Yonder

The following is a flash fiction, sort of fan fiction, borrowing a concept from Stephen King's Dark Tower series:


"The thinny takes you over yonder." 

The old man gnawed a sliver of wood, rolling it from one side of his gummy mouth to the other.  His black eyes, surounded by a web of wrinkles so complex it would have given a spider a run for its money, squinted in the harsh light of the desert.  His head cocked to the side when the wind brought the sound of the the thinny to us where we stood at on the edge of the arroyo.

"Yonder?" The air was unbearably hot, and sweat poured down my brow and over my cheeks.  The sound of the portal whined like a mosquito in my ear, and burrowed deeper in my mind.  It was a profoundly unpleasant noise.

"Aye." The sliver rolled back and forth.  "To the other side of the universe.  So said my Papaw.  It's bigger these days.  Used to be you couldn't hear it from here."  He sniffed and hiked up his sagging pants as if the suspenders he wore were just for show.  "I ain't goin' any closer, and if I was you I would just head on back to the ranch and forget this."

"I can't."  I stared down the arroyo that meandered through the scrubby bushes.  The rains had ceased weeks ago and the stream bed was dry, hard and cracked.  I had been in this world for 2 years and this was my only chance.

"No tellin' where you come out.  Or if you come out."

"It has to be better than here."  I turned to the old man and extended my hand.  "Thankee Sai, for your help."  He took my hand and shook it, a single pump up and down.  Then he turned and left without another word.  That's how they did things here.  No long goodbyes.

I stepped down into the dried up streambed and started walking.  As I moved down the arroyo the whine of the thinny grew louder, more intense, and began to shift and distort until it was no longer unpleasant.  It called to me with sounds of home, promises of a world lost to me.


*Image from here

Short Story Saturday

Part Two of the story started yesterday.

“I'm so tired of this, Rick. When are you going to get a job? All you do is sit around, watch tv, play games. Is this one of your new 'let's mess with Em' games? Because I'm sick of those too. You need to grow up.”

He stared down at the scuffed brown boots he wore. “I mowed the lawn yesterday.” 

“You have a degree. You have student loans to pay. You can't run from those forever.”

“I was thinking I should go apply for grad school.”

“I was thinking we still have a position open in marketing at Brown Webster,” she countered.

Brown Webster was the company she worked for. He imagined going to work with her everyday, and tried not to imagine choking her one day as they drove down the carpool lane.

“Em, I don't think--”

“Of course you don't think!” she pushed past him. “I have to go to work. I'm going to be late now because of you and your games.”

She covered her face with her hands and for a moment he panicked. She was going to cry and was going to be the bad guy after all. But when she lowered her hands her eyes were sad but dry.

“When I come home tonight, I don't want you to be here.”

Rick nodded slowly. “Yeah. I guess that would be best.” He shuffled his feet. Even though he wanted this it still felt awful. It would have been better if she had screamed and thrown something.

She grabbed an empty laundry basket. He watched her sadly and realized that maybe he didn't want to all of it to be over. He still loved her and knew that pretty much all the misery of the past 6 months had been his fault.

“You're in my way.” She was standing with the basket propped on her slim hip. He was blocking her way back to the stairs.

“Oh. Yeah.” He stepped aside. “Em.” She stopped. “I'll go. I won't be here when you get back. But do you think...?”

“Rick, I can't do this. It feels like I'm dealing with a twelve-year-old sometimes. I love you, I really do, but I can't carry you anymore.”

He nodded again. Looked down at the floor. She didn't move. Maybe she was waiting for his reply. He looked down at her small feet. She was still wearing her fuzzy green house slippers. Her shadow slanted away from her and he saw his own shadow pointing towards her. Only that wasn't right. The light was to their left. He glanced to his right and there was his shadow laying sadly on the concrete. He looked back at the shadow pointed at Em and realized it wasn't attached to anything, it was just a black smudge on the floor like a discarded rag. Then it wiggled.

“Em?'

“I have to go to work.”

“Em. Emily!”

“What!?” she snapped,whirling around--

--and the shadow leaped into the air, and as it flew it expanded and unfurled like two giants wings sweeping towards her.  She had no time to react. He tried to reach her-his arm went up, one foot lifted to take a step; and the shadow was on her, wrapping around her small body like a soft black robe. Without a sound she disappeared.

The shadow crumpled, empty, to the floor in a puddle that spread like an oil stain. It expanded in a perfect circle, thinning until a circle of gray concrete appeared and grew larger as the ring of shadow grew thinner and rushed to the edges of the room. Then it was gone.

Rick stood alone in the basement. The light bulb dangling from the ceiling pushed the shadows into the corners. He stared around him, at the laundry basket lying discarded on the floor; at the washer and dry and his bike. It was all still and silent as if the shadow had swallowed all the air in the room.

His vision blurred. “Em?” The word fell softly as a he watched a shadow slide across the floor towards him.

Rick

Another Flash Fiction Friday.  This is actually the beginning of a longer story I'm working on.  Enjoy.

They stood together in the basement. The light bulb dangling from the ceiling pushed the shadows to the corners, but Rick still felt uneasy.

“You are ridiculous,” Em said. “Seriously, how old are you? Monsters in the basement?”

“I never said monsters,” Rick replied. He glanced around the room again, at the washer and dryer and the plastic table they used to fold laundry on before dragging it back upstairs. His bike was in one corner, banished to the basement until spring. In another corner stood a stack of plastic totes filled with Christmas and Halloween decorations. “I just said I'm kind of weirded out.”

