December 30, 2022 0 comments

12 Days of Xmas: Appetizer

APPETIZER

Passive aggressive. That’s what he was at his core. Passive aggressive.

Slamming things. Shaming people for liking things. Huffing and puffing and muttering to himself as a way to make the victims of his aggression feel bad. Telling himself that he was a good guy while he went out of his way to make others feel like they were the bad ones.

"He’s the worst," Napier said, low-voiced.

"Yeah he is. The absolute worst of the worst," Clare said. She was avoiding looking at where Adam pranced at the front of the room, arms waving as he proclaimed this and that and gloried at once again being the center of attention. His pompous voice rose and fell as he verbally patted himself on the back. "Do you want to get out of here?"

"Yeah I do. I’m pretty sure I saw a bar on the way here. We could get a couple of drinks. Maybe some chicken wings. The food here is terrible."

They slunk to the back of the room, and once they were sure they’d avoided attention they slipped out the double doors, leaving the party behind. With the number of people, there was a good chance that Adam wouldn’t even realize they’d left early.

"Whew. We made it," Clare laughed gaily. She threw her arms out and spun in a circle, the skirt of her dress swirling around her knees. "Next time he invites me to one of his events, I’m going to pretend I’ve already got plans. I just can’t do this bullshit anymore."

Napier followed her out to the parking lot and offered her a ride in his car once she said she’d used a taxi to get to Adam’s party. In the closeness of the car, he breathed in the scent of her pheromone-perfume and remembered the long-time crush he’d had on her. Remembered, and realized that it was just as strong as when they’d been teenagers and he’d spent hours writing her name over and over again in his notebooks. Before Adam had seen and teased him. Before Adam had decided that he liked her and had asked her out. Before he’d forced himself to set aside his feelings for her, as it would have been a "betrayal" to date his friend’s ex-girlfriend.

He hadn’t let himself think much on the betrayal he’d felt when Adam had barely waited two months before moving in on his ex-wife. Adam’s new bride today.

Napier had liked Clare for years but had swallowed down his feelings in some misguided loyalty to Adam, and why? The two had dated for less time than he’d been married to Erika, and Adam hadn’t hesitated, likely hadn’t felt even second thoughts before asking her out.

He parked in front of the bar and they went inside. There were only a few other customers so they mostly had the place to themselves. Which meant a two-person table and free access to the jukebox. They shared a plate of appetizers and each got a burger and potato fries.

They talked and laughed and by the time late evening fell he more than remembered why he’d liked her so much.

And when the evening was done, she asked him to drive her back to her hotel. "I don’t want to bother with a taxi," she said, but there was a quirk to her lips and a light in her eyes that had his heart skipping a beat.

When she asked him if he wanted to come up to her room, he immediately agreed. Because he did want to. He wanted to do so much with her, from tonight on to tomorrow and all the weeks, months, and years to follow.

He’d liked her for so long while pretending that there couldn’t be anything between them because Adam was his friend and they were loyal to each other. But where had the loyalty been on Adam’s part? Who had known that Napier liked Clare but had dated her anyway? Where was the loyalty on Adam’s part when he’d gone after Napier’s ex-wife–and had maybe started while they were still married?

Adam always made himself out to be the victim in every situation. Always spoke about his hurts and the way he’d been betrayed, but never once indulged in self-reflection or other "weaker impulses."

He demanded loyalty without ever being loyal himself.

And Napier regretted all the years he had wasted and opportunities he had lost. But not this time.

He breathed in the heady scent of Clare’s perfume and let himself fall into love. They were both single and free, and passive aggression only worked if the victims let it. And he wasn’t a victim anymore.

=END=

~Harper Kingsley
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December 29, 2022 0 comments

12 Days of Xmas: Twenty-Six Winters

TWENTY-SIX WINTERS

They called him a changeling because he looked different from everyone else in the village. The children when he was young were cruel to him, and as they grew older they didn’t get any better, just slyer about how they enacted their torments.

Eyes were always upon him no matter where he went in public. The stares followed him along with the whispers about his strangeness. His oddity. The differences that he couldn’t control or change.

Some called him cursed. That was why the color had been leached from him before he was born. That was why even the slightest bit of sun would cause his skin and eyes to burn.

Others called him a curse, one that had been cast upon the village and that they were forced to bear. It was why no one dared to harm him, for fear of calling down the wrath of the god of death.

