fic

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=

~Harper Kingsley
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog
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The Way of the Househusband 01 at Amazon

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.

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?