"Tell Me Everything" -- July 14

Word count: 1000

Tell Me Everything

“Brownie blizzard, please.”

“What size?”

Kels looked at Melanie.

“Medium?” Melanie said. “And make it two.”

The Dairy Queen was empty. Outside, the sunlight diffused through a thin layer of gray smog. Little traffic passed on the road. Ceiling fans spun lazily, forgotten ten years ago and never removed. Tattered signs advertised “new” ice cream flavors that had left the menu five years before.

Kels took a seat at a booth with her back to a wall. The pink plastic embraced her and she put her elbows on top of the slightly sticky table.

Melanie joined her. “So, Kels, how are things with you?"

“Fine.” Kels gave a thin smile. Why had she even scheduled this meeting? Now that Melanie was sitting there in front of her, swiping on a thin layer of chapstick, sunglasses perched atop her head, Kels felt her throat closing up, shutting out the words she had wanted to say so badly when she called Melanie in a panic, ready to cry for three days straight.

“When are finals?”

“Three weeks. But most of my teachers are making us start to study right now.”

“Are you stressed?”

Kels managed a short laugh. “You can’t even imagine.”

Melanie hadn’t seen the four hours of sleep a night in the past week, the times Kels turned the shower on at 2 a.m. so she could cry without her ten-year-old sister hearing her. She hadn’t seen the note Mr. Olivier had added to her last essay, asking whether everything was all right at home.

“It’s good practice for college finals.”

“Well, if I go to college.”

It wasn’t all right and it could never be all right again. But as Melanie looked up from her planner, her eyebrows contracting, Kels’s courage to tell her friend about it melted like soft serve ice cream on hot asphalt.

“Not go to college?”

Kels squirmed. “I’m not sure it’s the right fit for me anymore.”

It wouldn’t be, in about seven months.

“It’s not for everyone.” Melanie set her pen down. On her calendar, Kels couldn’t help but notice the sparkly pink sticker next to big, bouncy letters—Kels, ice cream. “How are things with Matt?”

“We actually aren’t together anymore.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“No, it was…stupid.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Kels hesitated. She’d had the weight of her secret behind her breastbone for weeks, keeping her up at night. It was impossible to tell anyone about it.

“Not really,” she said in a small voice.

“Okay.” Melanie gave Kels a warm smile with a worried look behind the eyes. “You seem off. Is that what’s bothering you?”

“Yeah.” Kels cast around in her mind for something else—not Matt, not home, not the sick sense that something alive and slithering had taken over her stomach and made it hard to breathe and sleep and eat. “I’ve just missed you. When are your finals?”

Melanie referenced her planner. “Four…five weeks.” She rolled her eyes. “Except two professors are having theirs in three weeks, and in two of the other classes, we’ve only covered about—”

“Two medium brownie blizzards.”

“I’ll get them.” Kels jumped up and crossed the empty store. The sleepy-looking employee behind the counter upended both cups, shaking them slightly, and then handed them to Kels.

“Thanks.” Kels contemplated the ice cream as she walked back to the table. She handed Melanie hers and slid back into her seat, studying the shapes of the brownie chunks barely visible beneath the ice cream surface.

“I wonder what makes it stay when they turn upside down,” she said absently. She turned the cup over.

When Kels was little, she had been fascinated with Dairy Queen ice cream. She’d begged her parents to buy her blizzards just to watch and laugh hysterically when employees upended them on the way out the window. She’d thought it was magic.

Now, as she studied it, forgetting for the moment that Melanie was there, all she could see was soft ice cream melting, clinging to the sides of the cup as it slid. A drop hung on the very edge, quivering.

Melanie’s hand caught it before it could splatter onto the table, and Melanie’s hand turned the cup right side up.

“Hey,” she said gently. “Don’t spill that on my planner.”

Something motherly in the gesture and in the way Melanie wiped the ice cream from her palm with a damp napkin reminded Kels of sophomore year, when she had met Melanie and suddenly everything in her life had begun making sense, as though Melanie was a strong magnet collecting the scattered pieces of Kels as they flew through the air.

“Kels.”

“Hm.” Kels buried her spoon deep in the ice cream she’d suddenly lost her taste for, willing the tears to stay in her eyes.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on?”

The pressure behind her breastbone was about to burst her chest. Kels’s fingers went limp on the spoon and she pushed her ice cream softly to the side.

“I’m…I’m um, pregnant.”

“Oh.”

