Vixenscratch

He was tall, trim, athletic, with a face that could put boyband idols to shame and a smile that made him that much more attractive. Like a boyband idol he remained perpetually single, yet managed to make the admirers that approached him feel special. Somehow he found time for both sports (no doubt there was an athletic scholarship in that boy’s future) and agility training with his dog. A rescue, of course, because of course he had to be that fucking perfect.

She was taller than she looked, always a little bit hunched over, uncoordinated as a newborn foal, struggling with her weight and skin that stubbornly kept looking like she’d spent too much time in the sun, red and dry and peeling. Her greatest accomplishment was scoring third place in a school spelling bee in fourth grade, and her greatest source of embarrassment the fact that her mother still would not take the trophy off the mantelpiece.

Then the apocalypse — or whatever it was — happened. The world went silent, and the few humans that remained thought they were alone.

When they met after the apocalypse, he hadn’t had a warm meal in weeks. Even with matches, it’s not easy to make a cooking fire if you don’t know how. It was just as well that he’d stopped trying before he managed to cause a house fire — or worse. He was cold, running on too little sleep, and looked it. She invited him and his dog to share her fire out of pity.

He was athletic, handsome, and — in this new world — helpless as a newborn foal.

They’re both what can only charitably be described as “tipsy” – she can smell the alcohol on his breath, and is under no illusion that hers is any different. He smells of beer and fresh sweat and a bit of something else that makes her think of campfires. His skin radiates heat as she unbuttons his shirt, still damp with perspiration from dancing. He grins at her, one hand at her waist and the other grabbing her chin, only slightly awkwardly, to plant a kiss square on her lips. She finishes undoing the last button and slides the shirt down his shoulders, baring his chest. He has the body of a laborer, not a desk worker nor a gym rat, and he plants a kiss on the top of her head as she runs her hand through the dark blond curls covering his chest.

He told himself the sin was not his, as he followed a man with a wedding ring on his finger from the club where he’d ventured in awkward desperation. It was not he who had made a promise to God to remain faithful to another as long as they both should live. Surely, when the promise was not his, the burden of breaking it was not his to bear, either.

He knew the truth, of course. And if he knew, so did God. He simply couldn’t bring himself to care, anymore. He needed to eat. He needed textbooks and notebooks and pens and toiletries. If his scholarship wouldn’t cover them – it didn’t – he had to find the funds elsewhere. Somewhere deep down, he still cared about his grades, so he still studied. He knew his only source of income depended on his ability to catch the eyes of strangers, and so he still kept himself as well groomed as his tight budget allowed. He knew that his body needed fuel for all of those things, and so he ate.

But he didn’t care. He went through the motions a shell, told himself that no one noticed, and took risks he wouldn’t have some months prior, consequences be damned. On the occasion that he passed a church or a chapel, he felt a sting of guilt, and carefully pushed it into a dark corner of his mind. It just wasn’t enough to give him pause, anymore. Not after he’d met a man who might as well have been the Devil himself.

On the surface, there was little to distinguish the ship from the ones docked to her right and left. They might practically all vary in make and model, something commonly seen in the temporary docking of larger stations, but they all had sturdy metal hulls, most of them with some blemishes after close encounters with this or that free-floating desbris. None of the ships in this section were flashy, high-ticket rigs; anyone who had the money and the inclination to spend it on impressing people would pay extra for a better docking spot.

A casual visitor invited into the ship might start to realize that she was something else, led to that conclusion by glimpses of transparent tubes, filled with softly glowing liquid, organically-shaped capillaries joining and forming veins, converging into larger vessels as they approached the ship’s heart. But a casual visitor wouldn’t be invited to the bridge, this most vulnerable section of the deceptively-normal-looking ship.

Her crew knew her for what she was, and even among them, only a select few truly knew her. She wasn’t simply circuitry and metal, this ship, transcending the state of being a simple machine not as the advanced AI systems installed in top-of-the-line vessels did, but like those fitted with prostethics after violence or ill fortune had taken their flesh. Yet this, too, was a superficial resemblance, for they had been born flesh and blood. She was their opposite, a machine that had been given life, rather than flesh and soul that had been given new, mechanical strength.

