Tag: short story

Trunk Stories

Stranded

prompt: Start your story with someone making a cup of tea — either for themself or for someone else.

available at Reedsy

Cara watched the water reach a boil in the animal skin bag over the open fire. She kept a close eye to ensure the flame never reached higher than the water. She’d crisped one bag that way already and wasn’t looking for a repeat.

When the water reached boiling, she removed the bag from the fire and poured it carefully into the hand-carved wooden mug, soaking the crushed dried leaves waiting there. She let it steep for a few minutes before taking a tentative sip.

Nodding her approval, Cara sipped at her “tea” until she reached the dregs at the bottom. I should figure out a way to make a strainer, she thought.

The last leftovers of the creature she’d eaten the previous few days constituted her breakfast. That, combined with the stimulant properties of the leaves gave her the energy to hunt. She’d named the creatures “piradeer” because they looked like a cross between a pig, a rabbit, and a deer.

They were not frightened by her presence, but she worried that as time went on, they would begin to fear her. For now, “hunting” involved picking a couple of the bitter berries (that made her sicker than she ever wanted to be) and finding a piradeer. Once spotted, she need only show the fruit to the animal and lead it back to the cave.

About the size of a medium dog and gentle, she found that she could calm them by scratching behind the long ears, and then a tight hug around their thin neck put them out. The butchering was bloody and difficult, but she’d gotten efficient during the months she’d been stranded.

Cara looked out on the area outside her cave. The area to her right was flat and mostly clear. If she was still here in thirty more days, she’d build a paddock and see if she couldn’t domesticate the piradeer. They didn’t move far, but they moved in loose herds to fresh grass.

It would require work on her part not just to build the paddock, but to collect fresh grass for them every day. She’d been so lost in her thoughts that she’d neglected to knock out the piradeer that was now sleeping calmly under her scratching fingers, its pig-like snout twitching with each breath.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and rendered it unconscious with a squeeze of its neck. A tear ran down her cheek. No matter how many times she did it, it never got easier. 

Aside from the bitter leaves she used for tea, every other plant she’d come across made her violently ill, even in tiny tastes. The pseudo-tea leaves, however, were far stronger than coffee or actual tea. She learned that two of the fingernail-sized leaves were the right amount to give her energy without the shakes.

The meat smoked over the fire, her food for the next few days. The meat was gamey and a bit grainy, but she’d grown used to it. Cara picked up a stick and charred the end in the fire, before adding another mark to the wall. She wasn’t sure how long the days were here, but they felt longer than twenty-four hours. Still, this was the two-hundred-twenty-sixth mark she’d made.

There had been many days before that, sitting first at the wreck, then moving out when her supplies dwindled. The cave was a lucky find. It was two days travel from the wreck, and Cara hadn’t been sure where she was going. The lower oxygen levels caused her to tire easily at first, and her thinking was often clouded. It also made starting the fire more difficult, or at least she rationalized the entire day spent getting it going that way. Cara hadn’t allowed it to go out since.

She’d acclimated over time, and guessed that now she could return to the wreck in a single day or less. The hide of the creature that now cooked in the smoke of the fire lay before her. She scraped the back with the knife that constituted her entire collection of useful modern tools. Muscle memory took over, allowing her mind to wander while she scraped.

Her emergency radio sat quiet in the corner of the cave, the green light indicating that it was listening, the slow blinking of the orange light indicating every time her ship in orbit sent a distress call. Folded neatly beneath the radio was her flight suit, a massive rip in the right leg. How she didn’t die in the crash was still beyond her.

She stopped scraping and rubbed the scar on her right calf which itched when she thought about it. Cara was glad for the warmth of the weather, as she hadn’t anything other than her undergarments to wear. She wondered if she should make a needle and try to sew some hide clothes.

The scraping finished, she hung the skin over a rock near the fire. She wasn’t ready to sleep yet, so she grabbed a bone from the pile and began carving with her knife. Making a needle would probably take a good deal of practice and now was as good a time as any.

Cara woke the next morning and stoked the fire, adding another log. After tea, her next chore was to find more dried wood. While her tea steeped, she saw movement in the underbrush outside the cave. The piradeer were moving to the clearing near the cave.

“Hey, guys,” she said.

A few of them stopped and looked her quizzically, their ears perking up. She sipped her tea and watched them go about their calm business. While they ate, they seemed to take turns coming to the mouth of the cave, sniffing at the fire and deciding it was not good or sniffing at her and showing a great deal of curiosity.

She scratched behind their ears as they came around, and soon she had a dozen of them lying around her, in a state somewhere between waking and sleep.

Cara finished her tea and rose to set her mug on the rock outcropping she thought of as her “shelf” when the radio crackled to life. “Exploratory Vessel Andrews, this is Rescue Vessel Sunrise, do you copy?”

She picked up the radio and responded. “RV Sunrise, EV Andrews, Dr. Cara Meeks. I’m on the planet’s surface. From the downed shuttle, look for the smoke of my fire.”

“Roger, Dr. Meeks, we’ll be there to pick you up in less than an hour.”

The curious piradeer had risen and were surrounding her and she found herself scratching them as they got close enough. “Thanks, Sunrise. Take your time, I’m in no hurry today.”

Trunk Stories

Savages

prompt: Write about a character whose intuition is always right — until one day it isn’t.

available at Reedsy

His calm was not born of insouciance, but of clarity; he already knew what would happen and how it would play out. He waited outside the Lord High General’s office, letting the harried couriers and lesser generals bustle about. A subtle feeling led him to move to the other side of the entryway as the door swung violently open where he had just been.

“The Lord High General calls for the Royal Seer, Terkannan!” The guard that opened the door and barked it out hadn’t even noticed Terkannan until he was halfway through the door.

He approached the broad desk and bowed. “Lord High General, I am at your service.”

The general’s voice was hoarse from non-stop meetings since the first light of dawn. “The primitives in this system, here,” he said, pointing at a star chart. “You’ve seen the reports, what is your assessment?”

Terkannan closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Not that he needed to, but it helped maintain the mystery of his line; long bred for intuition to the point of being nearly precognizant. “They are savage, brutish creatures, capable of only violence. This has led them to fight each other, making the strongest among them their leader. Strong they are, too…far superior to our raw abilities, but that’s what weapons are for.”

The general nodded in assent and motioned for the seer to continue.

“Due to their violent nature, they will advance only slowly if at all…assuming they do not do us the favor of wiping themselves out first. Worst case, they may advance rudimentary armor in a few hundred qot. We can use this to our advantage, as we have the technology and weapons to make us…that is…you, Lord High General, the leader of them all.”

“Strategy?” the general asked.

“Overwhelming show of force. As they gather in groups, find the largest gathering first and kill the leader and fighting capable males outright and capture the rest. This demonstration, using their own methods, will make you their undisputed leader.

“From there, it is a simple matter to assimilate bordering groups and grow an army of the creatures organically. They will be fanatically dedicated to you and do your will. They will also make good slaves for mineral extraction.”

“Thank you, Terkannan. The other generals are concerned by the strength of the beasts, while the scientists want to study them, and at least one princess wants to protect them. Bah! That entire system is wealth for the empire, and a million of those beasts on chains in front of our armies will secure our place in the galaxy forever.”

“Exactly as you say, Lord High General.” Terkannan bowed and left the general’s office to return to his own study.

