the idea of talking to a pair of eyeballs.  He explained what he needed, and received the promise that it could be done.  The eyes disappeared down the repair shaft and an hour later the ship was up and running.

After that Xavier began to enjoy the eyes.  Not only did they give him "x-ray" insights into the bowels of the ship, but he enjoyed having someone to talk to.  In an odd sort of way they became friends.

It wasn’t until the eyes helped him through a second repair that he realized the truth.

The eyeballs were a part of the ship.  The part that prevented him from being stranded, because they not only could see all the places he needed to work, but they knew what needed to be done.

The eyeballs were a manifestation of the ship’s computer.  A computer that perhaps had grown as bored with the empty space between ports as he had.  Were they part of the original program?  He asked.

No. 

After a long, thoughtful silence, Xavier asked no further.

 

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

 
 

Flashback Flash Fiction: An Elegant Apocalypse

This story first appeared on this blog in December of 2012. I've touched it up a bit, and wondered about the amount of borrowing from Douglas Adams, but decided to let it stand with the original "reverent apologies to Douglas Adams." I'm not sure about the origins--I'm pretty sure someone challenged me with that title, but I kept no record. About the only thing I can be pretty sure of is that I was rereading the Hitchhikers Guide and sequels. We can probably chalk this one up to fan fiction.

Elegant Apocalypse
With reverent apologies to Douglas Adams

 

Sunrise on Planet X-4732B is 7th most stunning and beautiful event in the Universe following, among other things, sunset on X-4732A and the eruption into the sea of an unnamed volcano on an undiscovered planet. This is a well-established fact, determined by a complex algorithm developed by the Ultra-Computer housed on the 4^th Moon of Planet G-7512, known to locals as Home. The lunar location was originally meant to isolate it and prevent the most powerful computer in the universe from running amok. No one has recorded how the residents of Home felt about that.

 

Naturally, by the time the Ultra-Computer was completed, there were six more computers being built on six asteroids, each one an order of magnitude more powerful than the Ultra. That is not germane to the issue, but does explain why the Ultra was free to spend its time determining the nature and location of the most stunningly beautiful sights in the universe.

 

 Thus the morning of the last day of the world began with the last most beautiful sunrise. If anything, the approach of the disaster gave the sunrise a more vivid coloration. It was not, however, beautiful in the eyes of the beholder. There were no beholders, for the same reason that X-4732B has no local name: there are no higher order inhabitants on X-4732B. Lower-order organisms abound, or did before the world ended, but they had failed to evolve to create pollution, disrupt the perfect order of the landscape, or anticipate the apocalypse.

 

The absence of humans or any intelligent observers is, of course, central to the elegance of the X-4732B apocalypse (for every apocalypse is local, until the final event, the end of the universe so eloquently documented by Douglas Adams). Besides a failure to muck up the view, lower-order organisms tend to lack the necessary glands to panic. Had the planet evolved so much as a muskrat, the day would have taken a different turn, and the Ultra Computer would have had to recalculate the event’s standing in its ranking of events approaching perfection.

 

Naturally, just when it seemed safe to assume that the apocalypse would proceed with dignity and quiet splendor, everything changed. A lone, tiny, and definitely lost space capsule spiraled down through the oddly Earth-like atmosphere.

 

In the best of all possible worlds, the man who emerged, dazed, from the erring and now disabled spacecraft would have been Arthur Dent.

 

It wasn’t.

 

His name was Johnson Bob, and he’d been in transit between two planets far from X-4732B when his flight path took him a hair too close to a concert by the intergalactic band Disaster Area. The cosmic disruption of the loudest band in the universe had put an end to his tedious business trip and landed Johnson on X-4732B in time to witness the end of that world, and potentially to disrupt its tranquil order by the infusion of human terror, dismay, and the filing of complaints to the travel company.

 

The event was saved from the contamination of panic, despite the intrusion of a more-or-less higher life form, by the simple fact that Johnson Bob never left his ship. He was sleeping off the disconcerting effects of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster he’d had in the space port bar before leaving, a task that requires the full concentration of all bodily forces for a full day. In fact, in an act of incredible bravado, or idiocy, he had consumed two of the Gargle Blasters, and would be fortunate to wake up at all.

