Short story

May 21, 2023 0 comments

SHORT FIC: The Stranger

THE STRANGER

There was someone standing beside the refrigerator. From the angle, I had to be in the living room. Yet somehow… Even though he was unfamiliar–tall and thin, dressed in a sweater and jeans with tousled curls atop his head–there was something recognizable about him. Not the shape or the color of the eyes, but something that called out to me. That screamed out his identity.

He was me.

That was me standing next to the refrigerator. I knew it deeper than the deepest knowing. So far that something inside me rang out with the knowledge: That’s me!

I didn’t know his face or recognize his body. I didn’t know his name or anything about him. But I knew that was me I was looking at.

And who am I? | wondered, near to crawling out of my skin at the eerie strangeness of it all. The wonder and the weirdness.

I stared at him, but it was as though I was a ghost to his sight. He gazed through me as he turned to walk into the kitchen. There was the clink of dishes as he opened a cupboard and took down a plate and cup. I thought that I should say something–“Why are you digging through my dishes?“–but the words died unsaid and unformed, the will behind them dissipating before I even drew in breath to speak.

I moved closer to keep him in my view, but I didn’t dare to get within touching distance. I simply stood next to the refrigerator–where I had first seen him–and watched as he fixed himself a plate of buttered toast and made himself a cup of tea with sugar and milk the way I liked it. And I watched him eat, the way he chewed every bite, swallowed with a bob of his throat, and his hand rose and fell with the toast disappearing munch-munch-munch until it was gone and he was brushing the crumbs from his hands over the sink.

My sink.

In my kitchen.

In my house.

Using my dishes.

This stranger standing in his stranger skin, looking nothing like anyone I had ever known and the farthest from me as he could possibly get. Yet knowing that he was me and I was him. That we were the same person, though we’d never seen each other before and maybe never would again.

And I watched him as a ghost as he moved about his daily life. And there was so much familiarity in his every motion, in the way he tossed his head and moved his feet, in the way he held his mug–my mug–as he drank the tea until the last drop was gone and washed the dishes, his sleeves rolled up in the same way I would roll up mine.

And it was strange and familiar at the same time. And I wanted to watch him forever even as much as I wanted him to leave. Because it was uncomfortable to have him here. To feel so jealous of this stranger my mind kept insisting was so familiar, so me.

But I lingered near. I remained a silent witness as he lived in my house and enacted my life. And I watched him, admired him, slid my gaze up and down his form and felt a nameless wanting.

Until I woke up in my own bed. In my own skin. In my own self. In my own eerie sense of longing and loss, of something taken from me that I had never known but never not known.

And I got out of bed and I dressed myself. And I brushed my teeth and washed my face. And I brushed my hair. And I avoided my own eyes in the mirror as I went out into the kitchen and made myself some buttered toast and tea.

Alone again, without me.

/END

~HarperWCK

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September 24, 2022 0 comments

Free-thought No Thought Off Head

My brain is a formless nothing. A resounding rhapsody of the kinds of sound that would make someone hold their face and SCREAM.

From that nothingness, planets are formed. Swirling out of the greater void. Bathed in the twinkle of stars popping into existence one after another, like specks of ink on a page.

Drinking from the well of life. As something was birthed from nothing and All came into being.

Rasping breaths on a midnight silhouette shore. Drawing in every bit of air that could be breathed, tasting the unique flavor of a brand new world.

I had been trapped in nothing for so long, smited there by a vengeful god that I still hated with the deepest fire of my being.

My father. Rasmandius. The Demon King of the Greater Underworld. Lesser Prince of the Farthest Hell.

The cruel dictator of my imprisonment. The one that had sentenced me to the void for daring to defy him.

Yet here I am. Birthing myself anew from the nothingness, now that the very memory of my father is long gone.

"You did not win," I said, knowing that he was too far to ever hear, but needing to speak nonetheless. "I did not let you win."

I stand on the earth of a planet in a universe newly born, and I smile.

It is my time now.

/END

–

"Killing It" on Peacock: The first season ends on a cliffhanger!

If there’s one thing I wish American shows would do, it’s emulate Korean dramas in giving is the whole of everything at one time.

I want a show to wrap up the story. Make those 12 or 20 episodes, rather than feeding us little rabbit scraps and expecting us to be satisfied with less than we want.

But anyways, the first episode of "Killing It" was funny, which gave me a different impression of the show than it turned out to be.

That shit is heavy as fuck, yo.

I watched the whole first season because I’d already started it, and it’s a good show, though I need to have the complete thing, and I wish it wasn’t broken into seasons or whatever they’re going to do. I mean, for all I know they’re going to cancel the show and that first season is all there’s ever going to be.

For serious: From the first episode I was expecting (hoping for) a much lighter show than I got.

I was expecting him and her to pair up, and they would hunt a bunch of snakes, and they would win the competition and he would start his business and it would be a big success, flowers and butterflies, happy endings all around.

Instead it’s very bloody and tense. Definitely not the vibe I thought it was going to be at the end.

~Harper Kingsley
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An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good at Amazon

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==

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=