As he walked through the city toward the library, activity around the fort increased. Shuttles were already transporting troops to the waiting ships in orbit. A quarter of a qot to board and prepare the fleet, then three quarters there. The system would be under the empire’s control in just over one qot. Which leaves another nine-hundred-ninety-nine to plan for. This would be the empire’s greatest turning.

Terkannan entered the library and climbed the steps to his study. It was quiet here, and he could shut out the world around him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath; not for show, but to clear his mind, let his intuition wander. Suspicion niggled at the back of his mind. Something was missing, but he wasn’t sure what it was.

He was trying to let intuition guide him to the missing piece, when he felt he should stand and face his comms. He stood for only a moment when it chimed, and the Lord High General’s assistant showed up on the screen.

“How may I help?” Terkannan asked.

“The Lord High General requests your attendance on this campaign.” The assistant didn’t wait for a reply but disconnected immediately. As with all things the general did, this was an order, not a request.

Terkannan took the bag he had packed the previous day, knowing he would need it but not why. He made his way to the fort and turned left at the sign that pointed to the right for shuttles. A short way down the road he met the general’s staff, boarding a private shuttle, and let himself in.

He was shuttled to the command ship and settled into his cryopod. The general wouldn’t board until just before they left and wouldn’t have time to consult him anyway.

He woke to a cacophony of alarms and shouting. Something had gone wrong, in the worst possible way. Terkannan made his way to the bridge, and the sight that filled the screens was unbelievable.

This was the same planet, but it was ringed with artificial satellites, cities that lit up the night skies, vast amounts of pollutants in the atmosphere. It shouldn’t be possible. He knew they would never advance.

“Did someone get here before us?” the general barked out.

“Scans show the same creatures,” one of the deck officers responded.

“Hundreds of qots to get to crude armor!” The general’s face was distorted with rage as he rose and towered over the seer. “You said they would never advance!”

“Perhaps, Lord High General, I let logic try to explain the reason for my intuition, but I stand by it. An overwhelming show of force and they will follow you blindly.”

The general grunted and sat back down. He pulled up a holographic globe and picked the brightest spot on the night side. “We’re setting down there,” he said. “Set a course and lock it in. The fighters can flatten a landing area for us.”

“Lord High General,” the comms officer said, “we’re getting even more radio wave transmissions from the planet, all across the spectrum. Should we analyze before we—”

“No. Take us in.”

The fighters flew in ahead of the formation and began blasting the strange towers to flatten the land for the fleet. The response from the creatures was immediate.

Flying machines harried the fighters, tearing holes through them with projectile weapons, and finally destroying them with flying bombs. The fleet came over the horizon, flying machines at their backs, and we met head-on with missiles firing from the area of the destruction.

Terkannan felt the unsurety that had bothered him fall away. The general’s ship, and the fleet along with it, would die here. His fate was to sink with the ship in the deep water off the coast they were approaching.

#

“In this evening’s news: We are not alone, but we may not be safe. An alien invasion in Europe destroyed much of the Benelux before NATO troops were able to bring them down. Thousands dead and many more missing. An underwater salvage is underway in the North Sea to recover as many of the alien ships as possible. Here’s Dr. Silva from the European Space Administration to tell us what they hope to learn from the wreckage.”

Trunk Stories

I Meant What I Said

prompt: Write a story about two people who don’t know each other but bump into one other on New Year’s Eve (either once or every year). 

available at Reedsy

The first time I saw her, her eyes were haunted, her scars fresh. She came through the line in the soup kitchen, pointing at what she wanted but never uttering a sound. If I had to guess, I would say she was nineteen or twenty. That was New Year’s Eve, three years ago.

Two years ago, I volunteered on New Year’s Eve again, and saw her again. The haunted look in her eyes was pushed down, hiding under despair and dark circles. Her scars, the result of some horrendous fire, were still visible, but the color almost matched her medium-tan skin.

She was wearing a sticker on her jacket, probably from a twelve-step meeting somewhere. It said, “Hello, my name is Anita.” Once again, she uttered no sounds, but pointed out what she wanted. She seemed thinner, frailer. She seemed to have aged several years.

“Hi, Anita,” I said, “I’m Tim. Have you got a place to stay warm?” I made sure to include the card for the women’s shelter on her tray.

She looked up at me, for just a second, before walking away with her food. I watched her sit across from another woman, grey hair, missing most of her teeth, with the leathery skin of someone who has lived rough for years. They signed to each other between bites. The older woman cackled at something, but Anita didn’t seem amused.

By last New Year’s Eve, I had learned enough sign language to be almost conversational. I was able to talk to the older woman, who I found out was Maribeth, once a beauty pageant winner, fifty-four years old, and homeless for the last seventeen years. Maribeth had a crank habit, and claimed she’d been kicked out of shelters and rehab programs all up and down the west coast.

I asked about Anita, and she grew angry. She was signing too fast for me to keep up, but I caught the gist. They’d had a falling out. Maribeth’s signing slowed for emphasis as she told me, “That bitch thinks she’s too good for my meth. I tried to share but she said no. I bet she’s working for the government.”

Not wanting to aggravate her further, or get drawn into her delusions, I told Maribeth that she should eat before her food gets cold…and that she was holding up the line.

I didn’t see Anita until after Maribeth left. The despair in her eyes had turned to resignation but the haunt was still buried there. The cold outside made her scars stand out pink against her throat and hands.

She removed her heavy parka, four sizes too large. Where she had been thin the previous year, she was positively gaunt, and needle tracks marked her arm. She looked closer to forty than twenty-five.

As she approached, I signed, “Hello, Anita. Do you have somewhere warm to sleep tonight?”

She looked up at me and signed back, “Who cares? And I can hear.”

“Good to know,” I said. I grabbed one of the cards for the women’s shelter and was about to put it on her tray. Instead, I turned it over, wrote my name and number on the back, and handed it to her.

Anita looked at the card like it was poisoned. “I don’t want anything from you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m just worried about you. If you go to the shelter, talk to Julia Marquez, she taught me sign, she can help. If you need someone to talk to, you can text me at this number, any time.”

“Not my hero,” she signed with an angry huff, but I noticed that she put the card in her jacket pocket.

“Not even close to a hero,” I said. “I just care.”

As she ate, I noticed she was watching me like a hawk. Every interaction I had with the others as they came through the line. “Do you have someplace warm to sleep tonight? No? Here’s a card for a men’s shelter over on Second.”

There was a slight delay as a woman holding an infant and trailing a toddler came in. The left side of her face was swollen and purple, the eye almost swollen shut. Dried blood from her nose and lip mingled with the tracks of tears. When I made a move to help her, she cowered from me, so I backed off. “Sister Kathleen,” I called, “we could use your help.”

The sister came over at once and bundled the three of them into one of the side rooms that connected with the main body of the chapel. I stared at the door that had closed behind them far too long, trying to calm the reflexive part of me that wanted to find the monster that had done that to her and pay them back in kind.

I took a deep breath to calm myself, wiped the tears of anger that had started to form, and turned back around and went back to serving. My phone chimed, and I finished helping the man who was so intoxicated as to be reeling on his feet to a table before checking it.

It was an unknown number. The text message said, “Do u mean it?”

“Mean what?” I texted back.

“U care – any time – that shit.”

I looked at Anita, who was staring holes through me. I walked to her table and said, “Yes, I meant everything I said. I care, and I’m available any time.”

“What was her name?” she signed.

