The warrior, the wizard and the thief stared into the bottomless pit.
"Cliffside wallets!" the pit exclaimed. "The perfect wallet for the on-the-go adventurer! And did I mention Dr. Vessman's watertight boots? They're lightweight, and keep your toes dry in any dungeon! Such a bargain!"
"You know," said the warrior, "when they say the abyss gazes back at you, they neglect to mention sponsored ads...."
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Submissions are open through November 12 for fantastical flash fiction! We are paying a flat fee of $100 for up to 1,000 words (a pro rate of $0.10/word). We look forward to reading your best!
#WordWeavers 2403.01 — Introduce yourself as if you were a character in your story. What would your role be?
Can my story be autobiographical?
My first recollection was looking up at a dashboard in a car. It was green, made of metal. My dad was driving, but I don't think there were seatbelts.
I don't remember much from those days because I acquired language late, and then it was French because Mom sent me to a Montessori. I don't remember French, so I don't remember much. Autism was a secret that ran in the family, though I wasn't as bad as Uncle who stayed home all day building houses with cardboard and tape.
My specialness would account for other factors when I grew up, and, oddly, lead me to becoming an author. I think I had little native understanding of people's behavior, less of their expressions. It led me to intensely studying them, learning to predict what they'd do as if my life depended on it.
It did. If I didn't get it right, bad things happened. Don't remember specifically what, but I'm sure of this. Not understanding the language, nor the people, made it hard to remember more than images.
My next recollections come from when I was 7 or 8. It was night and I was home alone, no lights on. Batman was on primetime (/POW! Zowie! Holy Guacamole!/). By the flickering light of the the TV, Chef Boyardee raviolis heated in the pot and smelled really good...
Live. Laugh. Lie in wait beneath the murky black waters of the lake, wreathed in seaweed and smiling at the horrorstruck man in the boat with your sharp black flashing teeth as you snake your cold gnarled fingers around his wrist so tight the bones creak, pulling him down down down into the dark cold quietness of the foul rancid muck where you make your bower, watching all the beautiful glinting bubbles cascade up up up from his mouth as his scream dies with him
#WordWeavers 2405.01 — Introduce your setting as if it’s a character in your story.
[/Well, I decided to jump ahead in the WiP and write what might be the start of the next chapter. The title may be named:You Have Mail. Pardon the Dickensian texture; this is a first draft. —RS/]
I never expected a human habitation to feel as protective as my dorm room did. Sure, my lodgepole tent protected me through the blizzardy winters in the Fell Wood, as it did the wolf pack that had adopted me. I provided the tent, though. I repaired it, stored it, and raised it year after year. I maintained the cooking fire for all the wolves and cubs. It was I who was being protective, not it—or so it felt.
My dorm room wanted me to know that for the next few years, at least, it existed solely to protect /me,/ to comfort /me./ Increasingly, it did so as I added memories. Mother Wolf and I used one of the two small beds, the left one, piled with fuzzy brown blankets as needed or clothed with luxurious white cotton sheets that felt cool against cheek or jowl. Since I was tasked with the cleaning instead of the dorm servants, my room smelled of us, faintly of yeast, sweat, and a wolf that occasionally hunted rabbits but favored the cafeteria's pasture-beast stew.
The little red iron stove kept us warm through winter; the room's wood panel walls kept us shaded from the hot summer sun. It lovingly provided a rare enclosure—almost like walking within the orange and white rock walls of the slot canyons of the south woods—creating a remarkable silence in a land of noisy humans and huffing machines. This and its soft radiant cloud-light ceiling made me feel... what? Swaddled? Like being /home,/ as my parents would have used the word back on the farm when I was a child. My spirit books, fashion magazines, and papers cluttered the worn ink-stained blond pine desk. I ran my bare feet over the oval tapestry rug letting the patterns of wands and dryad trees caress my toes. My skin stuck to the cushy tan leather chair as I stood, but I knew that was it hugging me.
Situated to the rear of the building on the first floor, the casement window at the end of the rectangular space opened to the clay roof of a shed. Crisp autumn breezes fluttered the gauzy drapes as I looked out at the barrier forest beyond the stables, lit by the setting sun. The window conveniently allowed Mother Wolf to jump up, as she did right now, and clatter into the room as she pleased. She greeted me with an ever-wet red tongue on my face and backside. (A white wolf opening the front door of the women's dorm, with a key in her mouth, and walking in always frightened at least one student or professor. People called me their Wild Woman, but still never got used to the implications of the name.)
