Justice for All

She found God at last.  He was hiding in the cupboard, up on the top shelf behind the soy sauce.  "There you are," she purred.  "Come on."

He flinched away from her reaching hand, but she was quicker and caught him by the scruff.  His bulging eyes goggled at her.

"You made this world," she told Him.  She gestured widely.  "All of this."

He nodded.

"You've got a lot to answer for."  Her grip tightened, slowly, and He wriggled, but in the end, it was surprisingly easy.  "Now," she said, wiping her hands on her jeans, "to get to work."

Walking Boots

One day, you may discover walking boots on your porch.  Walking boots are weather-beaten.  They are just your size.  You may have vague memories of buying them, but this is a lie.

The walking boots never tire and never slip.  They always take you where you need to be.  There may be magic; there will be wonder.

But walking boots never go home.  The walking boots do not sip tea and only grudgingly tolerate campfires.  The walking boots emphatically do not sit in comfortable chairs.

Whether you put the walking boots on is up to you. 

Keep an eye out.

Theory of Relativism

“I have a solution,” said Pigh.  “The Valiri Gem requires the sacrifice of the most powerful love in the universe in order to destroy it for good, right?

“Right.”

“Okay.  First, renounce all principles, beliefs, and personal ideals.”

“What?”

“Just do it.” 

“Uh, okay, sure.”

“Okay, now give me your shirt.  That one’s your favorite, right?”

“Pretty much.”

Pigh ripped it in two.

“Hey!”

The Valiri Gem sparked, flared, and cracked in half.

“As I suspected,” said Pigh smugly.  “In the presence of a moral vacuum, the gravity of the situation acts equally on each burden, regardless of relative weight.” 

Welcome Back

The mask had cut most of the smell since they’d left the ship.  Jev’s eyes started watering the moment she removed it.  Tral kept his on, the wheezing of his recycler the only sound, other than the distant hum of the roving swarms.  They weren’t a threat yet, but they moved fast.  Jev was wary.

From atop the rise, the brown and arid earth spread down and away, dipping into soupy dells and occasional tangles of hard and thorny weeds.

“What is this place?” Tral wanted to know.

Jev blinked, feeling the sting.  “It’s home, Tral.  We’ve made it home.”

Malfunctions

Timothy turned on the tap.

“The water isn’t working right,” said Betty.

And it wasn’t.  It flowed out of the tap and down to the sink, clear and cold to the touch, but it wouldn’t get anything wet.  He added coffee grounds to the filter holder and they just hovered in the middle of the fluid, undampened.

He glared at Betty, sipping blithely from her mug as she sat at the table.  “How did you get yours, then?”

Betty shrugged, then indicated the dark gouge in the wall behind her.  It dripped, glistening wet.  “The bricks aren’t working right, either.”

A House, Haunted

We spent the night in a haunted house.  We didn’t have to.  No one forced us.  We’re not sure now why we did.

There were no horrifying apparitions.  No blood dripped slowly from the ceiling.  Nothing moaned or whispered.  No fingers clutched or trailed softly down the soft hairs along our arms.  The house was musty and damp, and we slept fitfully, fearfully, expectantly.

Nothing at all happened.

Except when we opened the door to leave and found only another hallway stretching off into the dark and distance, smelling of age and mildew.

We spend nights in a haunted house.

---

Part of the Advent Ghosts annual event at I Saw Lightning Fall.

Morning After the Sun Did Not Rise

The bed hovered over the immeasurable void. Kinny and I hadn't worked up the courage to enter it yet. A chill wind blew up from beneath, and all around was blackness.

Somewhere, a dog barked.

“Pretty sure it’s your turn to let her out,” Kinny said.

“If our carpet rematerializes, I will clean any mess off of it with gusto and verve,” I assured her.

“I’m going to brave the unknown. How different is it from any other morning, really?”

I strained with all my might and manifested my pink fuzzy slippers.  "Hold on," I said.  "I'm coming with you."

The Squid of Despair

The Squid of Despair takes up most of the living room now. Its muddy, brown-­gray skin saps the brightness from the room, or perhaps simply highlights the lack already there. It rolls a dinner-plate­-sized eye at me as I step over its sprawled tentacles. I kick it. It does not respond.

“You should just get rid of that thing, man,” says Cal. The Hummingbird of Whimsy flits around his head, while the spiny Scorpion of Sarcasm lurks on his shoulder.

The Squid lifts one tentacle, then drops it, limply, on my lap. Because of this, I cannot kick Cal, too.

Hunting

He fills in the crossword while he waits. He does not skulk in bushes, not anymore, not since he learned about Starbucks; cafes; newspapers. He shaves often, especially during the week of the full moon. Hunting is a mental state as much as an action. He sips his coffee, wincing at the bitterness. He writes an answer in the little boxes: “TEETH.” He has filled in all of the answers this way. He likes teeth. He wonders when she will emerge from the building down the street.  He wonders what she will think of his teeth, when she sees them.

Purity

Count Darigon cackled as the Sword refused to budge. “I know you, King Amberion,” he rasped.  "You are a thoughtful leader and a complicated man. You are good. But the Sword can be wielded only by the pure of heart. Can you truly say that you have never sinned, never fallen short?”

Amberion’s grip on the hilt slackened perceptibly. Darigon grinned.  Behind Amberion, Kailen snorted. She strode forward, snatched up the Sword, and lopped Darigon’s head off.

“I’m not a good person,” she told his stunned expression as his head rolled on the ground. “But I know what I want.”