She waved her small hands around the room. “Nothing here. Maybe if you got a job and left the house once in a while you would have better things to do than make up stories about the Boogeyman Man in my basement.”

Her basement. She never let him forget that it was her basement, her house, her job that paid the bills. A year ago they had been soul mates, but that was before he was fired from his assistant manager position at Cheddars. Before she realized that he was a 17 year old in a 30 year old's body and there was nothing she could do to make him behave otherwise. Before he realized that if she couldn't change him with subtle hints she would belittle and insult him in every way possible. His friends went from “artsy” and “interesting” to “lazy” and “useless”. His tattoos were no longer “intriguing”, but “stupid”. His beard went from “sexy” to “Why don't you shave that thing off? No one wants to hire a guy who looks like he's homeless.” At this point he stayed because he never wanted to be the bad guy in a break up.  It was also easier than finding another place to live. He didn't know why she let him stay.

“Let's just go back upstairs,” he said.

“No,” she said, flipping her dark hair over her shoulder. He used to love that hair. It was black and shiny and smelled like lavender. “Where's the monster Rick?”

“I never said there was a monster,” he repeated.

He never did say there was a monster, but the basement had been really creeping him out the past few days. There were noises, like whispers from far away, and shadows in places where shadows shouldn't be. And just this morning he had seen one of those shadows move.

Of course he shouldn't have told Em about it. She had immediately rushed downstairs just to prove him wrong.

Luck

It was a coin toss, easy enough to beat, but as she grasped through all the lines of probability, she found no way to win. 

She could manipulate the coin to land any way she wished, but she could also see all the outcomes of the results.  Her opponent would call heads, she would make the coin show tails and win the right to choose the first cup.  The crux was in the final outcome.  In one future she chose wrong and drank poison.  In another she chose the correct cup, but later that day would choke on a particularly tough piece of bread.  Every line she pulled down and studied resulted her death.  Whether she was first or her opponent, she always lost in the end.  She could see no alternative to the situation.

She glanced around the room at the others gathered there.  This was a dangerous game, you only had a 50% chance of surviving to the next round.  She had made it through 4 contests, all dependent on her ability to manipulate the toss and forsee the results, but it looked like her luck had run out.

"Shall I call it then?" her opponent asked.

"Go ahead." 

"Heads then."  The moderator flipped the coin.  She didn't bother manipulating it as there was no point.  It was the end of the line.

The coin was made of gold, the head was some king who never existed in this universe, the tail a creature no longer living on this world but thriving on another.  As it flipped and glittered in the lamp light, she felt a queer tug in the part of her mind that explored all possible realities .  She grasped it, with shaky mental fingers and pulled the new world toward her.  It came to her reluctantly -it was a very small chance-but she wrenched it into existence with a smile.

Oh you sly universe.  I only looked at the possibilities where I manipulated the coin.

The coin landed tails up. 

"Challenger drinks first," the moderator said, pushing the tray towards her.

She lifted the small clay cup to her lips with a wink.  "Cheers".

It seemed her luck was still with her.

Flash Fiction Friday

Ok, I'm doing something a little different today.  No comedy, just my first Flash Fiction.

The old woman lowered the bucket into the well and brought it back up with the winch. Her back made a painful protest as she lifted and poured the water, which emitted a faint sulpherous smell, into a yellowing plastic jug. She thought of all those warnings they used to give about reusing plastic containers; how the plastic supposedly leached toxins into the liquids and foods that they contained. If only those concerned officials had known what was coming, they wouldn't have worried about a few cancer causing molecules in a water bottle.

Grunting she hauled the water back to the hut she had erected near the well when she found it 20 years ago. It was nothing more than rusted metal, plastic sheeting, and bits of wood hodgepodged together to provide shelter. Inside, by the dim light of an oil lamp, she poured some water into a pot on the wood stove used for cooking and heat. On a flat slab of wood balanced on two old wire spools she chopped anemic looking carrots and a slightly moldy potato. She wished she still had a bit of meat left over from a deer carcass she had scavenged several days ago. The thing had had a fifth leg hanging from its belly, but appeared to have died of natural causes. It had still been in one piece, more or less, and she had hurridly hacked off a chunk of flesh and shuffled home as coyotes yipped and barked in the dusk. She didn't want to be out after dark. There were worse things than coyotes in the dark.

The carrots and potato went into the pot. She sat back at the table and stared at the gnarled hands resting on the surface, the right one still gripping the knife she used for everything. Her knuckles were knobby. It was becoming harder for her to fully extend her fingers. Dark blue veins bulged and slithered under cinamon-colored skin when she tried to make a fist. When had she gotten so old?

Memories welled up: working at a bookstore, nights drinking and talking with friends. Earlier memories: catching frogs, eagerly waving her hand in the air in class, the scruff of her father's 3 day old beard; all before The Fire had turned the world inside out. There were others: flames, ash, years when the sun remained hidden by dust. There was a man with wavy brown hair, gentle and doomed; childeren laughing, running, hugging her legs, then coughing blood, large dark eyes staring sightlessly from pale, hollow faces. She closed her eyes and saw another man with white hair and black eyes, and her stomach tightened with a cold rage that had never left her, even after so many years.

She could feel the night closing in on her little home, opening like a void in the world.  Tonight there were no coyotes yipping, and that was a bad sign. It meant that the shades were moving across the land. The old women opened her eyes, leaving her memories and prepared for the night.