Turning around, Victoria observed the staff specifically assigned to her every beck and call waiting patiently for their orders. Permanently tattooed eye brows raised as she observed they seemed to be predominantly females. Sighing, she simply nodded in the direction of her bedroom for the numerous bags to be deposited.

She needed to have a long soak of lavender oil in tepid bath water, along with the best champagne the place had to offer. She would order dinner to nibble on as she began her three-hour procedure of getting ready for bed. Victoria headed to the vanity mirror in her bedroom, ignoring the staff efficiently putting her things away. Leaning in, she observed the most miniscule beginnings of a wrinkle on the corner of her left eye. Damn plastic surgeon. She’d told him to up the dose of Botox. She was getting tired of paying out hard-earned money to idiots who didn’t listen to her. Victoria chuckled. Well, actually Charles’ hard earned money.

A maid appeared in the reflection of the mirror, waiting for instructions. Victoria’s eyes narrowed, jealousy shooting through her veins. The usual nausea, which came along with the exaggerated threat of another attractive woman in the same air space, washed over her. She would make sure this one would never come back to her room. Eventually, Victoria surmised, she’d have enough klout at the spa to get any and all of the attractive women fired. Satisfied with her plan, she coldly barked out orders to the maid. The maid, a youthful nineteen year old, ignored Victoria’s offensive manner. She was use to women reacting with hostility towards her shimmering black hair and almost transparent green eyes. It came with the territory. Although, this particular woman, had more venom than most. It was no never mind to her the consequences of Victoria’s behavior. She fulfilled Victoria’s orders and silently slipped out of the suite.

***

Victoria heard the chirping of the native birds far too early in her opinion. Removing the black sleep mask from her eyes, she stretched lazily. She’d had a little too much champagne last night as she set about her nightly anti-aging routine. Her head throbbed slightly as she grimaced from the sour aftertaste in her mouth. The phone on the nightstand rang.

“Good morning, Mrs. Samson. This is your morning wake up call,” an annoyingly cheerful voice sang.

“Good morning but I’m not ready to start my day. Can you make those birds shut up, please? And ring me back around one or two. I should be up and ready by then,” Victoria snapped before slamming down the receiver.

Replacing her sleep mask, Victoria pulled the comforter over her head just in time to hear a loud knocking on the suite door. “For the love of……” Victoria muttered, throwing the comforter off. Grabbing her robe, she stomped to the door, flung it open to glare at the intruder. “Do you have any idea what time it is? I am not ready to start my day! Period!” Satisfied she’d made her point, Victoria gave the door a good push. As she padded to the queen size bed, she realized she hadn’t heard the door slam shut. Exasperated, she turned to find a slew of people entering her room, pushing carts.

“What is this? I thought I was here to relax and be pampered,” Victoria demanded.

“Mrs. Samson, it states clearly in the contract what the day’s schedule is. We begin promptly on time. No need to fuss or be upset. We’re here to treat you like the queen you are,” an elderly woman replied. Guiding Victoria to the sitting room, she gave the staff a quick glance. As if one, they nodded and began preparing for the day’s pampering.

“Can I at least get a cup of coffee? Or is that asking too much?”

“Coffee is here, one sugar, no cream. Just the way you like it, Mrs. Samson,” came the answer.

“That’s more like it,” Victoria sniffed as she was led to the massage table awaiting her.

“Just relax, Mrs. Samson. We’ll take very good care of you. Marianne will begin the body massage, starting with your feet. Chester will begin the facial. Once those are completed, we will begin with your transformation,” the elderly lady explained, handing Victoria her coffee.

“My transformation? Oh, that is rich!,” Victoria cackled. “Does that mean you’ll peel twenty years off my face and body? With this ‘transformation‘? You should, with the amount of money I’m paying.”

Satisfied she was thoroughly in control of the staff, Victoria handed off her coffee cup without so much as taking a sip. Laying back, she felt instantly relaxed as Marianne began rubbing a lavender-scented oil on her pedicured toes. Chester gently covered her near perfect face with a rich and silky cream, lulling her into a state of sleep.

‘Tell me, Victoria. What frightens you the most,’ a soothing, bass voice coaxed.

‘I don’t want to get old, like my momma,’ Victoria answered in a little girl’s voice.

‘Is that why you’re a guest here, Victoria?”

‘Yes, I want to stay young, forever. At any cost,” the little girl whispered.

“What happens when you get old, Victoria?’

‘Your daddy leaves your momma for a younger woman. It’s bad to get old,’ the little girl whimpered.

***

“Mrs. Samson, Mrs. Samson,” the elderly voice intruded Victoria’s mind. “The doctor is here to talk to you.”

“What? Okay, I’m awake,” Victoria mumbled. Head feeling foggy, her voice sounded gruff to her ears.

“Mrs. Samson, I’m Dr. Bersten. I performed the procedure per your friend’s request,” the soothing, bass voice stated. “I wanted to explain how the procedure works.”

Victoria’s eyes snapped open, her heart beating rapidly. “What procedure? I didn’t ask for any procedure!”

“Relax, Mrs. Samson. Cassandra is an important client, as well as contributor to our special spa. She personally recommended you for this little procedure.”

“I don’t understand,” Victoria stammered.

