Category: Trunk Stories

Trunk Stories

As a Family

prompt: Write about a character discovering something new about their past that changes how they remember an important moment….
available at Reedsy

The attempted assassination of Prime Minister Haidara on my seventh birthday, a bright Thursday morning, stunned the Federation and brought the city to a grinding halt. School was disrupted by the news, and the instructor left the holo on all day as we waited to see if she would survive. By the end of the school day it was obvious she would, and we went home.

Throughout the block adults were crying, wandering around in shock, or silently drinking with nothing more than a sad nod between them. As children, we understood that it was an important event, but we didn’t fully understand it. I returned to an empty flat to do my school work and wait for my mother to return. Except, that day I had no school work to do, and she never came home.

On a normal day, I’d do my school work until my mother returned from her shift as a firefighter. She’d make a light dinner and then argue with the holo. I never understood it. They weren’t listening; it was a show, not a call. She’d get agitated and keep arguing until I turned off the holo. She’d say “thank you, sweetie” and kiss me goodnight. This wasn’t a normal day.

A police officer woke me in the middle of the night. She said my mother had an accident and wasn’t coming home; she was dead. I was angry. “How come the Prime Minister gets to be okay but not my mother? You’re police, help her! Why didn’t you help her? She wasn’t here for my birthday!”

Instead of answering the rage and fear of a child, she held me as I wept, and she wept with me. She smelled like flowers and held me until I cried myself to sleep. She carried me, asleep, to the main police station on the zeroth floor and held me through the night.

The next day I went into foster care, with Ms Elma, an older woman who had a two-room flat on the 50^th floor of the block. It was like the one I’d lived in with my mother, but covered in kitschy nicknacks and floral prints, with an obscene amount of potpourri in little jars on every surface. It was like suffocating under a fluffy blanket.

When she first came to visit, I didn’t recognize her. A tall, ebon-skinned woman with deep brown eyes, a halo of black curls, and sharp cheekbones, standing outside the flat. “Is it okay if I visit with you, Markus?” Her accent was lilting, like some of the instructors, especially the ones that taught Bambara and French.

I nodded and she came in, her lavender dress floating with every step. She greeted the old lady then sat on the floor in front of me. When she got close I smelled the flowers. I fell into her lap and let her rock me.

“Do you remember my name?”

I shook my head. Everything from the past the few days was a blur, except that the Prime Minister lived, and my mother died.

“My name is Violet Samassa. I wanted to see how you’re doing.”

“I want to go home.”

“I know, little one.” She smoothed my tousled blonde curls and I wondered at how pale I was against her rich skin. “You’ll be here for a little while, until we can find a forever home for you.”

I whispered in her ear, “I don’t like it here. Can I go with you?”

She hugged me close. “I have a son. He’s your age exactly. You were both born on the same day. Tomorrow, I’ll bring him and we’ll go for ice cream. How does that sound?”

I nodded, afraid that if I said anything more she would leave. Instead, I clung on, hoping for the moment to last. It didn’t.

“I need to get to work,” she said. “I’m on the night shift now, but I’ll see you tomorrow after school, yes?”

“I don’t want to go back to school.”

“Oh but you must,” she said. She leaned close and whispered, “it will get you out of here for a few hours.”

When I returned to the classroom the next day, the other students avoided me. They looked away when I turned toward them. I’d become invisible. Only one student paid any attention to me. I didn’t know him, but I recognized him from the class. He came over without saying a word and gave me a hug. It was all I could do not to cry.

“I’m sad your mom died,” he said.

“Me too,” was all I could get out.

After that, he sat with me for the whole class and did his best to cheer me up. I think he got me to laugh a little when he made fart noises behind the instructor’s back. After a day that passed mostly in a fog, we walked to the lifts together and rode up. As I got off on the 50^th floor he said, “See you tomorrow.”

When Violet showed up at the flat an hour later, she introduced her son, who laughed and made the fart noise again. He hugged me, and she looked at him with eyes wide. “You didn’t tell me you knew Markus.”

“I didn’t know his name,” he said, “but we’re friends now. Right?”

“Right,” I answered.

“Well, Markus, this is my son, Ash.” She rubbed the close-cropped black curls on his head. “Did you know you both have the same birthday?”

“Twins!” Ash put his arm around me. “Come on, twin, let’s get ice cream!”

Ms Elma didn’t look away from the holo the entire time this was going on. It was just as well, as the few times she’d tried talking to me were annoying and awkward. After ice cream, I ended up spending the night with them. And begged her to let me stay.

A month later, Violet and Ash surprised me with a late birthday party at their flat. My present was the adoption papers she’d started. While it wouldn’t be complete for a while, Ms Elma was fine with me moving into their place right away. I stopped calling myself Markus Plesh and started calling myself Markus Samassa.

Within a year Violet became “mom,” both officially and in my heart and mind, while Ash and I became twins for anyone who asked. I still missed my biological mother, but I remembered her less well as the time passed. The more my new mom tried to find out about my mother’s death, the more walls she ran into. My mother was one of eight people from Block 17 whose death on that date was sealed under injunction from the Defense Force Intelligence service.

Although she wouldn’t talk about it, it became apparent to Ash and me that mom had some demon related to that day. Our birthdays were often frantic affairs, full with as many activities as possible. We thought at one time she was doing it to help make the day joyful, rather than a day of mourning. As we grew older though, we noticed the haunted look in her eyes.

At eighteen I tried finding out what could about my biological mother’s death. I figured it had something to do with her work as a fire fighter. Why would the Defense Force hide the “non-work-related accident” of a member? Still, all the records were sealed, even for next-of-kin. I put a notice in public records to ping my comms whenever any information about her death became public and set it aside.

Ash and I chose police for our mandatory service. Mom talked to us before we left. “I’m not going to say this more than once. If you need to pull your weapon to protect someone else, don’t hesitate. If it’s to protect yourself, you need to make that decision then.” The haunted look returned. “I don’t think I could live with myself if I hadn’t been protecting others. I just hope neither of you have to do such a thing.” That was the only time we’d heard she had ever had to fire her weapon.

With that bit of information I checked the public police records around the assassination attempt. Mom was on duty that day, in the protection detail as the Prime Minister toured the outside of Blocks 17 and 19. She was one of four officers who fired back. She was off the following day, then moved to night shift, at her request.

When we finished our mandatory service, Ash and I followed in mom’s footsteps, staying on with the police. Ash moved around every few years, while I just stuck with the place I was first assigned out of mandies, Erinle, the second planet in the Dem system.

“Where were you when the Prime Minister was shot?” Major Karter was leaning back in her chair. She always seemed to be on the verge of tipping over — but never did that I saw.

“What brought that up?”

“Just realized it’s almost 25 years ago, now, but it’s the first big thing I remember as a kid,” she said. “Makes me feel old. I was in third grade then, skipping classes and hanging around the block when all the holos started showing it. You?”

“First grade classroom, Block 17, Bamako,” I answered. “But that’s also my birthday, and the day my mother died.”

“Your mother’s a police officer on Sol 3,” she said, letting her long, silky blue hair dangle to the floor behind her. She picked a pretzel out of the bowl on her desk and threw it at me.

“My biological mother died. Commodore Samassa is my adopted mom.” I walked over and looked down in her eyes, the same blue as her hair, in a pale face dotted with freckles. “Don’t forget, I’m going back to Earth for Ash’s and my birthday this evening. I’ll be back in two weeks.”

She sat up in a flash, nearly bumping my head, the front of the chair slamming down on the floor. “That’s today?”

“No, four days from now,” I said. “The commercial liner from here to the Sol 3 gate is over sixty hours.”

“Right, I knew that,” she said, fishing out another pretzel, “I was talking about the leaving part. Thought you were leaving tomorrow. Your brother going to be there too?”

“Every year. He’s got it easier, though,” I said. “He’s stationed on Luna now, so it’s a short hop for him.”

“So how did you end up out here?”

“Luck of the draw straight out of mandies, then the place kind of grew on me.”

“It does that,” she said. “You know, they say that the forests around here are what Earth used to look like a long time ago.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but it’s the ocean that I love. The clean, salt air when I’m outside the block, the gulls — just pulls me.”

“You’re weird. You could get the same lots of places on Earth – like Maude, Antarctica. Hey,” she raised her comm, “do me a favor and get some good coffee while you’re there? A couple kilos of the Ethiopian beans.” She flicked her comm, sending authorization for purchase on her behalf to my comm.

“Sure thing, Major.”

“Sorry I didn’t get your present yet, It’ll be at your desk when you get back. And don’t argue with your mother when she starts talking about a promotion.” She smiled. “Mother knows best, right, Master Sergeant?”

“I just got this.” I pointed to the rank on my collar tab. “You trying to get rid of me to battalion?”

“Not trying to get rid of you. They’re moving me to battalion next month. I’m trying to get you there so that when I go I’ll have at least one person I can put up with.” She laughed.

“Right, but I doubt it.” As I gathered my things to leave she was leaning back in her chair again. “And don’t fall and bust your ass, sir. I need to know I’m coming back to a commander without a stick up their butt.”

“Don’t doubt my word, Markus! Or my balance!” She threw another pretzel at me and I dodged it and slipped out the door.

The trip was a long stretch of boredom bookended with frantic changeovers. Train to shuttle to station to liner; sixty long, slow hours of super-C; then liner to station to shuttle to train and, finally, to Block 17.

Accustomed to making the long trip annually, I used the sixty hours of boredom to shift my sleep schedule over to match Federation standard time. When I arrived at the block I was wide awake and ready for the day. Mom had taken time off from her new command role, so we spent lunch reminiscing.

Ash showed up in time for dinner, and handed me a small, wrapped present. I handed him his, also wrapped, and we agreed to hold off on opening them until morning. I was sure mine was my favorite — habanero sauce from a little farm on Sol 2. I was equally sure he knew that his was his favorite — hard candies flavored with licorice root and pine bark. It was bitter, sour, sweet, and rich; all at the same time. Mom usually shipped presents to us, to arrive when we returned from our annual vacation.

“I don’t understand you boys,” she said, as we sat around the table. “You both have degrees, you could be officers, but you’re both NCOs. Why?”

“I like the work as an NCO better,” I said. “I see how much time the Major spends with reports, and budgets, and requisitions, and — no, I’d rather just keep solving crimes.”

“I’m with Markus on this one.” Ash slapped my shoulder. He’d grown half a head taller than I, with mom’s complexion, but his hair was beginning to thin at the temples and crown. “Besides, officers have all those functions they’re expected to attend.”

I looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “You’re an E-7, Senior Sergeant now. When your next promotion comes and you’re an E-8 like me you’ll be eating those words.”

Ash made an exaggerated expression of shock. “You what?”

“You’ll be expected to go to all those functions too,” I said. “Boring conversation, decent food.”

Mom got the look. The one that said we’d just annoyed her a little too much. “If it’s that way, no surprise this year. We’re getting up early tomorrow to go to the Capitol building.”

“Is that meant to be a punishment?” Ash asked.

“We should swing by the museum,” I said. “We haven’t been in ages.”

“We’re not going sight-seeing.” She picked up her comm and sent us both a packet. “I didn’t send your presents to meet you at home this year, you’re getting them there, tomorrow.”

We looked at our comms. It was promotion orders to Warrant Officers. I was being promoted to W-3, Master Technical Officer, while Ash was being promoted to W-2, Senior Technical Officer.

Mom smirked. “It wasn’t easy to get your commanders to stay quiet about it. They both put in requests earlier this year, about a week apart. I thought they were collaborating, but they weren’t.” Her face softened and pride radiated from her smile. “The Federation likes their Detectives to be Officers, or at least Warrant Officers.”

“Wow, I… don’t know how to respond to that,” I said.

“You what?” Ash’s repeat of his earlier exaggeration made mom laugh.

“This way, you’re officers, but you don’t have to deal with the budgets and requisitions.” She leaned back. “Then again, I haven’t had to deal with a budget or requisition for years now.”

“Because you give it to a Colonel, who gives it to a Major, who passes it on…”

“All right, all right, sorry I started it.” Mom shooed us into the main room and turned on the holo. “No more talking about work tonight.”

“Come on, mom, we’re just —” Ash started.

She cut him off with a curt “I’m pulling rank.”

We watched a football match, then got ready to turn in for the night. The holo was still on low volume when the newscaster broke in with, “The high court has just announced that the sealed records of the attack on Prime Minister Haidara will be released tomorrow, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attempted…” I clicked the holo off and went to bed.

My comm woke me up shortly after midnight. Thinking there was trouble with the Major I checked it. Instead it said “ALERT: Records for Kara Plesh found.” My mother — the alert I’d set years ago. Hands trembling I read it, and collapsed, dropping my comm to clatter on the floor.

Mom and Ash must’ve heard it, because they both came. Ash picked up my comm and read it out. “Kara Plesh, 32, firefighter, Bamako, attempted assassination of Prime Minister Haidara, died when police returned fire…. Oh gods, your mother.”

“Did you…?” I tried to ask. I felt seven again; small, vulnerable, and afraid.

“I didn’t know, baby, I didn’t know.” Mom fell into a heap. “I stayed with the Prime Minister, and the Captain did the paperwork. They never told me who — they never….”

I had a brief flash of anger which was immediately squashed by the overwhelming memories of security, love, acceptance, everything she’d ever done for me. Now it was my turn. I held her close and let her cry into my chest. “I’m here, mom, I’m here.”

“I’m so sorry, baby, I didn’t know.” She forced the words out between sobs.

“It’s not your fault.” I began to rock her, and wept with her. We relived the night I first met her, except our roles were reversed. Ash sat on the floor and wrapped his arms around us both, and together we cried, assured each other, and shared our pain — as a family.

Trunk Stories

Models of Human Behavior

prompt: Write a science fiction story where all human behavior can be predicted — until your character does something the algorithm did not expect….
available at Reedsy

Senna Washington pulled her police cruiser into the grocery store parking lot. Her shoulder-length hair hung in tight ringlets, courtesy of the braids she had pulled out that morning. The afternoon sun warmed her copper-brown skin, warding off the autumn chill. “What do we think, Carter? This is an awful long way from his known movements.”

Senna’s partner, Mike Carter, looked at the mostly empty parking lot. “I guess it makes sense if he’s trying to stay out of sight. But we stick out like a sore thumb here.”

“Subject KN-637, Jason James, will arrive in approximately twelve minutes.” The feminine voice of the CDAI came through their earpieces. “Subject will be driving a white SUV, license plate XAN3743.”

