"Mint Chocolate Chip" - A Short Story

I'm actually pretty proud of this story. I recently joined DeviantArt.com and am part of several writing groups. One of them has a weekly writing prompt and I wanted to participate. This week, we could write whatever we wanted as long as it was less than 1,000 words (about 3 pages) so I gathered some ideas and went to town.
You know the drill by now! Follow me on Facebook at facebook.com/authoremilyblue or on Twitter @Miss_Emily_Blue

Mint Chocolate Chip

Gabriel walked away from the cart with his ice cream. Melting tendrils of mint chocolate chip dripped over his fingers, already melting in the summer sun. He paused and dabbed at the sticky mess with the thin napkin the confectioner had handed him. He succeeded only in smearing the ice cream around. The feel of sugar drying on his skin, clotting his arm hairs together, made him grimace.

I should have gotten the cinnamon pecans, the young wizard thought. That would have been a better choice on a day like this. Why hadn’t he thought ahead? Master Zeke kept telling him to keep the consequences of his actions in mind before he did anything.

Something tugged on his jeans.

Gabriel looked around and saw the head of a child, all auburn ringlets with crimson flashes brought out by the sunlight. He pressed his lips together and pulled away. Children were gross creatures. “What?” he said, impatience bittering the sweetness on his tongue.

The child looked up at him. The red flecks in her hair continued down over her face, smears and splatters. Blood.

He gasped and yanked out of her grasp. His fingers went numb and he dropped his ice cream. “What the hell?” He dropped to his knees in front of the girl and grabbed her shoulders, his former revulsion forgotten. “What happened? Are you okay?”

She blinked blue-gray eyes at him. “I didn’t mean to,” she whispered.

His heart pounding, he reached to her with his magic, scanning her for injuries. Shimmers of light, like little heat waves, skimmed over her thin frame, undisturbed by the darkness of trauma.

It’s not her blood. Oh, God.

And there was something else. The glimmer in the depths of her round eyes. A light reflected in his own. A shine of magic.

Everything made a terrible sort of sense now. Gabriel shook the girl, her head rocking back and forth. “What did you do? What happened?”

“Hey, what’s going on over here?”

Gabriel snapped his head up. An older man approached, looking stern. The scene he was walking into looked awful, and Gabriel was very aware of it. A bloody child, a grown adult male. No one else seemed to have noticed what was going on, everyone minding their business on the crowded boardwalk, but if they did…

The girl trembled under Gabriel’s hands. The temperature in the already-hot air started to rise, leaping to scorching levels. Gabriel watched, horror climbing up his spine, as his skin mottled pink and then red from the touch of the heat. Pain snarled through his hands, a sensation like he’d grabbed a pan straight out of the oven.

He forced himself to act. Releasing the girl with one hand, he thrust his fingers into his pocket and grabbed at the white powder he kept on his person at all times.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, and then he threw the Blinkdust into the other man’s eyes.

The man flinched back, too slow. The dust reached his eyes, dulled his perception of what he had seen through a process Gabriel was still working to understand. He went slack, standing motionless except for rapid blinking.

The effect wouldn’t last long.

Gabriel grabbed the girl’s blazing arm and started to move, walking fast through the crowd. Running would attract too much attention. Pulling her behind him, feeling her trip and stumble, he ducked between a clam bar and a pizza parlor, through the cluttered and dirty alley to the back areas ringed with dumpsters and recycling bins.

He spun to face the girl and dropped in front of her again. “What’s your name?”

She stared at him and blinked a few times. “P-Penelope. What did you do to that guy?”

“I made him forget we were there.” It was close enough to the truth. “Penelope, what did you do? Did you use your magic on someone?”

She hesitated. The blood was drying on her skin, going ruddy.

“I’m a wizard. I can use magic, too. But you knew that, right?” Gabriel lowered his voice. “That’s why you came to me.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she whimpered.

He bit his tongue. Showing his urgency would make her retreat further. “Then, show me. Take me to where it happened.”

Penelope looked at him for a moment longer before nodding. She grasped his hand, sliding her small fingers between his.

She led him to the scene of what she’d done, behind an arcade. Gabriel needed only a glance at the remnants of another human spread up the back wall and across the ground to know the whole story. She’d been grabbed and had protected herself, probably more violently than she meant to. Her young magic knew no limits. Not yet.