A man approached the docked ship with the hidden secret, Captain’s insignia on his jacket, a quickly-schooled smirk playing with one corner of his mouth. A hatch sighed open, and he stepped inside, the smirk returning as the hatch closed behind him and his features blurred, the uniform becoming ill-fitting as his body changed. A faint line glowed in the floor, and, pulling out a small, concealed pulse stunner, the intruder followed it.

Laughter bubbled, bright as a child’s, through the ship’s strange tubing, as the stranger followed the line marking an emergency evacuation route backwards, closer to the heart of the ship. He didn’t take much notice of the sound, figuring it part of some ambience package that had been included by an upselling dealer when the vessel was new.

As another pair of doors whispered open, he readjusted his features to fit his assumed role, and found himself face-to-muzzle with a half-dozen energy weapons easily dwarfing his own compact model, wielded by as many disheveled, incompletely-dressed spacefarers, looking suspiciously like they had still been sleeping when he’d first boarded their vessel.

“Stand down!” he ordered in their superior’s voice, to absolutely no effect.

“Did you really think,” purred a petite, silky-furred feline woman from behind the wall of nude and half-nude defenders, “the Star Siren wouldn’t know her own Captain?” She came closer, her black coat clinging for a moment to her fellows with the static from their charged weapons as she passed between them. “If I were you, I’d tell me where to find him.”

He spent just a moment too long searching for an answer. A vice grip around his wrist sent his stunner, now seeming pathetically small, clattering harmless to the floor and caused his fingers to spasm painfully.

“Do you reckon,” the woman asked over her shoulder, grinding tendon against bone with her deceptively delicate hand, “station security strictly wants this scumbag in one piece?”

At that point, self-preservation won out.

The worst part of the job in the skyrise on the island had always been the commute. Nobody with less than a five-figure salary could afford a decent place to live on the island, and if you had that five-figure salary, or were willing to settle for a cleaning closet, or both, it was still a toss-up whether you’d find a flat, anyway. The skyrail was always crowded, and John was pretty sure homeless people slept, or eliminated, or slept in their own urine, in the skyrail cars, anyway. So he’d bought a nice black car – not can-afford-to-live-on-the-island nice, but nice enough there was no shame in taking good care of it. And at least he had bought it new. That had to count for something, right?

(more…)

There was a weight, like an invisible heavy black blanket, dampening the mood in the cozy booth at the back of the café. The startling blue eyes of one of the two people at the table, a seal-point shorthair cat, were fixed on the steaming mug clutched in both her hands. Her fingers flexed slightly in time with her breaths, claws extending and retracting with each such small movement, the sharp tips tapping the glazed-black china. Her companion, a chocolate-black pony with snowflake-like dapples, whose neck and face were half hidden under a shaggy cloud of silver-white mane, tentatively reached across the table and brushed the hard, hoof-like tips of his fingers against the back of her hand.

She jerked back, some of her hot mocha sloshing over the edge of her cup, and the pony hastily withdrew his hand.

(more…)

This #FridayFlash fic was written as part of a prompt call themed around saws, idioms and proverbs; inspired by prompts by Shurhaian: “Don’t count your eggs before they’re laid” and “A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush”

Rik was struck by the hypocrisy of the family members crowding into the stands, and it left a bad taste in his mouth. He’d overheard Aunt Tess crowing about her nephew whose animal was surely going to win the Grand Championship, and he’d tried to explain that these things were never to be taken for granted. He was happy to even be here, to have qualified for the most prestigious show in the country, and it grated on him that they had to set their sights higher.

“The harder they fall…” he muttered to himself, adjusting the almost jewelry-thin straps of the headcollar his prize stud wore. He didn’t wish himself failure, not exactly. He wanted to win – he wouldn’t have been here at all if he didn’t. But Aunt Tess, especially, wouldn’t stop her crowing until she saw disappointment.

