I’m gay as fuck, my dude

Naturally, the wizard is still a bastard and puts and even stronger, stupider curse on the villager (like all the clothes he puts on turns inside out) before teleporting away.

As in the other three books, he and his party have to track down the wizard (whilst taking shifts in drinking tea) to undo the curse. This is made more complicated by the tea kettle which whistles in perilous circumstances like sneaking through the End Of All Forest or trying to evade the attention of a previous nemesis. By the time they find the wizard, every single party member is able to drink a scalding hot cup of tea in less than 10 seconds (the trick being to make sure it's a small cup)

They harangue the wizard for several days until he finally admits that he wasn't the one who laid this curse. He waited days to tell them because he is, of course, still a bastard.

Turns out the villager touched the cursed kettle at the antique shop they were trying to sell goblin jewels to several days ago and it followed him home from there.

Unfortunately, the misunderstanding brought him in proximity to the wizard who was so angry at being surpassed by the villager in magic that he has been studying grimoires from far away lands. He uses one of the rare curses found in the grimoire and then destroys it. Now the party must go abroad to uncurse the villager

It feels like the villains are winning a lot lately.

You stir sugar into your tea, clicking your spoon against the sides of your mug in an easy four-count pattern. Click, click, click, click. You time your breath with the sound and watch the plume of debris rise in the distance. The fight is happening in the shipment yard of a construction company. By the look of it, that’s concrete dust turning the horizon into a foggy haze.

You turn back towards your penthouse apartment. The best designer in the city worked on the sleek, white marble interior. You’re a fan of the gold trim on the counters and in the chandelier, but you think it might be time for the minimalist furniture to go. You’ve seen so many social media posts with the same amorphous couch and chair that it no longer feels unique or cutting-edge.

The deal forms easily in your mind. Treat yourself to a redesign or to stepping out of retirement. You can’t have both.

The news anchor’s voice is noticeably breathy. “We’ve lost visual on Lady Spring. Mr. Hands-On managed to make contact-- ” Quickly, the screen switches from footage of the fight and to PR approved photos of the heroes. The anchor coughs and regains her level voice. “Redding’s Hero Team recently went through a reshuffling earlier this year. It’s not clear whether Odysseus is the Leader or if Sir Stone was promoted—”

You hate how the news always censors Hero fights these days. Back when you were active, they showed everything. The wins. The defeats. The blood. The way the streets filled with it. The way the scent of it slipped between the scent of burst water pipes and burning plastic. The way--

You sip your tea. Your fangs click against the rim of the cup. Not enough sugar. You sigh and set it in the sink. You know from experience that now that your appetite has awoken, you won’t ever be able to add enough sugar. Not until you’ve smothered the flames building in your throat with a different liquid.

You retreat to your bedroom to change. Your costume isn’t even sold in stores for Halloween anymore, that’s how long it’s been since you’ve been active. You’re grateful for it. They never used the right material to achieve the draping black dress, the structured bodice, or even the jewel-studded mask, which you think even a reasonably crafty elementary student should be able to create. You’ve always felt that if children must dress like you, they should do so accurately.

The adults who dress like you do so at their own risk. You do love some well-dressed thralls when the mood strikes you.

On your way out the door, you throw an emergency counseling request to your therapist. They’re not going to be happy the way you’ve let your delusion win this time. You grab the parasol hidden at the back of your coat closet. It’s awfully bright outside.

You and your therapist would probably make more headway on your mental health if so many parts of your illness weren’t true.

You don’t wait for the elevator. You open the shaft with two fingers and drop down it silently, disintegrating into a fine mist before you ever see the bottom.

------.

Lady Spring hears the humming first. It’s muffled as if sung from the next room, but the voice is strong and sure. A lullaby at the harbor. She coughs and rolls off the pallet of concrete mix she’d been thrown into. It’s higher than she thought and she groans when she hits the asphalt. Her head is ringing. She shouldn’t have taken that hit for Odysseus. She learned a long time ago that even heroes who monologue have a price to pay—

The humming. The humming.

“Spring!” Odysseus leaps over a pallet of bricks to land beside her. The strap of one of his Greek sandals has broken and it drags behind him uselessly. Half of his tunic has been ripped off when he let Mr. Hands-On get too close. His bare chest shines with sweat. “You okay?”