“Here at ‘Fountain of Youth’, we have, quite by accident, discovered a means in which to pull the youthfulness from one person and transfer it into another person. It seems Cassandra wanted to forgo a couple of procedures and thought you’d be a good candidate since you’ve had so many surgeries to maintain your youth.”

“Oh,” Victoria exhaled. Sitting up, she brightened. “So, Cassandra wanted me to look even younger? How delightful! I bet I must look about fifteen or sixteen. Okay, maybe that’s stretching it, but at least my late twenties. Quick, give me a mirror.” Victoria began looking around to see her new-found youth. “Why are there no mirrors in here? Wait a minute. What’s going on here? I demand you tell me what’s going on!”

“Here, let me show you,” the elderly woman smiled, holding a hand-held mirror.

Hands trembling, Victoria reached for the mirror, eyes swinging terrified from the doctor to the elderly woman. Locking eyes with her reflection, Victoria’s mouth opened to release a horrified scream. Staring back at her, was the face of a ninety-year old woman whose face bore a road map of hard years and gullies of wrinkles.

“What have you done to me! What have you done!” Victoria screamed over and over. “You made me old. Not young. I wanted to be young. Forever young,” she began sobbing.

“Look at it this way, darling,” a woman’s voice smirked. “If you’re only in your thirties now, looking this wretched, imagine how youthful you’ll think you use to look when you reach your eighties.”

“Cassandra!”

“Yes. Fortunately, this procedure only pulls out youth. I was a little hesitant to you use yours, since you do have so much natural ugliness inside. But as you can see,” Cassandra laughed, coming closer to Victoria, “It only made me look like I’m in my twenties. Ta ta, darling!”

–
By Chelle

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Head Ant challenged me with “You are on your dream vacation in Australia. Then you face something frightening…” and I challenged R Martinez with “Eyes so mesmerizing, I…..”

Her father had told her this with such frequency as she grew up that at some point it became her default approach to life. This isn’t to say that she was an unfettered success. Far from it. Failure was a constant companion through much of her formative years. And yet she was never daunted. Always in her memory sat the image of her father, pipe resting pleasantly between thin lips, paper drooped ever so slightly, just enough to enable him to see her standing in the doorway in her pajamas. ‘Nothing is impossible,’ he muttered through one side of his en-piped mouth, ‘unless it involves staying up past your bedtime. Go to bed, my love.’ And back up would go the paper.

She finally found her creative calling as an artist and when she told her father that she wanted to be an art major in college, she thought that she saw in his reaction the slightest twinge of regret. ‘Promise me that you won’t give up on this decision’, he said, recovering himself, ‘for the life of an artist is difficult and the rewards lie mostly within. But I know that you’ll do well. Do you know why?’

‘Yes, daddy’, she replied, slightly exasperated. She wasn’t sure what he meant about the ‘rewards within’ stuff and it would be years before she appreciated the part about the difficulty of her chosen path. What always kept her going, confident in her choice and passion, was the seed planted in her grey matter from when she was merely a sprout. That she could do anything.

Eventually she made a name for herself in a field where one’s name is mostly spoken only within small groups of people with very specific tastes and talents. She could create the most realistic representations of people and animals that many people had ever seen. Her colleagues held her in high esteem with what was equal parts admiration and jealousy. She had arrived after decades of effort, failure and success always accompanying her like siblings. When she decided to retire her chisel, she settled her mind on a final work that would be her finest, searching the world for the largest hunk of black granite that she could find, and procuring its purchase and delivery. The cost was astronomical, but ultimately met with the help of friends and galleries whose faith in her ability had never been marred.

And so she worked on this last sculpture for years, through retirement and the gradual loss of motor skills that finds us all in due time. She never rushed, however, even when her sight began to fade. Always her focus remained on this one final work, a memorial to both herself and her father.

In the atrium of the gallery named posthumously in her honor, there stands a 6’3” likeness of a curious looking man in a three-piece suit. One hand rests in a trouser pocket, while the other arm, bent at the elbow, holds a pipe. The head is titled forward and a permanent thin-lipped smirk adorns the handsome face, the eyes of which are cast downward, forever resting upon whomever might be standing in front of him. And there on the base of the statue are carved the words that paved it’s creator’s glorious path.

‘There is nothing in the world that you can’t do if you want to badly enough.’

A young girl, filled with the insecurity that plagues all young people on field trips to art galleries, stops to read those words. Through the haze of her unstable life at home and at school, she looks up into the tall, dark, handsome man’s face, and suddenly, unexpectedly, begins to think that he just might be right.

–
By Sir

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Lance challenged me with “tall, dark and handsome” and I challenged Sophia Grace with “Tell a story about the passage of time from the perspective of an old clock.”

I rolled off, groaning in pain. I scrambled to my feet and hurried over to my horse’s saddlebag. I pulled out a small package and stuck it into a pocket in my skirts. I also grabbed my bag of supplies. I ran my hand over my horse’s head as I murmured, “I’m sorry, Princess.”

My pace was nearly a run as I left Princess behind. I willed myself to slow down to a fast walk, just in case I came across another traveler on the road. I kept my head down and just kept walking as my mind went over and over the events of the last couple of days.

The village I had grown up in was very poor. We were serfs to Count Doofen, a cruel master. We grew crops in the fields but were hardly allowed to keep any for ourselves.

