Room 329

There was so much more to say. (A small collection of flash fiction. Enjoy)

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in which i redirect you to the alt lit blog where i will be spending the next who-knows-how-long of the 365 day writing challenge.

just in case anyone finds this blog and wonders where in the world i am

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Civilian

Good morning, Civilian! Rise and shine! We have a lot to do today! Oh, wait. You have no idea what’s going on, do you? Let me explain. My name is Dilys, daughter of Cruelty and the merciful killer of the weak. Like you. Maybe. Because some Civilians are a lot stronger than one would think. I should know, I used to be one too. And no torture that I could come up with would match how it feels, being a Civilian. All your life, you just wanted to be special -- superpowers, magic, whatever -- and when you finally resign yourself to just growing up and enjoying a mundane life, your friends get chosen instead! And the stupid, stupid, stupid excuses the Directors give. “We couldn’t pick you, you expected it!” “The point of picking children as heroes is to help the kid let go of childhood.” “That is simply not how it works.” But I know the real reason why they don’t pick kids like us. We’re boring. Don’t roll your eyes at me! I’m a thousand years old. I know what I’m talking about. You’re nice, aren’t you? The cheerful, optimistic one? The punching bag? Yeah, that’s boring. Nobody cares about the doormats. That’s why you weren’t called. But when I’m done with you, if I do this right and you keep fighting no matter what happens, maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to escape, and seek out the Society. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll let you in.

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Vignette

For most people, New Year’s Eve was to be spent watching fireworks, going to parties, or trying desperately to hold on to the final minutes of the old year. There would be apologies, breakups, reunions, rescues. And, of course, there would be that one unlucky person who died before midnight. There always was.

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Dear Legal Guardian of ---- ---:

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When the psychiatrist comes back, she's carrying a thick folder stuffed with all sorts of papers. The colorful pages, the ones filled with things he doesn't mind her knowing, like the old love letters or the art contest he won in eighth grade -- they're visible from across the room, out of place, eye-catching, utterly ignored. Instead, she pulls out the boring, plain, black-ink-on-white pages. Those ones are the police reports, the blackmail letters, the news articles.

His file.

His life.

He hates it, hates it, hates it.

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Astronomy x History, part one

Her name is History, and when she speaks, it is with the utmost certainty in her words. She never lies -- or at least, she does rarely, and never with deceptive intent. Otherwise, she is silent, an observer with profound memory and indiscernible values. The other Subjects try to include her, but despite being smaller than most of them she is so old in what she knows and how she acts, to the point where they feel that she will never enjoy anything they do. They leave her alone. She doesn’t mind.

There's just nothing new, to her. Somewhere in the thousands of years that she keeps locked in the back of her mind, she's seen everything. Everything, but...

Astronomy pretends that he doesn't have a past. He pretends that he's brand new, out of this world, too spectacular for human eyes. Maybe he's right. History thinks so. Back when she was a child -- well, a younger child -- she used to blame him for many of the disasters in her books. A comet foretold an earthquake, a solar eclipse a plague. He would growl at her and pointedly explain that she didn't know anything when it came to him. Well, that was fair enough. She hadn't known much about Medicene at first, either, nor Geology. But at least they had ended up teaching her their stories. Why could she learn about Astronomy -- his story?

So there she is, observing, as the Eagle lands. (Astronomy says it's a milestone of human potential) The International Space Station goes up. (This time, a symbol for peace.) The Challenger crashes and burns. (He doesn't comment on this one. Instead, they sit together, and while History considers herself too dignified to cry, she does anyway so that he will feel that he's not the only one mourning.)