Best of all, as the special guest of Her Highness, nobody dared inspect my room. Everyone knocked, no exceptions. Wolf inside, right? Framed pictures of my boyfriend hung suspended by single powder blue silk ribbons, and they were /very/ inappropriate. Looking at him warmed me deeply, reminding me of being /us,/ together—so I didn't care that my foolish "civilized" human brethren might think. People existed to enjoy themselves, regardless of what nosy people might say. This room supported me as I lived here, trapped in the Townships because circumstance required me to learn to be "more human" as Her Highness was fond of saying. My little supportive enclave encouraged me to be me, and allowed me to dress or not dress as I pleased behind its closed oaken door.
When the House Mother knocked, I simply threw on a dressing gown. I turned the pictures around before answering—to be respectful. It tickled me that she never asked why I always smiled when I opened the door.
Technology and science wasn't magic, and Sharp Eye knew this more than ever. Five generations ago, Fleetmaster Running Talon had turned a portable cannon on his first Tyrannosaur, and ended their species rein of terror. Since that day, science and progress had ruled their world. Telescopes and the study of astronomy were unknown to her grandkin. The laws of orbital dynamics took a decade to render correctly, and her own grandmother had invented the slide math-relator that made verifying it all possible.
She lived in a world that promised her hatchlings steamships that could cross the Great Ocean between ports reliably, in days, because it need no sails. It offered /their/ hatchlings the possibility of powered flight using a lightweight heat engine. Literature discussed the not too fictional possibility of one day visiting the moon.
She ought have been happy with life and her grand future.
This wasn't the case. She turned the great telescopes with there photo capture plates toward the sky every night.
She'd found a streak.
Not a new planet. Something far smaller. Something far closer.
The rodent was very brazen outside the window. She'd been throwing the mammal bits of meat for the last month as she'd directed the telescopes, so of course he was. It chittered. With googly eyes, needle teeth, and the rotted smell of offal, the creature wiggled its pink nose and whiskers at her. It could see through a window! So smart. Its furry kind survived the freezing nights on the mountain, where despite her downy feathers, and a heavy parka, she could barely breathe the frigid night air. It burned her lungs.
She'd found a giant rock in space. A week later she confirmed it was two. The latest plate insisted she'd found a co-orbiting swarm, the biggest the size of a city or larger, the rest not that much smaller. Its mass made her think it was mostly iron-nickel. The length of the streaks on the plates grew smaller as the planet's gravity well influenced the orbit, sending it down on their heads.
Physics was physics. The ellipse calculations were irrefutable.
Between the constantly erupting volcano lands on the opposite side of the continent—which made sunset burn orange and purple, and sometimes caused snow to fall at the equator—and the dirt and dust that would be kicked out of the atmosphere by the meteor impact to rain down molten rock across the land, would it be that prolific mammal's descendants who'd inherit her decimated world?
Sharp Eye took a deep breath, inhaling the steam of her tea. The big question was: Did she announce her findings? While she had time?
Did it matter?
Who was she to break the world's ignorant bliss by announcing the inevitable? Fame didn't matter any more. How could it?
She sipped her tea and watched the soon to be victorious vermin nose through gravel, looking for roaches. She set the cup down, thinking how pleasant living only in the present was. She knew the future.
Then she thought, surely roaches would survive. Right?
"Someone explained to me that you were a prizefighter," the blue-winged day angel said unexpectedly. "Makes sense why you were such a good enforcer for the Boss." Bolt had been thoughtful the last block or so. Like the approaching clouds in the sky and hot rising humidity, I saw it coming on her face.
"He blackmailed me," I said, shrugging. "Fun work, though. You saw, I frightened people into paying. Acting crazy. Fists, sometimes." I cracked my knuckles. "Which was fun, too."
"Blackmailing you was his first mistake."
"And his last."
Bolt chuckled, but paced me, slightly in front, evaluating my expression. An ask? "I'm told you don't like dairy—"
/Okay. Where's this going?/ "Upsets my stomach—"
"—and rarely eat eggs. Just veggies. Even with beans and lentils, that's piss-poor low-grade protein for all the physical training you do daily."
I shrugged.
"No fish? Not pescatarian?" Arched brows. Her wings lifted, expectantly, feathers rustling in the breeze.
I studied her. Bolt was a new friend. I'd saved her during the sting operation to topple the Boss, from being shot by the constables—spiriting her away before they could arrest her, and me. The next day, she'd saved me from being blasted by a thaumaturge far stronger than me. I'd have been incinerated. She had healing burns all over her legs for her trouble. We'd both been used all our lives, and bonded over that, when it came down to it.
