Fi50 (Fiction in 50--words, that is)

After watching Jemima Pett do it for a year or two, I decided it's time for me to jump on the bandwagon with The Bookshelf Gargoyle's Fiction in 50 challenge. That's a complete story, in exactly 50 words, written to a prompt he provides for each month. Posting is the last week of the month, and I'm targeting Mondays of the last week. This is my first attempt, so go easy on me--it's harder than it looks!

Moving with the Times

Innovation can be hard on the tradition-bound. I’m really trying, though, to get used to reading the new way. My son says anyone can do it. It’s easy, he says.

But it’s not easy, rapping him over the knuckles with one of the new-fangled books. My old scrolls are better.

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

Writing news and a short story

I'm pleased to share that The Problem of Peggy: The Ninja Librarian Book 3 has come back from all the editors and beta-readers, and progress is happening once again. I expect to complete edits--mostly minor--in the next few weeks, before sending it out for a final edit and proof-read.

The cover is also nearly done--except that part where I remembered I needed a blurb for the back cover, for advertising, etc. I've obviously waited too long between books, to be forgetting that sort of thing!

I'll be doing a cover reveal in a couple of weeks, and if you'd like to participate, drop me a PM. By then I should have all the pre-order stuff set up, and have polished that all-important blurb. The cover was a struggle this time, but I think among us (that would be my cover artist, Danielle English, my co-worker Laurie, and yours truly) we came up with a good one. It will be a match for the first two, so that the trio (oh no! have I written a trilogy? I might have to write a fourth book after all, just to avoid the trilogy thing) will look great on your shelf.

In case you've forgotten, Stinky and Stinklet show off books 1 & 2

Now, since it is Friday and I promised you a story on Fridays, I'm going to share an all-new story from Skunk Corners--told by Crazy Jake Jenkins. This one isn't part of any of the books, though it maybe fits in around the time of Return to Skunk Corners. It's just under 2000 words, so settle down with your coffee and enjoy!

Crazy Jake and the Boy from the Train

When Big Al set out to teach me and Wild Harry Colson to read, I thought she was wastin’ her time.  Yeah, we’d been tryin’ to learn, and we’d even got our strange Librarian to help us out, but much as we hankered to learn, I figgered it was way too late for the likes of us.

And I admit I never really figured some female could teach us, especially not some crazy female who dressed and acted like a boy.  Truth was, when Al come to town, she never let on she was a girl, and folk got to thinking of her as a boy and didn’t much heed her ways.  But that’s neither here nor there to our story.

But Al not only taught us to read, she fooled us into learning to figure, too.  Next thing you know, we was hankering for a job on the trains.  And we got that job, though I’ve always suspected the Librarian of pulling some kind of magic to do it.  Or  Tess.  She wanted us out of town bad enough to call in a favor or two, I reckon.

Well, we’d thought to ride the trains and see the world, but we ended up on the run up and down our own Skunk Mountain, and didn’t never see much else.  Thing is, there was a lot to see on that run.  Gold Camp, Carter’s Mill, Lupine, Pine Knot, Two-Bit, Skunk Corners, and Endoline.  That gave us maybe enough look at the world for now, and plenty of tales we ain’t told no one, least of all Harry’s scamp of a brother, Tommy.

Things just seem to happen around me and Harry.  It’s a gift, I reckon.  Take the time we were on the hill between Lupine and Pine Knot.  There’s a real steep bit there, and Engineer encourages the young and energetic to get down and walk.  We allus say it’s so’s they can stretch their legs, but really it’s on account of the railroad’s too cheap to give a second engine so’s the train can climb the hill fully loaded.

Harry and me, we was sort of junior conductors, taking out the trash and sweeping the cars, and one of our jobs was to make sure folks didn’t lose themselves on the walk, and everyone was back aboard and accounted for at the top.

This time I’m thinking of, folks piled off, happy enough, near the bottom when the train slowed to a crawl.  There was a whole party of boys from someplace down in the Valley, coming up for fresh mountain air.  Maybe they’d find some when the train was gone, but I have to say that there were clouds of smoke from the engine choking us all the while we climbed.  A train is a powerful thing, but it makes an awful smoke.

We’d not been afoot long when one of the ladies who escorted those boys scurried up to me.
“Oh, Mr. Conductor!”

That was a promotion for me, but I let it pass.  It felt kind of good, truth to tell.

“Mr. Conductor, that bad boy Frankie Murphy has disappeared again!  Can’t you find him?”

Well, I looked at Harry, and he looked at me.  I didn’t like the sound of that there “again.”  And we already knew Frankie.  Twice we’d caught him exploring the brake van, and just the other side of Lupine he’d pulled the emergency stop. I’d threatened then to string him up by his heels, but some boys just can’t be held down.

Sorta like Tommy, come to think.  I dunno, maybe Harry and me made folk feel that way, too.  Tess has threatened us within an inch of our lives, more’n once.  So I had some sympathy for the scamp.  But I also kinda sorter wanted to let him stay lost.  Either way, the little rascal was like to cost me my job.

Any road, Harry and I stuck our heads together and, upshot was, he kept on with the rest of the passengers and I went off after our one strayed lamb, as Preacher Dawson would have said.  He never did have a very clear view of how folks is. Not much like lambs, if you ask me.

So off I went, trying to figure what a boy like Frankie would do.  I stopped and listened, now the train was pulling enough ahead to hear something besides that.  Off to the right I heard Skunk Creek.  The tracks follow the creek right up the mountain, and if I knew boys, water would draw this one like wasps to rotten apples.  I headed for the creek.  Back down the line just a little, a sort of path led over there, and I trotted back, guessing he’d been tempted to check it out “just for a minute.”

That’s how it always is with boys like Frankie, see.  They don’t mean to be bad, but stuff interests them, and off they go to see what they can see.  I reckon a boy like that needs someone like our Ninja Librarian to teach him stuff, and keep his brain busy.  This fellow, as near as I could make out, lived in some sort of orphanage down in the valley, where they probably made them all go everywhere in lines and do the same stuff every day.

The train was making pretty good time up the hill, and I picked up my speed a bit, slithering the last few yards down the bank to the creek.

I didn’t see hide nor hair of any boy, but there was plenty of sign.  He’d been there, alright.  He’d stood by the water and thrown rocks at a log for a bit, then—you didn’t have to be a good tracker to see this—he’d turned and started following the water up the hill.  At least he’d had the brains to go up, I thought.

