Tag: contemporary

Trunk Stories

The Last Manuscript

prompt: Write about a character giving something one last shot.

available at Reedsy

Agnes placed the stack of papers into the box. She ran a wrinkled hand across the cover sheet at the top.

She closed the box and sealed it with shipping tape. With a marker and a careful hand, she wrote her return address on the upper left, then the address of the publisher in the center.

That done, she moved to the kitchen to make her breakfast. A bowl on the counter and a box of cold cereal in her hand, she stopped.

“Agnes,” she said aloud to herself, “you deserve to celebrate today.”

She put the cold cereal away and made an egg, sunny-side, two strips of bacon, and piece of toast with far too much jam to be healthy. Agnes ate her breakfast in front of the radio playing the news from the local public radio station.

After the news, she knew she had half an hour until the post office opened. Unwilling to waste any time, she called for a van. It would arrive in just a few minutes. She stood waiting at the end of her driveway, leaning on her walking frame, the box sitting in the sling strung across the arms of the frame.

The van pulled to a stop and a large door opened on the side, revealing a lift. The driver jumped out and began lowering the ramp. “Good morning, Agnes!”

“Good morning indeed, Hector.”

“Sending another manuscript today?”

“You know it.”

He helped her onto the lift and closed the safety gate behind her. “Feel good about this one?”

“Oh, yes. I think it may be my best yet.” She shook her head. “It better be, anyway, as I think it’s my last.”

“Why is that, Agnes?”

“I’m not getting any younger,” she said, moving into the van proper and sitting on the nearest seat. She patted the box. “These take a lot out of me.”

Hector secured the lift and got back into the driver’s seat. “You promised to sign my copy when you get published,” he said. “I hope that’s still in the cards.”

Agnes smiled. “I don’t have any reason to think they’ll treat this one any different to the others, but I still have to try, don’t I?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Hector pulled out into traffic and began the journey to the post office. “Your determination is inspiring. Every time I think work and school and the baby is too much, I think of you. ‘Agnes wouldn’t quit,’ I think, and I keep on.”

“I don’t know about all that.” Agnes shifted in her seat. “I never had to do so much at once as you.”

After helping her off at the post office, Hector asked, “Are you going home after this, or do you have some other errands to run?”

“I’ll be heading back home. Wouldn’t want to keep you all to myself all day,” she said with a smile.

“I’d be okay with that.” Hector smiled back at her as she toddled into the lobby.

Agnes was the first in line and set the box on the counter. Once it was weighed, postage applied, and she’d paid with bills she’d removed from the neatly folded stack in her purse, she thanked the clerk and went back out.

Hector was waiting with the van running and the lift down. “In a hurry to get rid of me?” she asked.

Hector laughed. “No, ma’am, just didn’t want you to have to wait for me. Instead of wasting your energy standing around, you might have something more exciting planned.”

“This was enough excitement for me, today.”

“Aww, does that mean no drag racing on the way home?”

Agnes laughed. “Thanks for entertaining an old lady.”

Hector jumped backed into the driver’s seat. “You’re my favorite rider.”

“You probably say that to all the ladies.”

“No, ma’am. Only the nice ones.” Hector beamed a smile in the rear-view mirror. “You’d be surprised how many innocent-looking little old grannies are down-right foul-tempered.”

“No, not really,” Agnes said. “You don’t get to be ninety-seven without learning something about people. Everyone has the capacity for good or evil. Most people have a fair bit of good in them, but too many are afraid to let it out.”

“I’ll have to remember that.” Hector pulled to a smooth stop in front of her house. He helped her out and gave a slight bow. “Have a wonderful day, Agnes. And have faith. They’ll want this one.”

“Thank you, Hector. Always such a polite young man.” She took a few steps toward her door and stopped to turn back. “I hope you don’t go flirting like this all the time. Some are not so savvy and worldly as me. Wouldn’t want you breaking hearts.”

Hector laughed. “No, ma’am; no flirting. I’ll behave myself.”

Agnes settled into the armchair in her bedroom, the television showing the local news. To her right stood two piles of manuscript mailing boxes, each with their rejection letters in an envelope taped neatly to the top. The piles, forty years of work, stood nearly as tall as Agnes.

If number eighty didn’t sell, Agnes didn’t think she’d try again. Even though she’d moved from a typewriter to a computer years ago, her fingers still ached after a couple hours of typing. Add to that the annoying sound of the printer when it came time to send a manuscript out….

She wondered what Hector would think if he read the latest. Would he recognize himself as the protagonist? There was just something about him that sparked an idea for her. An heroic tale of a desperate last stand, with “Jorge” defending his family against a tyrannical warlord.

Agnes chuckled. She realized that Jorge was as much her as it was Hector. Not that she was fighting tyrannical warlords, but she might as well be. The publishing industry didn’t want manuscripts from unknown writers with no agents, and agents weren’t interested in an author her age.

She pulled the last box off the pile and looked at the most recent rejection letter. It wasn’t a form letter for a change. Someone had read the manuscript. They’d praised the writing as tight, and the story as engaging, but the tone didn’t fit what they were looking for.

The letter ended with the reader saying they looked forward to any future manuscripts, especially if they were more action oriented. The one she’d just sent off was, indeed, that.

A hopeful smile crossed her face as she nodded off in the chair. She dreamt of seeing her book in print and signing a copy for Hector.

She woke to a sharp pain in her chest, a pounding in her ears. She knew she was drawing her final breaths. In that moment, she also knew that it didn’t matter whether her book was published; what mattered was that she had never stopped trying.

