Far from the Tree

Slightly non-PG for Sexual Content

            It was hard to sleep.  The bed was too soft.  Bernbriar manor was too far from the street.  I had never slept without the lullaby of sirens and drunks right outside my window.  Here on the moor, there were no lights or noises to reassure me that the real world was still out there.

Somewhere.

My room smelled a little too tastefully of freesia.  Anais did it that way.  My sinuses burned—a wish for an allergy.  I sucked at the back of my throat until my tonsils felt red and raw, imagining the headache I would have in the morning.  I turned over on my back, put my scented pillow over my face and bit into the silk and feathers.

It was no help.

Short of running away, there was nothing I could do.  And what kind of idiot would runaway from this?  Bernbriar made celebrity mansions look like dog houses.  My older sister and her husband were giving me a world class education; all of my nephews were perfect-little-instrument-playing-spelling-bee-winning-children-of-the-corn.  Soon, maybe I would be too.  Everything was perfect.

I tossed aside the handmade duvet and began to pace back and forth before the mantle.  The fire had faded to ash, but the room was still warm.  My stomach growled.

I could never eat much at their table.  Every meal was too lavish.  There were ice sculptures at dinner, fruit carved into animals that I had never even heard of—before me, nothing but a blur of forks.  I had no idea that any one home could own so many forks, let alone use them all at one meal.

Sometimes I would find my way to the kitchen on nights like this.  Without a word on my part, a pair of silent white gloves would deliver a mug of warm soup and a platter of crusty cheese sandwiches.  But Anais had taken to joining me.  There was only so much sisterly bonding I could take.

Instead, I opened a window hoping that the cold wind howling over the moors would come in and dissipate my sleeplessness.  Maybe I was wrong for wanting to avoid my perfect sister.  But I couldn’t think her as family yet.  We had only really known each other a few weeks.  Ama Josephine, our grandmother, had not mentioned her existence before she died.

I leaned out of the window as far as I could without letting my feet leave the floor.  Tendrils of wind wound through my couture silk pajamas, raising goose bumps on my chest.  The winds spoke like a person and it was easy to pretend that it was Ama talking to me.

“Woooooeeeeeeee!” she howled.

“Don’t be sad.”  I murmured to my imagined grandmother.  The cold wind brought icy tears to my eyes.  “You’re at peace now.”

“Nooooooo!”

“But everything is okay now,” I told her.  She deserved peace, no matter how much I would miss her.  “Annais is taking care of me.  I’ll be alright.”

“Goooooooo!”  The window panes began to shake and lightening split the sky.  In the after burn of that crack of lightening, I thought I saw Ama standing in front of me.  She didn’t look the way she did before she died, but I knew the frown on her face too well.  I remembered it from when I was small and my grandmother could still be the adult, before the pneumonia and the dementia and the cancer, back when the words ‘opportunistic infection’ meant nothing to me.  She even smelled the way she used to--of cigarettes and cheap perfume.  I stumbled back into the room.  “Runnnnnnnnnnnn, Sooooophie, runnnnnnnnn!”

And with that, the window slammed shut in my face, the lock jamming down so hard that when I tried to wrench the window open once more, I couldn’t.  It was as if it had been rusted shut all these years.

Suddenly shivering, I sat on my bed with my duvet wrapped around me.  Sterling, the oldest of my perfect little nephews, had said that the old house was haunted.  It didn’t occur to me to believe him in the light of day.

I jumped out of bed and rushed for the door.  Anais or no, I didn’t want to be alone in this room a second longer.  There would be no sleeping now.

It was my intention to head for the big formal dining room by overlooking the garden.  That’s where I always went in my late night wanderings.  I knew how to get there even in the dark, though I brought a small flashlight with me.

But the second that I opened my door, I heard it.  A rhythmic growling and banging echoed throughout the house.

Growing up with paper thin walls, I was no stranger to the sound of two people going at it, but this was intense.  The thick, ages old walls shook with the couple’s abandon.  Animalistic moaning competed with the sound of thunder.  It sounded as if someone was being eaten alive.

I shouldn’t have been surprised.  My sister did have nine sons.  All of that birds and bees stuff should have been nothing new.

At least she wouldn’t be waiting for me at the dining room table.  Tonight was a free pass.

But as I tiptoed out past all of the sleeping chambers in the west wing, the sounds became louder and louder.  The noises sounded as if they were coming from the east wing.

The wing Sterling had told me was haunted.

Ghosts?

Would they still have those kinds of urges?

Something in me highly doubted it.  But then, who?  A couple of the servants?  They were practically ghosts themselves.  All I ever saw of them were occasional flashes of white gloves.  Even when I tried to catch a face or two in the corner of my eye, I would find nothing but shadow.  Why would they go through all of that trouble to remain inconspicuous only to risk exposing themselves like this?

No it couldn’t have been the servants.

