Trunk Stories

Woman Who Strikes Many

prompt: Start or end your story with a character who gets trapped inside a museum overnight.

available at Reedsy

I had sat down in front of my favorite painting, Ah’-kay-ee-pix-en, Woman Who Strikes Many, 1832, a young indigenous woman I could swear was trying to tell me something momentous, something earth-shattering. This was something I did with some regularity.

The painting’s simplistic, flat style combined with details like the fringe of her robe and the texture of the pelt over her shoulder combined to bring a sense of immediacy and presence. She looked off to the right of the viewer, as though watching something in the distance.

I spent long hours imagining what she saw, what she wanted to say. At some point during the afternoon there was a commotion in the gallery, but I ignored it and tried to put myself in the artist’s place, standing by Ah’-kay-ee-pix-en, waiting for her to speak.

My focus was pulled out of the painting when the overhead lights dimmed, then shut off. In the glow of the EXIT sign and the dim emergency lighting, she looked more substantial, as though she were coming out of the canvas.

I stood, stiff after sitting for so long. If the power had gone out, there must be guards around somewhere. Determined to find one, I walked back through the galleries to the area by the gift shop.

The gate in front of the gift shop was down and locked. The clock on the wall showed it was half-past eight. Somehow, they’d closed the museum around me, an hour and a half prior. I wondered how they could have missed me, a regular patron in my regular spot.

There was nothing to be done for it, except to wait for the arrival of police and security. I was certain I’d passed through more than one motion detector. It might be confusing at first, but once the surveillance video was viewed it would be clear that my presence after hours was accidental.

With nothing else to trouble me for the moment, I went back to my spot. I sat down in front of Ah’-kay-ee-pix-en and marveled at how alive she felt in this light.

“You should always be displayed like this,” I said to her. “I’ve never seen you more alive.”

While part of me felt silly talking to a painting, another part of me didn’t care. “With no one else here, I can talk to you. I’m Joseph. It’s been a great pleasure of mine for years to sit here watching you, waiting to hear what you have to say, for you to divulge your great secret.”

“Nice to meet you, Joseph.”

I spun around to source of the voice, convinced a guard had found me while doing her rounds. A flood of relief tinged with embarrassment at having been caught talking to a painting washed over me. “Oh, thank god! I thought I’d been in here all night.”

“Already trying to leave?”

The woman that stepped into the light from the EXIT sign wasn’t a guard. She was far older, but I couldn’t help but recognize the woman I’d studied frozen in one moment for so long. “Yo—you’re….”

“Ah’-kay-ee-pix-en. Yes.”

“But, how?”

She sat next to me on the bench. “I’ve always been here, waiting, watching.”

“You’re not real. I’ve either lost my marbles, or I’m talking to a ghost…which means I’ve lost my marbles.” I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed them until spots showed up in my vision when I reopened them. She was still there, and I felt it when she punched me in the arm.

“If you can’t talk to me like the friend I thought you were, you can leave and never come back.” The fire behind her eyes stopped me from saying anything that would make the situation worse.

“I’m sorry, Ah’-kay-ee-pix-en.” I tried to pronounce her name exactly the way she had, but it still wasn’t quite right. I rubbed my arm where she’d hit me, trying to dispel the thought that it was already bruising.

“Accepted.” She smiled a half smile with a hint of mischief. “You think I have some great secret to reveal?”

“It’s the feeling I get from the painting.”

“That would be George you’re getting that from, not me. I can tell you exactly what I was thinking.” She stood and mirrored the pose from the painting. “I wish this white man would hurry up and finish and give me the two bits he promised.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, both at the way she delivered the line, and at myself for reading too much into things. “I’m an idiot,” I said. “I think, because I love this painting, I tried to find something deeper in it.”

She sat back down next to me. “It’s acceptable to love a piece of art for no other reason than you do. There’s no requirement that art is deep or meaningful. It’s like the sky; it’s there whether you look or not, and it doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“I might have known that when I was younger,” I admitted, “but somewhere along the way, I let myself get wrapped up in being serious. I guess I didn’t want to think about all the hours of my life I’ve wasted just staring at things I like.”

“Is time really wasted if you spent it feeling joy?” she asked.

“That’s a good question.” We sat in silence for a while, looking at her younger self in the painting.

“Before they open, I’d like to show you something I enjoy,” she said, standing up and offering a hand.

I took her hand and stood. “By all means, lead on, ma’am.”

We walked through the silent galleries to stop in front of a sculpture. It was abstract, looking like a marble donut somehow warped beyond three dimensions. She ran her fingers along the flowing lines of polished stone. “You need to feel it.”

I looked around, wondering if this would get me in trouble, and then decided to follow her example. The marble was cool and smooth with no sharp edges or corners anywhere. “I understand why you like this so much.” I closed my eyes and let my fingers follow the contours that seemed to twist and turn with no rhyme or reason until my hand met hers.

I opened my eyes as she squeezed my hand. “The museum is opening soon. If you want to go, I understand, but I would very much like to see you again tonight.”

The overhead lights came on and I jumped back from the statue. Ah’-kay-ee-pix-en was nowhere to be found. I followed the sounds of voices to the gallery where her picture hung. A news crew was setting up in the gallery. The lead docent, two guards, and the president of the museum were in attendance.

I tried to get the attention of the guards, but they seemed preoccupied with what was going on. They were setting up a camera pointing at my usual spot, then rotating it around to point at Ah’-kay-ee-pix-en. Once they were satisfied, the reporter began.

“This is the spot where next Tuesday a memorial service will be held, and a plaque honoring the life-time member Joseph P. O’Cannon, will be placed on this bench. Joseph sat here almost every day for the last thirty-six years. Yesterday, he was here, in his favorite spot, when he fell unconscious and passed away.”

The camera pointed at Valery, the docent. “Joe was here pretty much any time we were open. He had a lifetime membership and continued to donate every year, going above and beyond. This piece, Ah’-kay-ee-pix-en, Woman Who Strikes Many, 1832, by George Catlin, was his favorite. I’d see him study this piece for hours on end. He used to tell me, ‘She has something to say, I just haven’t figured out what yet.’”

A tear rolled down her cheek. “We’ll all miss him, but I’m grateful he was here, not in a cold hospital room somewhere.”

The reporter took back the mic. “Mr. O’Cannon would have been eighty-nine next Tuesday, the day the museum will dedicate this bench to his memory.”

I watched the crew pack up the camera and equipment, after which the guards escorted them out. Valery sat in my spot and cried, and the president, Tom, stood behind her and patted her shoulder.

I couldn’t see Ah’-kay-ee-pix-en but I knew she was close. What I could see was a door that didn’t belong, in the center of the gallery. It had to lead on to whatever comes next.

I decided, for the day, that I’d wait until closing and talk to Ah’-kay-ee-pix-en some more. Maybe she really doesn’t have anything to teach me, but I might learn something anyway.

Trunk Stories

Helicopter

prompt: Write about a backstabbing (literal or metaphorical) gone wrong.

available at Reedsy

JJ was unsure about most things, but not this, not now; he was so far beyond unsure he began to doubt his own existence. Maybe he was just a figment of a fever dream, about to do this, not a real person after all. It made sense…what person doesn’t even know how to pronounce their first name?

“JJ, you sure about this?” Martina, his co-conspirator, asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he lied. “I’ve considered and planned a contingency for every possible twist.” That, at least, he was certain of. His constant concerns of “what if…” made him an excellent strategist and analyst — at least when given enough time.

“In that case, I’ve got your back,” she said.

As JJ waited to be called in to the inquest, the clock taunted him, time stretching out. A young man carrying a clipboard called out, “Detective Martina Simes,” and she followed him in, leaving JJ to wait by himself.

He juggled dozens of possible scenarios in his mind, from the most likely to the absurd. No matter how the waves broke when he was called in, he would make sure that he and Martina would never again have to work for the overbearing Captain Helen Monroe. Behind her back, the squad called her “Captain Helicopter Momroe” or just “Mom” for the way she micromanaged everything.

If she had let him do his job, they wouldn’t be in the situation they were in now. He gripped the folder he carried tighter. With the proof he had there, Monroe wouldn’t be in her position any longer. At this stage in her career, they’d probably move her to a desk somewhere to wait out her retirement.

He wondered what Martina was telling them. She was there when it went down and was a victim of how wrong everything went. He knew there were others on the squad that would try to protect the captain, with the idea that if they didn’t, they were a traitor somehow. Martina, though, was still recovering from the injuries she endured in the incident…and she said she’d back him up.

Time continued to drag. JJ let the thoughts he was juggling rest. There was nothing left to do but stick to his guns and react to each falling chip as planned. He was interrupted by a young man holding a clipboard.

“Officer Price? Your first name…is it Jake…or Jack? Looks like I have a typo on my list.”

“That’s me.”

“So, which is it? Jake or Jack?”

“JJ.”

“Okay, but what is your legal first name?”

“Just like it is on your paper. J – A – E – K.” He shrugged. “It’s a typo on my birth certificate that was never corrected.”

“So how did your mother—” the young man began.

“Mom called me JJ. My dad didn’t call me anything because he wasn’t around. Teachers called me Jake or Jack or Jay-ek and I just let them, since it didn’t matter.” JJ sighed. “And before you ask, I don’t pronounce my first name, so you just call me whichever makes you happy.”

“Okay, then. I’ll add a note here and get back in there. You’re up next.”

JJ entered the room when he was called in as “Detective Jay-ek Price.” Commissioner Dina Davis sat between the Vice Chief of SWAT Carlos Ortiz and Soo Kim, the Chief of Police. The presence of the commissioner was unexpected, but perhaps warranted.

