A Blog Of Our Own

Five writers trying to push our own boundaries. One short story posted every week.

[ablogofourown-blog]

Laura

So, these next few from me will probably be more character studies than solid stories. I’m trying to develop a group of nerd ladies with the same embracement of their nerd-dom that nerd guys in fiction receive (without having to sexualize them or make them appealing to nerd guys). Eventually, I’ll want a proper story for them, but right now I’m just trying to flesh out who they are as people.

...Alex

The distressed Captain America shield shirt was the only sign that the woman behind the counter meant to be in a comic book store.  Over the shirt was a worn brown blazer, and with her long, swishy skirt, waist-length frizzy red hair and horn rimmed glasses, she might have looked more fitting in some New Age self-help music store or a women’s studies class. Her complexion was blotchy, her face too long and tired looking to be considered attractive.  She looked bored, in fact, but watchful enough of the new customer that entered the cramped but clean store.

“Hi, can I help you find anything?” she asked as he thumbed through  the shelves on the left.  

“Yeah,” he said, picking up a few from the same comic. “Do you have anything past issue three of Descendants of Ancients?”

“Issue three is the most recent issue,” she said plainly. “The next one should be out next month.”

“That can’t be right,” he half-chuckled. “This has been around since I was in high school.”

“Well.” She shrugged.  She took out her phone and started typing.

He scoffed. “Look, can I talk to the manager or whoever? They’ll know what I’m talking about”

The woman looked up with her hazel eyes narrowed and he realized too late his mistake. “I’m the owner here. And the manager for that matter. So you can talk to me.” She looked at her phone again.  “The Chronicles of the Descendants of Ancients had twenty-six issues from the nineties through the early two thousands.”

“See…”

“The Descendants of Ancients is a reboot of the cult classic,” she continued in a slightly louder voice, “first released in 2015 with a new storyline and a gender flip of the original narrator. The fourth issue will be released on June 7, 2017.” She held the phone out.  He leaned forward to read, and sure enough, it said just that.  His face flushed with embarrassment.

“I can hold a copy for you when they come in if you’d like to pre-order it,” she offered.

“No, that’s…fine. I was looking for the old one, anyway.”

“I can order that, too.  It  can be here next Wednesday.”

But by then, there was no point. “Forget it,” he muttered and louder, he said, “I’ll just go to Heroes. I think they have it.”

If he expected her to negotiate, she failed.  He swung out the door, and the owner of POW! Comics on Powell Street smacks her lips. “Yep.”

The day had nearly ended when the new woman opened the door, looked around the otherwise empty room, and immediately started rambling, “Am I late? Sorry, I had to finish something and I thought about texting you, but then I thought that would take more time. How long have you been waiting?” She was tall and gangly, with wide eyes and a high pitched voice that made her seem perpetually stuck in the awkwardness of high school, even though she was professionally dressed and must have been in her late twenties, at least.

The shopkeeper shook her head. “Nope. I was just getting ready to close, but it’s been like this all day.”

“Still?” Her friend frowned with concern.

“It’s only been two months, Gracie.”

“Exactly. It’s been two months, Laur. Have you checked your website? How far down the google search you are and all that?”

Laur, considerably rounder and shorter by comparison, shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just go.”

On paper, Laura Nicholson was the perfect person to open a comic book store.  She had used comics to create her own custom world all through her childhood. She had written her graduate thesis about the importance of comic books.  She had drafts in sketchbooks hidden in her closet that she would probably never finish. She could and had spent hours divulging little known trivia about her favorite series, which she had learned was only a decent party trick around other people who enjoyed comics.  And she felt so strongly about the need for a female-owned comic book store where women wouldn’t have to deal with condescending gatekeepers that she decided to open her own.

What she didn’t feel strongly about was interacting with people outside of her close group of friends. Laura was irritable, and even when she wasn’t, she had been known to come across as disinterested and cold. The problem was social skills turned out to be a bigger part of owning a small business than she had anticipated, despite warnings from her friends and family. She knew Grace was just concerned and trying to be helpful, but right then, Laura wasn’t interested in hearing any, “I told you so.”

Gracie pursed her lips while Laura grabbed her things from the back, turned out the lights and flipped the sign.  On the way to the car, she handed a thin plastic bag to her ride.  “This is for you.”

Gracie pulled the contents out of the bag and read, “Descendants of Ancients, Issue 4: Into the Depths of Drossnet.” She looked at Laura. “You got it? Already?”

Laura grinned proudly. “Signed ARC and everything.” Gracie flipped open the first page eagerly to check. “There are some perks to owning even a failing comic book shop.”