Trunk Stories

What He Wanted

prompt: Write about a missing person nobody seems to know or remember.

available at Reedsy

It started with an anonymous missing person tip on the city police website. In the following weeks, flyers began to appear on utility poles like an unlikely pox, spreading out in all directions from the city center.

By the time the news picked up the story, it was to tell everyone about the “mysterious disappearance” of Kyle Smith, assistant to the city council secretary. Bob Keller, the council secretary was nervously vague when asked what kind of person Kyle was.

“I, uh, guess I would have to say he was quiet,” Bob said. “I mean, I can see all his employment and pay history, including his signature on hundreds of documents that passed through my office, but….” He cleared his throat. “To be honest, I don’t remember ever seeing him, much less talking to him.”

The news anchor’s face replaced the pre-recorded interview. Her smile was practiced and plastic; completely out of place given the nature of the story. “Perhaps the most mysterious part of this entire case is that no one we interviewed had any recollection of Mr. Smith.

“Police have combed his residence in the Graham Tower complex for clues. All they were able to determine was that he had lived there for nine years, and not a single neighbor recalled seeing him. DMV have provided this photo from his current driver’s license. If you see this man, please call the hotline at the number below.”

Her plastic smile extended to near-unrealistic proportions. “Now here’s Susan with the weather.”

 Sid muted the TV above the bar. “Anybody here recognize this guy?” he asked.

There were grunts of dissent and shaking of heads. The patrons quickly lost interest in the subject and began pleading with Sid to switch the TV over to the game.

A chyron scrolled beneath the game. “Missing 42 days: Kyle Smith’s car found abandoned off I-5. Police fear missing man dead.”

“Shit.” Ally waved Sid over. “Another.”

He pulled a bottle of imported beer out of the cooler, removed the cap, and exchanged it with her empty. “Problem?”

“We have a leak in the department,” she said. “No one was supposed to pass anything to the press until we were done processing the car.”

“So the ‘feared dead’ thing? Is that legit?”

Ally grunted. “That’s pretty much been the thought after the first week. Now it’s just down to figuring out how, when, where, who, and why.”

“Isn’t it odd that someone could work in city hall for years, and no one remembers him? Not even his direct supervisor.”

“You saw the picture,” she said. “He looks like an ‘everyman,’ the type that spy agencies love to use.”

“You think he was a spy?” Sid asked.

“Nah.” Ally took a long swig of her beer. “He wouldn’t be an assistant secretary for city council here. Maybe in a city close to a military installation or a major financial and intelligence hub.”

“You think you’ll find the guy responsible?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s just a matter of time. The sick fuck has been sending us empty texts from Smith’s phone, but it never stays connected longer than it takes to send the text. It’s always when he’s on the same tower as me. I think he’s in sight of me when he texts, but we still haven’t seen him.”

Ally’s phone chimed. She checked the message. Another blank message from Smith’s phone. She called her supervisor. “Just got another one. Verify the location, I’m locking down the bar.” She lifted her beer and spilled a bit of it on her way to her lips.

“You okay?”

“Just a spasm,” she said, “probably stress and not enough sleep. Go lock the doors. No one’s leaving until we find that phone.”

#

Kyle had thought he’d enjoy the little city sprouting unexpectedly in the middle of miles upon miles of farmland. The big city where he’d grown up was too loud, too crowded, and he felt too seen.

He landed a job the second day he was in the city and moved into an apartment in a midsized complex. Still too crowded for his liking, and he had some neighbors that felt intrusive and nosy.

It was close to one year after he’d started working for the city council that he was already starting to feel too many eyes on him. He spent his free time hiding in the back stacks of the library where the rare and reference books were hidden. Then he found it; the book that contained a collection of rituals to bind demons to do one’s bidding.

He didn’t believe it, of course. He wasn’t stupid or superstitious. Still, he sounded out the nonsense words of one of the rituals there in the dim light of the library’s forgotten stacks. Feeling nothing, he chuckled and put the book back.

Kyle walked home, annoyed at the people he passed that said, “hello” or “good evening.” He just wanted to be left alone. If everyone around him could just ignore him, that would be ideal. He already did everything he could to keep his head down at work and not have cause for his boss…or anyone else…to speak to him.

Over the next couple of years, his refusal to engage with anyone approaching him or trying to speak with him began to pay off. He could come and go, unmolested and untroubled.

He had no interactions with anyone beyond that which was required to live his life. Kyle bought a coffee at 7:15 on his way to work every morning, requiring only the words “Americano, black,” and “thanks” on his part. He knew his job inside and out and had the files his boss needed ready and waiting before he was asked.

The grocery store’s self-checkout was a major boon. It didn’t require Kyle to speak to anyone, ever, and was always clear on his late Thursday night shopping trips. With his utilities and bills paid automatically through his bank, and his paycheck going into his account rather than a check, he fell into a solitary rhythm rather quickly.

Kyle was living in his perfect world, or so he thought. However, the day came that required him to speak to his boss. He hadn’t taken a vacation in nine years, and he wanted to get approval for a month off.

He entered Bob’s office, leave request in hand. “I…uh…would like to…um…get some time off, please.” He laid the request on the desk.

The council secretary continued staring at his laptop screen, not acknowledging Kyle’s presence. He continued to scroll through whatever he was watching, clicking occasionally.

Kyle walked around the desk to see what was so engaging. It was cat videos. “Bob? Mr. Keller? Hey. Could you sign my leave request?” He waved his hand between the screen and Bob’s face to no reaction. He tapped him on the shoulder; nothing. Feeling desperate, Kyle slapped Bob’s face. Still nothing.