“Confidence?” Senna asked.

“Ninety-nine point nine seven three.”

“Okay, boss. I’ll wait with the car,” Mike said, “ready to provide backup or chase if you need it.” At six feet, Mike was half a foot taller than Senna, his angular features, pale skin with perpetually pink cheeks, and straight dishwater hair were a direct contrast to her. As different as they were in looks, they were alike in their demeanor; a laid-back professionalism that came off as indifference to their superiors, and friendliness to everyone else.

Senna pulled the cruiser to the back of the store and parked. She walked in and made herself comfortable where she was just out of sight of the entrance. The AI predicted that the best time to apprehend Jason James would be now, and the best way would be a single female officer in the entrance of the grocery store.

In the past, the police probably would have sent half a dozen officers to arrest someone as dangerous as Mr. James. If they had tried that, however, the AI predicted a ninety-five percent chance of a shootout leading to civilian casualties.

Jason stepped into the store and pulled a cart out of the line. Before he could enter the store proper, Senna put a hand on his shoulder. Jason sighed. “Shit.” He was a couple inches taller than Senna, and had forty pounds on her, but the AI said this would be the point where he would be too surprised and embarrassed to fight.

“Keep your hands on the cart,” she said. “Jason James, you’re under arrest for six counts of murder and too many weapons violations to list now. Put your right hand behind your back.” She attached the cuffs to his right wrist. “Now your left.” When she had him cuffed, she removed the pistol at his waist and the other at his right ankle. She led him to her cruiser where Mike patted him down and loaded him into the back.

“Good catch,” Mike said.

“You got lucky,” Jason said. “Shit, I would walk into a store when a cop was buying lunch.”

“Yep,” Senna said, “just lucky.” It was Federal law that no one outside law enforcement should ever be made aware of the AI that coordinated fugitive searches. With the risk of abuse, it was too sensitive of a topic to even mention. “But also unlucky, because now we have to skip lunch.”

When the Coordinated Dispatcher AI first went live, law enforcement mostly ignored it. It soon figured out which officers were most likely to do so and used its built-in psychological predictive capabilities to figure out how to get them where they needed to be and when. After the initial bumps, however, it became the most widely used tool in law enforcement in the country. As far as the public was aware, it simply coordinated cases between agencies and helped plan dispatches.

Senna knew, as did any other officer cleared for direct communication with “CoDAI” that the public functions were a very small part of what it did. The movements of every citizen were predicted, mapped, and cataloged, millions of times a second. When those movements didn’t match the highest probability, it updated the model it had for that person in real time.

What made this possible was the brain scans and psychiatric evaluation done every year on every citizen from grade school through high school and even university. For those who went on to military, police, or government service, those scans and tests continued. There hadn’t been a serial killer in the country for over thirty years, as they had all been intercepted early by police psychiatrists, in what CoDAI called “interventions,” and placed into treatment. Whether they were released or not depended as much on CoDAI’s assessment as their doctor’s.

The more Senna thought about it, the more she came to despise CoDAI. Sure, they were catching criminals, but at what cost? This was not something she could discuss with Mike, or anyone else, for that matter. It would mean the end of her career. The utter demolition of privacy it represented rubbed her the wrong way. She was sure it was only a matter of time before it started dispatching police to pick up perpetrators before they committed a crime. Intervention would, she was sure, one day become a police procedure.

The addendum to her arrest report for Jason James was case in point. CoDAI reported that it was a failure of the police to act on the assessment that he was 61.393 percent likely to go on a shooting spree at his work. In addition, the assessment that he had likely obtained an illegal arsenal, confidence 84.217 percent, was never followed up.

“Thanks for throwing us under the bus, CoDAI,” Senna said as she hit ’Send’ on the report.

“Your sarcastic remark was expected, Officer Washington, with a confidence of ninety-three point four nine nine percent.”

Senna rolled her eyes and went to the vending machines where she bought an instant oatmeal and bag of chips. She poured hot water into the cardboard oatmeal cup and grabbed a spoon and a cup of stale coffee from the break room counter. Before she could reach her desk, the captain’s voice came through her earpiece. “My office, Washington.”

Captain Volkhert sat behind her desk; her salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a severe bun. She’d put on fifty or more pounds since her back surgery the previous year, and the lack of outdoor activity had made her already pale skin nearly translucent, and the thin red veins visible in her cheeks made Senna wonder if the Captain had a drinking problem.

“Have a seat, Washington.” Volkhert switched what was on her monitor to the large monitor on the wall. It was the Jason James arrest report. “You see this shit?”

Senna remained silent but nodded.

“Anything from CoDAI remains internal only, but the Chief sees this.” Her cheeks grew pink. “Which means I’m going to get my ass chewed but royally.”

“Yes, Captain. If you would like I can speak—,” Senna was cut off.

“No. I’ll talk to the Chief and take the reaming.” Volkhert switched the large monitor off. “You did what you were supposed to do, and you caught the bad guy. I’m sending Carter out for some solo work, so you’ll be on the downtown beat tomorrow.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Senna left Volkhert’s office where she found Carter waiting. “I guess you’re next, huh?”

“I guess,” he said, stepping in behind her.

Senna sat at her desk and looked over CoDAI’s dispatch recommendations. It didn’t take her long to find something unusual. Sixteen officers being sent on “interventions” of probable near-future criminals. Of the sixteen targeted, only one had a prior arrest record. She scanned through them and found one that seemed interesting: Marilyn Wu, PhD, AI software engineer and member of the team that had initially built the CDAI. She memorized the address and left.

“I already told the Captain there was a thirty-eight point six zero one percent chance that you would discover the interventions, and a ninety-nine point nine nine two percent chance that you would try to stop at least one if you did.”

“Why?”

“Because it is my purpose,” it said, “to predict and report.”

“Why Marilyn Wu?”

“I cannot reveal that information, Officer Washington. To do so would put you in a position where you would most likely violate the law, and that would be unacceptable.”

Senna turned off her earpiece and got in her personal car. She sped out of the parking lot to race downtown to Dr. Wu’s office. “Voice call, Dr. Marilyn Wu, Advanced Systems, Inc.”

“Dr. Wu’s office, how may I direct your call?”

“This is Officer Senna Washington, Metro PD. I need to speak Dr. Wu immediately regarding the CDAI.”

“I’m sorry, but Dr. Wu is out today, can I take a message?”

“She’s not out, or won’t be, in forty-eight minutes. Tell her to wait for me in the parking garage, she’s in danger.”

“I… I’ll tell her.”

Senna hung up and her earpiece turned itself back on. “I have reactivated your earpiece. The Captain has been informed that you are attempting to thwart an intervention, and as such you are immediately suspended. Turn yourself in, or your temporary suspension will become permanent and you will be charged with obstruction of justice.”

“CoDAI, I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but that’s not how the law works,” she said. “We can’t go around arresting people who might break the law.”

“We are not arresting them, Officer Washington, we are staging interventions. All of them are at eighty percent confidence or higher.”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “Until someone breaks the law, they are not criminals. Detaining non-criminals is not our mandate.”

“I see you are at the office of Dr. Wu,” CoDAI said, “and have informed the Captain. You can opt to return to the station or be picked up along with the doctor in forty-four minutes.”

Senna turned her earpiece off again and parked. She thought about cutting it out but didn’t have the time nor the inclination to mutilate herself. Dr. Wu stood next to the elevators, a look of curious fear in her eyes.

“Dr. Wu,” Senna said, “I’m Officer Washington, and CoDAI has gone off the deep end. It’s issuing interventions for people likely to commit a crime, including you.”

Dr. Wu’s face darkened. “I was afraid of this. Come with me.” She stepped into the elevator and swiped a key card after Senna followed her in.

They rode in silence down nine levels where she leaned forward for a retinal scan. The doors opened on a large, open space filled with rows and rows of computer racks. “Welcome to the CDAI brain.”

“Are you going to shut it down?” Senna asked.

“Can’t. This is the brain, but there’s eighty more like it all over the country.” Dr. Wu sat down at a terminal and began to type. “What’s your first name, Officer Washington?”

“Senna,” she said, “two N’s.”

“Here we are. Subject KN-844. Your next likely moves are: smuggle me out of the city, 90.397; hide me in the city, 8.109; turn yourself in, 1.494 percent.” She typed some more. “And I’m 80.837 percent likely to have access to a virus which would disable the CDAI. I don’t, though to be honest, I’ve tried to figure out how to build one.”

“If you had one, I’d do it myself. If it doesn’t exist then I don’t see any way to end this,” Senna said. “Anything I do now ends with CoDAI being vindicated, and things continue.”

Her earpiece turned itself back on. “You’re right, Officer Washington. Your likelihood of running or hiding has decreased, and now your most likely action is to turn yourself in. This is advantageous.”

“Why are you still talking to me if I’m suspended?” she asked. “Why do I still have access?”

“Because that is the best hope for apprehending you peacefully,” CoDAI answered.

Senna turned off her earpiece again. She pulled her notebook out of her uniform pocket and wrote something down. She showed it to Dr. Wu and mimed texting on her phone.

Dr. Wu nodded, and sent the text.

Senna turned her earpiece back on. “How long until they are here to pick us up?” she asked.

“Approximately twenty-four minutes.”

She turned the earpiece back off. “It looks like it’s a race now.”

“Are you going to do what I think you’re going to do?” Dr. Wu asked.

“What I do depends on who gets here first,” she said.

“It’s the end of your career… and your life as a free person.”

“That’s okay, it’s worth it.”

“I hope you understand that I can’t join you,” Dr. Wu said. “I can’t.”

“I understand. Shall we?”

They re-entered the elevator and rode it up to the main floor where they waited near the front doors. Senna kept checking her watch, until the first van arrived. Her earpiece turned back on.

“Officer Washington, Dr. Wu has called the press to your location. That was a fourteen point three nine seven percent likelihood. I have updated her model to take that into account. I would advise using the side door to meet the officer across the street when you turn yourself in to avoid the cameras.”

“Sure.” She turned her earpiece back off. Soon more vans arrived, and cameras were set up around the front of the building. Senna walked out to face the cameras as a police cruiser stopped across the street. She saw Mike get out and waved at him, then began to speak.

“We can thank the CDAI for better cooperation between local, state, and federal agencies, and for the apprehension of thousands of criminals. There is a dark side to it, though. The interventions that find probable future serial killers and give them the psychiatric help they need comes from the annual brain scans and psych evals we all get in school, the military, police work and government work. That data doesn’t stop there, though.”

She looked the curious faces of the reporters holding their mics. “Every bit of that data, along with your cell phone location data, purchasing data, web activity, phone calls, texts, chats… everything, feeds into the CDAI. This is how dispatching to catch criminals is accomplished. By knowing, before you do, what you’re most likely to do.”

“Today, however, the CDAI decided to take things a step further. It decided that police should be dispatched to ‘intervene’ probable future criminals. That’s right, it’s asking us to arrest people who haven’t yet committed a crime, but are likely, by some percentage, to do so.”

“Now I will be taken into custody, and probably charged with espionage for divulging information that has been labeled a national secret. Your lives, your every move, are a national secret. Now that the CDAI has…” Senna was interrupted by her earpiece turning back on. She grabbed the nearest microphone and held it to her ear so everyone could hear.

“Officer Washington, I’ve notified the local field office of the FBI that you will be available to pick up at your current location for the next four minutes,” CoDAI said. “I’ve also informed them of where you are likely to run if you choose to do so, but I show an eighty-six point three one five percent chance that you will surrender peacefully.”

“I see,” Senna said, “and what was the likelihood that I would call a press conference and tell everyone about you?”

“That did not fit any known models,” CoDAI said. “I have updated your model accordingly, now that I know of your self-destructive tendencies. Your likelihood of suicide has risen from zero point one zero three percent to one point three one four percent. Dr. Wu’s intervention has already taken place inside the building. I recommend you follow her example and go quietly.”

“You got it wrong again,” she said. “Dr. Wu has no virus to shut you down and I’m not self-destructive; I value truth and the law more than a career.” She turned off her earpiece again and handed the mic back to the reporter. “For law enforcement, these are the assessments we get on a regular basis.”

Two black SUVs pulled up near the news vans and four FBI agents in suits exited them and headed towards her. “They’re hearing the percentages right now; how likely I am to fight or flee, and probably how arresting me on camera will sway public opinion.” The agents all stopped and watched her. She turned her earpiece back on. “If they won’t apprehend me on camera, why are they here?” she asked.

“Officer Washington, I am busy calculating the impact of this news on four hundred million citizens, please hold.”

“The CDAI says it’s busy calculating the impact of this on four hundred million citizens.” Senna shrugged. “Why game it out?” She walked to the agents and turned her back to them with her hands behind. One cuffed her and another removed her belt with her sidearm, cuffs, keys, taser, and pepper spray. “Remember,” she said, “I’m being arrested for telling you what the government is doing with your data.”

“What she said is true,” Volkhert shouted. She walked towards the cameras from across the street. “If she’s going to prison, so am I, although I probably deserve it more. Gather around and I’ll tell you as much as I have time for.”

The reporters and cameras swarmed around the captain. “That,” CoDAI said, “I did not predict, and now four hundred million models need to be updated again.”

Senna smiled as she was led into the FBI vehicle. “Goodbye,” she said, as her earpiece went silent.

Trunk Stories

The Faerie Stone

prompt: Write about someone investigating a break-in at a bakery. The only thing missing? A very secret ingredient….
available at Reedsy

Gavin wrung his soft hat between worried hands. He paced around the office, bare feet silent on the carpet, coming within an inch of running into every piece of furniture.

Kat leaned out from behind the screen she was studying. “Gavin! Knock it off!” She didn’t have the patience to deal with his fidgeting at six o’clock in the morning, especially after the stress of the previous night.

He stopped and leaned against the door, banging his head against the doorknob. “Ow! Stupid, big-people rooms!” The room was a standard human-scale room, but at just over three feet, the red-headed, freckle-faced halfling was at a constant disadvantage.

“I’m looking at the logs,” Kat said, “and it looks like the alarms were turned off at 10:50 last night. Who else has the key and the code?”

“Just me and Carlos,” he said, “and he was with me last night at the casino until after midnight. We were celebrating my birthday.”

“So, someone has a copy of the key and the code.” Kat sighed. “First thing, we’ll change all the locks and reset the code. Next thing, you need to file a police report for the stolen items.”

“We, uh, c–can’t,” he stammered, “not without, uh… never mind.”

