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Prompts ∞
Comment on this post with a prompt and receive fiction. Whoever you are, whenever it is, whatever you want to inspire me with: it’s an open field. Anonymous commenters are welcome. You might leave one word and get a paragraph of stylistic horseplay. You might leave the title and author of a book, and I’ll go read it so that I can write a short pastiche. I am fond of poems, aphorisms, and links to Wikipedia articles. If I have written a piece of fiction that you particularly like, you can comment on it with another prompt and I will continue, though not necessarily from where I left off.
no subject
no subject
Perhaps that portion of her records had been shuffled in with another patient’s. He must remember to speak to his nurses about it.
So he thought, ’til this woman seated on the exam table in a garish red dress looked up through eyelashes long with mascara—not implants, for with his hawk’s eyes he could see the clumps caught between the hairs. Focused past them, he blamed the light for the color of her eyes, but that was foolery. A million dollars for the lighting in this room, or else he couldn’t have gotten the license for eye color modification, no matter his reputation. Her eyes were brown, brown like rich worm-eaten dirt, brown of silty water and of sloth’s fur. He caught his tongue between his teeth before he told her so, coughed, extended a hand. “Hello, Miss Eldridge. I’m Robert Isfahani. What brings you here?”
Disconcerting, how closely she watched his lips when he spoke. Doubly: she raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re a specialist, Doctor. You know.” Now she lifted her chin and gestured at her eyes (he thrilled at how they scattered the light and blushed green). For all she wanted him to examine them, she would not meet his gaze, but looked vague and unfocused to the side—shamed, he realized, and not able to bear the idea of another person looking directly at them. “No one will touch these. They say it’s impossible. I’m too much of a throwback and the color won’t take.”
“Well, Miss Eldridge—well—” He opened and closed his mouth like a fish stunned by a jellyfish’s sting, body slowly shutting down as nerve endings burst with venom, and she leaned forward with a frown, made an inquiring noise. “I want to lie to you,” he admitted, “and say there’s nothing I can do. There is. I could make them vivid green—have you seen Taylor Gorbeau? That color would take. Not blue, I’m afraid. Black is a more uncertain option. As I am sure the others worried over, the, ah, there would still be a certain tint to the iris, obvious against the pupil.” Say you want blue, he prayed; be a stubborn fool and argue ’til you walk away, and I won’t be the one to murder these, these—
“The green,” she said, quiet. “Please. Give me whatever I need to sign. I understand I will be blind for a while and have made arrangements. I expect you can have me in surgery soon, with this.” She took a credit chit from a pocket at the hip of her dress, flashed it in her palm with an air of embarrassment.
By the sweet lord, might I never have to mutilate what is so beautiful. For all his hesitation, he knew that he would do as she asked; he had sworn the oath that he would practice his profession with the patient’s satisfaction always in hand, and do no harm to their self-realization. At first look, he knew what he could and couldn’t do. A hundred years of this business meant fifty without the complex machines that assessed pigmentation and eye-shape for the viability of one option or another, and it was his well-developed ability to spot what could be done that served him better than all the young bucks and does who relied on the new technology. With those ancient eyes on him, he said, “I will do the surgery for free—I will tell your workplace it is necessary to avoid further psychological damage—if only you let me study them, a while. I need—” He shook his head; she expected more, but he could only say, “Please, Miss Eldridge. You do not know what you have, but I see.”
“Are they so awful?” she whispered. “Will studying them help others?”
He shook his head. “This will sound disturbing,” he said, and gestured to his own irises: slate grey, somber, as he had gotten when he entered the medical field. They were comforting to many businessmen who came wanting colors alike, having made poor neon choices in their youths and now wanting social advancement. “I want them. I would give up my business, to have eyes like that. Please, it will only be a year more between now and surgery. You’re—” He glanced down at her chart. “—forty-five, no? One more year...”
She shrugged off this peculiarity. “No. I won’t live longer than I have to with them. Doctor, I’m doing you a favor by saying so. If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve been utterly turned down by everyone else, I’d walk out that door with the knowledge that you’re mad for even saying such a thing. As it is—” She fixed him with a look, making eye contact at last. “You already said you can do it, so you have to, don’t you?”