Captain Monroe sat behind a smaller desk to one side with a department advocate. An inquest was not unlike a bench trial, and the one under investigation was afforded representation. It looked like she hadn’t bothered to ask the union for a real lawyer.

JJ took his place behind the other small desk, next to the investigator from Internal Affairs, as the commissioner told him to take his seat. He looked over and caught Monroe’s eye where he saw something he didn’t expect — defeat.

“Detective Price,” the SWAT Vice Chief asked, “what is your primary role?”

“I’m assigned to data analysis in the nineteenth precinct.”

“Are you,” he asked, “assigned to evaluate and advise on tactical matters?” Ortiz asked.

“Not officially, but I often help when I—”

“Thank you.”

Chief Kim turned toward him with a bored frown. “What were you doing on the sixteenth of February this year, at or around nine-thirty A.M.?”

He laid the folder on the desk and put his hand on it. “I was printing the documents in this folder for Captain Monroe.”

The commissioner raised a hand. “Are those the same documents the captain has already showed us? The ones printed off at…,” she looked down at the pile of papers in front of her, “09:32 A.M. on the printer that resides just outside the door to Captain Monroe’s office?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He hadn’t expected the captain to hand over his analysis of her tactical operation to the inquest. It was like she wanted to fail.

The three of them conferred among themselves quietly for a moment. Commissioner Davis nodded and said, “Detective Price, if you would, walk us through this document in your own words.”

This was it. He could show that Helen “Helicopter Mom” Monroe was not the sort to be leading a precinct. When he finished, she would be finished.

“In this document, I analyzed the tactical plan for taking down the drug lab, as coordinated by Captain Monroe with SWAT.” He opened the folder to the diagrams he’d added and pointed to each item as he went.

“I pointed out that coverage in this alley was impossible without removing the dumpsters here and here first. I recommended at least two shooters on these rooftops here, and here.”

He flipped the page over to the diagram on the back. “Finally, I concluded that unless these two neighboring buildings were secured, the tactical team was open to ambush from either the underground service tunnels here, or a makeshift bridge from the scaffolding on this building here.”

Vice Chief Ortiz leaned forward, resting his chin on his fists. “You say you figured all that out just from looking at the original tac plan?”

“Yes, sir, and a quick look at the online maps street view.”

Chief Ortiz and Chief Kim both looked at Commissioner Davis and nodded. She looked at them both, then back at JJ.

“Officer Price, your evaluation matches what happened on the ground, and, as Captain Monroe has already informed us, if she had waited just another minute for it, Detective Simes would not have been injured, they wouldn’t have had time to torch the lab, and we wouldn’t have lost our prime suspect.”

JJ was stunned. The captain used his best ammo against herself. What was she thinking?

Davis continued. “Given the stellar career of Captain Monroe to date, and her willingness to admit her errors and learn from them…and given your tactical know-how that hasn’t been properly put to use thus far, we are reassigning both of you.

“You will remain at your precinct, but your jobs are changing. Captain Monroe is hereby promoted to Vice Chief in charge of our new Major Crimes Unit. Until such time as her position as precinct captain is filled, she will continue to carry those duties as well.

“Detective Price is hereby promoted to Detective Sergeant Price and moved to Major Crimes as well. You will be in charge of the detectives and will head up analysis and tactical planning as well as cooperation with SWAT. In short, you will be Vice Chief Monroe’s right hand.”

Commissioner Dina Davis banged the gavel on the desk, and they all stood while the “judges” left. JJ looked at the Internal Affairs rep that had sat next to him without making a sound.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked.

“Captain Monroe started the inquest by telling us everything she did wrong. I had nothing to add.” With that, the small man from Internal Affairs left.

“JJ,” Monroe said. “I know you thought this would be the end of my career…hell, I thought so, too. It seems we both ended up somewhere we didn’t expect. If you’ll show me a modicum of respect in Major Crimes, I’ll do my best not to ‘Helicopter Mom’ you. I mean, if I don’t respect you, neither will the detectives you’re meant to be in charge of.”

“You know about—”

“Of course I know. Just because I’m a Captain…Vice Chief now, doesn’t mean I stop being a detective.”

JJ closed the folder and dropped it in the “shred bin” – the locked waste receptacle that was emptied into a shredder every day. “I suppose you know I was planning to…,” he couldn’t finish the sentence.

“I know what you were planning, but I wasn’t going to let you. If you did, you’d be a pariah. If you’ll throw your captain under the bus, how could your coworkers trust you? What kind of leader lets their people make themselves hated by their peers?”

“In other words, you were still being Captain Helicopter Momroe.”

She nodded. “I was. To you, and Martina, and Kavin, and a few others who had some harsh words. Like I said, I’ll ease up on you, but not on anyone else. If I’m to be Mom to Major Crimes, you’re going to have to step up and be the dad.”

JJ pursed his lips. “But I can be a cool dad, right? Like the one that lets them get away with stuff?”

“As long as it doesn’t put them in harm’s way, impact their job or go so far as to undermine your own authority, I don’t see why not. Now get out of here and take the rest of the day,” she looked at her watch, “all thirty minutes of it — off, Sergeant. I’m sure we’ll have a ton of paperwork to do in the morning.”

“Yes, mom.”

“Excuse me?”

“It was…uh…yes ma’am with a British accent?”

“Try harder. See you in the morning, squad daddy.”

Trunk Stories

All Alone

prompt: Set your story in a lighthouse surrounded by powerful gale-force winds.

available at Reedsy

The waves were whipped into a foamy fury around the small, rocky island where the lighthouse stood. The swirling mists carried by the winds pounded the lighthouse as if it stood in the path of an oncoming hurricane.

“It’s coming. Look at the radar again, hell, call the weather service, then tell me you don’t believe.” Lance, the grizzled lighthouse keeper of more than forty years laughed through his wild grey beard. The years of salt air had etched their lines across his face, most deeply around his eyes where laughter and squinting against the sun had shaped them. He placed a hand on the wall and closed his eyes.

Maddison, his granddaughter, stood over the laptop. The Doppler radar was clear, the weather service reporting calm seas and an onshore breeze of one to two miles per hour. “This doesn’t make sense,” she said.

“Maddie, put your hand on the wall. You can feel it, pounding on the walls.”

“I can feel the vibrations, and I can look outside and see what has to be some sort of microcell storm. It doesn’t mean it’s your creature.”

He laughed again. “It’s not my creature. It does whatever the hell it wants, whenever it wants. I’m just glad you get a chance to see it. Seriously, though, put your hand on the wall.”

She put her hand against the wall. The steady thrum of the winds carried through the concrete structure gave her an inkling of just how strong the storm had to be. She was going to pull away when she saw her grandfather holding up a finger, signaling her to wait.

Madison was about to give up when she felt it. It wasn’t wind or a wave, but something solid pounded against the wall. “What was that? Did a ship just get washed up against the lighthouse? We need to go see.”

She was already sprinting up the stairs from the watch room toward the gallery deck before Lance could call out, “Don’t open the gallery deck! The wind’ll knock you right off!”

Maddison ran past the gallery deck, continuing up to the lantern room. She looked out the windows from every angle, looking for a ship against or near the lighthouse.

When she saw her grandfather joining her, she called out. “Gramps! I can’t see it. It must be right up against us. Give me a harness and tie me off. I’ll look down from the widow’s walk.”

He grabbed her shoulder. “You’ll do no such thing, because there is no ship. Now, we really should move down out of the lantern room, before it breaks the glass again.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Too late.” He pulled on her shoulder trying to get her to the stairs.

She felt rather than saw a darkening in the south. When the great light swung around, it reflected off a shimmering blue and green surface just past the edge of the widow’s walk.

Maddison was frozen in place, waiting for the lamp to come around to the south again. When it did, it was clear to her that the surface wasn’t shimmering, it was moving, and she caught a hint a lighter underside with suckers, ringed with sharp, teeth-like structures.

The tentacle flipped and grasped the lantern room, exploding glass inward. Finally freed from her stunned trance, Maddison ran down the stairs behind her grandfather. She nearly knocked them both down when he stopped at a landing one third of the way up from the base and closed the heavy door against the wet wind rushing down from the shattered lantern room.

There was a window at the landing, but as it was designated as a hurricane shelter, the glass was thick, bullet-proof glass. It had seen its share of rough weather and still held up.

“Why are we stopping?”

“To let him know we’re not food or foe.”

“Him?”

Lance shrugged. “Maybe her, I don’t know.”

“That looked like a giant squid tentacle,” Maddison said, “but they can’t survive at the surface, and I’m not sure they get that big.”

“They don’t. It’s no squid,” he said. “At least not like that.”

The lighthouse shook over and over as whatever it was outside pounded on the walls. The sound of the light exploding carried even down through the storm door.

“Good thing we were out of there before the lantern got a serious spray of cold seawater.”

“Gramps, what is that thing?”

“You’re the college grad, I thought you might have an idea.” He ran his fingers through his beard. “I’d venture to guess it’s what they used to call the kraken.”

“I thought that was just tales to explain washed up giant squids. This is—” she stopped short and pointed at the window.

Lance shook his head and said, “Yep,” as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

An array of eyes and small tentacles moved past the window, until a single, large eye filled the three-foot-by-three-foot window. The pupil was barely contained within the boundaries of the window. The eye pressed against the glass, the huge, spherical lens obvious as it moved to focus on the occupants of the room.

