Flash Fiction Friday: A Pismwallops PTA Christmas, Part 1

Decided to have some fun as we run up to the holidays (and yes, I will unashamedly say "holidays," because there are a bunch of them and I like to celebrate any that come my way, and encourage others to celebrate any they like). So I dropped in to see how the Pismwallops PTA handles the event. With a fund-raiser bazaar, of course! But nothing ever goes quite according to plan when JJ MacGregor is involved. It's looking like a 2-part story.

A Pismawallops PTA Christmas

“JJ, we need another table for the baked goods!”

“JJ, the tree won’t light up!”

“JJ, the—”

I tuned out the last voice. Arne Hancock always had a crisis for me to fix. I dispatched two kids to get the table Patty Reilly needed for the brownies, and went to help Kitty Padgett with the lights that didn’t light. Kitty’s the PTA president, so she was getting her own share of people demanding instant fixes.

“It’s plugged in?” I asked.

Kitty gave that the eye-roll it deserved, so I added, “In an outlet that actually works?” The Pismawallops High gym needed some upgrades, no question.

“I tried three outlets,” Kitty said. “It’s got to be a burned out bulb.”

I eyed the antique string of lights on our decidedly fake tree. There was no good way to find the defective bulb, unless the principal had someone in detention he really wanted to punish. Each bulb would have to be replaced, one at a time, and the string tested after each one. I made the sort of executive decision expected of a VP, even of a small-town PTA.

“Toss ’em. Buy a new set at McMullens when we get done here, and we can string them in the morning.”

Kitty nodded agreement and we moved on to the next set of crises. Arne was at my shoulder, so this time I had to pay attention.

“Someone has been playing with the hot pads and scrubbers. I left them perfectly arranged, and now look at them!”

I could see his point. The colorful clothes and crocheted plastic pot scrubbers were jumbled in disarray on the table. I thought it looked fine—a cheerful chaos—but Arne liked order.

“I suppose someone must have bumped the table or something,” I said. “It won’t take long to fix it. Get some of the kids to help.”

He pursed his lips and regarded the teens who swarmed over the gym, hanging decorations and creating a joyful chaos. At length he selected Kat and Brian—Kitty’s daughter and my son—and set them to work lining up the handicrafts.

By bedtime, the gym looked pretty good. Swags of greenery covered at least some of the cinder-block walls, and the tables lining those walls were heaped with seasonal goods. Our Holiday Bazaar was as ready as it would ever be, aside from the lights. Arne’s table was a perfect rainbow again, and Patty had the food tables organized with pricing signs to show were everything would go when the goodies rolled in in the morning. A fair number of sealed containers were already in place.

I checked to make sure none of the containers could be opened or nibbled through. We’d been known to have a pest or two in the school. Convinced everything was tight, I doused the lights, the last one out, and locked up.

#

I was the first one back at the gym Saturday morning, with Kitty right behind me hauling new strings of colorful lights. It was two hours until the holiday bazaar opened its doors, and we had some work to do.

I hit the lights, and scanned the room. Everything looked like we’d left it…until my eye reached the hot pads. Arne’s fastidious rainbow had been scrambled into a chaotic swirl once again.

“Oh, no! Arne’s going to have a coronary!”

Kitty, coming up behind me, said, “What?”

I pointed.

“We’ll have to get it back in order, fast.”

“But how could it have happened?” I wanted to know. “I was the last one out. It was fine then, and I locked the door. No one’s been here.” Except someone obviously had been there.

Carlos, the custodian and our PTA secretary, had keys, but he swore he hadn’t been near the place, and I believed him. That left burglars, who I assumed would at least have stolen some brownies, not just messed up one table; students, who would have no way to get in; or ghosts.

“Poltergeist. That has to be it,” I told Kitty.

“The Ghost of Christmas Presents?” she suggested.

“Let’s get these lights strung, then we can do something about the table.”