“Penelope,” he said, trying to sound calm, “where are your parents? Your mom?”

“I don’t have parents.”

Of course, not. Unfortunately, that was a story most wizards knew all too well.

“Me, neither,” Gabriel said. “But I have a teacher. He shows me how to use my magic. I think you should meet him.”

Penelope looked at what she’d done and said, in a voice much older than her years, “Me, too.”

The one day Master Zeke lets me take a break from studies and I find an orphaned mage.

He straightened up. “Let’s get you away from here. I’ll find you a bathroom so you can clean up, and I’ll call my teacher. While we’re waiting, we can have ice cream. Would you like that?”

She might have been a mage -a very powerful one, if he was reading the signs correctly- but she was still a child. Penelope took his hand again and said, “Okay.”

 At least this was one situation in which he knew the consequences of what he was doing. He was going to get this kid the help she needed.

© 2019 Emily Blue

"The Small Things" Short Story

This is a story about a microscope. Thinking about microscopes brings me back to high school Biology class, using old and outdated equipment that wouldn't focus. Thank goodness this story isn't about that.
Before I get started, be sure to follow my author page at facebook.com/authoremilyblue. And why not my Twitter while you're at it? @Miss_Emily_Blue
Now...
The Small Things

“Thanks for nothing,” Tim sniffed. He held the last box of his belongings. “I’m going to find a real man. One who tries to fix problems.”

Seth looked at the man who had once meant something to him, the man who still might mean something if he was a lot smaller. The insult stung in a distant and half-formed way, a pain dreamed rather than felt.

When Seth said nothing, Tim’s shoulders lifted like a dog’s hackles rising. “Oh, fuck you!” he cried, and stormed out the front door. It slammed shut behind him.

Seth studied his fingers, the grime caught underneath his nails. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he should have been more bothered about what was happening. Instead, relief loosened his lungs. Tim’s departure had removed a choking restraint from around his neck. Without Tim, he could do what he pleased, and there was only one thing he wanted to do anymore. 

He locked the door to prevent Tim from coming back if he changed his mind. Then, he mounted the stairs to the second floor and climbed the ladder to the attic. The wood squeaked in a friendly voice, an old friend inviting him home. 

Seth let his gaze wander over the items of furniture, the cheap garage sale chairs with their price tags still attached, and the old dolls pulled from antique store shelves. If it was old and funny-smelling and odd, he would buy it. Tim used to find that habit endearing, especially when Seth spent hours perusing second-hand shops for unique gifts. 

Endearing, until the microscope.

Seth walked over to the desk at the far end of the attic, underneath a large and dusty window. The space he once used for restoring old paintings and repairing broken china tea sets was bare now, devoid of all the tools he spent his life accumulating. In their place was a microscope, a bright yellow instrument he picked up last month. He hadn’t thought anyone lived in that strange house at the end of the road. When he saw homemade signs leading in that direction, and the tables of odds-and-ends set up on the lawn, he had been unable to resist a visit. 

Seth caressed the top of the microscope, the way a religious man might touch a Bible. He sat in his chair and leaned over to put his eye to the eye piece. He squinted, and stared, and lost himself in the dazzling sight.

There was nothing on the stage, no slide containing an interesting sample. The old woman selling the microscope had been so right when she told him he wouldn’t need any such gimmicks. 

Like all microscopes, this one offered a view of what couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. It saw through. Through a veil, through time and space, through everything, to a strange and amorphous place of dapples. Everything was light and shadow, a monochromatic field upon which slithering life forms of indeterminable shape and identity twisted and writhed. The creatures were unknown, hidden sideways on some other plane of existence no one had ever glimpsed before. 

Nothing compared to watching their lives in the chaotic and undefined unknown, a world reversed from the one Seth knew.

He switched eyes and leaned his elbows on his desk. He sat there, and he watched the magnified lifeforms as the sun descended across the sky and eventually beneath the horizon. Even when he couldn’t see any longer what he was looking at, he stayed unmoving at the microscope to wait for morning. 

The view was worth it.

©2019 Emily Blue

"Socks": A Quick Story

As promised, here's another short story I wrote! Enjoy and remember to check out my author page at Facebook.com/authoremilyblue and on Twitter @Miss_Emily_Blue. Obligatory self-promotion finished, here's the story.