He spent the rest of the morning wandering downtown, trying to get anyone to acknowledge his presence. It was as though he didn’t exist.

In a flash of inspiration, he went to the coffee shop where he’d ordered his coffee. Not only was he rudely pushed aside by anyone around him, but no one responded to any complaint, threat, tap, pinch or slap. It was the same at the grocery store.

After spending the day determining that no, he wasn’t invisible, and yes, he felt very much alive, he sat on his couch to figure out what he would do. He fell asleep pondering what could be done.

When he woke, he showered and changed, and decided that with or without Bob’s signature he was going on vacation. He carried his suitcase down to the garage, where he found his car had been stolen. Kyle dialed 911.

“911 dispatch, what is your emergency?”

“My car’s been stolen,” he said.

“Hello? 911 dispatch. Are you unable to talk?”

Kyle yelled into the phone. “My car! It’s been stolen!”

“Okay, if you’re not going to speak, I’m going to hang up now.”

Kyle screamed. “No!”

The call disconnected.

He decided to take another tack. Maybe he really was dead and didn’t know it. He went to the police website and tried to report his stolen car. The form told him to call 911 for vehicular theft. Trying again, he entered a missing person’s case for himself from their non-emergency contact form.

Kyle walked into the police station and found that he could go anywhere without question, assuming the door was unlocked. He followed one of the officers through the locked partition into the back of the station.

By wandering about and looking at everyone’s desk, he figured out which detective was assigned his case. Ally’s phone sat next to her, unlocked. He picked it up to get her number and sent a text from his phone to hers. He typed “I’m Kyle Smith and I’m standing right next to you,” and hit send.

Her phone chimed and showed an empty text. He tried again four more times over the next few minutes, every one of them empty on her phone. He watched as she looked up the number and discovered it was his.

Her next few hours were spent setting up a response team that could tell her what tower the texts were coming from. When she discovered that the texts had been sent from the area of the police station, officers scrambled, trying to locate him, although one said his phone was no longer “pinging,” whatever that meant.

Kyle began putting up missing posters with his picture, sending the printing job online and having them delivered to his post office box. The police staked out the post office and never saw him walking in, opening his box, and walking out with the stacks of flyers. On a whim, he attached one to the police car’s driver-side window. They didn’t notice it until their replacement got there.

After weeks of being unable to get anyone’s attention, including Ally, he decided to make it easier for her. He rode with her in the ride-share she’d taken to the bar. Neither she nor the driver noticed him.

The bar patrons were busy with the game, and Ally was suitably relaxed. No matter how he tried to get in her way, she avoided him. He put his hand where she’d been about to set her beer down, and her arm deflected so that she set it down just beyond his hand. Kyle texted her again. “I’m right next to you.”

She raised her beer again and he grabbed her wrist. “I’m right here!” he screamed into her ear. Despite spilling some of her beer, she still didn’t notice him.

He looked into the mirror behind the bar and saw a shadowy figure standing behind him. When he turned to look, it wasn’t there. He looked back in the mirror, and glowing orange eyes appeared on the figure.

The voice that rumbled through his head left no doubt that he was hearing the figure. “Are you not pleased? You got exactly what you wanted.”

Trunk Stories

Law of Fives

prompt: Write a story about a character who believes their dreams predict the future.

available at Reedsy

Sia fidgeted nervously, dark circles under her honey-gold eyes, lack of sleep dulling her golden-brown face. Her ebon hair, tied up in a sloppy bun, lacked the shine it usually had.

“Sia, are you okay?”, someone asked. “Do you need someone to talk to?”

She stared at her monitor, the work in front of her making no sense. The feeling that someone was standing next to her was sudden, causing her to jump. “Oh! Hi—hi Jace. Did you need something?”

“I was wondering the same thing,” he said, “about you.” He was slender, with pale olive skin that never saw the sun, his hair a pile of medium brown curls atop a fade. There was something about his shape or the way he carried himself that made him seem taller than his five-feet-eight.

“I, uh…I think I’ll be okay,” Sia said. “I just need some coffee.”

“Boss,” Jace said, crouching near her chair, “there’s something wrong. If you need someone to talk to, you know where to find me. For now, though, I’ll finish up the end-of-month reports and get them in to finance. You should go home and get some rest.”

“I—I guess you’re right. I’m not well.” Sia ran her hands down her legs, realizing with a small bit of horror that she was at work, at her desk, wearing her flannel pajamas. She looked at Jace, in his pressed shirt and casual slacks. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She took the back door out of the office, down the stairs rather than be seen in the elevator in her current state. Four stories down, eight flights of steps, she exited the side door where Jace stood, holding her purse.

“I figured you might need this,” he said with a smile.

Sia took the purse with a partially suppressed grimace. “Sorry, thanks.”

Jace winked. “No problem. If you need anything, give me a call; I’ll do whatever I can.”

#

After an interminable bus ride home, Sia fell on her disheveled bed, next to the work outfit she’d laid out earlier in the morning and forgot to put on. Her eyelids heavy, she started to drift off. With a jerk, she sat up and shook her head. She wasn’t ready to see it again.

To keep herself awake, she put away the clothes she’d laid out, made the bed, and started a pot of coffee. She turned on the TV to the annoying daytime talk shows and turned the volume up. That would keep her awake while she cleaned.

By the time the coffee pot was empty and the apartment spotless, Sia was moving in a daze. The staged fights of the talk shows were long over, and a sleepy, calm show about home repair had been on for a while.