Trouble was, there’s no path or nothing along the creek.  I could see here and there where he’d pushed through the bushes, and prints when he’d come to the wet banks to throw more rocks.  But it was a chore to follow him, and I was taking too long.  That train wasn’t even close enough to hear now, not over the sound of the waterfall ahead.

Maybe he’d be at the fall.  That ought to keep a boy, right?  I pushed ahead faster.

Frankie was at the falls, sure enough.  He was standing right under the fairly gentle stream—it was summer, and our creek gets pretty small in the dry season, once the snow’s all gone from up high.  And he was nekkid as the day he was born.

I almost hated to do it.  He was laughing and having a great time, and probably getting the best bath he’d had in a long time, with no other boys around to make fun and maybe pick on him, since he was smarter than they were.

But I had no choice.  I scooped up his clothes, and shouted at him, “You come along fast, or you’re walking the whole way.  That train won’t wait!”

He hadn’t seen me arrive, nor heard me of course.  I took a bit of satisfaction from making him jump, and turned back toward the tracks.  There wasn’t any path here, save a bit of a deer trail, where they’d come down to drink from the pool.  I noticed there were shoes in the mess of stuff I was carrying, and I grinned to myself.  That would teach the squirt to run off—he could run on up to the train barefoot.

“Hey!” I heard him shout, but when I didn’t turn around I heard a bunch of splashing and pretty soon he was panting along behind me.  “Give me my shoes, anyhow!”

“Nothin’ doing,” I puffed back.  I was pushing the pace, both to make sure we caught that train and because I wanted him to suffer a bit.  “We’ve no time.  I’m sure not walking all the way to Pine Knot, and maybe beyond.”

“My shorts, then,” he wailed.

I chanced a glance back, and he was running well for someone in bare feet.  I guessed he’d not worn shoes all that much anyway.  But he was red all over, and I thought maybe it wasn’t from running.  Now he was out of the water and out of the woods, I guessed maybe he’d had second thoughts about getting naked.  I glanced ahead.  The train was nearing the top of the hill, and people were clustering there.

It was one of the hardest decisions I’d made.  If we stopped for him to put his shorts on, we’d surely make everyone wait—if Engineer would wait, which he might not.  But if we didn’t, well, Frankie would have to run up and get on the train in front of everyone, wearing nothin’ but a smile, as Pa used to say.

I compromised.  I dropped the shorts, calling, “you get those one and run like crazy to catch up, because I’m not waiting!”

I didn’t even look back to see what he did, though I didn’t expect him to catch me, and I didn’t really expect the train to leave without him.

Nor did I expect what happened.

I was sorta jogging up the hill, giving him a chance as you might say, when that boy, shorts now mostly in place, came speeding up behind me.  Frankie could run!  And what’s more, he could run farther and faster than I could.  He’d been holding out on me!  I looked ahead.  Folks were mostly loaded back onto the train, and Frankie was well ahead of me.  I could see the engine was getting up a good head of steam, ready to continue on, and I tried to run a bit faster.  It looked like maybe Engineer would leave us after all.

The cars began to move, and I knew we were doomed.

Only Frankie, he put on a bit more speed, and managed to catch the back rail of the brake van as it pulled away.  Like a squirrel he just sorta jumped up on that platform, and waved to me as the train picked up speed.  I stopped running and threw my hat on the ground in disgust.  Looked like I was in for a long walk, and maybe I’d lose my job, too.

Then, hanged if that little rascal didn’t go inside the van and pull the emergency brake.  The train squealed to a stop again, I staggered the last few yards up to the back of the van and swung aboard, and Frankie met me with the sort of grin that makes you want to slap a boy silly, or else elect him president.

I handed him the rest of his clothes, and went to check the connections, pretending there really had been a problem.  I met Harry coming back the other way.

He tipped me a wink, and said, “the rotten kid beat me to it!  I was gonna pull the brake for you, and he got there first!  Man, that kid can run!  Left you in the dust, sure enough.  Reckon he’ll go far.”
I didn’t comment.  Frankie might well go far, if he didn’t get killed first.

Maybe we should keep him in Skunk Corners.  Seems like he might fit right in.  But I wouldn’t want him and Tommy getting together.

 ###

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2016
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Friday Fiction: Halloween in Skunk Corners

This week, Chuck Wendig didn't give us a flash fiction challenge, instead offering the suggestion that we share our first chapter of NaNo novels.  Since I choose never to inflict anything on my readers, even my blog readers, until it is edited at least once, and of a preference twice or maybe 15 times (whatever it takes, when it comes to my books), I chose not to participate.  Fortunately for me, as I cast about for a story, I received the following from the Ninja Librarian himself, just in time after a long silence!  Somehow Tom always knows when I need a helpful word.

But even before we get to that, please vote in the NEW title poll on the right side of the page.  I've taken my favorites from the titles suggested both here and on Goodreads, and am doing another round.

Halloween in Skunk Corners

After my lengthy silence, I return to report to you about recent Halloween-related events in Skunk Corners, lest one of your informants provide you with an inaccurate account of the celebration.  Events of that evening did develop in a manner I believe you will find interesting, and I believe that only Alice and I know the full story, as befits the librarian and the teacher.

You may recall that on a previous Halloween we in Skunk Corners were visited by something presenting itself as a headless horseman and endeavoring to terrorize the good citizens of the town.  That proved a snare and a delusion, most especially for the unprincipled varmint who perpetrated the impersonation, though he spent far less time in constrained circumstances than I would have preferred.  This year, I kept a sharp lookout for any disquieting developments in Skunk Corners, lest  any neighbors, perhaps from Endoline or Pine Knot, might attempt something similar.

Nothing, however, seemed amiss in the days leading up to this most curious American holiday.  While the adults concentrated on the harvest and preparing the seasonal treats, the young folk of the town gathered together where they believed themselves free of adult supervision and laid their plans for mayhem.  None seemed to rise to any level in need of my attention, though of course I kept a close eye on their festive preparations.

Alice, she whom others in town choose to call Big Al, likewise reported calm in the school and the town, and began (on my recommendation) to read the works of Edgar Allen Poe.  We selected a few of the less horrifying works to share with her students.  “The Raven” they found a bit creepy, but it gave no one nightmares, not even the smallest children.  Al is very careful of her youngest charges.  “The Cask of Amontillado” even I chose not to read after dark.