 

Johnson Bob therefore slept through the end of the world. He failed to observe as the sky turned from its usual chartreuse to an odd shade of puce and finally a perfect shade of red-orange with green stripes. Nor was he aware when the atmosphere boiled away, as his ship maintained the ideal balance of gasses for the continuation of human life.

 

Johnson Bob likewise missed the exquisite moment when all factors coalesced into the perfect, nearly silent yet symphonic finality. It was this perfect coordination of elements that led the Ultra Computer to designate the X-4732B Apocalypse as the most elegant apocalypse of all time.

Millennia of constipated volcanism beneath the immense chain of volcanoes that ringed the planet burst through the plug in every peak simultaneously, exactly at the instant the asteroid that had boiled away the atmosphere struck precisely at the southern pole and the sun went nova.

 

Johnson Bob should have been boiled away with the atmosphere, of course, but the Ultra Computer considered the final touch that perfected the X-4732B Apocalypse to be the manner in which the volcanic cataclysm ejected the one bit of alien matter from the planet in time to make it a purely local event. When Johnson Bob eventually awoke, he had a nasty hangover but no awareness of where he’d been or what he’d done. The blast had flung him back onto his original trajectory, and he landed without incident and went to the nearest bar for another Gargle-Blaster, in hopes of clearing his head.

To a human observer, the tiny space capsule as it exited would have looked like a watermelon pip spat contemptuously at the remainder of the universe as the planet exploded into a nearly infinite number of identical fragments.

 

But of course, since Johnson Bob was unconscious the whole time there was no human, or even sentient, observer. That, the computer decided as the final rays of the perfectly symmetrical pattern of dissolution faded into empty space, was perhaps the most elegant feature. Perfection could only unfold unobserved.

 

### 

 

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

 

Friday Flash: How Does a Dragon Blow Out Candles?

I got the idea for this story from a meme a friend posted, about the things you lie awake worrying about. How, he asked, does a dragon blow out the candles on a birthday cake? This is my answer to that vexing conundrum.

 

How a Dragon Blows Out Candles 

There was no way to dodge the problem. Every time one of Flick’s fellow students had a birthday they had a party, and at every party there was a cake. Flick liked cake, especially chocolate cake with lots of frosting. The cake wasn’t the problem.

 

The problem was the candles. Every one of those cakes came with a bunch of candles burning on top, and the excited birthday ogre, gargoyle, gremlin, elf, fairy, or human child made a wish—and blew out the candles.

 

Flick’s birthday would be one of the last, but it would come, and he couldn’t concentrate in class on account of the one, all-important question: How could a dragon blow out candles?

 

Flick sat in a desk an extra three feet away from all his classmates, because while he didn’t flame—much—when he breathed normally, there were sparks when he got excited. And once he sneezed and burned up his own homework. He was working on it, but it was hard. It was why dragons lived in bare, rocky places. Huffing and puffing like the others did to blow out their candles would be a disaster, because huffing and puffing was how Flick lit fires.

 

Grown dragons could control their flames. Some could even sneeze without so much as a spark. But controlling flame was an advanced level of dragon studies, and not something you learned in primary school. Grown dragons might travel and even live in forests and fields, but young dragons kept to the barren places. Flick attending school with the other young of the region was a daring experiment. It was important.

 

The experiment was important to the grown dragons because they wanted to prove they could be part of society. Managing his cake without disaster was even more important to Flick, because he liked cake and didn’t want to burn it up and disappoint the other students. Flick’s flammable sneezing fit had already raised some doubts about the experiment. If he incinerated his birthday cake, it would be all over, plus there would be no cake.

 

Mother was no help. She just said, “What’s cake?” When she found out, she said he shouldn’t be eating that stuff and had he done his math homework.

 

Dad was more sympathetic, having once eaten cake. He offered some very complicated explanations of how dragons controlled their flames. Flick couldn’t understand the directions at all, and couldn’t follow them even if he tried.

 

It was Grandfather Dragon who at last listened to Flick, really listened, and determined to solve the problem.

 

“It won’t be easy,” Grandfather said. “But you can learn. All of us do, though it’s easier after we reach, hmmm, a certain age.”