She considered making another pot of coffee, but her insides were already protesting. Instead, she sat in the corner chair; the one that was there for looks as it was far too uncomfortable to be sat in.

#

It was starting again. The sky turned dark, heavy clouds blocking out the sun. A bright streak illuminated the clouds from above, followed by an ear-shattering boom.

The streak broke through the clouds, a glowing ball of light that lit up the sky like the sun before it exploded in the city center. The shockwave rolled over her with the rumbling sound of thunder times a thousand. A cloud of dust and ash rose above the ruined buildings, even as thousands of shards of glass and metal rained down around her.

As quickly as it began, it ended, and she found herself at her desk. Jace was there, and a shadowy figure dumped scalding coffee down his back. His yelp of pain woke her.

#

Sia was stiff and sore from sleeping in the hard, uncomfortable chair. The TV was showing an infomercial for a “miracle” cleaning product, the volume still loud.

She turned off the TV and checked the time; 1:04 A.M., still hours to go before the next day. As much as she didn’t want to sleep again, her body won out, and she stretched out on her bed, trying to loosen the knots in her back.

#

She woke early the next morning, took a long shower, dried her hair and spent thirty minutes brushing it to its usual luster. The coffee pot sat unused as she dressed in a smart skirt and blouse.

Sia was the first in the office. Not surprising as she was nearly an hour early. She went through her emails from the previous day; most of them were “Get well soon” messages.

By the time the rest of the office was in, she was in her groove, getting caught up on the work she’d missed the previous day. The rational part of her brain chided her for thinking that just because she dreamt a thing it would come true.

Sia had almost convinced herself that her dreams don’t come true, when Jace approached. His face brightened when he saw her.

“You look great today! Feeling better?”

“I remembered to dress today,” she said with an embarrassed chuckle. “What’s up?”

“Can you open the link I sent you?” Jace asked. “I have a question about that account.”

She opened the account, and Jace bent over to point at the account’s usage totals. “The month-over-month doesn’t line up with the billing,” he said, pointing. “See here?”

Sia looked behind him and saw Sarah, one of the finance techs carrying a coffee cup coming towards them. She grabbed Jace’s arm. “Don’t move,” she said.

Sarah walked behind them. “Morning,” she said as she went by.

Sia let go, and Jace stood. “What was that about?” he asked.

“In my dream, you got scalding hot coffee down your back.” She shuddered. “It would have happened if I hadn’t stopped you.”

“Thanks for saving me?” He smiled, but something about it seemed off. “Does this happen often? I mean, dreams coming true?”

Sia shook her head. “It feels like it just started a couple weeks ago. I started having a recurring nightmare, and then I’d have some dream about something mundane and then the other thing would happen the next day.”

“Exactly the way you dreamt it?”

“Not exactly,” she said, “but close enough.”

“And I suppose,” he said, “that you’ve been trying not to sleep, in order to skip the nightmare.”

Sia nodded. She locked her computer and leaned back. “It caught up to me yesterday and I couldn’t stay awake any longer. That’s how I knew you were about to get burned just now.”

“Let’s go for a walk and you can tell me about the nightmare that’s keeping you up.”

They walked to the park a block away from the office and sat on a bench while she told him the entire story. He listened, nodding at the appropriate moments.

“Do you sleep with the TV on?” he asked.

“Only if I fall asleep watching the late-night news,” she said.

“I wouldn’t have gotten burned this morning,” he said.

“If you had stood up, you would’ve bumped into Sarah, and she would’ve spilled on you.”

“And it would’ve really sucked,” he said. “Her morning beverage is kombucha with turmeric.” He shuddered. “It’s gross and it smells terrible.”

“It wasn’t hot coffee?”

Jace shook his head. “And your nightmare isn’t coming true, either.” He fiddled with his phone, then handed it to her. “Press play.”

She started the video. It was her nightmare, in exact detail, right up to the shower of glass and metal. The screen went black, then the words, “Coming to theaters in July. Not yet rated.”

“It’s a…movie?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “but the trailer is only showing online or late-late night. There’s other trailers online that are longer, but that’s the one you’ve been seeing.”

“But the city…it’s…”

“It’s set here,” he said. He pointed to his right.

Sia saw the same view as the nightmare, the trailer. “I—I’m relieved, but at the same time…it’s just so strange.”

“I can understand,” he said. “You said the other dreams were mundane things that happened the next day?”

Sia nodded. “Yeah.”

“Tell me more about the ones that come true,” he said.

“Well, the first was that I was about to cross the street at the office, but a delivery van ran the red. If I hadn’t waited, I’d have been flattened.”

“And that happened?” he asked.

“Well, it was a big truck, but pretty much.”

“Pretty common at that corner. Any others?”

She told him about a few other dreams that came true…mostly.

“Have you heard of the Law of Fives?”

“No, what’s that?”

He gestured around them. “How many fives can you find around here?”

She looked around. “There’s one on that building address, and one on that license plate. Not seeing any others.”

He looked around for a moment. “How many ducks are on the pond?”

“Oh, five.”

“The box truck over there, what are the numbers?”

“One one three…oh, that adds to five.”

“How many more cars parked on the other side of the road than this side on this block?”

“Six on that side, one on this, that’s five…this is weird,” she said.

“The Law of Fives basically breaks down to, if you go looking hard enough for fives, you’ll find them everywhere.”

She felt a wash of embarrassment. “Confirmation bias. It’s how people keep believing in horoscopes and fortune tellers.”

He smiled. “Don’t worry about it. Fooling ourselves from time to time is part of being human.”