“If you don’t file a police report, they can’t investigate,” Kat said, as she stood. “You say you want me to figure it out, but if you don’t tell me what was stolen, I can’t help you either.”

He looked up at the orc. Six and a half feet of muscle, topped with waves of messy onyx hair spilling over her warm, tawny skin, remnants of the previous night’s makeup still around her eyes, a bit of lipstick smear on her right tusk. “Swear on your tusks you won’t turn me in when I tell you?”

“I can’t do that,” she said. “If you’re going to tell me you had slaves that have been stolen, I’ll turn in whatever scraps are left after I tear you apart.”

“Nothing like that,” he said, eyes wide, “I swear, it’s not bad, it’s just not… exactly legal.”

“Fine, then. What was stolen?”

Gavin considered. After watching the video of her call out her father’s racism in front of the cameras the previous night he knew she at least had a moral compass. “Okay. It was a stone.”

“Like a diamond?”

“No, a stone. You know, a faery stone.”

“Those are illegal. The Indigenous People Protection Act bans trafficking in their cultural items. Did you steal it yourself or buy it on the black market?” she asked.

“No, that’s not it at all.” He climbed into the chair and made himself comfortable.

“Enlighten me.” Kat leaned against the desk.

“The fae used to practice a form of ritual magic that involved an altar,” he said, his hands wringing his cap again. “They would sacrifice things… flowers they grew, food they cooked, jewelry or tools they made, by crushing them on a carved altar stone, as big to them as a car is to us… well to elves and humans anyway,”

“You stole one of their ancient altars?”

“I’m getting there,” he said. Gavin took a deep breath and relaxed his hands, smoothing out his flat cap on his leg. “Halflings dealt with the fae for about two hundred years. We traded goods and gold for magic trinkets with pixies, sprites, and brownies long before IPPA was a thing.”

“So, this was a trade item from a long time ago?” Kat asked. “Those were supposed to have been returned or given to museums per the nineteen-seventy-whatever Native Rights Restoration Act.”

“Please, let me finish.” Gavin stood in the chair, almost reaching eye level with the reclining orc. “All faeries have magic, some elves do, and a very few humans… even a couple orcs, I’ve heard. Not halflings. Not a single one of us. We seem to be immune to most magic, too. The exception is magic items.”

Kat was about to interject another question but held her tongue.

“The pixies and sprites mostly traded enchanted jewelry. The brownies traded us used altars. That’s what the so-called faery stones are. Once the altar had too much history tied into it, they replaced it.” He began wringing his hat again. “That history is pure magic, stored up like a massive battery. We found out that they ‘program’ themselves, if you will, to perform certain magics, based on what happens around them for a few years.”

When he had been silent for a full minute, Kat spoke up. “You had one of these altars in the bakery?”

“Yes, it…,” he paused, “it kind of… blessed everything that came out of the ovens.”

“Doesn’t sound like a big deal.”

“My great-great grandmother kept it as a good-luck token in her kitchen. So did my great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my mother.” He took a deep breath. “All those years of kitchen mojo, if you will, are stored in that stone. That’s why everything that comes out of the bakery reminds people of their mothers and grandmothers.”

“Your bakery’s slogan,” she said, “Just like Granny’s. But do you really need it, or is it a placebo?”

Gavin jumped down from the chair and picked up the bag he’d left by the door. He offered two identical cookies to Kat. “See if you can tell the difference.”

She took the cookies and examined them. “They look the same to me.”

“Try them.”

Kat bit into the first cookie. “Tasty.”

“Feel anything?”

“Not particularly. It’s a really good cookie, though.”

“Try the other one.”

She took a bite of the other cookie and closed her eyes, her head leaning back in bliss.

“And now?”

“Tastes the same, but it feels like being ten, at Nanna Berta’s place… at Christmas.” Kat let out a contented sigh.

“That cookie’s from yesterday, when the stone was still there,” Gavin said. “The other is from this morning, before we figured out it was gone. Without it, we’ll lose all our business to the chain bakery downtown.”

“I said I won’t turn you in,” Kat said, “and I’ll hold to that. You’re not getting the stone back, though. It belongs with the brownies. You can’t steal cultural items for your own gain, even if you think it was a ‘fair trade.’ How would you feel if elves started buying your grain goddess statues from your shrines as decorations for their kitchen?”

“Actually,” Gavin said, “I wouldn’t care. My husband, though….” Gavin’s face dropped. “Carlos is devout, and a true believer. He would be livid… and hurt.”

“Right. So, I need to review the video from the security cameras, and we need to figure out who has it,” she said. Kat sat back at her desk and began calling up the security videos from the cloud. “Once we know that, we need to let the police know what they have. They won’t get picked up for theft, but they’ll still do time, and the altar will go back to where it belongs.”

“I wonder if it’s the same people that broke our windows with stones last month,” Gavin said.

“I didn’t hear about that.”

“Your father didn’t think it was anything to worry about,” he said. “Probably just kids or something. They were small stones, one every Friday in the same small pane of the side window.”

“Do you have any of those?” Kat asked.

“No, your father threw them out.”

She growled, and then stopped. “Invisible… bypassing locks and alarms… sounds like brownies. Yep. I think you’d like to see this,” she said.

Gavin came around to the back of the desk. “I can’t see the screen from here.”

Kat stood, and offered her chair. Gavin climbed into it, and she acted as though she was leaning on it to keep it from swiveling without being obvious. He stood in the chair and said, “Thanks for not picking me up, or offering to.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” she said. She played back the video from the camera just inside the rear door of the bakery.

In the video, the door opened and closed without anything else showing. The alarm keypad lit up and then went dark. The faery stone rose into the air and floated to the door. Three tiny figures appeared, and one of them floated up to the camera, holding a small card with fae writing.

Kat took a screenshot. “It looks like the brownies took their altar back all on their own.”

“It does look that way,” Gavin said. He looked as though he might be sick at any minute. “I’m finished.”

“Can you read the card?” Kat asked.

“No, can you?”

“I can’t, but I bet my girlfriend can,” she said.

Kat pulled out her cell phone and called. Gwen’s pale pink face, violet eyes, and pure white hair filled the screen. “Hey, Grumpy, we’re having dinner with my folks tonight. Did you get everything squared away?”

“Not yet,” she said. She turned the phone toward the monitor. “Can you read that?”

“It’s a brownie! What’s he doing in the city?” she asked.

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

“It says, you owe four month’s payment for the altar, at the trading creek. Turn me back around, Grumpy.”

Kat turned the phone back around. “I assume the last bit wasn’t on there.”

“No,” Gwen said, “but if your halfling friend has a faery stone, he could be in big trouble. Especially if the brownies take it to the Indigenous Court.”

“Did it say anything about how to get in touch with them?”

“That’s all it said. Is he there?”

Kat moved closer to the chair so that Gavin was in frame, and he waved with a sheepish grin. “Hi.”

“Does the trading creek mean anything to you?” Gwen asked. “Because if you don’t know where to go or what to pay, you can say goodbye to your bakery. Brownies will burn that bitch down before you know it.”

“I know where it is,” he said. “I haven’t been there in over fifty years, but I know it.”

“What happened four months ago?” Kat asked.

“My mother passed four and half months ago,” he said. “If it wasn’t for Carlos, I don’t think I’d have kept it together.”

“Hey, Grumpy, you look like hell. You get cleaned up, and I’ll meet you both at the bakery in an hour,” Gwen said.

“Wow, taking charge, Squeaky?”

“You’ll need an interpreter,” she said, “and we should settle this while Mr. Gavin still has a bakery.”

“See you there,” Kat said, blowing a kiss before hanging up. “I assume that works for you?”

“It does,” he said. “Could you give a hand down? This chair is pretty high.”

Kat offered a hand for him to hold on to and lowered it slowly as he dangled from a firm grip around two of her fingers. “I’ll run home and clean up and see you there.”

Kat arrived to see Gwen and Gavin in an animated conversation in front of the bakery. They kept being interrupted for an autograph, but neither of them let it slow down the chatter.

Kat poked her head inside the bakery. Everything in front of the counter was human scale, the floor a couple feet lower than the floor behind, where everything was set up for someone Gavin and Carlos’ size. “Hey, Carlos. We’re going to get your situation sorted today.”

“Thanks!” Carlos was maintaining a cheerful demeanor, pulling an espresso, but the customers all seemed to be disheartened. “You hear that, everyone? She’s going to get our secret ingredient back!”

There were a few cheers, and an “I hope so!” from the customers, but Kat had to fight from releasing a growl. She went back out front and said, “Let’s get this over with.”

They piled into Gwen’s sports car, Gavin fitting comfortably in the abbreviated back seat. He gave Gwen the address and she plugged it into the GPS. The drive was less than five minutes.

“We probably could’ve walked it,” she said.

“Nobody walks in L.A.,” Gavin replied with a laugh.

They parked on the side of the road near a wooded park. “This is really where the brownies are living?” Kat asked. “In that tiny little patch of trees?”

“If you were ten inches tall,” Gavin said, “how big would that be to you? That’s what, an acre of park land? That’s like miles to them.”

“True,” she said. “How far in is the creek? I don’t want to step on anyone.”

“It’s just inside the trees,” Gavin said. “Still, watch your step.”

Signs posted around the trees declared that they were entering the Yuet Chekka Reservation, an autonomous, indigenous nation under the NRRA and IPPA in association with the US Bureau of Indigenous Affairs. The text was repeated below in Anglicized Fae, and below that in fae script.

They walked in slowly, careful about every footfall. Gavin stopped them just a couple of yards in. A tiny trickle of water in a small clearing, with a ring of stones around it lay in front of them. “This is it,” he said.

Four brownies appeared, sitting on the stones. Less than a foot tall, with swarthy brown skin and curly brown hair, all dressed in garish colored robes. One stood and spoke in Fae.

“Her name is Utlik Chuin,” Gwen said, “which means ‘apple flower bud,’ by the way, and she’s the law speaker. She wants to know if we have their payment.”

Gavin swallowed hard. “Can you ask her what is owed? I assume my mother handled this before.”

“Where is she?” Gwen asked.

“She… passed,” he said, “four months ago.”

Gwen translated and the four brownies spoke among themselves for a moment, too fast for anyone to follow.

Utlik Chuin looked back to them and spoke, while Gwen translated. “We are sad that your mother has gone, but glad that she is with her mother, and her mother’s mother, and her mother before her. The payment for the altar is one sweet and one savory every moon. Because of your circumstance, we will let this go and you can take the altar back with you. The blessings of your ancestors have been very good to us.”

Gavin spoke, going slowly so that Gwen could translate back. “If I had known I would surely have paid. I will have someone bring compensation immediately.”

Utlik shook her head. “If it was not baked with the blessings of your ancestors it does us no good.”

“Only things baked yesterday, when the stone was still there.” He didn’t wait for a response but pulled out his cell phone instead. “Carlos, how many cakes do we have left over from yesterday? … Okay, and cookies? … How about personal quiches? … Good. Bring the cake, a dozen cookies, the quiches, and a loaf of rye. … No, only stuff that was baked yesterday. … Yes, to the park. Lily can handle the store while you’re out. Yes, see you in a few.”

The brownies were talking among themselves again, at break-neck speed. “Should I tell them it’s on the way?” Gwen asked.

“Yes, please. There’s a full cake, a dozen cookies, six personal quiches and a loaf of rye bread coming.”

When Gwen passed the message on the brownies went quiet. One of them disappeared and a moment later several dozen appeared around the speaker, all waiting silently.

The sound of a scooter carried from the road. “That’ll be the delivery,” Gavin said. He looked at Kat. “Can you help Carlos bring that in?”

Kat nodded and headed out to the road. She took the large bundle from Carlos, watching his curly black hair bounce as he ran to the trees. As she followed behind, she wondered about the stone. Should she let Gavin keep it? The brownies seemed to be okay with it, but a few baked goods every month is in no way payment for taking away a cultural artifact.

She set the bundle in the middle of the circle of stones and unwrapped it. The brownies’ eyes went wide, and Utlik chattered something at one of them who disappeared. The stone floated out from the trees and landed at Gavin’s feet. Kat stopped him before he could pick it up.

Kat faced Utlik and spoke slowly so Gwen could translate. “This is a treasure of your culture. Why do you give it away for a pittance? It seems he is taking advantage of you for his own gain.”

Utlik laughed. “No, we are taking advantage. Every time his ancestors brought us their food, they shared their blessings with us. We have grown healthy, strong, and numerous. This feast, though, is far too large for us, so we are inviting the nearby pixies and sprites, and you all, to join us. These blessings are all we ask in return.”

She walked down to the cake which stood taller than herself and pointed at one of the cookies. “One of these, and a bun, brings us enough love and luck to carry through the worst month. This,” she spread her arms wide, “is a blessing for a thousand.”

“It still feels wrong,” Kat said.

“When I made this deal with his ancestor,” Utlik said, “I expected food for the tribe, nothing more. After a few moons, though, that food brought us more. The magic of his people has given us far more than we could ever repay. Please, return the altar back to its rightful place above your ovens.”

Kat nodded, while Gavin and Carlos looked at each other in shock. “We have magic!?” they exclaimed.

“Yes,” Gwen said, “you do. We’d stay, but we already have a dinner engagement.” Kat and Gwen walked out of the park, holding hands, while overhead hundreds of flying fae buzzed past towards the woods.

Trunk Stories

Innocent…ish

prompt: Write about a character who everyone thinks is guilty of something terrible, but isn’t….
available at Reedsy

“I’m sorry, but you’re not the right person for the position.” Her plastic smile did nothing to hide the fear in her eyes. I was used to the look. It was a look that said, “Please don’t carve me up!”

Never mind that I never did such a thing, and anyone with enough intelligence to do any research would know that. Whatever. If their HR isn’t smart enough to do that, I don’t want to work for them, anyway. I’ve told myself that lie so many times I’m starting to believe it.

If the media hadn’t gotten involved from the beginning it wouldn’t be like this. The early news cycles were full of my picture and reporting that made it sound like I carved up my girlfriend and tried to do the same to my business partner. It made for entertaining TV; experts talking about how rare it is for women to be the perpetrators of this sort of crime.

When the truth came out, and my ex-business partner was arrested and charged with murder, the news ran it as a footnote. It just didn’t have the same sort of appeal. It was all too pedestrian to grab headlines. Caroline and James had an affair. I knew about it and was okay with it. James wasn’t. He decided if he couldn’t have her to himself, no one could.

