Flash Fiction? I guess?

Cain had been left by the girl Alia a while before, but he, too, found himself gravitating toward these "gardens." In a place like this one, he knew, nothing could be considered safe by any means, and yet he sauntered in, his new knife already coated in the appropriate poisons and strapped tightly to his thigh. The scents and colours played across his perception, a hearty mixture of debauchery and allure that would tempt the best of men to at least take a look at what was being offered to them by the rat-nosed little men with soft hands and grubby hair.

Met with specimens of rare beauty, dancers that suspended themselves on the tips of their needle-pointed shoes, smoky gypsy girls behind crystal balls wearing less than what covered their table, and exotic and fantastic races Cain had only begun dreaming of since arrival on the station, what was a boy like him to do? Almost tranced, he wandered into one of the lavish tents covered with elaborately woven gold and silk, removing his hat as he did so.

Before he realized what was happening, he was being touched by fingers that glittered with silver and jewels, and his cheeks flushed immediately in the light smoke that permeated everything inside the tent. A woman with bared breasts that were painted in an outward gradient from yellow to purple and a veil covering the bottom half of her face sat lounging on a luxurious, overstuffed couch in the center of the tent, surrounded by lavish silk and satin pillows and mattresses; with a snap of her fingers, the three similarly-clad and -painted girls that had swarmed him assembled in front of her.

"Welcome to my den, young stranger. I am called Tsuchilbara, the Red Goddess, and these are my Djinni. You may choose any of them as you please, as long as your coin does not run dry, young stranger..." she said, curling her fingers into her hand in a "come closer" manner. Cain felt himself moving forward, but only after it had started, in a sort of delayed-sensory state.

He knew that this was caused by narcotics or similar chemicals, and while his mind connected that the smoke might be the source of said chemical, he could no longer control enough of his conscious brain to say any different. One step, two steps, and then he was assaulted by those soft, glittering fingers once more, buttons on his vest magically coming undone, his gloves sliding off, one girl slid her simultaneously warm and cold hand under his shirt, ran her fingertips against his abdomen. He could feel the blood rising in his body, beginning to fill those places which were empty, but then...

As his belt was loosened and his shirt unbuttoned, someone started to slip the crisp white fabric off his shoulders. Suddenly his face was hot, his hands clenched into hard fists, and he'd brought one of them hard into the ribs of the girl who was behind him. The scars that marked his skin, those crimson and white streaks that lay across his back like badges on a captain's shoulder, he would allow no-one to see. No-one but the one he trusted the most, but his servant had not been brought to this place with him. No, this was the secret he would not divulge.

Consequently, the three girls recoiled, and each of them showed the purposes of those intricate and beautiful bangles and rings they wore as they popped open or twisted out to form needles and blades. Here stood Cain, partially drugged, and now grasping tightly the burnished brass hilt of the long knife he'd just so recently purchased, facing three lithe figures bespecked with blades he'd sooner not deal with. The choice, in his mind, at least, was obvious.

Seconds later, with only a scratch to his cheek and a slightly damp and stained knife, Cain dashed clumsily out of the tent, his shirt still open and his belt flopping around open by his waist. They had his vest and one of his gloves, but he could replace those. Leastways, he still had his coin purse, and they had not gotten any of that. He touched his abrased cheek and winced a bit, and then buckled his pants back up.

It seemed those girls would not follow him outside their tent, so he felt at least a little safe. Safe enough, at any rate, to button up his shirt, wipe his knife on a scrap of cloth tied to one of the rose bushes, and begin stumbling back out of this "garden." If he could remember the way back out.

Hooks

Story 3 of 100, same meme as Needles and Knives.

Down by the docks, there are these warehouses. You know the kind, the kind drug dealers use to peddle their shit, the kind that cops stake out for catching drug dealers. Well, there's one of them down there that nobody even wants to go to any more. Pretty much everyone says it's haunted or something. I wonder if they are right.

This one, this one warehouse way by the east dock 3 used to be like a meat house. It has all the metal doors and shit, the roll-up kind that trucks back up to, you know the ones. Then inside there are like a bunch of big rooms with those conveyor-hook systems that they'd hang up the big carcasses on and like it would go into the refrigeration rooms or out into the loading docks or whatever, right? Well, one time we had a rave we wanted to do, and the way I saw it, where better to have a rave than a fucking haunted warehouse, right?

