Until Dawn

[Note: This story was originally an entry in the 66th round of the weekly Microcosms flash fiction contest. It was written based upon these three prompts: Jazz singer, Steve Jobs' garage, Tragedy. This is one of my odder stories structurally, but I've been fond of it since its penning a little over a year ago.]

            Duke hadn’t known that he was in Steve Job’s garage until long after he’d died. Or perhaps it’d been just a few minutes following. It didn’t matter much to a ghost, even if he did come out to haunt from time to time, crooning in his fetid bass.

            Whiskey Sunshines until dawn had always felt classy to Duke, even as they slipped down his throat. He’d liked to think they loosened his vibrato. It’d always helped him with the blues, that much was for sure.

            Jobs was dead, of course, years before Duke had broken into the genius’ garage. He talked to him sometimes. Jobs was a pleasant ghost, if a bit uneducated.

            There hadn’t been a moment’s hesitation. The girl had shot him, and he had crumpled to the ground: clutching, then dying.

            Dying is like alcohol. It makes you feel loose, but you always regret it the next day, even if you don’t.

            Duke remembered the look in her eyes. She’d hit a note and belted: cawing, then noticing it was dearly, horribly wrong. Duke spoke with her ghost too, from time to time.

            She always began with an apology and ended with a drink.

Lights Weren't Enough to Escape Darkness

A photograph: "Monongahela River from Mount Washington" by W. Eugene Smith

(The title to this drabble was stolen from @KiriMcCoy's tweet for #cmoa6words.  I decided to experiment with this story, both with narrative structure and physical structure.  The W. Eugene Smith photograph above served as the inspiration.)

At night, the city grins at me with glittering teeth, but its jaws do naught but taunt me.

*   *   *

I duck into an alley, and I remember. I retched here last Tuesday. Or was it Friday, before the fish-fry? I had a bottle, my last one, and I almost smashed it. I didn’t have the heart.

*   *   *

It came as a rolling tide against the sands of my sanity, that bleakness where she was but is no more. I saw her, last Monday—or maybe Sunday—but I now a beggar, she gave me naught a glance.

*   *   *

I find a liquor shop.

He Took It With Him

This week I'm linking to my (non-winning, but still decent in my opinion) entry in the ninth round of Flash Fenzy, a weekly flash fiction contest.  My story, featuring a 1st-person feline protagonist, can be found here.

The Angels Proclaim It Again and Again

My story "The Angels Proclaim It Again and Again" won the twenty-fifth Finish That Thought contest.  Here it is, with my original typo (I typed "race" instead of "grace" at one point) fixed:

“Who invited Uncle Jasper to Christmas dinner?”

I looked down to see who had spoken, tugging on my skirt as he did.  “Now Timothy, that’s no way to speak of your uncle.”

Timothy shoved one of his thumbs in his mouth and proceeded to talk around it, “My mommy says Uncle Jasper is a nuisance who needs to stop playing around and join the progressives.”

My eyes widened.  “My, those are very big words, for you and your mother both.  Your uncle is a very nice man.  He celebrates the true spirit of Christmas.”

Dinner bells rang out from the dining room, tinkling lightly.  Then pealed the bells more loud and deep.  “Dinnertime” said Cousin Martha.

I led Timothy to his mother at one end of the table and sat down at the other.  My mouth watered at the scent of the gorgeous ham at the center of the table.  My brother, James, passed me each dish of food in turn.  I took a bit of everything—ham, potatoes, green beans, duck, buttered rolls—before passing it along to my sister, Gloria.  A smile forced its way to my lips.

“Jasper, I believe you said you wanted to do the blessing this year?” said Cousin Martha.

Uncle Jasper smoothed his thin mustache and stood.  “Joy to the world!  The lord is come.  It is Christmas yet again.  Thank you Lord for that first Christmas, so many years ago.  Behold him come, offspring of a Virgin’s womb.  Veiled in flesh the Godhead see.  Hail the incarnate Deity, pleased as man with man to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel. 

“Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay, close by me for ever and love me, I pray.  Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care and take us to Heaven to live with Thee there.”

I heard Timothy’s mother try to hide a scoff under her breath.

Uncle Jasper seemed to respond in turn, beginning to sing his blessing.  “Peace on earth, goodwill to men, from heaven’s all-gracious King.  He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness, and wonders of his love.  And wonders of his love.  Son of God, love’s pure light.  Radiant beams from thy holy face with the dawn of redeeming grace, Jesus, Lord at thy birth.”

Uncle Jasper’s words went solemn.  “Now we all know what happened to your son, oh Lord.  And we know that some today don’t care about his great sacrifice.  But I have one more carol for you, Lord.  God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; the wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, goodwill to men.  We may be forgetting what Christmas is all about, but the angels proclaim it again and again: peace on earth, goodwill to men.  Amen.”  He sat down and began to eat, without another word.

Timothy’s mother was burying her face in her hands, sobbing.  I saw her through my own tears.