Socks

Domino looked down at the socks on his feet, socks crusted with dried sweat and blood, less like pieces of clothing and more like shed snake skin. They had never had any shape to begin with and now lacked even the tension to pretend at functionality.

He loved them.

He bent over, one candidate out of thousands in the crowd all undressing. He removed first one sock and then the other. Utterly naked now, feeing his nudity for the first time even though he had tossed his shirt and pants aside already, he looked at the sad, ropey sacks which were all he had left in the world.

“Hey, you,” a sharp voice barked.

Domino turned and looked at the speaker, an older man with large dark eyes and a head shaved except for a thin stripe running from his forehead to the base of his skull.

“You’re done.” The man snapped off each word as if biting vegetables in chunks to drop into a stew in lieu of using a knife. “Go get in line.”

“Yes, sir,” Domino said. His feet moved for him before he finished speaking, taking him to the building whose placement he had memorized when he set foot in the compound. The crowd of others around him blocked his progress. He held the socks tight and shoved his shoulder into thin gaps, splitting men apart like an axe cleaving through firewood. Hands and thrown clothes struck him, other legs tangling with his as he slid by. The stench of sweat, the reek of hard travel, was thick enough to be tasted in the air. Tasted like tears. Because the air was occupied by smells, because all the men were moving as fast as they could, there was no room for conversation. Domino heard only grunts and gasps when he passed by the people making them, mistook the reverberant pounding of footsteps on the ground for his own racing heartbeat.

Another shove and he burst through the bulk of the undressing crowd to a sector with more order to it due to a fence -thin and ramshackle, but still a fence- and men with stripe haircuts guarding each entrance. Lines meandered through the gates. Domino watched, waited for his turn. Anticipation coiled serpentine in his gut.

Men came here in the hopes of being chosen. If someone was approved here, he was sent to another compound to be approved there and then at the headquarters after that, at which time he was to be christened a new citizen of the reforming country of Oss and welcomed into one of the walled cities.

Domino knew he might be rejected at any stage. If a man was not suited for a new life, he was sent away by train to elsewhere. Local rejection offices handed out tickets to anyone who wished to skip the long process. That way out would be so much easier. But if there was hope, any hope at all…

“Next!”

Domino blinked, realized no one was ahead of him. Legs trembling, he stepped up to the gate and looked the soldier in the eye. This one wore so many stripes upon his head, was of such a high rank, he nearly had all his hair.

“What is that?” the many-striped soldier demanded, pointing at Domino’s hand. “No personal belongings.”

“I know,” Domino said. Tried to say. His voice cracked. He licked his lips, tried again. “I know that. My grandmother made these for me.”

The soldier stared at him.

Domino pulled in such a deep breath his shoulders lifted. Everything inside him was loose and tight all at once. “I love them.”

The other man’s lips pressed together, thinning. His decision glowed bright in his eyes. He opened his mouth, showing a flash of folded tongue already most of the way through forming sound.

Spinning around, Domino threw the socks away as hard as he could. They sailed, pathetic kites fluttering in the air, and disappeared under the feet of the mob. “But I love my country more,” he announced, loud and proud, believing with his whole heart what he said.

Momentary stillness. A beat in which nothing breathed, not man, not the world itself. Then, the guard nodded slowly. “Hold out your arm.”

This wasn’t part of the process as far as Domino knew. He did it, anyway. The tendons in his wrist stood out against his skin.

The soldier reached into his pocket and pulled out an object that looked like a modified syringe. He placed the flat tip on the back of Domino’s wrist and depressed the plunger. Pain, sharp and quick. Domino flinched and yanked his arm back, staring at the mark that had been left upon him. It was small and square, too regular to be mistaken for a freckle.

Replacing the device in his uniform pocket, the soldier said, “Show that mark at each compound you visit.”

“What is it for?”

“It shows you have promise and dedication. It won’t guarantee acceptance, but it does increase your chances. Now, move. You’re holding up the line.”

“Thank you,” Domino gasped, and sprinted through the gate to join the others all headed in the same direction. Tears of gratitude stung his eyes, twin to the twinging pain on his arm. He had no idea where he was headed or what he would do when he got there. All he knew was that he would do the best he could. Right now, that was all anyone could do, even if it meant putting the good of the country ahead of the good of the individual.