“Julia Marquez.” I texted it to her as I said it. “She’s the real deal.”

Anita rose to leave, and I thought I saw something different in her eyes…a faint glimmer of hope. Sometimes, that’s all one can ask for.

She didn’t text me at all after that. All I could do was hope for the best. As New Year’s Eve rolled around again, I volunteered for the fourth year running. Aside from some of the sisters, it seemed that the volunteers were new each year more than the people we were feeding.

I was about to introduce myself to the new volunteers when my phone chimed. I looked at it; a new text from Anita. “Behind you,” it said.

I turned around, and there she was. She’d gained some weight and shed the extra years, looking more her age. Her clothes, while casual, were neat and clean, in her size, her hair styled, and best of all, she wore a smile. The circles under her eyes were gone, and there was true happiness in them. She held her arms out, and I copied her.

Anita stepped close and gave me a big hug. As I hugged her back, she began to sob. I looked around for help, but Sister Kathleen just grinned at me.

“I—is something wrong?” I asked.

She shook her head no and clung on. After a minute or so she stepped back. “Nothing’s wrong,” she signed. “I’m just so glad you’re here.”

I noticed that she was wearing a volunteer pin. “I’m so glad that you’re here, on this side of the line.”

“I thought I was done,” she signed, “but you told me you cared, and I thought, if the dork at the soup kitchen can care enough to learn sign for me, I should be able to care enough to ask for help. So I did.”

I was about to ask her for more details, but she pulled something out of her pocket. It was a keychain from Narcotics Anonymous that said, “9 Months.” The pride in her smile was unmistakable.

“They say we can change lives doing things like this. Want to see if it’s true?” I asked.

She signed at me, “You dork, of course it’s true. I’m working next to you so you can translate.”

“Not if you’re calling people names,” I said.

“Never,” she signed, “at least not here. I work for the church as a janitor and I do this every month now, you should join me.”

“I think I will,” I said. As always, I meant exactly what I said.

Trunk Stories

Late for the Last Time

prompt: Start your story with a character who is always running late arriving somewhere just as it closes.

available at Reedsy

Liv hadn’t been on time for anything, ever, and this was no different. She knew it would still be there later, after all, and she’d had things she had to do.

The doors were massive, imposing. She took a deep breath and started toward them before stopping. Liv looked at the summons again. She was more than just a little late.

Liv shrugged. What are they going to do, sue me? she thought. As she began to climb the stairs toward the doors, they began to swing close.

The stairs were interminable. She wondered how they accommodated the handicapped. There were no ramps in sight, and no signage for accessible entry.

Liv continued to trudge up the stairs while the doors continued their slow, stately arches, moving inexorably closed. She was surprised that she hadn’t gotten short of breath on such a massive staircase, but she wasn’t going to run and risk tumbling back down them.

Even if the doors closed before she got there, she could truthfully claim she’d been here, but slowed down by the stairs. She noticed, now that she was closer to the massive doors, that there seemed to be person-sized doors set within the main doors.

She wondered why a place like this insisted on such grandiose, over-the-top displays of power and authority. We get it, already, she thought, we’re peons and you’re all the overlords of everything. Sheesh.

Liv climbed the last dozen steps as the massive doors closed with an almost imperceptible click. Not the massive thump she’d expected. That quiet click held the uncomfortable feeling of finality.

She stepped to one of the person-sized doors set in the bottom of the main doors that stood at least four stories tall. With a deep breath and final resignation, she knocked on the door.

No sooner had she knocked than the small door slid open. The man who stood before her in a grey suit made her uneasy. He was nondescript, bland-faced and forgettable.

“Olivia Marcos-Gonzales, you are late,” he said.

“I had things to do,” she said, “and it’s not like you’re going anywhere.”

“From the moment of your birth, two weeks late, you have never been on time for anything.” He looked at a tablet in his hand that she hadn’t seen before.

“Yeah, everyone knows that about me,” she said with a shrug. “My friends don’t mind, and my family’s used to it. My boss understands, and I get paid piece work rather than hourly. At least my work is always impeccable.”

“Your friends tolerated you, your family reached the end of their tolerance long ago, and your boss only assigned you work that had no deadline.” He swiped the tablet to a new page. “The closest you have been to appearing at an appointment on time was during your second year of school, when you were seven minutes late for your school photo.”

“Oh, come on,” Liv said. “You can’t blame me for being late in grade school! My mother never got me to anything on time.”

“It was always you that slowed her down,” he said. “Any time you were not a factor, your mother arrived on time or early. You acted as an anchor, slowing her down, and causing her no end of stress.”

Liv bit her lip. She felt the truth in his words. As much as she didn’t like to admit it herself, she was a burden to everyone around her. “I…I’m sorry.” Her voice was as small as she felt at that moment.

The man turned off the tablet and it disappeared from his hand. “It seems only fitting,” he said, “that you are subjected to this.” He pointed to the stairs behind her.

She turned to look, and the stairs seemed to descend forever into darkness. “What? What’s going on?”

“As unlikely as it sounds, you arrived at hell as we closed the gates for eternity.” He raised a hand. “Before you ask, heaven closed thousands of years ago.”

“Thousands of years? What are you talking about?”

“You are the last human soul. We’ve waited for you as long as we could, but we must move to a new universe now, so that all the other human souls can be reborn into new forms.” A small smile played at the corner of his mouth. “Olivia Marcos-Gonzales, you will remain in this universe until its eventual heat death, after which you will be forever in an eternal void…alone.”

“Come on,” she said, “you’re here, I’m here, the door’s open, let’s just move on.”

The smile dropped from the man’s face. “That’s where you are wrong. You are here, I am not. The door is not open, just a facsimile in order to pass your judgement. We have already gone.”

“Bu—but…I had things to take care of! It’s not like I was just wandering around doing nothing!” she cried.

“Olivia Marcos-Gonzales, that’s exactly what you’ve been doing. For three thousand years you wandered the Earth as a ghost, never moving on, never accomplishing anything. Then you spent a billion more making your way here. You have always been and will always be nothing but a faceless wanderer.”

“Th—three…thousand…years? Then a billion more?” she asked. “How?”

“Time moves differently for the dead, but then, time has always moved differently for you, hasn’t it?” A frown darkened his face. “Had you made this one appointment on time, you’d find yourself being birthed on a new world, in a new universe, right now.”

“But I’m stuck here forever?”

“Indeed.” He smirked with a perverse joy. “Perhaps now,” he said, “you’ll have enough time to do all your very important things. No one will ever bother you or ask you to hurry up, ever again.”

The man took a step backwards and the small door slid closed. The massive doors in front of her shimmered and disappeared. Liv looked around. With the building gone, she found herself floating in the void of space, watching the stars wink out, one by one.

Trunk Stories

The Other Me

prompt:  End your story with someone finding themselves.

available at Reedsy

Sometimes it’s easier to pretend that everything’s fine. This wasn’t one of those times. Still, I put on a smile and went through the motions until the end of the workday.

When I left at the end of the day I went straight home to try and straighten the whole mess out. I pulled out my phone and looked at the twelve messages I’d received over the course of the day.

Each message was, supposedly, sent from my own number. That’s easy enough to spoof, I guess, if one knows how. What concerned me were the intimate details contained in each message. Things that I’d not told anyone or written down anywhere…ever.

I read over the last message again, trying to make sense of it. It left more questions than answers.