She beamed and wrapped an arm around her. “Have I told you lately you’re my favorite person?” And Laura smiled as she thought it was much easier to be a people person with the right sort of people.

[ablogofourown-blog]

In her lifetime, she was known by many names. Panchali, princess of Panchal. Yagnyasani, she who was born of fire. Yojanagandha, she whose fragrance could be felt for miles. Parsati, granddaughter of Prushata. The most well-known perhaps was Draupadi, daughter of Drupad, wife of five brothers, queen of the Pandevas. Draupadi, bereft of sons. She stood alone, as the enemies of her husbands tore at the clothes on her back. She begged and pleaded and wept as her husbands', her family averted their gazes in shame. Her anger grew as betrayal cut deep; her cries went unheeded as she was dragged and dropped at Duryodhana's feet. To find out that she had been lost in a game of dice, that her husbands' enemies had her at their mercy, that nobody would step in and save her brought much pain to her heart. Yet her tears slowed, her chin raised in defiance. They would not see her break or fall apart at the seams. She was Draupadi, she was proud and she was fierce, and she was beloved to the one she could always count on. Eager hands pulled the cloth off her shoulder. And pulled. And pulled. And pulled. Hands grew tired, frustration and rage tumbled out of her attacker's lips, but still the cloth would not end. She stood alone, tear tracks shining on her cheeks, remembering - An old sage in the bathing house, unable to leave the pool as he had no clean clothes to wear. A bevy of ladies surrounded him as he asked for forgiveness. She tore a strip off her sari, and held it out to him, turning away with her giggling friends. Before he left, he blessed her, "As you have kept my modesty today, so shall yours be protected." Two meters, five meters, ten, twenty, fifty, still he pulled, and she remembered - His gopis may have surrounded him, but when Krishna cut his finger, not one had a cloth on hand to bind it. But Draupadi could not bear the blood on her best and dearest friend's hand. She tore a strip off her dupatta and tied it around his finger. Almost but not quite a rakhi. Still he promised her the protection of a brother. There was no end in sight. Each pull of the fabric only served to unveil more. Her husbands had forsaken her, she stood alone, but Draupadi had no been abandoned.

The Disrobing of Draupadi

[ablogofourown-blog]

Cursed

I’m so late and I’m so sorry but here it is! Like Chrissy, I cheated a little, so this is the prologue for a tentative lesbian BatB retelling!

There is a saying in the Old Village that bad things happen when it rains.

It rained on the night the princess was born, which was the same night that the king lost his wife.

There were whispers that the princess was cursed, but the king was not one to listen to superstitions. Instead, he doted on her like any father would his firstborn.

Under the king’s instructions, the princess received nothing but the finest: the brightest tutors were sought to give her the best education; the most extravagant materials were given to the most skilled tailors to make the most beautiful clothes; the finest jewels were brought from the furthest regions to adorn her dark hair; and the princess, who knew nothing of want, grew into a headstrong young woman who always got her way.

The skies were clear the day that the king set off for another hunting trip, a few days after the princess turned sixteen. There had been a ball in her honour, to celebrate another year getting older instead of mourning another year since they had lost the queen, and nobles from far and wide had gathered at the castle just outside the Old Village and joined in the festivities. For the first time, lords had started asking for the princess’ hand -- she was sixteen now, and would soon be ready to take a husband. A line had already started to form, with suitors offering her the finest their lands had to win her hand.

On the day that the king had set off on a hunting trip, most of the visitors had cleared, save for the nobles from the towns closest to the Old Village who had stayed on to discuss political matters. But of course, there was no better way to start off the talks than a hunt, and so the king had kissed his daughter on her forehead and left her in the care of her handmaidens.

No one could have foreseen that just hours later, blue skies would turn dark, and thunder and lightning would escort a king fatally wounded from a stray arrow back home.

Not even the most skilled healers in the Old Village had been able to save the king, and a week after the princess turned sixteen, he died.

Sixteen years and a week after the princess was born, whispers rose again that the princess was cursed. But the castle could not afford to pay attention to them. There was a king to bury and a queen to crown.

Under the burden of the crown, the young queen turned cold. With her father’s advisor at her side, her rule had less of her father’s empathy and more of the advisor’s calculation. Suitors were entertained, their gifts were accepted, and they were dismissed.

The castle mourned for the princess, mourned for what she had lost and mourned for what she was becoming. But the queen would have her way, and no one said a thing.

It rained on the queen’s seventeenth birthday. The castle whispered about bad omens. But the queen paid no attention to superstitions, and held a ball. Lords and ladies came from far and wide to partake in the celebrations, and it was a more extravagant affair than any her father had held for her.

There was another guest that night, one that had not been invited: an old woman dressed in rags, soaked from the rain and shivering, her damp cloak wrapped around her like a second skin.