For the first time since my first morning here, I followed the corridor to the east wing.  The noises grew louder and louder.  The walls were positively shaking here as if they were being battered by a fallen tree over an over.  Instead of human cries of delight or pain or even ecstasy, it sounded as if two bears had set up a boxing ring.

I let my flashlight beam wander over the forbidden wing.  It was different from the west wing.  Less flashy.  Less stuffy.

Instead of the collections of old sinister paintings of laced up women from a hundred years ago and portraits of boys dressed in their Little Lord Fauntleroy suits, the walls here held simple collages of black and white photographs.  In one of them, a beautiful blonde woman stood staring out at the ocean while the breeze rippled in her hair.  In another, I saw a picture of my sister’s husband, Honore.

He was an ugly man.  Small.  Squat.  With a slightly hunched back and misshapen nose.  Most of his face was covered with an unruly white-streaked beard.  Santa Claus, he was not.  I had only seen him once or twice since I moved to Bernbriar a few weeks before.  But Honore was unmistakable.

It was the bearskin.  My brother-in-law goes about wearing a bearskin.  It’s practically fused to his body.  The poor bear’s fur is matted together with the human hair that has grown through the tattered hide.  Honore looks worse than something that crawled out of the Ozarks in the year 1806.

The beam of my flashlight skipped over my ugly brother-in-law and came to rest on a new picture. 

A man with shoulder-length blonde hair stood leaning against a snow white horse.  He was stripped to the waist and sunlight gleamed off of his lean muscles.  With one eye he looked at the camera, but with his other, he looked up at the horse as if the two shared some kind of secret.

And that one eyed inside joke with the horse broke my heart.  I knew that I would never know what they found so funny.  It was so weird and lonely living at Bernbriar.  A single hot tear threatened to spill out of the corner of my eye.

I had to shake myself.  Was I loosing my mind?  This place was making me soft.  I had never cried over a picture before.  There were so many things in my life more worthy of grief.  It was stupid to long for something so stupid and two dimensional.

It was then that I had noticed the noises had stopped.  The lovers were done.  The ferocious bears would probably go to sleep.

So I let my flashlight wander the photos again, my heart leaping every time I found the man with the horse.  I found with once with a surfboard tucked under his arm.  In another photograph, he leaned against the door of an old-fashioned race car.  In other places I saw him as a young boy.  I dreaded finding the requisite awkward prom picture.  Not because I didn’t want to see him all dolled up, but because I didn’t want to see him with his arm held stiffly around another girl.  A muscle unclenched around my heart when I realized that it wasn’t there.  Of course not.  The photographs on the wall were too tasteful.

Who was this guy?  And what relationship did he have with ugly, bear-wearing Honore?  I scanned the photograph in hopes of finding some answers.

The guy seemed to have two older brothers.  They each had the same blonde hair and the same joking eyes.  The beautiful blonde woman on the beach was probably his mother.  But what did that make Honore?  His uncle?

At long last, I found an old family tree, penciled by one Wyvern de Hoof, age eight.

But before I could begin to decipher the eight-year-old’s tiny writing, a set of footsteps came shuffling towards me.  I was overcome with a sense of guilt for wandering around the manor this late at night.  Sterling had all but told me that this wing was off limits.  I dove into an alcove, hiding myself behind a dying potted plant.

The light grew brighter and brighter.  It struck me that this was one of the lovers.  What could they possibly want, now?  But who else would be down this wing?  I’m not sure whether I was curious or repulsed.

It was probably just a couple of squatters.  I mean, who leaves half a house completely unoccupied?  This would have been a gold mine for some of the folks I had known back in the tenements.

Still, I watched.

What would Anais want me to do?  Tell her, so that she could have them forcefully removed?  Would she think that they were a threat to the boys?  A threat to me?

Inwardly, I scoffed.  That would be silly.  There was more than enough house here to share with a couple of luckless bums.  And how many times had someone over looked my presence and Ama’s presence after the bank had taken our home?  I had a debt to pay forward.  Maybe I also owed Anais something for taking me in.  But it would have to be something else.

Actually, I thought.  I can afford to be even more generous now.  There was so much food at every meal, my closets are bursting with hand-made one of a kind couture and I have more books than I know what to do with.  Maybe, just maybe, if I got a glimpse of them, I would know just how to play fairy godmother.

Maybe I could also advise them to keep it down.

Maybe—

The thought broke off in my head.  The light filled my dark hallway.  It stung the back of my retinas.  I blinked hard to focus them.

Honore.  It was Honore.  Ugly, dead bear wearing Honore tottering down the hallway as if he had been riding a horse for the last two days.

Oh God.

In the name of all the things I never wanted to know.  My brother-in-law had a mistress.  A mistress that he hides on the ‘haunted’ side of the house.  He lied to his own kids.  He lied to my gorgeous, overzealous sister.