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His hands were shaking, and went he failed to open the cab’s door, the driver reached over and did it for him. “T-thank you,” Dominic said, taking a seat. He  gave the driver an address a couple blocks away from his actual house. He had a strange fear about letting strangers know where he lived. Two streets away was as close as he would admit and as far as he could walk. “Got it,” the driver muttered. He started the engine and began to drive. “Any cases today, detective?” Dominic jumped, stifling a cry of surprise. What had given him away? Had he been staring a little too long when coming up with his unspoken deduction? Most Sleuths could close their eyes and fit clues together;  he couldn’t. But then again, most Sleuths had nerves of steel and didn’t blink at casual, loaded questions like this. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” Dominic asked innocently, glancing at the ID card hanging from the dashboard. The driver’s name was Levi Wayne Kelly. Pretentious. Dominic tried to remember if he had ever heard the name before, but his mind drew a blank. There hadn’t been anyone with that name involved with his cases. The driver glanced at him through the mirror. He had greenish-brown eyes, not the kind that usually indicates omniscience, but there was just something in his expression... “You’re a sleuth, aren’t you? I’ve known a couple of them. They come just like you: middle of the night, a thunderstorm, some poor guy banging  on the doors. Are we going to the suspect’s house? I’m pretty good in a fight, you know. If you need someone.” Oh. It seemed Kelly was one of the few who admired the sleuths. Dominic struggled to figure out a way to explain. “Actually, I’m not on a case right now, exactly,” he began, looking out the window. He had almost caught his breath by now, but he still couldn’t control his voice. “In fact, I just got back from-- from testifying – Sleuthing isn’t as fun as it looks. There’s a lot of paperwork.” “Are you kidding me?” Kelly asked. “You get to go out there and catch the bad guy and serve justice! How cool is that? What kind of real-life job could be more fun than that?” He slumped in his seat. “It isn’t really a job, in the strictest sense...” But by then they were already speeding down the streets and he wasn’t sure Kelly had heard him. The driver didn’t answer, anyway, and even if he did, Dominic would have tuned him out.

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I wished her good night, and watched as she shut the door, both of us smiling.

"Feierabend!" Her voice came from inside the house. I could just imagine her punching the air.

Knocking on the door, I asked if she had been talking to me, and what the word meant. 

"Oh," she said sheepishly, scratching the back of her neck. "German. It's what this guy in my favorite video game says whenever he wins. I think it means something like... 'work over!'"

"Work?" I asked, still smiling. She realized her mistake.

"N-no! Being with you isn't work!"

Oh yes it is,I think.

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Bang.

Miss.

Bang.

Miss.

And that’s when they make eye contact. They both know Owain is in the way; there’s no doubt about that. Whether or not she can bring herself to get rid of him is another matter entirely. He doesn't think so. She's only a kid, after all, he tells himself, and anyway she's not naturally inclined to violence.

But as he tries to stare her down, Owain realizes that she really was serious about taking over the world, and, worse, she really isn't going to let anything stop her now.

Marisol closes her eyes.

Bang.

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You’re going to hurt them no matter what you do. It’s better to just stop right now and let them find a way out without you.

My inner monologue is usually right, but this time, with what the fever and the stress, I’m not exactly ready to listen to it. I know one thing for sure: My team is out there, somewhere.

 I’m the leader.

 They need me.

And anyway, if I give up now and they somehow win without me, I’ll be branded for cowardice. It doesn't matter what my inner monoglogue thinks. There's no way I'm getting out of this alive.

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Found in a Treasure Chest

How far did you come to dig up this little treasure chest? How much time did you spend looking for it? Did you ever think of giving up? I mean, I hid this jar in a tiny little hole in a huge tree in a huge forest, so if you’ve found it anywhere else, rest assured, someone beat you to it. If, however, you bothered climbing up the stupid thing to get this jar, I have another question for you: Why? Surely you knew there was nothing valuable in here. One simply can’t afford to put expensive prizes in all the caches one hides. That should be clear from the start. You don’t do it for the money. So, do you do it for the adventure? Consider yourself an Adventurer with a capital A? All you’ve done is follow the directions and pick up a dirty glass jar. Not much world-saving, is it? (And don’t tell me you’re ready should the planet need you. It never will. Not unless you realize what you're doing here.) You haven’t learned anything about the world, or yourself, or the people closest to you. This is just another way to spend an afternoon, and a rather muddy one at that. Look at your arm. It’s full of bug bites, isn’t it? How long have you been chasing after these packages? A year, ten years, more? Do you want to keep living like this, make believing that you’re that tough-as-nails adventurer who does anything necessary to get the objective? Or would you rather stop playing pretend, and actually become that tough-as-nails adventurer? It’s your choice. But, should you choose the second option, by all means, contact me. I think I can help.

