Tick

1000 words

Tick

There’s always a clock, solemnly clicking on to your death in the branches of a dead oak tree.

You search for the clock in this endless misty land, the clock that drills into your head with every click. It’s in a different place every time. It comes at 5:07, the only constant here.

A thick atmosphere drags at your body. Abandoned buildings tower around you. Cars sit in orderly lines in the traffic circle and it rains from a blue sky and bird-shaped shadows swoop around you. The rain changes to papers falling straight from the sky like rocks.

A statue stands at the corner of the plaza, barring your way. It’s covered in a stack of papers.

You avoid it.

           

Following the road the other way, you look over your shoulder. The statue stands there looking at you--a pudgy, soft teddy bear, striped in brilliant colors, smiling a little. Its eyes are giant and vacant and they stare different directions. It was not there when you walked down the road.

You dodge through perfect, rigid rows of dead cars, your feet shuffling through piles of medical charts. Maybe inside the hospital that looms ahead you can escape the paper rain.

           

Inside, you trip over an extension cord. Beeping surrounds you, pressing on your body. The statue is sitting on a chair in the corner. It’s holding a digital clock that reads 4:51. You think the statue’s eyes move, but you can never be sure.

The hidden clock ticks. Tick. Tock.

A doctor approaches the bed in the middle of the room. He is a tall man and he holds a clipboard with more medical papers. He leans over the bed and speaks to the person on it. Then he looks at you and holds out the clipboard. You cannot see his face.

For a moment, you stand still. Two, three, four breaths. You listen to your gut, deep inside--the voice that says you’ve done this all before.

You reach out and take the clipboard, your hands shaking. You look down at the scrawl, listen to the doctor’s voice, but you can’t make out any words, written or spoken.

You don’t need to. He’s telling you the cancer has spread. He’s telling you she has two weeks to live.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, the doctor chants.

           

You drop the clipboard. The words are like a weight on your shoulders, pulling you down, and you slump forward, grabbing the edges of the bed for support, your eyes closed. The metal rail is thin and hard under your palms. There is not enough air in the room.

Something compels you to open your eyes. You know what will be there, but you can’t avoid it. So you try not to look for too long. She died with her eyes open and no one has closed them yet.

The statue stands by the door, the only way out. You make eye contact and something jolts in your gut. You leave by the other door. Halfway down the corridor, you realize you are still holding the clipboard, but do not stop.

A heavy metal-and-glass door leads to a forest. Here, the ticking of the clock fills reality to bursting. You still have the clipboard in your hands, covered in charts and red lines that fill your head.

The clock is close, and it is closer. You can sense its footsteps behind you.

It already came, you tell yourself. For her. Not for you. For some reason, your insides still quiver.

You find the clock, nestled in the branches of an oak tree with ancient, gnarled roots that cling to the side of a crumbling cliff. The clock hangs suspended over the drop.

The clipboard gets in your way as you start to climb, maddened by the constant ticking. You drop it and try not to watch it as it disappears.

If you look back, the statue will stop moving. You don’t want to see it changing places without moving. You don’t look.

The branches end. Beyond you, they stretch brittle twigs over the abyss. The wind rocks you up and down in thin air. You reach for the clock and brush it with your fingertips as the second hand clicks over. 5:00.

The steady ticking that has haunted you all day stops. Branches creak, the only sound as you sway up and down. Your gut clenches so tightly you have to grab a spray of twigs to stay balanced.

           

It’s there. The statue. You edge away as it begins to climb. It’s covered in copies of the chart that told you your wife had two weeks to live. It scoots up the trunk of the tree toward you in dead silence, its eyes pointed different directions. Medical forms--death certificates--swirl around you.

You scoot farther back, ignoring the crackle of smaller branches as much as you can. The branch can’t hold you much farther.

The branch barely sways as the statue approaches. You can hardly see the statue through the storm of death certificates floating like giant snowflakes around your head. Thick, unreasoning panic settles into your stomach.

You know it’s going to happen, but when the statue’s head thrusts between the papers, so close you could feel its breath, if it were breathing, you scream. The twigs give under your weight and you fall. Time seems to stretch out and the whole motion is centered in your gut, stretching it, twisting it, as you scream without making a sound at the silent statue head looking down, watching you fall through a sea of death certificates. You wonder if you will ever hit the bottom.

Everything goes black. In the blackness, something tugs at you, calling your name, and you wonder if you will wake up.

You wake up in the middle of a city. Empty cars line the pavement in orderly rows. From all around you echoes the ticking of a clock, counting down to 5:07.

Tick.

Tock.

Red Handed

300 words

Red-Handed

Sir,

Operatives “Rory” and “Cheddar” were apprehended last night at 1900 hours. We have provided transcripts of their interviews for your review.

 ****

Rory: Here’s what happened. They left it out. But I’m minding my own; if they catch me, they’ll lock me outside forever and ever. But anyway Cheddar comes in and he’s smelling like poop and dirty laundry and I can’t help checking him out, like do you know how great that stuff is—

Interviewer: Stay focused.

R: Sorry. Anyway he says, “Want it, boy?” and I tell him no but he keeps pushing me and shows his claws and do you know how sharp his claws are? I’m afraid for my life, I met this chick one time, her mother had been—

I: Sir.

R: Oh, sorry, anyway his claws are wicked sharp so I had to do it and—that’s him! The little rascal!

Interview terminated due to subject’s excessive distress.