I checked the other tables, but as far as I could see, no one had touched anything else. I did eye one well-sealed pan of brownies, which seemed to have some scratches on the cover, but nothing had gotten in. We shared a brownie before we started, just to be sure they were okay.

We strung the tree in record time. Expecting volunteers and food donations to begin arriving at any moment, I crossed the room to turn on the music, though I’d been enjoying the silence. Kitty headed for the hot pads.

I was about to flip the switch when Kitty gasped.

“What?” I turned around, not sure what to expect. That talk of ghosts had been a joke, but maybe we were a little jumpy, or just punchy.

Kitty was crouching by the table, hand extended. She made a little kissing noise and said, “Kitty!”

“Why are you calling yourself?” Now I wondered if there’d been something odd in those brownies we’d tested.

“Not me—kitty as in cat.”

“Kat? What’s she doing under there?” And Kat couldn’t hide in that heap of hot pads.

“Not Kat. Cat.”

I still wasn’t getting it, and became convinced the brownies had been laced with something. That would be a fiasco, we’d have to…

“C-A-T. There’s a cat in here!” Kitty was laughing, at the same time as she tried to keep still and not scare the animal.

A little, scared, scrawny kitten crawled out from under the hot pads, where it had obviously made a warm nest for the night. Kitty scooped it up, cuddling it. “Here’s our Christmas ghost!”

“A Christmas present for Arne, for sure,” I laughed. “But how on earth did it get in here?”

“Santa?” Kitty guessed.

“And what do we do with it?”

“Her,” Kitty corrected, having taken a look. “She’s for Arne, of course.”

“You don’t think he’s going to adopt a cat, do you?” I looked at the ruin of his perfect rainbow. “Fussy, tidy people do not like kittens.”

Kitty smiled. “Wait and see.”

###

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

Deja Vu All Over Again

I so much appreciated last week's Deja Vu post, that I decided to republish a Christmas Story from last year.

It can be hard to get into the holiday spirit when you're all alone in a space ship, but Xavier Xanthum, Space Explorer, is determined to try.

Xavier Xanthum’s Xmas

Xavier Xanthum switched off his book with a sigh and stared at the window.  He was in deep hyperspace, so the window was black.  Whatever was out there, space travelers had long ago decided they didn’t wan to see it.  When he was in hyperspace, then, the window served as a vid-screen.  Xavier called out, “Larry, give me a snowy village scene.”  He turned away while the computer worked on the problem, and found the disembodied eyeballs that were Larry’s physical manifestation watching him.

“You are troubled, Xavier?”  Larry’s voice came from the speaker on the wall, not from the eyes.  It took some getting used to, but Xavier and Larry had been together a long time.

“Larry, how long until we make landfall?”

“Approximately four weeks.”

“And how long since we celebrated Christmas?”

“What?”  Larry was taken aback, not an easy thing to do to a computer.  He recovered almost at once, however, and said, “You were on Gobulan D on December 25th four galactic years past.  It is an Earth-colonized planet, so they presumably celebrate Earth holidays.”

“Huh.”  Xavier couldn’t recall, but four years was a long time in space.  “What’s the date now?”

“Stardate 27358.49.”

Xavier made a rude noise.  “What’s the Earth date?”

“That is a meaningless concept.  You are approximately 40,000 light years from earth.”  Hyperspace really was an amazing thing. 

“Count the days from the last time we were on Earth.”  He reconsidered.  It had been decades since he’d been on Earth.  “Or from that holiday on—where did you say?”

“Gobulan D.”

“Count the ship’s days on an Earth calendar.”  He waited a moment, then demanded impatiently, “well?”

“By that meaningless reckoning,” Larry said with disapproval in his allegedly synthetic voice, “this would be December 24th.  Do you wish to know the year?”  For a computer, Larry could be very sarcastic.

 Xavier ignored the sarcasm.  “December 24th?  Then we,” he announced, “are celebrating Christmas tomorrow.”

“Very well, Captain.”  Larry really could be sarcastic. “In what way do you wish to celebrate this event?”

“In the traditional manner!” Xavier said.  “You figure it out!”