When he’d started, all those years ago, she’d been singing a different tune. He was throwing away his life, money, and who knew what else, trying to compete with people who’d been at it decades longer than he. They’d all been singing that tune, in fact, every single family member sitting up there, waiting for him to enter the show ring with the fruits of his labors. Now that he’d beat out some of those longer-established competitors in the smaller shows required for qualification, of course they’d claim they’d believed in him all along.

They always did.

The animal beside him was a work of art. A narrow, wedge-shaped head ending in a wicked beak. Dark, piercing eyes, watching the surroundings alertly, but without any sign of alarm. Slick, silky feathers in sunburst shades of gold, red, and orange, growing longer down the creature’s nobly curved neck, so that the feathers underneath its deep chest almost brushed the floor. Black fur covering all four broad paws, and all of its hindquarters aside from its back, where the feathers extended into a train that would make any mere peacock hide in shame. Down that train the colors of the beast shifted, from yellow to green, and then at the very tips, a rich gemstone blue, and the gryphon’s wingtips had similar dramatic coloring.

Yes, Rik had succeeded in what he’d set out to do, and there’d be no shame in losing out to one of the other show animals that would enter the ring with him, no matter how many hours of oiling had gone into making sure those feathers lay just so and shone as much as they could possibly do under the bright lights.

Finally, they were called in, and he made a point of not glancing up towards the stands as he entered the ring and took his position, the gryphon he’d raised from the egg obediently taking position next to him with the lead slack. Further down the line, he could hear another one behave a little less exemplary, and clicked his tongue to remind his own beast of where its attention should be right now.

The judges studied each animal in turn with eyes practised to see through the layers of feathers and read the shape of the body beneath. One by one, the gryphons were approached, their beaks opened to inspect their teeth, their paws lifted, and their wings pulled open. No detail was too minuscule for the scrutiny of the panel that would, eventually, pick their Champion.

One black-red-and-yellow beast was sent out when it ruffled up its feathers and hissed at an approaching judge. Many gryphons had a hard time accepting the black desert dogfolk, but it was a flaw that couldn’t be accepted in a Champion, especially not when the dogfolk was one of the judges.

They were trotting the gryphons around the ring when some would-be funny-guy in the audience launched a spitball at the silver-white, blue-barred animal behind Rik and his tropical-bright stud, and from there, it all devolved into chaos.

When the dust settled and he got his breath back, Rik was lying on his back on the floor, his gryphon’s long chest feathers tickling his face with every panting breath it drew. He nudged one foreleg with his hand, and got the stud to back up, sitting up with a groan to survey the damage.

No blood stained the sunburst-and-black gryphon’s beak – so it hadn’t attacked, good – but what remained of its tail, now fanned in alarm and warning, was in a sorry state, and it seemed like another animal had managed to get a mouthful of feathers off its shoulders. With a croon, the animal lowered its head and gently nudged his chest, and he gave it a stroke before seizing a handful of feathers to let it help him back on his feet.

The confusion didn’t, of course, prevent the judges from picking out their Grand Champion. With most of his gryphon’s beautiful plumage being blown across the shown ring in the slight draft from the doorway, Rik didn’t need to hear the name being called out to know the title had slipped between his fingers. He stood stoically with his gryphon at his side, waiting for the formal announcement in the spirit of good sportsmanship. He had, indeed, not won, and he was fine with that.

“Before we close this year’s National Gryphon Exhibit,” the announcer spoke, “the judges would like to address you all.”

The dogfolk judge who’d sent out that black gryphon for hissing at him stepped up, spent a moment adjusting the microphone, and then looked straight at Rik. “What we would like to say to you, breeders and spectators alike, is unthinkable. Yet this year, the unthinkable has become the truth. We have named one Grand Champion already, and while the prize is well deserved, we all agree that another animal is the one we will remember above all. For the first time in the history of the National Gryphon Exhibit, the panel of judges have unimously decided to award an extra honorary prize.

“Rik Selasen, please come forward.”