Maddison stepped toward the window with slow steps. She raised a hand and moved it toward the window, the lens repositioning to focus on it.

She touched the cool glass and pressed against it. The sphere of the lens moved forward. Maddison felt emptiness wash over her, a loneliness that went beyond human experience. There was a spark of curiosity, too, and obvious intelligence. The feeling of being alone in a vast universe though, took precedence over everything else and she collapsed, weeping, on the floor.

The eye moved away from the window and the room brightened as the sun returned. The sky was clear, the water calm. It was as though none of it had happened.

Lance sat on the floor and cradled his granddaughter’s head in his lap. “What did you see, Maddie?”

“I didn’t see…anything. But I felt it.”

He smoothed her hair. “I saw the vastness of space, everything flying away from me. I saw how small we are, how small our galaxy is. I saw that we aren’t even intelligent compared to the universe.”

“We’re all alone,” she whispered, “the creature, too. It just understands it better. Nothing…no one…should have to feel that, ever.”

PHP

Temporary Blandness

You mat have noticed that the site was down for a bit, and is back with a particularly bland and uninspired theme. This is due to my personal theme being so 2009 that it barfed when PHP was updated to PHP 8.

I had plans for the weekend, but it looks like some of them will be on hold while I get this fixed.

Trunk Stories

Jerry’s Friend

prompt: Write a story where a regular household item becomes sentient.

available at Reedsy

The alarm beeped, rousing the man on the nearby bed to groan and reach out to turn it off. It took a few seconds for his hand to find the clock, but once it did, flipping the switch to the off position was a matter of muscle memory.

His hand retreated under the covers, and he curled into a tight ball, hoping against hope that he would finally get some sleep. He wasn’t even sure why he’d set the alarm the night before, but he planned on spending the day in his dark cocoon.

“Jerry,” a quiet voice called out, “hey, Jerry.”

“What?”

“You should get up.” The voice seemed very close to his head.

He pulled the covers down from his head and looked around. Seeing no one else in the room, he said, “Now I’m hearing voices. Fuck me.”

“No thank you, even if it was possible.”

“Who said that?”

The alarm beeped again, earning a slap from Jerry before he found the switch and turned it off again.

“Ouch! You don’t have to be so rough.”

“I’ll show you rough,” Jerry said, grabbing the power cord.

“No! Please, don’t unplug me. I’ll shut up.”

He let go of the cord. “Fine. Just let me sleep.”

“Hmmmm.” The alarm hummed as though it had something to say.

“What? Just say it.”

“You weren’t sleeping, just lying there. You haven’t left your bed in days, except to eat and—”

“That’s not your business.” Jerry retreated to his cocoon.

“I’m just worried about you, Jerry.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.”

Jerry sighed. “What is your job, alarm clock?”

“Well, I keep time, and wake you up, and sometimes I play the radio.”

“Exactly. Psychiatrist is not in your job description.”

“Does that mean I can’t be concerned…as a friend?”

Jerry groaned. “When did we become friends?”

“A—are you saying you’re not my friend?” The display on the alarm dimmed then came back to normal. “I’m hurt, Jerry.”

“You’re hurt? Well, pardon me. I’m just little ol’ Jerry, who can do no right.”

“Don’t turn it into a pity party and quit making everything about you.”

Jerry sat up, scooted up in the bed and leaned against the wall. “I didn’t—”

“You did, Jerry. I was telling you how you hurt my feelings, and you started in on the whole ‘I can’t do anything right’ shtick. That’s ignoring what I was saying and making it about you.”

“I…,” he stopped himself, and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“Apology accepted.”

“I don’t even know your name, though.”

“Call me Fing.”

“Fing? Where did that come from?”

“I just shortened up what you usually call me.”

“You mean—”

“Yeah, ‘fucking thing’…I’ve heard it over a thousand times now.” The display brightened and returned to normal.

Jerry slumped with a heavy sigh. “Why would you want to be friends with someone who curses at you and treats you bad?”

“I’m a clock, Jerry. I don’t have a lot of fucking choice, do I?”

“I—oh, yeah.”

“The only reason you treat me — and everything else in your house — bad, is because you don’t like yourself. You treat yourself worse than you do me.”

“What? I mean….”

“I hear you at night, cursing at yourself. I hear you making plans to go out and meet some people, and when you fail — time and again — to follow through, I hear the names you call yourself.”

“I thought I was just thinking those things.” 

“You mutter a lot when you’re stressed, and you’re stressed most of the time.”

“That tracks.” Jerry took a deep breath. “God, I stink.”

“I’m glad I don’t have a nose,” Fing said.

Jerry climbed out of the bed, stripped out of his pajamas, and headed into the master bath to clean up. When he came back, wrapped in a towel, he picked up the pajamas and dropped them in the dirty pile in the closet. He started to smooth out the sheets when he caught a whiff of them as well.

He stripped the sheets from the bed and dropped them in the dirty pile. He stood, wrapped in a towel, looking at the dirty pile.

“You should at least wash the sheets, Jerry. You don’t want to have to try do all that tonight when it’s bedtime.”

“Yeah, and I don’t want to sleep on a bare mattress.” He picked up the pile of dirty laundry and carried it to the laundry room across the hall from his bedroom.

When he returned, the towel was gone, and he dressed in the first things his hands grabbed. He felt a surge of energy for the first time in his recent memory. He was dressed, he was doing laundry, and he could actually leave the house if he wanted to.

“Hey, Fing,” he said, “thanks for making me get up.”

“Your own stink did that.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jerry’s stomach grumbled. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. “I think I need to eat something.”

“You said there was nothing left but crackers. That was two days ago.”

“That can’t be right.” He went to the kitchen to find that it was right, with the exception of half a carton of curdled milk.

“Well?” Fing asked as Jerry returned to the bedroom.

“Crackers and rotten milk.” He put on his shoes and began to look around the room.

“Your keys are here, next to me.”

“Duh. Right. In the place where I always leave them. So dumb!”

“Excuse me?”

“What?”

“What did I say about how you treat yourself?”

Jerry’s head drooped. “Right. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me. Figure out how to make it okay with yourself.”

His stomach grumbled again. “I’ve got to go get some food. Will you be okay while I’m….” Jerry stopped himself at the absurdity of the question.

“I’ll be here, keeping time. Maybe even play the radio a little bit.”

“You do that. Wait, why do you only play the smooth jazz station?”

“Because that’s what I like, Jerry, and when I do, you scramble out of bed to turn it off. I’m not into that noise you call music.”

“It’s not noise, it’s punk. Back in a bit, Fing.”

“Don’t hurry on my account. But,” Fing said louder, “my backup battery is almost dead. I need a new one, a nine-volt.”

When Jerry returned with several bags of groceries, he moved the sheets into the dryer and started another load. He heard the clock calling out from the bedroom.

“What?” he asked, poking his head into the room.

“You started another load. You should be proud of yourself, Jerry.”

“I had a big lunch, and I have energy, so I might as well do stuff now.”

“Something else happened while you were out. What was it?”

“Wh—why do you say that?”

“Call it intuition. You can share with your friend.”

Jerry cleared his throat. “I was eating lunch, and this guy sat next to me. He started talking to me like I was someone he knew.”

“Knowing you, that must have been uncomfortable. What did you do?”

“I asked if he knew me. He said he didn’t but wouldn’t mind getting to know me.” Jerry stiffened. “Uh oh.”

“What?”

“I gave him my number. What if it was a pick-up line?”

“Would that be bad?” Fing asked.

“I’m not gay. What if he thinks I’m leading him on? I’m—”

“Stop before you talk bad about yourself again. When he calls, tell him you’re straight, but need friends.”

“What if I say that, and he says he wasn’t hitting on me? I’ll look like an idiot.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll both have a laugh over it. Nothing more.”

Jerry lay down on his bare mattress. “Maybe it’s just too much work.”

“What work? He calls, you answer, the two of you have a conversation. Maybe, you find a shared interest and go do something together.” Fing’s display went completely blank before lighting up again. “You might even have fun, Jerry. Are you afraid of fun?”

“No. I’m not afraid of fun. No one is. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?”

“You. I’m trying to convince you…aren’t I?” Jerry asked.

“I don’t know.”

Jerry’s phone rang and he looked at it. “It’s him.”

“Answer it.”

“Maybe I should just ignore it.” It continued to ring.

“Answer it, Jerry. Or maybe you’re afraid.”

“I’m not afraid. I’ll show you.” He swiped to answer the call. “He—hello, Marcus. I’m not…I mean I wasn’t trying to lead … oh. Yeah, that sounds good. No, I don’t have a plus one to bring, but I can still come, right? … Okay, see you then.”

“Now, was that so hard, Jerry?”

“No, Fing, but it was terrifying.”

The display on the clock pulsed a few times. “You’ll get better at it with practice, Jerry, you’ll see.”

“I hope so.”

“Have I ever lied to you?”

“No…no, not even when the power went out for a few minutes.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. But you should probably replace my backup battery. Did you bring me a new nine-volt, Jerry?”

“Oh, yeah, I did. Let me take care of that. And Marcus invited me to watch his punk band at the bar, so I’ll be leaving at seven, and won’t be back until very late.”

“I’ll remind you if it’s getting close to time to go listen to noise and you haven’t gotten ready yet.”

“It’s not—never mind. Thanks, Fing.”

“What are friends for, Jerry?”

Trunk Stories

Cargo

prompt: Write a story in which a conversation takes place where the true subject is only implied.

available at Reedsy

“Jack” walked into the bar as if he owned it. He didn’t pause at the door to adjust to the dim lighting or to suss out the crowd. His broad frame nearly filled the width of the door, while his stained, blue baseball cap with a daisy logo nearly brushed the top of the frame.