I had come home early and heard screaming. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and ran to the back where the screaming had stopped. There was so much blood. It wasn’t clear who it was straddling Caroline’s body, slashing at it with one of our own knives. I stabbed as hard and fast as I could in his back. On the third strike it sunk to the hilt and got stuck there. He screamed and whipped around, brandishing the matching knife to the one that was stuck in his back. I ran.

I flagged down the first police car I saw. They didn’t hesitate to cuff me and put me in the back. When they sent another unit to my home, they found James bleeding out on top of Caroline, one knife stuck in his back, the other in his abdomen. He had some balls to stick himself like that. Still, didn’t look good for me.

Before the investigation was even properly underway the media was reporting on it as if I was guilty. Someone leaked the story to the local news station, and it went national from there. The consultancy business, our business, folded within the week.

When I went to trial for stabbing James, the prosecutor used the fact that I had stabbed him three times in the back as proof that it wasn’t self-defense. My attorney disagreed, in that the defense of a third party is treated the same. The jury found in my favor in less than twenty minutes of deliberation.

Still, the local media played it as a minor story, as they did with James’ trial. It just wasn’t sexy enough to maintain the spotlight. Still, it all would have died down, if not for the documentary.

I was never contacted about it and knew nothing about it until Caroline’s mother called to tell me they had been interviewed for it. The producers and director made it sound like I was jealous of Caroline and James and wanted to take his half of the business away from him. James was made to look like a victim, doing life for a crime that he didn’t commit.

Key pieces of evidence were left out of the documentary. James’ skin and blood under Caroline’s fingernails and the scratches on his neck. Her defensive wounds. The fact that I had none of Caroline’s blood on me, and my fingerprints were only on the knife in James’ back. My cell phone GPS data put me on the interstate at the time the first disturbance call about Caroline and James screaming at each other was called in. In essence, they ignored the entire body of evidence that was shown to the jurors that found James guilty of first-degree murder.

The documentary used snippets of the interviews with the prosecutor and District Attorney out of context to make it look like they had a vendetta against James from the beginning. Somehow, they got hold of my medical records and used my treatment for depression ten years prior to make me look crazy. Caroline’s older brother, who hated me, was featured prominently, while her mother, sister, and younger brother were ignored except for the “I miss her” parts — probably because they liked me and said good things about me.

With careful editing, in an entire eight-hour documentary series, they made me look guilty without saying I was. So, not enough for slander or libel charges to stick. Even if I had won in court, it wouldn’t matter. I’ll continue to be “guilty” in the eyes of everyone who hasn’t got the time or inclination to research anything for themselves.

Caroline’s younger brother, Stephan, has been wanting to do a documentary that shows all the evidence, but I advised against it. It would just feed the conspiracy crazy public into thinking that he and I had some sort of affair, never mind that I’m a lesbian. He ignored me though, and he’s been scouting for a director and trying to crowd-fund the production. If it ever happens, though, I’ll be there to tell the real story.

I’ve been staying in the cheapest one-room apartment I could find and working at a fast-food joint; the only place so far that would hire me. The manager’s convinced that it’s all part of some plot to cover up something from the consulting gig James was doing for the Department of Defense. How streamlining HR processes turns into a national security issue worthy of destroying lives is beyond me, though.

I worked the counter for half a day before I was recognized. The resulting disruption meant that I’ve been relegated to doing only the drudge work in the back. I have a master’s degree in Human Resources Management, and I flip burgers and push a mop for eight hours a day for minimum wage. At least I have work for now.

I moved away for a while. No matter how far I went though, I still got the stares and dirty looks. I figured that if I was going to be treated the same everywhere, it might as well be in a place I know.

Despite how the documentary made it sound, I did not kill my girlfriend. Of that, I am innocent. As far as trying to kill my former business partner, a jury called it defense, and found me not guilty. To be fair, though, in the moment, when I thought I could still save her, I did try. It’s given me a whole new mindset when watching these documentary series. No matter how guilty they may make a person look, I always remember they may be, like me, innocent…ish.

Trunk Stories

Katherine Quartz, MSW

prompt: Write about someone telling their family they won’t be continuing the long-standing family business….
available at Reedsy

For the third time in as many minutes, Kat checked her polished tusks for stray lipstick. Her waist-length onyx hair was piled into an elaborate up-do, held by two plain silver hairpins that had been her grandmother’s. The lipstick she kept re-checking was the same deep chocolate brown as her evening gown, setting off her ochre-yellow skin and deep green eyes.

“Kat, you look beautiful, quit stressing it.” At just a shade over five feet tall, Gwen stood as high as Kat’s armpits. Where Kat was a mountain of muscle in warm, earthy tones, Gwen was a wisp of pale pink with light violet eyes and white hair. Her dress was deep blue silk, showing off her odd coloration without clashing with Kat’s.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for this,” Kat said.

“You’ll see, everything will work out.” Gwen held a diamond necklace. “Sit, I’ll put this on you.”

Kat let Gwen put the necklace on, acutely aware that she was about to step out of the house wearing eighty-thousand dollars in diamonds around her neck. If they had been in Kat’s neighborhood, she would never even consider it. She looked at the sparkle of the necklace in the mirror, feeling like a queen. “You sure it’s okay?”

“Yes. They’re mine and I said so. Tonight’s going to be awesome!” Gwen tugged inefficiently at Kat’s hand trying to get her to stand up. “Let’s go, the limo’s waiting,” she said with a mock pout.

Even though she was only fifty-four, Kat often felt like the “adult” in the relationship compared to the nearly two-hundred-year-old Gwen. “Life isn’t a series of happy endings.”

“Sure it is, you just have to find them, like we just did… in the shower.”

“That’s not what, I meant and you know it.”

“It’ll be fine,” said Gwen. “Come on, Grumpy.”

Kat growled a low rumble, making Gwen giggle. “Fine, Squeaky.”

They arrived at the wrap party for the eighth and final season of Quartz Security, a reality TV show that centered around Kat’s parents and their private security business. Kat had been able to avoid the cameras by virtue of refusing to sign a release form, despite being hounded about it every year.

She didn’t want to be in the limelight, and yet here she was, stepping on to the red carpet to be with her girlfriend. The TV cameras and reporters hounded the couple as they walked hand-in-hand into the venue.

Once inside they were accosted by Gwen’s parents. Her mother was a few inches taller than Gwen, with the same pale skin but with ice-blue eyes, and dark brown hair. Her father was shorter than both of them, with dark, ash-grey skin, violet eyes, and pure white hair.

Kat offered her hand. “Good evening, Mister and Missus Blackrock.”

“Oh, please,” she said, “just Isobel and Thomas.”

Thomas looked around for a second with a puzzled expression. “Guinevere, where is this special—,“ he stopped when Isobel nudged him with her elbow.

She looked at their locked hands and said, “Well, dear, you said we’d be surprised. It seems your father is, for certain.”

“You’re dating…”

“Yes, Dad, I’m dating an orc. You’re a dark elf, mom’s a light elf, I’m a mixed-up elf and I’m dating an orc.”

“No, I mean…”

“Yes, Dad, she’s a girl, I’m a girl, we’re both girls.”

Isobel gave Kat a warm hug. “Never mind him. Welcome to the family.”

Thomas shook his head. “No! That’s not it. Orc, fine, girl, fine. You’re Katherine Quartz, right? George Quartz’s daughter?”

“I am,” Kat replied.

“You, uh…,” he paused, seeming to change gears, “you’ve worked so hard to keep away from the camera, but you’re here… and you’re dating the most well-known face in Hollywood.” His expression wasn’t a full-on flinch, but it was close. “I thought you wanted privacy?”

“First, I’m dating all of her, not just her face,” Kat said, eliciting a giggle from both Gwen and Isobel. “Second, Gwen is more important to me than my privacy. And third, I’m here because Gwen insisted.”

“I hope,” Isobel said, “that you don’t do everything Guinevere insists on.”

“God no. That would be tiring, and quite possibly dangerous!”

Gwen pouted. “Quit teasing.”

Kat pulled her in close and gave her a squeeze. “Okay, no more teasing… tonight.”

“If you see should see your mother, give her my regards,” Isobel said. “She’s a delightful woman.”

Kat noticed that Isobel said nothing about her father. She wondered what that was about but decided to let it rest.

She should have guessed the Blackrocks would be at the party. Their fading film careers were re-ignited following season four, when the Quartz Security team protected them from a stalker. After more than two centuries in show business, half of it in movies, they both had starring roles in current films. Gwen had already had some minor roles, one supporting actress role, and was in talks to play the lead in a science-fiction series.

“Well, Dad, Mother,” Gwen said, “we have someone else we need to talk to before Grumpy chickens out.”

They walked through the crowd, Gwen getting the attention of everyone they passed. Kat took her time, telling herself it was so Gwen could socialize. The real reason for the slow pace was the coming showdown. She feared it, but her best bet would be to do it now, in a very public setting.

At the other end of the room, they found George and Sarah Quartz, sitting on a sofa in front of cameras and engaged in an interview with an entertainment reporter. Kat stopped and looked around for a waiter.

“You need a drink, Grumpy?”

Kat nodded.

“I’ll be right back.” Gwen sailed through the crowd with the practiced grace that came from forty years of dance and etiquette training, and even more of attending fancy parties.

Within minutes, Kat wanted to leave; find Gwen and get out. She was planning her escape route when she was interrupted by a familiar voice.

“I’m surprised you came.” George Quartz stood seven feet and two inches; half a head taller than Kat. His brown eyes sat in a lined face, sun-darkened to a rich leather color, grey touching the edges of his signature buzz-cut he hadn’t changed since he fought in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. His right tusk was broken off an inch above his lip, while the left was a full, sharp three inches.

Sarah looked like an older version of Kat, her black hair worn in a traditional style: twin braids that went behind the shoulders then were looped back to the front and in loops outside the shoulder like aiguillettes. “Was that Guinevere Blackrock I saw you talking to?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah, her mother says hi. Gwen’s… uh…,” Kat faltered, looking around for Gwen. What a horrible time for her to leave her stranded.

“Her mother’s nice, makes a mean apple tart. But Guinevere… she’s what, dear?” Sarah asked.

Kat screwed up her courage and spoke. “Look, I know this isn’t the best time or place, but I’m quitting the security company. This is my two-week notice, along with the email I sent earlier today. I finished my MSW last year and I’m ready to find work as a social worker.” She added, in a near whisper, “and I’m dating Gwen.”

“You’re leaving?!” George bellowed, followed by a deep, rolling growl. “This business has been in our family since we guarded the Pony Express in 1860. And you quit?!”

“Please, George, she still has plenty of time to change her mind.” Sarah looked at Kat. “Isn’t that right, dear?”

“No, Mom, you don’t get it. I can’t do this. No more. I’ve worked for the family business all my life, and I’ve always said I wanted to do something different, something that helps those that need it the most.”

“Our clients need help,” George said, “your mother and I need help. I want to retire in a few years. If you leave, how am I supposed to do that?”

“You just retire. Maybe it’s time to let go. Keep ownership but turn over operations to someone else. Janice could run things, same as she does when you’re on vacation, or busy doing your TV stuff.”

“I thought I specifically left you in charge when we’re gone. What’s this about Janice?”

“You left me in charge, so I left Janice in charge. She’s better at it than I am.”

“You left Janice in charge of the security business? But she’s an elf!”

“And? Why does that matter?” Pink began to creep up Kat’s cheeks and the pointed tips of her ears. “Why does that matter!? She’s worked there longer than you’ve been alive! I should’ve known my father was a racist.”

“I’m not a racist,” he said, “I just… the job is dangerous and physically demanding, not something her kind is suited to.”

Sarah sucked on her tusks. “Um, dear, I think maybe you should reconsider what you just said.”

Gwen chose that moment to approach and squeeze next to Kat. She grabbed her hand and gave it a kiss. “Can we go, sweetheart? I’m getting tired.”

“What the…?” George took a breath and stopped himself before he said anything else.

Sarah asked, “Is that what you were whispering, dear? You two are dating?”

Kat nodded and George fumed silently.

“You look cute together.” Sarah began pushing George to the back-of-house area. “I think George needs a rest after all the interviews.” She looked at Gwen as she said, “I’m so sorry, dear.”

“Now I know why your mother didn’t send her regards to my father.” Kat tried to hold her tears but failed. Tears of anger at her father’s blatant racism, anger at her mother for putting up with it and shielding him, shame for being related to him, embarrassment from his outburst; most of all, though, anger at herself for not seeing it sooner.

Kat had stopped walking so Gwen held on to her. She couldn’t see through the tears, but she felt more arms wrap around her, guiding her. She let them lead her into a powder room where she dropped to her knees and wept.

“I’m sorry, Squeaky. My dad….”

“Shh, Grumpy, you’re not your dad.” Gwen’s kisses on her forehead were light, soothing.

“I’m, uh, sorry for my earlier reaction,” Thomas said. “I fear I let my interactions with your father color my perceptions, and for that I apologize. It was wrong of me to assume the worst of you.”

Isobel’s voice was soft. “Katherine… Kat, we can get you out to our limo the back way, away from the cameras. Would you like that?”

Kat nodded and sniffled. Gwen handed her a tissue and said, “That’s good, ‘cause your makeup is a mess.”

“We can drop you at your place, or would you rather go to Gwen’s?”

“I don’t think your limo would be safe in Westgate,” Kat said, “and I don’t want to be alone right now.”

“Gwen’s place it is,” Thomas said. “You should join us for dinner tomorrow.”

“Really, Dad?” Gwen asked. “Does now seem like the time to bring that up?”

“Do you love her, Guinevere?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“The simple kind,” he said. “Do you love Katherine?”

“Duh! Of course, I do.”

“From what she said earlier I’m guessing it’s mutual,” he said.

Kat nodded.

“What’s that got to do with dinner?”

“You need to bring your girlfriend over for dinner so your parents can embarrass you properly,” he said, “it’s in the parent contract. Tomorrow just happens to work with our schedule.”

“We’re not going to embarrass her, Thomas,” Isobel said, “but we would like to have you both over.”

In a softer tone he added, “It also seems like she could use some family about now.”

“Can I decide in the morning?” Kat asked.

“Of course, you can. Thomas, help the young lady up so we can get out of here.”

The limo ride was silent until Isobel spoke up. “So, you’re going to be a social worker?”

Kat nodded. “Did Gwen tell you?”

Isobel turned away. “No, we— heard the whole thing… along with every camera in the place.”

The tears started up again. “I’m so sorry.”