****

Cheddar: Don’t believe a word. Here’s what happened. The poor kid’s in pain. I mean, real pain. I feel so cruel now, but you know, a little fun never hurt. I walk up to him and I ask does he want it? The kid starts drooling. He can hardly contain himself, right? I’m up on the counter, I don’t quite trust him, and suddenly he jumps! Kid’s got wicked teeth. I’m not sure whether he’s going for me or the burgers, and I jump back about to smack him—self-defense, you know—and then he has the burgers in his mouth and it’s too late.

He’s probably trying to blame me for putting him up to it, isn’t he? It would be just the kind of thing—

****

            Subjects have been detained, pending further evidence. The burgers have not been recovered. Please advise us of the next moves. –Station 38372.

Scorched

Word count: 750

Scorched

I do not have time for this.

The dragon’s leathery wings wrap over its body and my finger; it snarls at me as I try to shake it off. The talons scratch the skin beneath my gold ring. A tiny wisp of smoke wafts up from its nostrils.

“Get off,” I mutter, its body heat scorching my finger. It purrs and clings tighter.

I open the drawer of the till and hold it over it, shaking it a little, closer to the scattering of gold coins in the till.

“You little—” I should be opening the shop doors, not prying a dragon off my finger. Can’t customers be more responsible with what’s in their bags?

It spots the gold in the till and flops into it. Grabbing the nearest coin between its claws, it rolls over and hugs them to its smooth, snakelike belly. A plume of smoke rises from its nostrils.

Just another problem, I think, twisting my ring as I open the shop. Getting the little beastie out of the till at the end of the day will be difficult.

My apprentice does not appear before the supply caravan comes. I snap my account book closed. This shop is more trouble than it’s worth, sometimes.

It takes the whole day to settle the new inventory in the shop, indulge the camel drivers’ trading customs, and get them back on the road. Thankfully, no one comes to the shop. My apprentice still does not appear.

I reenter the shop and groan.

The dragon. Now cat-sized, it sits among the splintered shards of my till, its talons full of gold coins. It looks up and coos as I stop dead in the middle of the floor.

It is angry when I try to pick it up; gold rustles against its belly as it gathers the small pile beneath it. Its teeth have grown appreciably. It sneezes, catching a whiff of the peppercorns I spilled on myself, and a lick of flame darts from its mouth.

I think of my father-in-law, who helped train the battle dragons in his day. He could help me get this thing out of my shop. But it is dark now, and he will be abed. A thought flashes through my mind and I watch the dragon contentedly lower its head to the floor.

I dig out my secret stash of gold, the small bag I keep for emergencies. The dragon’s head pops up as I jingle the coins. It cocks its head like a puppy. Then, like a puppy chasing a bug, it pounces, bounding into the storeroom after the bag of gold, and I close it in and leave it for the night.

The sun rises on the ruin of my life.

The dragon sits in a smoking pile of charred wood and embers, steam rising from its sides into the air. Abandoned buckets lay scattered among the ruins.

            It happened quickly, they tell me. Just before sunup. Someone heard a terrible sound, and a moment later the building was afire. It lasted about an hour, not even enough time to come fetch me.

I should be devastated. I pick my way through the steaming embers and come face-to-face with the dragon.

It growls softly, its teeth half-hidden by the thin cloud of smoke hanging above its head.

“You bastard,” I whisper to it. It looks me in the eye. I would almost swear it smiles. Beneath it lies the small hoard of gold I kept in the shop—all of it. One look at the dragon’s eyes and I know it won’t leave the hoard alone. No way I’m getting that back. It’s almost as large as me, now that it has been sitting on the gold overnight, and I don’t dare approach it closely enough to get my gold back.

Thank goodness that wasn’t everything. I look it in the eye again. It rumbles deep in its throat.

“Keep it,” I say.

The little dragon that started off no bigger than my finger has grown as large as me and ruined my business. I regret the shop a little—my father built it from the ground up when he was my age. But I do not regret it that much. Not enough to rebuild.

The soft, contented growl of the dragon echoes softly off the walls of the buildings as I head down the street toward home. Time to start over. Somewhere new. Somewhere exciting. Somewhere profitable.

Time to start over.

Barnacles

Word Count: 1200

Barnacles

Bailey cursed as the thin edge of the shell bit deep into the side of his hand. Snatching a dirty piece of cloth, he dabbed at the blood that bubbled up. It stung.

Holding the stained cloth to his hand, Bailey sat down heavily on a piling. The endless curve of the ship’s hull, like the soft swell of a shoulder or back, rose high above his head. At his feet, tiny whispers of the highest tide lapped. Shore birds waded in the water, searching for food. A few stood a hundred feet away, washing in and out with the waves, eyeing the slowly growing pile of barnacles and sea debris at Bailey’s feet.

“Whales carry barnacles. They swim just fine.” Bailey squinted up. A few feet above his head, the waterline ended. A crew had removed at least half the barnacles during the week. Now, Saturday, they had dragged him out of his bed and ordered him to continue the job. He picked up his scraper with aching fingers laced with half a dozen other cuts and went back to work.

A light breeze brushed through his hair and fluttered the heavy sheets of canvas hanging above. They’d done a terrible job of furling the sails and the heavy canvas flapped against the side of the boat. The breeze brought the faintest whiff of salt and sea, but also a heavy musty scent of fish and slime. Winter was coming, and the docks, usually teeming with life and encrusted with ships, stretched empty into the harbor.

Bailey’s scraper slipped again; swearing, he flung it down and smashed it beneath the heel of his boot as brilliant red stained his fingers.