“Very well.”

And then Larry refused to say anything more.  Xavier, for his part, went to work on creating decorations.  He had no access to pine boughs or holly in the ordinary way, but Larry, when asked if the replicator could generate a Christmas tree, gave a curt “of course.  Santa will bring it after you go to bed.”

Xavier thought that was unnecessarily sarcastic, but he forgave Larry.  The computer didn’t like it when Xavier got irrational.  It made Larry nervous.  He played around with the lights to give the single living-working space on his ship a Christmas feel.

The basic flaw in his holiday plans, Xavier realized, was the whole gift-giving thing.  He’d been reading what the computer library called “classics of earth childhood,” and Christmas definitely involved the exchanging of gifts.  Well, he would just have to give Larry a gift, since there wasn’t anyone else.

That left him with the dual challenge of finding a gift for a sentient computer, and doing it in secret when Larry knew every item on the ship and saw everything.

And who would give Xavier a present?  He tried not to think about that.  He even re-read the first chapter of Little Women to remind himself that it was better to give than receive.  He wished there might be some starving immigrants he could give his breakfast to.  He knew it was all silly anyway.  Just something to pass the time.

Even so, Xavier felt a little excited when he woke the next morning.  He had found a sock and attached it to the sticky-tab nearest the air duct (as the nearest substitute he could think of for a chimney).

When he rolled out of bed—Xavier kept the g-field just strong enough that he didn’t have to strap in at night—and exchanged his sleep-suit for a work jumpsuit, he saw a small, weedy-looking fir tree next to the driving panel.

Instead of pushing the button to fold the bed back into the wall, Xavier took a closer look at the tree.  Two small, colored balls hung from branches too limp to support them.

“Larry?” Xavier called softly.  “Did you do this?”

The eyeballs appeared next to him.  “I studied 20th-Earth-Century holiday vids, and this seemed to be the most popular look.  It is something called a ‘Charlie Brown Christmas tree.’  And it was easy to replicate, using the program for—” Larry broke off, and finished lamely, “well, you could eat it if you wanted.”

“It’s lovely, Larry,” Xavier said not quite truthfully.  “And a tree needs a present.”  He pulled a small box from where he’d hidden it in his covers.  He thrust the box at the eyeballs, which got a little brighter.

“Thank you, Xavier.  Would you open it for me?”

Larry had no hands, since he didn’t really exist outside the computer.  Even the eyeballs were a projection, or possibly a hallucination.  Xavier opened the package, feeling a small surge of pleasure even though he’d filled and wrapped it.  “More memory for you!”

“I thank you,” Larry said.  Xavier could tell he was pleased.  He’d meant the memory plates as back-up, but Larry would make good use of the added capacity.

“I’ll install it right after breakfast.”

“I regret that I could not. . . .” Larry began, but Xavier was looking at the stocking he’d hung.  It was wriggling.  Xavier shoved off across the pod and lifted the sock, which definitely bulged and squirmed, from the sticky-pad.

“What in space?”  Man and computer spoke together, as a small, furry head popped out of the sock, uttering a plaintive mew.

“Where did it come from?”  Xavier asked.  You couldn’t make a kitten from the replicator.

“I have no idea,” Larry said.

“A stowaway?  For all these weeks?  And why come out now, to hide in my stocking?”  He cuddled the soft animal as he spoke, and it licked his hand.

“Larry, a bowl of milk, warm.”  The bowl appeared in the food slot, and Xavier held bowl and cat as the animal lapped the milk with enthusiasm.  He scanned the night’s instrument records, as his hand absently stroked the soft fur.  Only one anomaly appeared, far too close to them for a brief period and then gone, and that was too absurd to credit.

###

©Rebecca M. Douglass

Friday (just barely!) Flash Fiction: Millions of Cats

I wrote the first 200 words of this story for the 200 word challenge back in November.  But even though the story got carried on and finished, I kept wanting to write the story I'd had in my mind when I started.  So here it is.  It's a little long, at 1169 words, but I couldn't cut any more.

