There was just enough light in the darkened room for Kendra to notice something was not right. She knew every piece of furniture in the room by memory right down to any marks from the years of ownership any piece may have possessed. She pulled her flashlight from her belt and shined it around the room. Nothing seemed amiss, but she could not shake the knot in her belly that screamed there was. Her right eye squinted slightly as she turned the flashlight off. Just as the light went out, she caught movement. She stepped into the room and put her back to the door. Her heart raced. This was the moment for which she had trained. Tonight, she would catch her first thief.
Kendra closed her eyes, allowing her other senses to take over. Her ears, trained to pick out the smallest sound, kicked in with ultra-sensitive hearing. Soft footfalls crept across the carpet. She turned her neck in the direction of the sound and let her sense of smell take over. Natural body odor was difficult to mask, even though every thief tried. This thief was sweating, the hot, sticky kind produced from a combination of adrenaline and nerves. This thief was no novice yet Kendra detected a hint of hesitation, too. This thief was no pro, either. Satisfaction creased Kendra’s thinking. She refused to let that satisfaction show on her face. Instead, she pulled the door open just enough for her to pass through yet stayed within the darkness. The door closed with a soft swish. The thief let out a soft sigh of relief, just loud enough for Kendra to pinpoint his location. He stood near the grand painting of the homeowner’s wife. Kendra knew within moments, he would pull the painting from the wall. The soft clicks of the combination lock of the safe being turned confirmed her instincts. The thief would have his prize in minutes if he successfully broke the code.
She tiptoed quickly, silently across the room. At the same instant, she heard the safe opened, she wrapped her arms around the thief and wrestled him to the ground.
“Lights!” she said. The overhead security lights came on. A gasp of dismay left her throat as she recognized the soft brown curls. She could not see his face, but she did not need to. She knew his scent by heart. It was her brother. He rolled over as a single tear escaped down her face. It splashed on his black cotton shirt, leaving a wet spot in its wake.
“Damien!” she said, more remorse in her voice than she wanted. “Oh, Damien, why?”
He tried to push her off him, unsuccessfully. His blue eyes looked into her brown ones. “It was all your idea.”
A piece of paper stuck out of his shirt pocket. A small tug pulled the paper free and she recognized the numbers on the slip. She looked at him with disbelief. It had been better when he had been hidden. A slick smile crossed his face.
“Are you really going to let me go to jail?” Damien said. “You’ll go, too. The code to the safe is in your handwriting, after all.”
For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, ~k gave me this prompt: There was just enough light in the darkened room for Kendra to notice…(feel free to change the name)
I gave Steph this prompt: It happened at a Bingo game.
This is also prompted by this week’s Master Class assignment which came from the 4th line of the 144th page of Douglas Adams’ The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul which was: “It had been better when he had been hidden.” We were to use the line in a 4th position. It is the 48th sentence, and the 4th line of the 7th paragraph.
I always welcome and appreciate honest feedback. Please share your thoughts in a comment.
Every day, twice a day, exactly twelve hours apart, the bobbin appeared. The human like head would bob up from the water always facing the same direction, looking out on the horizon. Nothing existed within eyesight. No ship’s sail broke against the blue. No silver sky bullets created new paths among the clouds. In fact, it was rare that even clouds marred the crystalline surface of the sky.
One day, a steel rod breached the edge of the sea. The bobbin’s lips curled upwards revealing a row of perfect teeth. The pupil-less eyes closed and a sound that denied definition burst from its throat. The rest of its well-muscled yet sexless body rose from the water. Its flat toe-less feet strode small steps across the surface of the water, defying gravity. It paused and lifted its arms towards the sky like a child waiting eagerly to be picked up. It stood sullen and still hour after hour as the rod slowly grew larger in the distance.
The steel rod became a ship, though the ship had no sails. It glided smoothly in circular motions over the water. Only its shadow disturbed the ocean beneath. It moved slowly, the small colored lights along its belly rotating as it spun. The bobbin’s arms dropped to its side and more bobbins rose from the sea, slowly emerging head first, one after the other, as sexless as the first, only the length of their hair giving any clue to their gender. Once the sea became nothing but bodies, the ship moved faster, enveloping them in a strange white-hot light. They shimmered and blinked out, disappearing quicker than they had appeared. Once the sea was empty, the ship moved to the shore. White light flashed and the bodies reappeared, no longer bobbins, but fully dressed like humans. Each one carried a weapon.
It was the beginning of the end.
July 31, 2013. A true account of the end of the world as seen from the edge of the pier by Janice Stephens, Reporter for the Daily News.
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For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, k~ gave me this prompt: A woman in a dress is standing next to the edge of the pier on an overcast day. Why is she there?