So we brought in my brother's sound equipment, and set the place up one day. Speakers, lights, the works. We could seriously blast some fucking waves with the shit my brother had, right? But like, the best party about the place was that the acoustics were fucking wicked. The reverb was delicious, man. You could FEEL the music everywhere in that place. Well, everywhere except that one room.

The conveyor rotation shit worked in every room except the one in the back. That door was stuck or some shit, and the little hole in the wall thing where the conveyor goes through had been boarded up. We didn't know why, but it was far enough back that we didn't care. We wired up all the other rooms with speakers and shit, and at like ten or so people started showing up. We'd charge like five bucks a pop for each person, and the place was big enough that we definitely made back the money we spent in like two hours and a fuckton more after that.

At around 2, though, that's when the music shorted out. I went back to look what happened-- someone probably kicked a cable out or some shit, right? But that's definitely not the case-- the room next to that one boarded-up room was just trashed. The speakers were kicked in, and like seven or eight people were lying face-down like they'd OD'd on something or whatever. It only hit me like a few seconds afterward that the door to that room had been opened outward, like toward you when you're looking at it.

I only looked inside for just a second before I had to start running. Like you know when you notice something and it processes in your head before you understand it, and your body starts to react before your cognitive system tells you what it's reacting to? It was kind of like that. I was like halfway out of the warehouse before I finally knew that I was being chased. This guy, he was like all covered in shredded up clothes, right? All bloodied up and had like two fucking huge meat hooks, one in each hand.

The police said they found me in a little rowboat in the middle of the bay, but I don't really remember anything past the hook-guy turning and catching one of the girls in the eye socket with his fucking hook. They said I was like mumbling and rocking back and forth. I don't even know.

The news still says the guy's running loose in the city, and his hit number is up to 63 right now. That's a lot of corpses, man. I wonder if he takes them back to that warehouse, hangs them up on the fucking hooks there?

Hey you guys!

I'm in the process of writing lots of little pieces of stuff, but nothing is Show-You-Guys worthy yet, so.

As soon as I have something I will put it down here for you.

Needles

Number 2 of 100 from the same meme that Knives is from. Warning! This has some language in it that might not be suitable for young kids.

I have a bad habit. It's particularly bad in this day and age, when the tools are easy to get and the stuff itself is on every corner. I've been in and out of jail for my bad habit, in and out of the hospital for my bad habit, and in and out of sanity for my bad habit. I'd love to stop, really. I would.

But some habits are just hard to break.

There's a vein that runs along the inside crook of your elbow, called the median cubital vein. It's pretty big, pretty easy to spot. You get to it best when you have your elbow bent. This vein goes straight back to the heart, a clear shot to that big wiggling muscle inside your ribcage that makes you tick. That's where the game starts.

One tiny little pinprick, and then you've got a full-access doorway to that marvellous crimson stream people so often waste. Into that doorway, you know, I'm quite fond of introducing various things. I'd done the usual rounds of drugs-- ketamine, opioids, depressants, you know the lineup. Nothing really did me the good song, though, like Red Sunrise. I don't remember who it was that showed me the first time, because I was probably high off my bucket, but after that, man... After that, Red Sunrise was my new god.

In its base form, my dealer said, it's a strong hallucinogen used for ages by old monks and priests to “contact God.” Well, I knew that whatever it was that caused the geezers in monasteries to write the crazy shit they did was going to be good enough for me to get a ticket on the electric flapjack, and I dropped a wad of bills on this shit every time I saw the guy. It came in little bottles, almost like test tubes, with rubber corks jammed into the top. The stuff itself was a dark green, almost black until you held it up to a bright light. Reminded me of when you put a shit-ton of Kool-Aid into a tiny bit of water.

And it hits you like a brick to the temple, man. You go out for hours of real time but it feels like years of your life go by in these fucking sick trips. It turns your arm green for a while, but that's a small price to pay for what you see in these walks, man. With me, I'm always walking through this field of flowers, but the flowers are thousands of tiny human faces, and they are all screaming and biting their tongues off but I can't hear them because I'm not listening, and the ground is made of bone dust and the air is heavy with a sickly-sweet smoke. And man, every time, I always meet this dude with four eyes, two on top of each other on both sides of his face, and he's got these teeth, man. Fucking wicked teeth.