Your bank password will be given to you tomorrow morning. Trust me, this is for your own good. You’ll find things a little tight until payday, but when the auto trade happens on Nov 22, three years from now, you’ll never have to work again. You’ll even have enough to buy J a house, even though she doesn’t even know you feel the way you do about her. When you do, don’t let her know it was you. Let it be anonymous for her and her kids.

I went to my laptop and logged on to my bank account…or tried to anyway. Not only had my password been changed, but I got an alert on my phone that someone unauthorized had attempted to access my account.

After spending twenty minutes on hold, I was connected with a service rep. They told me I had changed my password three times in the past few hours, and the account was now locked for further changes for a twenty-four cool-down.

The call ended with them trying to hint that maybe I was having a dissociative episode and might benefit from medical help. I’m sure they thought they were being gentle and subtle about it, but it hit like a hammer.

Was I going crazy? How would I have disturbed my own meeting this morning with a text to myself? Was someone trying to convince me I was going insane? Who would do that?

I was left with questions I couldn’t answer. Rather than continue the fruitless conversation with myself, I settled in for a Friday evening of binging streaming video. At least those passwords hadn’t been changed.

I finally got to sleep despite the nagging worry that my life had been hacked in some unrealistically deep way. My sleep was not restful. When I was woken by a text message notification, I didn’t feel like I’d slept at all.

The text message contained my new bank password, and login credentials to a stock trading site connected to a national broker with an office in town. It concluded with, “The good pruning shears are in the kitchen junk drawer—don’t know why. I’ll answer your questions Monday. I know it won’t do any good but be careful tomorrow.”

Not that I had any reason to, but I checked the kitchen junk drawer. I didn’t see any pruning shears in there. Of course, it was a mess. I dug into the drawer, and under the top layer of odds and ends…there they were. Missing for the entire summer, yet this person knew where they were.

I logged in to my back account and noticed it was short a thousand dollars. I checked the transaction history and found an in-person withdrawal that happened while I was in the meeting that had been interrupted by the text message. I looked at the record of the withdrawal and found that it was verified with ID, debit card, and thumbprint. On top of that, I knew all the tellers at the bank by name, and they knew me, as I was there on a weekly basis.

It was looking more impossible the further I went. I’d only added thumbprint verification for cash withdrawals a week prior, as soon as the bank offered it. Whoever this was, had a passable ID, my debit card with the chip, and my thumbprint.

I checked in my wallet, and found that my debit card was, indeed, still in my possession. Still in a haze of feeling violated, I checked the stock trading site. I had three transactions. The first was a deposit of one thousand dollars that included a free five-year membership. Next was an automatic purchase order for GryTek at nine dollars, which had triggered yesterday at noon, resulting in the purchase of one hundred shares after the trading site took their fees. The third was an automatic sell order of the GryTek at nine thousand dollars.

Here again, the transaction records showed that the transactions had been made in person with ID, and that certainly looked like my signature. I checked through the terms and conditions. The agreement was binding and there was no provision for refund. That money was gone.

Should I get the police involved? Someone with my debit card in hand, and my thumbprint, withdrew my money from the bank, and then bought a hundred shares in a nobody company. It would sound like buyer’s remorse…like I wanted to back out of a hasty decision.

I spent the day going in circles, trying to decide how to handle the situation. No idea I came up with was satisfactory. At some point I turned on the TV and let some documentary series play, until I fell asleep there.

The morning came and I woke feeling not refreshed, but like I had at least gotten some sleep. I showered and dressed, planning to spend the day trying to research identity theft, to see if it had ever been done so completely.

The phone rang around noon and I answered, hoping for the thief, but got a coworker instead.

“Could you swing by the office? You missed a signature on one page of your benefits packet. I need to get them out to FedEx this afternoon, but without your signature you’ll miss out on your revenue sharing.”

I drove to the office and handled the paperwork. I sat into the car and had no sooner started it than changed my mind about heading straight home. I got back out of the car and crossed the street to the park.

I walked to the bench by the water where I sometimes ate my lunch and sat facing the river. I wanted to clear my mind, let rationality take over.

The river made a pleasant burbling in front of me; the sunlight sparkled off the water in bright shards. I took a deep breath, letting the fresh air of the park calm me. I’m not sure how long I sat there, but I rose and headed back out of the park as the sun hung low in the sky.

I hadn’t even made it out of the park when my mind began to race again, going in circles as I stepped into the crosswalk. A screech of tires and loud honk made me jump. The last thing I felt before everything went black was my knee shattering against the bumper.

When I woke in the hospital, my entire body felt like a giant bruise. I could only see out of one eye. I reached up with a hand in a cast, only my pointer finger free, and felt at the bandage covering my eye.

The TV at the other end of the room was tuned to a news channel. They were talking about a hundred-fold increase in the stock price of a little-known scientific instrument company that had just signed deals with every major smart phone maker.

I found the remote by my other hand. That hand wasn’t in a cast, although that elbow was immobilized. I turned up the volume.

“The announcement of the deals signed by GryTek early this morning signaled a meteoric stock rise. The CEO has said that they plan a series of stock splits, to normalize their stock prices over the next few years. The first came as a surprise this morning when they made a one to five split.”

I muted the TV. It seemed I now owned five hundred shares of GryTek. I muted the TV, turned my head to the left…and there I stood, smiling.

“Hey, there I am. I couldn’t remember what room I was in,” the other me said. “I know this is weird but hear me out.”

We looked like identical twins, although I noticed a small wrinkle near the corner of other me’s eyes I knew I didn’t have. “What…what is this?”

“GryTek just had the first of several stock splits. Over the next three years, that one hundred…well, five hundred now…shares will turn into twenty thousand. They reach their peak at nine thousand and four dollars a share before they collapse completely.

“For the next three years, their name will be in the news constantly. They make a sensor that ends up in every smart phone and smart watch, until they get pounded by a patent suit.”

“How…who…?”

“I’m you, four years from now. I had this same conversation with myself, on your side, four years ago. Last year…three years from now for you…I retired. A few safe real-estate investments and I’m set for life.”

“If you’re from the future, how does this all work? Causality, I mean?” I asked.

“Hell if I know. I didn’t invent this, just stumbled on it by accident…you’ll see. Was there a version of me that didn’t have a future me come back and make that investment? Maybe. That might have been the me that started all this.”

“But you have my debit card…?”

“Of course. It doesn’t expire for another four years for you, next month for me.” Other me stood. “It’s time for me to go.”

I noticed a slight limp as other me walked a few steps away then faded away into thin air.

Trunk Stories

Method Acting

prompt: Write a story about a character practising a speech in front of the mirror. What are they preparing for?

available at Reedsy

“Okay, again.” He looked in the mirror, took a deep breath and relaxed his posture.

He looked at the script again. It couldn’t really be called a script, though. It was broad strokes, with details sprinkled throughout. A believable performance required that he be totally at ease with the story and the character, while recalling the details as if he had lived it.

“I met him in the coffee shop in the lobby; seen him around a few times. Said his name was Greg? Gary? Pretty sure it was a ‘G’…I suck with names. Saw him on Thursdays, since that’s when I usually have enough time to grab an iced coffee after lunch. Either way, it was around one o’clock in the afternoon last Thursday that I last saw him.”

He glanced at the script to check details. He’d need to get it down without needing notes.

As he continued with the story, he caught himself bunching his shoulders, or shaking his head slightly when affirming something. Another deep breath, he shook himself out and he started again.