Even though I was thin and sickly, I was cursed with a beautiful face. When the Count took a ride through of our village, I had the misfortune of catching his eye. He dragged me off to his castle and did unspeakable things to me. I endured it because I felt I had no other choice.

It wasn’t long before I was with child. The Count longed for a son and I knew if my child was one, I would become his wife. I prayed for a son because I knew it would make both of our lives so much better.
When the midwife told me I had borne a healthy baby girl, I wept inconsolably.

I was allowed to keep my daughter for several years but then she was taken from me, sent to live in my old village. I tried to console myself with the thought that at least my parents would look after her, but I felt so much pain that my child was forced to live the same merger existence that I had.

At that point, I just tried to keep living — until a few days ago when news reached the castle that a plague had been spreading through the countryside like a wildfire. My entire village perished, including my daughter who had just turned ten years old. Outside, I pretended to grieve and move on. But inside, I was aflame. I had to get away from the Count, from this life. I was fueled on by the fact that I was newly pregnant.

I made a plan, and began to gather supplies. On the night I made my escape, I stole a valuable necklace to sell once I got far enough away. Even though Princess, my favorite horse, and I had made a clean getaway, I felt like there was a host of people following us.

As I walked, I began to feel a flush rising up my neck. My steps slowed and I found that my whole body ached. I stopped to sit with a tree at my back, my eyes began to feel heavy, and then I fell asleep.

I died peacefully on the side of that road, from the same plague that had killed my daughter. I couldn’t run away from the trouble I was in or from my life. But death was something of an escape for me.

–
By Chaos Mandy

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Tara Roberts challenged me with “You can’t run away from trouble. There ain’t no place that far. – James Baskett” and I challenged The Lime with “All She Needed Was A Good Beating”

She crossed the threshold in dawn’s fingered light with fierce grace, her fingers trailing along trunks, her glance flashing into shadows, innately attuned to the forest. Her lithe step was in no way diminished by her large size. In fact, it may have been her size that so much reinforced the fairy sense of her, someone regal and finely made. She walked in step with her heartbeat and she focused her mind; she listened for – something.

Dried blood stained the ripped belly of her shirt. It hung open enough to reveal a swathe of bandages. She wore heavy leggings, also torn and bloodied. Closer examination might tell of the slightest limp, just the smallest unnatural movement in her forward flow over the green and brown earth. Yet she did not cease to move nor did her body fail her will.

The forest bent and moved with her. There was silence and there was presence.

The limp became more obvious, sunlight poured through the leaves, and the day passed with small rushes of air glancing off trees like flat stones skipping over a glassy lake. The once imperceptible injury produced a stagger as night seeped down and new blood surfaced, restaining the cloth near her skin.

When she finally collapsed, it was a dark that felt watery, as if the moon had tried to wash it away, but still there hung darkness, hovering and filling shadows with thicker layers of dark like sediment. Just as she fell, a sound became audible and she seemed almost to stir, but it was too faint, too slight a sound to revive her from that bodily night.

In the wee hours, they came. The peal of their drums resonated against leaves’ soft film and barks’ coarse facade long before they found her.

They circled in closely and the rhythm became overpowering. It was a beating that none but the most frightened hearts can produce, a frenzied and pulsating thing.

The people were long and grand as she was, with sharp chins and thin muscled arms, bare against the cool wet night. They sweated and beat, and they stepped in time with one another, in the way that an orchestra plays in time. Circling and circling, they played a rhythm to the tune of the cosmos and the microcosmos. Three of the beings approached her body and lifted her, cradling her against themselves, and swaying forward in a movement that played a new harmony to the throbbing chorus of beat surrounding them. Her body sagged over their arms. They moved in a dance, ever encircled.

Her eyelashes flickered. Her fingers twitched. Her long legs straightened. One hand struggled to her belly and pulled the bandages free.

In a single downwards sweep, the three set her on her feet again and she began to dance a melody that wept like a tragedy recounted for the first time, through a forest where dappled light had begun again to appear, and all the while, the drums beat on.

–

By The Lime

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Chaos Mandy challenged me with “All She Needed Was A Good Beating” and I challenged Carrie with “Focus on a character’s breathing within a scene”

I shift nervously from foot to foot as I look at the crowd around me. The vibe here is immense. I feel like the collective energy created by these twenty thousand people could lift me up and carry me. I have not slept for a week in anticipation of this day, but that does not matter. Standing here, it is impossible to feel tired.

Two and a half minutes… Will these 13.1 miles make me or break me?

It all started six months ago with an email. A local autism centre was entering a team into this race. Was I interested in joining, to raise funds for autism services? My first reaction was: You must be joking. At the time I was tipping the scales at almost two hundred pounds, which was a lot for a woman whose pre-pregnancy weight had been 130 pounds. I had let myself go to seed following the birth of my younger son. Exercise was a four-letter word to me. I found it impossible to lift myself out of the post-partum depression I was still suffering from for long enough to walk to the mailbox and back. And now these people wanted me to run a race?

Two minutes… Will this race be the fruition of all my efforts? Or will it make me slink back into depression?

I deleted the email, but its contents pulled at a thread in my mind. I was in very bad shape, both mentally and physically. It was clear that I needed some impetus to get myself sorted out. Could this be it? Did I finally have the right reason to get up and do something? Would this venture even be possible?