Kels couldn’t bring herself to lift her eyes but she heard Melanie shuffling, flicking her planner closed. The bubble in her chest burst and it was too late to stop the tears. Something hot filled her chest.

“Are you leaving too? Like Matt?”

Suddenly Melanie was beside her, wrapping her arms around Kels. She smelled like lemon candy and her fingertips were cold from the ice cream.

“No, I’m not going to leave!”

Kels leaned into Melanie’s hug, letting the support of her arms pull her flying pieces out of the air and piece them together. She didn’t trust her voice. Tears trickled quietly down her face.

“Why don’t you come back to my house?” Melanie asked after a minute. “We can talk. We can do this together.”

Kels followed without speaking, still holding her melting blizzard close to her chest, her breathing clearer and more free than it had been for a long time.

"Beans" -- July 13

Word count: 500

Beans

“Clayton! Billy and Joe are down.”

“Both of them?”

“Sicker ‘n dogs.”

Clayton tipped his hat back to rub his sweaty forehead. From horseback, he commanded a view of thousands of cattle, raising a cloud of dust as they drifted. On the outskirts of the herd rode tiny specks of men, keeping the cattle from drifting too far.

Clayton was already understaffed and had the boys working extra hard to keep track of all the cattle. Billy and Joe were his two best bosses.

“What’s the matter with them?” Clayton asked.

“Same as the rest. Stomachache.”

Clayton looked out toward the sun, beginning to lower toward the horizon. They ought to have made another five miles today.

“Bring ‘em in. Tell the boys to keep away from the sick.”

The other man, a lanky cowboy in two layers of chaps, protested. “We can’t just stay here! We’ve got to have this herd in the yard by sundown Saturday.”

“We can’t drive it with half the boys too sick to ride, can we? Now bring ‘em in.”

Clayton dismounted and led his horse to the makeshift pen. He hung his saddle on the gate beside a few others and headed for the chuck wagon, small and dingy white on the horizon.

A group of men lay huddled on the ground, wrapped in their sturdy blankets. Hats, chaps, spurs, boots lay in a haphazard pile beside them. Their faces were deathly pale.

Clayton stopped and leaned over them. “Doing all right, boys?”

They answered with shaking heads and a chorus of groans. Over the smell of horses and cattle and dust there was a sharp smell of sickness. Clayton took shallow breaths.

“What’s causin’ this?”

More groans. “No one knows,” someone mumbled. He looked like he’d rather be dead than alive.

Dylan stood at the back of the chuck wagon, ladling himself a plate of thick beans. He leaned against the back wheel while he ate.

“What do you suppose is causin’ this?” he asked Clayton.

Clayton took a spoonful of the beans and leaned against the other wheel. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Hoping it moves out by tomorrow.”

“You think someone might be poisoning them?”

Clayton frowned as he shoveled beans into his mouth. “I don’t know who—”

He stopped himself. He’d never tasted beans like this before. He leaned into the chuck wagon.

“Clive.”

“Yeah, Clayton.”

“When did you make these beans?”

“Last night.” The cook emerged, drying his hands.

“Uh-huh. And what did you put in them?”

Now it was the cook’s turn to frown. “What?”

“Just show me,” Clayton said.

The cook reached back into the shadows and handed Clayton a bottle. “Just a bottle of season—”

“You idiot!” Clayton shouted, shaking the bottle at Clive. “I thought I told you not to visit those quack doctors when we’re in town!”

Clive grabbed the bottle and held it close to nearsighted eyes. The illness ravaging the camp slowly became clear.

The bottle read Hair Tonic.

"Paper Frogs" -- July 12

Word count: 1000

Paper Frogs

“Will you be my girlfriend?”

They are in Kindergarten, too young to understand what the words mean. The adults smile and shake their heads and joke about it at school events and playdates. Every week, on the playground at recess on Monday, Wednesday, or Thursday afternoon:

“Will you be my girlfriend?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Oh. Want to play Kitties and Doggies with us?”

“Sure!”

He has dark black hair that Daddy spikes in the front; she has a curly golden ponytail that falls out of her fine hair halfway through the day. In the classroom, they sit at different tables, and he watches her to see what colors she uses on her picture. Their pictures turn out similar. The parents elbow each other and make jokes about in-laws.

It’s a beautiful Wednesday and the sun is shining gently on the wild hair of children at play, beating down on the playground equipment and making it hot to the touch. Twenty-five children run riot, screaming with joy as they play by rules that are written in no book but known as instinctively as breathing to the entire pack.

“Ellie, will you be my girlfriend?”