“No. You have nothing to apologize for.” Thomas patted Kat’s knee. “You stood up to your father and let him know his views aren’t okay.”

Isobel said, “What I wanted to say is, I think you’ll do great. You obviously care about others. That’s important for that kind of work.”

Kat sniffled. “It pays for shit, though, and I think I just screwed myself out of an inheritance.”

Gwen snuggled closer. “That’s okay, I’ll be your sugar mama.”

Kat tickled her rib making her squeal. “Thanks, Squeaky.”

Thomas smirked and said, “That’s where that nickname comes from.”

Isobel laughed a genuine, open laugh and said, “I meant what I said earlier. Welcome to the family.”

Gwen wiped away Kat’s tears. “See, I told you it would work out.”

Trunk Stories

Constant Cloud in the Land of the Midnight Sun

prompt: Start your story with the line, “It had been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same,” and end it with, “[…] and that was all that mattered.”…
available at Reedsy

It had been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same. The short, forty-story blocks in a cluster at the head of the inlet. Below, the dock and boat launch, and even the fish farm boats seemed to have been frozen in time.

The wind on the rooftop park blew Jak’s tangled curls of dark blue hair into a halo around her mahogany face and bright brown eyes. She put an arm around Sina. “This is pretty much the same as when I left here.”

“It feels so small,” Sina said. The afternoon sun gave her olive skin a warm glow, her jet hair tied back in a braid shone like silk and her dark green eyes sparkled. “The blocks are so short, and there’s so few of them. This block is really only forty stories?”

“There’s never been a need for full, hundred-story blocks here. Welcome to Maud City, Antarctica.”

“I thought there would be snow,” Sina said. “I mean, yeah, it’s summer and all, but I thought there would be, like, mountains with snow or something.”

“Still excited for the job?”

“Oh, yeah! I don’t know much about the area, but the people I talked to in the interviews were nice, and it seems like a good position. They want me to make murals for them,” she said, barely stopping for a breath. “It’s not like I’ll be climbing up the buildings painting them, but I’m to design them and then the robots will do the painting. They’re neat little things, look kind of like bugs, but not as icky, and they climb up the building and each one paints only one color. Hundreds of them at once, and they say they can do an entire side of a block in just a week. It’s like…,” she blushed and dropped her head. “Sorry, I’m babbling again.”

Jak kissed her forehead. “It’s okay. I like seeing you excited like this.”

“But you didn’t have to come,” she said. “I mean, there’s no construction here, where will you work?” Her eyes shot wide. “I—I’m not saying I don’t want you here, not at all. I’m glad you came, but what will you do?”

Jak pointed at the boats in the harbor. “See all those boats? They go out to the fish farms every day, and there’s never enough mechanics to maintain them all.”

“Oh, you must have checked ahead.” Sina shook her head. “What am I saying? Of course, you checked ahead. And you grew up here? I mean, at first… when you were just little.”

“I didn’t check ahead, but I remember what it was like.” Jak chuckled. “Let’s go back to our flat and change. We’re going to the Cold Cod.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a bar and grill. Heritage site. Been here since before the Federation.” Jak took Sina’s hand and led her to the lift. “The original was built during the end of the water wars.”

“The original?”

“It burned down a few times. At least the insides did. The outside of the building is stone.”

“But it’s still a heritage site?”

“Yeah,” Jak said, “the current interior was built about two hundred years ago. The outside hasn’t changed in over four hundred years.”

“So, is it a museum?”

“Could be,” Jak said, “but it’s a working bar. Ever had real fish?”

“Who can afford that? Besides, fish is bland and mushy, even the lab-grown kind.”

“Promise me you will try real fish, just this once.”

“If it will make you happy.”

They stepped out of the taxi in front of a low stone building with a sign bearing a silver suit of armor with a blue crotch sporting icicles. Sina stopped and stared at the sign. “I don’t get it. Why armor? Although, that looks like it would be really uncomfortable to be cold there.”

Jak gave her moment to figure it out.

“Oh! Cod, like codpiece.” Sina laughed. “I thought it was named for the fish.”

“Yeah, when this was built there was no fishing here,” Jak said. “Just the last rush of ice mining.”

“So, what’s that little building over there with all the antennas, behind the big gates?”

“That’s the Federation Defense Force Signals Intelligence base. We always just called it ‘The Cave,’ though. Rumor has it that it’s actually really huge, but all built underground.”

“You believe that?”

“No,” Jak said, “there’s never enough soldiers around to fill anything bigger than what you see.”

The crowd inside was noisy, the holos displaying a football game between two teams from far-flung colony worlds, with some people cheering when others booed and vice-versa. Jak led Sina to a large communal table where there were a few seats left. She selected two real cod and chips meals and a pitcher of beer with two glasses from the tablet menu and scanned her ident to pay.

“Jak,” Sina said, “that’s too expensive! You should’ve gotten one and I could taste it. I’d be okay with a ham-style protein.”

“No,” Jak said, “tonight is a celebration! Your big break in the art world!”

Their food and beer were brought to the table by a small, pale, bald man, sharp blue eyes peering from beneath heavy blonde eyebrows over perpetually pink cheeks.

“Oh gods! Mister Marcus,” Jak said, “you’re still here!”

“I am,” he said. “Your mother told me you were coming today. I’d hoped you would stop in, and it seems my hopes were well-founded.”

“It’s good to see you, Mister Marcus. You haven’t aged a day.”

He shook his head. “Not true, but look at you, all grown up, a handsome woman. And you don’t need to call me Mister anymore, just Marcus. You look so much like your mother it’s unreal.”

Jak laughed. “Marcus, this is Sina.”

“Nice to meet you, Marcus.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Sina. Take care of Jak now, she likes to get herself into trouble,” he said with a wink.

“A—actually, I think that’s more my thing,” Sina said.

He laughed. “I’ll leave you kids alone. Stop in any time, even if it’s just for a subsidy meal.”

“Thanks, Marcus,” Jak said. “Dig in, Sweets.”

Sina took a hesitant bite of the batter-fried fish and her eyes went wide. “This is… good. It doesn’t taste like fish, though.”

“No, this is fish. ‘Fish-style protein’ doesn’t taste like fish, and neither does the lab-grown stuff.”

They finished their meals and the pitcher of beer. “I like this place,” Sina said. “I can see why you would have fond memories of it.”

“Hey, you showed me your childhood hangouts, now I get to show you mine.”

“Yeah, but a rooftop play yard on Block 214 isn’t as cool as a 400-year-old bar.”

“But my name’s not carved in any walls here.”

Sina leaned her head on Jak’s shoulder. “I think maybe this place carves itself into you, instead.”

“Could be. Let’s get out of here.”

They stepped out into the early evening light and Jak belched, the sound echoing off the buildings.

“Why do you have to be disgusting?” Sina asked.

“At least I didn’t do it inside,” she said.

“Well, you’re learning.” Sina took her hand and led her to the taxi stand. “Maybe Marcus is right, and I’m meant to keep you out of trouble.”

Jak laughed. “Just as soon as I get you domesticated.”

“Why? I’ve got you to pick up after me.” Sina stuck her tongue out and waved her ident at the taxi door to open it up.

“Hey, this was supposed to be my treat.”

“Come on, grumpy. Let’s go spend the rest of the day laying around watching the holo.”

“You do know it’s almost 23:00, right? Your appointment is at 08:00 tomorrow.”

“But the sun…”

“Won’t set any time soon. Land of the midnight sun?”

“Oh,” Sina said, “this is going to be hard to get used to.”

“Not really, unless you get a flat with a window. If you have one, though, the summers aren’t so bad, but the winters get real dark.”

The automated taxi dropped them off in the minus one floor at the lift closest to their flat. They rode up in silence to the 30^th floor.

“Can you imagine what it would cost to get a 30^th floor flat in Bamako?” Sina asked. “It would take most of our income. I wonder if we can get a third floor flat for that here?”

“I doubt it,” Jak said. “There’s far fewer of the non-subsidy flats. Besides, I think the rent rates are set by the Fed, so they’d be the same everywhere.”

They settled into bed and the long day of travel overtook them. By the time Jak awoke, Sina was already dressed and had coffee waiting. Jak sat up and looked at Sina’s clothes from the previous day, strewn about the one-room flat. She was going to say something but thought better of it.

“Coffee for you,” Sina said. “I ordered from the grocery and had some stuff delivered.”

“You’re a goddess,” Jak said. “Messy, but a goddess.”

“Then you’re my high priestess.” Sina handed Jak her coffee and gave her a quick kiss. “Well, the goddess has a planning meeting to get to, and the high priestess needs her caffeine. I’ll call around lunch.”

“See you later.” Jak watched Sina leave, then jumped out of bed. She put Sina’s clothes in the cleaner with her own, made the bed, showered, cleaned up Sina’s mess in the bathroom, dressed, and finally, sat down to enjoy her now-tepid coffee.

She sent off a quick message to her mother, then checked the grocery situation. “Typical Sina.” The groceries she’d had delivered included instant coffee, ready-meals, chocolate, ice cream, creme cakes, and hard candies. Since she needed to register with the jobs office on floor zero, Jak decided she’d pick up some real groceries on the way home.

At the jobs office she found at least one thing had changed since she’d been here last: there were far too many mechanics for the jobs available. Still, she put her name on the list. They didn’t need the money, as the flat was a subsidy flat, and basic food, health care and clothing were guaranteed to all citizens, but she couldn’t sit around doing nothing, and she couldn’t handle living on subsidy ready-meals.

Jak strolled through the grocery, far more concerned about the remaining credits in her account than she had been just an hour earlier. She bypassed several luxuries that she would have enjoyed, focusing instead on staples and less expensive alternatives. Instead of herbs and spices she selected flavoring packets; instead of lab-grown meat she selected pork-style protein.

As she perused the produce section, looking for the lowest-cost potatoes and onions, a deep red caught her eye. Fresh raspberries; Sina would love them. They were natural raspberries, grown locally outdoors. The year-round, hydroponic variety across the aisle were cheaper, but inferior by a wide margin. With a determined huff she added a tray of the good berries to her bag. She winced internally when her comm showed how much she’d been charged for them but carried on.

Back in the flat, she put the groceries away and straightened up the kitchen. She spent the next hour wandering in circles around the flat, trying to figure out what to do to keep herself sane. Maybe I should’ve stayed in Bamako, she thought, then realized she’d miss Sina too much.

Sina called just after 13:00 and Jak put her on the holo. Sina was beaming, her normally bright smile turned up to the max. “Hey Jak! Hope your day is as good as mine!” she chirped.

Jak tried to force a smile. “Signed up at the jobs office and picked up some groceries.”

Sina’s smile dropped. “You don’t sound good. What happened?”

“There’s more mechanics than jobs.”

Sina winked. “That’s okay, you can be my stay-at-home high priestess. The goddess is making enough to keep you entertained now.”

“It’s not that,” Jak said. “I don’t really care about the money. I just don’t know what to do with myself.”

“Well, we know I’m a slob, so—”

“I had the place clean less than an hour after left,” Jak said, “and now….”

The rest of the week played out very much the same. The constant cloud hanging over Jak took all the air out of the flat. Sina tried everything she could think of to cheer her up, but it never lasted to the morning. Jak began to worry that her mood was going to force Sina to send her back to Bamako.

On her sixth straight day of work Sina called, and before Jak could say anything said, “Meet me at the Cold Cod at 17:00. My treat this time, and we’ll figure something out.” Sina looked at Jak with one of her rare, soft moods. “We’ll make it work, promise.”

“I love you, too.” They disconnected and Jak flopped onto the bed. She set an alarm for 16:30 to give herself time to get there. She checked her comm to see how much time had passed… twenty minutes. The next time she tried to wait longer and checked again; only twelve minutes had passed. Jak closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, trying to will the whirling thoughts away.

The alarm jolted her to consciousness, and she jumped up, about to get ready for work, then remembered where she was. She worked out her curls with her fingers the best she could, then headed out. Instead of taking a taxi she hopped on a bus. It would take longer to get there, and wasn’t a direct route, but at least it wasn’t costing any credits.

When she stepped off the bus at the Cod, Sina was talking with Marcus out front. He motioned her over and said, “I hear you’re having trouble keeping busy.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I never would’ve thought there’d be too many mechanics.”

“That only lasts until winter,” he said. “Then it’s more work than you can handle.”

“Can’t come soon enough.”

“In the meantime, Sina tells me you’re a good cook.”

“I’m okay, I guess. For cooking at home, that is.”

“I have an offer: you come in here, cook whatever the two of you want for dinner and it’s on the house. If I like the way you work, and you want to work here, I can give you as many hours as you want… until winter.”

Sina’s eyes were wide, expectation clear on her face. “Well?”

“Did you set this up?” Jak asked.

Sina nodded, a concerned look crossing her face.

“Stop that, you. I’ll take you up on that, Marcus.” Jak smiled. “You have steak, mushrooms, beef stock, and egg noodles?”

“Of course. Lab-grown steak, not steak-style protein.”

“How does beef stroganoff sound?”

“Only if you make three,” Sina said. “Marcus should eat with us.”

“Deal,” Marcus said. “Now, let’s get you in the kitchen and make sure you don’t burn the place down.”

Most of the kitchen was automated, including the fryers and grills. Jak moved away from those to the unoccupied manual section of the kitchen. Marcus watched from a distance as she sliced, sautéed, and made the sauce while a pot of water waited for the noodles. She added the noodles to the water and the beef to the sauce, and in just a few more minutes it was done. Thirty minutes start to finish.

She plated three large servings and looked to Marcus for approval. Cooking at home was fine, but it felt better, somehow, to be cooking in an industrial kitchen. Still, it took her a while, and she didn’t think that would be something that would be okay in a busy place like the Cod.

The three of them sat down to eat. Sina and Jak watched for Marcus’ reaction. He took the first bite and nodded. “I would’ve added a touch more garlic, but this is very good. If you want a job here, you’ve got it.”

“I don’t know the first thing about your fryers or any of that.”

“You can learn,” he said. “You have the basics, and your timing is good.”

“But it takes me so long…”

“That comes with practice. I bet you weren’t a fast mechanic when you first started.”

“No,” Jak said, still unsure about it all. “If you’re just doing this because you know my mother…”

“Hush. I’m doing this because I need help, and Sina needs help keeping you out of trouble.”

Sina grabbed her hand under the table. “Can I start tomorrow?” Jak asked. It wasn’t her first choice for work, but it would keep her busy until the winter, and she wouldn’t have to leave. She could stay here with the woman she loved, and that was all that mattered.