It happened on a New York City street, and there was nothing Meggs could do to stop it. A force more powerful than life pushed it into being, despite her will. Her fingers gathered a life of their own, strumming shamelessly on her guitar until her fingers bled. Her voice lifted over the sound of traffic, lilting sweetly as she sang along with her guitar. Someone offered her an empty milk crate and she accepted it graciously, placing one foot on it for balance. A small crowd gathered around to listen, and she closed her eyes tight, lest fear grabbed hold of her and she stopped playing.
Julliard accepted Meggs into their music program and she had gone willingly, gratefully, but she never managed to graduate. She could not do the presentations required of her. She had barely managed the audition, which was only set up because her mother was a single parent, the widow of a prisoner of war. Meggs grew up hearing stories of the musical talent her father possessed. Her grandmother claimed when he sang it was as if angels had come to earth and chased all the evil spirits away. Meggs, on the other hand, had such stage fright she could not even perform for her family. Her mother was the only one privy to her music.
Meggs mother, Sarah, listened gladly, though the music was bittersweet. Meggs found the book her father used to play from and when she played from it, it never failed to bring tears to her mother’s eyes. Meggs had more talent than her father did, but she could never tell her that. She feared it would make Meggs stop playing altogether. After all, she started playing for the sole reason that she wanted to feel closer to her father. Taken from this earth too soon, Meggs had few memories of him. Sarah wanted her daughter to know the man her father was. He was a brave musician who died a hero; his death was almost poetic in its occurrence.
When Meggs found her father’s unfinished song, Sarah’s heart skipped a beat. Most of Meggs talent was still untapped, and Sarah hoped that Meggs would not finish it. There was something soothing about the unfinished work– something that allowed her to feel like he was still there, and would be back soon. Meggs played the soft opening chords quietly, repeatedly, until they became smooth. She progressed on to the more complicated parts, soft cries of pain as the strings sliced the fat of her fingers. When she came to the end, she strummed a few more chords before going back to the beginning again. This time her voice joined the guitar, humming at first, then words began flowing from her lips. Meggs stopped abruptly when she saw her mother standing in the doorway, tears streaming from her face.
“Mom!” Meggs started. Her face turned a soft shade of rosebud pink as she realized her mom listened when she played. “What’s wrong?”
“This song…” her mother said. Sarah’s voice came out as more of a whimper than spoken.
Meggs shrugged her shoulders. “It isn’t finished.”
“I know,” her mom said softly. “You were finishing it.”
Meggs eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Her lips closed tightly. “I wasn’t finishing anything.”
“You were singing, yet there are no words, and the chords you strummed were new.” Sarah insisted.
“Oh…that,” Meggs blushed again. “No, I wasn’t finishing the song. I was just messing around.”
Sarah walked over to Meggs and took the guitar from her arms. They sat down on Meggs bed together. Sarah folded Meggs hands into her own and gripped them tightly. Her eyes searched the pale pink quilt that covered the bed as if it had the answers she was seeking. No words hid among the tiny roses that alternated with the solid pink. No answers peeked out from behind the tiny white dots some of the squares held. Sarah sighed, releasing a few more tears as she looked into Meggs’ eyes.
“Meggs, your father began this song when he found out about you, only weeks old in my belly. Called to war when I was six months pregnant, when he returned home the first time, you were already almost two. He set his music aside to delight in you and be a father. He kept talking about finishing the song, but never got back to it before they called him to war again when you were four. He never returned from that war. He never finished that song. Hearing you play it…” Sarah paused long enough to take a deep breath and exhale slowly. Another tear drifted down her face. She cleared her throat. “Hearing you play it, Meggs, is bittersweet. I want to hear it, and I don’t want it to end. At the same time, I want to hear the end, but I don’t want it finished, though I know it needs an ending.”
Deeper confusion clouded Meggs face. “No, mom. I’ll put it away so it doesn’t hurt you anymore.” Tears trickled down her own face as she met her mother’s eyes. What she saw there, deep within the brown flecks, shocked her. “You…you want me to play?”
Sarah smiled between tears. “I do, love. More than ever. I want you to finish the song, even though you don’t believe you can. I know you can. Finish it.”
Sarah released Meggs’ hands and stood up. She crossed the room and let her words follow her out the door. “Finish it!”
*~*~*~*~*~*
It happened on a New York City street and Meggs’ mother watched with awe. The crowd gathered around, coins dropped into the small bucket someone had placed near where Meggs was playing. Dollars soon followed, but the applause became the greater gift. Meggs still closed her eyes, and when she did, the guitar playing changed, her voice changed, and that was when Sarah knew.
He was there.
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For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Kirsten Piccini gave me this prompt: it happened on a New York City street..