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“If you love something...” she began, softly. But that was the root of the problem. Brett shook his head violently and grabbed her arm. “I don’t love you!” He shouted, pulling her back. “I need you, but I don’t love you!”

That's when she smiled. "Ditto."

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I've found the secret

To avoid a broken heart. I will not let you touch me. I'll be the perfect girlfriend otherwise -- laughing with you, listening to you, loving you -- but I will not touch you. That way, if we break up, I won't miss the warmth of your hand, the sweetness of your lips, the smell of your skin. Because I've read all the love stories. That's all that anybody ever misses.

And anyway, if you can't hold my attention (or if I can't hold yours) without bringing our immature teenage bodies into it, then any kind of relationship we might have had is rather doomed from the start, isn't it?

That's what I tell myself, whenever I want to kiss you.

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Fact is, I replaced you with a diamond bracelet, because now that I think about it, that’s all you were to me – completely unnecessary, larger than life, just something to wear on my arm and show off. That's okay with me though. I can always say that I love my bracelet like I loved you.

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Henley

The first time Henley solved a murder, she was twelve years old and they put her picture in the newspapers. I told her to be proud of herself. She rolled her eyes and asked how any detective could be proud when it took them so long to solve such a simple case? All the evidence was obvious from the beginning, she should have found the solution earlier, and so on. I obviously didn’t see what was wrong with it. Then again, I was only the oblivious assistant, a year older but not even close to being smarter. I say that with sarcasm. The second time, she asked me to time her from the  second they found the body until the time she got the murderer to confess. She did it in two hours, twenty-six minutes and forty-two seconds. Apparently satisfied, she took an article about the incident and hung it up in her bedroom. I didn’t hear any more from her until she knocked at my door two days later. When I didn’t come immediately, she pressed the doorbell. Repeatedly, and doubled with anxious demanding. "Hey! Hey! Nat! Come out! It's really important!" My parents weren’t home. I turned off the TV, tumbled off the couch, and opened the door. I blinked, trying not to gag at the combined smell of lemons and blood. It wasn’t that much, just enough to make a sickly person like me nauseous. A few red droplets ran down her arm, and she wiped it on her shirt. Seeing the red on white somehow made it worse. Her eyes were wide. I reached my hand to her. “What happened?” She looked down at her shirt and breathed deeply. “I was experimenting,” she said, her voice shaking. “But that’s not the important part. Nat, you know how I got Myra to admit to killing her boyfriend?” “That was only last week,” I pointed out, wondering if I should get some bandages or something for her. “I-I think she was innocent.”

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Oleander

Ollie was used to being unstable, herself, but this instability was different -- a warning. The end of the beginning. The beginning of the end. She had failed Mr. Fletcher, and she had failed everyone else, and it wasn’t even her fault. The men in suits led Mr. Fletcher away without ceremony. He didn’t resist. Instead he just looked at his apprentice with a sad smile and a slight nod. Mr. Fletcher didn’t deserve this, yet he wasn’t angry at all, and that just made it worse. “You tried,” he said simply as he and the suits walked past her, out the door. Ollie felt herself shake as she realized she would never see him again. She had known what to say. She had known how to get him out of this. But then the player had chosen wrong. Instead of giving herself up, doing the right thing, she had slipped back into silence and let the accusations stand. When the suits closed the door behind them, Ollie fell to the floor and began to cry. Game over. * Begin again?

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Entrance

Sure, a limping man in a wrinkled tux would not exactly escape notice, but he wasn't a spy anymore, and frankly he didn't really care.