Everything proceeded quietly.  Too quietly for my restless young friend.  The day before Halloween Alice and I ‘cooked up a plan’ of our own, as she phrased it in the local argot.  Assorted pranks having long been standards among the somewhat older children of the town, we thought it was it was our time to turn the tables on them in a new way.

The hardest part was managing to get our efforts completed after dark but before the young folk began work.  In the end, our fine Mayor, Mrs. Herberts, helped us all unknowingly, for she declared a town celebration, with soup and pie, to be held at Two-Timin’ Tess’s Tavern on Halloween night.  I suspect Alice of having been behind this idea, as she knew very few people in Skunk Corners, young or old, could resist a soup and pie dinner.  Even the most dedicated pranksters would be sure to be indoors for the serving of the pie.  Annie’s pies are worth going out of your way for. 

So, in the early evening, while our townsfolk filled their bellies with good food and their souls with warmth and laughter, Alice and I lost ourselves in the crowd until we could slip out unnoticed.  Working hard, we finished in time to return and judge the pumpkin-carving contest.  First prize went to the elderly Miss Cornelia, who proved to possess a wholly unexpected talent for the conversion of squash into works of gruesome art.  I dearly hoped none of the small fry would have nightmares after viewing her lit pumpkin in the dim room.

Then we said our goodnights and went decorously off to our quarters in library and school.  Only, after a decent interval to allay suspicions, we crept back out rather less decorously to enjoy the fruits of our labors.

Everyone keeps a cow or two, of course, and generally at least one ends up on the roof of the railroad depot on Halloween night.  As a general rule, it is Archibald Skinner’s cow, for he is a most unpleasant man, and frequently chases the young folk from his property.  It does no harm to the cow, and gives the children a chance to exercise their ingenuity in concocting the means of elevating the bovine.

The other annual prank is, of course, the horizontal displacement of the house of comfort behind the bank.  What Alice refers to as “knocking over the Tolliver privy.”   Mr. Tolliver is a favorite of no one.

On this Halloween night, the young people divided themselves into two bands, desetined for barn and bank.  Soon we heard voices.

“Hey!  He’s moved his cows!  There ain’t no—what on earth?”  Alice nudged me in the ribs.  Someone had discovered that the cows were gone.  In their stead, tethered in place in the stalls, stood a pair of outhouses.  We’d had to borrow not only the one from the bank but also Mr. Skinner’s own, in order to match the number of cows to be removed.

About the same time, a loud whisper came from behind the bank.  “Hey!  What are these cows doing here?”  Soon the two groups of would-be pranksters came back together, with much laughter and indignation and smothered outbreaks of gaity, and appeared to own themselves outdone.  Smothering laughter of our own, Alice and I departed to our well-earned beds, assured of our own brilliance.

Imagine our surprise and chagrin in the morning. 

There, behind the bank, lay two cows on their sides.

Atop the depot, proud and tall, stood the banker’s outhouse.

And on my doorstep, perhaps in homage or perhaps to say that they knew who was behind the swap, sat a gourd, carved in the perfect likeness of mephista mephista, or the common skunk.  I don’t know who carved it, but I can guess.

###

Flash Fiction Friday: Peggy's Story

This is another in my random and growing collection of stories from the denizens of Skunk Corners.  Peggy Rossiter is one of Big Al's students, and secretly wanted to learn even before the Ninja Librarian came to town and made it okay.

Photo by Tom Dempsey, c. Photoseek.com.  Used with permission

Peggy’s Story: When Big Al Came to Town

So, Mr. Tom wanted me to tell you about when Big Al came to Skunk Corners.  It was a few years ago, so I was only maybe nine or something, and still stuck in the Second Reader.  I might not remember everything, but I saw Al come to town.
   It was like this.  I guess I was the only kid who hadn’t heard that Jake and Harry had chased off another teacher.  They used to make the schoolmasters’ lives miserable, until they’d just up and leave.  One time we had a schoolmarm, a real cranky old maid you wouldn’t think had ever had a soft feeling in her life, and she left in tears after just two days.  The boys never laid hand on any of them, not like how they treated librarians.  They had other ways, being bound and determined not to go to school, or to learn anything when their folks walloped them into going.
   I guess the last laugh was on them, come to think of it, but you know all about how they ended up coming back to Big Al to learn to read.
   Anyhow, I’d come into town that morning for school.  Even then I kind of liked it, though I wasn’t making much progress, what with never having a teacher for more than a few weeks at a time.
So I was standing in the street by the empty schoolhouse at sunrise when someone walked into town off the trail from Endoline.  I could tell it was a kid, dressed in his Pa’s clothes and hat, which were just a little too big.  You could see he was pretty uncertain.  He looked around a bit, then his eye lit on Two-Timin’ Tess’s Tavern, and I saw him nod.  Of course, there was no one up at the Tavern at that hour, so the kid just walked on up to have a seat under the tree.  That was where I was, but I guessed he didn’t see me, not until he was already sitting down and I spoke up.
   “Hey.”
   Then the kid jumped a mile, before getting a grip and looking at me.  Then he said, “Hey yourself,” and the voice sounded like a boy who’s just starting to change, so I guessed he was maybe 14 or 15, but big.
   “I’m Peggy.  What’s your name?” I asked.
   “Al.  Some call me Big Al, I guess cause I’m big for my age.”
   “What’re you doing here, Big Al?”
   “Looking for work.  What’re you doing?  Dodging chores?”
   “Naw.  I came for school.  But looks like the boys chased the Master off again.”
   “You like school?”  Seemed like the kid wanted to talk.  I think talking was better than thinking, but then I was just kind of flattered that a big kid would pass the time of day with a squirt like me, and I was curious.
   “Well, I like learning,” I hedged.  “School isn’t so great.”  That got a bit of a smile out of the stranger.
   “Me too.  Guess that’s all done for me now, though.”  He turned away and didn’t say anything more.
   After a bit I said, “I suppose if there’s no school, Pa’ll expect me to come home and do chores.”  I didn’t get up.  “What’re you doing?”
   “Waiting.  My Pa,” I saw him swallow hard, “Pa talked of Miss Tess and this here Tavern, so I thought I’d ask.”  Suddenly sounding angry, the stranger said, “You’d better shove off then.”
   I’m no dummy.  I figured there wasn’t any Pa any more, and maybe the kid needed to cry, so I took off.

