#stoco

Posted on 8 Feb

Prompt: TRUTH

“I’m trying to speak — to write - the truth. I’m trying to be clear. I’m not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and the truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.”

From one who did not walk away:

We know what we are. But we do it anyway. If we stopped now, nothing would be better. The poor brute wouldn't suddenly know freedom, and we wouldn't suddenly be resolved. It would just make everything bad.

We aren't the first, you know. We aren't the first community to destroy one of our own for selfish reasons. We aren't even the first ones to consider stopping. One community did stop, not far from here. It's gone now. Nobody remembers its name.

[There's something here, but it doesn't really work for a response to "Omelas." There's no simpering self-justification that I could write which Le Guin hasn't already done better.

Written on Jan 5

Prompt: NEW 

“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” - Trickster

Written on Feb. 4

Prompt: RAGE

“When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing.” - Fledgling

Calum propped the animated portrait up against the wall. It was a portrait of an older woman, wearing an austere dress. Calum thought it looked suffocating--the neckline reached up to her chin and the torso looked pinched in. Her steel gray hair was pulled up into a harsh bun. It made a show of looking disdainfully first at the rubble, and then at the scruffy-looking scavenger in front of him. "Look at the state of this place," said the portrait in an archaic dialect. "Once this was the pinnacle of civilization, the greatest center of learning in all our world." The woman in the portrait sniffed. "I suppose you don't know anything about what happened here?" Barely waiting, she continued. "Of course not. You're just here to pick through the ruins of your betters."

The woman in the portrait, whose name Calum would never know, continued berating him for a few seconds, but he was no longer listening. He wondered if he could sell it. A talking painting had to be worth something to someone. Maybe the shamans could pull the magic out of it. He briefly remembered the stories he heard about the people who dwelled in this place, what they'd done to the communities surrounding here, how they'd banned together to pull down the parapets of their seemingly impassable walls. Finally something the portrait was saying caught his attention. "...knew we were too kind. We should have treated the townspeople the way they deserved."

Without another thought, Calum punched through the portrait with his fist. He then shredded the canvas with a rock until the strips hung from the frame, and then he smashed the frames on a chunk of wall.

Day 2, written on Day 3

Prompt: "I sit beside the fire and think/of people long ago/and people that will see a world/that I will never know."

He looked across the table from the empty chair. To the place his wife had sat for the last seven years. To the place where someone else would be coming home.

He hadn't slept after their conversation last night. He didn't know how to feel. He was pretty sure that was normal. His wife didn't know how she felt, either, for the last seven years, and who knows how long before that.

Would his wife still be his wife when they came home? What would they be instead? A husband? Did he have a husband now? He wasn't sure he was ready for that. His spouse? He said it a few times, out loud, in the empty room, to see how it tasted. He could fit the word out of his mouth, at least. Well, another conversation he and they would have to have, he supposed.

Unless they didn't want to be his spouse anymore, either. Or unless he didn't want to be theirs. Then they'd never have to talk about it again.

Written on Day 2, Posted on Day 3.

Day 1 Prompt: "Still round the corner there may wait / A new road or secret gate."

It was much too busy for this time of year. For this time of night, come to that. June 23rd? It felt like December 23rd. Jerry was in a foul mood, Ever since the sun had gone down, some weirdos had come out of the woodwork. One guy had painted himself blue and only spoke to the cashier in cooing noises.Another person wanted to pay for a sizeable book purchase, including at least one extremely rare volume, with a gold coin. Coins weren’t Jerry’s specialty, but if the piece the customer put on the counter was genuine, it would be worth 4 grand, easy. But Jerry had no way of knowing whether it was genuine or not, so he refused. And on and on like that.

So when Karla’s voice came over the ludspeaker, saying “Manager to the fantasy section, please,” Jerry thought, “What is it now?” He made his way through the throng of people to the back of the store. Karla was just staring at the wall that divided the bookstore proper from the receiving and storage bay. To Jerry’s irritation, Stan was back there, too. Just staring. “Stan, if you’re here, who’s minding the espresso machine?”

Stan looked over his shoulder, looking at the line of apparently endlessly patient line of customers. “This is more important, I think,” Stan said in his slow way. Jerry never knew if it was thoughtfulness or stupidity, but the man knew how to make a cappuccino.

Karla said, “We need you to settle something for us. That door…has it always been there?”

Jerry blinked. “What?”

Karla pointed. “That door. Right there. Have we always had a door there?”

