short fic

December 31, 2022 0 comments

12 Days of Xmas: Resolutions For a New Year

RESOLUTIONS FOR A NEW YEAR

There were the distant booms of fireworks but otherwise the house was silent. Curled up on the small bed, Tylar coughed into his hand. He’d been suffering from a cold for the last three days and had been forced to miss out on the New Year’s Eve party he’d been looking forward to for months.

He didn’t have the strength to feel sorry for himself. His head was aching even after the medicine he’d taken and he’d slept as much as he could. It was only a few more hours until the new year.

The bedroom was as warm as he could make it and he was wearing flannel pajamas beneath his multiple layer of blankets. He’d even pulled thick woolen socks over his feet to fight off the chills that kept running through him.

He hated being sick. He’d nearly drowned himself in hot soups and whatever foods he could choke past his aching throat.

"I hate being sick," he rasped, then chuckled weakly at how pathetic he sounded. It made him think of being a kid at his grandmother’s house on sick days. His mother would drop him off on her way to work and he’d spend all day wrapped up like a burrito on the couch watching daytime television while his grandma brought him soup and checked his temperature with the back of her hand against his forehead.

He’d eat chicken noodle soup with oyster crackers and drink 7-Up while watching soap operas through heavy-lidded eyes. He’d sleep off and on throughout the day and sometimes one of her cats would come lay on him. And the days would pass by until he’d stop feeling sick, and the last day would always be the best because his grandma would let him help her make cookies and they’d play board games and she’d feed him sandwiches with the crusts cut off and they’d spend the whole day together.

Tylar pulled the blankets tighter around his neck and shivered. Being sick as an adult meant taking care of himself. There was no homemade soup, as he was too weak to make it; instead there was concentrated chicken noodle from a can. And while he’d tried to watch TV earlier, his head hurt too much to deal with the sound and movement and the brightness so he’d been relegated to hours spent in the near dark of a single lamp on the dresser.

He swallowed, wincing at the pain in his throat, and closed his eyes to try and sleep some more. If he was lucky he’d wake up feeling better.

Focusing on the darkness behind his eyes, he thought about the new year. He hadn’t written down any resolutions as he usually did, too tired to bother, but he thought about them now.

To eat healthier. To exercise more. To drink less coffee. To read more books. The kind of resolutions he always made and never managed to keep to.

Tylar coughed and snuggled deeper into bed. He’d think up some resolutions tomorrow.

New year, new me, he thought.

=END=

~Harper Kingsley
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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=

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=