 

Flick didn’t care what “a certain age” was. He wanted to control his flame.

 

Grandfather tried to explain the mechanism. He tried to teach Flick the way grown dragons did it. None of that worked. But school was on a holiday, and Grandfather had nothing better to do—they’d thrown him off the Draconic Council for arguing that gargoyles were people. He was interested to learn that the gargoyles weren’t convinced dragons were people. He became as determined as Flick that the birthday cake should be a success.

 

They experimented. Flick tried puffing through a damp cloth, but if it was wet enough not to burn, it blocked too much breath and the candles wouldn’t go out.

 

He tried blowing on a spot near the “cake” they had made out of sticks and mud, but again, if he blew hard enough to put out the candles, the cake got singed.

 

“It’s no use,” Flick said, two boiling tears running down his face.

 

“There’s always a way. But it looks like you’ll have to do it the hard way.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“You’ll have to learn to meditate, then to control all your bodily functions, and that will teach you to stop the flame when you don’t want it. You’ve started learning that, though you might not know it. What you do with Master Smoke on Saturdays.”

 

“But Master Smoke said it takes years to learn control!” Flick cried, setting fire to the fake cake.

 

He started crying harder as he thought about all the birthday cakes he wouldn’t get to eat after they threw him out of school. And he liked being with the other children, even if they did all have to keep a safe distance from him. Some of them were brave enough to play with him, and he was getting pretty good at tag, though he still sometimes forgot to keep his tail out of reach.

 

The more Flick cried, the more flames came out, and the more tears boiled from his eyes. When they grew too hot to bear, Flick dunked his head in the bucket of water they’d kept handy in case of fire. He kept it there until he couldn’t hold his breath another second.

 

Raising his head, Flick let out his held breath in a great whoosh—and nothing happened. There was no flame.

 

“I put out my flame!” Flick didn’t know if he was pleased or scared. He wanted to control his flame; he didn’t want it to go away altogether. A dragon without a flame was just a big flying snake.

 

“Try the candles,” Grandfather urged, hastily setting up and lighting the “cake.”

 

Flick gave a great puff. The candles went out, and not a flame escaped his nose or mouth. A few minutes later, while they weighed the plusses and minuses of a dragon of having no flames, Grandfather noticed a trickle of smoke leaking from Flick’s nose. A few minutes after that, Flick sneezed and set the cake on fire again. Grandfather handed him a flame-proof handkerchief. Flick grinned a little uncertainly as he and Grandfather stomped out the fire.

 

And that is why dragons always bob for apples at birthday parties right before they blow out the candles.

 

### 

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

Friday Flash(back): What's for Dinner?

 

Before I give you a story, I get my little brag. My story for the February WEP was runner-up in the judging. I think people want humor these days! If you missed it, the story is here.

 

I wrote this story in 2014. It's kind of a fun venture into seeing the world in different ways :)  I'm reposting it complete with the photo from the original. This was written to a sort of prompt that challenged the writer to turn something very ordinary into a story.

What’s for Dinner?

Mom’s acting weird.  Well, that’s kind of normal, if you follow me, because she’s always weird, but usually she’s weird like wearing strange clothes and working all night on one of those bizarre sculptures she makes.  I won’t ever tell her this, but I don’t like them.  They have too many jagged edges.  They’ll tear holes in you if you get too close.  I sometimes wonder if she’s out to destroy someone, or if she just sees the world that way, all jagged.  Either way: weird.

But what’s really weird is that she’s started cooking.  No more Swanson’s pot pies, and no more trips through the fast food drive-through window.  So now, I have to eat what she calls “real food,” which is sometimes pretty unreal, if you follow me.

The thing is, her idea of real food can get pretty disturbing.  And that’s why I am sitting at the kitchen table doing my homework, instead of in my room with my music.  I’m keeping an eye on the cooking, between algebra problems.  I’m watching for that moment that says she’s gone over the edge, so I can try to save the rest of us.

She’s put on a big pot of water to boil.  That seems pretty safe, so I turn back to my math book.  6x + 7y=23.  If y=2, what is x?  Okay, algebra’s weird, too.  What do I care what X equals?  I can see at a glance that it’s not going to be a nice round number.  I don’t like decimals.  They’re messy.  And I need some kind of motivation for X, if I’m going to care why it’s multiplying six.