At this rate, his hands would still be out of commission and useless for the sails when they headed back to sea next week. If only he were in charge instead of that stupid, half-drunk--

Bailey cut himself off, frowning. “Bloody idiot.”

A few hundred feet away, two figures emerged from the huddle of huts and customs houses on the shore. They had the rolling gait of inveterate seamen who had not recovered their land legs after a week on shore and probably never would. The two of them sauntered side by side down the longest dock and stood at the end, staring out over the rolling water into a horizon flat and empty and endless. The soft movement of the waves carried their words like a piece of driftwood directly to Bailey’s ears as he slumped on his piling.

“We’re really casting off next week?”

“He says we can make it.”

“Do you know what ye need to make the next set of islands, Davis? Fresh water and fair weather! Not grog.”

“The grog is for morale. You of all people ought--”

“What does he think we’re doing, dancing drunk till midnight?”

Bailey gave a little jump as he recognized the resonant voice of the speaker, adapted to carry over the wind in a storm, as the first mate. His partner would be Davis, Captain O’Hara’s clerk. Everything in his body suddenly attuned to the soft noise across the waves.

The first mate spoke again.

“What is the temper of the cabin?”

“It’s hard to tell.”

“Give us an estimate, then.”

Davis dropped his voice and Bailey couldn’t make out the rest. He wobbled on his piling and realized he’d been leaning toward them.

“...five days,” the first mate said, gesturing toward the horizon. A thin bank of clouds was building at the edge of the sea.

“...three days out of port.”

“We don’t have that kind of time.”

“Two days, perhaps.”

Bailey stood as the voices trailed off. Deliberately, he swept the fragments of his scraper to the ground beneath the dry dock. They clinked against rocks covered in dry, stiff sea moss. He walked to the end of the dock, the vast clumsy bulk of the ship rising behind him, and looked out.

“It’s our duty,” the first mate was saying.

“Can you rely on your men?”

“All of them. And you?”

A quiet sound of assent.

“...the winter. I guarantee, once he sobers up, he’ll thank us.”

A handshake. More silence. The first mate reached down and scooped up a handful of water, letting it run out between cupped fingers. A flurry of breeze snatched spray from the tops of the waves, bringing a sudden chill and a heavy smell of rain and lightning that was gone almost before Bailey could identify it. He shivered.

Since he was a boy, he had dreamed of overhearing plans just like this. He had dwelt on the thrill it brought him to imagine saving an entire ship and its crew, defending the captain at all costs from a few desperate mutineers.

Davis and the mate walked back down the dock toward the tiny town. Bailey watched them go, picturing Captain O’Hara. He’d hardly seen the man on the last leg of this voyage--but he’d heard him, wailing mournful sea songs from behind his cabin door late into the night. He’d felt the man’s presence as the ship wallowed in the last storm, tight sails humming in the wind and threatening to break.

Bailey looked up at the bulk of the ship’s hull, discolored and still crusted with patches of barnacles.
He had never sailed under such an incompetent captain before. Yet in all his boyhood fantasies, he had never imagined himself taking the side of the mutineers.

Another gust of wind brought the scent of rain to his nose, and it lingered this time.

He turned back, arms crossed as he headed back up the dock toward his lodging. At the end of the dock, leaning on a cane, stood a tall, bearded figure. Captain O’Hara.

Bailey stopped in his tracks. The captain had not noticed him. The words he had just heard flashed through his brain with white-hot intensity. Then the face of his father, waving farewell from the dock at home.

Take care of him, his father had said.

For the life of him, Bailey did not understand what his father saw in Captain O’Hara, but he trusted him.

Captain O’Hara spotted him and waved his cane. Even at a distance, Bailey could see the brilliant white teeth that split the beard in a smile. He waved back. Maybe the captain knew already. But perhaps he did not. He did not know what the crew was planning. Maybe the man’s life was in danger.

Maybe not.

Bailey put his hands in his pockets and resumed his walk up the dock as casually as he could.

“Ahoy, Bailey! Seaworthy yet?”

“Not yet, sir,” Bailey said, worried his voice would give him away.

“Get her ready! We sail Sunday!”

This close, Bailey could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“Sir, I’m not sure--”

“Sunday, Bailey! The next port awaits us. By the way--have you seen Davis?”

Bailey took a deep breath.

“No, sir.”

“Hm. Haven’t been able to find him today.” Captain O’Hara turned and, leaning on his cane, made his way back toward the town.

Bailey bit his tongue and watched him go.

The Bridge

1200 words

The Bridge

I hold my breath as I approach the bridge at the edge of the world. He is moments ahead of me. The brilliant birds sing of a stranger beneath the trees. The shy jungle cats cry he has passed.

            I need not return home, the Grandmothers say, if I am not bold enough to take him, the last of his kind remaining on our world, before he crosses the bridge.

            I catch glimpses of his tawny body through the trees. The trigger on my blowpipe bulges beneath my fingertip; I raise it from my side as the trees thin around me. We near the bridge. The trees break, and he starts across the clearing, running fast and low.

            I break cover, pushing through a spiderweb covered in bright, jewel-toned drops, and shout.

            “Hey!”

            He freezes, one foot on the bridge.

            Glistening and slick, the bridge springs from the brilliant green side of the canyon, stretching into the hazy distance without suspension or pillar. Against the rainbow of sunlight glaring off it, his coloring is dim and tame. He eases his foot off the edge.

            I raise the blowpipe to my lips. The red sunlight flashes in tiny points off it as my hand trembles. My hand always trembles.