And he tells me secrets. He tells me where to find more Red Sunrise, always the same guy selling it. He tells me who people are and what they do. He's like a fucking voyeur's dream. He tells me where to go and where to look to see the hottest shit go down, he tells me which girls are hot to do what I like. He makes me promise to him, every time, though, that for every secret he tells me I have to give him a pint of blood.

A body only has like 5 or 6 liters of blood at one time, so that's only like 34 secrets for a liter. And a liter is a lot of blood, you know? A lot to drop all at one time.

So I got wise on this, yeah? I started stocking up.

...what, you think I'd use my own blood? Fuck that shit. Better yours than mine, fucker.

Bodruin, Part 1

This is the first part of something I am writing. It will go through several revisions, and lots of cutting and sanding. For now, here's the first chunk; I will continue writing pieces of this until I decide I am finished. See also: LAZY. NO FORMATTING STUFF.

"Well, that was plenty enough for me. I gave that big ugly oaf one good look in the eye and then socked him in the gut as hard as I could, and let off a charge through my glove that sent him reeling. Now he doesn't bother the first-years any more," boasted the boy on the table, his pose a heroic-looking one, even if sort of childish. The other kids that had formed a small crowd around the edge of the table looked on with eager eyes, wanting more to the story, more about how this strong, heroic second-year had single-handedly saved all of their hides from the biggest bully in the whole academy.
Their fervor was cut short, however, by the girl sitting on the overhanging tree branch. "Did you tell them about how Cassian and I had to come peel you off the floor after you were done with your 'beat-down?' Because I think I missed the part where Noah didn't have his tech stuff and that's why you won," she said casually, brushing her painted nails against the hem of her artificer's jacket. A murmured chuckle spread through the crowd. She looked down at the top of the boy's head.
"What? No way, you guys, don't listen to her. I was putting all kinds of hurt on that Noah kid!" he started again, but the attention he'd garnered was diminished greatly by his embarrassment. He sighed. "Another day, another crowd lost," he mumbled.
The girl snickered. "Score up to date: world, one; Lywell, zero. Better luck next time, Ell," she said, and dropped to the tabletop to pat him on the shoulder. "But don't feel too bad-- the next group of transfers is coming in tomorrow, so you'll be able to ensorcell them with your tales of harrowing bully-beating as long as Cass and me aren't around."
"Yeah, thanks, Iwaen. You're a great friend," said Lywell, brushing himself off and plopping down on the edge of the table. "You always ruin my chances of gaining a reputation with the new kids. How am I going to gather an army of arcanists to take over the world if nobody takes me seriously?"
Iwaen sat down next to him, put her elbow on her knee, and chuckled. "You could always build some, mister Arcano-technician. An army of those little brass mice you like building so much, now that would be a sight to see." She chuckled, opened her lunch bag.
"Ha, ha. Very funny," replied Lywell. "Once I get done with this round of tours, I'll be off of detention duty. Wanna hit the cafeteria after? It'll only take a little while, I promise," he said. "Call Cassian, let him know too?"
The girl zipped up her bag and turned, a chunk of brown, seedy bread hanging out of her mouth, and nodded. Since the transfers were coming in all that week, every day was a half-day so that the newcomers could go through the school without the inconvenience of classes being disturbed. It being a half day was more than enough reason for Iwaen to believe that Lywell would invite her and Cassian to lunch at the cafeteria, and she knew she could weasel out of paying for it if she just pulled the right strings.

“Listen up, everyone, I'm only going to explain this once. If you have questions, ask me after I'm done talking and maybe I will answer them. All right, here we go. As I'm sure you know, there are three sections of Bodruin Academy, and each section houses their respective magic classes and students.” The courtyard fountain was a perfect place to give this spiel, because you could see all the other sections without walking through them.