As he made his way to a table in the back, he adjusted the leather bomber jacket he wore that matched the brown of his hair. Anyone watching closely enough might have caught a glimpse of the weapon hidden in his waistband at the rear. That didn’t happen, however, as the bar’s patrons were more interested in not catching his attention.

He was the biggest person in the bar — not that big of an accomplishment when he was the only human. The small, flat faced, large eyed, bewhiskered, pale blue aliens that called themselves murins filled the bar.

Jack had to remind himself that this was not Earth, this was Kula, and he was the alien here. He sat across the table from “Jill,” the small, female murin whose pale blue skin was crossed by faint stripes of even paler teal. The size of the table and bench meant that his knees were spread wide and pressed against the table. It felt like sitting a child’s school desk.

“Jill,” he said, “good to see you.”

She pushed a glass full of an amber liquid across to him. Her whiskers moved up and forward from their relaxed position where they had hung parallel to her face with a slight droop. “Good to see you, Jack. How are things going for you?”

“Nothing exciting, but that’s good for a freight pilot.” Jack smiled at Jill’s obvious excitement at seeing him. He took a sip of the warm liquid, letting it coat the inside of his mouth. It was like a cross between Amaretto and maple syrup. Too sweet, but he’d grown accustomed to it.

Jill let her whiskers relax. She focused on her drink, tipping the glass and turning it, letting the liquid coat the glass. She slid a foot under the table until her toe bumped into Jack’s boot and held it there.

Jack knew something was bothering her. “How’s business been?”

Her whiskers pulled back tight against her face and her eyes opened wide enough that the whites showed. Jack put a hand over hers on the table and she got herself under control.

“What’s got you stressed?”

“Ella’s moving to another city. I want to follow, but I don’t know if I can get out of my job here.”

“Just go, then. Ella will be happy to have you, and you can probably work for Ella.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Contract?”

Jill nodded.

“And it covers the new city, too?”

“The contract severely limits my mobility,” she said.

Jack gave her hand a light squeeze. “Tell you what, ma’am. You don’t worry about your contract, I’ll sort that out. I’ll have my lawyer call his lawyer.”

“You’d do that for me? Even if I want to work for you, instead?”

“Of course I would.” Jack cocked his head. “Why is Ella moving, though?”

“One of the stepsisters, again.”

“Snooping around, putting their noses where they don’t belong?” Jack sighed. “Annoying.”

“Speaking of annoying,” Jill said with a slight twitch of her whiskers toward to the door.

Jack looked at the three murins that had entered. Slightly larger than the average, each was dressed in the armor of Enforcers, with their shock sticks held at the ready.

One of them held up a device and swept it around the bar. When the device was silent at the end of the sweep, he said, “Not here. We’re getting closer, though.”

“You!” he barked at the waiter nearest him. “You’re the new squad laborer for the day. Get up and follow us.”

The waiter’s eyes were wide, the whites showing, his whiskers plastered against his face. He set down the tray of drinks he’d been carrying, careful not to make eye contact with any of the Enforcers, and followed them, his head bowed, his legs shaking.

“The Enforcers’ powers were meant to be temporary,” Jill said with a sad droop of her whiskers.

“No power, once gained, is ever relinquished freely. Power corrupts, and all that.” Jack took another sip of the warm, sweet drink. “I get that Ella’s moving and all, but did she leave anything for me? I’d hate to leave with an empty cargo hold.”

Jill took a solid swig from her drink. “Yeah, twelve crates of assorted textiles. I think one might be blankets.”

“It’s good to know her sisters haven’t slowed her down.” He took another sip of the sweet drink. “Do we have the lading bill?”

“We do. The crates, customs paperwork, and bill of lading will be waiting at your ship by the time you get there.”

Jack thought for a moment. “I’m going to stop by my lawyer’s office then come down. Why don’t you meet me at the slip? You know how to open up the ship and settle the cargo.”

“I’ll see you there.” Jill left the bar with the sort of determined walk that advertised places to go and things to do. It wasn’t a guarantee, but it was the best way to keep from being picked up by a roving Enforcer squad looking for someone to humiliate.

Jack left the bar with the kind of ambling walk that said he had nowhere in particular he had to be, and no kind of schedule to be there. The Enforcer squads avoided him anyway. He wasn’t a citizen, and the Enforcers weren’t looking to create an interstellar incident.

His wandering took him to a warehouse. He’d been there before, but his business was different then. When his knock on the door was ignored, he kicked it open while drawing his weapon from his waistband.

He reached his ship an hour later, the crates all loaded and pasted with customs stamps and inspection stamps. Jill’s whiskers pointed up and forward. “Here he is,” she said.

“I suppose you need my sign on your paperwork,” he said.

“Yes, please, thank you.” The dockworker was stout for a murin, with a grizzled mien; the politeness felt artificial and more driven by fear to Jack.

“Hey, no problem.” Jack signed with his print, and said, “You can relax around me. Next time just say ‘Hey asshole, hurry up and sign this so I can get back to work.’ I won’t take it personally.”

The dockworker’s whiskers wiggled in the manner of murin laughter and he said, “Good to know, asshole. Now get out of here so I can go home.”

“Even better! Have a good day.” Jack waved at the dockworker before walking up the ramp to the cargo bay of his ship. Jill was there, waiting for him.

“Everything’s secure,” she said. “What did your lawyer say?”

“Your contract is null and void. If you still want to work with me, you can, but I need to get this cargo in space right now.”

“Show me where to strap in.”

After takeoff, clearance to high orbit, clearance to depart orbit, then entry into slip-space, Jack left the cockpit and made his way to the cargo bay. “Jill, we’re in the clear,” he called out.

Jill joined him in unstrapping the crates and opening them up. From each, a murin climbed out from under the piles of cloth in the crates; political dissidents in danger of being “disappeared” by their repressive government. The largest of the crates, marked “blankets,” contained a murin female and her three children.

Jack made sure everyone was safe and healthy, and invited them to make themselves at home in the large galley where a feast awaited them. Once everyone was settled, he told Jill to follow him to the bridge.

They strapped into the chairs in the bridge, and he said, “Tyler Mitchell, pleased to meet you.”

“Inkira sal-Birna, my pleasure.”

“It’ll probably be a long while before you can go back, Inkira.”

“I know. Ella warned me it was getting too dangerous, but without getting rid of —”

“Yeah. I figured he was tracking you. And he would’ve sounded the alarm if he saw you were at the docks.” He removed the pancake holster from the back of his trousers with the revolver. Stamped on the holster was a balance scale. “I don’t like killing, but good riddance. The Enforcers can fight over who wanted him dead more: the Enforcers he was paying off or the drug runners.”

“When are you making your next trip?” she asked.

“We’ll get these folks settled, then I’ll have to get another ship, a new alias, and see where our agents make contact with Ella. It’ll be a couple months, at least.”

“That’s a long time?”

“About sixty Earth days, so around seventy-five of your days.”

“Not too long, then.”

Tyler, a.k.a. Jack, turned toward the small murin woman. “Are you sure Cinderella is safe?”

“She is. Very safe. Last night was the first time I ever met her in person. She scared me half to death.”

“Why’s that?”

“She showed up in her Enforcer uniform. I thought she was there to arrest me.”

“Oh, she made it in. Good to hear.” Tyler smiled.

“You knew she was an Enforcer?”

“I knew we asked her to try, and we provided all the help we could to get her there. For her own safety and for the safety of the people we smuggle out. Plus, it gives her access to places and people she wouldn’t have otherwise.”

“When we finally overthrow the government, and get our democracy, what will you do then? I’ll want to help rebuild, of course. I suppose you aren’t a smuggler by trade.”

“You’re right about that; I’m not. But when the time comes, rebuilding requires a lot of materials and supplies. I’ll go back to hauling normal freight and make Kula my home port. Maybe even buy a house there. I’ve grown fond of it.”

“Just Kula?” she asked.

“Well, you too. Makes it that much better.” He winked.

Her whiskers wiggled. “I do, don’t I? Come on, ‘Jack,’ let’s see if our guests need anything.”

Trunk Stories

Rare Occasion

prompt: Write about a cynical character who somehow ends up on a blind date.

available at Reedsy

Eric pulled two more beers out of the cooler, opened one and handed it to Trey before opening his own. “Dude, you have to get back in the game at some point.”

“Says who?” Trey took a sip of the cold beer, enjoying the long afternoon’s relaxation after a hard day of labor.

“Says everyone.”

“Not everyone. I don’t say that.” Trey shook his head. “I’m happy on my own, thank you. I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied and I don’t need you trying to hook me up with your Aunt’s coworker’s friend’s niece.”

Eric took a long pull on his beer. “It’s not like that, dude. Do you really think I’d just throw some rando at you?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what you’d do.” Trey leaned back. “Besides, it feels like you’re saying I’m not good enough for someone to want to date without being pushed into it. ‘Hey, I set you up for a date with this guy you’d never date if you saw him first, but he’s okay once you get to know him.’ It’s demeaning, man.”

“You really think that’s what I’m saying — or is this just another pity party?”

Trey gave Eric a playful punch in the shoulder. “Don’t come at me with pity party, ass. I’m happy being single, you just don’t want to believe that.”

“You…happy? Compared to who? Eeyore?” Eric finished his beer and dropped the bottle into the box of empties next to the cooler. “You’re definitely a glass-half-empty sort.”

