Faroe knew something was wrong. Her father's mumbling. His memory. How he acts. And his yellow eyes. No matter how much her memories say his eyes were always yellow, she knows thats not correct. Those eyes haunt her every thought...
That was until yesterday.
She met up with her dad again, pushing any weary thoughts out of her mind, just to find that his eyes are normal again!? Well, exept for a streak of yellow that passes through his pupils.
And he was accompanied by a tall man with yellow eyes with a dark streak in the same position. Like the color was just taken from each other.
The man, John apparently (the same John hes been mumbling about?), seems oddly close to her dad dispite Faroe somehow never meeting him. His darker skin, long hair, and odd scars below his eyes make him stand out like a sore thumb (and that isn't even including his hight).
Even so he seems quite enthusiastic to finally meet Faroe "in person". And Faroe has become increasingly more confused on what the hell is going on with her dad.
When starting something new, it's difficult not to hone in on its imperfections. Ideas are fragile things in the stark light of reality. They shrivel on the vine of scrutiny.
Starting new journals feel the same. Perhaps even more profane. I behold a clean, empty space with all its crisp lines, and think of all the ways I will dirty it all with my thoughts and feelings and half ideas: crooked lines and smudges and oil stains from clumsy, imprecise fingers.
For some context, I’ve started the practice of writing a sort of note to myself at the beginning of new journals. Sort of like an introducti
Simon and Grace randomly appear on the Hephaestus.
(Plz no spoilers I'm currently on episode 11 of Wolf 359)
The episode starts like normal. Eiffel is doing his usual thing when Minkowski comes in and asks if he did [insert important task here] and of course he didn't. Its certainly not an easy or enjoyable task but Minkowski makes him do it. After some spooky sounds of the hull, Eiffel finally gets to the usually untouched room to find a strange man unconscious on the floor??? Hes blond, wears glasses, odd looking jewlery, and his shirt has a science pun on it.
"Uhhhhh Minkowski? There might be a small problem."
"What is it?"
"There's a guy here."
"Stop messing around Eiffel. I know that you dont like this but-"
"No no I'm serious. There's some random guy asleep on the floor here. It isn't Hilbert or anyone I've met."
"How is that possible? We're 8 light-years away from any people!"
"That's what I'm wondering-"
Then Hilbert chimes in:
"Id hate to interrupt but I think I found dead body"
Static noises
"Hey there dear listeners its been a few hours since I checked in. Sooo there is 2 more people (?) on the ship than before. There's the mystery guy I found and the thing that Hilbert found. We've essentially had to put everything on lock down. Ive just spent the last 2 hours helping clean up the absolute horror show that was the airlock. Probably would of lost my lunch if it wasn't for us wearing the suits."
"Whatever Hilbert had found is somehow still alive. It looks like a human (or once was one) but it has these sharp monster like teeth on one side of its mouth and is missing an arm! Hilbert said it might be infected with something which is a totally relaxing thought. Hilbert though seems more exited than I've ever seen him, which worries me more than it puts me at ease."
"As for the guy I found? He seems to be completely fine. No injuries or weird mutations. Not a drop of blood on him either. Hes also still asleep, but we've been keeping an eye on him."
"We have absolutely no clue how they got here. Hera said she never detected any movement outside of the 3 of us nor has any of the ship's entrances opened. No detection of anything outside either. Its like they just appeared out of thin air. No idea if they came from the same place or not. They certainly dont look like it"
And thats all I got! I started listening to Wolf 359 recently and of course my bloodymary filled brain immediately slipped into action. Had to get it written down.
It's done(ish)! At least the first draft of it. "Scotch & Cyanide" (temp title) came out to be 11,003 words--a good 1,003 over my target. Reading it outside of its file, I already see some redundancies and a few lines that could be trimmed.
The story is a speculative infused mystery inspired by Sherlock Holmes short stories.
Since it's Sunday, I thought I'd share the first 500 words of it.