Who was she?  Was it this woman in the pictures?  I turned my flashlight back on and studied her face, trying to figure out what she had that Anais didn’t.  The woman was beautiful, in a sharp, devastating sort of way, but her face lacked something.  She didn’t look capable of love, I decided.  There was nothing soft about her.  She looked like the sort of woman who served babies’ eyeballs on crackers as appetizers.  Maybe I was a little biased on behalf of my sister.  So what, if she was the horse-guy’s mom?  Blood is still thicker than water.  Even thicker than the guy's shiny golden curls.

Slowly, I made my way over to the faded old family tree.  It was funny.  I didn’t even know Honore’s last name.  Was Honore the guy’s father or step-father?  Step-father, probably.  I wanted the guy to have nothing of Honore in him.

De Hoof.  I rolled the words in my mouth.  It reminded me of the old meat packing plant on the south side of the city.  Boil de Hoof to make stock.  Use de Hoof and the bones to make gelatin.

The paper was old.  Like a thousand-years-should-be-in-a-museum-somewhere-because-it’s-about-to-crumble old.  But Honore’s name was there.  Someone must have added it with surgical equipment or something equally as delicate and precise.

But something was wrong.

Her name was de Hoof too.  There were two little rings that joined them together.  Wedding ring symbols.  A year scratched out so that I couldn’t read it.  Estelle de Hoof.  Mother to Luca, Forester and Wyvern de Hoof.

Estelle.  She would have a name like that.

And then I knew the truth.

There was a wedding band on his hand, but I never saw one on my sister’s.

Honore was not my sister’s husband.

We were the squatters.

This was someone else’s house.

And my sister had taken someone else’s husband.

“Hello Sophie.”

I spun around at the sound of my name.  The guy—the one from the pictures—the one that really belonged in this house—was looking up at me from the bottom of the stairs.

Week 9 Wrap-Up

Confession.

I'm not really sure what I was thinking when I wrote last week's prompt. I think I had some notion of genies or evil fairy creatures being shoved into perfume bottles and sold as novelty gifts by small children on the side of the road in Tijuana . . . (hello my name is Jennifer and yeah, my mind goes there) . . . or stories about someone who keeps ending up in the emergency room with bottles stuck to bodily appendages because they have an addiction to some kind of new age massage therapy involving bottles. I also spent some time contemplating the Bonsai Kitten Hoax. Of course, Trisha reminded me that the prompt could easily be interpreted as beyond the confines of PG-13, and yeah, my mind went there too.

So if you spent some (or all) of last week looking for hard objects to bang your head on, I'm very, very sorry. (Note: No, that is not usually* how I get my ideas.)

Anyway.

Last week's prompt was:

"Why would you keep doing that? Of all the things you would stick in a bottle . . ."

• Trisha gave us our Friday Feature about a very tiny woman trapped in a very transparent hell.
• Jes, one of our newest members, was our Saturday Feature. Her story not only made impressive use of the word 'recondite,' but highlighted some considerable world building.
• Madeline contributed our Sunday Feature about a murdered woman's memory of her killer and his quest to mentally dominate her. Very one hand clapping.
• Jesimarie, our other newest member, wrote about a jinn who lives in a bottle of gin, but the consequences of making three wishes . . .
• Michael gave us the first of another hilarious Caitlin saga. There are penguin zombies. Enough said.
• Brooke wrote a lyrical tale about a man's compulsion to send one last gift to his beloved who had been taken by the sea.
• Me: I drew on my random experiences with the crazy Santeria practitioners in my neighborhood and wrote about the process of making a hot sauce that is so powerful that it can stop death. The only problem is that even Severus Snape couldn't stand the heat of this potion.

See you all tomorrow with our answer to prompt #10!



*If you're going to bang your head on hard objects for inspiration, please be responsible and wear appropriate safety gear. The Chrysalis Experiment will vehemently deny responsibility for that part of your creative process.

OMG! Check out these pretty buttons :)

A very fabulous friend of mine (whose online contact details I will or will not add to this post at a later date, whether or not she wants me to) has helped us out with some graphics, and I think they are just WAY too pretty! So here you go, if you've written even just ONE story for the Experiment, there is a button (badge thingy) you can take home. :D

There are also buttons for those who have completed all stories in Jan and Feb (with the other months to follow of course). Finally I am going to beg my friend to make us one more item - for when we're all done at the end of the year. But so far, here is what we need:




Please note that I have larger sizes of these (350x350 and 500x500) if you want them. :)

In other very exciting news, we are also very happy to welcome our two newest participants, Jes and JesiMarie! We're so glad to have you guys on board! :D Your names have been added to the Test Subjects/Organ Donors page. Woo! Hehe.

PROMPT NUMBER TEN

WOOHOO! Ten weeks?! Double-digit party.

And by that I mean write a short story of 1,000-10,000 words based on the following:

Stop reading these words before it's too late.




(funny font included for extra inspiration)

Good luck!

-Winter

Jennifer's Story Pick, Week 9

Wow, it's the end of week nine already. By next Friday, some of our participants will have completed ten stories.

That seems like a bit of a milestone.

A huge milestone, really. We're almost 1/5th of the way through the year.

