short fic

1 comment on "SHORT FIC: Apricot Sunrise"

For Kevin

Up all night. Exhausted. Bone tired. Weariness dragging down.

Whoever said crime doesn’t sleep wasn’t lying. It had been nonstop action all night. There was a scent of soot and body odor clinging to her skin.

Elisa looked at her phone to check the time. Grimaced at the crack running across the screen. Meta-grade materials her left foot. She’d slammed the thing into one recalcitrant face and now look at it: crack city.

The thought of having to get a new phone made her want to have a headache. Even with the cloud, there was still a lot of personal stuff she’d have to transfer over. And there was always the nagging sense of something being forgotten, left behind, whenever she got a new phone or device and had to abandon the old.

Nostalgia was almost a suffering friend on her part, rather than the thoughtful softness that other people got to enjoy.

She shoved the phone back in her utility belt and finished her slog to Canaverra Bridge. It was the perfect spot to watch the sunrise, the rippling blue water and the clean scent of ocean a cleansing backdrop.

Being a superhero wasn’t all cheery media smiles and punching villains in the face. It was tiring work, especially for a second-rate hero like her.

She didn’t have any illusions about her place in the world. She wasn’t a frontline hero. Just one of the grunts that cleaned up ground level criminals. And that was fine with her.

Superheroing was a job. One that paid her bills and let her live the life she wanted.

It hadn’t been her dream. It was a paycheck she worked hard for and earned with blood, sweat, and tears. Mostly not her own. She had a powerful right hook and wasn’t afraid to use it.

Her lips curved up when she realized she’d made it on time. Barely.

Ghostly wavering light at first rising up over the mountains. Then the spill of golden light as the sky brightened beneath the clouds. Then the first piercing rays of sunlight.

The sun rose, beautiful in the early morning chill. And Elisa watched it happen.

Beautiful.

=END=

1 comment on "Prompt 26: After being seduced by a demon, an empath ate a baby"

23. After being seduced by a demon, an empath ate a baby.

It was a strange time. That wasn’t an excuse. It just was what it was.

A strange time.

He’d picked up the demon at an estate sale. The candlesticks had immediately appealed to him. The sight made him think of the little hallway alcove that had been built into the house for some reason. That empty space called out to him, demanding to be filled.

He’d bought the candlesticks and brought them home. They’d fit in the alcove perfectly. Added class to the place.

Everything was great for a time. Work was going well. His house was finally feeling like a home. He was healthy and felt fitter than ever before in his life.

Of course it couldn’t last.

The dreams came first, then the sleepwalking started. The sleep emissions. The zoning out. The realization that something was really wrong.

By then it had likely already been too late.

The demon got in his head and built a home to stay. And in that time when he was lost, they’d done terrible things together.

The demon had twined itself throughout him until he didn’t know where it began and he ended.

Because he’d been so wrapped up in the feeling of things that he’d lost touch with the reality of things.

None of it had seemed real, even as it happened, and it was only afterward with the nightmares and prison cells that he’d come to realize what he’d done.

Because while they’d done it together, the demon was a demon and realized no wrong. It took a human soul to suffer for human sins.

And he’d committed a grave sin for letting it happen. For enjoying it in the moment, because whatever the strength of the demon there were some things he never should have allowed.

The sex. The scarification. The gorging themselves on any food they could reach.

It could all be forgiven.

The eating of a human baby?

Unforgivable.

x_x x_x x_x

Being known as "the baby eater" in prison wasn’t exactly the highest point of his prison sentence, but it wasn’t the worst either.

A spiritual trace had highlighted the signs of demonic possession in his aura. He was still sentenced to prison, but it was a lesser term than he would have gotten without the evidence of a demonic presence.

He took whatever blessings he could find. So that reduction of what otherwise would’ve been a life sentence was gratefully accepted.

He didn’t really think it was fair, considering what he’d done, but he raised no objection to being released just two years after he was sentenced.

A small apartment. A from-home job. And six months later he could almost pretend that his life wasn’t a completely ruined thing.

Almost.

/END

0 comments on "12 Days of Xmas: Nine Cuts Deep"

NINE CUTS DEEP

There was no warning. One minute he was curled up in his bed, face nestled against a plump pillow, and the next he was being dragged out of the house in his sleeping clothes.

“What is happening? What are you doing? Who are you?!” he shouted, trying to struggle but his arms were held too tight.

He was thrown on the ground and knelt up to see that his attackers were wearing the uniforms of the Imperial Guard. Their commander stood before him, strong legs braced and expression firmly unfriendly.

The commander unrolled a scroll and held it face out so he could see the words in vermilion ink. “Jan Douther, by order of the Emperor you are to be exiled for life to the island of Reuine.”

“Why?” Jan asked, horrified.

He could hear his house being ransacked behind him. Anything of wealth was thrown onto a prepared wagon. As an exile, a proclaimed criminal, he would only be allowed a single set of rough spun clothes and everything else would be claimed by the courts.

“Donthor Auerleon, once Duke of Kourton, has been sentenced to be executed for the crime of treason. The great Emperor has proclaimed that his family be dealt with nine cuts deep.”

Jan wanted to wail in horror but no sound could escape.

Nine cuts deep!

Whatever Donthor had done hadn’t just seen himself and his immediate family dead, but had doomed his family down to nine generations.

As a second cousin, Jan would be made to suffer along with their grandparents and great-grandparents and uncles and aunts and all of their families. Whatever Donthor had done had killed his own wife and children and sentenced everyone else in the family to permanent exile.

They would not be allowed to own property. Those that didn’t already have a spouse wouldn’t be allowed to marry. Any children they had would automatically be labeled as criminals. They would have to do whatever labor the government ordered. And they would not be allowed to leave their place of exile.