Doctor Isfahani bent his head in defeat. “It’s your right. But, please—”
She shook her head.
“Please,” he whispered a last time; and refused, shaken, told her: “Go to the desk and make an appointment, then, ma’am. Show them the chit, tell them to do so as soon as possible. A month. Maybe less. You’ll pay in full, Miss Eldridge, before I do the procedure.”
She slipped down from the exam table with an expression of faint distrust and mockery, gave him a bow that wouldn’t pass for sincere and polite in even the lowest society. “Thank you, Doctor, for doing your duty.”
He stood aside for her to pass, a man dying of envy and guilt before the cause of those deadly emotions had ever come to pass. His hands would not shake on their tools, however, and he would not spread the pigment wrong; he was the Doctor Fixer, and his patients determined the mistakes.
no subject
As someone who's always bristled at the attempts of doctors, therapists, teachers, et al. to "fix" me, I find this story tragic. Not sure which figure is the more tragic of the two, though.
Hmm...
Schrodinger's Heroes.
Re: Hmm...
Re: Hmm...
tobacco island
Listen, write. Lyrics included.
Re: tobacco island
The guard moves easy on long shanks, peers tall enough to see over the grown fields. Her neck, as ever, aches. The rings do not provide all the support she needs, and it has been too long upright and not enough spent with head laid down, vertebrae relieved of weight.
Hierarchies, she reminds herself, and of gifts related thereto. Her mother had quite a lot to say about the mouths of horses and the guard has always been one inclined to bow to matriarchal wisdom. She credits her job performance to her body and thus the ones she works for. The speeches they give to remind her and fellow workers of this are called ‘communal reassurances’. (The snapping in the distance presses at her thoughts. She shakes her ruff and scents the air again. For a cleaner world, she would give much. All of her failings can be credited to the hampering of her senses by filth.)
The snapping is closer. Instinct makes her look towards the disc, that slowly-turning home of the builders and source of all that is large in her world. Besides the usual flow of effluvia from the central sewage outflow, it is still. Too still? The guard would, if freer, investigate. As it is, her path is dictated before her. Still: that breaking among the canes. If it comes a little closer, it will be within her purview and she may investigate without repercussions, allowing she does not interrupt any other work. Her path—her speed—it is behind her; the guard comes to the gates of the cemetery and exchanges brief chatter with the two young day-guards.
Nothing, they report. Nothing and more nothing. They are not very intelligent and she does not know if they mean there has been much nothingness issuing from the graves—a thing bad enough to warrant keeping her weapons in her hands—or nothing at all happening, which warrants a nap. No use, her questioning; they are japes. She sends them away with a snap of teeth.
Duty is at her back, among the unmarked graves and given to scaling the fences twice even her height. Interest—the mighty forgive her—is all for the place she has come from. It occurs to her that the day-guards will be passing and obligated to check the odd noises. Her ruff settles; unclenched, her bottom jaw is underslung, showing her lower canines flush against her upper lip. Her fellows will see to it, and thus comforted the guard reflects on the unpleasantness which will be acquiring pain medication. That sleep will be impossible without them seems unfair. The sugar cane field abutting the path to the graveyard becomes an item to rest her eyes on while she does not watch.
When a swathe of the cane falls forward in a neat row, sliced clean through right at the base, the motion is incorrect: she draws and shoots before she thinks. Everyday annoyances aside, the limited number of actions the builders allow their workers does make her job easier.
Yet—what has done the cutting is not dead: sickles blood-slick and sap-filthy in either hand, it squats in the dirt of the path, its body concealed by a massive mask of wood painted red and black in an animal snarl worse than her own. The arms that hold those weapon-tools are muscled, black. The guard remembers shaking palm fronds, being in her mother’s arm while the women sat around the hut’s hearth and listened to the men make war on the devils outside. In her ears is the pipe, in her muscles the groaning chant. It is festival—it is—And her last thought is of the profound way in which she has transgressed, though in her confusion she does not know if it is for accepting the builder’s contract, for seeing the devil, for all these nights keeping her kinfolk’s spirits in the earth when they would have gone to be breathed by the living.