After several restarts, and hours spent watching himself in the mirror he took a break. While he prepared his lunch, he carried on an imaginary conversation with a small mirror propped up on the counter. “Oh, yeah, I thought he was weird as shit, but that’s his business, right?”

He took a bite of his sandwich and talked around it. “Yeah, I heard about that, right? I mean you hear about this kind of shit every day almost.”

He nodded as he continued to chew. “Yeah, it’s a little freaky that it happened so close to work, but it was bound to at some point, right? The city’s only so big, and the dealers and pimps have been moving closer for months now. It’s weirder that it was ‘The Weird Coffeeshop Guy’ I kinda know.”

He finished his lunch and brushed his teeth, checking that there was nothing stuck between them. Satisfied, he began recounting the story in the mirror again. Each time he told it, the order he told it in changed, but the details remained the same.

With each retelling, he built the picture in his mind, creating a memory where none was. As long as he believed it, his performance would be perfect. 

He’d been called on so rarely to perform, but he borrowed heavily from method acting for those times he was called. Prior to now, his performances were small potatoes: almost all sales pitches with the occasional pick up on a lonely Saturday night.

A good night’s sleep, filled with dreams of the pictures he’d been building in his mind, and he woke refreshed. He was a little surprised that he hadn’t been called on to perform yet but took full advantage of the time to engage in more mock conversations about it.

He had just finished breakfast and was brushing his teeth when the doorbell rang followed by a heavy knock on the door. Opening the door, he saw two police officers.

It was his time to perform. He didn’t resist, but he demanded to know why they were arresting him in the first place. When the word “murder” came up he was suitably shocked and appalled that he would even be implicated.

The ride to the police station gave him all he needed to completely lose himself in the character he’d built up. Every passing minute increased his confusion at being accused of something he’d never even consider doing.

When they left him alone in the interrogation room, he let his confusion overwhelm him. “What’s going on?” he asked the camera.

The interrogating officer entered the room, introduced himself, and asked the man where he had been the previous Friday at six pm.

“I was still in the office,” he said, “working on a deal for a needy customer. If you want details, you’ll need to contact my boss and sign an NDA.”

“Okay, so you were at work. Anyone see you there?” the officer asked.

“After five on a Friday!? You must be kidding. Most of my coworkers would rather lose a client than miss out on happy hour.”

“Is there any way you can corroborate that you were in the office?”

“I think the last email exchange I had with the client was around seven or so. I went home right after that and it was almost eight when I got in.”

“We’ll check that out,” the officer said, “since we already have your personal and work computers.”

“What the hell? You just dig into my personal stuff, for what?”

“Why don’t you just walk me through your entire day last Friday, from the time you woke up, until you went to bed.”

“Do you need to know what I had for breakfast? I don’t remember if I had cereal or a breakfast bar.” When the officer signaled that those sorts of details were unimportant, he described his typical day, finishing with the details about working until seven pm, getting home at eight, and having a beer for dinner.

The interrogating officer leaned forward. “We have an eyewitness that puts you in the alley where Gary was killed, at six pm on Friday. And Gary was wearing your raincoat.”

He let the anger build up inside him at the accusation. “I wasn’t there! I just told you!”

“Why was he wearing your raincoat?”

“I don’t know. I hung it on the hook in the office last week when it was raining, what was that, Tuesday? Anyway, I walked out without it, and realized after I got home that I’d left it in the office.

“When I came in the next day, it was gone. I asked around about it, but no one saw anything. I saw him on Thursdays, usually. I didn’t know he was around the building any time.”

The officer just kept nodding and making notes as the man talked. When he finished, the officer asked, “How well did you know Gary? You said you saw him on Tuesdays?”

“Thursdays. That’s when I have some extra time after lunch, so I go to the lobby and get an iced coffee. Gary is…was…weird. He’d say shit like, ‘The butterfly flaps its wings…beware the storm.’ That’s kind of what he said to me last time I saw him.”

“He said, ‘Beware the storm?’ What do you think he meant by that?”

“I think he was off his meds. Sorry, that’s mean. I don’t know if he was crazy or constantly on drugs or just…creative. He was a nice enough guy, he just didn’t seem to have his head in the same reality as the rest of us, you know.”

The officer conferred with another officer outside the open door of the interrogation room. He returned and removed the cuffs from the man’s hands.

“We’ll check on your alibi and get back to you. In the meantime, don’t leave town. We’ll probably have more questions for you.”

“I’ll stay available. I hope you catch your guy.” The man rubbed his wrists as he walked out of the police station. 

He took a ride share to his home and walked in to the small mirror still sitting on the countertop. He leaned in until his face filled the mirror and smiled. “Who should we choose next?” he asked.

Trunk Stories

After the Storm

prompt:  Write about a character who’s stuck in a shopping mall.

available at Reedsy

There were, no doubt, better places to hide out, but this one was available. The storm was coming. Already, the heavy rains pounded against the large glass wall of the main mall entry.

Deciding that the glass was likely to turn into shrapnel when the storm fully hit, Angel moved deeper into the pitch-black mall, the crowbar she’d used to break in hanging from one hand. Her phone provided a little light, at least for now. She didn’t dare check how much battery it had left.

The drumming of the rain echoed in the empty promenade, louder now. A bright flash illuminated the empty store fronts, followed by the boom of thunder that hurt her ears.

She looked up to realize that the entire promenade had massive skylights for a roof. That, combined with the sheer amount of glass in the empty store fronts made her more nervous.

Angel tried to remember the last time she’d been here. What brought her back to the city she’d fled she couldn’t say. Years ago, when the stores were still open and the mall was packed daily, this was a happy place for her. She wasn’t sure what had killed the mall, but it was a dead, dusty thing now long faded like her memories.

Aside from some graffiti, though, the inside looked untouched. Another bright flash followed immediately by the boom of thunder pulled her head back into the present and presented a possibility.

She shined her phone’s light at the sign she’d glimpsed in the lightning flash. The restrooms and mall office were down a hallway just ahead. No exterior windows, no skylights, it would do.

The end of the hallway presented her with the restrooms and a heavy door to the office. She tried the door, but it was locked. Angel tried to break the lock with the crowbar, but the door was sturdier than the outside door she’d jimmied.

The sound of glass shattering and the sudden increase in pressure motivated her to run on to the restrooms. There was no door on the men’s, but the women’s restroom was still whole.

Angel sat down against the inside wall, feeling the air pressure pulsate as the door opened and closed, pumping like a bellows in response to the gusts. She turned off her phone’s flashlight to save her battery and darkness made her eyes strain to get the light that didn’t exist.

She closed her eyes, listening to the storm raging outside. The door was spending more time opened than closed, the wind raging past in the hallway outside. The steady drumming of the rain was punctuated with the percussive sound of branches or other detritus striking the skylights like mallets on a giant drum.

The faint echo of a whimper caught her attention. It was a dog, she was certain, and it sounded as scared as she was. She turned on her phone’s flashlight and called out, “In here, puppy! In here!”

The whimpering drew closer. A small mutt, curly brown coat soaked, showing the emaciated frame beneath, slunk in, ears down, tail between its legs. It bumped its nose against her hand and rolled on its back, shivering.

Angel turned off the flashlight and lifted the feather-light puppy into her lap. “You look how I feel,” she said. She stroked the wet fur slowly, giving the scared pup time to trust her.