This #FridayFlash fic was written as part of a prompt call themed around saws, idioms and proverbs; inspired by a prompt by Zamdor: “Procrastination is the thief of time”

There was a sense of excitement all over the forest; the air seemed to vibrate with the expectations the animals had for the yearly Midsummer Ball. In every tree, den, and stream, the animals were getting ready for the big day, each in their own way. All of them had a task, each of them equally important, to make sure the day went off without a hitch.

Squirrel was in charge of the snacks, and was feverishly collecting every nut and acorn he could find to make sure there would be enough for everyone.

The birds, led by Blackbird, were in charge of the music, and practised for hours each day. Hearing their song was a reminder to all the animals of what would soon come.

Queen Ant and her children had been charged with preparing the glade where the Ball would be held, and scurried to and fro to blanket the ground with a soft, even layer of fresh pine needles. They enlisted the help of Hare, who stomped the needles flat with his strong feet, and once they were done, Sheep brought fragrant herbs from her meadow to scatter across the top of the blanket of needles.

Spider wove artful curtains to decorate the tree branches up above, and the fireflies saved their glow for a full week, to make sure it would be strong enough for the big day.

Moose wrote a speech, Bear and the bees made peace for once to provide the very best honey-mead to drink, and Otter collected clams for the carnivores to eat. Rabbit brought in carrots and lettuce for the herbivores, and all around, the animals kept busy.

That is, all animals except one.

Vixen had finished collecting wooly fibers together with Raven and Magpie, for the guests to rest their feet on between dances, and was ready to start thinking about how she was going to dress for the dance, but first, she wanted to check in on her best friend Cat. Cat had been charged with spinning fine wispy clouds to float around the Ball and give it the proper magical flair, and so far, Vixen had seen no clouds.

She found Cat dozing on a rock in the sun. “How are you doing with the cloud-spinning, Cat?”

Cat opened one yellow eye, and grinned at Vixen. “The Ball isn’t for another five days, Vixen. I’ll spin the clouds later.”

“Well, as long as you get done on time,” Vixen told her friend. “Just remember you need to finish your gown, too.”

“I have plenty of time,” Cat assured her, and lay back down with her tail across her nose.

So Vixen left her alone, and went to sew herself a nice new set of beaded black silk gloves and stockings. When she came back the next day, she once again asked Cat how the Ball preparations were going.

“Oh, don’t worry, Vixen,” Cat replied, and rolled over to let the sun warm her belly. “I have plenty of time yet.”

So Vixen left Cat alone, and went to finish the last few stitches on her new white silk scarf. The next day, Cat still thought she had plenty of time, and Vixen finished sewing her own ball gown, as delicate as new birch leaves. She was getting very worried about her friend, and went to ask Dog’s advice.

“Cat has always been lazy,” Dog said. “She doesn’t realize that time runs away from her when she’s lying in the sun. She’ll get the clouds spun last minute, like always.”

“But then Cat won’t have time to get her gown ready,” Vixen protested, heartbroken for her friend.

“Maybe then she will learn,” Dog replied. “You can’t force Cat not to squander her time, Vixen.”

“Maybe not,” Vixen sighed, and walked home, her heart heavy.

On the morning of the big day, Vixen walked past the Ball glade, and sure enough, everything was in place except for Cat’s clouds. Now Vixen was getting really worried for her friend, but when she found her friend, Cat was sitting on a tree stump washing her paws.

“It doesn’t take all day to spin some clouds, Vixen,” Cat purred. “No need to be in such a rush.”

“But what will you wear?”

“I’m sure I’ll have time to finish my new gown after I spin the clouds,” Cat said, yawning. “After my nap.”

Vixen could only sigh and shake her head, walking away to get dressed for the Ball. Maybe Dog had been right, and there was nothing she could do to help Cat.

As dusk fell, Nightingale took up the first haunting notes of the evening’s musical entertainment, soon joined by Blackbird, Starling, and Mockingbird. Frog and his cousins provided accompaniment, and soon all the animals were in the glade, laughing and dancing and enjoying themselves. Vixen was there in her new green gown, with her white scarf and black gloves, and she was relieved to see Cat had spun her clouds, which were floating wispily around Moose’s and Deer’s horns.