            His eyes meet mine across the space between us. His are brown, and they catch and reflect the light like the surface of a pool, all sharp twinkling points.

            I come from a race of mighty hunters. We have hunted his species all our lives. I learned it from my mother, and she learned it from her mother and she learned it from her mother, forever and forever into eternity. My finger tightens over the trigger button.

            He speaks.

            “You don’t know what you’re losing,” he says.

            My free hand flies to my translator, sitting just inside my ear. I tap it, my heart pounding—I turned it off an hour ago. The blowpipe drops to my side.

            “Please don’t shoot.”

            His voice is soft, smoother and deeper than anything I have heard before among the women in the city. It rumbles. It resonates in my bones.

            “Where did you learn to speak my language?” I demand. “The Grandmothers—”

            “The Grandmothers are wise,” he says. His body is rigid and upright and his sparkling brown eyes do not leave mine. If it were not for the voice, for the flat, square body—

            I cut myself off. He is still speaking.

            “They do not remember everything.”

            “They tell the ancient stories back a thousand years,” I say, shaking off the hypnotic pull of his voice. He is wrong.

            “They have forgotten what they once were.”

            Only once before have I hunted a creature—a tiger—with such eyes, large and innocent and frightened. I killed him right before he leaped at me. His words distracted me, flattering, fascinating words in an animal tongue through the translator I had forgotten to turn off. I swore I would make no similar mistake. Not with Man. Not with any other beast.

            I raise the blowpipe once again to my lips. My hand shakes so I can hardly sight down the barrel. The thought of killing a creature that speaks my language, that looks so unnervingly like me, sits like a hot pebble in my stomach.

            “You’ll never know, if you kill me,” he says, and I press the trigger.

            The little yellow feathers at the end of my dart never appear in his neck. His eyes meet mine, wide and smooth and no longer sparkling.

            The blowpipe slips from my fingers. I have missed. The blowpipe cracks as it hits the ground.

            “What were they before?” I ask. I can hardly force the words out.

            “We were all the same.”

            His curious voice, of all the jungle creatures the closest to my own, yet so different, holds my ear spellbound.

            “Before the Grandmothers,” he explains, “there were spacemen. They came and built cities and left ancestors. We were all the same, then, your people and mine.”

            I look down to my cracked blowpipe, lying half-hidden in the jungle grass at my feet. I pick it up.

            “Your kind always tells that story,” I say. I can hear the Grandmothers’ rebukes for the broken blowpipe and empty hands even now. Without a weapon, I realize how much larger he is than me, and I wonder how fast he can move.

            “What lies beyond this bridge?” he asks suddenly.

            “Chaos,” I answer, sliding my fingers into the chamber of the blowpipe and extracting my spare dart. I handle it with my fingertips, careful not to get the poison under my skin. The answer is the one the Grandmothers give the first time they take their daughters to see the bridge at the edge of the world.

            “Did they tell you that?”

            My answer hurts the back of my throat, so I do not make it.

            “Just a yes or no,” he says. His voice is thick and warm like fresh milk.

            “Yes,” I mutter.

            “Look,” he says. He turns and points; across the chasm, rising above the wet jungle haze, stretch five long, jagged fingers of glass.

            “They’re buildings,” he says. “Left by the spacemen who came before the Grandmothers. When we were all one.”

            I stare out over the chasm at the glinting buildings, my mouth open.

            I can’t believe I’m talking to him. Believing him. My prey. The Grandmothers would be furious. But why is it they would not tell us if such a thing were true?

            “How do you know?” I ask.

            “We, too, have our stories,” he says. He puts one foot back on the bridge. The skinny length of it begins to bounce up and down under his weight.

            I stare out across the chasm, across the mist, into the endless distance. “A city?” I ask.

            “Yes.”

            Impossible.

            “Why are you going?”

            “Because the Grandmothers have forgotten,” he says, “what it is like to be one.”

            I look again into his wide eyes, and a little hot longing awakens inside me to see what he will see and to hear the ancient stories still more ancient than my own.

            “And you will find out?” I ask.

            “Perhaps we can learn it again.” He shrugs. I wonder if he might be right, that we and Man were one in the years past.

            I look at the yellow dart I have concealed in my hand. The Grandmothers will be angry when I come home empty-handed. I will tell them that I dropped my blowpipe. I will tell them he escaped. They will be angry but it will pass.

            “Watch for it,” he says, turning back to the bridge. His back is broad and his neck exposed.

            I look at the dart and drop it to the ground. He steps out onto the bridge, bouncing up and down with the chasm winds. And then he disappears, and the bridge is still, and I have failed. Far in the distance, the fingers of glass buildings poke up into the sky.

            Without taking my eyes off them, I place my own foot onto the slick glass surface of the bridge and commit myself to the chasm winds.

           

All-Consuming

Word count: 500

All-Consuming

Hissing acid rain beat on the wide glass windows, glowing red with the reflection of the fire. Beneath the window, an old man’s head jerked up from the pen strokes he studied like bacteria beneath a microscope. He peered at the fireplace, a heavy frown etched deep into his face.

The door swung open, creaking. A young man closed it softly behind himself.

“Father, it’s time.”

The old man stood and trudged toward the bookshelves lining the far wall. Books crammed together so tightly that the shelves sagged in the center. He glared at the shelf, eyes running along the worn spines.

The young man put his hands into his pockets, his voice weary as if he were repeating instructions to a toddler for the fifth time. “Father.”