   That night my Pa started talking about the school, and how the townsfolk thought maybe it would be a good idea just to leave it closed, seeing as it cost money and no one was getting much good out of it anyhow.  Pa glanced my way when he said that, being as he knew I liked school.  I felt pretty low.
   But next day I went into town, and Mr. Burton, who calls himself the Mayor, was saying that they had to get a new teacher, because the School Inspector was coming and we’d be in big trouble if our youngsters weren’t in school.  So they were pretty desperate for a teacher.  Mr. Burton was asking around for who could read, but of course all the grown folk who had any learning were either long gone from Skunk Corners, or they had work already, and no time to teach a pack of mostly unwilling youngsters.
   Now, don’t you tell Al, or I’ll end up in the creek, but I up and told the Mayor that this Big Al fellow, seemed to have maybe been to school some.  I was making a wide guess, but I wanted my school, and maybe I felt bad for him, because he hadn’t found any work yet, and was sleeping in Tess’s woodshed with the mice and spiders.
   Al dodged a bit at first, but five dollars a month and a room to sleep in must’ve been a powerful temptation, because pretty soon we had us a school again.  That’s when the fun started.
   Everyone always came to school the first day with a new teacher, to see the fun.  That meant Jake and Harry, too, and they set right in with their usual tricks.  They figured that Al being younger’n them, he’d be easy pickings.
   It took about a half a day before our new teacher had had enough.  The boys were making comments about Al being some kind of sissy, or even a girl, on account of his voice not being really changed.
   Instead of bursting into tears or anything, Big Al walked down the aisle past the rear desks, where the big kids—Jake and Harry and a couple of girls—sat, and opened the door.  Of course, we all thought our new teacher was going to walk out.  But instead, Al came back, grabbed one of those boys in each hand—and now we saw that even though Big Al wasn’t any taller than them, he had a lot of muscle.  Next thing Jake and Harry knew, they were out the door, and Al stood on the top step saying, “You are done with school.  I don’t want to see your faces here again, unless and until you actually want to learn, which I don’t reckon will happen in this world.  Idiots.”  Then Al closed the door and walked back to the front of the room.
   “Anyone else?  If anyone doesn’t want to at least pretend they want to learn, you can join those boys in the street.  Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean you can get away with anything here.”
   Well!  You could have knocked us over with a duster full of feathers!  There Al stood, looking just as much like a boy as ever, saying she was a girl as though we’d known all along.  We were too stunned to move.  After that, I think most stayed out of curiosity about this girl who dressed and acted like a boy, and could throw bullies out without breaking a sweat.  I’m not saying many of us did much learning.  But I’ll tell you, no one ever tried to make Al leave.

  

So that’s how Big Al came to Skunk Corners and how she became our Teacher.  I guess maybe Tom would like to know more about why she came and all that, but she’s never said, except that bit the first day.  Al’s private, and I guess Mr. Tom’s the only one could ask her about it and not end up in the creek, unless maybe Tess could.  I’m not asking.  I’ve no hankering for a swim this early in the spring.

Flash Fiction Friday: The Choker

This week, Chuck gave us a random choice of twenty psychic powers.  The roll of the dice gave me psychometry, the ability to tell an object's past from touching it.  I'm not much on this kind of thing, and the story turned dark on me right from the beginning.  It's not really suited for the young.

The Choker

I was with Brian when it began.  I knew something had happened, and I tried to get him to talk about it then, but experience he would not and I let it slide.  That was my first and biggest mistake, but we who have these powers are slow to speak of them, and with reason.

Brian had taken me shopping with him to look for a birthday present for his wife.  She liked old jewelry—not necessarily antiques, but old.  Brian had seen a shop he thought looked promising.  You know the kind: half junk store, half antique shop.  A few good bits mixed in with a ton of trash.  It just takes patience, to keep looking until you find treasure.

Brian spotted it first, and pointed it out to me, half-buried on a tray with stamped-tin costume stuff: a silver choker, made from four strands of fine chain.

To tell the truth, I didn’t like it.  It reminded me of a choke-collar for a dog, somehow.  But Brian was drawn to it, and I figured he knew his wife better than I did.  The choker was in a display case, and Brian had the proprietor take it out for him.  When he handed it over, Brian froze for a moment, and swayed.  I thought he was going to pass out, and he dropped the choker.  Only a couple of seconds, and then he apologized, pulling himself together.  He bent and studied the chain where he’d dropped it on the counter, but he didn’t touch it again, not then.  He’s quick, I’ll say that.  Or maybe it wasn’t as new a sensation as I thought.  To my surprise, he said he’d take the thing, and asked the man to wrap it for him.

I managed just to brush it with a finger as the proprietor took it up, and the sense of pain and despair was breathtaking.  No wonder Brian had nearly fainted, meeting that for the first time.  I gave him a sharp look.  He’d shown no signs of psychometry before, as far as I knew, but something had definitely happened.

It’s a tricky thing, talking about stuff like that.  I asked a few leading questions as we went back to the office, but he didn’t answer.  I worried about his wife, , but Brian didn’t give her the necklace.  He kept it in his office.  I caught him, twice, with it laid out on the desk, his hand held just above, not touching it.

I tried.  I let him know that I’d seen.  “You’ve got to get rid of that thing,” I said.  “It’s getting a hold on you.”  I tried to say it in a way that would let him know I understood, without coming right out and saying it.  Just in case.

“I can’t let it go,” he said.  “I need to know—” and he broke off without finishing the thought.  I admit I lost courage.  I should have done something.  Taken the thing and found out what it was.  Instead, like Brian, I guarded my secret against my fear.

The day came when I went into his office and he didn’t turn at the sound when I closed the door.  He sat, rigid, and my heart sank.  I stepped closer, and my fears were confirmed.  Both hands lay face up on the desk, the choker draped across them.  I called his name, and he didn’t answer.  I clutched at his shoulder, and his head moved a bit, and I looked into eyes that reflected a soul gone—somewhere.  He breathed, but that was all.

I snatched the choker from his hands, and nearly screamed.  It clattered to the floor where I flung it from me, and my moans mingled with Brian’s.  His moans said he knew something had happened, but a look at his eyes told me it wasn’t enough.

I knew what I had to do.  If I followed him where the thing had taken him, I might find him, and I might be able to bring him back.  If it didn’t kill me.  Psychometry is all very well when it uses happy objects from an innocent past.  But I had already seen enough to know that this choker was no beloved bauble of contented women.  It was a choker.  A slave-collar.  Steeped in eons of death and despair and hatred.  No wonder Brian, not believing, not knowing anything, had gotten lost.  And it was my fault, for not warning him.  My fault, and my job to set it right if possible.