But nowhere did she see Cat enjoying herself, even though Cat loved the Midsummer Ball as much as all the other animals.

Finally, she found Cat outside the glade, curled up under a root crying.

“What’s wrong, Cat? Why aren’t you at the Ball?”

“I don’t have anything to wear,” Cat cried, and looked very ashamed. “You were right, I should have spun the clouds earlier!”

“Yes,” Vixen said, “you should have. Time doesn’t wait for your naps, Cat. But if you promise to do better next year, I have a surprise for you.”

Cat promised, and Vixen pulled out the most beautiful gown Cat had ever seen, the color of honey and wild clover.

“When did you have time to sew that gown?” Cat asked, stunned.

“You had time, too,” Vixen said. “If only you’d planned it a little better.”

Maybe Cat didn’t stop procrastinating entirely after that day, but at least she never again was the last one to finish her task for the Midsummer Ball.

This #FridayFlash fic was written as part of a prompt call themed around saws, idioms, and proverbs; inspired by a prompt by Ysabetwordsmith: “Eze mbe si na ihe ya ji-achiri ihe egwu ya aga njem bu maka ya ezu ndiegwu”

“Hey, Millie, I’m going to the corner store; wanna come?” The moment he said it he knew it had been a mistake. For a moment, he’d thought more about how it’d be nice for her to get outside, than about the big production she was about to make of it. Shame on him.

“Oh, yeah, hang on, Rob, I just need to get a couple of things, okay?” Loose red-blonde wisps of hair pointing in every direction around her head, his girlfriend became a flurry of activity, and he went back into their shared flat with a sigh, to sit down while he waited.

Her legs, long and thin and pale, foalish and freckled, disappeared into a pair of cargo pants with more pockets than Scheherazade had stories. A matching vest was hung over her narrow shoulders. Had it only been the vest and pants, Rob wouldn’t have been so worried about Millie. She was entitled to wear what she wanted, after all, and that mildly anti-establishment tomboyish look was far from the worst she could have chosen.

“They’re only open another hour, Mil,” he remarked as she went to work loading up those endless pockets with objects that might come in handy. Not that he expected it to make a difference; Millie had her ritual and he should have known better than to ask her to come along on the three-minute-roundtrip walk to pick up a quart of milk.

“I’ll be right with you!” she promised, wiggling a compact first aid kit into one pocket on her vest. “Just a couple more things…”

And then she was off again, going through cabinets searching for a solution for every contingency, probably up to and including alien abduction and zombie attacks. Rob knew better than to suggest further disasters; it’d add another ten minutes, at least, to her prep time every time he made a remark about some far-fetched impossibility in jest. Been there, done that. Millie didn’t have much of a sense of humor when it came to her arsenal.

“Rob, where do we keep the cereal bars?”

Oh, lordy, she was worse than usual, today. “It takes like a minute to walk to the corner store, Millie. Nobody’s going to starve in the time it takes us to go there. Leave it.”

“But what if we get locked out?” Nevermind she had pocketed two sets of spare keys already, plus a cell phone that would be entirely sufficient to call a locksmith if they couldn’t get a hold of the building manager who lived down on the ground floor.

“We can pick up cereal bars at the shop, Mil.”

“They might be closed.” The way she was going on, it was starting to look like the least outlandish of her concerns.

“They won’t be closed.”

“But what if-” Oh, damn it, the poor girl looked close to tears. He really shouldn’t argue with her; it wasn’t as though she could help it.

“Sssh, it’s alright, Mil. I’ll get you a cereal bar.”

“Two.”

Rob closed his eyes and counted to ten. It was definitely better not to ask. “Alright, two. That’s it?”

“Yep!” She beamed at him, looking… so very normal. “Just gonna grab the umbrella and the water bottle!”

He hid his smile and shook his head. That girl… if MacGyver had travelled with Millie, he’d never have needed to fix an aircraft with a wad of chewing gum. Maybe that’s what he ought to do, sit her down in front of the TV a couple of nights and hope she picked up the notion of solving problems with a minimum of tools. It could work.