In front of all the queen’s guests, the old woman begged to be let in, to be given shelter till the rain passed. Amid the whispers that bad things happen when it rained, with a heart as cold as the winds that raged outside, the queen turned the old woman away.

Enraged, the old woman cursed the queen, stripping her beauty and turning her into a beast as horrid as her heart. She cursed all who lived in the castle who had not spoken against the queen, turned them into objects. She cursed the guests to forget what they had seen, to forget the queen and the castle. She cursed the castle, vowing that the spell would only be broken when the queen would love someone other than herself, and was loved in return. She left a rose as beautiful as the queen had been, and promised the queen that if the spell was not broken by the time the last petal fell, they would spend the rest of their lives cursed.

Years passed, but the rains never stopped. The castle lay forgotten. The splendid rooms gathered dust, and the queen lost hope, and the last remnants of her humanity.

[ablogofourown-blog]

A Perfectly Ordinary Day

1

A Perfectly Ordinary Day

It was a perfectly ordinary, normal, mid-autumn day in the little village of Chawton. But then, you know what they say about extraordinary days – they have to have a good foundation of ‘ordinary’ to get going. That’s what’s so special about them. It’s very hard to predict when you’re about to wake up and have an extraordinary day. And it’s certainly true that Sara Body hardly expected fireworks over her cornflakes.

  To give the day its credit, it did dawn quite prettily, light shining through brown and golden leaves, gently teasing at the slumbering teenager attempting to awake her gracefully from a night’s rest. And what made it even better was that it was a Saturday: no school, and while the dawn was pretty, the day was just as nice at ten thirty, when the light and noises of the day finally woke her. She squirmed under the sheets, pulling in her air-chilled arms and squinting into the light as she tried to get herself used to the whole being awake thing. It didn’t take too long, though, and a mere seven minutes later she was poking her toes out of the warm cocoon she had made for herself.

  A grand total of fifteen minutes later she was downstairs, clad in a t-shirt and battered jeans, pushing herself up on to one of the kitchen stools. ‘Mum?’ she called, reaching for the waffles. No answer, but that wasn’t surprising – it was a nice day in autumn: she would be out back tidying up the garden. Personally, Sara didn’t see the point at all – nothing was going to stop those leaves claiming their brief empire over the neighbourhood. Whatever kept her happy, though. It just meant that there was no one there to tut as she pulled down the maple syrup for her waffles.

  ‘Hey poophead,’ a young boy’s voice broke the peace. In response Sara exaggerated an eye roll for the benefit of the toaster, which she was anticipating releasing her breakfast any second now.

  ‘Ahh,’ she grumbled, having completely ignored her little brother – it was good for his ego, after all, ensured he’d never been spoilt – as she pulled her waffles out of the machine and on to her plate. She licked her lips as she doused the whole plate in maple syrup, her stomach growling hungrily.

  ‘Haha, mine!’ the voice came again, much closer this time. The bright blonde-haired eight-year-old had clambered up on to the stool next to her and before she knew it, his gross, sticky hands were making off with the waffles she had so lovingly made.

  ‘Hey!’ she exclaimed, outraged. Honestly, the child looked like a goddamn cherub angel type, what with the golden locks and big blue eyes. But she knew the truth. He was the devil. Or at the very least a major demon, sent to her family to be a pain in her neck. ‘Get off those – they’re mine!’

  ‘Nuhuh,’ Toby managed to get out, his mouth crammed full of waffles, syrup leaking out the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Ugh, gross,’ she protested, recoiling, her good mood from the lovely wake-up evaporating with alarming speed, which only increased as the boy started cackling in amusement. He loved his big sister, to be sure, but that didn’t mean he didn’t like pushing her buttons. Especially if he got sugar-encrusted baked goods out of it.

  She made to get up to chase him out of the door, but gave up almost before she started. She wasn’t lazy, per se, it was just that the waffle packet was way closer than her brat brother was. Plus she’d had eight years of his company - she knew the game. If she went and chased off after him their mum would be sure to come in just as she was teaching Toby a good lesson about the evils of stealing and somehow she would be the one to get into trouble.

  Pulling the last waffle from the packet, she sighed. Her stomach was grumbling, sounding as grouchy as she was beginning to, clearly needing more than one to keep her going. What was worse was that the old toaster needed rest breaks between each round and she just wanted it to cook now.

  ‘Sara, did you just give your brother half a litre of maple syrup?’ came a voice from the doorway. ‘You know what he’s like when he’s had too much sugar - and it’s lunch time in an hour. Don’t start cooking anything else or you’ll spoil it.’ The middle-aged woman walked into the kitchen and placed a couple of gardening gloves into a waiting plastic bag to keep the mess off the surfaces.