I hope we haven't been too cruel.

Anyway.

Our Sunday feature comes from Madeline, who made me question everything I learned in Philosophy 101 this week a la:

Rene Descartes: I think therefore I am.
Madeline: What if you only think that you're thinking and in reality I'm doing all of your thinking for you?
Rene Descartes: huh?
Madeline: I made you think that.
Rene Descartes: You are queen of the world.

Nostalgically Disturbed

“That’s a very stupid thing to say,” she scoffed. Her eyes were a light grey. I had told her that once, and she just laughed. She said she remembered them being blue. She was obviously wrong. Dead wrong. Ironically, now she was dead. And she was still wrong.


“No, not really,” I replied very casually. I saw the injustice, but I didn’t feel the guilt. When it comes to sin, if there’s no guilt, you don’t really want to admit you were wrong. So I just didn’t. And she really didn’t seem to pleased about that.


I may of loved her, I may not of. There was no way to tell for sure, being that I actually had never really loved before. I tried to pretend I was okay with the biting uncertainty, the itching shrieking that always hummed in my head, telling me I didn’t know what I was doing.


She was pretty. She was an idiot, too. But pretty. Something about her made me want to laugh uncontrollably, we both knew that very well. She didn’t even seem to mind.


I knew I wanted to love her, if you wanted to put things simply. I also loved seeing her pain, misery, and sorrow.


And I loved getting small children to kill her. I loved getting small children to kill, period. And why wouldn’t you? Blood seems best when taken by the blameless.


“Well, if you really want to go that way with this argument. . .” she pressed.


“I didn’t say I was taking it there.”


“You most certainly implied by some sort, did you not?” Her raven black wrapped itself around her face, threatening to strangle and suffocate her. She pushed it away.


“You obviously aren’t hanging on to this conversation too well,” I said, laughing at her innocence, her taste for right or wrong.


She drummed her manicured finger nails against her tiny chin. “No,” she replied. I could see my words might of stung a little too hard. “No, I understand it just fine. It’s as clear as day.”


“Day? There’s no such thing here. Who are you?” I asked, my guilt suddenly washed away.


Tears began to make her grey eyes sparkle even more, mixing in with the slimy substance. “I don’t know,” she whispered.


I was immensely amused.


“Well in that case. . .” I could feel the disappointingly strange menacing smile creep up onto my face. I really
didn’t want it there, but I didn’t do anything against it.


She was obviously caught off guard by everything, even her own reaction. Dark tears were streaming down her dirty face. Mockingly, her agony was cleaning her face. Cleaning it quite well, too. Of course that made me all the bit more happier. “I’m sorry. Who are you?” She asked, her eyes seemingly hard, which made me uncomfortable.


“Me?” I asked, extremely surprised. “It’s a bit entertaining how this conversation got shifted from the fact of your unknown existence to my guiltiness.”


“Even more entertaining by the fact that the topic of your guiltiness turns against me in the first place. That was the beginning of this all, you understand?” She snapped.


I was a bit surprised by her sudden expression, but nonetheless, it was funny. “Well, you shouldn’t of lied. Now you’re in this situation. “I - by no means - am guilty. I don’t know how you could see it like that.”
I could tell she was a bit embarrassed by the fact that she was shrinking below my level, I was only growing higher in this conversation.


“You taught children how to murder.”


“Merely self defense.”


“Self defense?” Her voice held insulting astonishment that left me wordless for moments.


“Yes. What else would it be?”


“So, so much more.” She almost seemed to chuckle, which took me back even more. There was most definitely something behind her that I didn’t understand.


I suddenly realized that there was a third force in play.


She wasn’t in my world, I was suddenly in hers.


“What do you know?”


“Have you come to your senses?” She was very smug.


“I’m just curious,” I tried, playing my part with dignity, mixed with the higher knowledge I really didn’t have.


“No, you’re not curious the least bit. Your confused, I know everything,” her voice taunted abstractly.


“I don’t think you do. Why don’t you know who you are?”


She paused, and I felt instantaneously proud and elated by my sudden victory. That was until she answered, her words flowing together, gloriously intense, something I myself would of never thought of.


It was something that even scared me.


“Just because I really do know everything doesn’t mean I have to perceive it, I don’t think you’re fully aware of what’s happening around you, hence the need for callous murder. You know very well the rights from wrongs, do you not? Comprehension is different then knowing, you seem to be falling short already,” she scolded with far too much humor in her voice. “Now why you put that in the bottle, I’ll never ever be sure. But, it was most certainly a very stupid thing to say.”


I hung my head before realizing what I was doing, and I snapped it back up. “You already went over this.” I then tried to hold in my exasperated sigh.


“Well then, I guess we’re going to have to go over it again, because you obviously don’t understand.”


“I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.”


“Once again, I know everything. You don’t. So please, don’t embarrass yourself. I never really did like seeing you embarrassed."


I ground my teeth together, the noise making me shiver. I caught her shudder as well. “You still don’t like that noise, do you?” I asked.