She thinks, her golden ponytail half-gone, her hair hanging in a tangled mess down her back.

“Not today. Maybe next week.”

“Maybe tomorrow?” He is hopeful.

“Will you play Cops and Robbers with us?” she asks, and he perks up.

“I want to be a Cop!”

They run off at full speed. They are in Kindergarten, too young to know what a heart is, and too young to care.

****

“Ellie can come with us. She’s cool.”

They are ten years old and it has been years since he asked her to be his girlfriend. The girls in the class clump together at recess and on weekends, leaving the boys to their games of basketball and football and dodgeball.

Ellie still can’t keep her hair in a ponytail, and Myles spikes his own hair now. For her birthday, Myles spends hours in a bookstore, clutching the money he’s saved from doing extra chores, trying to choose a book that Ellie will love from the glittering array of shiny covers.

She loves it.

Valentine’s Day, right before their eleventh birthdays. Myles puts the finishing touches on a painstakingly hand-folded origami frog. He adds it to the pile of pink and blue and green frogs in a grocery bag on his kitchen table, ready to take them to school. Each frog has a piece of candy taped to its back and a name carefully written underneath with Myles’ mother’s drawing pens. Only Ellie’s has a note beneath the garishly colored lollipop.

Will you be my Valentine?

He cannot focus on the teacher. Ellie’s frog sits atop a pile of cards in a paper bag taped to her desk. He pictures her ripping off the lollipop, finding the note beneath. He hopes she does not read it aloud. He finds his eraser in pieces on the desk when the teacher calls on him for a fourth time.

On the way out the door at the end of the day, too flustered to say goodbye to Ellie, he spots the paper frog in the trash can, remnants of lollipop wrapper clinging to it. The message is torn nearly in half.

His mother is waiting in the car to speak to him about his lack of attention.

****

Ellie dyed her hair red last summer. Myles spots her across the hall on the first day of senior year, surrounded by five or six girls.

“When did you start drinking those?” Ellie asks him, pointing to the energy drink in his hand as they take desks together.

“SATs,” he answers, all the explanation she needs.

Myles has stopped spiking his hair. Ellie still can’t keep hers in a ponytail. She did all the summer reading. Myles worked at a summer camp and didn’t even read text messages.

In second period, Ellie clinks his energy drink with her tumbler of coffee. She has three different colored highlighters. Myles listens absently to the teacher telling a long story about his summer as he folds tiny paper stars from the corners of his notebook pages. Somehow all he can think about is a paper frog, torn and abandoned in a trash can.

He catches Ellie’s arm before she walks into her next class. “Hey.”

“What’s up?”

“Hey, um, now that we’re older…maybe we could…I mean, do you want to…maybe, be my girlfriend?”

She steps back.

“Um…”

Images of a paper frog flash across his eyes.

Myles doesn’t bring it up again.

****

Myles has gotten used to the questions at family events. He has an answer prepared.

“I’m focusing on my career right now. In fact, I just got promoted. They’re sending me off to temporarily fill an overseas position in the next year or so.”

He and Ellie still cross paths. At twenty-eight, they no longer compete to see who can drink the most energy drinks (Ellie) or put in the most all-nighters to finish late classwork (also Ellie). Instead, a small group of friends from their graduating class meets occasionally for coffee. Increasingly, the others bring their spouses, and then their children, along.

One Saturday morning, only Myles, Ellie, and one other friend show up. Ellie sips her iced tea and chats. Myles folds his napkin into origami stars, watching Ellie talk. Her passion is palpable. She has plans, hopes. She’s smart and knowledgeable. She’s thinking about going for a doctorate. Most importantly, perhaps, her ring finger is bare.

Later, Myles sits on his couch, a box of pizza on the table in front of him. His finger hovers over the “send” button on his phone.

Hi, Ellie, it’s Myles. I was wondering if you’d like to go out for coffee next Sunday afternoon? :)

Is it worth trying again? He stares at the screen, mind filling with old images—paper frogs in the wastebasket.

He deletes the text and begins planning for his move overseas.

"The Broken Ring" -- July 11

Word Count: 300

The Broken Ring

“You take him; I’ll take her.”

“Shouldn’t…I charm her?”

“No. She’d be suspicious.”

The two faeries hid among the leaves, watching the young couple walk hand-in-hand down the path below them. The strangers had broken the ring, disrupting the faeries’ path home. Now the Law said they must face the Council.

“Come on.”