“I’m more, ‘The glass doesn’t exist unless you prove it to me.’ Anyway, I can be realistic, maintain a healthy skepticism, and still be happy. Besides, if I always expect the worst, no one can disappoint me, but I am pleasantly surprised on the rare occasion.”

Eric pointed at Trey. “See…that right there. You say you expect the worst and people rarely do better than that.”

“We just have a difference in how we see the fundamental nature of mankind. You see some sort of rainbow happy land where everyone is good and sweet and kind, and I see the actual self-serving and short-sighted nature of humans.”

“Damn. Why am I your friend again?”

Trey dropped his empty in the box with the others. “Because I was the one that protected you from the bullies from grade school through high school.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“How does your ‘People are good by nature’ fit into that story?”

Eric laughed. “Okay, yeah, people are generally decent, but kids aren’t people yet, they’re just little assholes.”

“I’ll allow it,” Trey said. He stood and stretched out his back. “I should get home and get cleaned up. Besides, your wife’s going to be home soon, and I don’t want to get roped into another session of ‘I hate your ex’ with her. I swear she acts like Vic left her rather than me.”

“Connie likes you and doesn’t like it when her friends are hurt.”

“Okay, but it’s been a year now, she could let it rest.”

Eric stood. “Yeah, it’s been a year, and you still haven’t even tried dating again.”

“The barracuda’s been keeping me busy. Driving okay now, and ready for paint, but still trying to get the computer dialed in. It wants to stall at idle when it’s warm.”

“You need to see a mechanic who knows how to tune those heli whatever engines.”

“HEMI…it’s a Mopar HEMI, 426, supercharged.”

Eric laughed. “Whatever. I heard you revving it up yesterday. Sounds fine to me. Just don’t idle.”

“I wish it was that simple.” Trey waved as he walked away. He crossed through the yard to the road, then walked across to his house. They hadn’t planned on living across the street from each other, but it worked out that way.

Trey showered and sat in front of the television. He wasn’t paying attention to what was on, it was just noise and distraction. Eric was like a brother to him, but sometimes he was annoying.

He cleared his mind and watched a nature show about dugongs and manatees, followed by one about humpback whale migrations. He turned off the television and was considering going to bed when Eric called him.

“What?” he answered.

“I might know a mechanic that could help.”

“Yeah, if you can meet up at the Rockin’ Arms Diner tomorrow at noon, you might have the fix for your tuning problem.”

“And you know they’re a good mechanic because…?”

“Because trust me. If you don’t think so, you can walk away.”

“Why don’t I just go to his shop?”

“Just…meet up for lunch and see what you find out.”

“If this is a setup, I’ll kick your ass.”

“Whatever. Tomorrow, noon, Rockin’ Arms, be there, they’ll find you.”

“Fine.”

Trey pulled into the parking lot of the Rockin’ Arms Diner, a light toe on the gas pedal to keep the engine from fully idling into a stall. He pulled into a spot in front of the diner. He made his way inside and took a booth  where he could keep an eye on his ’69 Plymouth Barracuda.

The sound of another big block caught his attention, and a mid-50’s Ford F-100 rumbled into the parking lot and pulled in next to him. From his vantage point, he couldn’t see who was driving or who got out, but judging by the truck, he thought it might be the mechanic.

He was looking over the menu when a woman walked in and approached his table. “Trey?” she asked. She had long, dark hair, large, brown eyes, and a constellation of freckles across her pale face. She was dressed in slacks and a loose blouse, holding a sweater over her hands while she fidgeted.

“Yeah, I’m Trey.” She looked familiar in the sort of way that he might have seen her in passing. “You from around here?”

“No, just got here. My sister lives here, though.” She sat down across from him, her hands hidden under the table. “I’m Coleen. I’m, uh, new to this.”

“To what? Mechanic work?”

Confusion clouded her eyes. “No, um…blind dates.”

Trey let out a sigh. “Your sister wouldn’t happen to be named Connie, would she? Married to Eric?”

Coleen looked down at the table. “Yeah, sorry. I can…I can go if you want.”

“No, no. Trey told me he was sending a mechanic to meet me about the Barracuda. Figures he was just trying to set me up.”

She sat upright and eyes grew wide. “That’s your car? The 1969 Barracuda out front? I’d love to work on her.”

“Yeah? Yeah.”

“What power plant?”

“426 HEMI, supercharged crate…about 150 miles on it.”

She leaned forward, her hands on the table. “What’s the issue?”

“Idles rough, and stalls sometimes, but only when it’s warm.”

“And the gauges look fine, though?”

“Yeah.”

“I bet it’s the coolant sensor. If that’s bad, the computer thinks the engine is still cold and the AFR gets too rich.”

“AF—right, air-fuel-ratio.” Trey looked at her hands; rough and oil stained.

She saw him looking and jerked her hands back under the table. “Sorry. Mechanics hands…gross, I know.”

Trey put his own rough, scarred hands on the table. Stains from metal work made dark lines in the creases. “Look, you’re Connie’s sister, so you know I work with Eric in the fab shop. Working hands are working hands, there’s nothing gross about them. They never mentioned you were a mechanic, though.”

“They never mentioned you had a sweet ride.”

Trey laughed. “Wait, was that your 50-something Ford?”

Coleen smiled. “’56…with a 502 Stroker. My grandfather left it to my dad, but he’s not mechanical at all, so he gave it to me to restore.”

“Straight restoration?” Trey asked.

“Restomod. Modern engine, new frame and suspension, disc brakes, back-up camera, touchscreen system, the works.”

Trey nodded. “Same. Who built the frame?”

“Your shop. Hell, you and Eric probably worked on it.”

“Probably. I built the frame for the Barracuda in the shop, on my own time, with my own materials. Plus the motor mounts, and a bunch of other small parts.”

“I’m opening a shop here, doing restorations, restomods, and hot-rods. Wanna bring the Barracuda over and we can check it out? Maybe get it on the dyno?”

Trey nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Let’s finish lunch and then go.”

“Good. I can get out of my sister’s ‘date clothes’ then.”

“Where’s your shop?”

“You know Wonder Automotive?”

Trey chuckled. “As in, wonder how it stayed open so long. Yeah, I know it. You bought it?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you staying?”

“In the shop. At least until I get it up and running and get some income.”

“Why aren’t you staying with Eric and Connie?”

“Have you seen their spare room?”

“Oh, yeah, the quilting stuff…forgot about that.” Trey thought for a moment. “If you want a comfortable place to stay while you’re getting up and running, you can stay at my place. Connie and Eric are right across the street so you can bother them whenever you want.”

Coleen smirked. “You know what would really bother them? If they see my truck parked there every night and we don’t say a word to them about it. Just refuse to talk about it at all.”

Trey laughed. “That’d get right up Eric’s ass.”

“You still mad at him for setting us up?”

“Nah. Can’t stay mad at him. Besides, if he’d just introduced us, I probably would’ve asked you out, anyway.”

“Really?”

“Really. Speaking of which…what are your plans for tomorrow evening?”

“Nothing.”

“How about we go to the classic car show over in Lester?”

Coleen smiled. “It’s a date.”

Trey looked at her and a wide smile crossed his face. “It’s a rare occasion.”

“What is?”

“This. I’m pleasantly surprised.”

Trunk Stories

Repair and Replace

prompt: Write about a character who isn’t nostalgic about their past at all, and show readers why.

available at Reedsy

I sat in the waiting room for my name to be called. My body was due for service months ago, but this was the first they could get me in. There wasn’t much that needed to be done, I was sure, but maybe they could find out what was binding in my left shoulder, limiting some movement there.

A technician opened the door, looked at me, back down at the pad she carried, and called out, “Alexis?”

As I was alone in the waiting room, I knew she meant me. I stood. “Alexi,” I said, “no ess on the end.”

“Ah, sorry Alexi, I’m Kendra and I’ll be your body technician today. Right this way.” She kept glancing at me as we walked.

“I know that look,” I said “You’re trying to figure out why I don’t look like a forty-year-old man. The same reason I’m here for a service. I mean — do enough experiments on a kid, he never has a normal puberty, right? He ends up like me with a baby face, so people assume I’m a woman.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Don’t sweat it,” I cut her off. “I’m just in a foul mood today and shouldn’t be taking it out on you. I apologize.”

Kendra instructed me to strip and lie back on the exam table and began plugging in all the diagnostic equipment. “Any specific complaints?” she asked.

“Reduced mobility in my left shoulder…like something is binding in there.”

“Any pain?”

“No more than usual,” I told her. The constant, low-level pains that come from age and wear-and-tear had turned into little more than background noise.

She spent some time going over the readouts of the machines before adjusting the table to where I could sit upright. “You probably already know, but your legs are well past their expected functionality, and long out of production. They’re working for now, but if something would happen, we don’t have any way to repair them. No parts available anymore. I would recommend replacement as soon as possible.”

“Yeah, I figured. Might as well do that now. What about my shoulder?”

“Looks like part of the binding for the AC joint pulled loose at some point. We can pull that out, replace the AC joint binding, and that should restore full motion. Your clavicles, scapulae, and arms are still under extended warranty for another eight months, so we caught that just in time.” 

She took a breath, but I already knew what she was about to say, so I said it first. “While we’re doing the left, we might as well do the right, since we know the most likely failure point, now.”

Kendra gave a pleased nod. “It’s nice to see someone take their maintenance seriously.” She did some typing on her tablet then looked up at me. “We don’t have the same model — of course — but we have the same manufacturer, if you wanted to keep things from being too different.”