One and a half minutes… Will I have the strength to go the distance? Or will I give up and not finish the race?

I recovered the email from my Deleted Items folder. If I decided to join the team, I could choose a distance. I ruled out the marathon – it would definitely be too much. I considered the 5 kilometre run, but somehow this did not seem to be enough. If I was actually going to do this, I wanted it to be a real challenge. I’ve never been one for doing things in moderation. Either I don’t do it at all, or I go all out. Abruptly, I checked my thinking. Was I seriously thinking of attempting the half-marathon? Was I crazy?

One minute… Will this endeavour cement my newfound love of running? Or will it make me toss my running shoes into the back of the closet forever?

My thoughts drifted to my older son. My beautiful boy with autism, so loving and full of promise. He could go so far and accomplish so much, but he would need help along the way. He would need services and social supports and programs, all of which cost money. The autism centre was hoping to raise funds to finance exactly the kinds of programs that are needed by kids with autism. I could be doing this for my son.

Thirty seconds… Do we proactively give our kids the best possible chances to overcome their challenges? Or do we just sit back and hope for the best?

Just like that, the thread in my mind – the one that the email had been gently pulling at – unravelled. I knew what I had to do. I pulled out my calendar and looked up a few online training programs. I worked out that in six months, I just about had time to train for a half-marathon. I signed up and got to work. And now here I was at the start line, fifty pounds lighter, and although not exactly fleet of foot, at least capable of running for a couple of hours.

The starter’s siren goes off and the crowd surges forward. As I cross the start line, I put a picture of my son in my head and run from the heart.

(Postscript: I finished that first half-marathon in almost two and a half hours. I remember the lump in my throat as I crossed the finish line and the tears that sprang to my eyes when I received my finisher’s medal. Every step of that race was dedicated to my son. Since then, I have done two more half-marathons for autism, and this year I will be doing it again. In my three autism runs to date, I have raised about $1500 for the Geneva Centre for Autism. My sons – the child with autism and his loving, caring brother – are my inspiration. I would run to the ends of the earth for them.)

–
By Kirsten Doyle

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Shauntelle challenged me with “Write a story that begins “Three minutes. Will it begin? Or end?”" and I challenged Head Ant with “Write a story that includes the following: a dreamcatcher; red high-heeled boots; a broken wine glass.”

“You’re in here early.” Moll, owner of the Lissome Lady, stood at one of the tables with a rag and bucket, shooting a crooked smile to the figure in the doorway.

He scowled. “Mornings suck at our house. Between the noise from the forge and the smell coming out of the dragon pens, we’re all grumpy and nauseous before we finish breaking our fast.” He strode to the bar and sat down. “I just needed to get away.”

Moll put down her cleaning supplies and made her way to him. “Did you eat at all?”

When he didn’t respond, she clucked concernedly. “I think I can fix something for you, if you don’t mind stale leftovers from last night’s supper. Stay there.” She ruffled his hair and skipped into the kitchen, humming quietly.

Lief, son of Lief, firstborn of the clan Baldragon, blushed and straightened his hair. If Moll only knew who he was, she wouldn’t treat him like a boy. He knew he was younger than most of the patrons of the Lissome Lady, but he was still a man, and an important one, at that.

Moll returned with a plate piled high with food. She set it on the bar. “It’s not fancy fare, but it’ll get you through the day,” she said. She pointed to the different items in front of him. “Yak cheese, homemade goat sausage, and a little bit of snake jerky.” She leaned in closely, wisps of auburn hair falling across her face. “If I tell people it’s dragon meat, I can charge three times as much for it.” She laughed and ruffled his hair again.

He jerked away from her. Her words offended him more than her touch did, but there was no way he could tell her why. From the corner of his eye, he saw her hurt and confused expression, so he avoided speaking at all by stuffing his mouth full of anything and everything on the plate.

After a few minutes, Moll shrugged and returned to her cleaning, but she brought the bucket and rag to the bar so she could talk to Lief as she worked. “Did you hear? Priests of the Golden Eye are coming to Dragonfall tomorrow.”

Lief almost choked. He had come to this dusty, forgotten town in the middle of nowhere six months ago because he was trying to get as far away from the Golden Eye as possible. And now they were coming here? He doubted it was a coincidence. “The Golden Eye?” he said between mouthfuls. “All our dragons are domesticated. Have been for generations. What do they want with us?”

“They come around here every few years to recruit.”

Lief’s heart was racing. Recruitment meant the priests of the Golden Eye would be looking for young, strong men like him. But they would also be testing the men for signs of magic, poking and prodding them with staffs and wands, instruments of torture to anyone without the gift to withstand it.

Moll stopped working and looked directly at Lief. “Don’t get any ideas. Not many around here take kindly to their ‘recruitment’ techniques, mind you…but the priests are only looking for the brightest and strongest. Besides, there’s not much we can do to stop it. The Eye sees everything.” She gestured to the gilded relief depicting the Ever-Watchful Eye above the door, folded her hands in prayer, and dipped her rag back in the bucket.

Lief folded his hands in prayer as well, looking at Moll out of the corner of his eye. She seemed to have lost her earlier liveliness, now going through the motions of cleaning with slow, robotic movements.

What most people didn’t know is that magic-users were resistant to the hypnotic power of the Eye. Those people, when found, were tried publicly as witches and executed.