That was the command passed down from the highest officer in the United World Militia. It wasn’t a request. In fact, if you didn’t follow orders, it was grounds for immediate termination.
Your status on this planet didn’t matter. Your occupation didn’t matter. Your level of security didn’t matter.
“You better smile and wave.”
It applied to everyone, all across the globe, to those of us who survived the explosion and to those who created the explosion. All were equal when it came to this law. Not even the pope himself could get around it.
Speaking of the pope, they stripped the papal system. They condemned all priests and those who were unlucky enough to be caught died deaths equal to their lives. No sin left uncovered, their shame laid bare, most of them crucified on crosses made of crude wood. They hanged naked, castrated, and bleeding until their lives ceased. These priests of the highest order on the planet became examples, and it was not lost on the people.
The new World leader, once the President of the United States, made the decree.
“You better smile and wave.” His command, scribbled on a napkin in a small diner located in what was left of the District of Columbia, became law. Directed mainly to these priests who hanged on the crosses, it applied to all who faced termination. Ordered to stay until the last person drew his last breath, they required we smile and wave all the while.
Once the crucifixions ended, the militia herded us into the nearest temple, all of which were made of glass, where they stripped us and bathed us, all in the name of a new god fabricated from the President’s imagination. They rubbed our flesh raw until it bled, and then held our bodies over a large moat that ran around the temple, a conduit to capture the blood. This giving of blood was another law and to refuse was suicide. They always tore the flesh in visible places; the scars left behind became the necessary proof for the right to exist, the right to shop, the right to marry and have a family, the right to be with your family, and the right to be free, though the freedom offered was a sham.
Unless you lived in the hills.
Only the hill people were free. Only the hill people didn’t have to smile and wave. The hill people could hide in their cabins and turn a blind eye to what was going on in the world. One man led the hill people. They called him Ebby Shroud. There was nothing special about Ebby that set him apart from the rest. He was neither the youngest nor the oldest; his voice was neither the loudest nor the softest; he was neither the tallest nor the shortest. His appearance was no more attractive than the next man was. He was the only man willing to step up and take charge. “Desperation had given him authority.”
Desperation drove the hill people to keep to themselves and build a defense system that included ten foot walls and automatic weapons that fired with the first alarm. No one managed to penetrate it. They let no one in, and few out.
Your status on this planet didn’t matter. Your occupation didn’t matter. Your level of security didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, unless you had kin among the hill people. Your birthright was your only salvation from the chaos dwelling in the valley.
I was a lucky one. I could join the hill people, but I dared not leave the love of my life. It took me 35 years to find him and it would take more than a nuclear explosion set off by warring Presidents to separate me from him. I know that if I left, he wouldn’t follow. He hated the state of the world as much as I did, but running was never part of his vocabulary. They knew I wouldn’t leave him but still they invited me. I received letters regularly from my father begging me to join them. I wrote back requesting passage for David, my beloved, and the answer always came back no.
David was a leader in his own right, though the group he led was small. Some called it a militia, but it really wasn’t. We learned to carry any weapons we could find, because it meant a matter of our own survival if we didn’t. David and I were the only ones among our tribe that had actually killed someone. I wasn’t proud of it, but I’d done what needed doing, and I looked back with no regrets.
That’s the key to leadership my dad always said.
“No regrets” was his motto, and he did some horrific things while he served in the Army. Stuff so bad it woke him up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. One time he grabbed my mother by the throat and forced her up against the wall. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t breathe. Who knows what else he would have done to her if I hadn’t approached when I did. Needless to say, he let her go but I’ll never forget the haunted look in his eyes when he realized what he’d done. He packed his bags the next day and we never heard from him again until recently. I suppose he finally had something to regret.
That’s neither here nor there to the current moment. I heard my beloved rustling around, stifling angry grunts and protests over shared food and sleeping space. More than one voice chimed in asking when we would go to war, and, as always, David’s soft tone soothed them that it would be soon. Soon was always the answer, and I knew the people grew restless. We were tired of the needless executions and crucifixions. We were tired of looking over our shoulders and the distrust that permeated everything, even between David and I, like a fog rolling in from the water. I knew an uprising was coming, even if David didn’t. Perhaps he did, he just preferred to live in denial. He’d always been a lover versus a fighter, but I was proud of how far he’d come. I wished my father could see us. They’d welcome us for sure if they could.
And maybe they could, if the last letter was any indication.
My father said he heard rumors of an uprising and begged me to come to the hills where it was safe. It was more than David that I would be leaving now, and I couldn’t do that to these people depending on me. They were all children, and I had somehow become their den mother. They lifted their frightened eyes to mine every morning and clustered around my waist every day they demanded us to “smile and wave.” No, I had a purpose here, now. The only way I would leave was if I were dead. That day may come sooner than I’d like. The people were more afraid of dying then of the President’s laws and so we waited.