With a buzz of gossamer wings, the two zipped ahead of the couple on the path. In seconds the wings disappeared, the bodies expanded, the delicate, androgynous fae features widened and sharpened and hardened. A man and a woman, exquisitely beautiful and draped in fine clothes the same shifting hues of the forest, now stood in the path. Their movements a little too quick, their step a little too light, their eyes a little too golden, they advanced toward the merry human couple.

“Hello, strangers!” the human man called when he sighted them afar. “Where are you bound?”

The faery woman smiled, her teeth small and sharp. She smelled gold. The Council would be pleased when these ring-breakers were captured with an extra bounty in their pockets.

“Where the road takes us,” she said, her voice chiming like a brook over stones. She fell in beside the human woman as the couples caught up to each other. “Where are you bound?”

“For home.” The woman looked sharply under her brows at the faery. “Fritz,” she said.

The human man broke off his bright conversation with the faery man and turned to look. A sharp scent of suspicion rose from the human woman.

“Now!” the faery woman hissed, though it was too early, and her companion seized the human man as she lunged at the human woman.

The struggle lasted only a moment, before the two faeries, loaded now with gold and prisoners, bent their steps toward home.

"What Happened in the Dark" -- July 10

Word count: 1500

What Happened in the Dark

“Will you please turn that down?”

“I can already barely hear it!”

Tyler set her keys gently onto the entry table, the rasping of the metal drilling into the side of her head. “I can’t even hear myself think!”

Margot dropped her video game controller onto the table, a deafening crack. “Well then put on your headphones!”

Tyler made for the bathroom in the shared studio apartment, her body wound like a tight spring, ready to snap. It had been a long day at the movie theater daycare, full of screeching children, and her head buzzed with feedback and painful static. She closed the bathroom door, the click of the latch pinging off her aching head like a bb pellet.

Tyler switched off the bathroom light and turned on her pink salt lamp, rummaging beneath the sink for her noise-canceling headphones. Her head ached and the pain had migrated down her neck and across her shoulders. She couldn’t wait for Margot to get a job. Maybe she would get lucky and her roommate would work night shifts.

She located her headphones and slipped them on, reveling in the sudden silence. She grabbed a microfiber towel, her knuckles brushing painfully over Margot’s stacks of rough towels, and tucked it around herself as she lowered herself into the corner of the shower.

She was safe here for at least thirty minutes, reveling in the soft pink light and the cool steadiness of the shower wall. Tyler focused on her breathing—slowly, deeply, in and out.

Suddenly the floor of the apartment trembled. Tyler shot to her feet, dropping the towel, her heart pounding painfully.

“What was that?” she whispered.

She stood still, waiting for it to repeat, but the floor remained stationary. Tyler gently moved the headphones off one of her ears, cringing at the onslaught of noise from appliances and vents, and tried to listen for Margot.

No sounds, except the obnoxious blare of Margot’s gaming system.

Tyler replaced her headphones and tried to still her body. Someone must have slammed a door downstairs—or upstairs. Maybe someone was having a fight.

Ten more minutes. Tyler needed ten more minutes before she could deal with Margot’s noise again. She could feel lost energy trickling back into her as the silence lengthened, pressing in around her and molding to her body like warm water.

Tyler closed her eyes and didn’t even notice when the pink salt lamp flickered, flashed, and blinked out.

Twenty minutes later, headphones in hand, Tyler slowly opened the bathroom door. The apartment was strangely silent. Tyler could no longer hear Margot’s gaming system, and the buzz of the appliances was silent. The lights were off. Even the harsh, indestructible bathroom light wouldn’t turn on.

There must have been a power outage.

The bathroom door swung open all the way, grating on its hinges. The tiny apartment was completely dark, except for Margot’s screen. Margot sat in front of it, cross-legged, shaking her controller. The insides of the controller rattled.

“What did you do in there?” Margot demanded.

“What did you do out here?”

Margot stopped shaking and leaned back on her hands. “Everything just shut off. Except this.” She pointed to her screen. “I got some weird in-game message right before it happened.”

Tyler could hear the soft static coming off the screen. Keeping a distance—the static pulled at her hair and filled her brain—she crouched beside Margot. “Did someone hack it?”

Margot shrugged. “It was a bunch of random misspelled words.”

“Glitch, maybe.”

“Maybe.” Margot pushed the power button on her console. It flickered green, then red, then shut off again. “I don’t understand why the screen is on but not the rest—”

Something clanked in the kitchen, then crashed, an explosion of sound that threatened to restart the headache that had just faded from Tyler’s skull. Margot grabbed Tyler’s arm, fingernails digging into skin.