Careful not to touch the thing, I seated myself in the lotus position on the floor by his feet.  I took up the cloth lying on the desk, and even that held an echo of the choker.  I picked the thing up with the cloth, closing myself to the emanations that leaked through the fabric.  A few deep breaths took me into a light trance.

Then I unwrapped the thing and let it fall on my left hand.

I have no idea how long I was frozen there, one agonized life after another passing before me.  Even the most recent, long after slavery ended, were marked by grief, no doubt due to the necklace itself.  You didn’t have to be able to see it’s past for such an object to hurt you.  I tried to control what I saw, to let the images and feelings flash by without absorbing them, and even so tears ran down my face and only my fist stuffed in my mouth kept me from screaming as I moved with the choker back through the ages, through each woman’s pain and wretchedness and hatred.  Oh, lots of hatred.

I nearly lost myself.  I clung fiercely to my sanity, and kept going, and at the end of it I found Brian.

I found him, but I could not bring him back.

Flash Fiction Friday: The Quick and the Quicker

It's another Friday and another Chuck Wendig Flash Fiction Challenge. This week he presented a list of (reader-provided--that was last week's challenge) opening lines and asked us to write a 1000-word story starting with that line.  I chose “I never trusted that statue in the garden behind the house.”

The Quick and the Quicker

I never trusted that statue in the garden behind the house.  The place was crawling with statues, but the rest remained well-behaved, doing as they were told and returning to their appointed places when asked.  It creeped me out a little, but Mom and Dad took it all for granted, and said I was much too sensitive.  Mom liked it.  She said it was like living in an art gallery and that helped her create.

Mom’s an artist, and she’s had a lot of trouble working lately.  She says all artists go through dry periods, and she just needs inspiration.  I don’t know what inspiration one gets from statues that won’t stay put, and I’m not sure I want to know.  Mom’s work is a little weird.

There was one statue that did the washing-up for us every evening.  She looked like some kind of queen or something to me, but seemed to like scrubbing pots, so we let her.  It was only later that I thought how weird it was that a bronze statue could plates and teacups.  At the time, it seemed natural enough, and what surprised us was that a queen wanted to wash dishes.

The place was doing strange things to us, and I blame the statue in the garden.  It bugged me because it was the only one that didn’t ever move.  Maybe  that should have been reassuring,  but not in a house where every other statue, sculpture, or bit of three-dimensional art wandered the house at will, trying out new points for displaying themselves.  Not many were as active as the Queen, of course, but even the paperweight on the library desk, an amorphous blob probably made by someone’s 4-year-old, drifted around.  Once I caught it hiding in the drawer.  But though the statue in the garden behind the house never seemed to move, I noticed it didn’t have any weeds or vines or even lichen growing on it.

We’d taken the isolated house for the summer, and at first it was great. Then, at the end of the second week, it rained, and I stayed in.  By now I’d gotten pretty used to the statues, and learned to look where I was going in case one had moved into my path.  Once in a while I chased one off to keep the hall clear enough to get to the bathroom in the night, or asked the man-sized abstract to move so that it wouldn’t block the front door.  They didn’t talk, but moved politely.

But the statue in the back garden.  .  . I sat in the library that rainy morning, looking out and debating if it was worth getting my boots and rain jacket and going to see if the creek was rising, when it caught my eye.  It still hadn’t moved from where it stood—and it’s a sign of how the place was getting to me that I found that creepy—but I could see its head swiveling from side to side, watching the house with blank eyes.

After a few minutes, I began to hear the familiar shuffling of the statues rearranging themselves.  It sounded like they were all gathering in the hall, and suddenly I didn’t like it one bit.  I crept to the library door, and opened it just enough to peek out, down the hall toward the entry.  The big abstract had blocked the door again.  And all the other statues, I’m pretty sure it was every one in the house, stood before it, as though they were receiving commands from a leader.  Aside from the shuffling noises, they were as silent as always.

Suddenly frightened, I ran back to the window.

The statue was gone.  Now I heard a noise in the hall that sounded—but I must have imagined it—like a murmur of angry voices.  Now I was really scared, and I wanted Mom.  But I stopped with my hand on the doorknob.  If I opened that door and went out, I’d be in full view of all the statues, and they were between me and the studio.  Whatever was happening, I didn’t want them to know I was watching.

That left the window, and just before I climbed out, I turned back and picked up the fireplace poker.  It was the only thing at all like a weapon that was definitely not also a work of art.  I’d wondered about it.  In a house where everything was art, this one tool was clearly just that: a tool, bought at the hardware store, straight, dull, and heavy.  That weight felt good in my hand as I crawled out the window into the rain.

Creeping behind the bushes, I make my way toward the front of the house, where I hid behind the largest bush of all.  The statue from the back garden stood on the porch, and the front door was opening, ever so slowly.  The noise from within grew louder.

At that moment I knew that statue must not be allowed to enter the house.  In my most commanding voice I yelled to them all to go back to their places, but the garden statue only turned to fix me with a malignant gaze from it’s blank stone eyes.  If the statues wouldn’t obey me, I knew what I had to do.

Clutching the poker in both hands, raising it over my head, I ran for the porch, and brought the weapon down on the stone head with all my force.  The impact numbed my hands, and bits of stone stung my arms and face.  The statue split in two, and lay still.

The door swung open, and I felt the gaze of all the statues in the hall.  Pretending I wasn’t scared to death, I stood taller, held onto that poker with both my stinging and numb hands, and faced the crowd.

Then I commanded them to return to their places, and they went.

 

 

Lost in Space--Flash Fiction Challenge

I've bitten on another Chuck Wendig Flash Fiction challenge.  Playing on the "write what you know" meme, he asked us to take an incident from life and turn it into a bit of fiction, preferably genre fiction.  I'm going to take a pan that once went missing right in my house, and put it with a ghost on a space ship.  It's 1000 words max, but I came in well below.

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

Arthur had waited a long time for the chance to steal something.  He didn't even know why he had to, but ever since he’d died he’d felt like he couldn’t move on until he stole something from the living.  And there is so little on a space ship that isn't fastened down.  He couldn't believe his luck when he saw the frying pan, just lying on the counter like an abandoned sock.  As soon as he wrapped his ghostly hand around the panhandle, the whole thing vanished into the seventh dimension, where neither ghost nor living human could enjoy it. What was the point?