 

Millions of Cats

Things never work out according to plan when there are cats involved.  I knew that, and I should have known better than to take the job.  But Keelan made it all sound so easy: we just had to pick up the consignment from Alpha-Centauri 4 and take them to Exilion 17.  Four days, max, and two of them in hyperspace.

“What could go wrong?”  I should really have run when Keelan said that, because I know darned well that anytime those words are uttered a disaster is sure to follow.

Unfortunately, we needed cash, and the cat people had it.  So we went and picked up the load of cats.

That was where the trouble began.  They were supposed to be crated, sedated, and ready to be stowed in the cargo hold.  But when we arrived, a team of cat-wranglers was still chasing them around a pen.  We had to wait an extra three days for all of them to be properly prepared for flight.

Once they had them ready, things seemed to look up.  The crates were loaded, and all was quiet.  The cat people promised that they would not wake up before delivery, as long as we made delivery inside four days.  They gave us the base payment, and assured us that the farmers of Exilion 17 were desperate for rodent-control mechanisms, and would pay a bonus for prompt delivery.

The trouble began almost as soon as we left orbit.  Not only did an odor start to permeate the atmosphere, but I began sneezing.  We’d never smelled that odor before, but we knew what it had to be.  I contacted Feline Solutions and asked about it.

“Oh, yes, they do excrete some while in the sedated state.  It’s at a much-reduced level and should not be any problem in the short time you will have them aboard.”

“Why am I sneezing?”

“Some people do suffer allergic reactions to cats.  If your ship air system is working properly, this should not be a problem.”

I wanted to argue.  Our ship’s systems worked just fine, and not only was I still sneezing, but my nose was running.  My eyes itched, too.  Further, we had only just left Alpha-Centauri 4 and already the cats were “excreting” in quantities that made the whole ship smell.  There was something fishy about this deal.  At least we’d checked the crates; they really were full of sedated cats.

Keelan and I talked it over.  All we could think to do was to make the delivery as fast as possible, and hope the bonus would be enough to pay for a thorough cleaning of the ship.  The base payment wouldn’t cover much more than costs.

We spent the next day getting clear of the Alpha-Centauri system.  I spent half the day in the auto-doc, getting allergy treatments.  If you think that’s fun, you’ve never met our ’doc.  By evening, I was full of meds and we were ready to make the jump to hyperspace.  That was when the next problem hit. 

Keelan found anomalies in the booster tests, and we ended up spending the next four hours running diagnostics.  The smell from the cargo bay was making both our noses twitch, and every hour’s delay reduced the chances we’d nail the bonus.  When we finally got it all fixed up, it was nearly midnight, and we had to check the programming three times, we were so tired.   The allergy meds didn’t help.

I suppose that was why I didn’t catch my error.  Everything checked out okay, and with a sense of relief, we hit the hyperspace button.

For the next two days, I alternated spending time in the ’doc and trying to adjust the filtration and air recycling system to get rid of the cat smell, as well as whatever it was about cats that I was allergic to.  The only thing we didn’t do was enter the cargo bay and check on the crates ourselves.  We’d been assured that there was no need for us to do anything; the crates would keep the cats sedated—in something like suspended animation, really—until arrival.  There were no user-serviceable parts.

Just when we were due to drop out of hyperspace, leaving us just a day of impulse drive to approach the planet, we made two discoveries.

I made the first one, which was nice, since I’d made the mistake in the first place.  Fortunately, my miscalculation was only in a single digit five spaces to the right of the decimal point, so it just meant we’d be spending an extra six hours in impulse drive.  That was bad enough news, of course, since we’d lost a similar amount of time on the other end.  We could certainly kiss the bonus goodbye, and the four-day sedation window was closing fast.

Keelan and I exchanged looks, but neither of us dared to say anything.  I’d made the mistake, but he’d uttered the fatal words, “what could go wrong?”  Maybe just to keep himself from making any comments about my work, Keelan took himself off to look into the cargo bay.  He came back at top speed.