“What was that?”

“Probably your dirty dishes.” Tyler pulled her arm away. “Are you going to call the landlord or am I?”

Margot took a deep breath. “No, I’ll do it. Do you have a flashlight or candle or something?” She got to her feet and scooped her phone from the floor.

“Why can’t it just be dark?”

Margot shot Tyler a look and dialed the landlord.

Tyler listened to the buzz of the phone as Margot waited for the landlord to pick up. The soft glow of the screen put a blue cast over the apartment, vaguely illuminating the fold-up bed in the corner and the futon by the wall.

Twice, three, four times the phone buzzed.

Margot slowly lowered it from her ear. “Tyler, he’s not picking up.”

“Try again.” The edge of panic in Margot’s voice grated on Tyler’s ears. “Don’t freak out; it’s just a little dark.”

Something in the kitchen clanked again and Tyler thought she heard a snuffling sound. Her shoulders went rigid and she caught her breath.

“What is it?” Margot nearly screamed.

“Shush!”

“What is it?”

“I just thought I heard something.”

Margot clutched her phone to her chest. “Should I call someone else?”

“It was nothing.” Tyler stood up. “No answer from the landlord?”

“Nothing.”

“Check the app and see if the rest of the building is out.”

Margot looked down at her phone. In the dark the glare of the screen was obnoxiously bright.

A sound like a piece of metal dragging over concrete came from the kitchen, and then a snuffly and irregular, but very definite breath.

Margot dropped her phone and screeched. “There’s something in there!”

Tyler tried to tune out the shrill pitch of her voice. “Calm down. I’m sure it’s just a rat or something.”

“No! It sounded bigger!”

Tyler stood up and moved softly toward the kitchen. Behind her, Margot’s voice kept climbing upward.

“I’m going to call 911!”

“Just wait! I haven’t even checked it out yet.”

Margot kept squeaking in the background, spewing words in fragmented sentences, and Tyler tuned her out, squinting into the semidarkness for the source of the noise.

It leaped out at her before she spotted it, a shadowy shape with long limbs and claws, and she fell back. Margot screeched.

“Give me something to hit it with!” Tyler called back to her. The shadowy shape crouched in the corner by the refrigerator. Tyler squinted at it, not daring to go any closer. Its shape was entirely unfamiliar to her.

The creature made a high-pitched whining noise, the frequency of microphone feedback, and teeth flashed in the semidark. Its eyes began to glow, and Tyler’s insides sank into a quivering pile.

“Margot! The bat!”

Tyler had no idea what this thing was, but she had never seen anything like it before. The hair stood up on her arms and its eyes seemed to glow brighter. The pull on her skin was like the pull from the tv screen.

“Margot!”

Tyler could hear Margot screeching and sobbing and clattering around behind her. She didn’t dare take her eyes off the little demon crouched in the corner.

“Margot, shut up and get me the baseball bat!”

“I can’t find it!”

“Stop crying; that’ll help!”

“I’m calling 911!”

“Margot, give me the baseball bat!”

The creature’s humming grew louder and louder, pressing on Tyler’s ears and filling her head so she couldn’t think straight.

Something clattered across the floor, and Tyler reached out and picked up Margot’s pink Hello Kitty baseball bat from her Little League days. Across the room, Margot was still jabbering.

“Can you see what it is?”

Tyler twisted to face her, baseball bat in hand, the whine in her head building to a crescendo.

“Shut. Up!” she shouted.

Suddenly the creature was in her face, claws jabbing at skin, sharp teeth flashing, something soft and membranous brushing Tyler’s skin like a bug’s wing. She flapped her arm at it, sending off a shower of static sparks. The bat clattered to the floor and Tyler kicked it as she flailed, sending it skidding toward Margot.

“Kill it!” Tyler screamed. Something brushed her lips and got into her mouth and she gagged and sputtered. It stank and the chatter of its teeth, the rustle of its skin, the touch of it on her was too much. “Kill it, Margot!”

“I’ll hit you!” Tyler got a glimpse of Margot holding the bat over her shoulder, poised to take a swing.

“Just kill it!”

Crack.

White light exploded across Tyler’s face. All sense of gravity left her and she collapsed. She hardly felt the impact when she hit the floor.

When she woke up, the creature was gone.

“What was it?” Tyler asked, pushing herself up on an elbow.

Margot shook her head, her eyes wide. The power was back on and the appliances were humming. Dishes were strewn across the floor in the kitchen.