 *  *  *

Sarah was unpacking the shuttle.  They'd had a good holiday Down Below, but it felt good to be home again.  She and Gil had lived aboard the Lady Luck since they were married four years ago, and this had been their first real trip dirtside.  Haven was a fully Earth-like planet, and very little developed, so they'd been able to land the shuttle where they wanted and had enjoyed a grand week of fishing--you could even eat the local fish--and a lot of lying in the sun.

 She pulled the kitchen supply bin out of the shuttle, and the frying pan that had cooked so much tasty fish tottered on the top.  She didn't want it to fall, so she set it aside on the mechanic's bench and carried the box into the dining bay.  Some spacers let the machines do all the cooking, but Sarah liked to cook. She'd grown up dirtside on Golden, and always stocked up on what she called real food.  Gil laughed at her, and sometimes grumbled about the extra space her kitchen supplies took up, but he liked her cooking and humored her.  Still, he let her haul all the kitchen stuff off and put it away.

 Sarah puttered around the dining bay happily stowing her gear, then a glance at the chronograph told her it was time to fix some dinner, so she got on with it.  Just a simple dish, the last of the campfire bread she'd baked that morning, and a bit of the local cheese.

 It wasn't until the next morning that either she or Gil remembered the frying pan, when she wanted it to cook up some bacon she’d picked up in port.  She sent him to fetch it.  Gil came back in a minute.

 "It's not there.  Are you sure you didn't bring it up here?"

 Sarah sighed.  Typical male.  Couldn’t find his head if it wasn’t attached.  "I'll go.  I know just where I put it."  She did, too.  The trouble was, it wasn't there.  The bench was cleared and secured for zero-G, though they were still running the gravitation motor.  There was no frying pan on it.  She searched the cargo bay, then each part of the ship, even the ones they hadn’t entered since returning.

 There was no frying pan anywhere.

 "Gil, it isn't there.  And I KNOW I left it right on the counter.  Could the cleaning ’bot have picked it up?"

 "I didn’t run it last night, since we’d just got back. Anyway, it’s programmed to avoid the mechanic’s bench.  We’re the only people on this vessel, and we didn’t either of us touch it.” 

Sarah looked at him suspiciously.  ‘Are you sure. . . I know you think my cooking gear is an extravagance.”

 “Swear by all that’s sacred.  Anyway, I would never get rid of that pan when you had bacon to fry!”

 “I suppose not.  It’s gone, but no one and nothing could have picked it up."

 "Only a ghost," he said, and they laughed.

 * * *

Down in the cargo bay, Arthur’s last thought as he slipped into the eighth dimension was that, at last, he knew why he had to steal.  He’d never see that pan again—but it had freed him at last of the blasted ship.

The Librarian Explains

At last, I've heard from the Ninja Librarian again.  He sent me this bit, which seems to relate to an incident described by Big Al in her narrative of his first year in Skunk Corners.  Without further ado,
The Librarian Explains. 

The Librarian Explains

Once again, I feel it behooves me to present my own view of events in our town of  Skunk Corners.  Alice does her best to be fair, of course,  but she is not in a position to see all sides of things.  For example, I know that Alice never thought I stood up for her properly in the matter of the fellow who came courting.  I refer, of course, to the man who called himself Nebuchadnezzar Jones, to  whom she was forced to present an exceptionally clear indication of her lack of interest in any form of romantic involvement.
   I might, it is true, have handled that situation in a more helpful manner.  The difficulty, of course, lay in the fact that I know very little about young girls, and still less about the sort of young woman that is Alice.  To be sure, there are unlikely to be any others quite like Alice, so it is wrong to speak of her “sort.”  Alice is, I believe and hope, in many ways unique.
   But I can see Alice giving me that particular look that says she doesn’t believe I am telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  She is still young enough to believe that she should know everything—and, perhaps, that her way of seeing things is the only way.
   I admit to being rather taken aback when Alice presented to me her concern that the young man who had watched her practicing her kicks and blocks down by the watercourse meant to court her.  It struck me as unlikely that such a young man would recognize the value of a young woman as unconventional as our Alice.  Still less did I trust his assertions that she was the most beautiful creature he’d seen.
   Alice is the child of my heart, and is a great deal more good-looking than she allows herself to appear.  But she is not, as he tried to tell her, the loveliest woman ever.
Thus, my suspicions were aroused when Alice reported to me that the gentleman—I use the term to offer the man the benefit of the doubt—had run on about her loveliness.  I would have trusted him farther had he simply said that he admired her strength and thought she would handle life on his homestead well.  I would not have liked him any the better, as I do not believe that a man should evaluate a potential mate as though she were a draft horse, but I should have known then exactly what his intentions might be.
   Because Mr. Jones took us both by surprise with his claims of being rendered nearly senseless by her beautiful presence, neither of us could immediately establish an appropriate response.  Being further uncertain of Alice’s own desires in this matter, I chose to keep my mouth shut.
   Now, I know that Alice will tell you that she made her feelings completely clear to me, and so I should think she did.  But I have known young women in my early life. . . though perhaps the least said of that the soonest mended.  I did choose to separate myself from this event, so that there should be no opportunity of reproach.

   In the event, of course, as Alice has made clear in her own narration of the events, keeping my mouth shut left me open to strong reproach indeed.  I left the young woman to resolve her romantic troubles on her own, and as a result she was forced to fight off an attack from out of the dark.
Though I will point out, as she will not, that Neb Jones never stood a chance.