  ‘I wouldn’t exactly call it “giving”, but I guess if that’s what he told you ...’ she murmured, crossing her arms over her chest and reluctantly returning the breakfast treat to the cupboard. She was still starving, but it didn’t seem worth it to argue the point. Now she was too busy sulking over the unfairness of it all.

  And so she sat back, and watched quietly as her mousy-haired mother washed her hands and moved seamlessly into preparing the family’s lunch. Since her and Toby’s father’s death two years ago, Matilda had become an automaton of a woman, taking care of home, family and finances. It meant Sara had a lot of babysitting duty while her mum worked in the evenings and at weekends, but although she did sometimes get tired of doing it, she could appreciate the effort her mum was going to in order to keep the family together. In fact, she knew she ought to offer to help now, to take some pressure off, but lack-of-food-fuelled fatigue had set in. Stupid brother stealing her stupid food.

  ‘Mum,’ Toby called, coming in from the living room, extending the word out into a whine. ‘I don’t feel so good.’

  Sara watched her mother’s shoulders rise, stay there a moment then uncoil as she breathed out. Ah, maybe it hadn’t been such a restful Saturday for her mum as it had been for her. Matilda turned round, giving her eldest a ‘significant look’, then surveyed Toby. ‘What did I tell you? Go sit down and be still,’ she insisted. ‘It’ll pass - you’ve just eaten too many sweets.’

  That was her opportunity. Sara jumped down from her seat and put on a smile. ‘Don’t worry about lunch, mum - I can make it. How do omelettes sound?’

  Matilda turned to her daughter and smiled. ‘You’re a star,’ she said gratefully, though her moment’s rest that Sara had hoped to give her didn’t last long, as the doorbell rang almost immediately.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ the young boy’s voice rang out, and Matilda immediately jogged after her son.

   ‘No, you stay sat down before you make yourself sick. What have I told you about answering the door to strangers?’ It seemed that she spent half her life telling her children things for their own good that they promptly either forgot or straight up ignored. Most of the time they were good, though, and neither had shown any nastiness so that was something.

  Ten minutes later, Matilda returned to the kitchen, just as Sara was pouring the egg mixture into the pan. ‘What was that?’ she asked, stepping back as the hot pan spat some of the mixture back at her. She picked up a spatula and poked at it a bit.

  ‘Nothing much, just someone dropping something off,’ she said, a little vaguely. There was something odd in Matilda’s expression, but Sara was distracted by cooking eggs and didn’t push it. Instead, she flipped the mixture and pulled a plate closer. Soon enough she had lunch for three on the table and at last her rumbling stomach could be sated.

The rest of the day was fairly quiet for the teenager. Sara had gone back up to her room, as small and uninteresting as it was, and decided to have a sort out. Toby had been taken out to his friend’s birthday party, having recovered completely from the sugar overdose he had suffered, and Matilda was taking the chance to buy some more groceries while her son was otherwise occupied.

  Midway through sorting out her desk, Sara sat on the chair in front of it and looked up at the noticeboard stuck there. Its contents she hadn’t touched for years. Two years and three months, to be precise - the very day that the policeman had come to the door to tell her and her family about her father’s death. She remembered the policeman had been a little odd and she found herself getting distracted constantly trying to figure out what it was about him that she didn’t like. But then she reasoned she was probably just trying to avoid what horrible news he had come around to deliver. There hadn’t been anything ‘special’ about her father’s death - there hadn’t even been anyone to blame. She had never really appreciated how hopeless the term ‘tragic accident’ was until that day. But what else could be said about an incident involving one man, his car and a tree? It hadn’t even been foggy or raining.

  Still, that night she had done her noticeboard as it looks now. The entire thing had a scrapbook-like feel and depicted her family through the years: her parents on their wedding day (her mum with an adorable dimpled smile much like her own), her as a baby with her dad laughing, their first holiday all together (the picture was a little blurry but the waitress had done her best with it), Toby as a baby … She liked to think of it as a roadmap of her family’s life together. Although if you looked at it, you’d be forgiven for thinking she was still fourteen years old and that nothing bad had ever happened. She’d never consciously intended to stop working on it after that, but every time she had a picture in hand to pin up there something had stopped her.

  ‘Sara,’ came a soft call from her mother, who had opened the door slightly to check in on her daughter. That normally irritated Sara beyond belief, but she was feeling a bit reminiscent and sentimental just then, so she let it go.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Toby’s just dropped off - I wondered if you could come downstairs so we could have a chat?’ Without waiting for an answer, the woman turned and padded down the stairs.