“Of course we have. That goes to Receiving. You’ve both been through there a thousand times. We don’t have time for—“

“No, not the receiving door. The receiving door is beige. I mean the one sort of next to Receiving. The gray primer-colored one.”

Jerry squinted and winced through a flash headache. Then he realized which door Karla and Stan were talking about, and his irritation grew. “Of course it’s always been there. It’s a door. They don’t just grow out of walls.”

“I remember…” Stan paused. “I remember the door being there forever. But I don’t remember…remembering that…yesterday.” He shook his head and went back to making coffee.

Karla said, “If it’s always been there, what’s behind it? Stan and I have been arguing about it.”

“It’s a storage closet. That’s where we keep the…” Jerry trailed off. This was ridiculous. This was his store. 10 years he’d been doing this. He knew what was behind this door. That headache just made him forget for a second.

A man, very tall and very very thin, rested a gentle hand on Jerry’s shoulder. “Excuse me. Do you have any Tennyson? A hilarious man. I’m quite overdue for a re-read.”

Karla shook her head, like she was trying to clear it, and said, “Of course. Come this way.”

Jerry stared at the door for a moment longer. Then another customer required his attention, and it slipped his mind. After all, it had always been there.

The rest of the evening was insanely busy. The cashiers kept asking Jerry to approve transactions in unusual currencies, things no policy could cover. He found himself saying yes to as many as he could, and he found himself glad for doing so. Some were straight book swaps. He was surprised by the titles people were willing to part with. Apparently he traded a pretty good edition of Butler’s Parable of the Sower for “one perfect song in perpetuity,” whatever that meant. He just knew he wanted to go to karaoke later.

The bookstore normally closed at 10 on weekends, but closing seemed unthinkable. Until midnight the customers kept them all busy with strange requests. He thought he heard one customer in the café ask for a cup of tears. When Stan replied that he didn’t have any, the customer happily ordered an oat milk latte instead.

Then, the lines grew shorter. Fewer and fewer people required Jerry’s attention. Then the last customer left with their purchase (an adult coloring book and seven copies of the same edition of War and Peace—Jerry hadn’t even known they had that many. He hadn’t sold that many copies of that book in the whole time he’d had the bookstore).

And the place was empty.

Jerry, Karla, and Stan cleaned up, exhausted. There was something slightly different about all of them, in ways Jerry couldn’t explain and would soon forget to notice. As they did a final walkthrough of the book floor, something caught Jerry’s attention, something about the back wall, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “Hey, Karla?” he called. “Do you member why you called me back here earlier?”

Karla joined him and took a long look at the back wall. “Didn’t I need you to get something from Receiving?”

Jerry hesitated. “Yes, that must be it.” He looked at the beige door. Something was bothering him about it still.

As they all left the store together, Jerry said, “Hey, I know it was a long night, but is anybody interested in karaoke? I have a song I want to try out.”

…Etched into the leg of the prep table in the kitchen was the most beautiful symbol. It wouldn't peel off. It couldn't be copied. However, the saw could go through the wood above and below the rune.

Reflecting on that moment that might have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Mom always said not to be so impulsive. You would think offering to replace the table would have been enough...

Read more at https://www.worldanvil.com/w/anhult/a/person-followed-by-an-invisible-thing (flash fiction - 5 minute read) written for The Storytelling Collective's Flash Fiction February challenge, edited for #tuesdayfiction

First the water fell. Then it froze. Then it kept falling.

Rains fell first on feet of snow, then on rock-hard ground. Drops of water the size of candle flames bounced off 6 inches of underground ice. The snow had never melted so fast, like it was trying to beat the rush.

The river took as much as it could swallow, and the rain kept coming. The river began throwing up, then, throwing up all the water that forced its way out of the sky and that the frozen ground refused to drink.

It didn't take long for the river to show its disdain for our back yard. The marshy border, normally hundreds of feet into the woods, emerged out of our lawn in a matter of hours. The space under our house was next, with the river flowing from above and below. The pump couldn't pump fast enough, because there was nowhere to pump to. Every gallon pumped out of the crawlspace just became part of the river which now flowed through the yard.

This was not the civilization-ending rage of the hurricane, the mindless violence of the tornado. This was not the deceptively peaceful snow blizzard that buried the world in silent white that started all of this. This was just a gentle rain, that didn't stop, on top of a foot of snow pack, on top of frozen topsoil. It was just an utterly indifferent river, flowing from everywhere to the lake, not caring much what was in between.