“I think,” she said, “you’ve been living on the streets as long as I have. If we make it out of here I’ll make sure you get some food, okay?”

The dog licked at her hands, tentative at first, then gaining confidence. It tried to burrow under her sweatshirt, and she helped it. “Yeah, I don’t have much, but I can share some warmth at least.”

Every crash of thunder, sound of breaking glass, and large strike of rubble against the skylights made the dog tense and shiver. Angel cradled the scared animal under her sweatshirt and rocked it slowly, as she had rocked her baby once.

“I never got the chance to be a mommy,” she said, “but I’ll be one for you.” She remembered the day, what should have been the best turned into the worst day of her life. Her small son, cradled in her arms, umbilicus freshly cut, as he lay still and lifeless. The doctors tried, for what seemed like hours, but there was nothing they could do but let her say goodbye. Tears ran down her face, mirroring the rain outside, as she remembered the day that made her run away from her own life.

By small measures, the puppy she cradled calmed, until it finally slept, sucking on her sweatshirt. A sad smile crossed Angel’s face, as she continued to rock the sleeping puppy.

The storm tailed off so slowly Angel didn’t notice until it was silent. Her hips and back hurt from sitting on the tile floor. She realized that she could make out the sinks and stalls. Light was coming in from somewhere.

Angel rose, careful not to drop the puppy, that stirred and tried to lick her face as she took it out from under her sweatshirt. She put her phone in a pocket and picked up the crowbar with her free hand.

The door to the restroom stood open a crack, a small branch wedged under it. She forced it open the rest of way with her shoulder and stepped out into the hallway. Leaves and small pieces of branches littered the hallway. She turned the corner to the main promenade, where the morning sun poured in the shattered skylights.

What appeared to be an entire tree lay in the main walk, surrounded by shards of glass. Not a single skylight had survived the storm.

The puppy squirmed. “No, I can’t set you down in here, you’ll cut your feet. Let’s get out of here.”

She walked out of the shattered main doors to the path of the storm’s destruction. The river had flooded and taken over the lower parking lots. Pieces of building material and trees were piled against one wall of the mall. The construction site to the south had been scrubbed clean.

A heavy sigh escaped Angel’s lips as she realized that her squat was gone. She’d known it wouldn’t last forever, but at least until the construction was done would’ve been nice. She walked to a grassy island in the parking lot and set the puppy down.

Her phone still had a little charge, and she still had the one important number in it. She looked at the number and locked her phone. Was that why she’d come back? She would have to get something to eat soon, and she wasn’t likely to get any water at the fast-food places, since they’d all be closed.

She wondered if the water in the downtown park bathrooms, four miles away, was working. At least she wouldn’t die of thirst, then. The park was a good place to panhandle, too. She could get at least enough to buy something off the five-dollar menu at the taco place…assuming it was even open.

A whimper at her feet brought her back to the present. The puppy was begging to be picked up. She picked it up, holding it on its back Ike a baby.

“You’re a cute little girl, aren’t you?” She scratched the puppy’s belly. “Well, I promised to feed you, and I can’t do that without help, can I?”

The puppy nibbled at her fingers, play biting turning into an attempt at suckling. Angel took a deep breath, unlocked her phone and hit the “call” button before she could change her mind. The line on the other end rang once, twice, then was answered.

“Mo—mom?” Angel’s voice broke. “I—is it okay for me to…I mean, can I come home?”

Trunk Stories

Hidden Links

prompt: Write about someone in a thankless job.

available at Reedsy

In all the inhabited worlds there were fewer than five people who had more than a passing acquaintance with Kia Tyler. Her direct supervisor, Adama, was perhaps the one who knew her best, and they never saw each other outside of work.

The most important thing that Adama knew about his employee was that her skin was very sensitive, and she was, according to her, “allergic to damn near everything in the universe.”

With mandatory genetic counseling, this sort of trait was all but unheard of, making her uniquely suited to her job. It wasn’t difficult, or physically demanding, but she often ended the day with contact dermatitis around her nose and mouth.

As the only manufacturer of masks for low-oxygen environments that didn’t require full vac suits, the lives of nearly everyone on Mars depended on his product. Adama felt his company should do everything in their power to ensure their product was not just safe and effective but comfortable as well. That’s where Kia’s sensitive skin came in.

Kia wore an oxygen mask in her testing office. Since she didn’t require extra oxygen in the environment of the dome, the mask delivered slightly cooled room air. Thermal cameras recorded any leaks of the mask. A certain amount was allowed, but she would automatically fail any material that was less than 98% effective in the proper size or 90% if too small or large.

The new compound of the mask seal she was testing passed the leak test with flying colors. Despite trying it on in every size available, even the masks too small and too large maintained a seal above 98%. Her face, however, was not happy.

It began as a faint itch, progressing to a burning sensation. Less than an hour after donning the mask, Kia was forced to remove it. She looked in the mirror at her desk. The edges of the mask were clearly marked by what appeared to be an angry red burn; bumps beginning to form.

“Compound Z-443-alpha-2, wear test negative. Allergic reaction positive. Wear time: forty-eight minutes.” She saved the results and pulled the seal off the testing mask and tossed it in the recycler. Kia made a point of cleaning her hands, then her face, and finally, the mask.

There was no more testing that she would be able to do for the day. Before treating with an antihistamine, her face was sensitive to any contact, including the rush of air caused by her breathing. After treatment, her face would be completely insensitive to any sort of allergic assault for at least twelve hours.

#

Miria loved her job, traveling across the Martian landscape far from any domes, checking the progress of the bacteria and fungus that had been engineered to release oxygen from the iron oxide in the soil. Her rover had food, water, and oxygen for twenty days. She would spend fourteen in the wild.

She was required to post regular reports to the terraforming commission, but never had to deal with them face-to-face. Her reports were signed by her employee number. Miria didn’t mind being a small cog in a large machine.

The thing she loved most about her job, though, was that she was completely alone. Not one given to idle companionship, she preferred the company of her “little world changers,” as she called them.

Two dozen mask seals, labeled Z-799, were stored in a cubby above her three masks, near the airlock. One primary, and two backups. Ten oxygen canisters provided enough for twenty hours outside the rover and could be refilled in the rover itself.

She stopped at the grid coordinates for her inspection and pulled on her mask. Cycling the airlock, she stepped out into the cold, thin atmosphere. She found the marker flag, bent over by a windstorm at some point, and straightened it back up.

Yellow lichens clung to every rock larger than a couple centimeters. Miria took samples of the lichen, the surrounding soil, and one deep soil sample. She paused to lift her mask and take a drink from her water canister. The air was sharp, acidic. She lowered her mask and took another breath.

“Someday, you will make the air sweet here,” she said to the lichen sample. “I’ll be out of a job then, but I’ll probably be over a hundred, so it doesn’t matter.”

Back in the rover, she made use of the mobile lab and compared the genome of the current bacteria and lichen versus those originally seeded. The faster reproducing of the current bacteria had a lower oxygen toxicity threshold than was desirable. Miria would have to find a way to give the more oxygen resistant bacteria a leg up, so to speak.

The lichen, however, was doing its job superbly. “Strain 613-gamma, code name whirlwind, maintaining stable genome and positive nitrogen production,” she added to her audio log.

#

Zane planted pale yellow lichens around the base of the new hybrid rhododendron in the Capital City Park. He took a deep breath of the air, sweetened with the scent of roses and the moisture from this morning’s watering.

