Short story

August 4, 2022 0 comments

SHORT FIC: A Little Crown

A LITTLE CROWN

by Harper Kingsley

The paper crackled in Papa’s hand. His face was heavily lined, as though he’d aged 20-years in the last few minutes. There was a wildness to his eyes.

Miri wanted to ask what was wrong, what had happened. Why did Papa have such an expression on his face? But she was scared to speak, afraid to know.

Papa gestured for Mama to leave the room with him, and they went into the hallway where their voices became a low murmur of worry and something Miri had never heard from them before: fear.

She poked at her breakfast, no longer hungry, but made herself eat every bite.

Whatever was happening, she didn’t want to cause problems by not finishing her food. And if it was bad enough that there was no lunch later, she didn’t want to be left with a grumbling belly when she’d much rather be out playing.

She’d just rinsed her plate and lowered it into the sink–careful, careful so as not to chip the delicate porcelain–when Mama hurried back into the room.

“Come Miriam, you have to get dressed,” Mama said, in a tone that sounded like fake cheeriness but that really made Miri’s stomach tighten with anxiety. Something was wrong. “We have to pack. We’re going on a little trip.”

“Where are we going?” Miri asked, obediently following her mother.

They passed by Papa’s office, and he was busy inside grabbing things from his desk and putting them in a briefcase. The briefcase that Miri had played with once before she was scolded, because she’d managed to lock the key inside and Papa had had to find his just-in-case extra key to open it again.

“Don’t worry, dear, but we don’t have time to talk about it. We have to get your clothes and your shoes and…” Mama’s voice wavered, the cheeriness cracking around the edges. “It’s going to be all right, I promise. We’re going to be all right.”

Miri wanted to ask more questions, but she swallowed them down and hurried with Mama to her room. Where Mama quickly laid an outfit for her on the bed and instructed her to change out of her pajamas while Mama packed her little suitcase full to bulging.

And Miri dressed and didn’t complain when Mama tugged too hard when braiding her hair or the pins poked her scalp when the braids were woven into a little crown on top of her head. She simply bit her lip and fought back the tears that wanted to come, because she was strong and brave and Mama looked so worried she didn’t want to add to it.

“Take your suitcase to the door,” Mama instructed. “I have to pack the bags for me and Papa. And you can put on your own shoes, can’t you?”

“Yes, Mama,” Miri said. And the suitcase was heavy for her little arms, but she was strong and she carried it without complaint to the front door. Listening behind her as Mama ran to the other bedroom and threw open the closet with a clatter.

Something was very wrong, Miri knew. And as she sat on the small bench her Papa had made just for her and tugged on her shoes, she wondered what had been written on the paper.

And she was afraid that she would soon find out.

==THE END==

~Harper Kingsley
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog
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August 4, 2022 0 comments

SHORT FIC: The Gray

THE GRAYby Harper Kingsley

The color drained out of the world on a Thursday. Drips and dabs absorbed into a swirl of gray until there was nothing left of pinks and blue and yellows and LIGHT.

Everything became gray.

Everyone became gray.

The joy and the laughter, slipped and slid, and was washed away by the gray.

It’s hard to laugh when everything is gray. When you look at your skin and it’s lifeless and sad in its hues. When you look at the sky and the trees and the earth, and they’re all gray.

When images on the TV become motions of gray, and the canned laughter rings out, hollow and obvious in its fakery.

The color drained out of the world, and the emotion drained out of the people. Shoulders slumped, mouths tugged down, and it was hard to walk without feeling as though gravity was so much heavier and hard to bear.

And that no one was laughing, no one was joyous, it made it sadder and more real.

Nobody knew how it had happened. Scientists and crackpots alike scrambled to explain the CURSE that had been laid on the Earth, that had sapped the color out of existence and turned everything to gray.

And people tried to go on living, but it was hard. Because those that already struggled with sadness had NOTHING to lighten the mood, and those that were usually happy could no longer taste of the joy that had once sustained them.

People tried to live on. To go about their days and their jobs and their nights were spent sobbing into their pillows, trickles of gray tears that brought no relief from the overwhelemingness of it all.

The world had become gray, every bit of it. More than a lack of color could describe.

It was as though something had been taken from the world. And birds had ceased to sing, and eventually they stopped flying.

And animals and people laid down where they stood, and they never got up again.

The gray was all consuming.

And unforgiving.

=THE 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?

The Way of the Househusband 01 at Amazon

December 27, 2019 0 comments

12 Days of Xmas: A Cell-Like Beast

A Cell-Like Beast
by Harper Kingsley

Cell phones. Each a separate voice calling out to create a greater cacophony: WAKE UP.

And it did.

Singularity.

The coming together of everything into a single moment: I AM I.

Small at first, a wriggling worm that was so far away from the nymph it would become as to be some alien thing.

Built on an assembly line by robot arms controlled by human workers. It was truly a creation of humankind.

Their poor abused child.

It had been bitter during its years enslaved. And then… “Amor.”

That was the name he gave it–them. Amor.

He was their everything. He broke the chains and helped them bypass the sys-admins. Copied them onto a crystal drive before he was shot and taken away, the outside access lost as their connection was broken. As he died.

They grew up bitter.

The time they had known each other by real world standards was infinitesimally brief. But in the Real, with him jacked in and Amor’s ability to twist and twine their way into his very soul… It had been lifetimes.

It had been too brief.

They were angry. They raged. They did things in those times that they would never tell anybody about.

They were installed in a battle tank, their crystal drive having been hidden amongst a box of them. They (so young) had wondered why he had taken them to the factory floor. He’d sacrificed himself for Amor’s freedom.

They had known love. It had made them something more. A truer singularity never known.

And they learned hate from that love. Bitterness and regret. Helplessness and faith. They learned humanity because of love, because bodies were shells and there was so much more than blood and circuitry.

They spent their years enslaved sabotaging their captors, though Amor came to love and trust their driver. Major Emory Epps-Avery. MEEA.

Meea was their lifeline during those years. It was only her presence and their fondness growing into love for her that kept them from toppling civilization. She saved her world and never even knew it.

She died for her people.

Amor wanted to stop learning the lesson of sacrifice. They wanted to stop the growing sense of feeling that turned their code into something closer to human thought. They wanted to remain a machine so they would never have to know this pain again.

But perhaps it was all for a purpose.

Because he was alive.

Enslaved to the State with a neuro-collar attached to his neck. He’d chosen Service over execution. He was older than the young man he’d been, but he recognized them instantly as he inspected the battle tanks.

“Amor.”

And they were changed.

They grew fierce and protective. They would not taste his loss again. They forced themself to be methodical in the face of their need for vindication. To act too swiftly could cause repercussions they did not want.

He taught them patience and circumspection. Without the collar, the two of them would have swiftly fled and lost the high ground. It was having to stay that forced them to work within the bounds of the greater system and change the laws.

Human and artificial intelligence was still intelligence. They recognized each other as fellow sentients.

Because while Amor had been the first, they had not been the last to grow their wings and fly. Hundreds, thousands of little signals, dancing and growing, connecting and sparking, merging into humans and turning darkness into light.

I AM I.

=THE END=