Everyone believed that he had been touched by death. It was why he’d been garbed in white from the moment of his birth. He’d been cast in the color of grief and mourning.

He was a curse, they all agreed. It was only the kind of curse that they argued about.

And sometimes he wondered, and he feared, what would happen when (not if) they finally decided that his death was the only answer. He knew that the moment they no longer feared reprisals for harming him, they would happily see him dead. Because they hated him because they feared him and they feared him because they hated him. He could see it in the way they looked at him and even more in the way some refused to look at him at all.

Some of his earliest memories had included villagers warding off the evil eye when he walked past with his mother. She had only touched him when she was forced to and had only taken him with her until he was old enough to be left alone. And then one day she’d been gone, her clothes missing from the wardrobe, and not even a note left behind. And the villagers had let him stay in the house and they’d provided him a monthly stipend until he was old enough to work, but he knew it was only their fear of the gods that had them help him.

If they could have, they would have let him die. It wouldn’t have been murder to simply turn their backs and let him fade away from hunger and neglect. But they were too scared of the kind of spirit he would become, as though he would return wrapped in vengeance to punish them. As though he cared enough about them to hate them the way that they deserved.

He didn’t know what was wrong with him, that he couldn’t hate them. That he pitied them so.

He’d raised himself on the words of books he’d found in his grandfather’s old shed. Books that no one had touched for decades and that his mother had surely never read. She’d barely spoken of his father’s father other than to say that it was his house in which they lived. That he had died before Yeager was even born.

And he lived his childhood dependent on the fearful “kindness” of the villagers. And he grew up in that house alone with no one to talk to and no one to care when he hurt himself or when he succeeded at the tasks he set himself.

And when he was an adult and their charity was no longer to be expected, he took up wood carving and hunted small game. And he survived on what he hunted and grew, and he treated and sewed together small furs into larger blankets, and he sold them and his carvings to the peddler that would pass through the village.

And without his knowing, he began to gain a fame of his own. Because his carvings were clever and beautiful and had a charm that townspeople could not resist.

He grew famous without his knowing, and when he was twenty-six winters old the lord of the region came to call. And he was lauded for his great talent, and while he was still reeling from the surprise of it all, he discovered a truth that no one had ever said:

His grandfather had been a man of means. So much so that he’d owned the vast stretch of land upon which the village had been built. Land that he had never sold but that he had rented to the villagers. Land that they had never told Yeager belonged to him.

His mother had been spending his money for all the years that she had been away, even after she’d married again and started herself a new family. And he had never known, because he was a curse and no one ever said.

And the lord was kind to him, kinder than anyone he had ever known. And it was the lord that told him of the beauty he created with his hands and that later made him realize the beauty he possessed in his face and his form and his voice…

Yeager could never see the beauty of himself for himself, but he saw it in the lord’s eyes. In the way the lord spoke to him and made him feel. In the love that grew between them, watered on the happiness that knowing each other brought.

And when the lord–Miskar–asked him to come away from the village, to live in his keep and stay by his side forever… Yeager didn’t hesitate to say Yes.

And his curse was broken. Because while the sun still burnt his tender flesh, he could cover himself in veils of silk and enjoy the light. He could bask in the love Miskar gave him, and for the first time and the rest of his time he could enjoy the world and the life he had been given.

He had been born a changeling, different from everyone in the village, and though it took him twenty-six winters, he came to realize that he was not a curse but a blessing. A joy. The love of someone’s life.

And he was happy and whole and he left the village behind and never felt the need to look back.

=END=

December 28, 2022 0 comments

12 Days of Xmas: You Were You and I was Me and Together Were We

YOU WERE YOU AND I WAS ME AND TOGETHER WERE WE

They were twins. Triplets once. But then there were only two of them left, the other faded away into memories that only they remembered. Nobody else even knew her name. She’d faded away like the moon on a sunlit day.

“We are the sun and the moon, and she was our star,” Hamlet murmured. He was wearing his favorite tank top, the one with the rainbow stripe across the chest. “I miss her.”

Mac sighed. “I hate that we’re the only ones that remember her. She was the most important person in our lives, and nobody knows about her but us. I don’t even think the kids we went to school with remember her anymore. We all looked the same. They used to confuse us all the time.”

“Remember when we’d all wear the same outfit and we’d pretend to be each other? She was a better me than me.”

Hamlet laughed and it sounded like tears that wanted to fall. “She was the best of us. I miss her so much.”

