December 25, 2022 0 comments

12 Days of Xmas: A Once Mighty Wind

A ONCE MIGHTY WIND

He’d felt like a god once. He’d walked the earth and been able to imagine it tremble beneath his boots. His voice had shaken the air and everyone had shown him nothing but awe.

He was old now and feeling older everyday. His once mighty voice had been diminished to a whisper, easily ignored by the children that surrounded him.

Everyone seemed like a child to him now. He was older than he’d ever wanted to be. And with every passing day he only grew older, weaker and more bowed by time, his body failing him while on the inside he felt the same as he’d always been.

He’d felt like a god once, but now his health was failing him. Time was catching him up and he could no longer outrun the sunset he felt closing around him. The tiny aches and pains that had added together to become a dragging misery.

The bones he’d broken and treated carelessly as they healed were now a deep throbbing agony when the weather turned cold. The scars that had slashed his flesh now stood out against skin gone paper thin and they twisted tight and sometimes felt as though they would tear themselves open again.

He’d grown older than he’d ever wanted to be. Some part of him had somehow assumed that he’d reach a comfortable age and time would cease to bother him. Yet here he was, an old old man, long retired with no more battles to fight. Not because he’d won the war, but because the war had moved beyond him. Taken out of his hands by the young heroes that had taken his place.

He hated that he had become defunct. He’d lived the most when he’d had an enemy to fight, but now he’d lived so long that his body had failed him. Had lived so long that he’d outlived his ability to fight.

He could still feel the power within him, that well that waited to be drawn upon. But his lungs had failed him—too many cigarettes back when he had smoked—and now the doctors warned that using his metability would likely kill him. His body was too weak.

He thought about damning the consequences and the solicitous advice. Imagined sometimes opening his mouth wide, drawing in a deep breath, and BLOWING as he once had done.

That mighty wind that could topple buildings and push the weather where he willed. He could still feel it deep inside, but his body was weak and broken by time.

He imagined drawing on that power one more time. Fantasized about showing everyone that he was still here, still existing, still a god amongst men.

But time had taught him fear. Time had taught him dread of encroaching death. Time had made him greedy; miserly over the few short years of life he had left.

He wasn’t just tired of the pain he felt. He dreaded adding hurts to the accumulation he was already forced to carry.

Time had bowed him down. Time had brought him a humility he had never thought to know. Had knocked him from his pedestal and made him merely human.

He’d felt like a god once. A long time ago.

=END =

July 14, 2022 0 comments

SHORT FIC: Shiny Town, by Harper Kingsley #HarperWCK

I wrote this on Twitter a tweet at a time.

Here’s my point of reference:

and here’s the tweet thread: https://twitter.com/HarperKingsley0/status/1547633608357134336.

SHINY TOWN

The Mayor of Shiny Town stood in his pressed trousers with the red suspenders, heavily embroidered vest, and blazer to survey the townsfolk going about their day. Each person was made distinctive by the clothes they wore.

The clothes they couldn’t remove.

Ever since that weird kid with the staff had passed through, nothing had been the same.

The kid had said their town was called "Shiny Town," and Shiny Town it had become.

They hadn’t had any rain in close to two years now, yet everything remained green, though oddly plastic.

Food had an odd taste to it now, even the things that came from cans.

The Mayor wondered if it was the food whose taste had changed, or if it was that his own taste buds had been changed with the odd metamorphosis he’d been forced through.

They’d all been transformed by that weird kid, from the oldest elder to the smallest of infants. The Mayor tried not to think of Little Sweetheart, as the kid had renamed her, the baby that hadn’t grown a single millimeter since The Change.

There was quiet speculation that Little Sweetheart was never going to grow up. She’d stay a 7 month old baby until she died of old age. Never gaining enough awareness to realize the hell they’d been trapped in.

Sometimes the Mayor envied Little Sweetheart her ignorance. Most times he wallowed in the unrelenting pity of the situation.

There was a lot of self-pity on his part, and while most times the fixed cheery smile that remained on his face was close to what he felt, there were darker times when he wished that he could frown. That the huge glossy orbs his eyes had become could cry.

But he wasn’t allowed the freedom of tears. No one was.

The kid had wanted cheery people, and that’s what they became. The cursed inhabitants of the now-named Shiny Town.

Sometimes the Mayor tried to think of his old name. His old life. His old self.

But it wouldn’t come. Had actually faded more in the last two years, until the things he’d yearned for on first becoming different were no more than memory shadows.

He’d see his name written down, and his eyes would blur over the letters, his mind unable to hold onto them.

He was the Mayor of Shiny Town. It was the sole identity he was allowed, the curse tightening around his mind whenever he tried to remember who he really was. Had been.

Likely never would be again.

Sometimes he looked in the mirror at his own cartoonishly huge eyes and the whiskers that refused to be shaved, and he hated that nameless child that had so-carelessly waved around such powerful magics and changed everything about him and the rest of the town.

He would try to find glimpses of who he used to be, and they seemed lesser everyday.

He was fading away from himself. Dying while still walking around with a body and a voice. Forced to follow the scripted phrases the kid had BURNED into him.

"Welcome to Shiny Town. I’m the Mayor and I’m here to help you."

"Please follow me and I’ll introduce you to the most important people in our town. We’re so glad you’ve finally come, Great Hero. We’ve been waiting for you to come save us."

"The monster has been attacking us for many a night. Good thing you’re here to take care of it."

And the Mayor tried not to think about "the monster," or what the kid had done to it… him? her? Whoever that poor thing had been before the Change.

A part of him was glad not to remember who the monster had once been. Though the searing ache in his heart made him fear the monster had been someone he’d loved.

Someone he could no longer remember, as he was forgetting himself.

He’d touch the clothes in his closet… the dresses, the pretty shoes… and it hurt to know he’d once been different. Happy.

Until that kid had come to town.

/END?