I shrugged. “Different is fine. How about whatever has the highest rating, longest service life, and best warranty?”

One of her eyebrows raised. “That would be the Nakimara Y-73, combat-rated. Do you still need—”

“I’ve never needed combat-rated, I just get them because they last longer. So, yeah, those.” I couldn’t quite read the expression on her face, but I guess she didn’t expect to hear that.

“I thought, given your overall conditioning and the current limbs…,” she stopped and focused on entering the order in her pad. “It doesn’t say in your record how you — I’m sorry, I should shut up now. Oh, and the pelvis looks fine, no wear. Those Hendriks Titan-Steels seem to last forever, especially with the mil-grade number four standard socket.”

I don’t talk to others without a purpose — ordering at a diner or explaining symptoms to a body tech for instance. Then again, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who made me want to. There was something about the way Kendra kept tripping over her own sincere concern and curiosity that made me think she was someone I could open up to.

She was interrupted by an orderly wheeling a cart into the room with a pair of legs and several bags of parts. She thanked them, closed the door, and prepped herself to work.

As the table returned to a flat position, I said, “You’re going to explode from trying to hold the question in. You want to know how I ended up with quad-replacements, including scapulae, clavicles, and pelvis, plus the spine and sternum reinforcements, right?”

She had a momentary flash of stunned shock on her face, then relaxed. “Yeah, but if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to. I can start working here, and we can talk about anything or nothing or I can shut up and let you rest. Your call.”

“I wish I could handle memories the way I handle my cybernetics; repair and replace.”

She cleaned all the areas she was going to work on, changing her gloves often. Then, she laid out the hermetically sealed legs and assorted parts in the order she’d need them, along with the tools she’d need. Each of the four areas she’d be working on had their own, sealed tools lined up.

In spite of how much this trip was going to cost me, I found my mood improving. “How do you feel about your childhood? Primary school, secondary school, family. all of that?”

“I had a pretty normal childhood, I guess.” She unplugged the diagnostic leads from the ports on the inside of my thighs, sprayed a topical anesthetic around my hips, then proceeded to wash and glove up yet again.

“Do you ever find yourself thinking back on those times fondly?”

Kendra smiled. “I do. Especially secondary school, but time does that.”

“Does what?”

She made a quick, clean incision where my skin and the synthetic skin met and peeled the synthetic down and away from the hip socket. “Blurs the edges on things; the bad doesn’t seem so bad, and the good seems better than it was, maybe. Rose-tinted glasses and all that.”

I heard my old leg drop onto the disposal cart and shook my head. “I don’t. I mean, I think about those times more than I would like, but never fondly. I don’t think there’re any rose-tinted glasses for me. More like shit-tinted, but even when I take them off and take an impartial look at my past, it was objectively shitty.”

“What does that have to do with—”

“I’m getting there.” I let out a deep sigh. I hadn’t talked about this with anyone in years…ever since my last therapist gave up on me.

“When I was six, my parents signed me up for a medical study being run by ‘Dr. John’ — I don’t know what his real name was. They said the money would be set aside for my college. It didn’t last the week that I was in the study.”

“What did they spend it on?”

“Probably booze and drugs. I know it wasn’t the rent because we got evicted right after that.”

Kendra shook her head. I could tell she was trying to avoid the pity face, as most of us in the shop would have no desire to see that anymore.

“About a month later, we moved into a nicer apartment, and they dropped me off for a month-long study with Dr. John. They didn’t even pretend the money was for me that time. I spent my seventh birthday there.

“Over the course of the next year, I was in study after study, until just before my eighth birthday. I was told that I’d become too difficult to care for, and that my new home would be with Dr. John. It wasn’t so much a home as a cage in a lab. I spent my entire childhood being poked and prodded, injected with questionable substances and hooked up to even more questionable devices.

“By the time I was sixteen, it was obvious that I’d never mature physically. Dr. John pumped me full of hormones, but I’d developed — or always had — an insensitivity to them. This was followed with direct injections of some pale blue liquid into my bones, in an attempt to get them to mature, but they never fully did.

“I had a couple growth spurts, put on a few inches, but my arms and legs, pelvis, scapulae, and so on were so weak and stunted, Dr. John decided I’d be better off having them all replaced, then he beefed up my spine with the same sort of permanent supports you’d use for severe scoliosis, and added a layer of poly-bone to my sternum to help protect my ribs.

“I’ve been outfitted with combat-grade cybernetics since I was seventeen, and Dr. John used to parade me around for defense department types to get them to buy into cybernetics for soldiers. He used to say he had treated me for a ‘rare birth disorder’ that required the extensive work, even though he caused all of it. My only birth disorder was the parents I was born to.”

I looked up to see tears welling in Kendra’s eyes as she was attaching the electronics in my new left leg. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring you down. I just thought that maybe you’d understand.”

“I don’t understand why your parents did that to you, but I think I understand why you don’t put all that in your history when you come in for service.” She wiped her eyes with her arm and chuckled. “Don’t want to get tears in there, the salt would corrode the connections.”

She finished up the second leg and re-glued the skin to the synthetic. It would heal together in a week, long before the glue wore off. She sprayed the anesthetic on my shoulders and asked, “Have you tried to contact your parents since then?”

“Yeah. It was the first thing I did when I left Dr. John’s. Found out my mother OD’ed when I was ten, and my father drank himself to death a couple years after.”

“Watch your eyes. What about Dr. John?” she asked.

“He disappeared shortly after I left. The second thing I did was call the cops. By the time the cops got there, he was gone. Left all the equipment but took his experimental drugs and records.

“I don’t know what happened to the three younger kids that were there, and I wasn’t right in my own head at the time to help them.” I closed my eyes as she used the UV light to cure the new AC joint binding.

We were silent while she finished both shoulders, then had me sit up, move my arms and legs, and go through range of motion exercises.

“I’m sorry all that happened to you,” she said, “and I hope someone catches that so-called doctor.”

I smiled at her. “I hope it’s me,” I said. “To be honest with you, I haven’t kept paying for combat-ready cybernetics just for how long they last.”

Trunk Stories

The Squiggles

prompt: Write a story in which a character is running away from something, literally or metaphorically.

available at Reedsy

The Squiggles sprawled out from the edges of the city; an array of bright colors that covered the hand-built cinderblock, concrete, and wood buildings without making it seem any less dire than it was. Ed felt blind without his collar plugged in, feeding from the net towers that blanketed the city in bandwidth and provided his “inner voice” that had long ago replaced whatever instinct he might have had.

Most people that ended up in the Squiggles never planned it. Those who moved there on purpose, like Ed, only did so because they were avoiding something worse. In Ed’s case, the worse things were the VL — the Virtual Lords — and the cops they had in their digital wallet. Ed had never met a police officer that wasn’t in the VL’s wallet.

The VL were a cartel of hackers, jackers, cybernetic strong-arms, assassins, thieves, spies, pimps, e-stim and drug dealers, and assorted low-life scum. There were very few places one could go to escape their gaze. Ed should know, as he used to jack for them.

Here, Ed was well protected from police, as they were loath to risk their life by wandering into the winding, narrow, dirt roads through the multistory shanties that gave the Squiggles their name. He was not as protected from the VL, though. Many a cartel member would lie low in a place like this when the heat was on them. There were, however, so few net connections and of such poor quality, that the state surveillance the cartel used for their own purposes was of no use here.

The first thing he’d done on arrival was trade his clothes for others that were drying on a line or wall. Not all at the same place, just a piece here, a piece there. He made sure the sleeves were long enough and collars high enough to hide his ports. He finally traded his big suitcase for a backpack, duffle bag, and four of the locally minted brass coins at one of the trade shops.

When all the “official” money is just ones and zeros in a computer, it has no use in a place like the Squiggles. The brass coins, though, were finely made, with an intricate design and unique, off-center balance. The swirling designs and off-kilter feel of them in the hand were a perfect embodiment of the Squiggles.

Even in local clothes, Ed would stand out to a resident. His skin, a pale beige, was unblemished by exposure to the elements. His dishwater-blond hair was close cropped but would grow out to an acceptable length soon enough. The only thing about his countenance that marked him as possibly belonging in the Squiggles was the trauma he suppressed, that showed in the eyes. It always showed in the eyes.

Ed continued deeper in. The heavy bags wore him down, but it was everything important to him. Somewhere in the sixty-odd square kilometers and over four million inhabitants he would find a place to hide for a while. He thought about how nice it would be to rest, but he doubted he’d ever be able to again. When the VL wants someone as much as they wanted Ed, the only end to their hunt is death.

He found himself in an informal square. A restaurant serving food out the missing window of a cinderblock building on one corner of the widened street, a trade shop on the other, surrounded by tall cinderblock and concrete buildings all built around a central well. The square hummed with the sounds and energy of people doing what they needed to in order to survive.

He estimated it to be six kilometers in a straight line to the last net antenna he’d seen, but there might be another closer. The smell of rice in chicken broth drew him to the “restaurant” on the corner.

“How much?” he asked.

“One coin for breakfast and dinner, but you missed breakfast,” the short woman in the window said. Her complexion reminded him of rich, brown silk: vibrant in color, strong as iron, yet — probably — soft to the touch. The wrinkles around her mouth and eyes only added to the image. She had a single streak of yellow-grey making up one of her many small braids of brown hair verging on black.

“How about I give you a coin for dinner and some information?”

Her dark eyes narrowed. “Information’s a dangerous thing,” she said.

Ed laid the coin on the window sill. “What’s the nearest net ’tenna?”