“The cats!  They’re awake, and they, they,” he stuttered over the words, “they’re making kittens!”

“You mean there are cats mating in our cargo bay?”  It was a bit much, but no reason to get hysterical.

“No!  They’re having kittens!  All of them!  The blasted fools at Feline Solutions gave us a load of pregnant cats all due to give birth!”

My first reaction was panic.  My second was to read the cargo invoice very carefully.  When I’d finished, I looked up with the first smile since the fiasco began.  It would also be the last until it was over.

“We are contracted to deliver 325 female cats and 50 males.  It says nothing here about kittens or a state of pregnancy.  I think we might make a profit after all.”  Even after the deep cleaning.

“We sell the extra kittens on our own account?” he asked.  “Is that legal?” 

“As far as I can tell.”

“Then those cats need a midwife, to make sure they all survive.”  We exchanged a long look.

“I’m allergic,” I pointed out.

“I know nothing about childbirth,” he pointed out.

I would have given anything to be able to say I didn’t either, but I’m his mother.  “Program the kitchen to make chopped tuna.”  I took down my emergency respirator and positioned it carefully on my face.  “I’m going in.”

That’s how I came to spend the last day of the trip running a maternity ward for felines while Keelan handled the docking.  By the time we were done, we had three times the cats we started out with, I had a rash that itched for a week, and we ended with a substantial profit even after the deep cleaning.

Even so, I will never, ever, take cats on board again.  Despite the cleaning, the smell lingers.  And every now and then I break out sneezing.

###

Author's note: I must state that I love cats.  I am also as allergic as the narrator of the story, and will never take cats on board my space craft.  But I don't think they are bad luck nor are they a curse on a ship.

Gratuitous cute kitten/cat photos!

Flash Fiction Friday!

This week's Chuck Wendig challenge (blog not suitable for children) was "Smashing Sub-Genres".  Roll the dice (well, click the random-number generator) twice, and get two numbers that correspond to two sub-genres.  Write a story combining them.  Now, I admit I did it twice.  The first roll managed to hit the two absolutely least appropriate to this blog (splatterpunk and BDSM erotica, if you must know).  The second try was more up my alley: distopian science fiction humor.  Though writing distopia and humor together was harder than I thought!

Without further ado: Diary of a Space-Pup

Day One
All our lives we have known exactly what to expect.  Food, water, a smack on the rump if we did our business wrong.  No one troubled us between meals, and we developed our own way of doing things.  Total freedom, you might say.  We were happy, all of us puppies and kittens together, floating about our habitat.

Now everything has changed.  With no warning we were put down here where everything is hostile.  First there is the terrible weight that oppresses us.  Even without the other torments, this would be sufficient to crush our spirits as it has crushed our limbs.

But it’s not only the weight, which I heard our tormenters call gravity.  They laughed, as though it were merely a temporary nuisance.  Perhaps they are right.  Already I feel myself responding, my muscles hardening in preparation for whatever may come next.  But there is so much more.

The walls are gone, replaced with only the flimsiest of wire barriers, which block none of the winds or rain.  Our tormenters seem to think this should make us happy.  Happy?  Despite the fatigue of the crushing gravity, sleep is elusive.  We are beginning to show the effects.  Gone are the pillows and baskets we have slept in and romped among since birth.  Now we scrabble for a comfortable place on a surface littered with dirt, where plants alternately poke and tickle us, and tiny creatures crawl over us.  Is it any wonder we spend our energy on incessant alerts?

Day Five
It is evident that this is the existence to which we are doomed henceforth.  The ship will not rise again, and we must make what lives we can in this desolate place.  Already the rule of the strong is the only law we have, and the cats—frisky kittens no longer—have begun to plot.  We are none of us children any more, and my former puppy companions are developing the lean, thoughtful look of the hunter.  I greatly fear that chaos and war are the only options left to us, as we are forced to gather our own food and manage our own disputes.