“You need to wear fucking armor,” Lady Spring says. She’s said it half a dozen times already and the words come easier than I’m okay. She checks her own armor, tightening the buckles on her leather breastplate with practiced movements. “Where’s Stone?”

 “Finding the civilian,” Odysseus says. He helps her to her feet. “Hands-On is over by forklifts, we think he’s hotwiring—”

“Civilian?” she interrupts. She grabs his shoulder. “What civilian?”

Odysseus’s heavy brow snaps down. “The one humming—”

“Recall him. Recall him now!” She’s already turning and running towards where she last heard the woman’s voice. She can barely see through the dust in the air, can barely breathe, but she isn’t blind, isn’t without oxygen. She can keep moving. She brings her power to her feet and her strides cover twenty feet at a time.

“Wait, Spring!” Odysseus has to tap into his super speed – barely d-rank – to keep up with her. “What’s—"

The forklift bay creeps through the dust cloud. She can hear Hands-On tinkering and cursing somewhere in the rows and rows of machinery. He’s a lower-level tech villain and she doesn’t want to imagine what he’s already done to modify a machine like a forklift, but it’s low on her priority list. 

There’s a figure up ahead. The spikes of his armor jut from his shoulder plates, and his head is cocked to one side, listening. Her heart shudders with relief. “Stone!”

Red glowing eyes blink open over his shoulder. A silhouette made of pure shadow materializes behind him. Lady Spring suddenly realizes her teammate isn’t standing – he’s being held up.

Her shoes smoke with the force she stops herself. She braces and catches Odysseus before he can barrel past. Her pulse thunders in her veins.

“Stone!” Odysseus bellows. He struggles against her grip. It’s only because she still has her spring activated that she can hold him back, sapping the power of his forward motion into building her recoil. “Let him go, Hands-On!”

“That’s not Hands-On,” Lady Spring says.

The dust is settling. A parasol blooms like a cloud over their new opponent. Lady Spring knows that if she inspected it closer, it would be made of the exact same lace as the gloves covering the woman from fingertip to elbow. A glittering mask of black jewels complements glowing red eyes. Sharp, small fangs gleam over bloodred lips.  Her gut sinks when a drop of red slides from the corner of her mouth. Stone’s been bitten.

“Is that a fucking vampire?” Odysseus breathes. “Vampires aren’t real.”

We’re fighting a man who can turn on any machine with a cog, Lady Spring wants to say. In one of the distant rows, she can hear a forklift engine turn over.  Her gaze remains fixed ahead.

“Of course they aren’t,” the woman says. She throws Stone’s body to the side with an easy flick of her wrist. When he hits the ground, he groans. Thank god. “However, schizophrenia is.”

“Vampyre,” Lady Spring says tightly.

“Specifically, Renfield syndrome,” Vampyre says. Her voice is sweet. She twirls her parasol with one hand as she uses the other to bat dust away from her dress. “That’s the official diagnosis. Personally, I think it’s the best my therapist could come up with. It’s close enough. Combine psychosis with superpowers…well. There isn’t much difference from the fantasy, is there?”

“You’re breaking your deal,” Lady Spring says through bloodless lips. Vampyre’s file flashes through her memory. S-rank. They are so fucked. “Ma’am.”

“Lady Spring,” Vampyre says. Something funny happens to the dust cloud. It moves as if caught in a dust devil, swirling and slamming into where Vampyre stands. Only she’s no longer there. She whispers in Lady Spring’s ear from behind her. “I never made a deal.”

Lady Spring lets the power she’d stolen from Odysseus go. She rockets forward, barely managing to retain her hold on Odysseus when she does. Her step takes her twenty feet forward to where Stone lies. Odysseus isn’t ready- he trips and falls over Stone’s prone body. Lady Spring doesn’t have time to apologize. She shakes out her arms as she turns, coiling the springs in them as quickly as she can. She raises her fists. “Don’t come any closer.”

Vampyre smiles. Her teeth are slicked with red. “I’m not here for you, dear.”