When the Millebrand case landed on my desk sometime in the autumn of 1927, I couldn’t fathom how consequential it would end up being. No one could.
It was supposed to be a simple welfare check. Due to the uptick of crime in Hollow Grove, both mortal and supernatural, the check was of low priority within the department. The Volstead Act was hard to enforce and, contrary to its aim of eliminate the drunken vice, paved the way for its expansion into a lucrative criminal industry. I had just got into the office after taking part in a raid on a small, father-son moonshine operation and about to write up my report when my boss, Chief Sloan, called me into his office.
I knew what awaited me wouldn’t be good. It was well into the afternoon and I was exhausted after a ten hour shift. I was ready to clock out and somehow knew that whatever assigned to me at this late point would be some grunt work they were more than happy to pass off to the junior beat officer. Being colored and lycan, I got a fair bit of those in my first few years.
I closed the door behind me as I entered Sloan’s office. The chief was a heavy set man with meaty hands always grasping onto a cigar. He had a sweaty, ruddy complexion and thinning dark hair, but his uniform was always neatly pressed thanks to the wife at home.
He threw a folder across his desk towards me and puffed slow at his cigar. “I need you and Rockhurst to follow up on this.”
I grimaced as I took up the file. The folder had a single page. Names and addresses and a line or two were written in a careless, messy shorthand. “What’s this?”
“It’s a welfare check. That boy Winslow on Fleet’s had been blowing up the line about it all week. Shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes to sniff about the place,” he added slyly.
I’m more used to those sly comments now, but back in my youth I was more sensitive and hot-tempered toward them. I snapped the folder close. “I still need to file my report on the Kerry case. Couldn’t this be passed along to the next patrol shift?”
Our resources are spread pretty thin, Knight,” Sloan lectured slow, as if this was something I didn’t already know. “Do the welfare check. I still expect your Kerry report to be submitted along with this one tomorrow morning.”
He puffed a few clouds of his stinking cigar into the air and turned his attention to other papers on his desk. “You’re dismissed.”
Thanks so much to @axl-ul for tagging me in this. Always appreciate you!
Gently Tagging: @kaatiba, @astras-rambles, @ibuprofen-exe, @transman-badass, @northwyrm, @tracle0, @duckingwriting and anyone who wants to participate!
Rules: Find a line in your WIP (dialogue, monologue, description or other; they can be from multiple WIPs) which fits the parameters given by the person who tagged you. Then change one of the parameters and tag some people.
Your Lines:
a line about a building
a line about the weather
a line that includes a quarrel
a line about fear (tis the season)
a line that includes a lie
I'm a bit out of practice with tag games but this looked fun!
My lines:
a line about a building
a line about the weather
a line that includes a quarrel
a line that is shouted
a line that includes a lie
A Line About A Building (Festival of Shadows)
The church itself was an impressive structure with a high gabled roof of the main chapel with frosted windows high up on each side. It allowed natural light to flood the room, bathing the handcrafted pews and deep red carpets that ran throughout it in a warm glow. She heard that the building’s face was positioned to catch the light of the halo moon at the its apex with that white ring encircling the pulpit before widening out to the whole room. Midnight services for their acolytes were a common practice during the Festival for this reason.
A Line About the Weather (Festival of Shadows)
She avoided looking up. Even with her back turned, she could still sense its soft light baring down on her. The halo moon was more unnerving than she anticipated. The lights were bright on the ground but the darkness of the night was absolute. No stars. No satellites. Just the halo moon. It was the full moon, but something blasted a perfect hole in its center. The darkness within was absolute and the thin rim that was left was the most brilliant of whites. It was always dead center in the sky, no matter where she was looking.
A Line that Includes a Quarrel (Gallow Lane WIP)
“How do you know?” Mariela asked, thinking along the same lines.
“It’s single-minded and hungry. If it’s prey is where it ought to be, it’ll have no need to rush.”