Pasta.  She’s gotten out the spaghetti, which is good, and matches the pot of water.  But a lot depends on what she wants to put atop it.  My palms start to sweat as she begins pulling things off of shelves and muttering.  She’s got an awful pile of weird stuff: ginger and allspice and beans, and for some reason a bottle of pickled pigs feet.  And is that an incantation she’s muttering?  We have never in our lives eaten pickled pigs feet, and I do not intend to begin now.  I forget all about algebra and concentrate on willing the bottle to disappear.

She puts the first cupboard load back on the shelves, and I heave a sigh of relief when the pigs feet disappear.  Then the search starts all over, and I start to sweat again.  What is that green stuff?  And is it supposed to be green, or is that a very bad sign?

Mom does the search three times, and I can’t tell what she’s selected.  By the third shelf of the third cupboard, I’m a nervous wreck, and algebra is a distant memory.  Anyway, I’m pretty sure this is the night she poisons us all, and I can only wonder if it will be on purpose or just because she let her artist’s imagination get loose.  But if I’m poisoned, I don’t have to turn in my homework, so I won’t hurry.

I start to pray.  I’m not religious, but when we studied world religions last fall, my best friend Griffin and I memorized prayers from every one of them, mostly in languages we don’t understand.  We made up a couple of our own, too, in the elf language J. R. R. Tolkien invented for The Lord of the Rings.  I repeat them all now.  Maybe at least one of the gods will appreciate the attention and save me.  And Dad and my sister, though by this time I’m thinking mostly of myself.

Mom plops the big pasta bowl onto the table, interrupting my prayers and scattering my algebra.

 I stare into the bowl, horrified.  It’s green.  Radioactive waste is green, isn’t it?  Or ectoplasm, or space aliens.  And mold.  Mold is green.

“Eat up,” Mom says.  “Come and get it,” she calls to Dad and Lily.

My hands are shaking.  We who are about to die. .  .

“It’s just pesto, for heaven’s sake Joseph!”

I sag in relief.  Pesto’s bad, but it’s better than interplanetary ecto-slime. 

Rats.  I’ll have to finish my homework after all.

###

Empty the box and find a meal hidden therein! It clearly worried my son.

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

 

WEP: The Kiss

  

What could be more appropriate for Valentine month than Gustav Klimt’s  The Kiss?

This shimmery, early 20^th century painting of a couple embracing in a patch of wildflowers has riveted art afficionados  across the world for decades.

Use this amazing painting to kick off  a romantic love story of star crossed lovers. Or maybe a much married pair who’ve been together for years. Of unrequited or lost love. Or any love of the other gazillion types.

For unValentinish souls, remember that there are kisses other than romantic ones.  The kiss of life, the kiss of death, the kiss of betrayal, the angels’ kiss in spring. The mystical thousand ways of kneeling and kissing the ground.

One golden artwork, a zillion directions to go. Pick yours and run with it. We’re cheering for you. And can't wait to see what you come up with!

That's the February challenge. And this is my response. I struggled a bit, until I remembered something my boys told me about their experience at 5th Grade "Outdoor Ed" at a camp near San Francisco.

The Kiss

“Do it! Do it!” All the kids were looking at him, chanting, as they had for every other camper in the group, “Do it! Do it! Kiss the slimy lips!”

Jordan looked from his campmates to the forest floor, hoping for some way out. Some way that wouldn’t mark him as a spoilsport or a chicken. Maybe it would be gone. It might have gotten away while they were urging him to pick it up.

“C’mon, Jord,” Callie urged. She was his best friend, but right now he hated her along with all the others. “You’re the only one who hasn’t. If you just do it, we’ll be the first team to complete the Banana Slug Challenge!”

The Banana Slug Challenge. Jordan winced. It meant a lot to the other campers. The first cabin-pair team to present photographic proof that every camper had kissed a banana slug would win the right to go first in line at every meal left in the week. That sort of thing mattered, especially with those bigger kids who always seemed to push ahead and get the best desserts.