“Not…?” Lady Spring’s eyes dart to where the forklift is now crashing into other machinery. Hands-On is coming this way. “You know him?”

Vampyre clicks her tongue. “Heroes haven’t been winning very often lately.”

“And you want to make sure we lose today?” Odysseus snarls. He’s shaking, but he still draws his shortsword and comes to stand next to Lady Spring. “Vampiress?”

Lady Spring steps on Odysseus’ foot as Vampyre’s eyes narrow.

“Her name is Vampyre,” Lady Spring hisses. She ducks her head to the villainess. “I’m sorry, ma’am. He didn’t read your dossier.”

The quick apology settles Vampyre. “I suppose that’s understandable. I am retired.”

“I’ll make sure they learn.”

Vampyre sighs. “I don’t know what the news is debating. Clearly, you should be the Leader, Lady Spring.”

No shit. But she’s a lower rank, and there are a lot more hoops to jump through. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Vampyre turns towards where Hands-On is maneuvering. “Villains shouldn’t win all the time, Lady Spring. It takes the romance out of the battle. You’d do well to keep that in mind.”

“Or else what?” Odysseus snaps.

Spring thinks very seriously about knocking him out.

Vampyre spares him a single glance over her shoulder, one red eye burning. “Or else I’ll help you.”

The forklift’s engine screams when Hands-On finally gets it into the aisle. It barrels towards Vampyre, thrusting out of the fog like a battering ram. Odysseus yells in surprise. Spring coils to pull them out of the line of fire. Hands-On is aiming for the heroes, his goggles helping him see through the settling dust. He jerks the steering wheel right and left. The machine pitches onto the edge of its tires and swings. It’s going to miss Vampyre and run right into her team--

Vampyre holds out one hand. She catches the edge of the cab with a taloned grip that crushes through the first layer of metal before she gets to the main support structure. Hands-On blinks. Turns.

“Wha--?”

Vampyre throws the machine and the villain back towards the pallets. A new plume of dust rises, and there’s a horrifying crunching noise when the forklift lands upside down, Hands-On still in it.

Even Odysseus knows to stay silent when she turns to them next.

“I suggest you run,” Vampyre says lightly. She nods to Stone. “Thank him for me, will you? Because of him, I have the strength to do what I must.”

 “And what is that?” Lady Spring asks.

Vampyre smiles. Her sly eyes slide towards the wreckage. “Why, to make sure the heroes win the day, of course.”

Odysseus' breathing stutters as he realizes what she means. “No. He may be a villain, but we don’t—”

“Thank you,” Lady Spring says loudly. Her stomach is turning, but she’s a strategist. She tries to communicate that to Odysseus with her eyes. “We will leave. Next time we fight, we won’t lose.”

Vampyre is licking her lips. She seems to be having a hard time looking back at the heroes, her gaze constantly returning to the broken forklift. The scent of blood is clawing through the air. “See that you don’t. I’m retired, you know. It’s not good for my mental health to keep doing this.”

Lady Spring grabs her teammates by their belts. Odysseus grabs around her shoulders when he realizes what’s happening.

“Wait, the harness—”

Lady Spring springs away, flinging her team up into the air with her. Odysseus is snarling, trying to get his feet under them so that they land correctly. She’ll let him chastise her later.

Today, they live. The citizens do too.

Vampyre only ever claims one victim.

---.

Thanks for reading! I'm really loving playing in my Hero Force universe again.

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there's nothing wrong with writing a short story! there are lots of good short stories that revolve around Interesting Ideas. What if I was my own mother. What if fish people were real and also (evil) living in massachusetts. What if you were your own worst enemy, literally. lots of good short stories there, all at just the right length for a cool idea. no one is going to go see the feature-length adaptation of William Wilson though, because that's it. unless you add in a tragic backstory and a love interest and so on and unfortunately there are a lot of novels and movies running around out there that clearly were meant to be a short story before someone took them and stretched them to a silly length.

your short story doesn't even have to be short! herman melville wrote over 100 pages of a guy who hated his job so much he died of being a hater the end. good show, herman. thank you

The way necromancy works is that the caster puts a little bit of their willpower into a corpse to order it to remember how it functioned in life and obey. This is easiest to do with bones, which are easy to trick, and becomes increasingly difficult the more of the original body remains.