  Immediately Sara mentally replayed the day, then the week, trying to figure out what the hell she had done wrong that her mum could want to have a private chat with her about. Normally there was some little thing. She suffered from an affliction of forthrightness combined with enough confidence to speak her mind; that usually was met with a certain amount of resistance from her classmates and teachers. But the last week had been pretty quiet. Plus it was Saturday, who would be tattling on her on a Saturday?

  Slowly she got to her feet, pulling on her dressing gown and tying it up on her way out the door. Quite often she had the desire to run when a row was on the horizon, but over the years she had learned that it was wiser to face it head on. Plus at this point she was sort of curious to know what she had been accused of now.

  ‘Whatever it is, mum,’ she began, on the defensive as she entered the living room. ‘I actually really don’t know anything about it.’

  To her surprise, her mother laughed quietly under her breath, shook her head and gestured to the sofa for her to sit down instead. Okay, so this wasn’t what she was expecting. Clearly she wasn’t in trouble, but why was this making her more nervous?

  ‘Sara, I hadn’t meant to do this like this but the visitor I had earlier ...’ Her mother trailed off and took a breath to compose herself. ‘He was a representative of your father’s estate. Not that he had an estate really, but … well apparently there was more to his … his effects than we knew.’

  Sara twisted her fingers in her lap, trying to hide how uncomfortable she felt at this sudden turn of conversation. She had dealt with her father’s death two years ago - had adjusted well, so the raft of school counsellors had reassured her mother - but she hadn’t had to think about it so directly for a long time. It still packed a punch that threatened to stop her breath from flowing normally.

  ‘I swear I had no idea that there was anything like this left to come - he never told me about this legacy ...’ the woman trailed off and looked down. She added in a quieter voice, ‘I didn’t think he kept anything from me.’ Clearing her throat, she placed a carefully constructed smile on her face and looked back up at her daughter. ‘But you’re seventeen in a few days so it’s nice that you’ll have something from your father.’

  Sara nodded, staying uncharacteristically quiet as she was passed a brown paper bag, marked for delivery on this day. She couldn’t help but think how weird it was that he’d scheduled to get this delivered to her today, of all days. Maybe if it had been on her birthday - and wasn’t seventeen a weird one to focus on anyway?

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ her mother prompted.

  She looked down at the package in her lap, sort of unaware that she’d just been twisting it around, flipping it over. Sliding her eyes back to her mother, she continued to stall, though she had no idea why. ‘You don’t know what it’ll be?’ she asked.

  ‘No, like I said, I had no idea about this family legacy. It’s not even from the solicitor we used, and you know he never spoke much about his own background.’

  Sara nodded, took a breath into her lungs and slid her forefinger beneath the seal.

  ‘It’s a bracelet,’ she said, her voice wavering peculiarly. She laughed at her own ridiculousness and slipped the trinket out of the packaging completely, allowing it to fall into her waiting palm. The coolness of the silver metal - slightly tarnished - surprised her a little, but it soon warmed to her touch. ‘It’s really pretty,’ she commented, warming up to the situation. ‘I always loved rubies - dad must have known before he-’ She trailed off, distracting herself by letting the deep red gems and smoky coloured stones reflect the light.

  ‘It’s beautiful, honey,’ her mum said, leaning over to have a look with a smile on her face. She hadn’t known what her daughter had been left - she hadn’t even seen the bracelet before - but this was nice. The uneasy feeling that had been assaulting her gut dissipated and she took the discarded packaging from her daughter’s lap. ‘We never knew much of them, but your father’s lot were always funny. Still, it’s nice for you to get an heirloom from their side.’

  Sara looked up at her mother, who had just got to her feet, and smiled. ‘Heirloom? Wow. I figured the solicitors had just found this hanging round their office and made up the story so they didn’t look like idiots.’

  ‘It’s in your father’s writing - you know what he was like: he had his own funny ideas.’ Matilda leaned over her daughter, turning off the lamp behind her and placing a kiss on her head as she stood back up. ‘Now don’t stay up too late. I know it’s Saturday, but you don’t want to mess up your sleep schedule for Monday.’

  ‘Ugh, school.’ Sara wrinkled her nose for a moment then wiped the disgruntled expression from her face. ‘I mean, I won’t, mum!’

  With that, Matilda retired to bed, for which Sara was grateful. She leaned back to turn the lamp back on,not intending to stay up for much longer, but wanting to have a good long look at the intricate little bracelet.