   And yet. . . as Miss Alice would say, I am dancing around the truth.  If I am to be wholly honest, as was my intent in writing to you, I will say that I had no wish to encounter the young man for reasons of my own.
   Neb Jones was not, in fact, a stranger to me.  I believe that he actually came to Skunk Corners in search of me, with intent to wreak some form of revenge. 
   I met Mr. Jones on the train coming west.  He was, as I came to understand, running a con on what he would doubtless refer to as “suckers,” or “ignert greenhorns.”  That I was, in fact, as green as the hills in spring, I have already confessed to you.  I am not, however, a fool.  Though I was taken in my Mr. Jones’ gambit in the beginning, I soon saw that he was less than honest.  Further, I saw that he had “taken” several poor immigrants for sums that they could surely ill afford. 
   I therefore exposed the man, and assisted him to leave the train rapidly.  In that, I gathered, I had done him something of a favor.  The other victims of his efforts, having recovered their valuables, were in favor of more violent reprisals.
   Mr. Jones, however, seemed to have little appreciation of the manner in which I had saved him from a worse fate, and vowed revenge.  How he found me in Skunk Corners I do not know, but I had little desire to meet him, feeling that I would either be forced to treat him with violence or would become the brunt of his coarse ribaldry for my failure to initially recognize his falsehoods.
   I had not thought that he might cause trouble in town by other means.  I still am not certain if he attached himself to Alice because she was my pupil, or merely out of what she might call cussedness.  He may have thought to humiliate her, or he may have had some idea that she would be easy prey to a man with a tongue he apparently considered golden. 
   Had Alice been a different sort of girl, I would, of course, have intervened at an early date.  Naturally, she never knew that I watched all that he did, albeit discretely.  I had no wish for him to even learn for certain that the man he sought was in Skunk Corners, and in fact he did not.  I beg you to understand that this sprung not from any physical cowardice, but rather from a worse source: a fear that I would lose my hard-won standing in the community.  This I greatly regret.
   Nonetheless, I believe that the outcome of the incident proved better than I deserved.  To wit: Alice learned to make up her own mind about a possible suitor, with no advice from a perhaps too-respected elder. 
   She then learned to discourage him through a series of escalating tactics, from simply declining to associate with him, through the final discouragement by means of the very fighting skills I have been at pains to teach her.  Finally, she learned to speak up—and speak back—to her townspeople.  I do not think that Alice herself has realized it, but from that point forward, the denizens of Skunk Corners have listened to what she says.  Not only those who like her, but also those who dislike or distrust her, or are merely flummoxed—to use her own word—by such a one as our  Alice.

   She does not yet see it, and might not like it if she did, but Alice has become a leader in her community.

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Halitor the Hero (short story)

Note: this is the product of a challenge on Chuck Wendig's blog.  (Caveat: blog not suitable for children, but many of the stories linked in the comments are great fun for adults).  Using a random number generator and only cheating a little, I ended up with the prompt to write a comic fantasy in which someone is mad or going mad, and someone gets poisoned.  Limit 1000 words (I clock in at 999).


Here it is:

Halitor the Hero

Halitor the Hero was going mad. 

Who wouldn’t, when every day he had to do again what he’d accomplished, at great personal risk, the day before? 

Halitor should have known better than to accept a quest from an unknown client in a hooded robe that hid his face.  But the Hero business had been slow lately, and a guy had to eat, and feed his horse.  The uniform didn’t come cheap, either.  You’d think a few hunks of leather and fur and a pile of weapons wouldn’t run you much,  aside from the initial outlay for the sword and axe.  But the stitching on the leather kept coming undone, and moths had gotten into the fur fringe on his cloak, so he’d had to have the whole thing redone.  And sword polish cost money.

So Halitor took the job.  It had sounded simple enough.  Just kill this fellow Thoriston.  Had to be an easy mark, with a name like that, right?  Mind, Halitor was a hero, not an assassin.  But he had it on good authority—that of the mysterious hooded stranger—that Thoriston was a tyrant from whose bloody rule all Polyopolis waited to be freed.  There would be cheers and feasting, as well as a bag of gold, just as soon as he’d done the job.

And that was the problem.  The job wouldn’t stay done long enough to collect.

Halitor used his sword the first time.  He leapt in front of Thoriston on the street, claimed offense for something or other, and beheaded him on the spot.  Then he’d faded into the crowd and waited for the cheering to begin.  The silence was deafening.

He hadn’t expected the beheaded tyrant to reach around for his head, stand up, and twist it into place.  Halitor was halfway to the border before he remembered that he was a Hero, and Heroes don’t give up.  Also, he needed that bag of gold.

Next day he used his war axe.  It took Thoriston a little longer to assemble the pieces, but he’d still finished before Halitor could find the stranger and get paid. 

He’d used his longbow, crossbow, dagger (that had nearly been fatal to Halitor, as Thoriston now had guards whenever he went out), throwing knives, pike, and a team of runaway horses.  All Halitor wanted was for the fellow to stay dead long enough for the mysterious stranger to pay up. He wouldn't.

By now, Halitor knew that Thoriston was an alias.  This was a god, and the obvious god was Thor.  And trying to kill Thor was plain crazy. 

And so Halitor knew he was mad, because he didn’t give up.  You couldn’t kill a god.  That was written in the rulebook.  Gods can’t be killed.  Not for more than a few minutes.  To try was insane.

Halitor lurked now in the shadows of Thor’s home.  Palace, really.  Crouched behind the arras in the dining hall, he gripped a glass vial with the tenderness he usually reserved for cash payments.  This was the one that would work.  A poison so strong that it could even kill a god. It could only kill him for a few minutes, but it was a long-lasting poison.  Each time he brought himself back to life, it would kill him again.  Halitor liked it.

The table was set for two.  The only challenge was to guess which place belong to Thor, and which to the unknown guest, for a Hero couldn’t randomly kill the wrong person.  He was mad, but not without honor. 

Halitor studied the table.  A plate of gilded china sat before an imposing chair, crossed battle-axes at it’s back.  The other was a mere wooden trencher, sitting before stool.  Thor was out to demonstrate to someone their relative positions of might.

Halitor considered what he had learned of the god in a week of killing him.  He made his decision, and crept into the empty hall.  It took only a moment to drip the poison into the already-filled goblet and turn to leave.

“You are punctual.  You will join me, Halitor the Assassin.”

Halitor nearly peed his fur-lined loincloth.  Where the kraken had Thor come from?  And had he seen what Halitor’d done?  Halitor thought of escape, but Thor had brought his bodyguards, giant men from some other world, big as boulders and bright blue.  They cut off all exits, so he had to bluff it out.  Thor waved  toward the table, and Halitor turned toward the lowly stool.

“No, my friend.  An assassin as persistent as you should not take the humble seat.”  Thor gestured to the throne-like chair.  “Please.  That one.” 

Halitor again searched wildly for an escape, and still found none.  He took offense instead.  “I am Halitor the Hero.  I am no assassin.”

“No?  Seven times you have killed me this week.  Odin certainly found a persistent tool this time.”

Odin.  Halitor could have kicked himself.  No wonder the chap who’d hired him had hidden his face.  Even Halitor would recognize Odin.  He was drinking in nearly every tavern you entered.  Halitor was pretty sure Odin could be in at least ten taverns at once.  Maybe more. 