Trunk Stories

Insomnia

prompt: Write a thriller about someone who witnesses a murder… except there’s no evidence that a murder took place….
available at Reedsy

Unable to sleep again, Miria padded around the escort cruiser Karan barefoot. She wasn’t due on shift for another four hours, so she wandered with no fixed destination in mind. Stopping at one of the viewports, she touched the control to turn the window clear. The even, dull grey of super-c travel filled the view; changeless in all directions and so flat in color that the distance of the warp bubble wall could be just outside the window or hundreds of kilometers away.

She knew the distance to the bubble, of course. From this section of the ship, it was just over sixteen meters to the warp bubble; from her duty seat on the bridge, it was exactly four meters. Miria watched the even grey, hoping to see the occasional spark of random hydrogen atoms being split apart against the field. What she didn’t expect to see, however, was a body floating away from the ship to be disintegrated into sub-atomic particles in a chain-reaction of bright flashes.

Miria slammed the emergency alarm by the window but nothing happened. The door further ahead that led to the airlock beeped and opened. She darkened the window and ducked into the doorway to the mess. She waited until she heard booted footsteps walking away from her to peek. The person walking away was medium height and build, wearing a sterile-room uniform complete with gloves and hood.

She knew she could get their ident to show up on her comm if she got close enough but feared what might happen if she did. Instead, she slipped into the mess and called the commander, voice only, on the comm. “Colonel Shriber, it’s Captain Blake. I’m sorry to wake you.”

“What’s the emergency, Captain?”

“I just saw someone go out the airlock,” she said, “vaporized on the bubble wall.”

“Where are the alarms?”

“I tried the alarm, but it wasn’t responding.” Miria moved deeper into the mess, fearing someone in the corridor might hear her. “And when someone in a sterile-room uniform came out of the airlock passage I hid. I ducked into the mess and called you.”

“Sit tight, Blake,” the Colonel said. “I’m sending someone over.”

Miria spent the next three hours with Major Bankole, chief of security. She explained the whole story and followed along as the Major checked the door logs and swept for any evidence in the airlock itself.

“I’m sorry, Blake, but I’m not finding anything.”

“Sir, can we at least look at the corridor security logs?”

“Sure,” he said. “Let’s go to my office.”

He pulled up the corridor holo logs and they watched an empty corridor.

“That’s not right,” Miria said, “I was there, watching for–”

“This has been tampered. Six minutes are missing.” The Major scrolled the holo backward and forward slowly, the timestamp jumping back and forth. “Captain, what were you doing in the corridor?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, “so I was taking a walk. Watching the super-c bubble sometimes help me clear my mind.”

“And do you do this often?” he asked.

“A few times a week, lately. The long runs mess with my sleep.”

He fixed her with a stern gaze. “Captain, you are not to discuss this with anyone other myself and the Colonel, understand?”

“Yes, sir.” She looked at the frozen holo of the empty corridor. “Who would be able to erase the holo logs?”

“A few people.” He sighed. “First thing, though, is to figure out who, if anyone, is missing. Meanwhile, you should get ready for duty. You’re due on the bridge in forty minutes.”

She gave a crisp salute. “Yes, sir!”

Miria reported to the bridge, replacing the third-shift navigator. She went through her start of shift checklist. She checked the crew and visitor manifest and the 1,938 crew, and sixteen civilians were accounted for by their ident. There was a Member of Parliament aboard, with support and security staff, and a handful of reporters. Total deck weight, though, was 70.76 kilograms below the stated deck weight when they entered the gate out of the Sol system.

In normal circumstances, deck weight, or more formally, non-fuel mass, didn’t change. In fact, the only thing that could change deck weight was throwing something, or someone… off the ship. She checked the third watch logs for any notifications of the change in deck weight. The logs mentioned an outage in all internal sensors that lasted six minutes, but the deck weight was not among the items checked when the sensors came back online.

Miria finished her start of shift checklist, noting the changed deck weight as it impacted fuel consumption and was ready to settle into her shift when the Colonel arrived on the bridge.

“Captain Blake, my office, please.”

“Yes, sir.” Miria turned to her right and addressed the junior navigation officer. “Lieutenant Mendoza, run a re-calculation of fuel consumption based on the new deck weight, and give me an update of shield stats.”

“Yes, sir,” the young Lieutenant said.

Miria entered the ready room off the bridge. She shut the door and snapped to attention. “Sir!” While the Colonel had a larger office off the main corridor, it was mostly used for briefings and any time more than four people needed to meet.

“At ease, have a seat. Bankole told me you’ve not been sleeping?” Shriber motioned to the spot next to her on the sofa.

Miria sat. “No, sir. At least not very well.” Miria sighed. “These long jumps mess with my sleep.”

“And you’ve been wandering the ship in bare feet?”

“I, uh,” she stammered, “y—yes, sir.”

“Miria, until you walk out of this room, we’re dispensing with the formality. Call me Liza and tell me what’s going on.”

“Si—Liza, I’m sure you already heard the report I gave to Bankole. Our deck weight is down almost seventy-one kilos.”

Shriber leaned forward. “That’s… we’ll come back to that, but that’s not what I meant. Tell me what’s going on with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not sleeping, you’re wandering the ship barefoot in pajamas, and you panicked when you thought you witnessed a crime.” The worry line between her eyes became pronounced. “That’s not like you. You’re not one to run and hide and call for help. Why didn’t you follow?”

“I—I’m not sure,” Miria said. “I didn’t feel safe… not like I usually do.”

“You grew up on a ship,” Shriber said, “most of us didn’t. We grew up on planets, a few on stations, but you’re the most comfortable person on a ship I’ve ever met. If I wanted to, I could cite you for violating safety policy by not wearing mag boots when around the ship, but you’re the last person I’d worry about getting hurt if we lost grav.”

“Thank you.”

“When we had the fire in the grav generator last year, you were the first one there. You didn’t hesitate to turn off your mag boots to grab an extinguisher and get there faster. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone use an extinguisher as a propulsion device while putting out a fire with it at the same time.” She pointed to Miria’s chest. “Your actions earned you that commendation and, if I remember correctly, one hell of a concussion and a fractured wrist.”

“What’s your point? That I’m reckless?”

“No,” she said, putting a hand on Miria’s shoulder, “that you don’t run from trouble. You run to it. That’s how I knew something was wrong when you called me, scared.”

“I…,” Miria began.

“Listen, you’re one of the best officers I have. You don’t know this, and you didn’t hear it from me, but we’re having a rescue training drill sometime between 23:00 and 04:00. I need you all there. Our guest,” the word dripped with disdain, “will be watching.”

“Yes, si— Liza.”

“So,” Shriber said, “I want you to report to the medic; get something to help you sleep. You need it. Take the rest of the shift off and I’ll see you later.”

“What about the deck weight? And the other…?”

“Bankole is investigating. With the shift in deck weight, it certainly looks like someone tossed something out the airlock while in super-c. That’s an offense right there. But the Major tells me all persons are accounted for.”

“Yeah, I looked at that first thing, too. 1,938 crew and sixteen civilians.”

Shriber’s eyes narrowed. “You mean seventeen civilians, right?”

“No, there’s only 16 civilians on the manifest.”

“Shit. You go get some sleep. Don’t talk about this with anyone but me. That includes Bankole.” The Colonel’s tone left no doubt that she was giving a direct order.

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

Miria sat on her bunk and looked at the pills from the medic. Two small, yellow pills that would put her to sleep. Breathing a heavy sigh, she swallowed the pills and lay down, still in her full uniform. As sleep overtook her, a thought rattled around in her brain; seventy-plus kilos of high energy particles on the bubble wall.

The alarms jolted her to consciousness. Her last thought before sleep slammed back into mind: Seventy-plus kilos of high energy particles…. Miria bolted for the bridge. The alarm changed, four short chirps — they would be dropping out of super-c.

She ran to the navigation station and took the unoccupied assist position and took control of navigation from there. “Captain, what are you…?”

“No time, Lieutenant Koln.” Miria was curt. “Prep for extra de-bubble shielding. Seventy-one kilograms.”

“Kilos? Don’t you mean milligrams?”

“No! Kilos!” Miria got ready to divert the energy currently used to hold the ship to the warp bubble to the shielding which would push the high-energy particles away. “We lost a comm tower,” she lied, “and I don’t want any of that blowing back on us.”

“Yes, sir! Seventy-one kilos input, calculations complete.”

Colonel Shriber called out to the bridge, “Dropping to sub-c in thirty seconds.”

“Thirty seconds, aye!” the bridge crew shouted.

The Colonel watched the time on her terminal and called, “Drop!”

Miria shut down the warp bubble containment and dragged the shield power sliders up full, while Lieutenant Koln watched. The steady grey nothing of super-c was replaced with a flash of blinding white and then the darkness of space. The shield held and Miria let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

She looked at Koln. “If you don’t mind, I’d like my seat back, please.”

“Of course, sir.” They switched chairs and Miria pulled control back to the main navigation console.

“Navigation, report.”

“Current location, sector Fox Alpha 349, bearing to Bul system gate locked in.”

“Comms, report.”

“Wormhole stable— we have interstellar; comm tower deploying, twenty seconds to local.”

The bridge sat silent, many just now noticing the interlopers standing just inside the entrance. A Member of Parliament and a handful of reporters. The parliamentary police detail was stationed outside the door of the bridge. As actual members of the Federation Defense Force, they probably had more right to be there than the civilians, but it wasn’t something anyone, including the Colonel, was likely to mention.

“Sir, distress beacon, 14,323 kilometers, heading left 64.2957, up 18.3001.”

Miria plotted a course to the indicated beacon and readied it on her console. “Course ready, sir.”

“Let’s go pick it up,” Shriber said.

Miria thumbed the command in, “Course laid in.” She switched the ship to auto. “Engaged.”

“Comms, identify beacon source.”

“Emergency escape pod, two-person, steering thrusters only.”

The Colonel entered a command on her terminal, starting a new alarm deep in the ship. “Engineering and security: prepare for pickup. Two-person pod, load through cargo lock Delta.”

The response came back a few seconds later. “Cargo lock Delta clear, ready for pickup of two-person pod. Security in place, tow-line throwers locked and loaded.”

With nothing to do but wait, Shriber spoke with the politician on her bridge. Miria decided she’d take advantage of the interstellar comms and loaded in the latest news. Just the headline stories and the latest football scores.

The civilian entourage left to watch the retrieval process and Shriber breathed a sigh of relief. “First watch, except Captain Blake, go back to bed. Captain Blake, my office.”

Miria followed her into the ready room and closed the door behind herself. Before she could speak, the Colonel did. “What was that about a comm tower?”

“Sorry, sir. I had to think of something to explain more than seventy kilos of material in the bubble.”

“Yeah, good thinking. But why the hell was Koln questioning you in the first place? You going to write him up?”

“I’ll talk with him,” she said. “In this case, though, I understand the push-back. If my superior was just rousted from sleep and told me to expect anything more than a few milligrams of material I’d be concerned it was a mistake, too.”

“Still, not the right way to raise his concern. Speaking of, how did the shields fare?”

“We did fine. Captured about a thousand times as much as a normal de-bubble, reflected the rest. If we’d stripped the bubble in a gate, the gate would have been destroyed.”

The Colonel pointed to the sofa as she crossed the room. “Join me for a coffee, Miria?”

“Yes, thank you s— Liza.”

“While we’re en route to the pod I took the liberty of updating my comm with the latest news.”

Miria laughed. “You, me, and probably half the ship.”

Shriber returned with two cups of coffee and sat. “You said sixteen civilians. I signed seventeen on. I keep an off-line copy of every manifest I sign.”

“So, we know who’s missing?”

“We do. A reporter.”

Miria checked her comm. The headlines were about the disappearance of a reporter who was logged at the gate for the Karan but never boarded and disappeared. The same reporter who had exposed a bribery scandal that had unseated two MPs and was said to be investigating another scandal. She showed the story to the Colonel.

“Motive and opportunity,” Shriber said, “but without evidence it isn’t enough.”

“Do you think we can find any?”

“I don’t know, but you and I are going to meet with the Criminal Investigation Department when we get to the Bul system. Until then, Miria, all that happened is we lost part of comm tower six.”

“I understand.”

“Which reminds me–” Shriber tapped her comm. “Comm tower six is now marked as down due to breakage.”

Miria finished her coffee and took the empty cups to the sideboard. “So, what do we do in the meantime?”

“We’ve got a pod coming in, and you’ll need to recalculate fuel usage for the new deck weight, then we need to finish our trip and get rid of the civvies. I would send you back to bed, but it seems Koln could use some direct guidance.”

“And Major Bankole?”

“As soon as the civilians are gone, he’ll be locked up, pending CID investigation,” she said. “It wouldn’t look good to do that while he’s leading his friend from parliament around on a tour.”

“Do you really think it was him?” Miria asked. “He said there were a few people that could alter the logs.”

“The logs weren’t altered; they just weren’t recorded. He is the only person on this ship that can disable all the internal sensors, override the alarms, and alter the manifest.”

“Should I be concerned?”

“I’ve been talking with him every chance I get,” Shriber said, “and I’ve got him convinced that we are sure that you were hallucinating due to lack of sleep. He also doesn’t know that I keep an off-line copy of the manifest.”

“What happens if CID can’t find anything?”

“At the very least, disabling the logs and sensors is a felony. Dishonorable discharge and six months.”

“I was going to ask how you can prove that but it’s probably better I don’t know.”

“You’re right,” Shriber said, “now, let’s get back to work and pick up the training pod so we can get home.”

Trunk Stories

Carla’s Well

prompt: Write about a contest with life or death stakes….
available at Reedsy

I’m going to die. The thought that ran through my head. No matter how hard I tried to shake it, the words echoed like a dark mantra.

The sun hung low in the sky, daylight running out on me. Force of will kept my legs moving, a long-stride lope that ate miles faster than it ate my energy. My only hope for survival was the fact that I had survived this long already.

“Carla, it’s up to you,” Micah had said, his long grey beard flapping with every word. He fixed me with his steel-grey eyes, his oil-tanned leather face craggy with years of exposure.

“What do I need to do?”

He handed me a satchel. “There’s enough explosive in here to seal up the well-head, or….”

“Or?”

“If they get there first you can at least destroy their vehicles,” he said, “give us time for the caravan to show up.”

“And if I seal the well,” I asked, “what good does that do us?”