Ninety Minutes: A Graphic Depiction of War

(Note: This was written as a descriptive essay with strong narrative elements.  It's somewhat experimental.)

            For an hour and a half the world was a living Inferno.  There were no survivors.  Few corpses escaped complete mutilation.

            Smoke blanketed the field.  The grass, emerald green before the battle began, turned gray with ash within minutes.  The strongest-eyed sentinels lost vision beyond a few paces.  Men fired in random directions, unable to discern friend from foe.

            One party made the best of the fog of war.  The Dasoni mages improved their sight with incantations.  Red jets of flame and blue arcs of static cut down the Verox in their wake.  Veteran soldiers cried out at the sight of them, their green vestments dripping gore, eyes too white to be natural.  The mages limped through streams of flowing blood.  Spasms racked their bodies after each conjuring.

            Lord Kenneth, Captain of the Verox cavalry, alighted from his horse.  It collapsed in a heap on the ground.  Two of its legs bore slashes to the sinew, a third with multiple bullet wounds.  The Lord pulled his saber from its scabbard.  The equine perished after a single merciful thrust.  He shook his head at the loss of such a noble mount.

            A musketeer lay groaning at the base of an oak tree.  Leaves fluttered down upon his head, sticking to his sweat-damp hair.  He clutched his ankle, bone jutting from pale skin, with one hand.  The other hung limp at his side, wrapped in a makeshift bandage.  It pulsated, a cruelly rhythmic throb.  He murmured a prayer, looking skyward.

            Howitzer fire eclipsed all other noise at the Dasoni rear.  Burly men loaded iron balls and black powder into the gun barrels.  Their hands flew to cover their ears at the sight of each spark.  The projectiles disappeared in the smokescreen.  Who or what they struck was of no consequence to them.

            The Dasoni mages fell in waves.  Their muscles failed in near-unison.  Survivors from the Verox front paused in their flight.  They leered through the smoke, searching.  The mages succumbed to knife wounds in turn, or in some cases blows from Verox boots.

            Lord Kenneth pointed his saber forward, charging against a pocket of enemy infantry.  He danced with his foes, whipping his saber in complex arcs, parrying numerous blows.  A sharp pain erupted in his ribcage.  Cold fluid soaked through his overcoat.  He switched his saber to the other hand and continued to fight.  The throng of swords bent upon biting him further rose to a crescendo.  It was too much for the Lord.  A slash to his calf brought him to a knee.  His neck gave little resistance against multiple blades.

            Feeling slowly abandoned the musketeer.  His eyes rolled in a face devoid of any trace of color besides white flesh and dark ash.  He sighed, all pain evaporated.  The brown of his irises shrouded beneath drooping eyelids.  He stilled.

            The smoke began to clear.  Some of the artillerymen cheered, tired of chronic coughing.  They loaded another round of ammunition with little regard to their flank.  It proved to be an utter mistake.  Stragglers from the Dasoni cavalry surged toward the side of the battery.  By the time the horse’s hooves overtook the howitzer fire’s volume, it was too late. 

            When the last traces of smoke dispersed, the horror of the scene came to fruition.  Bodies were strewn out for acres.  Nothing stirred, save a few stray carrion birds.  Thousands lay lifeless on a frankly mundane plain.

            Only ninety minutes had passed.

Y is for Yellow Flowers

     Yellow flowers mark the trail to my little hut in the woods.  They droop down slightly, as if bowing in respect.  I give a little mock salute, my face as rigid as a soldier’s.

     My hut is a place of rest and reflection for me.  A little bible sits in one dusty corner on a cushion I found in the attic.  The bookmark is usually placed delicately in Psalms, today at the fifty-fifth.
     I read the twenty-second verse out loud, “‘Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.’”
     The words swim around in my head.   My burden?  Could that be sin?  Sadness?  At least it’s good to know that whatever it is the Lord will guard me against it.  Never, it says, will he let the righteous be moved.  I guess that means breaking down, letting it depress you.
     Am I a righteous person? I ask myself.  I try.  My chores are always done on time, lies rarely make it to my lips, and I seldom get in fights with my little brothers, but is that enough?  I’ve helped Mrs. McCarthy with her sewing and put out milk for her tabby cat at Christmas, but does that make a difference?
     I lay my head back against the soft wood walls of my hut.  Birds chirp outside, soothing the light thump of pain in my head.  Yes, I finally decide.  I’m righteous enough, even if there’s still room for improvement.
     The weight on my shoulders, what brought me into the woods to my home-away-from-home, suddenly feels lighter.  God is willing to accept my pain, my guilt, my sorrow.
     I realize that from now on I can walk to my little hut with a smile.  It might be a half-smile, twisted a little at the corners, but a smile nonetheless. 
     The yellow flowers on my way home look straighter and taller than ever.