  It was lovely - it really was. Three thin strips of the tarnished silver crisscrossed over each other, just that beat off perfect that meant this was probably hand made rather than mass-produced like every single other bit of jewellery she had. In every second gap between the twining, a gem was nestled, alternating ruby and the smoky stone. It was honestly not like anything Sara had seen before in her life, though there was something tugging at her in the back of her mind. No matter how much she tried to pull the memory to the fore, though, it just wasn’t forthcoming. In fact, the more she tried to think about it, the more it seemed to retreat, so she figured she would let it alone. With any luck, she would suddenly have an epiphany while she was brushing her teeth.

  After about half an hour of peering at her new possession, she did decide it was time to retire. It had just gone midnight and if she wasn’t careful she’d while away the rest of the night down there. So she pulled herself up, placed the bracelet around her wrist, figuring she’d ‘trial run’ it before bed and then wear it properly tomorrow. Then it was just a matter of brushing her teeth in their little family bathroom and retiring to where the day had begun: her bedroom. She pushed her pale blue bed covers back and climbed in, yawning quietly to herself. Despite the quiet day, she was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow, the bracelet still sitting snugly around her wrist.

 And there it was. That was the end of the extraordinary day. Of course, no one could tell exactly how special it had been just yet. Sara went to bed with a vague sadness that the next day was Sunday, which meant school was getting ever closer, but how could she possibly know the significance of what she had done? Of the importance of what now lay around her wrist, beating with the rhythm of her own heart, subtly and impossible for anyone to notice? Not even they could discern the difference that had fallen over the girl. And they had been watching her from the beginning - from the start of it all.

[ablogofourown-blog]

Something Enough

It isn’t love. She knows that, he knows that, the whole kingdom knows that it isn’t romantic love that has him leading her by the hand out of her stepmother’s home and into a carriage to return to the castle where they will be wed and she will live the rest of her life in safety. Still, she thinks that is a sort of love and that’s more than she’s been shown since her father died so she’s happy to hold his hand and be helped up into the carriage. Smile, wave, blush prettily when he kisses your cheek while the crowd watches you and go back to discussing the trip to the mountains he wants to take you on because you've never been out of the capital city. He's an excellent friend and while there's a certain ache that feels a little bit like loneliness in her heart, it's better than the last decade has been by miles. She is aware of the narrative that people are creating around her. Look at this true love that has granted us a princess, see how she has endured such struggle to grow into a role model for us all. Except she never truly meant to be a role model for anyone, she had just been trying to survive without her own soul becoming corrupted by hate. She didn’t think she’d done much of anything to deserve the jewels that were now strung around her neck, but there is some satisfaction in the servants’ smiles when she says please and thank you and proves to be the most self-sufficient lady in the entire castle. People try to tell her to be wary of the Prince’s roaming eye. They say that he already had a beloved who was below his station and didn't have the sad sob story that she did that made it acceptable. It was inspiring for the abused maid to fall in love become a princess. The merchant’s daughter is just trying to rise above her station. She can see the sadness in the other young woman’s eyes though, and sometimes that's what she thinks about at night. She is aware of the lady-in-waiting with the sweetest voice calling her name, “Ella?” who never would have been able to save her as the Prince had, but might make her days worth living. She sinks into the bed beside her and kisses her while being assured that she truly can be selfish, if only at night, between the ashes of her past and the midnights of the rest of her life.

[ablogofourown-blog]

last pizza

My first thought was to write a short story that didn’t have a twist ending. I immediately imagined a woman who knew she was going to die going out for pizza. Then I sat on it for a week and my brain started poking holes in the premise which I rushed to try to fill in within about three days of writing. I think the real lesson here is when I have an idea for a story, I need to write it right away, or at least email it. 

Also I thought of at least three twist endings that I could have written for this story and some of them were very difficult to resist, I’m just saying.

...Alex

On the day she died, Thália went out for pizza.

One Eye Pizza Parlor had been at the end of her block for as long as she had lived there.  It was the sort of place she noticed on her walk home when she had already eaten or just wanted Thai take-out for the night or didn’t have any money. The kind of place she always made a note to visit but never did. That was the first reason she went to it now, but it was not the primary reason.

It was 11:00am when she arrived.  She ordered a large chicken alfredo pizza for herself and took a seat at one of the smallest tables in the corner.  While she waited, she took out a notebook, and as she ate, she began to write.  She stayed this way well into the afternoon, scarcely lifting her head above her notebook except to eat or order a refill of lemon lime soda. The three times she got up to go to the restroom, the staff must have thought with relief that she was finally leaving. But she always returned to her table and to her notebook.

At 4:30pm, her server, whose name tag read “Chinonso” made his last round before ending his shift. “Ready for your check yet?” he asked with a polite smile that only slightly wavered with his impatience.

She shook her head. “Actually, can I get a taco calzone and some cheesy bread?”