“We do not need to go,” the old man said. He selected a heavy book and glared at his son as he opened it. Tree branches scraping the window echoed in the room like miners working through the night to breach enemy defenses.

“The rain’s through the attic ceiling already. We need to get to the safe zone.”

The old man frowned at the diagrams on the page. “I need to solve this problem.”

“Father—” The young man gripped his father’s shoulder with a hand like a talon. “Your books aren’t going to protect you.”

Wind rattled in the chimney. The old man threw off the hand, frowning fiercely.

“This is the only way to end it!” he almost shouted, his old voice as raspy as the branches drawing across the windows—quieter now, though the rain hissed down, unrelenting, eating everything in its path.

“You cannot stay here! No one can stop it!”

The old man met his son’s eye. The firelight reflected on the dark, dilated pupils.

“You mean you cannot.” Plunking into his chair, the old man buried his head in his hands. The elements howled in his ears, dragging at his thoughts, filling them. He stared again at the charts and scribbles on his paper.

“This is it,” he said, under his breath, to no one in particular. “It has to be.”

The paper, littered with chemical symbols and diagrams, fluttered as the young man approached.

“We don’t have time for this—"

“No!” The old man flung his arm backward, backhanding the young man across the nose. He stumbled backward into a bookshelf. The wind shrieked outside, unencumbered by the tree the rain had already consumed. Around the edges, steaming foam began to seep in at the window.

“All right.”

The young man straightened, wiped his mouth, and walked to the door. It snapped shut behind him.

The old man, panting, slid his head into his hands and tangled his fingers in his thinning white hair, pulling at it. Rocking back and forth, he stared at the papers on the desk and muttered.

This is all we need. All we need. All we need.

At the window, the rain worked its way in, nearer and nearer.

"Frostbite" -- July 23

Word count: 750

Frostbite

Jem and Gray were assigned to the tracks on the most bitter morning of the year. January 14. They took three pairs of gloves apiece and an extra. The team that went out before them had lost a man to frostbite.

Jem and Gray did rock, paper, scissors for carrying the gun, which meant standing atop the handcart and watching for the wolves. Gray lost.

The sun hung low in the sky when they reached the end of the line, where the half-built, frozen tracks faded into snowbanks, but the snow shone all around, like a white bonfire. The air attacked the openings in Gray’s clothing, nipping at his wrists and the skin around his eyes.

“They won’t come during the day,” Jem said.

Gray leaned against the pump in the center of the handcart and flexed his stiff fingers against the barrel of the gun. He could feel the brittle coldness of the steel through his mittens. The last time he’d felt a gun like that in his hand, it had shattered when he pulled the trigger.

Gray squinted into the white wasteland, searching for eyes.

Below him, Jem pounded at the tracks with his sledgehammer. The hammer’s clink on frozen metal echoed over the blank white landscape. Gray did not envy Jem his job—track duty meant working, sweat turning wool clothes into an inescapable sauna.

“You could help me, you know,” Jem said, resting on his sledgehammer.

“We agreed.”

“Gray, they won’t come during the day.”

Gray didn’t answer. He’d had this fight with Jem too many times to count. He had seen the white wolves attack before. Jem was new. Anyone who had been on the line for more than two months knew about the wolves.

He held the gun barrel close, to keep it warm, and scanned the snow for movement.

The sun cast no warmth on the men. Jem’s hammer never stopped, each erratic plink jarring inside Gray’s skull. As Jem laid track, they crept further and further from the base.

Jem’s hammer finally stopped sometime around midday. He leaned it against the side of the cart. The platform shook as he jumped up beside Gray.

“What are you doing?” Gray asked, his voice muffled through his scarf.

“Taking a break.” Jem shrugged off his outer coat and hung it over the mechanism of the handcart.

“Put your coat back on, idiot!”

Jem looked Gray in the eye. “Strong language from someone watching for imaginary wolves while I work.”

“You’ll get frostbite.”

Jem spread his arms, showing Gray the layers of coats he still wore. “Come down and help me. Oh, wait.” He leaned forward and squinted outward. “There might be a wolf.”

Gray refused to respond. After a pause, Jem dropped back to the ground.

An hour later, Jem removed a second coat and one pair of gloves.

“It’s hot,” he said, staring up at Gray with his face uncovered, blowing defiant clouds of steam into the cold, dry air. “I’m sweating.”

An hour later, he removed his last coat, leaving himself in a fleece-lined shirt. He made an eloquent gesture when Gray opened his mouth to comment.

Jem swung the hammer more slowly now, gathering strength between each swing, movements sluggish.

Gray moved his eyes back to the edge of the woods, covered in a thick blanket of dazzling white. Something black moved against the snow. He snapped the gun to his shoulder, reminded once again of the brittle coldness of the barrel. The stock numbed his cheek through his scarf.

“See anything?” Jem asked, his voice slow and exaggerated.

Startled, Gray looked down. Jem stood soaked in sweat that was already crystallizing into frost, grinning lopsidedly. His warm clothes made dark gray spots on the snow behind him.

“Jem, put your clothes back on!” Gray moved to the edge of the platform to step down.

They attacked. Wolves from every direction, materializing out of the snow. Gray threw his rifle to his shoulder, but the black noses, black eyes, white shadows were everywhere and nowhere, impossible to reach with the rifle.

Jem screamed, staggering. “Get lost, you sons—”

Hot adrenaline pumping through him, Gray sighted at the nearest wolf, on the edges of the flailing pack clustered around Jem.