Trunk Stories

Nowhere to Go but Up

prompt: Write about a character who has landed their dream job, only to discover it isn’t quite what they imagined it to be.

available at Reedsy

There’s starting at the bottom, and then there’s whatever this was. Korin hadn’t expected to jump right into solving big cases, but this hadn’t even been more than a footnote and two-hour lecture at Quantico.

She’d been pleasantly surprised on her first day on the job to not be expected to make or fetch coffee, make copies, pull files, or any other bit of drudge work. When she’d been given an assignment to a major task force right out of the gate, she figured it would be something she’d need to prove herself with.

Korin took a break, walking to the coffee maker to refill her new mug with the FBI logo. The mug came with the first posting, the task force SAC told her; a welcome aboard gift from Uncle Sam. She filled the mug two-thirds of the way, sipped the strong, bitter coffee and frowned, before adding a big splash of cream to thin it out some, the light brown coffee a shade lighter than her skin.

“Don’t worry, Jackson, you’ll get used to it,” Anne said.

Korin turned to face the short special agent in charge; so pale that her suntanned features still read pink, with medium brown hair and fine crows-feet wrinkles around her eyes. “Which?” she asked, rubbing her hair, currently in the in-between stage of being close cropped and a ’fro. “The battery acid coffee, or the bank records?”

“Both.” Anne laughed. Her blue eyes narrowed as she looked up into the dark eyes of the young agent. “I remember my first assignment on a task force,” she said. “Believe me, you have a much better first assignment.”

Not in a hurry to return to the mind-numbing task of scouring through every deposit, withdrawal, payment, transfer, check, and charge against several dozen bank accounts, she raised an eyebrow. “If you don’t mind me asking, ma’am, what was your first assignment like?”

Anne laughed. “We were doing the same thing,” she said, “but none of the records were computerized. They were all on paper…and shredded.”

“You mean you were—”

“Taping together shredded documents, yes.” Anne had the air of someone about to impart wisdom when she was interrupted.

“Carter! We got something for you!” The man yelling from the other end of the open office was waving wildly.

“That’s my cue,” she said, giving the young agent a pat on the back. “And yours.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Korin returned to her desk and went back to building spreadsheets that showed each account’s total balance, by day, over the course of ten years.

The spreadsheets were on a shared server, where everyone on the task force could read and edit them. She started to notice notes being attached to some of her entries, many of them links to other documents. She stifled her curiosity, figuring that the faster she finished the mind-numbing part, the sooner she could do something intelligent.

When the day ended, Korin had no idea how much progress, if any, had been made on the case. In fact, she wasn’t even sure what case she was working on, beyond a case number.

Anne pulled a chair from the next desk and sat next to her. “Not the most exciting introduction to the field, but exciting isn’t exactly a good thing in this job.”

“I guess not.” Korin saved her work before closing her laptop. “I thought we had forensic accountants to handle all this.”

“They don’t get involved until you start talking about money laundering through a host of shell companies, or large-scale embezzlement.” Anne pursed her lips. “This is…small potatoes.”

“With a task force of thirty? Seems like reasonably large potatoes,” Korin said.

“Normally, you’d be right. But when politicians are involved, we tend to err on the side of too much manpower rather than too little.” Anne gestured at the office. “How long do you think we’ve been working on this?”

Korin took in the office. Rows of desks with laptops, folders on some, two locked file cabinets, and a large dry-erase board with photos held by magnets, scrawled notes, and lines going everywhere. “Hard to say. Weeks? Month or two?”

Anne leaned back in the chair. “This is day four. We’ll be wrapped up by the end of next week, then we’ll be back downstairs at our regular desks. Once the reports and arrests are made, I’ll be on call for the trial, while we move on to the next thing.”

Korin frowned. “I guess it isn’t what I thought it would be.”

“You’re an over-achiever, I get that.” Anne sat back up. “You completed a graduate degree in law enforcement while completing dual undergrad degrees in chemistry and forensics, with a minor in music. Graduated number six in your class at Quantico. Reminds me of who I tried to be.”

“What does that mean?”

“At first, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. Finished criminal law and contract law before I figured out that wasn’t what I wanted to do. Went to Quantico and tried my best to be top of the class.” Anne chuckled. “Didn’t make it, ended up in the top twenty percent, but not as high as you. Didn’t stop me from trying to over-achieve, at least for a while.”

“What happened?”

“After a year or so, how you did in Quantico, your degrees, your GPA…none of that matters. What matters is how you do your job every day.” She placed a hand on the young agent’s shoulder. “And most days, the job is pretty boring, to be honest.”

“Well, I knew it wasn’t going to be car chases and gunfights,” Korin said. “I’m happy that it isn’t like television, but this is…,” she gestured at the laptop with a shrug.

“Don’t worry,” Anne said. “You stick with it, you’ll get the chance to use your chemistry and forensics knowledge; maybe even your music training, who knows? You’ll learn a lot more, too. I’ve learned some physics, biology, and finally managed to wrap my head around statistics.”

“Well, learning is always a good thing,” Korin said. “I’d probably go insane if I had to stop learning.”

“You’re in luck,” Anne said with a crooked smile, “the input part is almost done. Do you know how to build a pivot table from a collection of spreadsheets?”

“No, I never learned that. I…,” realization crossed her face. “I stepped into that one, didn’t I?”

“And you just learned something else. You should always watch out for crafty, old agents twisting your words into volunteering for something.”

Korin looked at Anne out of the corner of her eye. “Crafty, old, agents? Fishing for complements?”