Yet... Someone had fed her misinformation about my diet. I suspected who. An old friend, a devil-boy who'd once worked for me, loyal to a fault. He had a crush on me, but was accepting my new boyfriend, not fighting it. For the time being, at least.
He was testing her.
I shrugged, just as my stomach growled, loudly, and my face warmed.
She pointed to the top of the building we walked under. "Just so happens, the best Fish & Fry pop-up in Home City is topside today on the terrace." Day angels "roosted," living on the top floors of buildings (or the canopies of forests, or on cliffs. Wings. Naturally.) The physical requirements of flight made them pescatarian. Devil girls and boys were never that strong. I was an exception. Prizefighter. For others, fish was yuck! Eyeballs, don't you know?
"Wanna try some fish?" she asked.
"Um..."
"Mackerel's got the crispiest, sweetest, lightest batter in existence. Shrimp, also. Broiled. Fried kippers and onions. It makes me drool, thinking about it."
I looked askance, waiting to see where she went with this, equivocating non-verbally.
"I'll fly you up! You'll love it."
"What makes you think so? I am no kind of angel."
"The extra protein will help your training, but I guarantee the taste will win you over. I'll even buy."
"Guaranteed, huh?" I stopped. Looked up. Counted fifteen stories. A lot of stairs. With a ride? /Let's test this!/ "Wanna make a bet?"
She sniffed the air. She pursed her lips. "Yeah, sure."
"I don't need money." I gave her a look, grinning, wanting to test her certainty, her resolve. "You kiss me." I would not force her to pay, of course.
She took a deep breath. She looked away, so I didn't know if she flushed. "I can do that. Deal!" She grabbed me around the chest before I could renege, under my armpits.
She hoisted me skyward. It was thaumaturgy: Gravity fields warped around us, playing with my inner ear as she flapped, manipulating them with her wings. A minute later, she set my feet on terracotta tile. The scent of fried food hit me. Super fresh oil. I heard the hiss of fryers, the clack of plates, and flatware tapping against earthenware. Day angels swarmed the vendors. I saw none but the feather folk. I captured every eye.
Of course, I /loved/ Fish & Fry. Kippers and onions, too. Everything she bought me.
Bolt said, smiling nonetheless, "Were holding out on me, weren't you?"
"Don't know who sold you that bridge, but they made a profit. This is as good as any place on the sea coast." I shivered. "Crispy. The perfect amount of oiliness. The homemade hot sauce... the right amount of malt vinegar and salt." I licked my fingers, my lips, then wiped with a tissue. "Thank you! As for our bet—"
In front of all the angels—who minutes ago had watched wondering if I'd turn green or upchuck—she kissed me. Not on the cheek, either. One of those tilting your head kisses. Deep. I—
Was she testing me?
I returned it, though I preferred devil boys, myself.
After a minute, when she decided she needed to breathe, I decided she wasn't a half bad kisser. Maybe she liked me? More than the being-grateful-for-saving-her part? We'd have to discuss, but she needed to buy me a second helping of the rice-battered shrimp, first!
How many years was it since I adopted this family of two-legged monsters? I'd trained them well to feed me on demand and provide me a warm bed and reliably clean litter. In return, I kept their house free of cockroaches and sometimes left a fresh bird on their doorstep.
It took me all this time to figure out the sounds they'd been babbling at me were actually a name! My mother had named me Flash Claws because no kitten was faster.
My monster family had named me, "Whiskers."
How much more demeaning could it be to be named for a body part that every cat had in common? Not much.
I. Was. Soooo. INSULTED.
I immediately took it out on the roll of paper the two-legs mounted for me to get my frustrations out, but the folds of white did nothing to ease my frustration. I walked by my scratching post and took it out on the sofa instead, but that wasn't enough.
Whiskers? REALLY?
The female monster with her kittens left the house, and I thought maybe I'd give her a scratch. I rushed out the cat door. I stopped quickly when she dropped her set of metal door openers. I snatched the keys and jumped back through the cat door.
The thumping on the door was gratifying, but then there was the male, who'd probably come up with the ridiculous name because he was just that stupid. He often sprawled on the sofa—the one I'd just scratched my frustration out on—containers of smelly liquid sometimes foaming all over him, watching his flicker box and farting when nobody was looking, right in front of me where I could smell it. Like an old dog. Many were the times he'd not let me sleep on his stomach. So uncouth.
I loped into the room with the bed and the clothes, selecting a nice white shirt. I dragged it to my litter box.