She grimaced, winced, and tried to show toughness.


I sighed, suddenly relieved that the topic was off my dirtiness and her innocence.


She smirked. “Oh, but don’t think it’s all over yet.”


“But why not?” I had a feeling she knew something I didn’t, and I knew something she didn’t. Only, I didn’t know what it was I knew.


“What if I was to tell you. . .” She paused and stood up, suddenly swaying back and forth ridiculously.
I caught her before she could fall.


“Thank you,” she told me icily.


That made me smile.


“What would you do if I told you that maybe this isn’t real.”


“Explain ‘all this’.”


“This. Everything. Me. You. All of the small children you’ve turned into murders. Which - in case I need to remind you - was a stupid thing to do.”


“I think I’d have to laugh. I’ve seen the blood, I know what those children can do. And I still know it’s not wrong. They were made for seeking and destroying, to be put simply.”


“Oh, but it’s not simple. Nothing is simple at all. Now, I’d ask that you please get out of my head.”


Something crushed me. For one, agonizing terror and rejection seemed to hurt the worse. But some unknown force crushed me through the clouds.


She knew everything because I was just a figment of her nostalgia.

Winter's Story Pick, Week 9

...aaand it completely slipped my mind, so I'm cheating and changing the date on this one. But this is a fantastic story from our newest participant, Jessica. Read on if you like some sweet vengeance - or, even better, mythology.

An Unfortunate Day in the Park Following a Visit to the New Magic Shoppe on Ninth

Lightning.

Surely that meant success. Around him the clouds grew closer, darker, the thunder now an almost constant roll. Brennus thrust his arms one final time into the air, palms splaying over the makeshift altar as the sands of a forgotten magic fell from them. The roll in the air gathered speed, gathered intensity, as did the lightning flashing across the deep bruise-colored sky, until the roll of the thunder was no longer a roll but a loud, somehow guttural roar, as if the unnaturally dark heavens struggled to heave upon the earth something from their recondite source; a roar that spun and spun around him, whipping at his face with branches and leaves and flashes of light which he had willed, divined, demanded bring forth a--

Brennus fell to the ground.

* * *

The rustle of leaves, crunching footsteps…

When Brennus opened his eyes he saw he lay on the forest clearing, bits of the altar and forest bracken lying about the park and him. He pushed himself up, looked around. The bottle! Where was the bottle?

The footsteps, to which he had previously paid no attention, stopped behind him. He felt the telltale prickle on his neck. It was the prickle of sorcery….the prickle of being watched.

"I keep telling your kind to give it up, I do."

At this Brennus jumped up, hastily wiping the storm-damp debris as he turned to face…her.

An instant of joy surged through him. The magic still settling through the air around her in lazy drifts, she stood. She was beautiful. She was stunning. And he, Brennus Lynch, had wrought her with the magical dusts of a bottle from lore of old.

"I do, you know;" she continued before he could say anything. "I tell your kind, and tell them, and tell them, and tell them, but do any of you ever listen?" She began to circumvent his sacred clearing.

"Of course not," she said, patting her newly-formed hairs into place about her crown as her voice gathered sarcasm. "Could a divine primordial being ever be right, especially in comparison to a great big man? Oh, what folderol! Imagine! So still your kind keeps calling our kind forth; no idea what your are doing, let alone what you want our kind to be doing for you--not that we shall do anything for your kind unless we damned well feel like that, but try telling your kind any of that and why, they plain just won’t hold with it!"

As she walked, the mist clinging to her form began to solidify into clothes, and she began to look more three-dimensional, and so beautiful to behold she was a bit terrifying. "And my guess is you’re just as bad as the rest of them…why, Prospero thought he was such a genius all those years ago, and look what happened to him! Enslaved to a low-level monster, of all things. Did he listen to the warnings? Why, of course not. Sometimes I simply cannot fathom why we gave your kind ears at all, it’s not as if your use them, after all.

"Yes, that’s my guess, that you’ve called me forth," she continued in one long breath, stomping here, stomping there, now bending to the ground to adjust her shoes, "and have had no good reason for doing it. Is that about right? Did I forget anything? Well? Well?"

Her hands went to her hips--a bad sign in a mortal woman, let alone an immortal. Brennus began to feel a little sour in the pit of his stomach.

"What are you called?" he asked, trying to sound like a sorcerer, straightening himself before her. If he could just get the subject off him and onto her, then maybe…

Her eyebrows lifted so high on her forehead that for a moment they seemed to hover above her.

"What am I called? What am I called? You’re kidding. Surely, you must be kidding." She took up the fast pacing again, around the circle. She strode to the rubble pile that was the alter. Atop its ruins, the air shimmered for a moment, and then a golden harp or lyre of some ancient designed appeared. She stooped--good greif, she was very tall--and took it in her arms.

"I," she said haughtily, "am she who has been called Atropos." And then she tossed her chin in the air, as if for dramatic effect, and laughed heartily. The sound of it reverberated in the hills of the forest.