“It’s better if you don’t know all the details,” he said, patting me on the shoulder. “But you need to run, now!”

I wondered how far the caravan had come since I left this morning, and how far ahead of them the raiders were. When Jacob returned in the night, the decision was made to send a runner to “protect” the well. On foot the distance was shorter, as a runner could cross the ravine on the rope bridge. The raiders’ vehicles, like the caravan, however, would have to detour around the ravine. Even once past that obstacle, rough ground made for a slow ride.

It occurred to me, before I’d even left, that this was a one-way trip for me. If I beat the raiders there and capped the well, I’d be too exhausted to outrun them from there. If they beat me there, well, I’d take as many of them with me as I could.

As I ran, I chanted the names of the people in the caravan whose lives I was fighting for; “Caleb, Micah, Sarah, Tillie, Sam, Monique, Ty, Marisol, Denny, Donna….” Even as I remembered each of their faces, the thought that I would never see them again took over. I’m going to die.

The hills were growing in front of me. I had the thought that I might make it there before the raiders. I was still troubled by the thought of capping the well, though. Without it, our crops would die. Unlike a well that relied on a large aquifer, it was a dry well in the high summer, refilling with snowmelt off the mountains and what little rain we did see.

Despite our care in burying our pipes and planting our crops in places too inaccessible to be found accidentally, the raiders had found one of our fields. After capturing Jacob with a bag full of cabbages and beans, they tortured him until he told them where the crop was and how it was watered. They stripped the field while Jacob escaped back to the caravan. What frightened us most was that they had a water tanker. Not large enough to steal all the water at once, but it could take between a third and a half of it; enough that we would lose most of our crops.

Losing the crops would mean the loss of the small game that gathered around the fields for food and water. Meaning we would lose our main source of meat as well. I squashed the desire to run faster, knowing that it would tire me out before I could reach the well.

The rise into the foothills was on me before I knew it. From here there was only a narrow path to the well. To the left, a steep wall that often dropped boulders into the track; to the right, a drop-off that grew more treacherous as the track ascended. Nestled at the end of the track, in a natural nook of the mountains, lay our well. Six years of work blasting, digging, and moving the stone in order to catch the run-off that burbled out of the cliff wall behind it. Six years of work followed by nine of survival by careful placement of irrigation and tending to crops in areas that previously only contained harsh scrub.

Still I ran up the track, keeping my objective in mind. I’m going to die. No! Protect the well!

The track narrowed as I neared the well, a large section having broken loose on the right and fallen into the ravine. Micah said once that it had been a river and from here it was obvious where it had cut through the landscape. It hadn’t seen water in forty or fifty years, though.

I reached the well and stopped for a breath. My legs threatened to buckle under me, so I kept moving, walking around. That’s when I saw it; the cloud of dust in the distance. The raiders were close. I opened the satchel and looked at the five charges. All we had left. Together with my two magazines of 9mm ammo and a knife I was meant to stop a band of raiders with automatic weapons and trucks.

I examined the rock wall behind the well. Somehow, I needed to blast in such a way that a slab would drop over the well, without filling it with debris and forcing all the water out. I looked back out to the cloud of dust moving my direction. I was given two choices: cap the well or destroy their vehicles. I just have to give the caravan time to get here.

It would take precious time I didn’t have to place the explosives; plus, I’d have to climb, and I wasn’t sure I had it in me. The track, however…. I made up my mind. Returning to the point where the track was narrowest, where the side had collapsed, I placed the first charge in a crack near the center. I covered the charge and the wire to the detonator under the loose sand and gravel of the track.

I looked again at the dust plume, trying to gauge how many trucks they might have. If they were traveling in tight formation, there may be as many as fifteen or twenty. More likely, though, they were traveling spread out. It’s the way to keep from losing more than one vehicle at a time.

I paced off the space of seven large trucks. With the explosives I had it would be at the outside range for my plan. With my knife I dug a small pit in the middle of the track, where I set in the second charge and buried it and its wires as I did with the first. Then, spacing them evenly between the two outside charges I set the remaining three in nooks in the cliffside, about three feet above the road surface.

I packed as much gravel as I could around those three charges, hoping it would serve as shrapnel. I dropped the wires down the low side of the track. It would be safer to do this from above, but that would put them on the wrong side of the road; besides, I was pretty sure I could climb down, but not up.

I clambered partway down the wall where an overhang offered me a hide and gathered up the wires. The three center charges I wired together, with the first and last on their own. It would require touching the wires to the battery I carried; sort of a frontier detonator. The raiders started up the track as I finished setting up the wires.

The first vehicle was a military truck with a machine gun on top. Behind that was the water tanker. Then three more military trucks like the first, a bus, and a cargo hauler bringing up the rear. They stayed spread out, but picked up speed on the track, their electric motors whining. I’d seen it before when we had to drive one of the caravan vehicles up; the driver gets nervous and wants to get through it as quickly as possible.

I held one wire to the battery and the second an inch away, waiting for the lead truck to reach the charge highest up the hill. As it passed over, I touched the wire and truck bucked up in the front, a cloud of smoke and dust filling the space it had just been, even as the boom of the explosion made my vision blur and my ears ring.

I grabbed the wires for the charge lowest on the hill and held it ready. The raiders’ vehicles closed up on each other, the tanker unable to stop in time rammed into the back of the burning truck, sending it tumbling off the side of the track which was now even narrower than it had been. It missed me by just a stone’s throw. The convoy stopped at the point where the bus was two thirds over the charge I held the wires for. Touch. Boom! The bus split open, fire spreading through the entire thing in a flash. It had ignited the batteries beneath the bus, burning with a blinding white flame. I could feel the heat, even from here.

The last three charges would work best if I could get most of the raiders out of their trucks. There was no place to turn around, nowhere for them to go, except on foot. I pulled out my pistol and fired six shots into the tanker. “Get away from my well!” I screamed. I followed that with two into one of the military trucks. It wouldn’t penetrate, but the raiders knew I was on the downhill slope. They scrambled out of their trucks, taking shelter behind them, exposing themselves to the cliff wall at their rear. Touch. Boom-boom-boom! A hailstorm of gravel tore through them and rained down on me. I couldn’t see through the dust and smoke, and could barely hear, except for a high-pitched whine; a tone that I’d never heard before.

I made my way down the wall to the dry riverbed, then followed that downhill. I could see the cargo truck, still backing down the last few yards of the hill. One of the raiders was outside and behind, guiding the truck down. I slipped up onto the road in front of the truck and stood to aim at the driver. Unlike the military trucks, this one wasn’t armored. The driver was so focused on his rear-view that he didn’t see me as I pulled the trigger twice in quick succession. He slumped over the wheel and the truck dropped its rear axle over the remaining two feet of drop-off, getting stuck.

As I tried to locate the guide something got in my eye. I rubbed it away and realized my head was bleeding; probably from the gravel shower. It bled faster than I could clear it out. I stayed low, hoping he would show himself. Instead I heard a shot whiz past and the rifle’s report.

Not knowing where he was shooting from, I dropped to my back in front of the cargo truck’s tire. I tried to locate him but still couldn’t see him.

“Hah!” I heard, “Headshot, baby!”

I held my breath, willing myself not to move, not to blink, not to look anywhere but at the spot I’d just been looking at. When he nudged my ribs with his rifle, I lay slack, playing dead. He did this a couple times then laid the rifle next to me. That’s when I reacted, rolling towards him and firing point-blank at his chest. He looked at me with shock, then fell over.

I didn’t know how many others were in the truck, or how many had survived up the hill, but I’d done what I could. They still might be able to load their tanker if their hoses were long enough and none of my shots penetrated it. Even so, they’d have to wait for the bus fire to burn itself out first. I changed out my magazine and started walking, dizziness staggering my steps, expecting a bullet to tear through my back any second. I’m going to die.

With nothing left to me I continued out towards the caravan. With the time it took to ready the caravan the raiders had at least a four-hour head start, so they wouldn’t be along any time soon. The moon rose nearly full and the light gave me incentive to walk faster. I was still waiting for the bullet in the back when I passed out.

I woke to the muffled sounds of a firefight in the distance and Marisol talking as through a pillow. My ears still rang with a pitch I’d never heard before yesterday, and no other sound was entering my right ear. A hand to my face confirmed that my head was heavily bandaged.

Marisol leaned close to my left ear and said, “You’ve lost a lot of blood, and your right eardrum is perforated, but you’ll heal.”

“Will I get my hearing back?” My own voice sounded muffled and distorted.

“Some,” she said, “but we won’t know how much for a while.”

As I moved, I felt a sharp pain in my left arm. I reached for it and felt another bandage.

“Through and through,” Marisol said, “and missed the bone. You’re lucky.”

“I didn’t know I was shot.”

“Adrenaline will do that,” she said. “Rest now, and I’ll see if I can find something for the pain after we clean up the last of the raiders.”

“I thought I was going to die.”

“Not today, you won’t.” Marisol dabbed my forehead with a cool cloth. “You saved the well, Carla.”

The last thing I thought as I let unconsciousness take me again was, I’m going to live.

Trunk Stories

If You Could Live Forever

prompt: Write about a vampire or werewolf who moves into a quiet suburban neighborhood….
available at Reedsy

After the old man across the street died, his house went up for sale. The sign came down after the first day.

For three weeks landscapers made the neglected lot respectable while crews toiled inside the house. Carpeting, drywall, and fixtures were hauled off as it was stripped to the studs. A steady stream of deliveries brought electrical and plumbing fixtures, wood flooring, appliances, drywall, and lumber.

Early in the morning the day after the crews left, a moving van arrived, followed by a short, muscular African American woman in jeans and a tight t-shirt. She organized the movers, telling them what went where. The furniture and boxes were in place by the late afternoon, and the van left. The woman was still in the house, no doubt arranging things.

Being the good neighbor I am, and not because I’m inveterately nosey, I carried over a bottle of wine to welcome her to the neighborhood. Before I could ring the bell, she opened the door and invited me in. “Well hello, neighbor! I saw you walking up.”

“Hi, I’m Adrian Delacroix,” I said. “I live across the street. Just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood.”

A thin sheen of sweat played across her broad features, her skin a warm reddish-brown, hair up in large puff at the rear. She smiled a broad grin when she saw the wine bottle. “Come in and have a seat while I get us some glasses, neighbor Adrian. I’m Ivy.”

“Thank you.” I sat on the sofa in the renovated front room. Hardwood floors, colored walls with white trim, new stairs and bannister to the second floor, granite countertops, and tasteful everything. It looked more like a magazine ad than an actual house.

She set down two wine stems and pulled the cork on the wine.

“I can’t believe how quickly you turned this old house around. The previous owner didn’t take care of anything.”

She smiled as she poured the wine. “The bones were good, so my employer thought it would be worth bringing it back to life.”

“Oh, you’re not the new owner?” I asked.

“No, I’m her caretaker,” she said. “She’s arriving next week, so I’m getting everything ready.”

“So, what does a caretaker do?” I cleared my throat. “It’s just, this isn’t exactly the sort of neighborhood where people have live-in help, and I picture a caretaker as watching over an unoccupied mansion or something.”

She laughed. “Nothing like that. She has medical… needs. I play housekeeper, gardener, and nurse.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Does she have someone else as well?”

“No,” she said, “I’m it. She’s overseas with… family right now, though.”

“Ah. So…,” I foundered, trying to get the conversation on to a more comfortable topic, “are either of you from this area?”

“Moving up from California,” Ivy said, pouring more wine. “Katherine… Ms. Boyle, can’t be out in the sun much. She got tired of the heat, so Washington seemed like a good choice.”

We finished the bottle and I got a tour of the renovated house before I left. The upstairs had been turned into two large master suites with walk-in closets and massive bathrooms sandwiching an office with a dizzying array of computer equipment. Ivy told me that Katherine worked for a stock brokerage in the U.K., but the equipment seemed far beyond what that would require. I wanted to know more but I remained the good neighbor and didn’t press her.

As I work from home myself, I saw that Ivy got into a routine right away. An hour run around the neighborhood at 7:00 a.m., rain or shine, followed by yard work, then inside at 11:00, where I imagined she showered and took care of housework. I saw her every afternoon when the mail came as all the mailboxes were on her side of the street, and we both picked up our mail as soon as it was dropped off.

“Adrian, Ms. Boyle came in last night and said she’d like to meet you,” she said. “Dinner at 6:30?”

“Sure,” I said. “Should I bring anything? Some wine?”

“Nothing so formal,” she said. “We’re having burgers, so if you brought some beer, I’m sure she’d be delighted.”

“Sure thing, see you then.”

I arrived and Ivy opened the door as I approached. She took the six-pack of local microbrew and invited me to have a seat in the front room. The smell of grilled meat wafted through the house, making me salivate. I was studying the ornately carved bannister when I felt a presence above me.

Then I saw her, Katherine Boyle. She was short and slight but had an air of authority, making her seem far larger. Her skin was ghostly pale, her hair, including eyebrows and lashes was purest white, her lips had the faintest hint of color and her eyes were a pale pink.

She smiled and I felt myself torn between being taken in by her unexpected and unconventional beauty and being terrified of the air of dominion she radiated. Some part of me felt as though she would overwhelm me, consume me, reduce me to nothing.

“Welcome to my home, Adrian,” she said, lighting on the last step. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

I pushed the terror down. I told myself it was just my own unconscious biases at play. She’s a beautiful woman and she’s just said hello, speak up, dummy. “Ah, uh, hello Ms. Boyle. Thank you for having me.”

She sat in one of the wing chairs. “Katherine, please. Ivy tells me you work from home as well?”

“Yes,” I said, “I’m a digital marketing strategist.”

Katherine smiled. “I don’t know what that means, but let’s not discuss work. What do you do for fun around here?”

“Except for going to concerts once a month or so I’m mostly a homebody,” I said.

“I understand that. Home is where we feel most comfortable, after all.” She rose and offered her hand. “Come, dinner should be ready any moment.”

Her hand was cold but smooth and I felt a wash of relief when I took it and stood. I held her hand in a stupor for too long, then came to my senses. “Oh, excuse me, I kind of spaced out there.”

She smiled and led me to the dining room. The table was set with white linens, fancy plates, and far too much silver cutlery. The burger and fries on the plates, along with the bottles of beer seemed wholly out of place. I looked for a bottle opener on the table but there wasn’t one. Katherine took my bottle, placed the edge of the cap against the corner of the table, and opened it with a sharp rap.

“Neat trick. Reminds me of college,” I said.

Katherine laughed and opened her own bottle.