That response only brought more questions. What’s hungry? How many are there? And how would September even know any of that? But it did make an odd sort of sense. This department’s only goal was to keep them there.
Emery didn’t budge. “Then it would make sense to hide then. Not pen ourselves in with no where else to go.”
September set his jaw. He was done arguing.
A Line that is Being Shouted (Festival of Shadows)
“Wait!” Hakeem shouted over the line. “I’m trying to help you, Knight. If you’d only cooperate, we could—“
“I don’t need your help,” September broke in acidly. “I did you the favor, remember?
A Line That Includes a Lie (Eyes of God WIP)
It was an accident. She laughed at the lie. What happened to Dale was as much of an accident as his fling with Sue, Kitty, Christine, and every other woman that caught him unawares with his pants down. By his accounting, it was all a mistake. A stumble in the dark. A slip into disrepute.
In honor of National Library Week (April 6th-April 12th), I want to take a moment to tell you all that libraries are not only places to find books and movies. (Although, I’m not gonna downplay that. It’s so much free material and all you need to access it is a library card. That’s priceless in today’s economy). You can find so many free resources at your local library. Almost all of them have access to computers and free public wi-fi. They offer cheap printing services and meeting rooms that anyone can book (be it small study groups or larger nonprofit events). They also have a multitude of online resources: from databases to help you with research projects to genealogy services to help you investigate family histories to sites that can provide learning and skills training to bump up your resume. There’s so much to offer and you don’t even need a library card to access all of it (but why not, right?).
There’s another aspect to libraries. One that I don’t think is highlighted enough in public discussions about their importance: libraries are essential community spaces. Many libraries across the United States (across the world even) host free events to address the needs of their communities and to promote literacy programming. My local branch hosts Storytimes to encourage early literacy in children while also offering parents a place to connect with one another. It also offers Legislative Coffee events to allow constituents a chance to connect with their elected officials. There’s book groups, board game meet-ups, along with a host of writing groups and special speaker events. And that’s just scratching the surface of how libraries offer spaces for communities to build connections from within. With the recent slash-happy approach to spending championed by the current US administration, I think it’s increasingly important to highlight and advocate for the institutions that are essential for the health of our communities. Rather than merely assessing worth through spreadsheets and perceived “waste,” we need to be thoughtful about the impact they have on people’s lives. This goes beyond libraries. This goes for every social program that we’ve taken for granted until now. But let’s get back to libraries, in particular. They’ve been very important to me throughout my life. When my family moved from one state to another around the time I started middle school, one of the first things my parents did was get me my own library card. That access gave the overactive imagination of an 11-year-old me something to preoccupy myself with as I settled into the transition. Libraries were places I hung out with my friends and where I fed my rabid and varied interests over the years. In celebration of National Library Week, I urge you all to support your local branch by picking up your next book, movie, or video game obsession. Investigate all the resources your local library has to offer through its website.
Joey left his boxer shorts on the bed post again.
There they were: proud, plaid, and blue like the American Flag on the the Fourth of July.
It was Saturday morning.
The first thing I saw when I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes were those boxer shorts. As my eyes took in the whole picture, I realized there were clothes scattered everywhere. As I took in the rest of the apartment, there were
dishes piled in the sink, small bits of food littered on the kitchen floor, and a laundry hamper full of soiled clothes. I stood in the center of it all wondering how I failed to notice any of it when I walked in the night before.
So, instead of sleeping in with a cup of coffee and the daily news, I was busy straightening up the house like a goddamn maid. But those boxer shorts remained the ultimate symbol of my ire.
Joey himself was sleeping on his stomach as a line of drool flowed down his pillow. He was half naked, of course. The sheets and comforter a messy heap from his waist down. Sonorous snores filled up the room as he blissfully rested in the land of deep sleep. It would be a shame if someone ruined such a pretty picture.
I poked him with the end of my broomstick. “Yo asshole.”