“Nah, they’d get you nowhere anyway. We both know I’m old enough to be your mother.” She stood. “Come on, let’s get out of here, Jackson. I’ll see you in the morning. You need to be in by 7:30 tomorrow.”

“Why’s that?”

“You’re next on the rotation for making the coffee. I’d suggest you make it every bit as strong as today’s was, or you’ll never hear the end of it from the other agents.”

Korin followed the older agent out of the office and sighed. “Well, we all have to start at the bottom, I guess. Nowhere to go from here but up.”

Trunk Stories

Do the Hard Work First

prompt: Write a story about a character who’s secretly nobility.

available at Reedsy

In a cramped kitchen in a bar in Anchorage, Alaska, a slight, dark-haired woman with pale skin and bright blue eyes sweated as she turned out burgers, fries, and assorted bar snacks. Working the early shift meant she got the lunch regulars, and a few die-hard barflies, but she avoided the crowded, noisy nights.

While the bar was ostensibly a “sports bar,” the large TV screens displaying whatever games were live couldn’t be heard during regular bar hours. During the day, however, they were tuned to cable news. As the bar was quiet it was easy to follow what was being said, if she wished to. Instead, Ana chose to tune it out and focus on getting the orders out.

She plated the burgers and rang the bell to let the Janice know orders were up. There were no more orders waiting, so she took the time to scrape the grill, clean and sharpen knives, and run the waiting rack of dishes through the washer.

“Ana, did you hear about Merovina?” Janice, the bartender of indeterminable advanced age leaned in the order window. She’d recently told Ana she had been working there for forty years.

“Another protest for elections?” Ana asked.

“No, but something big is happening. The government shut down all communications and isn’t letting foreign journalists in or out.”

Ana sighed. “No doubt it’s something manufactured to scare everyone into accepting things as they are.”

“While we’re not busy,” Janice said, “you never told me why you left.”

“I got asylum from the US because of…political issues.” Ana chuckled. “And they probably didn’t want me to go to Russia for asylum. Like I’d give them a reason to annex my country.”

“How can you still care about it when you had to run away in the first place?”

“I ran away to avoid an arranged marriage…to a seventy-year-old lecher.”

“How’s that political?”

“It was a political marriage. Besides,” she said, changing the subject, “I was publicly calling for the сборка to be elected rather than appointed by the crown.”

“Sborka?”

“Assembly, kind of like a congress or parliament.”

“Ah. So, the king decides who makes up the whole government?”

“It used to be all princes, lords, and dukes, but for the last hundred years or so it’s also included influential industrialists, and the ultra-wealthy loyalists.”

“Ah, I could see how that could get you in trouble.” Janice looked like she was going to circle back to the marriage question, when a large group of people in business attire entered.

“Looks like a three-martini lunch meeting just walked in.” Ana winked and got ready for the flurry of orders. She knew to expect every order to be personalized; no onion, extra tomato, bacon extra crispy, no salt, lettuce wrap, substitute this for that…the whole thing.

While it meant she couldn’t whip through the orders on muscle memory alone, it kept her mind occupied enough to not worry about what was happening in her home. Sure, she had a green card, and was probably going to be living in the US for a long time, but it still wasn’t home. Anchorage came close, at least in climate, and there were plenty of native Russian speakers.

She closed out the day at four, when the swing shift crew came in; three people to handle what she did on her own during the less-busy days. “Have a good night, guys,” she said on her way out.

Ana lay down on her bed, a mattress on the floor of a small apartment in the “rough” neighborhood. Sure, there were a few drug dealers and prostitutes, but it was nothing like Chicago’s South Side, where she’d been when she first came to the US.

She was woken in the wee hours of the morning by an earthquake. How the locals ever got used to them enough to sleep through them she didn’t know, but it was small, and nothing fell. Realizing that she wouldn’t be getting back to sleep, she opened her laptop and checked the news on Merovina.

So far, it was all speculation, as no news had come out of the country in more than thirty-six hours. The UK and US governments were demanding their reporters be allowed to leave the country, and instead, the Merovina government blocked all flights leaving the country, and limited inbound flights to those carrying Merovinan citizens. Those planes were then allowed to fuel and leave after the Merovinans got off, providing no one else got on.

In response to the increasingly tense situation, NATO forces and Russian forces began moving closer to the Merovina borders. Meanwhile, it seemed that the crown had followed the examples of more authoritarian states, cutting off the internet from the entire country.

Ana wondered whether it was a coup, or something else. Either way, she was in no position to do anything about it. She left for work early, stopping at an all-night diner for breakfast first.

The eggs and sausage sat like lead in her guts as she started the day. Janice was kind enough to not bring up the marriage topic at all in the morning. As it was a Thursday and between paydays, it would be slower than usual.

On days like this, she and Janice would do the grunt work. Scrubbing the walk-ins, clearing off every shelf in the kitchen and sanitizing, doing an inventory count on everything from toothpicks to saucepans, kegs to potatoes. As Janice was fond of saying, “If you do the hard work first, everything else is a piece of cake.”

Ana had finished the hard work and moved on to the “piece of cake” part of the day. She was busy filling out the order form for their vendors, when three people came in. A man and a woman in ICE police uniforms, and a man in a suit. Janice told them to sit wherever they liked, and the man in the suit shook his head.

“Ma’am,” the woman officer said, “we’re looking Anastasia Politskivina.”

“What’s the problem?” Janice asked. “Her green card’s still good.”

“Is she here, ma’am?” the male officer asked.

“I’m here,” Ana said, leaning through the order window.