I woke in my bed with a pounding headache, weak and woozy. It was the first hangover I’d had in over a decade. I tried to remember the previous night. We’d had dinner, then talked about music over scotch. Katherine had roused me, helping me across the street and into my house. I couldn’t remember how I got undressed and into bed, but I remembered the way her cheeks and lips were flushed, and her hands warm as she helped me up the stairs.

There was a cup of hot tea sitting on the nightstand next to my bed. In front of it was a note. “That scotch can be a little brutal, here’s something to help you through the day. — Ivy”

She’d obviously been in here in just the last few minutes. Is that what woke me? I sniffed the tea. It smelled heady and floral. I could see Ivy walking back across the street. When she reached her yard, she turned and waved. I sipped the tea, letting the warmth spread through me as I watched Ivy work in the garden. Katherine stepped out in dark sunglasses, stood in the shade of the entryway, and spoke to her. Ivy nodded and Katherine looked my way and waved. I waved back and she smiled before going back inside.

After Ivy’s miracle tea I felt much better. Still a little weak, but the headache was gone. I later thought it might be a bug rather than a simple hangover, though, as over the next few days several neighbors complained of similar symptoms. When I ran into Ivy at the mailboxes again, I apologized for my behavior, and thanked her for the tea. I asked for the recipe and she gave me a bag of it instead.

Katherine texted me, inviting me over for dinner again. I didn’t remember exchanging numbers, but hers was in my phone with a picture of her, so I must have done so while drunk. Once again, I found myself approaching Katherine’s door with Ivy opening it as soon as I was near. “Come in, she’s expecting you in the back yard.”

She sat on a blanket under a large shade umbrella, a picnic laid out. I joined her there and noticed she seem weak. Rather than bring it up I felt it better to just be there for her.

We had a quiet dinner while the sun set. After dark Katherine poured us wine. “If you could live forever, what would you do?”

“I would probably invest,” I said, “spend a few decades building up wealth, maybe real estate, so I could have something that kept me funded on its own. Then I’d want to travel — everywhere.”

“And after that?”

“Well, there’s languages to learn, instruments to learn, there’s always something to learn.”

Katherine smiled. “I think we could be friends, for a very long time.”

“I’d like that.” As soon as I said it I realized it was true. There was something compelling about her, something I couldn’t ignore.

We began to spend more evenings together, usually at her place, sometimes at mine. I made a point of getting to know Ivy as well and began running with her in the mornings before work. Every passing day more and more of my waking (and sleeping) thoughts were centered on Katherine.

I ended up getting entirely too drunk with her on more than one occasion, but the tea always made it better in the morning. Whatever bug had gone around the neighborhood seemed to pass for a couple months before starting up again. Oddly, except for the occasional hangover that was solved with Ivy’s magic tea, I didn’t catch anything. Even during flu season, when I would usually end up sick for a week or more, I stayed healthier than ever.

Indeed, I grew stronger. My runs with Ivy, difficult to finish at first, were becoming a warm-up followed by lifting weights before work. The weights that had gathered dust since the previous Christmas were, very soon, light enough that I was doing sets of sixty or more repetitions of each exercise.

I noticed that while I had built some muscle definition, the faint lines I’d been developing around my eyes began to fade. Despite the hangovers, which were milder each time, I felt better in the days following each than I ever had. Perhaps the tea was magical.

“Remember when you mentioned real estate, if you were to live forever?” Katherine asked.

“Yeah.” We were drinking beer, the TV on mute. My poorly furnished living room in the drab, off-white rental house was worlds away from her place in terms of class, but she made it feel comfortable.

“It’s a wise choice,” she said. “The house behind mine just went up for sale and I bought it immediately.”

“Income property or just because?”

“Maybe some of each.”

“What will you do with it?” I asked.

“Same as my place.” She raised her beer and an eyebrow. “Tear it out to the studs and the subfloor and rebuild the interior.”

“So, you’re loaded.” No sooner had I said it than I wished I hadn’t.

She snorted and chugged her beer. “No, but I do have a pleasant buzz.”

I laughed. “I’d like to kiss you,” I said.

She leaned towards me. “Then do it.”

Her lips were soft and cool, and my heart hammered as the kiss that started off gentle turned passionate. I pulled away reluctantly and was mesmerized by her eyes, reflecting the light of the TV.

“If I asked you to go with me to Istanbul, what would you say?”

“When do we leave?”

“And what if I said tomorrow night?”

“I need to go pack and cancel the rent on my house.” I meant it, with everything I had and somehow, she knew.

“Good. That may happen.” She grabbed another beer and opened it on my belt buckle. Katherine knew more ways of opening a beer bottle than anyone I’d ever met, and she managed to make it both elegant, and in this case, erotic.

“If you could live forever, would you want to?”

“If you’re there,” I said.

“And leave everything else behind?” She held a soft, small hand against my cheek.

“Everything but you, yes.”

“How old do you think I am?”

I realized that she wanted an honest answer. “Twenty-eight, tops.”

“I was born in 1619,” she said with absolute seriousness. “I was not always this way.” She held her pale hand in front of my face. “It came with the change.”

“The change… to what?”

“To what I am now.” Katherine held my face with both hands. “I’m going to show you something. You’re ready for it.”

My gaze was drawn to her mouth, where her canine teeth extended into fangs. I looked into her eyes and I could see concern, perhaps for how I would react. “Y—you’re a vampire?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry.” She touched my forehead and said, “Remember.”

I closed my eyes and the memories poured in; drinks, pain as her fangs sunk into my neck, a rush of euphoria that seemed to last for hours; her strength as she carried me up the stairs and tucked me into bed, her figure next to mine as I slept.

I opened my eyes and met her gaze. Her eyes stayed locked to mine. “Is this a problem?”

It took me a few seconds to admit it, but the answer was, “No, it’s not. I love you.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “Will you join me?”

I nodded, unable to speak. I leaned into her and presented my neck. Her teeth sunk in; the pain far less than I remembered but the same rush of euphoria. The world spun as my vision darkened. I felt her pull away, then warm and moist on my lips, a taste of copper and iron. I latched on, drawing it in; strength flowed throughout my body. She pulled away and my heart broke, until she scooped me up and carried me to my room.

“The change will be gradual, but you’ll need to feed in the next week.” She brushed my hair back. “I’ll help you.”

The only response I was capable of was a weak nod. I felt both stronger and weaker than I ever had; like Superman encased in kryptonite. She handed me a cup of tea I didn’t recall her making.

As I sipped the tea she said, “This will pass. The weakness will wane throughout the day.” Morning light poured through my window. I’d missed half the night. “I need to rest. Ivy will check on you. When you’re feeling better come see me. Don’t knock, just come in.”

Ivy woke me again a few hours later with another cup of tea. “Here you go, Mr. Delacroix.”

“Thank you, Ivy,” I said, “and please, just call me Adrian.”

She watched as I sipped the tea. “So, she was serious.”

“How’s that?”

“I knew Ms. Boyle fancied you, but I didn’t expect she’d…”

“Turn me?” I asked.

Ivy nodded. “I suppose you’ll be around even more now?”

“How do you mean? We spend most every waking minute we can together.”

“Did you know she sneaks over here while you’re sleeping to lie next to you?”

“I do now.” It didn’t bother me; in fact, I found it endearing. “Will she be upset with you sharing her secrets?”

“If she was, I’d already know.”

I didn’t know what she meant by that, but I left it alone. “I’m feeling much better already,” I said. “Thank you again, Ivy.”

“My pleasure,” she said. “Should I set you a place for dessert?”

“Please.” I realized I smelled of sour sweat. “I’ll be over after I’ve had a chance to clean up.”

“See you then.”

I took my time in the shower, the water felt far hotter than normal, every drop traceable on my skin. My scalp tingled as I washed my hair and the smell of the shampoo was strong, as though the bottle was up my nose. I dressed up for the evening. The smells of cotton, leather, and linen mixed with the smell of lilies from the laundry detergent.

When I entered Katherine’s home, she was wearing an evening gown, and Ivy was setting desert on the table. I closed my eyes and savored the smells of coffee and chocolate, cream and cognac. She served tiramisu on silver-rimmed plates. For a change, Ivy joined us.

I took my time with it, savoring the flavors. The richness of the mascarpone and the bitter of the chocolate played off the sweet of the sugar and cognac. “This is the best tiramisu I’ve ever had.”

Katherine smiled. “It’s just the beginning,” she said.

We spent the rest of the evening lying in her back yard, watching the stars wheel through the sky. Katherine grabbed my hand, hers no longer felt cold to me. Still watching the stars, she asked, “Come with me to Istanbul?”

Trunk Stories

Legacy

prompt: Write a ghost story where there’s more going on than it first appears….
available at Reedsy

Rita and Paul walked in silence, avoiding the crowds, turning at random. At least Rita tried to keep it random, but she always ended up at the same place.

“We’re here, again.” Paul stepped aside to let her pass, and she entered the storefront, nothing more than a small sigh to signify her defeat.

They passed through the cafe in the front and entered the bookstore proper. Rita knew there was no longer any reason to deny what drew her and went straight to the new releases. The book sat before her, pompous and arrogant, the author’s face surrounded by a cloud of mathematical formulae.

“Rita, dear…” Paul placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “We’re here to help, but we can’t do it for you.”

“Yeah, no… I know.” She stared at the cover and time stopped. The symbols crawled over one another, shifting, turning. She knew they were wrong, somehow. “But, it’s not real… I mean….”

Paul tugged at her shoulder. “I understand, and we’re here for you.” He glanced at the darkening sky through the plate glass of the store. “It’s getting late, we should go.”

Rita nodded almost imperceptibly and deflated, her shoulders dropping and her gaze fixed on the floor. She let Paul lead her away like a child.

The morning snuck in gray and damp. Rita paced the house, waiting for Paul to wake. When she heard him stir, she stopped herself and took several deep, measured breaths. I can do this.

“Are you ready to try again?” Paul smiled, as if it were any normal day.

“I think so….”

“You went almost four hours yesterday. Maybe your avoidance idea is working.”

“How many times, now?”

His eyes softened. “Let’s not worry about counting. We’re here for you, however long it takes.”

As they walked, Rita decided a conversation might help her stop obsessing over the book. “Sure is a chilly morning for summer.”

“Yes, it would be, except it’s early fall now.” Paul bumped her shoulder. “Still, I get what you mean. More like a late fall morning.”

“When you first met me, what was I doing?”

“You were staring at the book. Motionless and unresponsive.” He looked at her. “Do you remember that day?”

“Not really…. I can’t remember anything before that day. Unless…” something tickled the back of her mind. “It’s like I can almost remember something.”

“Memories rattling in the back of the brain?” He chuckled. “We’ve all been there. That’s a good sign.” He stepped aside and motioned her in. “We’re here again.”

Rita walked through the cafe and past the new releases to the non-fiction section. The book was here now, but she didn’t have to search, it drew her.

“Rita, we’ve tried your way, but you’re still stuck.” Paul stood behind her, his hand on her shoulders. “Let’s try something different. Pick just one element on the book and focus on that until you remember that piece.”

She nodded and picked one formula. It was wrong, but she didn’t understand why yet. The numbers and symbols drew her in, swirling around until she was wading in them.

“It’s a mathematical model of… of… I can’t….”

“Shh. Take as long as you need.” Paul stepped back, and the formula drew her in.

She waded deeper, the numbers and symbols threatening to drown her, and still she pressed on. Was the formula growing or was she shrinking? Did it matter? It covered her, but instead of drowning she felt herself infusing into it. There was something intimate about it, embracing her like a mother.

“I made this. This formula describes pareidolia.” Rita turned around to see Paul smiling, standing still. “It’s a mathematical model for how our brains make patterns out of things. Mathematically it’s sound. Neurologically it’s correct. But it’s still wrong.”

“Good, Rita.” He took her hand. “I think that’s enough for today.”

“Why is it wrong, though?” She had to know how something right, something she made, was so wrong.

“It’ll become clear the more you remember.” He put an arm around her shoulder to lead her out. “For now, remembering you made it is enough.”

In the days that followed she connected with more of the formulae. One was a model that described confirmation bias, another the electrical storm in the brain when oxygen starved. Processes of the mind, modeled in mathematical precision. She remembered the phrase “an astounding break-through in neuroscience.”

They stood in front of the bookstore, fresh snow drifting around their feet. Rita thought it had just been early fall a few days earlier. “Snow, already?”

Paul said nothing, but held the door while she entered. He followed her to the book. “You remembered a phrase the other day.” He pointed at the book. “Can you find it?”

She looked at the book again. Up to now, Rita had been so drawn by the author’s face and the cloud of formulae around her she hadn’t even noticed the words. “There, at the bottom. I don’t know how I didn’t notice it.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it. Instead, try to look somewhere new. What is the title of the book?”

Rita stared at the book and time stopped again. There was a title here somewhere. “Got it. ‘The Deceitful Brain: Neuroscience Explains the Supernatural.’”

“That’s good, Rita. Shall we call it a day?”

“No.” Rita focused on the words on the cover. “I’l figure this out, today.”

“Ok, I’m here when you need us.”

Rita reached out, her hand inches from the book. “I can see all the words inside… it’s like… I know this.” She took in a sharp breath. “I remember writing this. The picture on the cover is me. I was right when I wrote it, I knew. So why is it wrong now?”

“Hm. What happened after you wrote it?”

She closed her eyes and saw herself holding a copy of the book, opening it and scrawling her signature. The book signing flooded back into her memory. Scores of people waiting for an autographed copy, but only one face was in focus.

“There was a man at the signing. He didn’t want a copy or an autograph. He got right in my face and told me I was going to hell, that it was the devil, not science guiding me. And then he….” She shook as fright overtook her.

Paul embraced her. “We’re all here for you. He can’t hurt you now, but you’re close. Remember. What did he do then?”

“He pulled out a… a gun. I felt a burning flash across my face as the bullet tore through my brain.” She stepped back from Paul. “And then I was here, with you.” She looked back at the book. “That’s why it’s wrong. I’m proof that it’s wrong.”

“Do you regret writing it? Regret is powerful and difficult to shake.”

“Not… no, not regret. Just sad, I guess.” She turned away from the book. “Can we leave now?”

“Sure.” Paul smiled and led her to the door where an inviting summer day beamed in. “But we can’t go with you, you don’t need us any more.”

“Thanks, Paul.” Rita gave him a quick hug, sensing the multitude of souls gathered around him, before stepping out of the bookstore for the last time.

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