The devil recovers its sickles from the body of the guard, sparing a moment to peer down into her bewildered face. Her pain is nothing to it, and without regret the thing goes into the graveyard to wake the ghosts with the stamping of its feet that it might lead them down the path in the sugar cane it has hewn. Lungs are wanting breath, and the devil will not lower itself to fight against winded warriors.
prompts
(Anonymous) 2013-07-14 10:31 pm (UTC)(link)Re: prompts
My immediate alarm is tempered by the vindication of long-held paranoias, superstitions, and wistful beliefs regarding the existence of such beings as this, but the steel of calm is weak compared to three feet of horn as rough as any antelope’s keratin. I shriek; I scramble; I wonder if a unicorn avoids salt-water, and if it matters when there’s enough seaweed on this beach for me to tangle and drown even if I stay near to shore. The waves would deal me the same hand, further out. Questions, as I leave heel and finger divots in the grey sand, are numerous. Should I speak, should I hold still, should I be more careful where I put my hands?
Yes, to the last. My palm comes down on the sack of a seaweed’s float. It squeaks away, I come down hard on my shoulder with all the grace of a snail, the unicorn puts down a hoof—cloven, by god, and thus not equine—perilously close to my hip. With the coaxing tone granted upset children and animals that outweigh me, I tell it, “Hello, pretty—” It is not pretty; I can see snot in its nares, its beard is ratty and yellowed, and its coat should be white—its skin is pink—but there’s too much sand ground into it to tell. “—how violent are we?”
The bastard nipped my ear hard enough to draw blood and then thumps my shoulder with its nose. Up—and that better be my internal narrator offering its interpretation of the gesture’s meaning, because hell if I’m going on an adventure with a telepathic companion animal. I’m too old for it. I have too much dignity.
The unicorn flicks its tufted tail and prances back like a prize dressage horse, tossing its narrow head. The sun catches and fires in its eyes, its mane that comes to its fetlocks despite its tangles flicks in the breeze, and I feel my heart squeeze with a little kid’s delight in something they don’t know isn’t mature enough for them yet. Blood is dripping hot down my neck from the bite in my ear, but I don’t heed it as I shove myself to my feet. It’s pointless to brush the sand off—it’s that special, grainy kind that adheres better than any glue—and I make the attempt in any case.
“Adventures?” I ask it, hopeful and dreadful.
It reached out and licked the bite with a tongue as rough and rasping as a cat’s. Yes.
“Creepy,” I tell it, and push its face away. “Fine. Lead the way.”
I, says my internal narrator, Am here to watch over you. That is all.
“You’re not my guide, you mean? How inconvenient. Though at least you’re not my psychopomp. —You could at least give me a vague hint that won’t make sense ’til we get where we’re going. That would be a nice comfort even if it’s useless.” I look at it, spread my hands. “C’mon, there’s a dark lord to kill, pretty clothes to collect, a weapon with a name—isn’t there?”
The voice in my mind is very deliberate. There is me.
“Aw, shit,” I say after a moment of thought. “Fine. Be ominous. At least I’ve got my agency. We’re getting off this beach. —Don’t you dare lick me again.” Again, I push away its face and begin to slog over the saltgrass-thick hummocks hemming the sand. Next step: figure out how I managed to make myself a stereotype and woke up in the open with a mythical creature ‘watching over’ me.
Wait, no: first, a shower. Then mysteries. Behind me, the unicorn makes no sound but the huff of its breath and the occasional swat of its tail against its flank.
Fingers, Toes and the Music of Innocence
(Anonymous) 2013-07-28 10:20 pm (UTC)(link)Robo posting as Anonymous because he's lazy and can't remember any more passwords.
Re: Fingers, Toes and the Music of Innocence
Colby Winters used to tell this bedtime story to his kids, which Colby’s cousin overheard and told his granddaughter; it’s from her that I have it.
Long after the happy ones died and their many children dispersed, the magician Elly Muer purchased three hundred ever-burning torches. A king would have financed a quest like hers, once, but now she bought them on credit. The government might have said: well, it’s close enough to science. Might. She was too proud to fill out the forms. Prouder, too, than one who could suffer to be a sound-bite on the radio about misspent funding and the people’s right to vote on allotment of resources.