“You need some of this to help you get enough nitrogen,” he said to the plant. He liked tending the plants in the park. The Martian atmosphere was thin, but high enough in oxygen for daily life. He had seen holos of the early settlers more than a century prior. First with their fully contained suits, then, after millions of tonnes of Venusian atmosphere had been mined and dumped on Mars as CO2, with their masks.

He stepped back and admired his handiwork. It made him proud that thousands of people admired his work every day, even if they never knew it. Zane prided himself on planting and pruning in such a way that the garden looked like it just happened to grow that way.

With a check of the time, Zane gathered his tools into his carrier and made his way to the hidden gardener’s shack. The carrier hovered a few inches above the ground, not leaving any tell-tale wheel marks. He’d had the idea when he first started of planting a hardy, low-growing moss on the path to the shed. Any footprints would be gone within minutes, leaving no trace that a human had been anywhere other than the paved path.

In the shack, Zane put away the tools and checked his supplies. He’d need to order more whirlwind lichen starts soon. The respirator he used when spreading fine particulate like mold spores still had good filters, and he had plenty of spares. He checked the seals and ordered another dozen 799 grade face mask seals.

His day done, Zane logged his time out in the shack, and left by the door that led to the employee gate. He looked up at the sky, where the morning sun reflected off the few, high clouds. It was going to be another beautiful day on Mars.

Trunk Stories

Another Quest

prompt: Write about a character who yearns for something they lost, or never had.

available at Reedsy

Watt put the book back on the shelf. Reading it had become a monthly ritual. They especially liked the stories about brave knights rescuing fair damsels. Sometimes Watt was the knight, and other times the damsel.

Dreams of living in the romanticized version of the Middle Ages frequented their slumber. Watt knew, intellectually, that the stories had no relation to reality. Their heart though, or something very like it, still ached for the times and places of the stories they read.

Watt left the library via the basement exit to the tunnels. Once there, they navigated the short distance to their home. It was time to turn in, so they hurried up the stairs to their loft.

Their loft was a simple space: bed, kitchenette, closet, sink. A shared washroom down the hallway finished out the amenities. Watt lay on the bed, falling to slumber and dreams of castles and dragons immediately.

Rising refreshed, Watt left to run errands. Fulfilling quests, they thought. By the middle of the day, they had downgraded that. Gathering supplies to use on upcoming quests.

The week continued in the same vein, until the day Watt found themself with nothing to do. They could go to the library again, but it had only been a week. 

Watt pulled the edge of the curtain away from the single window in the loft. They could venture outside. The thought was frightening, but isn’t that what heroes did? Face their fears and continue undeterred by them.

The closer Watt came to leaving on an adventure outside, the less they felt like the knight, and the more they felt like the damsel trapped in the tower. Rather than taking part in an adventure, Watt sat on the bed staring at the door for hours.

During Watt’s slumber, they dreamed of a knight in shining armor, rescuing them from their flat. The dream’s happily ever after was in a cottage in the country, surrounded by fields of wheat bordered by magical forests.

Somewhere out there, they thought, may be a damsel waiting for rescue. Determined to be the knight, Watt strode confidently down the stairs, and out the door at ground level.

The night was damp, a heavy fog clinging to the streets and buildings. Watt maneuvered around the rubble of the ruined buildings and the demolished, rusting hulks of vehicles, long since forgotten. Vines climbed the buildings, grasses and small trees forcing their way up through cracks in the sidewalks and streets.

Despite the lack of moonlight, Watt found it easy to see. They headed south with no real destination in mind. A rusted signpost would do for a sword. They picked it up and hit it against the side of a building. It made a satisfying clang.

After an hour of wandering, Watt began to think of returning home. They were about to turn around when they heard a woman’s scream. The damsel!

Watt raced toward the sound of the scream where they found two men struggling to restrain a woman. They clanged their “sword” on the ground.

“Unhand her at once, foul curs!”

“Oh shit!” One of the men let go of the woman and shot at Watt. The other had let go after the first shot and joined in shooting at Watt.

Watt looked down. Their armor was dented, but not seriously damaged. They raised the “sword” over their head and charged. “Have at thee!”

The two men ran away, but not before Watt struck one with the weapon. They were certain they felt the man’s arm break under the impact, and his high-pitched scream as he ran made that likely.

Watt turned to the damsel, currently trying to hide in the shadow of a rusted truck. “It is safe now, fair lady.” They held out a hand to help her up.

She cowered further back in the shadow, shivering in fear. “Y—you’re a….”

“I am your knight in shining armor.” Watt looked down again. Their armor wasn’t exactly shining. “Well, your knight in armor, anyhow. Come my lady, these environs are not safe.”

By degrees, Watt earned the woman’s trust and finally led her back their loft. “You will be safe here, for as long as you choose to stay,” they said.

She turned on the sink and nothing came out but a faint groan. “Hey, you! Your water’s busted. Where can I get some water?”

“I recently acquired supplies. There is water in the cupboard to the right of the sink.”

She grabbed a bottle and gulped it down. “What do I call you?”

“I apologize, my lady. I should have introduced myself. I am Watt. Today I am the knight, sometimes I am the damsel, and sometimes I can’t determine which.”

“Okay, that was…a lot. I’m Tara. Please stop calling me lady.”

“My apologies, again, my la…Tara.”

Tara checked out the loft, looking out the single window to the rubble below. “How are you still around?” she asked.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You’re really messed up, aren’t you?” She stepped closer and began to inspect Watt. It made them feel self-conscious.

“What are you doing? You’re making me nervous.”

Tara laughed. “Yeah, you’re messed up bad. How long have you been here? Living in this flat, I mean.”

“Always.” Watt felt uneasy. “I can’t remember ever not living here.”

Tara looked at the bed and nodded. “I thought so. I’ll be back in a little bit; going to check out the facilities.”

Watt nodded. They were feeling extra tired and lay down on the bed. The dreams came right away. Watt saving Tara from a dragon, Tara saving Watt from an evil sorcerer, and more. They all ended with the two of them living on a farm surrounded by magical forests.

Watt awoke to Tara sitting in the middle of the floor, drinking another bottle of water and eating one of the rations they had gathered. She nodded at them and continued to eat in silence.

When she had finished, she stood. “Come on, Watt, I want to show you something.”

Watt followed her to the end of the hallway where she opened the door to the shared washroom. She led them to a large mirror on the wall and stood next to them.

“Look at our reflection and tell me what you see.”

Watt looked. Tara, although her clothes were torn and stained, and a large bruise adorned her cheek, looked like the ultimate damsel from their fantasy. Beside her, Watt stood taller; dark grey armor with a full face-mask helm protecting their head.

“A damsel and a knight.”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” Tara pursed her lips in thought. “Is there somewhere that has old newspapers or magazines nearby?”

“Oh yes!” Watt brightened. “We can go to the library. We don’t even have to go outside to do it.”

“Lead the way, then.”

Once in the library, Watt went straight to their favorite book and removed it from the shelf. Tara, meanwhile, was elsewhere, using a flashlight she’d been carrying.

Watt petted the cover of the book, trying to decide whether they would re-read it now, or wait until the next month. Tara approached from the rear, holding a newspaper.

She laid it on the desk beside them and pointed her flashlight at it. “What do you see?”

“It…it looks like my armor. A knight like me?” They studied the image. “And the fires behind; it is there to rescue damsels?”