Waited for the fear to subside. Waited for the courage to come. Waited as we smiled and waved at the new round of crucifixions, this time making martyrs of Christians. We waited so long Ebby started his own revolution and down from the hills they came, in small clusters like mini battalions.
At first, we thought they would help us, but they didn’t. Blood flowed like a busy stream on the streets, man, woman, and child alike. Shouts of “Coward” and “Scaredy cats” echoed in abandoned alleyways. This death was merciful in its quickness though and the people welcomed it. Few resisted. Few fought back. Our numbers dwindled until only a few brave souls remained. The powers that be watched from their thrones as we destroyed each other as if we were on a giant chessboard and they’d called the pieces.
Finally, I saw my father again. Ebby stood proud and tall before me, a dagger in his hand, the blood dripping from the blade that of my beloved. He smiled the award-winning smile I remembered from my childhood and I took a step towards him, tentatively. He spread his arms as if inviting me into his embrace, only once I got there, he squeezed me so hard I gasped.
“You should have come home when I asked you to. Now you are as poisoned as the rest of them and you cannot survive.” A sob escaped his throat even as he continued to squeeze me. “How I wish you would have listened instead of standing there smiling and waving.”
He looked me in the eyes once before slitting my throat and letting me drop. I felt warm liquid flow down over my bodice and my body weakened too quickly. I gasped one last time, my eyes searching for my father’s, but he’d turned his back on me. I closed my eyes and let the darkness take over, my soul finally at rest.
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For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week (which I totally blew the deadline for!) Christa gave me this prompt: You better smile and wave.
I gave Sam Edge this prompt: When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand. –Raymond Chandler
This also fits the Master Class assignment for this week. Renée gave us the second line of the last paragraph on page 152 of T.H. White’s Once and Future King which is “Desperation had given him authority.” The line is enclosed in quotes in the story above.
I welcome and appreciate honest feedback. Please share your thoughts in comment. I tried using a narrative POV with this piece. Should or could I have shown more and told less? Tell me what you think.
“You know the whole downtown was a playground for the Civil War, right?” Jimmy said, his long fingers reaching up to rub his freshly shaved chocolate scalp. “In fact this very house was used to hide Confederate soldiers. There’s ghosts all over the place.”
He was baiting me, I suppose, since it was my first time visiting his house. I wasn’t afraid of ghosts, although I’d never officially met one, either. I knew my place and considered myself adept to handle whatever came my way. After all, I’d successfully managed to crack a crystal and discover which color witchcraft best suited me. If I could handle a little bit of black arts, I could handle anything. Besides, I really liked Jimmy and it would take more than a ghost story to chase me away.
One night turned into a week and that’s when I met Elvira. She’d glide through the window and tickle my toes with the ends of her long black hair clutched in her pasty white hands. Her blue eyes would soak in the blue of mine and we’d chat about how much she missed her family. She was never warm or cold, more like a vapor, a wind that hovered above me. Once she revealed herself to me, she became a nightly visitor until one night, Jimmy got mad.
He called me into the small dining room. “Is Elvira here?”
“Yes.” I answered. It was true. He didn’t respond, just nodded his head. He centered a black candle on a small plate and lit it. When the flame burned whole, he muttered under his breath, not loud enough for me to hear. He turned to me, his eyes wide open and uttered strange words I didn’t understand.
“Show yourself!” He commanded.
I felt a great wind blow through me. I stumbled but didn’t fall, and then it was gone.
“Are you okay?” Concern danced in the depths of his chestnut eyes.
When I nodded, he continued. “Did you feel anything?”
I nodded again.
“You have no idea how powerful you are. A ghost just passed through you and you stand there as if nothing happened! Amazing!”
I found my voice as I sat in the nearest chair. “That was…something. Where did she go?”
“I don’t know, but she won’t be back!”
He was right. After that night, to my dismay, she never visited again. I had several more encounters throughout the course of our relationship, but none has ever remained as vivid in my mind as the first one.
I believe. Do you?
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For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Venus Moon gave me this prompt: I remember the first time…
I gave Debbie this prompt: The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker
I always welcome and appreciate honest feedback. Please share your thoughts in a comment.
For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, ~k gave me this prompt: There was just enough light in the darkened room for Kendra to notice…(feel free to change the name)
Every day, twice a day, exactly twelve hours apart, the bobbin appeared. The human like head would bob up from the water always facing the same direction, looking out on the horizon. Nothing existed within eyesight. No ship’s sail broke against the blue. No silver sky bullets created new paths among the clouds. In fact, it was rare that even clouds marred the crystalline surface of the sky.