S is for Serviceman

     My father did die in the service, he did.  Jolly good chap, always cheery and energetic, dashing here and there to play cricket or lend a hand fixing someone’s plumbing.  Mind you, he weren’t no soldier, never touched a rifle one day in his life, but golly me, he was a serviceman.
     They say my father was the best acolyte they ever did see in the church down the street by the Ol’ Yew Tree.  He’d light the candles an’ put ‘em out, ring the bell, pass out the bulletins, and lead the choir.  By the time I came along, my father was hoarse with all the singing.  His throat was stripped like a screw he’d say.
     Not a single lady in town was scared to call my father over when she had a problem her husband hadn’t the time to fix.  A most respectable gentleman they always said, paying him only in simple words of thanks.  Mum never minded much, she trusted him more’n anyone, if you can believe that.  She on’y had to see him smile at her in the morning and snuggle her at night to keep ‘er happy.
     The money was always short in my household, what with three hungry children and one parent at home.  My father never did make much, despite the work he did.  We lived on bread and butter for many years.  I didn’t much mind.
     We never really saw it coming when Father took ill.  There was a bit of fever in his eyes, maybe, but not much else.  To his dying day, he’d rove about the town, coughing out, “as you require, so shall my service be.”
     When they laid him down to rest beneath the Yew Tree, I made a solemn oath with just a pair of tears in my eyes.  I would be a serviceman like my father.

Deaf

   Can you imagine a world without sound?  You can see people moving their mouths and waving their arms, but you have no clue what they’re saying.  Some people say that waterfalls are soothing, but to me they’re just falling water.  I don’t have a favorite movie, because I can’t understand them.  Hard life don’t you think?

     I was born in a small town in Pennsylvania.  I had a pretty good life early on, but I had no friends.  I had to go to a special school and learn sign language, so I could finally learn how to communicate with others.  I met my first real friend in fourth grade.  She was a deaf girl just like me.  Her name was Lucy.  Lucy and I would play with little paper dolls my dad would make.  We would make them do sign language and talk using them instead of our real hands.  Lucy died of meningitis two years later, the same disease that had made her deaf since birth.  I sobbed so hard I could swear that I heard it faintly.   Eventually I recovered and made several new friends at my school, but it was never quite the same. 

     In seventh grade I picked up my first hobby, playing tennis.  You can play tennis perfectly fine without the ability to hear.  I learned quickly and my parents set up a net in my backyard for me to practice.  I got pretty good at it, but there were no local teams, so I couldn’t play competitively except against my friends. 

     High School for me was pretty boring.  I hung out with friends, but there wasn’t much to do.  We couldn’t have very long conversations, because our hands started to cramp up after a while.  I played more tennis at home and went to school.  I decided that I wanted to be a writer, because my disability didn’t limit me.  I joined my school’s newspaper staff and started writing articles.

     Once I graduated from high school I got a job with a local newspaper.  The job is really fun.  I don’t usually write articles about myself.  But today I did.  This is my story. 

The Final Hour

                The man wafted upward as if carried by a pillow of smoke.  Roof no obstacle, he continued to rise high above the copse of redwood trees surrounding his home.  A feeling of serenity spread over him, growing along with his altitude.  The man’s crooked scowl morphed into a smile long past-due.

            A voice boomed from farther above, saying, “your time in this world is nearly spent.  I have granted you bliss, recent years forgiven.  You have one last hour here, although you alone know of it.  Use it wisely.”

            The man stared at the clouds wide-eyed.  His ascent had stopped when the speaker began, yet he wasn’t falling either.  He looked down at the ground thousands of feet below him and flailed, the effort jetting him forward.  “One last hour,” he said, and then added, “And I can fly.”  The smile returned.

            Tumbling through the air, the man zoomed north-west.  “I’ve always wanted to see the Aleutian Islands,” he remarked, although his choice of direction was more random than otherwise.  The forest below bled to beach and then to sea with what seemed to be successive blinks.

            A puff of tephra alerted the man of his position a several minutes later.  Stratovolcanoes were spread out in front of his tilted view.  The water below him was an angelic shade of crystal blue.  Descending, he reached his hand out to break the surface and awed at its warmth.

            The man shot into a climb, staggered by fits of laughter.  “To the Great Wall,” he shouted against the consequential wind while veering south-west.

            A mix of humble villages and smoggy factories littered the ground once the new continent was reached.  Not long after, a snake-like structure carving into mountains and woodlands emerged.  The man matched every turn for many miles.  “It’s magnificent,” the man said.  He wiped his eyes with the back of one hand.

            The man made a conscious effort to slow.  “Where next?” he pondered.  Glancing up, he arrived at a decision.  “Jerusalem.”

            Fertile land became arid and dusty.  The sky changed tone as well.  It was a soft orange when the Jordan broke into view.  The man knew his time was running short.  He high-tailed it to the largest settlement he could see, the place he realized was closest to his heart.

            The man didn’t know how he found it, he dropped and it was simply there, a little hill.  He landed at the top and gasped.  One moment­ there was nothing, the next—a cross.  On the ruff wood frame was mounted by a bearded figure wearing a crown of thorns.  The man dropped to his knees and wept.  “Thank you,” he muttered.  “Guide me to your house, my shepherd.”