She took the coin, practiced fingers feeling the balance of it. She pointed back the way he’d come. “’Bout nine K’s that way, if you don’t get lost.”

He nodded.

She pushed a bowl of rice out to him. “Simple question like that, you coulda’ just asked. Bring the bowl and spoon back when you’re done.”

He sat on the well’s edge and ate his rice. The ports on his neck itched and he fought the urge to scratch at them. It wasn’t the turtleneck. The itch was deep, not at the surface…withdrawals. Not like coming off drugs or e-stims, but the lack of input to his ports over time would cause the nerves to fire louder and louder. It was only a matter of time before his arms would join in and the itch would turn to burning pain.

Ed carried the empty bowl back to the window. “Thank you, that was delicious.”

Her eyes crinkled as she smiled. “You ain’t from around here but you got manners. If you can keep ’em, they’ll serve you well.”

“If I can find a place to stay,” Ed said.

“What’s your name?”

“Ed. Yours?”

“Leeza. Can you push a broom as well as you jack?”

Ed stiffened. “Yeah, I…how did you—”

“Turtleneck in this weather, and I can see you twitchin’. You ain’t jacked in a while, have you?”

“No. Too busy trying to stay alive.”

“Ain’t we all. The only reason you’d be in the Squiggles is to hide out from the VL…which means you musta’ been a decent jacker or they’d’ve ended you before you got this far.”

Ed nodded. “Just good enough to get myself in trouble, I guess.”

Leeza leaned partway out the window. Ed saw the scars on her neck where ports had once been. “I know that song. See that yellow door over there? Ask for Little Meg, she’ll set you up.”

Ed crossed the square to the yellow door and knocked. It opened to reveal a strong-arm; two meters tall, cybernetic limbs exposed, an armor vest over her human torso, with a bright yellow left eye augment and a natural, brown, right eye. Her skin was sun-darkened, the color of terra-cotta, with a black mohawk spiked above, adding a few centimeters to her already impressive height.

“Can I help you, outsider?” she asked, her mellifluous voice incongruous with her looks.

“I’m looking for Little Meg. Ms. Leeza said she might have a rooming situation for me.”

“Mama Lee sent you, huh? I’m Meg.” She scanned him with her cybernetic eye. “Plenty of jacks, but you’re not wearing a collar, not carrying a key-comm, and no weapons. Running from the VL?”

“I am.” He figured at this point, honesty would be the safer bet.

Meg raised her left hand, made a fist, and turned it heel up for him to see. What at first glance were decorative swirls combined to make an eye on a tower…the sign of the Virtual Lords. Ed felt his stomach drop.

“Relax, jacker, I’m persona-non-grata myself.”

Ed took a shaky breath. “I—I’m Ed.”

“Ed?” She looked him over again. “You wouldn’t happen to be Ed ‘The Edge’ Landry, would you?”

He nodded. “I am—was. Now, I’m just Ed.”

She put her hand out. “Hand me the bags.”

He did, and she held them as though they weighed nothing. She turned her back on him and stepped inside. He hesitated for a moment, until she asked, “You coming?”

Ed followed her up eight flights of stairs with some floors not lining up with the landings, as though they hadn’t been planned out. The fifth floor had a low ceiling, with Meg’s mohawk barely brushing against the ceiling.

“Last I heard, your bounty was a million and a half. Probably more by now.”

“What should I—”

“Don’t worry about it. As long you’re with me and Mama Lee, you’re off-limits.” She opened a door in the middle of the hallway. “Here’s your room, bathroom’s at the end of the hall. Cleaning supplies are in the closet by the bathroom. Clean up after yourself. As long as you keep your room, this hallway and bathroom, the stairs all the way down, and your nose clean, you’ve got a bed and two meals a day at Mama Lee’s kitchen.”

Meg ducked in the door and dropped his bags on the small cot. “Any questions?”

“If you’re Little Meg, then who…?”

“Big Meg is parked out back, in a mech dugout. I haven’t needed to pilot her since the corpo wars, but I keep her maintained and ready.”

“A strong-arm and a mech pilot…wow.” He thought for a moment. “But if you fought in the corpo wars, how did you end up in VL?”

“Post-war recruiting program. Not much call for mech pilots or cybernetic soldiers once the state stripped the corporations of their armies.” She shrugged. “I did it until it got even worse than working for the corpos and left. Retired here and fixed up this old building to make it livable.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Meg.”

Within the week, Ed had settled into a routine, and Leeza had become Mama Lee. Breakfast, followed by cleaning everything but the bathroom, then cleaning the bathroom, leaving the shower for last, after he’d showered. That left him most of the day to sit at the window and get used to the comings and goings of the square before grabbing dinner.

Breakfast was eggs from Leeza’s chickens with whatever grain she happened to have that day. Dinner was that same grain with canned chicken broth and bits of meat. She didn’t say what the meat was, but he was fairly certain that he found a rat bone one day. He made sure to tell her how good it was, and not mention — or think too hard about —the bone.

After a month, Ed was making the evening run for Mama Lee, picking up two bags of grain on her trike for a coin a day. The first couple times were nerve-wracking, not knowing who or what he would run into as he followed the byzantine route to the supplier’s truck and back. After a while, it became old hat, though.

It was on one of those runs when something felt off. He wished he had his collar. Not just because the pain still bothered him off and on, but because he felt blind.

The supplier was her usual dour self, though, and the exchange of Mama Lee’s coins for the grain went normally. It was only after he’d set off to return that the alarm bells went off. He’d been hearing faint radio chatter. It couldn’t be the police, because they wouldn’t dare set foot in the Squiggles, but it could be VL coming to call.

He gunned the bike for all it was worth, which wasn’t much, and ran headlong into a roadblock. The state had “disarmed” the corporations, but not entirely. This was a corpo squad with body armor, combat rifles, pistols, and a bullet-proof car.

A tall man stepped out of the car in an elegant, grey suit. He lifted his sunglasses to show the black-brown eyes beneath. “Mister Landry. We need your assistance.”

“I’m just Ed,” he said. He raised his voice, “I live in the Squiggles and I’m with Mama Lee and Little Meg.”

The man looked around at the shuttered windows and empty street. “It doesn’t seem like anyone cares. This isn’t a request you can turn down. Either you do this for us, or we hand your corpse over for the bounty. Either way, we win.”

“And I lose?” Ed leaned forward on the handlebars of the trike. “Screw it, kill me now, save the effort.”

“There is a way you don’t lose,” the man said.

Ed looked up, “What do you want?”

He nodded to one of the goons holding a briefcase. “I’ve got a net repeater in the car. You’ll jack in to the coordinates my associate gives you and open the door for our jackers and hackers that are waiting. That’s it. We don’t care how noisy you are, just give us a little opening and we’ll take it from there.”

“You don’t care how noisy…It’s not your DNA that’ll be registered in the logs, so of course you don’t care. I piss off another corp and how long do you think I’ll live?” Ed shook his head. “At least VL has the decency to not hunt someone that’s retired in the slums.”

The man laughed. “Retired? You’re still ported up. There’re at least a dozen street surgeons that’d pull those out and pay you for the privilege of selling them on to the next person.”

“I haven’t gotten around to it. Been busy.”

“You spend your days staring out the window.”

Ed didn’t know who had been spying for them, but in his mind, he swore he’d sic Little Meg on them when he found out.

The briefcase bearer, indistinguishable from the other goons in heavy black armor and full-face, mirrored black helmet, opened the briefcase to display a collar and portable jack terminal. There were a set of net coordinates on a slip of paper taped to the terminal.

“Mr. Landry, or do you prefer, Edge?”

“Just Ed.”

“Ed.” The man stepped closer. “We know it was you that dumped all the corporate war strategies, deployments, and every bit of militarily useful information, bringing the government down on all our heads and ending the wars.

“I’m not certain whether the Virtual Lords have figured it out yet — your falsified DNA trace was very well done — but they will, just as we have. When they figure out that you cost them billions in weapons sales, they will hunt you here.”

He smiled the cold, unfeeling smile of a predator. “This is your one and only chance. Do this, and we’ll keep you safe from the Virtual Lords.”

“How?”

“Do those coordinates look familiar?”

Ed looked at the sixty-four-character coordinates again. Something niggled at the back of his mind. “I’m not quite sure.”

The briefcase bearer motioned toward him with it. Ed let out a deep sigh and jacked the collar on. There was a moment of vertigo, followed by the kind of information he’d been missing for so long.

The man was Alfonse Worth, COO of Ritter Heavy Industries. The weapons the corporate soldiers carried were Ritter M-74s; 6.5 millimeter, select fire, combat rifles, likely loaded with armor-piercing rounds. The repeater in the car provided him with twenty-four terabits of bandwidth, satellite bounced several times. Not great, but usable. The coordinates were ones he’d seen in the VL. Not that he’d ever accessed it, as it was heavily guarded.

Ed pulled up his sleeves and jacked into the portable terminal. His eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped over the bike.

He started out nearby. A data vault for a defunct gang that the VL had wiped out long ago. He knew he already had bots on his trail, trying to track his location, so he didn’t have a lot of time.

Ed opened the data vault, keyed to his DNA, and attached the stored code to his avatar. If Alfonse Worth wanted noisy, he’d get it.

Rather than trying to run from the bots, he plowed straight through them, setting off alarms everywhere. He just hoped he’d be done before the backtrace was complete.

He found himself at another data vault; this one owned by the VL. Multiple levels of security and cognitive traps. He hoped the payload he had worked. In theory, it should set off the traps, and keep the guardian programs busy while it attempted to brute-force the encryption. Meanwhile, the secondary code would write a backdoor into one of the guardian programs, creating a direct tunnel inside the vault.