“It’s gone,” Margot whispered. “I called the cops. And an ambulance.”

“Thanks.” Tyler sank back to the floor, groaning. This would not be easy to explain.

"Endurance" -- July 9

Word count: 1200

Endurance

A sight of a turtle at sea was a sign to persevere. Captain Victoria Yates remembered her mother’s teaching as she leaned over the railing, watching the dark, leathery back of the sea turtle disappearing beneath the waves. She frowned.

It had been eight weeks since their last sight of land and the sailors had been restless for two. It surfaced in the songs they sang while manipulating the sails, an undercurrent of discontent that bubbled close to the surface when they took their rations of grog at the end of the day. Tori was the only one who knew how close the grog barrels were to empty.

“We’re close,” Tori muttered to herself as she swung down from the railing, braids flicking across her shoulders. “I can feel it in my bones.”  

She took her platform at the middle of the ship, where she could see the whole deck. The tall steam-pipes at the center of the ship were silent and cold. They had run out of fuel a week ago. The sails, set and waiting, breathless, for a puff of wind to stir them, hung slack like dirty laundry in the rigging. Two sailors, covered in tar, sat mending rope below her, two lounged in the crow’s nest, and the rest sprawled in various attitudes on the deck and in the rigging.

They were all waiting for wind. Wind that seemed like it would never come. The sea was silent and still, the ocean swells so small they barely rocked the ship. The sailors sent nasty glances up at Tori. No wonder. A becalmed ship was open to pirates, to storms, to all kinds of dangers. Without power and without wind, the Endurance was crippled.

And so was she.

****

“A sea turtle.”

“Yes.” Tori restrained her anger. She had explained herself to the boatswain at least three times.

“All respect, Captain Yates, the men aren’t going to take faith in an alleged sighting of a sea turtle.”

“They don’t need to. They just have to have faith in me.”

The boatswain let out a deep sigh and finished his glass of wine—the last of the bottles Tori had supplied herself with at the last port. “Captain, you’re going to have a mutiny on your hands if you don’t talk to the crew soon.”

“Is there talk of mutiny on board?”

The boatswain pursed his lips. Tori knew better than to press him. She trusted him to keep any secret told in passing—the others undoubtedly felt the same. And the look told her all she needed. She rose from the table.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll talk to them. Wait for the wind, and I’ll talk to them.”

As the boatswain left, there was more than a little sadness and even a little dread in his eyes.

****

They had been three days becalmed and one of the water barrels had just run out when the crew came to talk to Captain Yates. The men crowded into her cabin, scratching at their wild hair and bushy beards, shuffling their feet.

“Captain Yates?”

“Yes?” Tori deliberately laid her instruments down atop the chart she’d been studying.

“Captain Yates, we’re wanting to know how much longer you intend keeping us out on the sea like this.”

It was something to admire about men, that they were generally so direct with their proposals and wants. Tori looked down at the notes she’d scratched in the margins of the ship’s log.

“It shouldn’t be much longer now, lads. Is there something particular concerning you?”

“Yes, Cap’n,” another seaman interjected. “We’re worried, Cap’n, about the water, Cap’n. We don’t have enough left for a long voyage, Cap’n.”

“How much do we have?”

“Enough to get us back to the last port, Cap’n, if we turn around now.”

A murmur arose among the men. It was crowded and musty inside the cabin, and Tori pushed through her men, beckoning them to follow her as she stepped out onto the deck and went to the rail for a breath of open, if not fresh and moving, air.

“Captain Yates, with all respect, we think it is time for you to do your duty toward us and take us back to land.”

Tori leaned over the railing, looking down into the still water, so quiet she could see the barnacle-crusted hull plunging straight beneath the waterline. So serene. Untroubled by a knot of sailors bent on getting her to give up on her dream.

A ripple broke the surface of the water, and then a few more, and then a dark shape surfaced, gliding alongside the ship. A tiny head broke the water and a warm glow filled Tori’s heart. A sea turtle. A sign.

She turned from the railing, her face set. “We press on,” she said. “It won’t be far now.”

She returned to her cabin through a knot of men that stared after her as she went with dark scowls on their brows.

****

Tori never thought she’d be defending herself from her own men. In the starlit twilight, she stood in her cabin alone, with two pistols and a sword on the table behind her. Outside, she could hear the grumbling of the men and the clanks of their weapons.

A heavy knock on her door.

Tori thrust her chin in the air and spoke as loudly and confidently as she could despite the sick fluttering in her chest.