To reanimate a full body to your command, you have to have a lot of willpower.

The necromancer checked the map. She checked the map again. She squinted up at the stars, lips moving silently. Then, taking the lantern off its hook, she peered over the side of the little sailboat.

There wasn't much to see. The sea was dark and still as glass, except where the lanternlight turned a patch of seawater a yellowish-green. A tiny fish flitted into the gleam, attracted to the light, and then vanished into the murk again.

The necromancer chewed the inside of her cheek. She sat down again, the boat bobbing gently with the movement, and checked the map one more time. Then she opened the little wooden case on the floor of the boat, which unfolded into a neat arrangement of drawers.

There were. Things. In the drawers. Some wriggled. Others twitched little beetly legs into the night air. A few of them made noises, which ran together into a squeaky, wheezy squeal of horror.

The necromancer twiddled her fingers over the display as she considered her options. Then she grabbed a few of the twitching, wriggling things, held them in her palm and squeezed her hand into a fist as tightly as she could with a squelching noise.

She opened her hand to inspect her work. She breathed the spell into it, and then, holding her hand over the edge of the boat, dropped the spell into the sea.

And that seemed to be it. She sat back in the boat and closed the little wooden case. After a moment she started looking over the map again.

There were a lot of handwritten notes on the map. Each one was connected to a mark and some coordinates; some of them said, "Storm 1457," or "Struck a rock 1483." Others said "Total failure," or “Completely dissolved.”

The note the necromancer seemed most interested in was the one that read, “Battle of Salzstein, 1501.”

The necromancer checked the map. She checked the map again. She squinted up at the stars, lips moving silently, and then she was suddenly thrown down to the floor of the boat as though a giant, invisible hand had crushed her.

Her mouth opened in a noiseless scream.

Then, of course, you’re too busy to eat fruit before it rots and the bowl sits empty- barring a lemon or lime here or there-  and that’s no good either because it takes up over half of the counter to the right of your sink and backs up against the blank wall at the end of your galley kitchen where you can’t hang anything because both the fridge door and the pantry door swing into it.

So when your mother gives you another worry stone for your birthday – rose quartz this time, which means she thinks if you’re not worried about being single in your 30s, you should be – you hold it while staring out the kitchen window, drinking coffee over the sink, and when you finish the last sip full of grounds you toss the mug in the sink and the rose quartz in the bowl. It clinks loudly and then settles between those two lemons that you need to find a use for before the weekend, lest they go hard and unusable except for cleaning your sink.

After that, belated birthday wishes show up in the mail, and you can’t bring yourself to throw them out. Your Aunt Sylvia sends a postcard from Peru that she’s been holding onto for “a special occasion” for the last five years and, -aren’t you lucky?- you’re the special winner of a National Geographic photo of Machu Picchu. And you’re not a monster. The card may not hold the same significance to you as it did to her, but the thought does and so tucked between the bowl and the wall it goes where the very tippy top of the ruins rise over the brown rim, as if from the depths of a valley.

Then your college roommate (the archaeology one who made you want to do the study abroad program in the first place), Audra, sends you a shard of Roman pottery and a note in Latin that you can’t read but understand perfectly by the coffee stains littering the edge of it. The sight of the coffee stains warms your heart more than the pottery shard, so both go in the bowl where you can occasionally glance at them as you drink your own coffee over the sink and reminisce over study dates and the few regular dates you shared before her passion stole her abroad.

(And if the clay and the rose quartz lie next to each other and you suddenly think of marriage and nostalgia and her stoneware eyes that led you to save the same-colored fruit bowl from the depths of your house in the first place, it’s a natural series of associations and doesn’t prove your mother right at all.)

The driftwood isn’t from anyone. Your agent calls to tell you that you won an award for one of your books. The driftwood is in your hand, scavenged along the Potomac from amidst the pebbles deposited by the last storm, and it’s suddenly your only tether to reality as she explains what this means. It means reviews and author readings and an interview - of you! – and a guaranteed sequel. The stick is smooth under your fingertips and you wave it in the air is if it’s a wand in an attempt to burst your bubble.