"Oh," Brennus said, "oh; Atropos. Wonderful; wonderful, yes. Yes, indeed. Come here, will you, Atropos, and stand before me." He was determined to get on solid footing. She was after all, his creation. "I want to get a good look at you."

"No." Now atop the alter appeared a shining set of joined blades; some kind of old-fashioned scissors.

"I’m sorry?" How dare this, this woman-thingy deny him what he asked, after he had called her forth.

"I said ‘no,’ you damned fool! I did not come to this earthly plain to be your beck and call girl! I am Atropos! Mighty cutter; the inflexible and inevitable; a daughter of night herself! Sister of the shears! Kings and Queens kneel in prayer to me! And I’m about to give you what for! If you don’t tell me what you’re up to and what I was called here for, I might just get rid of you just for kicks. Fool!" Her eyes flashed. "Let me guess, you still have no idea who I am, do you?

Though he thought she was perhaps overacting a bit, her names nevertheless seemed distantly familiar. Brennus furrowed his brow; he had a distinct feeling this was not good. And where was that bottle? No. No; not good at all. He dropped his head, as if in deference, and scanned the ground for the bottle. If things should go ill…

"Fine," she hissed as he half-groveled, "I shall explain to you who and what I am. I am Atropos of the Moirai, or in your tongue, the Fates. I am the eldest of the sisters of Destiny. My two sisters--ahem, that makes three of us, in case your mathematical knowledge is as limited as your divinatory knowledge….to think you called me and know not who I am!" She picked up the scissors. "But I shall humor you, and continue. My two sisters are Klothos, the spinner, and Lachesis, the apportioner. And I, inevitable Atropos, am the cutter. We were born of Nyx, or night herself, and almighty Zeus, king of the heavens, long, long ago in the early time of time. We answer to no man, for there are none who can avoid our power." She came to stand before him, towering over Brennus with her great height so that the harp was directly before his face. "Does that suffice?"

"But," he sputtered, "but you--you’re a Fate? How--I--I mean, how is it that possib--" and then, noticing a particular string on the harp, he broke off. For there, written in minuscule script along the length of it, was his name …

"Found your string, have you? Mmm,hmmm," she said, jerking the harp back from his view and instead choosing that moment to brandish her shears, gleaming in the daylight breaking after the storm. Brennus tried to keep his eyes from going wide.

"Well, unless you do something right now that pleases me, I might just snip this string right here. See it, this one right here? The one which reads ‘Brennus Lynch?’ Well?" she demanded again, striding opposite him and seating herself on a still materializing marble throne. Once seated, she placed her shears on his string threateningly. "Well?"

"Of course, my sweet goddess. What would you ask of me?"

"Ah yes, much better. Now, give me a lock of your hair and tell me of your time. I became bored with humanity thousands of years ago and haven’t been watching much. What is happening in this world? Who rules it now?" As she spoke, she handed her shears to him, presumably to cut the requested lock of hair, as long as he kept her happy, that was. He cut and handed her his hair (she yanked the shears from him and hid them in the folds of her draping, obviously suspicious he might try to keep them) before replying.

"Please, oh Wondrous Goddess, I humbly beg of you a question….since the storm, have you happened upon a small and delicately made bottle? It is…special to me. Find that bottle and I shall tell you all you wish to know."

"What, this old thing?" She pulled the item from her shimmering raiment. What relief! It was safe! Protected by a goddess, no less! He could have cried from joy. As long as the bottle, and its contents, were safe and accessible he could right the situation. "Is this for what you dare risk your life for bargaining with me?"

Uhh oh.

Atropos turned the bottle in her hands, then held it up to the skies.

"Yes, oh my Beloved Holder of Fate. It is very dear to me. May I have it please? The leader of this land is a man named Barack Obama. Egypt has just overthrown its ruler, and there is unrest in what once was Mesopotamia!" He heard his voice heighten in pitch, for she stood now before him, imperious, and he could tell this was not going well at all. "The future king of England is to be married this summer! China is communist now! The marshall of North Korea is crazy! Please, please; I’ll tell you more; I’ll tell you everything, if you’ll but give me the bottle."

"It is strange, you see, to one as me, that you mortals put such great magic into such tiny objects…and then," she said as she leaned towards him, the beauty dripping from her face and revealing a crone, haggard, with sagging eyeballs and a wispy grizzled beard, "leave them simply lying around…"

And with that she smashed the bottle onto the ground. The dust, the magic, spiraled out of it, blending with the wind.

"Why do you mortals keep doing that? Of all the things you could stick in a bottle, you chose magic! You dare think that with that," she pointed to the broken remnants of the bottle, "you could control even me! But my drear little mortal man, without it, why, I can control you!"

Then with a blaze of light the crone was gone, and the beautiful timeless woman stood before him once again. She grasped the harp with one hand, hid his hair in her gown, and with the other hand sawed her shears at the string labeled "Brennus Lynch."