The crack of the shot echoed across the plains as the kickback knocked Gray backward. He stumbled, his stiff fingers refusing to catch him. As he hit the platform, the rifle barrel shattered, leaving him at the mercy of the wolves.

"The Society" -- July 19

Word count: 2000

The Society

Abel Wilkins’s flat was in total disarray. Undergarments and scientific equipment littered every available surface. Two large rucksacks stood open near the door, filled with instruments and surrounded by piles of messy clothes.

Wilkins emerged from an inner room, aggressively flattening a telescope and muttering to himself.

“A disgrace; they’re a disgrace. They are a blot upon the good name of science.”

He flung the telescope into one of the bags.

“I’ll show them a disgrace!” he shouted. With the intention off his chest, he stood over his rucksacks, muttering under his breath as he catalogued their contents.

The door inched open and a young face with a patchy beard inserted itself into the scene. “Sir, the train—”

“Ah, Caleb.” Wilkins beckoned the young man over and handed him an assortment of tools wrapped in a leather roll. “Hold these.”

Caleb lifted the flap to peek at the tools with a puzzled look. “Sir, the train leaves at 8:15 tomorrow morning.”

“Good.” Wilkins took the roll back and deposited it in the rucksack. “You bought tickets, of course.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Excellent. Now, the cameras.” Wilkins held up three cases containing bulky travel cameras and their equipment.

Caleb sighed and took the cases from Wilkins to pack into the bags.

****

“Sir, what, exactly, are we looking for in Germany?”

“My dignity,” Wilkins muttered.

“Sir?”

Wilkins leaned on the railing, looking out at the skyline of the German port as they approached. Salt spray dusted his face.

“The Society says my creature cannot exist; well I know it does. No matter what they say.”

Caleb raised his eyebrows. Wilkins went back to staring over the railing.

“I know it’s out there,” Wilkins muttered. “I can feel it in my bones. Can’t you?”

“No,” Caleb said, leaning his chin on the railing. “What does it feel like?”

Wilkins gave Caleb a look and moved several spaces down the railing. He refused to look at Caleb for the remainder of the passage.  

Those nincompoops at the Society thought they knew everything—but it was out there. He had seen it. And, by Jove, he would show them they were wrong. They would be begging to reinstate him as a member in good standing.

As the boat drew nearer and the tangle of black forest surrounding the little port town grew thicker and thicker, Abel Wilkins bared his teeth in a slow smile.

He would teach them to expel him.

****

Wilkins strode down the crooked village street, squinting at haphazard house numbers with a much-worn paper in one hand and a field bag bristling with pens and instruments in the other. He’d left Caleb at the inn, waiting for breakfast. Caleb was far too addicted to comfort and pleasure to make a good Society member—or even scientist, though it didn’t take much in the way of brains to become one.

Wilkins spotted the broken steeple first—the numbers on the church were hidden beneath a thick carpet of ivy that crawled up the wooden side. As he approached the door, he stepped carefully around the holes in the dusty, spiderwebbed porch. A thin track, smooth and clean from street to door, marked the path of the faithful.

Wilkins shoved the paper into his pocket and pushed on the door. It was locked. He frowned and knocked. As he waited, he straightened his coat and tie.

He knocked again.

Finally, the door rattled. It opened and a tall, spare old man in a tall white collar leaned out.

“My apologies; I—”

Wilkins gave his most charming smile as the priest cut himself off.  “Good,” he said. “I was just about to look for the back door.”

The priest opened and closed his mouth several times.

“I believe your town archives are located here?”

The priest finally managed a “Yes.”

“May I see them?” Wilkins shouldered past the priest. “Thank you.”

“I’m…” The priest stared. “I’m sorry, can I help you with something?”

“Yes. I’m looking for your archives. I understand they are open to the public?”

“They are.”

“And they are located here?”

“They are.”

“I would like to examine them.”

The priest shook himself and gave a thin smile. “All right. You are welcome. Follow me, please.”

Wilkins followed the priest past ragged tapestries, damp stone, and an ivy-covered stained-glass window into a tiny room lined with heavy wooden cabinets. The priest fumbled with a key on a sparsely furnished ring and began unlocking cabinets, revealing stacks of bound books and papers.

“And what are you looking for in our archives?” the priest asked as Wilkins deposited his bag on the table in the middle of the room.

Wilkins pulled out a few notepads and a pen case. Choosing a notebook, he opened it and handed it to the priest.

“Ever seen one of those?”

The priest dropped his key ring back in his pocket and reached for the notebook. He pulled the page close to his face. Wilkins studied him.

The book hit the floor before Wilkins could reach out and catch it. The priest stood petrified with his hands extended, eyes wide.

“So you have seen it!” Wilkins leaned in, his eyes flicking to the book on the floor to ensure it was all right.

The priest lowered himself to the ground and gathered up the loose pages, tucking them back into the cover with small, precise motions. “Why do you have this?” he asked.

“Have what?”

The priest handed the book back to Wilkins. “It’s a local legend. I didn’t know it had gotten beyond the village.” He smiled, showing all his teeth. “Unusual to get a request about such a silly piece of lore, that’s all.”

Wilkins tucked the book back into his bag. “What can you tell me about it?”

Among his open cabinets of moldering books and crumbling papers, the priest looked at home, like a ghost among the relics of his past life. He riffled through a stack of papers in a cabinet. “It’s really just a local legend. I don’t know why you’d waste your time looking.”

“Humor me. Please.”