The enchanter intimidated that this was a great number of torches. He pointed out that each one was a fire hazard, and something like nuclear waste—they had a half-life, and “ever” was an overstatement but not by much. Once they were lit, disposal options were limited, and the two mountains with magma guts capable of digesting them had been declared a nature reserve on one hand and had a waitlist six months long on the other. It took a great deal of effort for him to be so conscientious; he sold four, maybe five of these a year, the only reason he kept them on his inventory list being their great cheapness to make and high price at sale.
They don’t make those torches at all, nowadays. People make good money dredging them out of the ocean, where a lot got dumped. They smoke awfully after the sea water soaks in.
At that time, Elly Muer looked at the enchanter with great pity, her disgust at his business’s interior—possessed, as it was, with a golf shop’s air—at last overcome. She signed a document absolving him of responsibility for damages done by his product. He reminded her a last time that they were dangerous. She gave him an owl’s look and wrote down a number for him to call when he had the torches ready.
Here’s why she wanted them: in the Dakota woodland, a coal mine operation turned open a vertical tunnel that led deep down into the dark. It belched cold so that it snowed for a week despite it being high summer. A local boy tried to lower himself down with a rope, but it burned through. Next a rescue worker went with a nylon harness, but that broke. A chain rusted through in a couple minutes—that’s how the boy’s father joined the others. For some time people sent down supplies, hearing them fall heavily to a stone floor out of sight, and the pitiful voices of the three lost came back, desperate but incomprehensible.
Flashlights wouldn’t work, and not candles either. The voices stopped echoing up around the two month mark. Instead, the hole drove people off with the smell of the supplies rotting. They put a memorial up—it’s still there; the names are scratched off, some say by Elly Muer. Maybe for reasons of magic, maybe to erase the immediate proof of the tunnel’s danger. As if the smoke that rolls out of it now wouldn’t leave the hardiest adventurer dizzy as a bee in a hive, certainly unable to climb.
Climbing down is all you can do, all you could do. Elly Muer lowered the first pallet of a hundred torches, careful as she let out rope ’til it broke and fell out of sight. Then she found cracks in the tunnel walls with gloved hands and booted feet. Crept down, scared so badly the first time that she near shivered herself free from the wall. Colby Winters knew because she hired him to watch over her supplies while she went to drag the pallet out of the way, then shouted up—he couldn’t understand what, but he got a new rope attached to their pulley and lowered the second pallet, then the third when she shouted again, and finally a fourth with her supplies on it.
Colby Winters sat on the monument then, heel tapping against the names of his neighbors. He waited, and lit a cigarette, and waited more. A few hours later Elly Muer appeared again in the tunnel mouth, the way she climbed up like—
He never told his kids what like. We can imagine. Elly Muer’s fingers tenderly probed the ridges and curves of rock and loose dirt knocked into it by the crush of the mining operation. Her hands moved very like a man’s learning for the first time what it felt like to touch a woman’s living flesh. Frightened, gentle. She learned things, in the place led to by the tunnel. Colby Winters, having avoided this description, went on to say: once she stood on the ground again he asked if she could bring up the dead bodies, but she shook her head. He asked if she would pay him, which she did, and then she gave him her shoes too and went toe and finger into the dark.
From the edge, you could see a hot light moving fluidly against smooth walls, but it illuminated nothing.
The world is like this: the best adventures take place where the problem is already lit, and though we never think much of it, someone has to buy the means of it. Humans aren’t meant for the earth except that challenges nest in it, and those are what we feed on. We need our Elly Muers to set the table. She went down to place her torches in a line leading to the prize, doing her magician’s job. Unfortunately for the enchanter, it isn’t compensated work, and making timely payments on credited purchases isn’t a magician’s problem. In any case she never reemerged.
When you lean over the tunnel—wear goggles—listen; there is the sound of footsteps, and a voice hums along to the melody of fire crackling. We speculate about the story’s end. Elly Muer waits upon a time when a hero will descend and go by the light of the ever-burning torches to find the meaning of the tunnel in the Dakotas. Ash will grey their skin. Yes: if she lives, she waits there still.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2015-01-24 06:51 pm (UTC)(link)--oliver leon