And Lief was one of them. He was a dragonsinger, like his father before him, one of only a handful still living. And if he didn’t want to meet the same fate as his father, he needed to find a way to leave town before the Priests of the Golden Eye arrived.

“Moll?”

“Yes, Lief?”

He wanted so badly to tell her his secret, but if he did, he could be endangering both their lives. He looked back up at the relief above the door and shivered.

“I…I think I’m done with my food. Thank you.”

When Moll came close to clear his plates, he reached out and kissed her. Not a lingering kiss, but one that conveyed his dreams of a future with her. Dreams that could be shattered by the Golden Eye.

Moll stepped back, her mouth agape.

“Thank you for everything, Moll.” He strode quickly out the door into the sunlight. He paused briefly outside the tavern, willing himself not to look back. It was time to look forward, to make plans, to buy provisions.

He would be leaving Dragonfall before dark.

–

By Supermaren

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Jester Queen challenged me with “Mornings suck at our house. Between the noise from the forge and the smell coming out of the dragon pens, we’re all grumpy and nauseous before we finish breaking our fast.” and I challenged Lance with “struck by lighting”

Even the guardian angels had been corrupted beyond belief. So what’s a frantic captain to do? Fire, icebergs, tidal waves, all methods tried and true. But then I’d be without salvation, thrashing in the terrible blue. Basic drowning would suffice. By then, the strung-out beasts were so wasted, they barely noticed their ringleader’s commands. The bugs had all gone sedentary; I scooped them in a net, sent them out to sea. Even the larger mammals went overboard, though it took some coaxing, and a very heavy plank. The monkey was the last to go, his mind still alive. He brandished a pistol, but I kept my head, lured him to the edge. In a moment of inattention, even he went down to the depths. At last, I had peace, and steered my ark toward calm shore. Judge me all you want, but I’m know what I saw. If you’d been there, you would’ve thrown the monkey overboard, too.

–

By Allyson Whipple

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Jay Andrew Allen challenged me with “If you had been there, you would’ve thrown the monkey overboard too.” and I challenged SAM with “Listen to one of John Cage’s pieces for prepared piano (most are available on YouTube if you can’t find them elsewhere). Write an ekphrastic poem based on the piece you selected.”

I wake shivering in my own sweat gone cold. I wake to the dog squealing.

Before I hear him, I feel him: my brother, watching me from the doorway. I flex my neck, pulling my skull from the sour pillows, and he’s there, silhouetted in the hallway light. I punch at the nightstand lamp, bringing it to life. Some part of me expects my brother to disappear in the sudden light, a crude apparition. He doesn’t. He’s unflinching with his sawdust eyes, unapologetic for the intrusion. He doesn’t speak, but stares. Running a shattered line between his wild eyes–over the valley of his forehead, disappearing into the rusted forest of his hair–is the wicked brand from where I cleaved him, the pasty skin on either side being tugged together and held with heavy black sutures. The wound stands between us constantly– physically, and as a memory. The circumstance wherein I am confronted with viewing the injury on a daily basis, while he can’t see it at all, has shaped our communication in a peculiar way, and he doesn’t need to speak to make his point.

“Okay, damn it,” I tell him. “I’ll fix him in the morning.”

I crash back down into my mattress, feeling nothing like sleep. I turn out the light, but my brother remains where he stands. I listen to my breaths and the gears inside my bedroom clock. A collection of minutes pass, and I hear the little cables behind the face pulling the hands around to mark off another hour. With a tug of wheels and pulleys, my brother squeaks along the track, back into his bedroom.

*

I haven’t eaten in days, but I think it’s important that I keep trying.

I sizzle-fry eggs and bacon. All of my pans are warped. I set them down on the burner empty, holding them there until the heat reaches a level where the air above them vibrates and boils, leaving a virtual vacuum. It’s interesting how things never stop getting hotter, if you let them. I will sometimes put my fist in this empty space. The skin, for certain, burns. But for a moment, there’s a stillness, and the sensation is cooling. I’ll feel indestructible, or at least beyond destruction. I drop the eggs in the pan and the clear, gelatinous mucosa immediately solidifies and turns white, like ice melting in reverse. After a moment, I drop the bacon in beside, and the fat liquefies, leaving lean protein to pop and dance on the black surface. I kill the heat source, and the meat and egg continue to cook together, cooling towards something human. This, I imagine, is something like how God made the oceans.

While gathering my plate and utensils, I see that my fish has gone belly-up in its bowl, again. From the body trails a steady spiral of burnt red, like smoke from an extinguished candle, and I cough a laugh at a thought that she might have been shot, or is, perhaps, experiencing a first menstrual cycle. I twist the cuff of my shirtsleeve back to my elbow, and reach into the fetid water. I set the fish on my plate, once again moved beyond hunger.

Her battery has gone dead, I see, and the blood trail in the water is actually a leaking of battery acid. Watch batteries are, by design, waterproof, but the casings are weak, and water, in nearly all circumstances, ultimately finds a way through, and then your fish goes poof. I have a gross case of these batteries, though. I fetch one from the drawer beneath my sink, along with a scalpel, some simple plastic wrap, and my grocery store-brand magnifying eyeglasses. I carefully dissect the old plastic wrap, lightly prying it off the golden scales with the point of my blade. I likewise use the scalpel to pop the old, dead battery out of its housing.