“Could you come around and talk with us, please?” The man in the suit pointed to a table and the ICE officers sat there. “You’re not in trouble, and we’re not here to deport you.”

“Janice, could you get the officers some coffee? I’ll come out and talk to them.” While Janice moved behind the bar to get the coffee, Ana set her phone up to record the area around the table where the officers sat and made sure Janice saw it.

“Sure, sweetie.” Turning back toward the officers, she asked, “Cream and sugar? On the house.”

Ana came into the main part of the bar and joined the three at the table. She laid her green card, driver’s license, and Merovinan passport on the table. “What is this about?”

“Are you sure you want to talk about this here?” the suited man asked. “We can go somewhere more private—”

“Anything you have to say you can say here.”

He took a deep breath. “Our embassy in Merovina managed to contact us late last night. We need you to go home.” Before she could raise an objection, he went on. “Your father died two days ago…heart attack. In the absence of the crown princess, Minister Kosolovich has taken over, and is trying to get control of the throne. The people, however, want their rightful heir to return, or at least that’s what the protestors are saying.”

“The old crow that father wanted me to marry is running the country?” Ana snorted a derisive laugh. “No wonder it went to hell so fast. As if he could ever be a ruler. He can’t even control his own hands.”

“Will you consider it?” he asked. “You wanted democratic reform; this is your chance to make it happen. It would go a long way to relieving tensions in the area. Not to mention, you really should be there for your father’s funeral.”

Janice had been standing near the table holding the coffee pot and four cups, her mouth agape. “Y—you’re a princess?”

Ana smiled. “Yeah, glamorous, isn’t it?” she asked, flipping the edge of her greasy apron. “Janice, would you be upset if I quit?”

“Are you shitting me? Of course not! You go home and be the queen!” She laughed, then composed herself. “Oh, sorry, here you go, darlin’,” she said as she placed the cups on the table and began pouring coffee.

“I’m very sorry, Anastasia…and Janice,” the man said, “but there’s a private jet waiting at Anchorage International. The sooner we get you there, the better. You’ll fly to Dubai, then take a chartered Emirates flight to Merovina. We’d like to avoid making you look like an American puppet.”

“What about my apartment, and my clothes?” Ana asked. “My car can go to the scrapyard for all I care, but I can’t very well walk into the palace looking like this.”

“The State Department will take care of your apartment and car, and we’ve loaned you an assistant for a couple weeks. She’ll get you properly clothed, after a shopping trip in Dubai, and prepped to meet the government.” The man smiled. “I think she’ll find her job a lot easier than the ambassadors she usually deals with.”

“And am I an American puppet, now?”

“If the CIA got to you before we did,” the man said, “you might have been. The State Department would rather have friendly allies than puppets that need to be kept on a leash.”

“And Merovina has no oil, diamonds, or other exploitable materials,” Ana said through a half-scowl. “I should be glad of that, though. Otherwise, we would have been swallowed by the USSR, rather than ignored as insignificant.”

After thanking Janice for the coffee, the ICE officers stood up and shook hands with the man and with Ana. “We’re done here. Good luck, Ana,” the woman said.

Ana took off her apron and handed it to Janice. “I guess I won’t be needing this any longer. Don’t forget to order limes this week.”

“Before you leave,” Janice said, “come here and take a selfie with me. We had an honest-to-god princess working here!”

#

The funeral was broadcast world-wide, with Queen Anastasia bidding a tearful final farewell to her father, King Freidrich IX. In the weeks that followed, Merovina faced sweeping reforms. The entire 130-member сборка was disbanded, and elections for a new parliament of 200 were held.

Sergei Kosolovich and everyone who backed his attempted takeover were forgiven, but the high court banned them from ever holding any political office. Ana’s first impulse had been to have them all imprisoned, but she didn’t want to be yet another Merovinan monarch that dealt with dissent by permanently silencing it. Instead, in her first public address, Ana said, “Treating harshly those who attempted to fill a vacuum would reflect poorly on the new Merovina. As such, the crown will not seek any further charges nor take any further action against them.”

In that same address, Ana did something few monarchs ever do; she drastically curbed the power of the throne, making her role more ceremonial than political. The newly elected parliament was made up of twelve parties, and more than a little messy, but the newly fledged democracy was finding its feet.

“The first order of business for the new parliament,” she said, “is to draft a new constitution befitting Merovina. Until it is drafted, passed by the parliament, and meets the approval of a referendum vote, we are still shackled with the old way of doing things. It is my deepest desire that the previous call for election, and the signing of the constitution will be my only actions as queen under the laws that are now more than six centuries old. I look forward to serving as your queen under a new constitution, in a new Merovina.”

Closing out her address, Ana smiled brightly for the cameras, and gave a closing line that left Janice beaming. “I have faith in my fellow Merovinans that we can and will create a new rule of law based on equity, humanity, and good will for our neighbors. As a dear friend often said to me, ‘We will do the hard work first, then everything else will seem easy.’”

Trunk Stories

Jo Said She Didn’t Take the Book

prompt: Write a story in which the same line recurs three times.

available at Reedsy

“Jo said she didn’t take the book.”

“So where is it?”

They were both just over five and a half feet tall with medium reddish-brown skin, high cheekbones, and bright brown eyes. The identical sisters, distinguished only by the size of their puff hairdo, stood in the middle of the apartment. George, with the smaller puff, picked up a framed photo from the coffee table. It showed the identical triplets, Josephine, Georgiana, and Alice, better known as Jo, George, and Al, in matching bikinis on a beach in Oahu. The smiles were forced, as it was the first vacation they’d taken without their mother.