Reluctantly, Jordan turned his gaze on the large, greeny-yellow gastropod at his feet. Of course it was still there. It was a slug. It couldn’t run away and hide. It probably didn’t know enough to run anyway. The slug wouldn’t care about what was about to happen. It was just Jordan who was grossed out by the thought of picking up a slug, let alone kissing it.

Not that it would be a real kiss. They’d all been coached on how to do it without hurting the animals. A little peck on the top of the head, avoid the antennae and the funny hole on the side of the head, if you could even call it a head.

Taking a deep breath, feeling Callie’s hand on his shoulder—was she pushing him or trying to reassure him?—Jordan slowly bent and ran his hand through the loose forest-floor duff. His scoop came up with the slug still resting on the mass of fallen redwood needles. He closed his eyes, then forced himself to open them. He’d had to look to make sure he got this right, or he could end up with a mouthful of banana slug. Definitely not what he wanted.

Hoping he wouldn’t puke, Jordan lowered his face to the unsuspecting creature in his hand.

Back at the camp, Jordan washed his mouth again and again, shuddering. He’d been fine until, not far from camp, they had come on a pile of horse poop with a banana slug nosing about for tasty bits. At least he hadn’t been the only one to puke.

The horror of that day would never leave him.

His lips rubbed almost raw, he left the bathroom when he heard the dinner bell, and began to run. He was a hero! They’d be first in line for dinner!

#

The life of a banana slug happens in slow-motion. Movement, dining, defense against predators—all depend on slime and patience, not speed or ferocity. And don’t even ask about mating, which can take all day. It might take half the day for a slug to decide if it will be male or female (answer: both).

The slug therefore hadn’t started or panicked when surrounded by large, noisy animals. It had simply continued to ooze along in search of the pile of delectable horse droppings it sensed lay somewhere nearby. Experience had shown that two-leggers left slugs alone.

The slug was dimly aware that the pile of duff it over which it slid was rising. The magnitude of the disaster became clear only when a vast face loomed in the slug’s view.

Then the slug would have fled at high speed, had such been possible. It made every effort to gather itself and writhe out of the way of the immense pinky-red arcs that curved closer and closer. Surely this couldn’t be happening. To be touched by such a disgusting creature, all dry and raspy and covered with neither fur nor the more sensible slime! The slug shrunk into itself, turned away, would have cried out if it had anything with which to produce a noise.

There was no escape.

The giant fleshy bits descended on the slug’s head, touched its skin. The slug was certain the touch would burn, leave a mark for all to see.

Then it was falling, along with the pile of duff it had rested on in security such a short time before.

The dreadful contact ended, the slug endured a new horror, the discovery of gravity.

Long after the loud, thumping herd of two-leggers was gone the slug lay there. When at last it dared to move, its body stretched out of the mess of dirt and redwood needles that had fallen with it, much of the forest detritus still clinging to head and back.

The horror of that day would never be forgotten, but life must continue. Slowly, cautiously, the slug began to move, gaining purpose and direction.

There was still that pile of horse droppings to be explored.

###

 

Banana slugs range in color from almost an olive drab to bright yellow, and some have black spots while others don't. I'm pretty sure the spots/no spots variations are regional--SF Bay Area slugs never seemed to have them--but the other shadings seem to have more to do with local conditions and what blends in well. The photos below all convey pretty accurate color. These are all my photos, all taken within 50 miles of San Francsico, accompanied by some fun slug facts.

The yellow end of the spectrum. Note the hole in the side, which is for breathing, but also gives access to the genetalia.

A poor photo but at the other end of the color spectrum, almost olive drab. The pneumostome (the breathing hole) is pretty wide open.

Banana slugs in flagrante delicto. Squirmy fact: banana slug phalluses can get stuck, in which case the will gnaw through them in order to separate. Some sources say it grows back, others that it does not.

Banana slugs at the diner (they will eat anyway; presumably they appreciate the partially-digested vegetation in horse poop). Note the mucus plugs at the back ends. Slugs generate a special mucus from the tail (as opposed to the slime they generate all over to prevent drying out and to make it easier to slide over rough surfaces) that can actually be used like a line to allow a safe descent from on high. I never caught them at it.

Hope you've enjoyed this little info drop on banana slugs!

Visit the WEP to see what others have made of this prompt!

 

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

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