It seems crude, but I’ve found the best cleaning solvent in these situations is spit, and I lick my thumb and wipe away at the spare drops of acid. I seem to have gotten lucky with timing, and the fish seems nicely untarnished from the leakage. When I pop the fresh battery into place, the diminutive motor immediately begins clicking, oscillating the braces back and forth, moving the fish’s spine and tail in a mimic of swimming. I place her flat on my palm, and she tickles me while she flops. I carry her back over to her bowl, but I’m hesitant to put her back into the fouled water. I have too much to do today to spend time cleaning out the bowl properly. So I fill a jelly jar with water from the faucet, and drop the fish lightly inside. She swims in a tight, comic circle.

When I retrieve my breakfast from the pan, it’s inedible, but perfect, the grease congealed just slightly.

*

The dog is not where I expect, but I refuse to go looking for him. I step over the guiderails and tripwires, duck under the guylines and pulleys, and whistle a loud note, calling, “Mercury! Come here, boy!”

I make my way over to the toby tree, and wait. After a moment, a ratcheting sound comes from somewhere inside the leaves, and a sparrow comes screeching on a tether, circling the tree twice in an upward arch and then disappearing with a rustle into green leaves of another tree ten feet away, the waxed cable running between the trees swaying out against its slack.

I lose my eyesight in the sun, studying a particular cloud as it slowly seeps across the sky like a creeping stain, passing overhead, then disappearing over the pitch of the roof. Momentarily, I catch the outline of my brother standing in his window, but he’s gone just as quickly. This time, it might have been a trick of light, or maybe not. This is his usual time to be up and moving around.

There’s a scampering above my head, and I don’t startle as a grey squirrel comes clattering down the tree trunk, alternating speeds between suspicion and adrenaline, before finally alighting in the patch of ground beside me with an unsatisfying thud. I’m bothered to see that his hide has somehow become compromised, and he’s fallen loose from his mount. Squirrels move quick, so I have to act fast: leaping to me feet, and bringing a boot down on the cable, just as it begins its retraction back into the branches. The cord stalls for a minute, before snapping loose, nearly taking off a piece of my ear as it recoils violently past me, settling disappeared into the branches. The squirrel rests in a mound against the side of my foot, reminiscent of scraping peanut butter off a knife against the jar rim. The bones poke out in an assortment of unrelated directions, no longer resembling the skeleton of a squirrel. The hide pulls apart easily in my fingers, and I say, “Damn,” as I realize nothing is salvageable. I kick at it, sending it off into the nearby shrubbery.

I’m becoming animalistic in my comprehension of time, telling it by hand width’s of space between the sun and the horizon, and the length of the shadows. I hold my breath suddenly, and tune myself to the symphony of whirs coming through my basement window. I can’t pinpoint exactly what sound I’m expecting until it doesn’t happen. What happens instead is an unhealthy hollow pop, followed by the pained and squealing whines of the dog, Mercury. I look up to his window, but my brother hasn’t appeared, yet. I choose to get along while I can, avoiding confrontation. I’m on my belly, scurrying through the open slat basement window.

*

I was a tinkerer as a boy, always. I never grew out of it. I was the proverbial child who would take apart the television- and the toaster, and all of the clocks, and my father’s watches, and the radio, and the telephone, and the stove. My father broke my collarbone once when he woke to find that I had taken apart the transmission of his 1958 Fairlane, even though it was working at least as good after my dissection as it had been before.

I was always bright, bordering on gifted, but terrible at school, because history and math and English weren’t things that could be pulled apart and replaced– though I was, of course, moderately successful at my science courses, and shop. Likewise, I was dramatically below par at fostering relationships with my peers, or teachers, or parents, because I didn’t understand people and had very little interest in learning. My brother was about the only person I spent any significant time with, and even that was rather grudgingly on his part, since he suffered similar issues with making friends, albeit for completely different reasons.

I had interpersonal relationships thrust upon me when I got drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam. It was “in country,” as they say, that I also became more interested in people, in general, and their inner-workings.

My spectacular mechanical aptitude, accompanied by my significantly less impressive scores in all other tests, made me a perfect fit to be a combat zone technician: fixing the machinery as it faltered, carrying a gun, but mostly trying to not get shot, and, they stressed, not get in anybody’s way. I was relatively successful on all of these accounts, and, frankly, wasn’t minding the war too much, at first.

It was on an otherwise uneventful afternoon when a strange zipping sound came out of the jungle and cut James Weston, a blond-headed 18-year old private from Cookeville, Tennessee, in half. He had been standing beside me, finishing a sandwich, jawing while I pulled jungle mud out of a Jeep carburetor. I pivoted on my heels when the strange sound came through the trees– not startled at all, just interested. When I turned back, James was gone. A moment later, a powerful concussion pitched me forward, off my feet, landing face-to-grey-face with the now-bisected body of Private Weston. A firefight erupted around us. As instructed, I kept my head down, stayed out of the way.