“There’s—there’s really nothing to tell.” The priest took a handful of yellowing papers from the shelf and laid them on the table. From another cabinet, he took an ornately bound book and set it on top. “This is all we have. Humor yourself, if you like.”

“Thanks,” Wilkins said, leaning over the papers and setting his notepad and pens aside.

“Whatever you do,” the priest said, pausing to look back at the door, “don’t waste your time in the woods looking for it. I think you’ll see why.”

He disappeared. Wilkins watched him drift into the main body of the church, padding toward the altar, then turned his attention to the papers.

This time, he wasn’t going home without solid evidence to lay before the Society.

****

“Five sightings. Four within the last four months. All coinciding with the full moon.”

“Sightings by elderly people, and all entirely unconfirmed!”

“Look, Caleb, just give me the light if you aren’t coming.”

Wilkins stood at the edge of the village, facing the woods. He had his notebook in his hands and a rucksack on his back.

“Another sighting won’t win the Society’s approval again.”

“I’m not after just another sighting.” Wilkins waved his notebook under Caleb’s nose. “I’m going to bring back evidence.”

“What, a sketch? The Society would never—"

“You’d never make it in the Society, Caleb,” Wilkins said. He snapped the notebook shut.

“It just doesn’t seem very scientific…”

“You know nothing about scientific!” Wilkins stuffed the notebook into his pocket. “If I’m ever going to get a look at it, if I’m ever going to show the Society what’s what, then it’s going to be tonight. Come, or don’t.”

He took the flashlight from Caleb’s hand and stuffed it in his other pocket. Then he turned and marched into the woods.

Caleb hesitated on the verge of civilization, then followed.

The sun was just going down, and the light slanted in long golden rays between the trees. On the horizon, the moon was just beginning to rise, full and white. Wilkins crashed through the undergrowth ahead of Caleb, flashlight in hand.

Caleb caught up to him. “What are you even looking for?”

“So you decided to join me.” Wilkins stopped short. “Good. I remembered that the cameras are in your bag.”

“Abel, what are we looking for, exactly?”

“I showed you the sketch.”

Caleb let out a deep sigh that fluttered the leaves on the nearest tree. “I didn’t see it.”

Wilkins slapped the notebook into his hand. “Look, then. But keep it down.”

“What is this thing?”

“I don’t know. That’s what makes it exciting.” Wilkins took a camera from Caleb’s pack and checked to make sure it had film in it. He rubbed the flash with his sleeve, cleaning off a speck of dust. “We need to find a likely place to watch for it.”

Caleb put his head down and followed Wilkins as he stalked through the woods.

The sun continued to lower, and the shadows deepened at the base of the trees. The broken spire of the church was barely visible behind them in the deepening gloom when Wilkins signaled Caleb to halt. His voice was barely more than a whisper.

“The sightings all happened within sight of the spire, at dusk,” he said. “Be silent and listen for it.”

The two of them crouched in a tangle of underbrush. Wilkins rehearsed what he had read in the archive papers. He hadn’t found much. Most of the sightings had been reported in newspaper articles buried with the likes of the personal advice columns. The Society would never admit the reports. But they were all consistent:

A figure the size and general shape of a man, with long fur and long limbs and an inhuman face. The favored explanation in the papers was that it was Old Scratch himself come to haunt the forests. It was likely, he knew, some sort of animal. The question was, what kind?

Night descended around them. A nightingale alighted on a branch and sang.

A little after dark, something moved in the silent forest. The sky still had a faint blue glow, but beneath the trees all was gloomy shadow. Wilkins perked up his ears and peered into the darkness.

Nothing.

“Did you hear something?” Caleb asked under his breath.

Wilkins silenced him with a frantic gesture.

It moved again—a rustle, quiet snapping. Wilkins turned the camera over in his hands, feeling for the shutter button.

Into a shaft of lingering twilight, a familiar tall, emaciated figure appeared. Its long limbs were covered with tattered clothes.

Caleb clutched Wilkins’ arm as Wilkins leaned forward in the thicket, squinting at the suspiciously man-like figure.

“It’s just the priest,” Wilkins whispered, barely audible, as the man stepped into the shadows and disappeared.

Caleb’s hand did not let go. Wilkins had to strain to hear his whisper.

“That wasn’t just—”

In a blur of motion, something long and lean and furry leaped out of the trees. A flash went off, illuminating Caleb’s back for a moment as he fled, screeching, into the night. The screams of Abel Wilkins, caught in its grasp, woke the echoes of the forest again and again.  

****

We of the Society wish to officially thank Caleb Payne for bringing to light evidence regarding the disappearance of former member Abel Wilkins. Some doubt has been raised as to the possible identity of the creature captured on the film that Mr. Payne retrieved from the forest where Mr. Wilkins was last seen. However, our members are aware of how often a bear of medium height, standing at full length, can be mistaken as a man. It is the official opinion of this Society, after much deliberation and study, that the creature in question is a bear, and that Mr. Abel Wilkins has likely, to our great regret as a Society, been consumed.

"Please Grow" -- July 18

Word count: 1200

Please Grow

The only cloud in the bright, clean May sky hung over a tiny rundown house at the end of a long lane, surrounded by a wrought iron fence in as much disrepair as the house itself. There was no gate in the fence, and the bars were crooked and broken. The porch hung off the house at a forty-five-degree angle, and the windows were covered with brightly colored scraps of mismatched flannel.

Up the lane came a dusty man. Grease stained his fingers and his blue jeans, and his boots were covered in mud that splashed up his legs. He walked with his shoulders bowed forward like a man carrying a heavy burden.