Jan had never been fond of Cousin Donthor, but now he discovered that he hated him.

That smug scumbag that would come to holiday events in expensive clothes layered with jewelry. Who would boast of his riches and his properties and his beautiful concubines and the best schools that his children attended. Who would flaunt his ducal title while looking down on the rest of them.

Donthor had ruined their entire family. And for what?

As Jan was stripped naked in the street and was forced into the rough spun clothes, he hated and hated.

He didn’t cry out when the Imperial Guards transferred him to the care of the prisoner transporters and he was beaten. He hadn’t done anything to fight them, but they wanted him weak. Pliable. Aware that he was no longer a person and could barely be considered human.

His status was lower than the lowest of slaves. Those whose masters could kill them for a list of offenses but who still had to follow set laws of treatment.

As a criminal his life was worthless. He could be beaten, robbed, abused, and kept captive, and if he dared to go to the Law Bureau for justice, he would first be given thirty strikes with a board before he would be allowed to speak.

The law was not on his side, and he knew it. And so he refused to cry, simply accepting that everything that had once been was no longer. Including the luxury of weakness.

Later, when he was reunited with his elderly family members and a few cousins on the ferry boat to Reuine Island–the rest of the family having been separated to other points of exile–he held them close and promised that he would take care of them. They were all that he had left in his life.

Donthor’s foolishness had taken everything else from him. Even the hope of a happy future.

=END=

0 comments on "12 Days of Xmas: Prion"

PRION

“You shouldn’t eat that,” he said, standing well back. “It doesn’t seem right.”

“Shut up. What do you know?” Logan growled and continued butchering the meat.

Meat. That’s what everyone insisted on calling it. Not beef. Not pork. Not chicken. Meat.

Wally figured it was hard to call it what it was. To admit that what they were salivating over was human. A dead human body.

They’d been hungry for so long, holed up in their ragged little town with limited supplies worn thin and thinner.

Before the zombie apocalypse, the grocery store had been waiting for the weekly delivery of supplies. The shelves had quickly been emptied in the following weeks and months.

Everyone grew hungry and thin. Several infants were the first to die, their eyes huge in their sunken faces. Then the sick and elderly began to die. Those that had lost access to their medication and their regular medical care.

Eating the dead had been an idea put forward by Logan and his crew. A distasteful suggestion that had gained traction with the hungry townspeople. And here they all were: getting ready to eat their tenth dead body.

Wally had managed to avoid cannibalism so far. His family had had a pantry full of staples and a cellar full of home canned fruits, vegetables, and boiled chicken. It had made him feel guilty not to share and the family had been tight with their rationing, so while no one was starving, no one was fat either.

They were waiting for the spring when they could move their vegetable seedlings to the garden plot they’d already dug out and begun fertilizing. With the Norman and Benson families they’d marked out a field area for growing wheat. (Wally was grateful for his sister Gail’s obsession with wheatgrass smoothies that had given them a huge bag of wheat berries ready to grow.)

Things were hard but not completely hopeless. That’s what Wally felt.

Supplies were tight in town, but not to the point of starvation and death. Yet Logan and his crew had eaten too well and ended up mixing and drinking infant formula when the milk had run out. They had insisted that the military would come and rescue everyone in just a few days… a few weeks… a few months… And those young children had died.

They refused to take responsibility. Claimed it was the fault of circumstance. Those babies would have died anyway. It wasn’t their fault for selfishly wasting supplies.

Promoting cannibalism was one of the ways they tried to divert attention away from the deaths they’d caused. As though they were creating food and not just indulging in another kind of sin.

Wally had told his family to stay in the house while he came to watch every time a human body was turned into meat. He hated witnessing the depravity, but he felt that he needed to hear what people were saying. Because those that were so happy to desecrate dead bodies might not hesitate to create more.

He had his wife, children, and sister to worry about. They were the most important things in this changed world.

So he stood at the back of the crowd as what had once been Gary from Schaeffer Street was skinned and cut into sections. The man had died in his sleep, presumably from a heart attack.The townspeople hadn’t yet turned to murder, though he feared it was only a matter of time.

He watched as a huge stockpot was brought forth and the designated cooks began to prepare a soup from the bones and meat. He even accepted a bowlful as his share, that he took back to his house and later buried in a corner of the backyard. He marked the spot and silently promised poor Gary that he would plant beautiful flowers for him in the spring.

Then he went inside to his family and forced a smile he didn’t feel to keep from scaring the children. They depended on him to let them feel safe.

. * . * . * .

Five days later, everyone that ate Gary Newman was dying. The town’s limited medical supplies were used to attempt to treat and diagnose what they were suffering from. And finally old Doc Mikkelsen announced that they’d been infected by prions, likely transmitted by the human meat they’d ingested.

“Is there any medicine they can take?” Lilah asked. Her little face was pale and scared. She’d seen too much death in her short life, from zombies to this strange sickness the doctor was helpless to stop.

Wally sighed and shook his head. “It sucks, but there are just some things you can’t do anything about. You can only pray for a dying soul and say your goodbyes. Even Before there was no cure for someone infected with prions.”

“Oh.” She hugged her rabbit doll so tightly that her fingers were white.

Wally gathered her up in his arms. “Don’t be scared. Prions aren’t something that you can catch like a cold or the flu. We didn’t eat what they all ate. We’re not going to get sick.” He pressed a kiss on the top of her head and looked toward his wife and two sons. “I promise.”

There was a reason why eating human meat was taboo. It wasn’t because it was disgusting and horrifying and immoral and… It was because there were some things that cooking could not kill. That only complete carbonization would destroy. Terrible things that bred in the quiet moments and could be spread when fools dared to eat what they should not.

He would do whatever he needed to do to keep his family from becoming cannibals. They were human beings, and he refused to let them become monsters.

=END=