“The east wing, Vil-Caery, that's the Arcana History area. You newbies who use rituals, chants, or any other 'Olde Methodes' will be staying over there. The north wing, Vil-Tirro, is where the Artificers do their thing. If any of you guys are the kind to use magic weapons or tools that don't draw from Mana gems, that's your home up there. Finally, The west wing Vil-Gonns, well...” said Lywell, brushing his jacket off. “That's my territory, and the territory of any other Arcano-Technicians that might be in this crowd. That's the fancy word for people who make items that run off Mana gems.”

He hopped off the fountain and turned toward the south. “Down south of here is the market. They are not technically part of the school, but they do business exclusively with the school and its students. That's us. Yeah, I know it sounds stupid, but the school makes us buy all of our own supplies for schoolwork, be it scrap metal or parchment or whatever. They do, however, give us an allowance of 500 Seeds a month, which, for studious, diligent people, is enough to buy your stuff. That's assuming you never want to have any fun in this place.” The transfer students listened closely; some perked their ears up at “diligence,” others at “fun,” and some, like the small first-year up in the front ring of the small crowd, were enraptured by just Lywell's voice.

Well, just his voice, and his scruffy, short black hair, and his thin-but-toned body shape, and his bright, almost glowing green eyes, and... The girl raised her hand.

Lywell considered ignoring her, but she did not look like the kind to ask a lot of annoying questions. With a sigh, he pointed toward her and squinted to read her name badge. “Fraelya Attebery, is it? What?” he said, and mock-impatiently put his hand on his hip.

The girl shook for a second, but then took a deep breath and spoke. “Mister Braewyn,” she began, but Lywell cut her off there.

“Just Lywell is enough, thanks. Carry on.”

“L-l-lywell... Um... How do you know what class you belong in?” She twirled a piece of her long white hair in her fingers nervously. Honestly, she'd never known that there were different ways to do magic until her father saw her having a conversation with her reflection in a mirror and immediately whisked her away to Bodruin. It was all so new to her.

Lywell stared blankly for a moment. “You... you don't know what class you are?” he asked, truly taken aback. When he'd been taken to Bodruin, he'd known since forever that he was Arcano-Tech. Cassian's parents were both Arcana Historians, so it was pretty set what he'd be, and Iwaen... well, Iwaen sort of chose what she'd do by herself. She could have gone in any of the three ways, but for one reason or another Artificy caught her by the tail.

He kept his stare locked for just another second, and then shook his head. “Well, I guess you should talk to the headmaster or something,” he said, scratching his head. “But really, how do you not know what class you are?”

Whether he meant it to be embarrassing or not, Fraelya turned tomato red and looked away, busied herself with her curls. With a last sigh, Lywell motioned to the South again. “The headmaster's offices are also down that way, by the lake. If you need anything like medical attention or whatever, that's where you should go.” He looked at his watch, an ornate silver clock face attached to a silver wrist-bracer he made himself. The hands snapped into one o'clock position.

“...and here's where you and I part ways, newbies. I'll catch you guys later,” he said, and turned to skip off to the cafeteria. Something grabbed his wrist, however, and when he looked back, Fraelya had latched onto him. She looked insecure, scared. Obviously something like this would be natural for a frail-looking girl like her being tossed into a grand and new place with no connections.

“...take me with you...” she muttered.

For one long second, Lywell contemplated the results of bringing along the small white-haired girl. “...I'm going to the cafeteria. You can come if you want,” he finally said, and shook his hand free. “Meeting friends, so you'd better not slow me down, you hear?”

Knives

Part of a 100-stories meme for /x/. June 2010

The game was an easy one-- you had to find something with which to protect yourself, and then still be alive when time ran out. Well, easy in explanation, sure. But when I was there, boy, wasn't nothing easy about it. Lots of people got killed in there, and nobody was the wiser. Hell, I even had to cut some men up myself, back then. Hell of a good deal of "therapy" that was.

You'd wake up in a haze, likely from the heavy dose of whatever they pumped into your veins, in one of the rooms with the door locked. I never woke up in the same one twice, but it was always a room in east block 3 that I'd get. Some people would say they got the same room once or twice, but I never did. The room you got probably still had the results of the last therapy session that happened in it laying about, so you had to hope you didn't step in it or anything. You just waited for the door to open, the intercom to announce the time limit.