The string snapped; Brennus was no more.

"Well," Atropos said aloud, settling comfortably back onto her marble dais, "they may have forgotten me, but I think I shall make these mortals remember." She stretched, adding to herself with a tiny laugh, "It is good to be back."

What The...

Wheee, this was funnnnnn! And it requires another warning about strong language. ;)

WTF?

Joanna awoke on a titanic swell of sand, coughing and spluttering and squinting in the sunlight.

Only one of her eyes could see. The other eye was half-buried in sand, along with half of the rest of her. She imagined that a great wave had washed over and around her, swirling up cubic metres of wet sand that had opted to mould to her.

She pushed herself slowly onto one elbow. It seemed to take the most monumental of efforts just to get that far up. Her sand blanket didn't want to let her go. It sucked at her as she broke away.

It was no longer a matter of spluttering. This was what Joanna would call outright gasping for air. She had exhausted herself just trying to sit up.

But finally she was sitting up, and she was looking around. And what a sight to see.

This was the biggest dune her mind could fathom. She was right at its peak, gazing out over an endless series of sand waves. Except it wasn't quite endless. She saw a strange horizon, every direction she looked. East, towards the rising sun, was a strangely glassy haze. Beyond that glassy surface she saw the blazing light of summer's sun. When she looked away, the vision was imprinted on her retina.

Behind her, to the west, was a similar sight—that same glassy haze in the distance, but with no sun blaring its fiery intent. What is this strange place? Joanna wondered, but she had only just started to learn how strange a place it really was.

Turning to the south, her jaw dropped nearly to her chest and she staggered to her feet, swaying on the spot in disbelief at what she saw.

A great huge swirling circle made up everything to the south, a circle reaching to the clouds above. But it wasn't swirling—it just looked like it should be. She kept blinking, wondering why it wasn't turning. It looked like a giant whirlpool, turned on its side. But it was transparent and shimmering, like the sky to the east and west. Except for the great shadows, which made concentric circular lines from the centre outward.

She realised she wanted to cry. Surely this was outer space, some frightening alien planet she had somehow been transported to. Surely she was dreaming. Yes, I'm dreaming, she thought with relief. Well, nightmaring… But the sun begged to differ. It glared down angrily from the sky, rising to its zenith with renewed determination and a surge of hot pride. Joanna was an ant in its path—it pulsed down on her and made her skin sizzle.

"Ahhh!" she cried out, eyes tearing at the pain, and the sun relented. For the time being, at least.

Will you trust that you are not dreaming, now? the sun asked.

"Yes, yes, I'll trust it!" Joanna cried, tears streaming down her burned cheeks. But I don't have to like it! she wanted to yell after that, but she wisely kept quiet.

And that was when she realised she was facing north.

A slow frown stole over her face as she took in what she was seeing up there.

A sand storm was in full effect, and as distant as it was, she could hear its roar even here. It wasn't moving, just staying where it was and wreaking havoc. But something told Joanna she needed to head towards it.

You're a fool!

That was not the sun talking. It was Joanna's own mind, trying to change itself. But she was determined to go with her instincts, which told her the sand storm held all the answers.

She began the long journey across the sand dunes, heading for the storm to the north.

Something strange began to happen the further she walked. The east and west horizons seemed to draw nearer, as if the world were narrowing and preparing to meet in the middle. Maybe it would meet at the sandstorm? Joanna could well imagine that turning out to be the case. She kept on walking, wishing for water but not daring to complain out loud, or even in her mind—the sun had heard her thoughts last time. It was sneaky and clever.

It didn't burn her as much as it had for that one hellish sizzling moment, but she knew now what it was capable of. She had never hated the sun, at least she didn't remember having hated it; but she might have to rethink that stance in future. When it was safe for her to rethink anything.

When she had been walking an hour, she spotted strange objects in the distance. They looked like great boulders, but they had a strange pattern on them. Half an hour more and she drew within reach of one such boulder. She frowned as she stumbled over to it and reached out a wary finger to touch it.

What the…?

It was cork. As from a wine bottle.

Well, that was just stupid.

You think so?! the sun raged, and suddenly Joanna was writhing on the ground, skin blistering from way too much UV exposure. She loosed the most spine-tingling scream she'd ever head from anyone—even in the movies and TV shows she loved to watch—and was amazed she was capable of it. "Stop!!" she bellowed at last, and the sun dropped its laser raygun, tucked away its sunbeams and turned its back on her. Purple-black clouds were gathering on the distant horizon to the north-east, and then they were rumbling across the sky in her direction, rolling in at an astounding rate.

WTF? she thought, and suddenly heard a strange sound she couldn't at first credit. A sniffing sound, as of someone acting all pissed off. It was coming from the sky directly overhead. From the sun.

The sun appeared to be…sulking.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Joanna demanded, climbing to her feet and wincing at the blisters she had on them now. "You're the damn sun! You're not meant to sulk!"

Go away, the sun pouted, and the clouds kept rolling in.