©2019 Emily Blue

Personal Rejection

It's a busy world. There's not always a reason given for the way things are, or at least there's not enough time. Now more than ever, we as a society are constantly moving on to the next. That's no truer than in business. It doesn't matter so much WHY you weren't chosen for something, just that you weren't. 

That's why personal rejections matter so much to writers. I've gotten used to form rejections. It's just convenience. I accept it and try again elsewhere. But when an editor takes the time that they don't have to give to others and uses it to pen a few lines to you about what you sent to them, it means the world. It almost doesn't feel like a rejection. It feels good because it means I was good enough to stand out and make them want to say something about what I wrote. 

Already this year, I've had a few personal rejections, and on one short story in particular. There's been praise. There's been reasons given why the story wasn't chosen. Not the right fit for the magazine, despite enjoying the story itself, or liking one aspect of it but not another. I was even invited to resubmit a story to another collection after being passed over for the first one. The editors liked it enough to want to give me a second try. 

It's still not quite what I want, but it gives me hope and shows me that I'm moving in the right direction as a writer. I'm improving. 

I was going to post a short story here this time, but this has gone on a bit longer than I thought it would. Look again in a few days, please. 

If you want reminders and convenient links, be sure to head over to my author page on Facebook at facebook.com/authoremilyblue.

Until next time.

~Blue

"Through Blurred Vision"

It's been a bit longer since my last post than I would have liked but hey, that's life. I don't have much to talk about at the moment, so I'll skip all that and get right to what you want. A story!
As always, please check out my other links. Follow me on Twitter @Miss_Emily_Blue. Or, there's my author page on Facebook where I post more often.
facebook.com/authoremilyblue
The title of this story, which is also the name of the post, isn't great title, I know, but it serves its purpose.

“Troy!”

I heard my name being called distantly, faintly, through the horror. In front of me were shifting, amorphous creatures of light, translucent and brilliant all at once, like sunlight slanting across ice. They hadn’t been there moments ago when I came out of the base to do the morning rounds. They hadn’t been there when I tripped over my own boots like a bumbling idiot. They only sprang into existence when I hit my head, lurching out of the shadows between mounds of snow following the firework burst of pain.

Heat dripped down the back of my neck, the tang of copper cloying in the chilled air. 

Amy dropped down beside me, curls of red hair blowing on the wind. “Are you okay?” she demanded. “How do you feel?”

I cleared my throat, licking my chapped lips with a tongue suddenly devoid of moisture. “Do you see that?”

Amy glanced in the direction I pointed. “See what?” A frown darkened her expression. She clasped my shaking hand in hers, rubbing my fingers through the thick thermal gloves. “We need to get you inside so Dr. Klinga can check you for a concussion. You’re bleeding, Troy! You need to be more careful. If you keep using up our medical supplies like this…”

She pulled me to my feet, chiding me and my eternal clumsiness, bringing up examples like slicing open my palm while preparing dinner the week before, and spraining my ankle a few days before that. I stopped listening, her voice fading into the wind. 

 Amy wrapped her arm around my shoulders, turning me to face the base. I caught a last glimpse of the creatures, the shimmering, trailing ends of their forms like tentacles.

No matter how much we research, we’ll never really understand. 

There were things we couldn’t see in our normal lives, things we could never begin to understand, things which drifted with the wind like loose powder snow, ghosts haunting the plains of the largest desert on earth.