“I wish mom could’ve been there,” she said.

“George, get your head out of the clouds and help me find the book.” Al was frustrated, and it showed.

The book in question was a collection of short stories about three magical princesses, Jo, George, and Al, and their feats of derring-do and magical mischief. Every story was based on a real-life situation the triplets found themselves in, spun into a tall tale. As the girls grew older, so did the princesses in the stories.

“Sorry, Al. I guess it’s time to start pulling everything off the shelves.”

“We might as well pack while we look.”

George nodded her assent and set an empty box beside her. She began taking books off the shelf and stacking them in neat piles in the box. “Mom still has a couple of your textbooks from med school.”

“I saw that. And is this one of yours from MIT?” Al held up a book titled “Brownian Motion and Stochastic Calculus.”

“Heh, yeah, from my undergrad studies.” George’s vision blurred as tears pooled in her eyes. “Why did she keep all this stuff?”

“I don’t know.” Al was crying now as well. 

They continued in silence, boxing shelf after shelf of books, pictures, figurines, and assorted bric-a-brac. Hours passed this way, and box after box was filled and stacked in the living room.

“When does Jo get back?” Al asked.

“I texted with her this morning and got chewed out. She was in court and forgot to mute her phone.” George laughed. “Anyway, she should be back tomorrow for the weekend. Are you going home?”

“I think I’m gonna sleep in mom’s bed tonight.”

“Me too.”

They snuggled together in the king bed that night, as they’d done hundreds of times before, although always with Jo and their mother as well. George inhaled deeply, her mother’s scent still on the pillows. “I miss her so much.”

“I thought of something,” Al said.

“What’s that?”

“Jo said she didn’t take the book. Do you think mom might have given it to her before…?”

“She’s the oldest, so maybe. And she’s not above being technically correct.”

They woke in the early morning to the sound of the garbage truck emptying the dumpsters in the alley. It didn’t take any words for them both to understand that the other was just as tired and annoyed by the rude awakening.

“Al, make us some coffee?”

“Depends.”

George used her sweetest sing-song voice, “I’ll go pick up some pastries from the Donut Haven.”

“Deal.”

George returned with a small bag containing three raspberry danishes and sat down at the table with Al.

“Why did you bring three?”

“Habit. I almost grabbed a bear claw for mom, too.” She wiped the tears that threatened to fall and took a deep breath.

“That’s okay, Jo will eat it even if it’s stale.”

They spent the morning packing more boxes, each item a small memory. Just holding up the occasional knick-knack to show the other was enough to elicit a sad smile.

Lunch time rolled around and passed without either woman taking note. Where they had started out at a steady pace, they were now both moving as if through molasses. The emotional toll was heavier than any physical exertion. George handed Al a cold cola and opened one herself. They sat drinking in silence, eyeing the sizable stack of boxes they’d packed.

“Sisters! I come bearing gifts!” Jo’s sudden entrance startled them both. She set her overnight bag down, and a bottle of wine peeked out of the top. Her briefcase remained firmly in her other hand.

George jumped to her feet and ran to embrace her, while Al lagged slightly behind. “I didn’t expect you until later.”

“Court was adjourned early for the weekend,” she said. “Come here, Al, give me some love.”

The three held each other for several long minutes, George and Al in shorts and tee-shirts, Jo in a suit with her hair pulled back into a severe bun. Al grabbed at the elastic holding the bun in place and yanked, freeing her sister’s hair.

“Get changed and let me fix your hair. You gotta quit trying to wear white lady hair.”

“In a minute,” Jo said, raising her briefcase. “I have something to show you.”

“Is it the book?” George asked.

“I told you I didn’t take it. You’ll like this, though.”

The sisters made their way into the kitchen, where Jo opened the briefcase and laid a small sheaf of papers on the counter. While the others looked at them, she grabbed the danish that sat there and ate it. “Thanks.”

“What is it?” the other two asked at the same time.

“Raspberry danish, our favorite,” she said.

“No, you ass, this,” Al said, waving the sheaf of papers.

“Mom’s publishing contract. Jackie gave it to me the day….” She faltered and shook her head. “Anyway, they’re sending the original back in a few days, and plan on publishing next May, in time for Mother’s Day.”

“Jackie’s a nurse, why was she handling mom’s legal affairs?” George stabbed a finger in Jo’s chest. “You’re the lawyer in the family, you should’ve been handling it.”

“Quit poking my boob.”

“Besides,” Al said, “mom always said her stories only meant something to us, the three princesses.”

“Jackie apologized for it after the fact, but she sent it off to a publisher without mom’s okay.” Jo sighed. “When she told me that, my first instinct was to sue. Until I read the letter mom left me. She wanted it to be a surprise, once the contract was finalized.”

The three of them chatted trivialities while Jo changed and continued while Al fixed her hair into a matching puff. When the three of them finally matched, Jo asked, “What can I do to help?”

“Have you eaten lunch?” George asked.

“Nope. How about an early dinner at O’Toole’s? Then I’ll help pack up whatever’s left.”

Al sighed. “The only rooms left are the kitchen and the bedroom. I don’t know if I’m ready to pack up the bedroom.”

“Me either,” George said. “I want to spend as many nights in her bed as I can, since it’ll all be gone next week.”

Jo pulled her sisters into a close embrace. “Then let’s walk to O’Toole’s for dinner and drinks. Then back here to pack the kitchen and cuddle in mom’s bed for the last couple nights.”

As they walked out the door, George said, “Called it. She was technically correct.”

“Yeah,” Al replied. “Jo said she didn’t take the book.”