“Just for you?” She looked around the table and nodded. “You sure you’re not going to explode?” His laugh strained and his face pinched as he realized the awkward and potentially insulting joke he had just made to a customer.

“Anything’s possible.” Thália shrugged. “But it’s my last day alive, so I thought I might as well stuff my face.”

His smile twitched and he stood uncertainly for a moment. “Hah,” he said flatly, as if it might have been some joke that went over his head.  “I’ll get that right in.” He walked away a little more quickly than he had arrived. Thália had always been cautious and private.  She rarely told people about even her normal thoughts.  Now it seemed silly to worry whether a stranger thought she was weird or crazy.

A few minutes later, a new server returned with the food, and Thalia pushed the empty pizza tray that Chinonso had forgotten away to make room.  Before she could start writing again, he was back at her table, now in jeans and a hoodie for some sports team she didn’t recognize.

“Listen,” he said, sounding almost out of breath. “Are you…I don’t know you, but are you…okay?”

“I’m not going to kill myself,” she answered. “If that’s what you were wondering.”

“Oh.” His shoulders relaxed. “So, you’re…”

“Psychic.”

He blinked. “Are you the one that told my mom that a blue car would put her aura back in balance?”

“Maybe,” Thália answered, not because it was true but because it was funny. “You have an interesting name.”

“It’s an Igbo name,” he explained. “What’s yours?”

“Thália. Brazilian, not Greek.”

“Thália. Cool.”  When he didn’t move, she gestured to the seat in front of her, and he sat.  “So, you’re saying that you had a premonition or vision or whatever that you were going to die, and you…decided to go out in a blaze of thick crusts?”

She snorted. “No.  I decided to get pizza because I had a vision of myself eating pizza on the last day I was alive.”

“So wait, you didn’t have a vision of yourself dying?”

She took a bite of the calzone, made a face, and waved it. “This is terrible.”

“You ordered it. After you started off with a pizza that’s meant to be a pasta, I might add.  I don’t think your culinary preferences are very sound.”

“Not the actual event, no,” she explained. “Just a snippet of the pizza.”

“Okay, so how do you know this is your ‘last day alive?’”

She sighed and broke off a piece of cheesy bread.

“Was that insensitive? I don’t know psychic etiquette.”

“What do you care, anyway? You think I’m making this all up.”

“Hey, I never said that.”  He leaned back and scratched his close cropped curls. “Let’s just say I’m invested in the narrative.  And if it’s all some desperate cry for attention, well, someone should actually pay attention, right?”

“Gee, thanks,” Thália retorted with her mouth full. She waited a moment before speaking again.  “I’ve always had these…senses, just this vibe of how things are and what will happen, without any logical explanation. Visions are more rare.  It doesn’t matter how insignificant the vision seems, if I have it, something’s going to happen. And when I had the vision of myself here, at this table, I just knew.”

He waited, considering her story. “So look, this isn’t some elaborate way of getting out of paying, is it?

She reached into her pocket and brought out the wad of cash that she had taken from her bank account that morning.  It wasn’t enough to give bequeath to anyone, but it was more than enough to pay for pizza. She placed it on the table.

“Okay. So if your vision happened here, and it made you think you were going to die…why not go somewhere else? Why not just stay home?”

“Whatever’s going to happen will. Trust me, I’ve had this forever. You try to do something else, and you end up in the same place.  It’s better to just go with it.”

“To go with…untimely death?”

She shrugged, arms crossed.  You didn’t see me yesterday, she thought. Afraid to move, curled up in a ball, then, by turns,  tearing her room apart because it obviously didn’t matter now.  It was good to get it out.  She wasn’t calm today so much as emotionally drained. “You don’t have to believe me. I shouldn’t have told you, but you asked, and I hadn’t really said it out loud before.”

“I didn’t say—wait, not to anyone? Family? Friends?”

She shook her head.  “I don’t talk to family anymore, and I’m not going to start now. My friends are kind of spread out and I didn’t want to bother them.”

“Maybe you should have. I mean, if you really think…”

“Yeah, maybe.” She felt a lump rising in her throat and shook her head as she pushed it down.  A pitying look flashed across Chinonso’s face and it made her feel worse.

“And I take it your accuracy rate…”

“It’s pretty spot-on.” She looked at her notebook and started writing again.

Chinonso was quiet for a moment, and then asked, “What are you writing?”

“Just some memories.”

“For your friends?”

“Maybe. Mostly for me, though.  I just spent so much time focusing on the future, and now all I want to do is think about the past.”

“Makes sense,” he said.  “Like what?”

She flipped back to the beginning.  “One time when I was six, I found a baby bird alone and tried to take it back to its nest, but I dropped it.”

Chinonso pulled back and raised his eyebrow.  “That’s…sad.”