Only you’re home the next moment and you’ve still got the driftwood in your hand and your bubble is unburst. It feels significant that you brought it back with you so you put it across the top of your fruit bowl as if it’s the award itself. You have a decaf coffee to celebrate that evening and see that stick guarding your rose quartz and your pepper grinder and your pottery shard and you think, I’m doing okay. And the joy you feel from that is so powerful that your next thought is, I’m happy.

Which is, of course, when the power goes out.

Outages happen all the time in a block as old as yours. Before, you’d see it as free time and go lay down in bed and wait for the world to relight or for morning to come. But you don’t have time now. Your agent is planning to call you soon. You are an award-winning author and you have things to do before your 42% battery runs out.

You make your kitchen your base and set the six pillar candles on your counter, lighting them one by one. They’re the rainbow ones from last June your mother bought you in a sweet yet confusing show of support and you’ve never found a special enough occasion to burn them. You smile at Machu Picchu peaking over your fruit bowl. Your aunt is the one who taught you about special things.

Then your agent calls and, while you’re hammering out the details, you see that the candles are about to drip colored wax onto your white, plastic countertops and even though you really want to replace them, you can’t afford to (at least until you sign a contract). You snatch up your driftwood and use it to scoop the wax from the sides until a kaleidoscope of color is collected and you have to keep spinning it to keep it from dripping.

You blow on the hot wax, thinking of Audra and your family and the future your agent is painting for you until it cools. Then you place the driftwood over the bowl where it belongs.

 It’s just a bowl. Of course, it’s just a bowl. It does a good job of taking up a huge amount of your counter and of holding onto things you’d forget in a junk drawer. It looks good in the candlelight, warm and earthy and welcoming with the three bright lemons scattering amongst your treasures. It’s nice to see reminders of your loved ones every morning from the summit of Machu Picchu to your worry stone to that shard of pottery, but it’s not anything more.

At least it’s not until you put your driftwood, wax-covered wand back and think, I wish I could see her.

The flames of the candles sputter and turn gold, radiating a pure and steady light that could never come from a mundane fire. Your agent stops herself midsentence, apologizes, promises to call you back when she has a better connection, and hangs up. The bowl rattles and shivers and you take a step back as your copper pepper grinder tips over. You must not have put it together correctly because it spills when it does, little peppercorns that roll across your counter towards the edge.

You expect to hear the dried pepper hit the ground, but it doesn’t.  Each peppercorn stops unnaturally.

G…

R…

A…

N…

T…

E…

D…

What?

The candles splutter and return to normal flame. Your bowl is still. The lemons seem less appetizing than they had a moment ago, but your treasures are still there and lovely.

You pick up your Roman shard.

Your phone rings. Audra. Although you can’t imagine talking to anyone after what you’ve just witness, your body isn’t on the same page. Muscle memory and association has you answering before the second ring.

“Mal, I got the job!”

“…The job?”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you. Not because I was hiding it! But nobody ever gets it and I didn’t want you to get your hopes up and then my hopes up—”

Her rapid-fire word is grounding. You laugh. “Because my hopes are your hopes.”

“Obviously,” she says. She takes a deep breath. “I got the Smithsonian. The curator role. The job.”

She’s coming home. The realization hits like electricity, raising all the hair on your arms and almost making you drop the shard. You blink quickly to stop the automatic tears.

“Mal?”

“I’m here,” you say. You go to put the pottery shard back with more care than you ever have, as if it’s Audra herself. She can probably hear the way your voice trembles, but you can’t compose yourself. “Oh, I’m so happy. When?”

“In a month. I have to hand over some current projects, which should only take a week, but finding someone to take over my classes might take a little longer, but not too long! I promise. After that it’s packing—”

You put the pottery shard back in the bowl as gently as you ever have. Audra’s voice is the sweetest music as she says goodbye, in a hurry to start packing. You hear that music long after she hangs up. Your knees are weak. She’s coming home. She’s coming home. Thank whatever god, she’s coming home—

Your fingers touch something coarse and feather-light. Your brow furrows as you pull a scrap of ancient paper from the fruit bowl.

You’re welcome.

“Oh,” you breathe.

The lights flare as the power returns.

---

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