Nothing to do  but play the game to the finish.  Seven times doing the same thing and expecting a different result.  But maybe he wasn’t mad.  This time the end would be different, and someone would finally be dead.

Halitor sat where he was told, but didn’t take up the goblet when Thor offered a toast.  “I never drink on the job.” 

Thor nodded and took a drink from his own pewter mug.  Then he looked at Halitor, appalled. 

“Odin!  You--”  Thor never finished the sentence.  Halitor stood and smiled. 

His gamble had paid off.  He hitched his sword into place, brushed off the giant blue guards, and turned to the door.  He had one task left, and little time to do it.

He had to collect his fee from Odin before the poison wore off. 

Short Story--An Elegant Apocalypse

  Sunrise on Planet X-4732B is one of the most stunning and beautiful events in the Universe.  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.

  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.

  So 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 human or human-like 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.

  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.  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 at the same moment.

  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 orignal 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.

With reverent apologies to Douglas Adams

The Ninja Librarian Speaks!

I recently received a package via very special delivery.  Inside I found the following communique, which I ( thanks to far too much exposure to Geoffrey Chaucer at an impressionable age) have chosen to title. . . 

THE LIBRARIAN'S TALE

-->

Up to now, I have allowed young Alice to narrate events in our town of Skunk Corners, and for the most part she has done an admirable job.  On deep reflection, however, I have determined to set straight the record on a few points.

Young Alice has an unfortunate tendency to depict me as both mysterious and, there is no other word for it, stuffy.  I confess to the former, as both certain vows I took and long years of habit render me reticent about my personal life and history, and disinclined to explain myself.  The charge of stuffiness, however, I most heartily deny.  I am an educated man, of course, and inevitably I do speak as such.  There is nothing wrong with that, and indeed I believe any attempt to speak and act otherwise would render me absurd.  But to be formal is not to be stiff or stuffy.

That point settled, I wish to recount my experience of my arrival in Skunk Corners, as young Alice has very clearly expressed her own and the town’s reaction to my arrival. 

Skunk Corners did take me very much by surprise.  Rather, on my arrival I saw much what I expected: a collection of ignorant people bent on demonstrating their ignorance.  I responded as I had been taught, withholding judgment only from Alice, of whom I had been told something.  I consider this forbearance to have been fortunate and highly rewarded.

For I did know something of the town before arriving.  And I knew that the school teacher was a young woman who dressed and acted as a boy.  I ought to have assumed her to be coarse and uneducated, and our first meeting certainly did little to change that idea.

And yet.  She went out of her way to warn me of the welcome planned for me, and for that I would give her a chance, despite her coarse appearance and dreadful abuse of the language.

Young Alice herself has recorded the outcome of that decision, and you can conclude that in the end I found something different than the crude collection of cruder individuals I had anticipated.  What Alice has not shared, simply because she does not know it, and I have been disinclined to tell her, is the manner of my passing my first night and morning in Skunk Corners.

I was all eyes and ears when I stepped off the train in this town that was to be my home for the next months.  I have never told Alice, nor anyone else in Skunk Corners, but this was my first time out West.  All my other assignments had been in the larger cities back East, as indeed are most Ninja Librarian assignments.  It is in those cities, with their gangs on both sides of the law, that there is often the greatest need for a librarian who is both educated and skilled in the ways of the Ninja.

It had been some thirty years earlier that the heads of the Society had gotten the idea to build libraries in the new towns springing up out West.  It was only now that they were realizing that some of those libraries needed to be staffed by the Society.

So there I was, after what seemed a lifetime riding trains of ever-shrinking dimensions, walking down the street of my first Western town.

It wasn’t much to look at.  Depot, church, Mercantile, teashop, bank, tavern, school, library, and a City Hall with a fine façade hiding a shoddy pine shack.

I noticed everything that day.  No one was expecting me, but a number of idle men hung about the depot, so I introduced myself.

“Good day, gentlemen.  I have come to serve as your librarian.  You may call me Tom.”  They didn’t, of course, call me any such thing.  Two nodded, which I took as a greeting, and one spat on the platform, which I did not.  A fourth called me something else entirely which I will not repeat here or anywhere.

Somehow, by the time I had crossed the platform and stepped into the dust of what they called Main Street, word had spread through the settlement, and every porch and doorway bore a watcher, not one of whom deigned to offer a greeting.  At the end of the street, the library and school glared at each other across the dusty thoroughfare, just as the school children gazed at me in open hostility.

Of their teacher I saw nothing at that juncture, nor did I much wish to.

When finally I entered the library and closed the door behind me, I sagged with relief.  In other places I had been librarian, a small violent element prevented a peaceful majority from using the library as they wished.  In this gods-forsaken town, it seemed every resident wished me gone.

Or dead.

The thought did not fill me with either joy or hope that I would make a difference, though I would fulfill my vows and make every effort.

The contemplation of the interior of my rooms did little to comfort me.  If the Society had thought to include a stove in their design for the living quarters, there was no indication of such now.  Only an open hearth greeted me as the means to heat both myself and my meals.  A stale smell of untouched books and dead air pervaded every corner.

I am quite aware that many of my new neighbors had lived and possibly even thrived in such conditions all their lives, less the books, of course.  But, as a city man, I had a problem.

I had always boarded until now.  I knew nothing of cookery, and while I felt confident that I could boil water and prepare the kind of simple repast to which I was meant to limit myself, I had no idea how to go about doing so on an open fire.

Thus, when I met Young Alice in the back entry of the library that night, it was not only that I had heard her enter and meant to discover the meaning of the intrusion.  I was also escaping the clouds of smoke I had generated, first by kindling the fire without opening the damper, and then by burning my toast beyond all recognition.  The warning which Alice delivered meant less to me at that time than my fear that I must starve in this forsaken outpost beyond the fringes of civilization.

However, by dint of much effort, I managed to produce boiling water and make a cup of tea.  I made no further attempt to toast my bread, but rendered it edible by dipping it in the tea, and so contrived to still the demands of my interior until morning, when I was forced to do it all again.

Thus, you see, I was in no mood to put up with ill treatment the next day when the townsfolk gathered to send me back where I came from, upright or in a box.  Had I been better fed, I might have been less quick to respond aggressively.

That, I suspect, would have been a pity.  Some towns do require a firm hand.

This narrative was signed simply, "Tom."