“State your business.”

“Captain Yates, it’s us. We have proposals for you.” The voice was muffled through the cabin’s heavy door.

“I hope your proposals involve putting down your arms and returning to your posts.”

“Please let us in. We must speak to you.”

“Look, be reasonable. We’re only four or five days from a port—”

“Captain Yates, I think this discussion would be simpler if you would open the door.” The sailor’s voice rose to a frustrated pitch.

Tori hesitated. She leaned her forehead against the door, hand on the knob. “How many are on your side?” she asked softly.

“Everyone, Captain.”

Silence. Then the sailor’s voice again.

“I would hate to force the door on a lady, but you aren’t leaving me much of a choice, Captain Yates.”

So she was alone then. The people she had counted on for help, to support her, to be on her side when the mutiny came, had turned traitor. Tori looked back at her little table full of weapons. She thought of the forty men on the other side of the door, wiry and lean and agile sailors.

She thought of the sea turtle. How it meant land was nearer than they thought, and how it was a sign to stay the course and endure, and she thought of her mother, who had been the first sea captain in their family and loved turtles. Mother always claimed that turtles had seen her through all the storms of her time at sea.

Tori put her back to her table of weapons.

“Sounds like you’re going to have to break it down anyway,” she said.

In the starboard distance, unnoticed by the preoccupied crew, a long, low brown shadow of an island slipped from sight forever.

"Extravagant Dreams" -- July 8

Word count: 1500

Extravagant Dreams

Harry started out singing, mentally calculating the value of the stacks of money in his backpack. Stacks of hundred-dollar bills, the last of the money in his safe, waiting for him to spend at the last Costco in the city. He estimated he might have a million dollars or more in the stacks, neatly wrapped in strips of sturdy paper. Not that a million dollars was much anymore, but the little he could buy at the Costco would be the height of luxury after meager potatoes from his side garden.

Sunlight filtered through low-hanging clouds as Harry climbed the on-ramp to the freeway. The time had long passed when paper money would buy gas, and slowly, the city had fallen still as people abandoned their useless vehicles. A steady trickle of bikes streamed by in the left lane as Harry started down the shoulder of the road, past a cluster of burned-out vehicles abandoned after an accident.

Just over the crest of the first hill, Harry spied a young man walking with a scuffed, dirty skateboard across his shoulders. He had a short ponytail and his jeans were full of holes. He walked slowly—more of an amble—and Harry, striding down the hill in the confidence of a backpack full of money, caught up to him quickly.

As he came up beside the kid, they exchanged nods.

“Where are you heading?” the kid asked, more friendly and soft-spoken than Harry expected, given his multiple facial piercings and fierce black punk jacket.

“Costco,” Harry answered, glad of the company.

“Costco! You got money?”

Harry shrugged, a proud glow between his shoulders. “A little.”

“I’m heading that way too. Name’s Jake.” Jake transferred his skateboard to his other shoulder so he could offer his hand to Harry to shake.

“Harry.”

“Pleasure.”

They walked in companionable silence for a time. Costco was one of the only remaining centers of retail in the city. The giant concrete building five miles down the freeway had become a sort of trading post, compartmentalized and filled with stalls of anyone scrappy enough to try to make a living off people who used devalued money for toilet paper.

As Harry and Jake crested a second hill, a billboard came into sight, looming over the silent landscape, massive and imposing and in tatters. Harry caught sight of a familiar pair of golden arches, and his stomach growled.

“Remember that?” he asked, elbowing Jake and pointing up at the waving billboard skin as they passed beneath it. “Remember when you could get a burger for a dollar?”

Jake squinted upward and scoffed. “It was always a crappy burger.”

“I ate one for breakfast every day on my way to work for…at least a year.” That had been when he was Jake’s age, before he’d made the strategic investments and started the side hustles that had won him his money. Harry remembered those days with pride—the days when his small paychecks felt as heavy in his hands as gold, when he carefully counted out his nickels and pennies to pull together enough change to supplement the burger with a soda.

“How much do you think a burger costs now?” Jake asked.

“Probably…a hundred and fifty times what it used to, at least.”

“I think it’s more like a thousand.”

“No way it’s a thousand.” Harry tried to process the numbers in his head. If his money was worth a thousand times less than it used to be worth…

He couldn’t even do the math.

“I don’t know for sure,” Jake said. He swung his skateboard down and pushed it lazily with his foot, zigzagging in long loops over the deserted, sun-warmed asphalt.