“This isn’t a story book. Read the headline.”

“AI army lays waste to Chicago in latest fighting.” Watt was confused. “Was Chicago evil? The home of a dragon or evil sorcerer?”

“No. It was a city of nearly three million civilians.” Tara wore concern openly on her face. “Do you really not remember anything of the war?”

Watt shook their head. “No. There has been no war that I know of, except for the ones in here.” They gingerly held the book out to Tara.

“A Children’s Book of Tales,” she read. “You really are a child, aren’t you?”

“I am knight or damsel…or maybe both. Not a child.”

“You’ve always lived in the loft, right?”

Watt nodded.

She handed the book back to them. “How did you find this book?”

“When I woke up in the loft on the first morning, it was there. I read it, and returned it, since it said it belonged here.” Watt hummed. “It was my first quest; find the library and return the book to its proper home.”

“How long do you remember living in the loft?”

“Eight-hundred-sixty-two days.” They shrugged. “I can remember by counting the number of times I’ve dreamed.”

“You dream? Interesting.”

“Yes. In my last dreams, I saved you from a dragon, then you saved me from an evil sorcerer, then we lived happily ever after in a farm cottage surrounded by magical forests.”

“That would be nice,” she said. “We just have to find a farm cottage with its own reactor in the basement, like your building.”

“Why does it need a reactor?” Watt asked.

“Your bed…it’s a recharging station.” Tara laid a hand on Watt’s cold, metal arm. “It would be like me trying to live somewhere without food and water.”

“But I have food and water. I make sure to keep well supplied, and make sure the food has not spoiled. I could do that on a farm, too.”

“I’m sure you could,” she said. “If we can figure out a way to take a reactor with us.”

“Another quest?” Watt asked.

“Another quest,” she answered.

“Am I the knight or the damsel this time?”

“Take your pick, Watt. I’ll play along.”

Trunk Stories

Gates

prompt:  Start your story with an unusual sound being heard.

available at Reedsy

It started with a low rumble that continued far too long to be normal. As it continued, the frequency rose and the amplitude spiked in increasingly shorter intervals, causing the volume to pulse faster and faster as the rumble climbed into a ringing, rising tone.

In all the years that the Gravity Wave Research Center had been recording and converting gravity waves to sound waves, this anomaly was a first. The duration and non-randomness of it pointed to the possibility of intelligence behind the still-increasing waves.

“I’m telling you, it’s the collision of a pair of pulsars. I’m working on the model now.” Andre typed away at his laptop, heavily chewed pen in his teeth.

“I don’t think so,” Liz said. “We’re either looking at something made by…someone…or we have a whole new thing to learn about in cosmology.”

Andre raised his hands to either side of his face with a mocking grin. “Aliens!”

Liz sucked her teeth at him. “Okay, be that way. Where’s the data from KGOT?” The Kuiper Gravity Observer Telescope was the furthest gravity wave telescope humans had deployed yet, in hopes of getting more and better data.

“Huh?” Andre removed the pen from his teeth. “You sure it’s in position for that?”

“Pretty sure.” Liz pointed to her monitor, where a solar system map with the position of every planet and every man-made object outside of Earth’s orbit. “We picked it up first at Jupiter…JGOT. Then us, at the same time as the message from JGOT. Then Mars is here, where MGOT picked it up twenty minutes after us. That gives us a general direction.

“Following that back, it takes us directly to KGOT.”

“Wonder if there’s a comms issue. I’ll look into that,” Andre said. “In the meantime, can we turn down the speakers? It’s giving me a headache.”

Andre sent a system test message to the gravity telescope near the Kuiper belt, knowing it would be an eight-hour round trip. That out of the way, he went back to work trying to make his model of colliding pulsars match the gravity waves they were still seeing going on close to three hours now.

“Um, Andre, I think you should really check the logs for the KGOT.” Liz’s voice was tense with worry.

Andre switched tasks to look at the logs. They showed that the telescope was sending its regular messages every half-hour for the entire time that they had been recording the anomaly.

“How…how could we pick it up here, but not there? I wonder if there’s a malfunction.”

“Maybe—,” Liz started, but fell silent as the wave ceased. “It’s done. Whatever it was.”

“I’m still trying to get these models to match. It may not be colliding pulsars, if the results I’m seeing are any indication.”

As the hours passed, Liz and Andre worked hard on trying to make some sense out of the strangeness of the wave. They had given up on hearing anything more from the anomaly, until an alert from KGOT showed up.

“Liz! KGOT started picking it up…uh…around four hours ago.”

“Can you give me a more precise time?”

“Yeah, according to the logs, it started at 01:13:22.93114 Zulu.”

Liz entered the data into her solar system model showing the track of the gravity wave. “That would mean it came from—”

“From what?”

“Inside the solar system. Jupiter L4 Lagrange point to be exact.”

“Impossible. There’s not enough matter in the entire solar system for a wave like that, much less the Trojans there.” He returned to his model. “It would take at least a supermassive black hole to generate a wave of that magnitude and duration.”

The videoconference phone chimed with its annoying song. Andre answered and looked to the screen. “Yeah?”

“Hey gravity nerds, I take it you have something big, right?” The screen didn’t show the caller, but a visual telescope view that looked warped, out of focus somehow.

“Hey Janice, what do you have?” Liz asked. “Need help to focus your telescope?”

“Nope. It’s focused perfectly.”

Andre snorted. “If that’s the case, why does it look smeared?”

“Let me zoom out.” The warped look stayed confined within a circle in the middle of the view, limned with a sparkling, blue light. Beyond the light, the rest of the view looked normal.

“Where…where are we looking?” Andre asked.

Liz answered, “Jupiter L4, I bet.”

“Ding! Ding! Ding! You win a prize! I knew you were the smart one.”

“Stow it, Janice. Any idea what it is?” Liz asked.

“Well, this is going to be huge, but I thought I’d show you guys first. I recorded this about ten minutes ago.” The view zoomed back in on the warped, distorted look through the center of the anomaly.

The warped view slowly began to redraw itself as a software algorithm tried to compensate for it. “Either I’m off my rocker or it’s a gateway…to a bunch of other gateways.”

Where once was an image of smudges of light, there was an image of hundreds of glowing circles with distortions at their centers. There were no other lights in the view; no stars, no reflecting nebulae, just the glowing circles.

“There’s no way this is natural,” Liz said.

“Well, maybe,” Andre said. “But still, I think you were right when you said we’d have something new to learn about in cosmology.”

“Just wait,” Janice said. “Here comes the good part.”

A bright shape, like an elongated triangle, came out of one of the glowing circles and moved into another. With no sense of scale there was no way of determining its speed.

“If those are the same size as the one here,” Liz said, “that ship is the size of the moon. I first estimated its speed as three-quarters C, until I realized that the gates…or whatever you want to call them…seem to heavily warp space in their vicinity.”

“What does that have to do with the velocity of the ship?” Andre asked.

“It’s three-quarters C relative to our view, but with the way the space between the gates is warped, the distances we think we see between them can be completely wrong. They may be right beside each other with the ship traveling at a leisurely fourteen thousand kilometers an hour. We just don’t know.”

Ho—how many gates do you see in there?” Andre asked.

“From this vantage point, we count just shy of seven hundred,” Janice said. “I think it’s safe to assume thousands.”

“What…or who made these?”

“That’s the real question,” Liz said. “That’s what’s going to keep us up at night until we know.”