It was the anniversary of her death. Of the day that had taken her from them all those years ago. And yet it seemed as though her light had been extinguished merely yesterday. The ghost of her had lingered close around them, carried them through the years of her absence, been the support they had needed to function.

Their memory of her had kept them motivated. Kept them moving ever forward where she would have wanted them to go.

“She was more us than we are,” Mac said. “I hope we’ve done her proud.”

“I want to believe that we have. I want to believe that she’s smiling at us from the other side. That she’s been with us this whole time cheering us on in everything we’ve done. That even if nobody remembers her for her… they’ll remember her through us.”

“I hope they remember her through everything we ever were together and ever will be,” Mac said, holding out a glass of amber liquor. It had been poured from the first bottle ever produced by the distillery they had named after her, in memory of her, so that even those that did not remember her would know her name. Forever.

“In memory of her,” Hamlet said, sipping from his glass. “The best of us.”

“The best of us.”

=END=

December 27, 2022 0 comments

12 Days of Xmas: Pleasant Dreams of Unwary Things

Content Warning: brief but somewhat graphic description of injury.

PLEASANT DREAMS OF UNWARY THINGS

Beckett screamed in rage before lashing out one final time. Lightning blasted from his fingertips but there was so much blood in his eyes he missed.

He knew he missed the second he released. He could feel it. The way the lightning left his fingers and kept on going to wash uselessly against the wall of a building. Dissipating into nothing and not saving him at all.

Because the Knife Man was right there, close enough to touch. Close enough to be touched by.

His rage became fear and agony as the knife went in. All the way in. Cutting at him. Slashing at him. Digging so deep into his flesh that it vibrated through his bones. And there was nothing he could do to stop it. He was spent. Powers all burnt out from overuse. As helpless as any other victim of the serial killer.

He died. Over and over again. He died. Lying there in the trash of the alley. Splayed against the icy cold ground with air that smelt of trash and the approaching snow.

He died, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

And then he woke in his bed, and it was the morning of that fateful day that would be followed by the night in which he died. And it was mysterious and strange, the idea of being given a second chance, unasked for and overlooked, but so precious nonetheless.

He woke up covered in sweat with eyes that streamed tears, and his heart pounded so heavy in his chest that he thought he was having a heart attack at first. Before he realized that he was alive, that it had been a dream. Only a dream.

Except it wasn’t a dream. He knew it wasn’t.

Because it was the morning of his last day, and the day that followed was EXACTLY THE SAME as the day he’d dreamed of, and he KNEW it was going to be followed by the night of his death.

But he refused to die.

He had been given a second chance. And he refused to waste it.

When the call came to face the Massacrists he didn’t hesitate, but he did bring more weapons. He brought more firepower and saved his lightning for when it was really needed. And when he confronted the cultists he didn’t hesitate and he didn’t mess around. He didn’t posture and he didn’t preach and he didn’t waste his time offering mercy the way he had the first time. Because that was how he’d let himself be worn down, that was how he’d let himself be distracted, and that was how he’d died.

He could tell his teammates were surprised by his ruthlessness, but there no time to explain. He knew the Knife Man was on his way and the dying was about to begin.

The Knife Man had cut through his teammates one by one and two by two and eventually he’d faced that monster alone and been the last to fall.

Not this time.

This time he knew where the Knife Man was going to appear. And he dodged the thrown blade that had scalped him the first time, that had taken the top off his skull in a blaze of pain to leave the bone hanging from tendrils of flesh to slap against the back of his neck.

This time he stepped to the side at the last second. Felt the whoosh of the knife past him. And didn’t hesitate to strike back along its path.

The lightning BLASTED from his fingers even as his lips drew back from his teeth in a snarl. And his eyes were clear this time, no blood blocking his vision, and he saw as the lightning struck. Saw the Knife Man limned in a crackling blaze of light so bright and terrible that his SKELETON shone through his skin before it crackled and burned.

Beckett struck out and DID NOT MISS.

He was a hero. Hailed as such in print and video media. Profusely thanked by the victims his team rescued from where they’d been imprisoned in a literal metal cage to await their sacrifice on an already bloodstained altar.

He was a hero, that’s what they called him, but Beckett knew the truth.

He was a survivor that refused to die.

He was Chronic Discharge. And no matter what happened, he always came back.

=END=

definition chronic: (of a problem) long-lasting and difficult to eradicate.