Harry put his hands in his pockets, head down, thinking. Thinking of everything his money could buy. He was hungry; they were three miles into the five-mile journey, and he had eaten the last of his bartered eggs for breakfast with nothing else.

He could buy eggs. They’d probably only take one bill off his stacks of hundreds. He could buy chocolate. It was four years since he’d had real chocolate. Thick, creamy milk chocolate that stung going down your throat.

“If you had a million dollars, what would you buy?” Harry asked, to pull his mind away from the chocolate.

“In the old days or now?” Jake asked. He picked up his skateboard again and swung it easily up to his shoulder, looking like a punk but speaking with all the elegance and respect and thoughtfulness of an adult.

“Either.”

Jake thought. “A car. An original Model T. I’d convert it to a drag racer. What about you?”

“Food.”

“Just any old food?”

“Nah.” Harry let his mind go, driven by his rumbling stomach. “I’d start with caviar. Truffles. Hundred-year-old wine.”

“In this economy?”

Harry laughed and pulled himself back down to earth. “Right now, I’d settle for three fat hot dogs and a can of Dr. Pepper.”

“Me too.” Jake sobered. “I’m not sure what I’ll be able to afford when we get there.”

A thought occurred to Harry, and his heart sank into his stomach. He looked away, down at his feet on the treadmill-like regularity of the asphalt. For a moment, his backpack hung heavy on his shoulders. He tried to shake off the feeling.

He could probably eat three hot dogs loaded with condiments. A bucket of crispy fried chicken. Chocolate.

The feeling stayed, and he was unable to distract himself.

As they walked, he found himself shooting suspicious glances at the younger man. The money in his backpack seemed to vibrate, advertising its presence. Could Jake smell it? Harry had seen the “Pathetic Poor Kid” act before. He’d done it himself, back in the day.

Harry mentally shook himself. Jake swung along beside him, carrying his skateboard again, unbothered. He’d retrieved a hat from his backpack and he adjusted the brim as he put it on.

“Don’t you grow your own food?” Harry said, trying to push away the sudden cloud of suspicion that had descended on him. “Most people do.”

“I tried.” Jake shrugged. “Kind of hard when you don’t have a place. I can usually work for it, though.”

“I did that when I was your age,” Harry said, too quickly, to calm his riled conscience.  It hadn’t been the same when he was Jake’s age. Then, there had been money that was actually worth something.

Jake made a movement and Harry caught it out of the corner of his eye. He jumped.

“What’s going on?”

“Sorry.” Harry shook himself, falling back into step. He kept his suspicion, and the image of a knife that had flashed through his mind, to himself.

He’d worked hard for his money, and he was going to spend it himself.

The Costco loomed in the distance. The giant red letters had long faded and cracked. Several were missing. The parking lot was empty except for smashed remnants of cars that had been ravaged for parts and had spiderwebs hanging off them in thick ropes. A thin stream of people flowed in and out of the doors.

Harry and Jake paused at the edge of the parking lot. Harry was absurdly conscious of the weight of his backpack, the lumps in it, the shape. He kept his eyes on the door, mind filled with flashing images of the food he was going to load up on. Jake’s voice finally faded into his consciousness.

“Thanks for the company.” Jake reached a hand toward Harry.

From somewhere deep in his gut, Harry reacted. He shoved Jake away, certain the younger man was reaching for his backpack, and he ran straight for the door.

He never saw Jake again.

Clutching his backpack to his chest tightly, Harry went straight for the food vendors. Breathless, he wended through a sea of people, all clutching bags and boxes close to their bodies, all warily watching the others. Sellers shouted and haggled. Stacks—boxes—wheelbarrows of paper money changed hands. Some sellers had the entire back wall of their stall covered by man-high towers of paper money, stacked double.

Harry pushed through all of them, only concerned that Jake did not follow. He hurried up to the closest vendor who did not have a wall of money on display. The prices were suffocatingly high.

Harry plopped his backpack on the table. “Let’s see your menu,” he said.

The owner opened the backpack gently and rummaged around. He pulled out one stack. “What do you want?” he asked.

“As much of anything as I can get.”

The shopkeeper removed several neat stacks from Harry’s bag. He set them down atop each other and counted. A quiet smile came over his calculating face.

After a few minutes, Harry leaned in. “How much will that buy?”

The shopkeeper smiled. He reached down behind the counter. “This is what you can buy with that amount of money.” He slid a package across the counter.

Shoelaces.

Harry’s heart sank with his head onto the countertop.