Joanna welcomed them, and she forgot all about the stupid sulky sun. "Let it rain!" she cried.

And heard the sun sniffling again.

She rolled her eyes and waited.

It rained, it poured, it rumbled, but none of it reached Joanna. She stared in confusion and finally frustration as the rain drenched the horizon but refused to come anywhere near her. "Why?" she asked miserably. Then she frowned, realising what she was seeing.

Rain, pouring down a surface.

A glassy surface.

The horizons were made of glass.

And there were cork rocks all around.

She turned to the north, and saw that the sandstorm had died. She saw a circular opening awaiting her. It was half-filled with rubble—cork rubble—from what appeared to be a giant crumbled cork. From a wine bottle.

What…the fuck, she thought dully.

"How the hell did I get into a bottle?"

But nobody answered.

The sun was sulking, the rain was preoccupied with wetting everything outside the bottle, and suddenly the world lurched under Joanna's feet, lurched and began to tilt dangerously.

Soon she had much more to contend with than just tilting. Her world was rolling, it was a sandy inferno without the flame. The sun had gone away, and there was only the storm, which loved to play but only by its own rules.

End over end, the bottle rolled down the hard-packed sand, heading for the deadly surf.

Week 8 Wrap-Up

Ya, it's that time again, time to wrap up the previous week! Week 8's prompt was:

"If you think again, you might be disappointed."

And this week we had the following stories from our participants:

• Brooke wrote about a rather sexy deity dude I personally wouldn't mind meeting, except that if he read my thoughts I'd be embarrassed too. :D
• Michael took the wacky weird Caitlyn chronicles to a whole new level I had never imagined he could - seriously, check it out!
• Madeline brought us angels with talons, who had only one thought each, and gave us a glimpse of the epic war going on in that world
• Virginia made herself a woman after my own heart (though admittedly she was already this! :D) by writing about ROCK STARS, baby!
• Jenn wrote about a down & out teen's sudden rise to fortune, and her struggle to adjust to her new life with her creepily well-adjusted adopted family...and more to come on this shortly, I'm hoping!
• I wrote about what happens when a teenager suddenly realises she's been bored her entire life
• And of course Winter brought us Friday's feature story, which I found just as powerful and impacting as pretty much all her work.

All in all, I was excited by and impressed with what I got to read this week! Huge thanks to our participants for making 2011 even more interesting! :)

PROMPT NUMBER NINE

Um. It snowed in Los Angeles. 0_o

That makes me want to write a nasty letter and complain to Dr. Evil. But instead, I'm posting this week's prompt.

Write a short story of 1,000-10,000 words based on the following:

"Why would you keep doing that? Of all the things you would stick in a bottle . . ."

Have a great week!!

Trisha's story pick, Week 8

Oops. Nearly too late, but I am here just in time!!

This week I've opted to feature Madeline's story, even though the other two I had to choose from were brilliant (and of course our Saturday feature was a great read too!). Madeline kinda had me at "one thought". I just love that concept, of knowing you can only have one single thought upon reawakening, and not wanting to waste it. ;)

Warning: if you're not into Lucifer, don't read on.

Once

My eyes opened.

For the first time in seven hundred billion years, too.

When I was created, I was delicate. The galaxies put me to sleep for billions of years until I was strong enough to wake up. They didn’t want me to be disappointed when I finally came back around. So they gave me one thought. “If you think again, you might be disappointed,” the tiny stars told me. It was so innocent. I was weak, I couldn’t stop them.

Besides, I couldn’t think anything of it. I didn’t want to waste my one thought before I had even seen the new world of the future.

I knew I had missed a lot while I was gone. When I finally woke up, there was crying and pain. I heard blood fall and wings shatter.

Then someone walked past me.

He was gorgeous. Stunning. He had silver hair that hung in his narrow face, almost covering his deep brown eyes.

And I thought one thing. “He’s absolutely beautiful.”

He didn’t stop walking though, he paid no attention to me.

Inside I could feel my heart drop, disappointed that there was no one to catch it.

I shivered and opened my white wings. Billions of years worth of black ashes fell off. They slowly fell to the grassy ground and I bit my lip.

I looked around. Everything had changed, and I realized that now there was a sky and light.

Standing up, I buried my talons deeper into the soil. I realized I was down in a valley. Thousand of rocks danced around me. Waterfalls dripped off of the floating mountains, and thousands of castles hid themselves on the mountain sides. I smiled because I knew Creator had done a good job while I was asleep.

“Hello Jerichi,” something whispered in my ear.

I jumped back, surprised. And then I smiled. “Good morning Lisle,” I whispered gently back to the tiny star. She giggled.

But there was still the agonizing crying and screeching. I frowned.

“What have I missed?” I asked.

She stopped moving. “I’m not sure,” she said, but I knew she was lying.

“Honestly Lisle,” I said. “Something is wrong.”

She closed her tiny eyes. “This is war,” she replied, her voice heavy.