Day Eight
The cats are muttering of war.  Fortunately, they are easily distracted, and a batch of butterflies has hatched nearby, creating a near-constant stream of pretty things to chase.  The Tormenters have ceased coming to watch us and we must develop the means to survive in, if not harmony, at least a state of truce.  It is very hard to get cats to come to any conference, now that we no longer share a common food source.  Rather, we compete for the common food source, and may the best hunter win.

Day Ten
The Tormenters returned to remove the fencing that kept us together.  The cats promptly disappeared into the brush, in search of more of the small creatures we have been catching within the enclosure.  From the sounds I suspect they have also found larger, fiercer beasts.   I feel myself reverting to some ancestral notion of behavior, leaping, chasing and killing.

Day 14
The weakest members of both cat and dog parties have begun to die, unable to hunt, or killed by their prey.  All life on this planet is heavily armed with teeth and claws, but so are we.  We must learn quickly to use them.

Day Twenty-One
The pack is starting to scatter, and the cats have mostly vanished into the brush.  They lost their fear faster than we dogs, but we are hunters now.  The local creatures are fierce and savage, but smaller than we, so we may yet defeat them.  I have given up all hope of an alliance with the cats, and am concentrating on survival for myself and my litter-mates.

Day Twenty-Three
Some of the Tormenters came around today, looking for the cats and dogs they abandoned so callously.  I considered eating one, but they are larger than I care to tackle, though soft.  Their leader nodded happily and said something about “adapting well.”  He seemed pleased that we were becoming savages, though some of his companions seemed to hope they could find the soft, purring or drooling friends they had made of us within the ship.  It is too bad for them.  Those weak creatures are gone forever, and we are what they have forced us to become.

Day Sixty
I saw some of the cats today.  They seem to have grown to immense size, as I have.  Two of them were eating one of the Tormenters!  A triumph for us?  It makes me long for the days when we celebrated our victories together, but I fear for the consequences.  The Tormenters have controlled us for so long.

Day Sixty-Five
I shall have to cease maintaining this journal, as the Chief Tormenter shows signs of suspicion.  I believe I now know our destiny, in any case, and believe that we can make it happen as and when we will.  He spoke to the other Tormenters when they found the remains of the one the cats ate, and I heard the words that made all clear.  “They are not kittens nor puppies,” he told them.  “We have bred lions and wolves to new levels of predation and intelligence. They can hunt anything that lives here, and the only way to get close to them is in their bellies.  But they will make this planet ours.”

At least one of the Tormenters understands something.  There is no going back, and we are not their pets.  But one thing he fails to see.  We are not their pawns, either.  We will not make this planet theirs.  This planet is ours, and they shall be our prey.

*****************

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What is "writing"?

This is a question for all us struggling writers who jam it in among our other life commitments, and waste far too much time in guilt over time spent NOT writing.  I'm here to say, anything you have to do for your book is writing.  I mean, I know hunting up a cover artist isn't writing.  But it's part of the job, and if you have only so much time, you need to take time from holding a pen and go do it.

So here's a list of things I have realized need to count, so I stop beating myself up over not doing any "writing" while dealing with them:
--the whole cover thing.  Finding artists, drawing my own, whatever it takes.  It's not a book without a cover, and the job must be done.
--revisions.  We've already discussed this.  Revising IS writing, and if you don't believe me, go back to your freshman comp class and try again.
--formatting.  Like the cover, it has to be done, and done right.  So you have to allow yourself the time.
--blogging.  Duh.  It's not your novel, but it's writing.
--marketing.  See covers and formatting.  It's nice if you can do this without impinging on writing time.  But if it needs doing. . . DO it.
--making coffee.  None of the above happens without coffee.

What doesn't count:
--cruising around Goodreads.com
--checking sales
--reading the news
--looking at cute kitten videos
--doing laundry
--grocery shopping
--housework of any sort
--anything (aside from making coffee) that isn't involved with either stringing words together or getting them into a condition to be shared with the world.

Dang.  I'm gonna miss those kittens.