I studied Weston’s body, and something strange occurred to me. Here in the pooling purple of guts, were the little bite-sized portions of sandwich– in some places, the bologna still glued by mayonnaise to the white bread. Out of habit, I gripped the tubes that connected to and from the spillage, and followed them with my fingers up into the cavities from which they came. And I suddenly saw people for what they are– machines. Soft, fragile machines. A network of tubes and wires. Food goes in this hole, comes out this hole, stopping here momentarily. It was all so simple. I was disgusted. Disgusted by God, by the sun, by dirt and by oceans. I grabbed at my own guts through my skin, vomiting violently, adding to the human mess, while the bullets zinged by and the men shouted at each other in languages that neither side could understand, and death bloomed everywhere so easily.

The fight lasted just minutes. When we bivouacked the area, we had unintentionally pinned a small troupe of Viet Cong in a hideaway shelter, keeping them there for days without even knowing it, until they got desperate. Within minutes, they were all dead, save for about a half-dozen that we held as POWs. I volunteered for guard duty that first night, and when the camp had gone perfectly silent, I picked one out, him squirming in my fists, like when you’re using frogs as fishing bait. I gagged him first, so much so that he probably would have suffocated anyway, and then I pulled him apart, piece by piece. I did so without malice, except, perhaps, for the lingering bitter disgust. I did so without intentional cruelty. I pulled the boy apart with nothing more than a crisp curiosity.

In the morning, I was discovered. I had not, of course, been able to put the boy back together again–though I had a strange notion that if I had just had a little more time…

The boys covered for me, that first time. They attributed the act to vengeance, me having been with James when he died. And vengeance was a reason they could all understand too easily.

When I did it the second time, I was sent back home. My discharge was technically honorable, though it didn’t necessarily feel that way.

*

Out of the army, I returned home to the tumble down farmhouse I shared with my violent brother. I knew it couldn’t last–that I couldn’t last. I had no appetite, with too real an image of my stomach processing everything into shit. I felt now like nothing more than a vile mechanism, ravenously putting food into the top hole and then pushing it back out of the bottom hole, flushing my own filth away into the ocean–-more hidden pipes and toxicity. My piss and my sexuality spurted out of the same length of flesh tube, and I became disgusted by carnal desires. I had no prospective girlfriends, of course–wouldn’t want one if I could get one–and refusing to alleviate myself, I began waking up crusted and glued to my bedsheets when my dreams betrayed me.

And all the while, I was itching with my new, strange curiosity. The new understanding of life as just another dead jumble of dumb mechanics revolted me on a spiritual level, but greatly interested me on a technical level, and I found myself constantly pinching at my own skin, wanting to get to the workings beneath.

I satisfied myself moderately when I took a blade to my brother’s skull, mid-fight over the impromptu embalming I had performed on his dog, Mercury. I had been up all night, pulling the dog apart and reassembling him, when he came down the stairs in the morning to find us there in the middle of the living room floor, and he lost it. He kicked me violently in the soft place between the ribcage and the hip, and I couldn’t breathe. He knelt on top of me, gripping my hair and smashing my skull off the floor with that terrible vibrating concussive pain. He meant, I believe, to kill me. Or if he didn’t mean to, we were at least stumbling together down that path. I defended myself, but my actions were not motivated by any sense of self-preservation or fear, but rather revulsion. I hated the feeling of the heat that his body was generating, seeping from him, through our clothing, and into me. I hated his grey-yellow teeth snapping around, shards of his skull left naked and exposed like a pair of pants with the fly down. The tendrils of his spit pulled and stretched, and I felt my stomach flip in nausea. Still pinned to the floor, I sent my fingers flickering around blindly until they found the hatchet I had been using to help in my dissection of Mercury. I managed to get it in my fist, and I buried it into my brother’s face, between his eyes, freezing his expression into a mask of anger and violence, forever. As the life gushed from him, so, I found, did my revulsion, and I set to work on a new project.

*

Down in the basement, I’m lost in the highways and rollercoaster tracks, forests and rivers, crochet patchwork of gears and cables and wires and tracks and sprockets, the workings of all my creations–playing god, intelligent design and choreographing a million moving parts. So much of this, I don’t remember doing. I won’t remember what a certain lever does, and later my pet snake will suddenly slither across my living room floor, pulled by a fishing line noose, and scare the shit out of me right in the middle of my afternoon game shows.

Inside of one of the gear casings on Mercury’s track, I find a mouse skeleton gunking up the works–a present from some cat or bird or bat that’s found its way in here, and I should probably keep an eye out for. I study it in the pale yellow basement light, first studying it for usable parts, but then getting lost in just the structure of the thing, marvelous.

Lost in thought and admiration, my mind goes somewhere calm. A voice finds me, saying how something has to give. I know this. I haven’t eaten in days, maybe weeks. The headaches are persistent, and growing.

The skeleton removed, the gears begin chugging with a clockwork precision. I believe I can even hear him out there, rustling around in the grass, but it might just be my imagination.

*

Mercury awakes me again that same night, once again squealing like a livid hog. I believe I smell gear smoke.

As I know he will, I hear my brother come marching down the hall. While he’s still a couple of feet from my door, a hollow sound catches me off guard, my stomach sinking. He enters my room, his hands posed out in front of him, dumb and useless. “Damn it,” I say, throwing the covers from me. “I’ll take care of it.” As my brother gesticulates, I shove by him, his large and beefy body feeling disturbingly hollow beneath my palms, and something churns in my guts, threatening to push up through my neck tubes in reverse. I exit the room, as my brother descends upon my bed.