I hid a lot, ran away a lot, but you can't run forever from the things they would send after you. I got to know east block 3 pretty well, though, so I could usually get to the kitchen area, pick up one of the big knives that were hanging on the magnet bar over the stove. I tried a broken broom handle once, but you don't have a chance unless you can draw blood. These things were really unstable in the head, you know? Some people said they were ghouls come back from the dead by way of some science-magic marriage, others said they weren't ever human to begin with. All I knew was that sometimes I recognized them, the leathery faces drawn tightly back into a permanent toothy grin and the eyes wild and bloodshot.

They moved pretty fast a lot of the time, and they'd spot you from down a hallway or wherever, and just like that they'd be all over you, biting and tearing and scratching and kicking. Doc once said that they represented the bad parts of the human mind, and that by killing them you're symbolically killing those parts and making yourself better, but that was a load of shit. I'd seen movies before I got "admitted," I connected two and two to figure out just what was up with these previous patients. That's what they were, you know, patients that disappeared for some reason or another some three weeks before. You could tell which ones had been worked on the longest; they were the ones with the brittlest skin, the least blood in them. Their eyes were shriveled up, but somehow they still saw. And when they saw, boy did they see.

I don't know how long I was in that place, but we never found a way out. Honestly I'm surprised there even was a way out at all, let alone a way in. When the SWAT team or whatever finally burst in, though, I thought, "Hot damn, finally a way out of this hell-hole." But then, of course, having seen and done what we'd all seen and done, we obviously could not be let back out into the real world, now could we, doc?

Small Brown Dog

Another three-word-game story for /x/. April 2010

This is something a friend told me a while back. He lived in Los Angeles at the time this happened to him, but he says that it could happen to anyone, anywhere, if they are not careful.

One day he and some friends of his were at his place drinking and smoking, like typical college students do. One of them thought it would be a good idea to do some graffiti on the administration building's steps, and of course everyone else agreed, because nobody disagrees when they are high and drunk, I guess. Anyway, so they got a bunch of spraypaint and hopped into my friend's car.

The campus was only like five minutes away, but they took the back way around so they would not get caught by the campus police. Here's where it gets weird.

On the backroad, they were driving along, when suddenly the truck lurched like it had run over something. He slammed on the brakes, and got out to see what he had hit. It felt too big to be a squirrel, but that was pretty much everything that was out there at that time of night, right? Well, it turns out he ran over this little brown dog, splattered it all over the street. I'm talking, guts and blood and everything, man. It was probably hella gross.

So my friend starts freaking out, and he gets back in the truck, starts it up, and starts going again. The other guys are like "What did we hit?" and he just says they hit a squirrel, a big one.

Sure enough, though, like two minutes down the road the truck jumps again, like they hit something else. Again, he hits the brakes, but this time he just leans out the window and looks back.

It looks like the same fucking dog they just hit like half a mile back, but it's different this time. Bigger, somehow? Or like, maybe it's closer or something. He said he couldn't really tell, because he was drunk, but it was DEFINITELY the same dog. He's like "Fuck this," and floors it, pulls a U-turn and rockets back toward his place. He won't say anything to the other guys except that he thinks it's not a good idea to be driving while he's as drunk as he is.

When they pass the spot that they hit the dog the first time, though, there's just a big wet spot on the street. No dog, no nothing. But then he looks back up at the road in front of him just in time to see a huge brown dog on his hood, staring at him for a second. He veered off the road and rolled his truck twice, broke his collarbone and messed up some of the other guys in the car too.

He told the police what happened, but they went to look for the dog that he hit, and all they found was a big wet spot, the same way as before. On the way back to the crash site, though, one of the police cars spun off to the side of the road too, and the radio crackled when that officer radio'ed in that he had hit a dog or something.

That was plenty enough to scare my friend sober, and he could not get to the police station fast enough, DUI and all. He transferred colleges up to Washington as soon as he could, and never drove that back road again. He says sometimes, though, he can still see some little brown dog in his mirrors when he's driving, or sees a big wet splatter on the road.

Now, I'd have called bullshit on this story until the other day when we were heading to the liquor store and he hit something in the road. Sure as god-damn, it was a little brown dog. Think this fucking thing is following him? I don't even know what to make of it, but now I'm starting to see it here and there too, all splattered all over the floor in the chemistry building at night or whatever. This place is fucked up, man. That dog followed him.