“I didn’t say they were all good memories.” She flipped through a few more.  “My first concert. That’s a good one.  I didn’t actually have tickets, but they played on the waterfront and I sat on the bridge, and at one point, when they played my favorite song, I could have sworn the keyboard player looked up at me. Which was stupid, because I couldn’t see their faces, but that’s how I like to remember it.”

“Who was it?”

She knit her brow. “Some art punk band I used to like.  They broke up and I don’t remember the name.”

She didn’t need to look at the notebook to reference the most recent. “And I ran away when I was twelve.  I was gone for a year before anyone found me.”

“Where did you go?”

“For a while, I just camped out in the woods, but then I met these…they weren’t good people. They usually had me play their daughter and we went around conning people until the police found me and assumed I’d been kidnapped.  And I let them, because no matter what I said, they’d just tell me I didn’t know what I was saying, that I’d been manipulated. Which is probably true.  But it was better than home, you know?” She frowned and closed the notebook. “Or you don’t. I don’t know why I’d assume you just know that.”

“It’s okay. I know.”

Thália looked out the window.  She hadn’t noticed the rain before, but now she saw it coming down so heavily it was hard to make out anything else.  Maybe it’s a storm, she thought, and that made her more calm than she had been all day. “I’ve always liked storms,” she said out loud.

“Me, too,” Chinonso admitted. A smile tugged at the corner of her lips.  “It’s okay to be upset. That’s…I mean, that’s human.”

She leaned back and leveled a narrowed-eye look at him.  “Don’t you have anywhere to be after work?”

He sighed.  “I don’t know. You’re the psychic.  Do I?”

“Please don’t.”

He chuckled.  “My video games and ramen packets can wait. Just for a couple hours, though, because the games get jealous.”

“You’re funny.”

“I really, really try.”

She snorted. When she looked outside again, the rain was already easing.  So much for that.  “I just mean, you don’t have to babysit me or sit with me and hold my hand. You don’t even know me.”

He shrugged. “You had a vision of the place where I work. Maybe I’m supposed to be here, too.”

“I hope not.”

“No offense, but I kind of hope not, too.”

“So, leave then.”

“Hey, no one’s holding a gun to my  head.” He winced. “Was that in poor taste?”

“I didn’t even notice until you said something.”

“Sorry.”

She ran one hand through her hair while the other tapped at the table.  “Well, look, if you’re going to stay, and I’m not asking you to, can you just…talk about something that’s not me? The trials of food service industry? Your childhood? Literally anything?”

“I’m not that interesting of a person.”

“Good. Ramble to me about as many uninteresting things as you can think of.”

So he talked about work (“Customers can be assholes sometimes, but my boss is super chill, so it’s cool,”), his family (a dramatic imitation of his grandmother’s Nigerian accent when she was  drunk, and his favorite dog that died the day after he finally moved out), his favorite games (“Games that are all shooting and combat are too much for me, I actually like the ones that are just a story, you know?”), and what he went to school for (business, but he just didn’t have the connections to get into anything yet, and anyway how is he ever supposed to get experience if people only hire applicants with experience?).  She nodded and laughed and sometimes she stopped tapping against the table as she listened. By the time he ran out of things to say, it was dark outside and Thália was scraping cheese off the empty tray where the bread once rested.

He leaned forward a bit, but he hesitated before he said, “You know they’re going to close eventually.”

“I know.” Her throat was dry and her voice was quiet.  “I thought something would have happened by now.  It be so much easier if I just knew what was going to happen, so I could expect it. Shit.” She fell back against her chair hard enough that it rocked.

“Sorry,” he offered in a mumble. He knew it was insufficient.

She sighed. “It’s just…I know whatever happens happens, but if I leave, then it becomes real.  Probably. Maybe you’re right.  Maybe I got it wrong, and I’m making a big deal about nothing.” She tried to make herself believe it, but her veins were tense with dread.  

“You don’t have to leave yet. We can stay here and talk for as long as they’re open.”

She shook her head. Chinonso waited, but her jaw was tight. She worried that if she said anything, it would just sound even more pathetic.

“Do you have anywhere else you need to go?”

She nodded. At length, she said, “I want to mail this to someone.  Just want someone to have it.”

“I know a late night post office. I can give you a ride.”

She gave him a wary look.  At this point, it seemed silly to wonder whether he was a serial killer, although the thought of dying that way was still terrifying.  He seemed honest enough, but that was not her main concern. “You’re not going to want to see that. Especially if something happens to you, too.”

“Whatever happens happens, right?” He stood up and held out his hand to her. “If you want.”

She closed her eyes and swallowed all the insufficient thanks she could have offered. She placed her hand in his.