I’m already a couple of steps down the stairs when I notice it there, the hatchet. Its sharpened edge is stuck comically into the raw floorboards, the handle wavering where it stands. The head of the hatchet is rusted dull, but the blade’s edge glistens shiny as new, catching the moonlight through the hallway window and flickering it into my eyes. I hold my breath and listen to the clicking of the house around me. In the dark, something scurries up the stairs, brushing my leg as it passes, startling the breath from me, causing me to bite my tongue and swallow.

–

By Kurt:

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Bran macFeabhail challenged me with “He’s absolutely barking, I don’t what to do about it except let him be. Maybe one day he’ll wake up and be the happy boy I once knew.” and I challenged Kelly Garriott Waite with “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”

“I can’t believe I’m falling in love with her.”

Helene dug out her phone and texted Ramona. I really hope you come tonight. I miss you already.

She hit send and immediately hated herself.

“She’s going to think I’m out of my damn mind.”

Helene breathed in the thick summer air. Her throat tightened and she felt in her backpack, unsuccessfully, for a bottled water. She tossed her wet, sticky brown hair off her neck and strode into the Soho Loft. She bounded up the stairs and spoke to no one as she dumped her belongings near the door.

Her bandmates, Sadie and Mara, had delivered her electric guitar and amplifier. They attempted hellos, but Helene ignored them and grabbed her instrument, plugged it in, then shouted to Mara, the drummer, “Stripes Girl on three!”

Her sweaty fingers barely held her favorite purple pick, dug out of her bra. She hit the guitar chords with overwhelming force. The stress of her relationships with Darcy Bridges and Ramona Gallery fought with the heat surrounding her. Helene’s voice sounded like it had been struck by lightning. It was wicked and dangerous.

“Fell in love with a girl, fell in love with a girl, fell in love once and almost completely, she’s in love with the world but sometimes these feelings can be so misleading…”

–

By Lance:

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Supermaren challenged me with “struck by lighting,” and I challenged Sir with “tall, dark, and handsome.”

“This must be the peddler the man spoke of,” he murmured. “See? You can just make out the gold scroll work along the edge of the wagon.” He stood and shifted his cloak to expose the sword at his waist. She sighed at the necessity but there was no point trying to hide he was armed. The circle of firelight revealed three men near the wagon, two of them with the ready stance of guards. He pulled Fionavar up from the crouch she was in and they stepped out from the screen of scraggly brush.

Two of the men instantly turned their attention in their direction. She could see hands move towards hilts. Aodhan stepped into the light and held his hands up and away from his sword. She chafed at being positioned as the helpless woman. In most situations she was far more deadly than Aodhan’s sword but they had agreed to try and remain anonymous during their search.

“Greetings,” Aodhan called. “I apologize for approaching you so late in the evening but we are in search of a certain peddler.” He smiled. “Might one of you be Morcant?”

The smallest man of the group stepped forward. The light reflected off his eyes giving him the appearance of a wolf. Fionavar clenched her hands and kept them by her side. Her slight movement caught Morcant’s attention.

“I be Morcant. Though I do not think you be the one truly searching for me.” He stared straight at Fionavar. “Failte siog.”

Her breath caught in her throat at his use of the ancient word for her kind. Aodhan glanced at her, worry filling his golden brown eyes. She placed her hand on his shoulder and pressed down signaling him to not be concerned before stepping fully into the light.

“You are knowledgeable,” she said, bowing her head. “I am certain you are the one I seek.” She pushed the hood back, exposing her long tangled red hair. She could see Morcant’s pupils widen at the sight. His guards shifted their bodies, sensing the danger.

Morcant bowed his head. “How may I be of assistance to one of the Coimirceoir?”

“I am searching for a particular item. A clear glass orb.” Fionavar smiled faintly. “To most, it appears to be nothing. But to me-“ She stopped abruptly and Morcant’s eyes narrowed.

“Come.” He gestured her closer with a long bony finger. Fionavar approached with Aodhan close behind. The peddler led them to the back of his wagon where he pulled open a small door to the enclosed space perched on top. He climbed up and slid inside. Fionavar followed, ducking through the tight opening.

Inside she was greeted by all manner of trinkets. Some common place others more mysterious. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light provided by the solitary lamp she could feel her lungs go cold. Each breath was excruciating, the pain intensifying as she struggled to take in air. She gasped and fell to her knees.

“Fionavar!” Aodhan cried, climbing in awkwardly and crouching down next to her. She clutched her chest and sucked in shallow breaths.

“Morcant,” she wheezed. He stepped back, his confidence oozing away. “Give-it-to-me.” Morcant reached above him and pulled down a small lead bound chest. He placed it before her and flipped open the lid.

Nestled within was a clear glass orb that pulsed with faint light. Fionavar reached out, still choking out grunting breaths, and grasped it. The orb turned red then faded to a pale green. She clasped it to her chest, her breathing suddenly eased.

“Is it safe?” Aodhan asked. His hand reached out to lie on her gently protruding stomach. Fionavar placed her free hand over his.

“I have no choice,” she said. She held up the orb and watched as a miniature forest sprang up within it.

–

By Carrie

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, The Lime challenged me with “Focus on a character’s breathing within a scene” and I challenged Bran macFeabhail with “Girl’s Night Out. Go crazy…or tame…whatever :)”