Daylight Encounter

I saw something move in the garage of the house on the end, and I thought, “Deer,” because Dad says they’re like rats and get everywhere.  Then it lifted its head, and it didn’t have a snout, but the flat nose of a monkey and a big hairy beard at the end of a long neck like a snake. It met my eyes before it leapt away into the scrubby trees.

The sun felt cold, suddenly, like it was night and dark, instead of in my neighborhood with its sidewalks marked in chalk and birds chirping, and I was alone.

Feeding Time

I woke to a soft weight on my shoulders and back, followed by a prickling as claws dug in, pressing through the fleece and the sheet.

“It’s like three a.m., cat,” I mumbled into my pillow.  “I’m not getting up to feed you.”

The claws dug in, and I heard him sniffing his way up toward my head.  I buried it under the blankets.

“You do not need any more food,” I said.  “You’re on a diet, mister kitty.  Vet’s orders.”

The snuffling reached my breathing hole and stopped.  Then I heard a plaintive meow.

From over in the doorway.

God in Your Pocket

Margie had to go  home for her wallet.  She still used cash.

“What?”  I laughed.  “How do you get anything done without a god?”

Margie’s face twisted.  “I just don’t see the point.”

“Here,” I pulled Chocorotan out of my pocket, “you can use mine.”   Chocorotan grimaced at me, but he’s carved that way.  “The commandments are easy.  I only have to brush my teeth clockwise and avoid alligators.”

“No.”

“But...”

“No!”  Maggie started walking again.  “I’ll catch you up at the theater.  Both of you, I guess.”

I watched her go.  “Women are weird, O Lord,” I told Chocorotan.

Anything But

Penny had a not-a-dog.  It wasn't exactly invisible, but it was an absence rather than a presence.  You could pet it, but it wasn't warm or solid, and it was not fuzzy at all.  It stared at her without devotion or loyalty as she fed it something that was nothing like kibble.  After dinner, Penny let it outside to excrete unfamiliar substances and make noises that were not barks.  Over red wine, we discussed her new lack of a pet.

“Did you consider a cat?” I asked.

“They tried that,” she said.  “No one was sure which one wasn't it.”

Post-Rapture

“They just seem so taken aback by the whole thing,” said Martha, letting the curtain drop.  The mob had sort of organized into an impromptu prayer service, but five different preachers were all trying to take command.  “It even said right in there that none would know the day or the hour.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the unspoken caveat to every religious protestation about the ineffable and inscrutable nature of God,” Laura responded from the couch, not opening her eyes.  “What’s driving them nuts is that they have to confront it head-on now.”

“What caveat?”

“God is unknowable... 'except to us'.”

Morning Eve

The shower always took a while to warm up in the mornings.  Bonnie winced as she stepped in.  Better than wasting water.

“Have you thought about it?” asked the serpent, wrapped around the shower head.

“Yes,” said Bonnie, lathering.

“Is that your answer, then, or...”

“No.  No apples.”

The snake pouted.  “But power overwhelming...”

Bonnie squinted her eyes shut and rinsed.  “You said you’d leave, after.”

The snake rearranged its coils.  “See, the thing with that is-“

“You lied.”

“Technically, I was prevaricating, but-“

Bonnie shut off the tap.  “You could at least pony up for some of the rent.”

Smuggling Dragons

The 7-11 parking lot was empty except for the rust-eaten white Buick.  The guy standing beside it looked like low turnout at the casting call for Suspicious Character #5.

“You got the money?” he greeted me.

I stared at him levelly and indicated the junker.

“Money first.”

The roll was all hundreds.  We’re thorough.

“All right.”  He popped the trunk and cracked it.  A gout of flame nearly took his hand off.  I saw a glimpse of a golden, slit-pupiled eye.  “Satisfied?” he asked.

“I’ve seen enough,” I agreed.  I pulled out my badge.  Fish and Wildlife.  “You’re under arrest.”

Bean Sidhe

The banshee’s wail heralds the death of a loved one.  The popular imagination has imbued the shriek itself as ill-omened or deathly, but in truth, it is not so.  It is only sorrow for the death that comes to us all.  Being fae spirits, they sense the death as or even before it happens, and their cries honor the fallen, eerie and upsetting as mortals might find it.

The world is broader, now.  Faster.  More connected.  Moment by moment, now, they fall, and moment by moment the banshee sings them to sleep.

Play them off, Keyboard Cat.  Play them off.

Hand-made, Locally Grown, Artisanal

Emily looked over the makeshift table, lips pursed.  The nightmare peddler swayed, ugly face indifferent.

“This one?” Emily asked, pointing to an angular silver one.

“Cut you,” the man grunted.

“And these?”  Two distressed yarn balls.

“Spiders.  Spiders everywhere.”

“Not very creative,” Emily sniffed.

“Scare you,” the man gasped, “to death.”

Emily raised an eyebrow and smirked.  “We’re done here,” she told me.

We’d crunched three steps across the gravel when the nightmare man spoke again.  “No,” he said.

The opening of his tent was dark behind him.  “Please,” he said again, straining to focus his eyes.

We kept walking.

Contributions to the War Effort

It’s Donation Day, and we line up outside the cafeteria.  Afternoon classes are canceled, which would be good except today is Art day.  I like Art class.

I line up with the others.  One by one we pass by the open warhead and add our hatred of the enemy to the seethe.  When I make the sign and spit, only a few dribbles emerge.  The soldier doesn’t say anything, but I know he’s recording it all.  Too many under-donations and my whole family will get marked as Unpolitical, maybe even Seditious.

I can’t even feel very upset about that anymore.