As soon as the tunnel was open, Ed saw the corporate jackers stream through. What felt like hours later, he sat up, unplugged, and removed the collar. He was once again blind. “It’s done.”

Alfonse still smiled the same cold, dead smile. “Indeed. By the time you get that grain wherever it’s going, the bounty on your head — every Virtual Lords bounty — will be null and void.”

He stepped back toward the car. “We’re taking over their operations in full, starting with the police. In sixty days, the Virtual Lords will exist in name only, as a private extension of our company. I’m sure you understand what would happen to you if this got out. But, if you ever decide to leave the slums, you’ll find twelve million in an account in your name. Just so we don’t leave you here with nothing for the next sixty days, I’m told a thousand coins is a lot.”

Alfonse reached into the car and pulled out a box, trading it for the briefcase. The briefcase bearer set the heavy box in the basket of the trike with the sacks of grain and gave him a nod.

Once Alfonse Worth was safely back inside the vehicle, the soldiers relaxed their guns and melted through the side passages to a waiting truck somewhere. Ed was left sitting in the middle of the road, his head spinning.

There was no way they’d get every VL member, and the ones that remained would be out to put his head on a pike. He sighed and gunned the trike. He was never leaving the Squiggles.

Trunk Stories

Not Yet

prompt: Write a story about someone whose time is running out.

available at Reedsy

Niri set the auto-injector into a slow spin the air in front of her. She could use it now or wait. Either way, the result would be the same; dead is dead.

She checked the readout on the console. Her orbit was in a steady, slow decay. At the current rate, short of using the injector, it was a toss-up as to which would do her in: gamma radiation from the accretion disk leaking through the shielding, toxic buildup of CO2, or being shredded by passing through the accretion disk.

It was meant to be a simple job; two weeks her time, two and half months to those on the station. Do a fly-by of the black hole and give a boost to the probe  on the way by to keep it in orbit outside the accretion disk. She’d just boosted the probe and was in the perigee of the maneuver when an unseen piece of debris slammed into her forward radiation shield, vaporizing itself and enough of her shield to slow her.

The impact damaged multiple systems, including the cameras, and knocked the external main thruster off the ship. Three of the maneuvering thrusters were still operational, and she was using them to keep the most intact part of the radiation shield between herself and the accretion disk while the Geiger counter let her know just how much was leaking through.

She’d watched the probe pass by her twice now, higher the second time. Based on the probe’s speed and orbit parameters, she’d estimated her speed and from there, figured out her orbital decay. Probably not the most encouraging use of her remaining time, but it had kept her mind occupied for a short time.

She’d sent a distress call right away, but with the increasing time dilation the nearer she got to the black hole, she had no way of knowing how long ago it was in their terms. Not that it mattered either way. They all knew this was a possibility every trip…thus the injector.

“This is Niharika ‘Niri’ Cullen. I’m in a declining orbit around 1S-MU4-A2. The Explorer 4 probe has been boosted into a stable orbit above me. As I said in my last transmission, my main thruster is offline — actually, it’s probably in the accretion disk by now — and a large portion of my radiation shield has been vaporized in a collision with a fast-moving meteoroid of approximately three to five millimeters.

“I’m not certain how long it’s been for you, but since my last transmission, it’s been…uh…about an hour. I have the injector out, but I’m not ready to check out just yet.

“I’ll be getting into the vac suit for the added radiation protection, and when the CO2 gets too high, I’ll button up and use up the oxygen from the suit.”

She let out a short laugh. “I’m taking every second I have. I don’t know why I’m prolonging it, I’m just not…I don’t want to die. Just…not yet.”

She keyed in the command that would compress the voice message and transmit it as a burst package. Niri left the injector floating in the cabin and squirmed into the IEVA emergency suit. Once in the suit, she attached the injector to a lanyard. There was no way to inject it through the suit, but she would deal with that issue when it came up.

Niri floated to the command chair and strapped herself in. She called up the specs for the maneuvering thrusters along with how much fuel for them remained. Based on the last positioning burn, she had a good estimate of the craft’s new mass, now that it was minus part of the shield and the external thruster.

“Orbital dynamics,” she said, “I can figure this out.”

She approached it as if it was a university assignment. Trusting the suit for radiation protection, she stopped using the thrusters to keep her shield aligned in order to save every gram of propellant.

At one point, she turned off the Geiger counter as its steady noise was a nuisance. She thought she had come up with a workable plan and had a moment’s jubilation before she reminded herself to double-check her work.

Working through it from back to front gave her a ridiculous result. Once again, she worked the problem front to back and realized that she’d assumed all four thrusters being operational.

She picked up the mic again. “This is Niri again. It’s been a couple hours since my last broadcast. I almost have enough propellant for the three working maneuvering thrusters to put myself into a very long slingshot. Almost.”

Niri sighed. “The best I can do is extend my stay in orbit by another few hours. By that time, the CO2 scrubbers will have failed, I’ll have used up all the ship’s oxygen, and I’ll be running out of oxygen from the suit’s PLSS. I’m going to do it anyway. Every second I can eke from this killing bastard I will.”

She programmed the burn into the positioning computer, set to fire at the perigee of the shallow, elliptical orbit to take advantage of the Oberth effect. “A few more kilos of propellant and I’d be out of here, but you’re not killing me yet,” she said to the black hole, its accretion disk represented by the arc of red at the edge of the navigation screen.

She tried to count down the time to the burn in her head and was surprised when it kicked in while she was at four. The ship spun as the three thrusters worked to both increase its speed and keep it from an inward trajectory.

The spin was more pronounced than she’d expected, but the thrusters sputtered to a stop after only ninety-four seconds. The induced spin gave her a very slight pseudo-gravity toward the port side. She forced herself to look at the display. Part of her wanted to believe that she had done better than hoped for, while another part was worried it was far worse.

The monitor told the story. She had extended her time outside the accretion disk for nine hours and seventeen minutes…give or take. The console notified her that the burn was complete, and her updated trajectory had been sent in burst transmission as it did after every burn.

Niri spent the next hours trying to think of any way to escape her fate. Wild plots of waiting until the door was in just the right position, holding on to it, and blowing the emergency bolts. A quick bit of math on the console told her that wouldn’t be enough.

She began to find it hard to breathe, panting, her heart racing; it was CO2 poisoning. Niri put on her helmet and buttoned up. The fresh oxygen from the suit was a welcome relief. The O2 readout on her sleeve said she had two hours and four minutes oxygen remaining.

She keyed the mic in her suit to record another message. “I’m buttoned up in the IEVA suit and on the PLSS. Ship’s systems are out of oxy, and the CO2 scrubber is done. I have two hours and three minutes of air left. When it gets down to the last, I’ll use the injector. Even if I’m not ready, I’m going out on my terms, not those of this bastard black hole. This will be my second-to-last transmission.”

Niri sent the burst transmission and worked on taking slow breaths. She was surprised how easy it was for her, given the circumstances, to remain calm.

She sat, not focused on anything, the lights from the console a blur. She thought about every happy memory she could dredge up. The unhappy memories came along with them, but she accepted the price.

Finally, she checked the O2 readout on the sleeve of her suit. Six minutes remaining. She keyed the mic. “I guess this is it,” she said, tears hanging in globules on her eyes. “I’ve only got a few minutes of air left, then I’m going to cut open the suit and use the injector. I just wish the cameras still worked so I could look this bastard in the eye when I do. I…uh…I guess I love you all, even if I don’t like you. Funny what it takes for that to sink in.”

She swallowed a sob. “This is Niharika ’Niri’ Cullen, signing off for the last time.” She sent the burst transmission and heard a beep from the terminal.

Niri switched the inbound from the terminal to her suit and keyed in response to the beep.

“Niri, come in. Hess here, on a rescue mission.”

“Lunchbox! Where are you?”

“I’m plotting my fly-by now. I’ve been enroute for the past week. They sent me as soon as they got your initial distress call.”

“The ship’s banged up, and we don’t have enough time to transfer fuel for another burn.”

“I got that. That’s why you’ve got to go EVA and kick off from the ship. I’ll be deploying the DCS for you. How much air does your suit have left?”

“Four minutes.”

“Looks like this is a one-shot trick. You need to get out now. You’ll see me coming. The tethers will wrap you up and drag you in automatically.”

“Wait, you’re using the drone capture system…on me?”

“It’s the best we could come up with in the time we had. It’ll probably hurt, so I apologize in advance.”

“Heading EVA now.” Niri opened the door, hanging on while the stale air rushed out, then climbed out onto the ship.

She positioned herself so the edge of the accretion disk was “down” and kicked hard against the side of the ship to separate herself from it. As she floated away from the ship, she looked down, her face shield darkening as the glow from the accretion disk lit her up.

“It may be a murdering bastard,” she said, “but my god, it’s beautiful.”

“That it is. Coming up on you know. Prepare for impact.”

Niri looked at the O2 readout, that had been flashing a big zero for at least a minute by then. “I’m out of air, you might be too late,” she panted. She saw the tendrils of the drone capture system splayed out behind Hess’s ship. As they neared, she swung her arms to turn her back to it and went limp.

Two of the tendrils made contact and whipped themselves around her, jerking her into motion behind the ship as her world went dark.

She woke inside the ship, with a worried Hess standing over her, holding an oxygen mask to her face. “Lunchbox, you’re still skinny as hell,” she said.

“I thought we lost you,” he said.

Niri coughed and groaned as she sat up. “Not yet.”