© 2019 Emily Blue

Off to a Strong Start

Well, here we are. A week into 2019. My thoughts are racing and I'm full of ideas, but what writer isn't? It's the ability to put those ideas into words, shape them from the abstract into an identifiable form, that makes us writers instead of day-dreamers. Plans are the same way. It's easy to plan. It's hard to take the steps toward whatever goal we want. Big ideas, grand schemes, those are easy. It's walking the path, following the journey through all the detours and set-backs, that becomes the challenge. We're human. We're curious. We get lost. We lose sight of what we want. It's hard.
Not to say it's a bad thing to want to explore new options or to reevaluate our plans, but if that's all we ever do, then nothing will ever happen.
And I know I'm tired of staying in the same place. I want to make something new happen. I want to learn to set goals and be realistic in my expectations for reaching them.
I want to publish a book.
I want to get a short story published in a magazine, or anthology. Somewhere.
I want to be more organized.
I want to cook more, sew more, paint more.
I want to... enjoy being me.
It won't be easy. Hell, no. I'm a daydreamer. I look out car windows and get lost in the scenery. I have imaginary arguments in the shower until the bathroom is so steamy I can barely breathe. I lie awake at night and tell myself stories. I'm all over the place, all the time. I don't want to change that part of me. All I want to get better at is having fun while I do it. If I enjoy what I'm doing, who I am, then the doubts and second-thoughts I struggle with should be easier to bear. I might get somewhere.
This blog post I'm writing, it was on my To-Do list for the day. It's not the most important, or the most profound, but it's done. I did it.
And that's enough for now.
Thanks for listening to my rambling. I'll have a story posted here in a few days. Until then, take some time to really look around at the world. Pay attention to what you see. Have feelings about it. We're human and while we might not be the most rational, organized, or stable of people, this is our world to experience. Don't miss out on that chance.

Happy -almost- New Year!

I did have a different story planned to post, but then I got it in my head to write one centered around the New Year. Timely, right? I'm on top of things for once! Well, the story isn't so much about the upcoming New Year as much as it... mentions it. So, I bent my own rules. Oh, well. I'll punish me later.
I do have some resolutions planned for the year, but they mostly consist of doing more of the things I already do. I want to be healthier, happier, more balanced. I'm already endeavoring to be a better version of myself, so why not keep going, keep growing?
But that's enough about me. You all know the drill. My author page is facebook.com/authoremilyblue and you can find me @Miss_Emily_Blue.
Now, it's time for... "General Holladay's Resolution"

The man on the screen swept out his arm, a glowing field of blue energy blasting through the room, shattering equipment and sending shrapnel flying. Shards of metal punctured through the skin of the humanoid creature on the other end of the room, high-pressured jets of blood spurting from the wounds in its carapace. The scene dissolved into a kaleidoscopic mist, an image of a vast galaxy forming from the swirling blur of color. 

Words drifted into existence, superimposed on the white-gold elliptical. 

“I didn’t answer the call. The call answered me.”

After ten years playing General Holladay, ten years being voted the Most Heroic Man in the Universe, I still had no idea what the hell that catchphrase was. What the shit did it mean? The recruitment call for the Planet Alliance Force, and it sounded as angst-riddled and self-important as something a 14-year-old thought up for an imaginary argument that would never happen.

“What do you think, Bradlee?” asked the man sitting in front of the screen, wearing his favorite hat and fashionably-rumpled suit. “I feel like we can do better.” He sighed. 

“It’s raw and gritty, Director,” I said, telling him what I knew he wanted to hear. “They’ll eat it up.”

Director Mark Jacobson nodded and pressed his lips together. He had that unsatisfied expression he wore as often as his suit, which meant he would hound the editors and animators to polish this next broadcast until the first of the new year, when the entire world would watch under the belief it was all happening real-time.

Only those in the know were aware of the truth, that this fear-mongering production had been engineered by the Society to keep the general population under control. When threats came from all around, strange beasts and unimaginable technology pulled from the darkest recesses of the human imagination, combatted only by a small force of specialized space soldiers, no one bothered to argue with their government.

“There won’t be anything to worry about.” I consoled Mark, knowing the words were really for me.

I might be an actor, a liar for profit, but I had also become husband to Cynthia Holo, “Captain of the Third Squad,” and now father to our daughter, Merry. 

This frightened world was not one I wanted my daughter to live in.

I patted Mark on the shoulder. “Are we done here?”

“What?” he said, absently. “Yes. Thank you, Bradley. Your input is as invaluable as always.”

I left the screening room, walking through the light-studded studio hallways. The illumination used to make me feel so important, but now I huddled my shoulders around my neck and hurried to my private room, where the lights could not reveal the secrets I felt were written so apparently on my face. 

A bottle of spiced whiskey and a canister of Calm capsules awaited me on the dressing table where I placed them earlier. By dinnertime tonight, when a series of scheduled messages launched from my computer, containing months of gathered evidence as to the falsehood created here in the Society’s hidden settlement, I would be beyond any sort of medical assistance.

Cynthia could find someone better to raise Merry. The revolution this evidence would create could find a better figurehead than an aging actor. 

I went to my room, my death chamber, sad, but also satisfied. 

And thirsty.

The End