The porch creaked beneath his feet, sending up puffs of dust. He walked straight across it, ignoring the sound, and knocked heavily on the door three times. While he waited, he patted all his pockets and straightened his clothes.

The door swung open silently. The man hesitated on the doorstep, then ran a hand over a bald, shiny head and face and walked in.

The man crossed through a beam of gray light from a window, stepping over a litter of colorful stones on the floor. He stopped to inspect a stack of old books that bent the side table beneath their weight.

“Mrs. Ballywood?”

The man leaned from side to side, trying to see around stacks of clutter. “Mrs. Ballywood! It’s Murphy!”

Murphy’s voice echoed in the room, seeming to startle a collection of taxidermied foxes that perched on a sofa, staring into the room with wide-open eyes and mouths. He put a table with a large, heavy globe on it between himself and the animals.

“Mrs. Ballywood!”

A figure rose from behind a pair of shelves filled with dusty bottles. Wild gray hair appeared first, then a pair of bony shoulders draped in a sheer material embroidered with crazy figures. She turned around, her wizened face scrunched into a squint.

“Farmer Murphy?”

“Mrs. Ballywood, it’s me.” Murphy stepped around a pile of empty bottles into the old woman’s line of sight.

Mrs. Ballywood stood up straight, bony hands holding her filmy shawl to her chest. “Oh?”

Murphy’s hands fidgeted in front of him, as though he were wishing for a hat to hold. “I’ve come for help with my situation.”

“I see.” The old woman stepped out from behind her shelves, dust falling from her shoulders like pixie dust. “And just how do you think I can help you?”

“Well…Corey down at the General Store said you’d helped him with his problem, and I thought—”

“Did he tell you how much it cost?” The old woman squinted at Murphy, a frown tugging the dozens of wrinkles on her face downward toward her chin.

Murphy fidgeted. “No, ma’am.”

“Hmph.” The old woman put her chin in the air and studied Murphy.

“Please,” he said. “It just needs to grow.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “I’m not sure I can help you with that.”

“I’ll pay anything.”

“I’m not sure you know what you mean.” The old woman pivoted on her heel and hobbled toward a door.

Murphy watched her go, his shoulders slumping. The old woman glanced back over her shoulder at him as she closed the door slowly. Murphy hesitated, rolling the hem of his shirt between his fingers.

“Wait!” he said just before the door closed. “How much would it cost?”

The old woman poked her head out from behind the door. “How much did you bring?”

“I can get more—”

“At least two thousand dollars,” the old woman said. She pulled her head back behind the door, but it remained open. “And that’s if I choose to help you.”

Murphy stood speechless, his eyes wide, his face turning an unhealthy yellow. The door remained open. In the silence the raspy breathing of the old woman was audible. A soft cascade of dust motes fell through the slanting rays of gray, overcast light from the windows.

“Mrs. Ballywood, I only have eight hundred dollars, but I just bought a brand-new tractor that you can have; I can use the old one—”

“What would I do with a tractor?” The voice from beyond the door was sharp and had a hard edge of laughter in it.

“Look, it’s worth at least three thousand; I’ve only used it to plant one field—”

“Do better.”

Murphy licked his lips and ran a hand over his smooth head and down his face. “Um…”

“I’ll wait.”

“Half the crop?”

“What would I do with that? Eat it?”

“It could—”

“Do better!”

“My…” Murphy bit the word down and hesitated. He wiped his palm down his shirt.

“My dog?”

A pause.

“And what,” said the sharp voice behind the door, “would you do without that?”

Murphy took a step toward the door. “I…I don’t rightly know, Mrs. Ballywood, but I’ve just got to have your help. Would…would you take my dog?”

A long pause. The old woman’s head reappeared.

“Eight hundred dollars, your dog, and half the crop.”

“You promise it will grow?”

The old woman pushed the door back open. A smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth.

“No guarantees.”

Quick as a snap she whipped into the other room and slammed the door. Murphy jumped. A shelf of glass knickknacks rattled, and a puff of dust rose from everything in the room.

The old woman’s voice came faintly. “Of course, if it doesn’t work, I’ll return half the payment.”

The color came back to Murphy’s face as tension drained from his shoulders. He grinned. “Thank you, Mrs. Ballywood!”

“Don’t leave!”

Murphy waited. He wandered the room, feet leaving wide prints in the dust. He picked up a jar full of green fluid and turned it over in his hands, studying the three-eyed fish suspended inside.

“Farmer Murphy!”

Murphy jumped and set the jar down with a clunk. The old woman stood in the doorway, holding a bottle full of orange liquid. She handed it to him with a sniff.

“Put it in your water,” she said. “Don’t let anyone else get any. And bring the dog tomorrow night, around eight?”

Murphy took the bottle reverently and gently deposited it in his pocket. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

The old woman turned and disappeared behind her door.

Cradling the precious bottle in his pocket, Murphy left the house grinning.

Five days later, Murphy stood at the pump and poured the last of the bottle into his wash bucket. He tucked the empty bottle into his pocket and leaned down, splashing his head and face with the orange-tinged water.

As the water settled, he leaned over and grinned at his reflection. From his head and chin, which had been bare and bright enough to reflect the sun a few days before, sprouted a crop of thick, dark hair. He ran his fingers through it, grinning as he spiked it in front.

The loss of half his crop meant he wouldn’t have money for another invaluable cattle dog for at least a year—but he had despaired of ever having hair again.

Rubbing his hair dry with the towel, Murphy walked into the house grinning.