Once the cereal bars were safely stashed away in Millie’s pocket, they walked out the door, and she bounced on the balls of her feet as he locked the door three times. Three steps away from the door, and then he turned, raising his key towards the lock again. “Just gonna check the stove.”

Millie rolled her eyes. “You weren’t even cooking, Rob.” A quick glance at her watch. “The store closes in five minutes.”

And whose fault was that? “I’ll be quick.”

Millie watched her boyfriend’s back disappear through the doorway to their apartment, then turned and started down the steps. It was better not to argue with Rob’s ritual.

This #FridayFlash fic was written as part of a prompt call themed around saws, idioms and proverbs; inspired by a prompt by Beetiger: “Too much stuff”

A horde of hungry eyes stared at Casey when the locksmith’s work was done and she opened the door. Green eyes, yellow eyes, a few blue eyes.

For a few moments all was quiet, then a pink, fanged maw opened beneath one pair of eyes, and released a terrible sound, the angry angry cry of a lap-sized cousin of a starved lion. It was followed by another one, then two more, and soon every single one of the carpet of cats waiting in the tiny hallway inside old Mrs. Gentlefellow’s front door. With a growl, she swept a couple of cats aside with the side of her foot, and managed to take a full step into the apartment before her brain registered the stench hanging in the air.

With a hard swallow, she reached up and adjusted her breathing mask. Bad enough the place was full of cats; she was going to be itching for a week at this rate. Not much to be done about it, though – she was here to find out if the smell that had bothered the old lady’s neighbor was a result of foul play or just a failure to keep up with those furry devils’ litter boxes.

Wistful thinking, of course.

There was no way, no matter how filthy, a litter box could smell like someone went to the butcher and forgot to put their purchase in the fridge. The best-case scenario was that the old bat had done just that and then went for a cruise in the Bahamas. Someone swore behind her; probably some poor technician trying to keep the cats from running out through the open door. God. Casey could not understand why anyone would want pets, and especially not pets like cats, with no practical utility.

But then, maybe that antipathy also had something to do with that pesky allergy thing she’d been dealing with all her life.

The kitchen, once she managed to wade there through the sea of hungry felines, showed no evidence of a shopping trip interrupted by a bout of scattered mental faculties. The counters weren’t clear, but at a glance none of the clutter piled onto them could explain the smell permeating the apartment. Knick-knacks, jars of all shapes and sizes, half of them the sort cookies or candies would come in at the supermarket. Crazy old ladies, saving everything for a rainy day.

Casey shook her head, tugging at the edge of her gloves. Might as well check the trash, too; nobody ever got a promotion by doing a hack job of an investigation.

Opening the cupboard under the old lady’s sink in search for the trash can, she found a newly-changed trash bag, and several cans of cat food, causing the chorus of her whiskered, fanged onlookers to redouble in volume. Maybe that was why the old lady was gone; Casey couldn’t see how anyone could stand that noise – thirty seconds and it was already giving her a headache. With a sigh, she pulled out one of the cans, hooked a gloved finger into the pull-ring on the lid, and opened it. Chunks of something with a cursory resemblance to meat in a gel-like, just as unappetizing sauce.

A plastic plate sat on the floor over in a corner, and she upended the empty can over it, drawing a hissing, yowling mass of famished animals to converge on the freshly-served meal. She was probably going to catch flak over it, changing the scene, but she couldn’t work with those beasts following her around singing an aria of desperate, primal hunger.

No sign of the old lady in the tiny bathroom.

Last chance. Casey proceeded to Mrs. Gentlefellow’s bedroom.

The coroner determined cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head, noting that most of the damage to the exposed parts of the woman’s body had been done postmortem. Those cursed, devilish cats, those pets the old woman had hoarded, hadn’t loved their mistress very much in death, it seemed.

A week later, one investigator was landed in the hospital with a concussion after opening another closet door in the old woman’s home, and the chain of events was official. There had been no burglars, no foul play, no material motive to be discerned.

Just a lonely old woman who’d collected too much stuff over the year, and whose hoarding had finally gotten the better of her.