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

"The Thin Baker"

Continuing in my efforts to write more. It's nice to be able to do shorter works that I can turn out in less than an hour, a good balance to the longer projects I do at work and for myself. I do sometimes have a hard time restricting myself it terms of how many words I use, so it's good practice.
For this one, I used a prompt generator. This one, in fact: https://thestoryshack.com/tools/writing-prompt-generator/
I like generators a lot. I've never actually used them much for anything aside from getting inspiration for names, though. Maybe this is my chance to play with them more.
If you like what I'm doing here, please please check back for more soon. You can also find me on Facebook. My page is www.facebook.com/authoremilyblue/
And on Twitter, I'm @Miss_Emily_Blue
With that out of the way, here's my most recent story. "The Thin Baker." Enjoy!

Harold looked thinner than ever. Once a bright and chubby boy, adulthood had consumed his excess and left him wasted. Emaciated. Not the best look for a man who had culinary talents galore, enough to keep the family business afloat after the deaths of his parents, but he couldn’t help it.

Dipping the tip of his little finger into a bowl, he tasted the batter. Sweet and subtly spicy, with cheerful notes of citrus and ginger. 

His expression held still except for the thinning line of his lips as they pressed together. He grimaced and picked up the bowl and held it over a pan, and poured the batter in. The last bit he scraped out with a spatula. Still wielding his spatula, he smoothed out the surface of the batter and turned to the oven.

A man stood there, in the kitchen where he wasn’t supposed to be. He was skeletal, the lines of his bones and muscles standing against taut skin. He looked like Father Christmas himself after a terrible liposuction accident, with his festive ugly sweater, and a Santa hat perched on top of dirty gray locks of hair. A musty elderly-man reek of urine hung around him like bad perfume. 

Harold flinched, the spatula flicking. Drops of batter speckled the old man’s face; he blinked and looked startled in a vague way, seeming to lack the energy to express more emotion.

“I’m sorry!” Harold squeaked. He spun, more batter flying. “Let me get you a towel. I…”

“Is this the poisoned stuff?” the old man asked. 

Surprise weakened Harold’s hands and he dropped the pan and spatula on top of the nearest counter. He turned back to the old man. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.” 

Funny how natural I sound. I’ve turned into quite the liar.

The old man sighed and closed his eyes. One hand drifted up by his head, as of its own accord, and fiddled with the white pompom end of his hat. “My name’s Joe. I need to make a special order. I was told you could help me.”

“What do you need done?” Harold asked.

There was no use pretending, no use denying his alchemical heritage even as much as he hated it. It was in his blood to do this. His senses heightened with interest and his heart beat more intensely than before. His mind readied itself, years of information crowding at the front of his thoughts.

“I need to kill my brother,” Joe said. “He…”

Harold held up his hand. Not knowing hurt worse than knowing, but knowing weighed the heaviest on his conscience. “$5,000 upfront now. Cash. $5,000 after it’s done, dropped off in the box in the back alley behind the dumpster. I don’t know you, you don’t know me. Clean-up and covering your own ass is up to you.”

Joe reached into his pocket and produced a stack of Benjamins. Harold tucked the money into the front pouch on his apron. No use counting. It was the right amount. It always was.

“How do you want it to look?”

Joe blinked rapidly, his eyes shining with moisture. “Fast. He’s had a stroke before. Um, can it be cookies?”

“Come back in a few hours. Back entrance this time.”

Harold turned away and picked up the pan and stuck it in the oven, as if the conversation hadn’t happened. Strokes are easy. Glass spidersilk and murrecit essence, sleepleaf…

“Do you enjoy hurting people?”

Harold flinched again and clutched the counter. He hadn’t realized the old man was still in the kitchen. “He won’t hurt,” he muttered. “I promise.”

Spidersilk would cut the mouth. Just a little sting, like biting your cheek. The sleepleaf would numb the senses and the murrecit would do the rest, clotting blood as it raced through the veins. It would be over too fast for Joe’s brother to understand.

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“Yeah,” Harold whispered. He turned away again. “Yeah, I know.”

The End

©2018 Emily Blue

A Lovecraft-inspired Story

I'm trying to keep up with writing more stories so I have another one here to share. Recently, I was given a small pad of paper and a pen taken from a hotel. I *love* nabbing pens. If I see one undefended, it's mine. And I also like collecting unique things to write on or in, even if most of the time I never end up using them. I sat down one night a few weeks ago and wrote out a quick story by hand and then typed it up, so here it is. It has an H. P. Lovecraft feel to it, I think. I enjoy his stories so much, but that's a post for another day.
I'll go ahead and get out of your way so you can get to reading. Please remember to check out my author page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/authoremilyblue/ Or, I'm also on Twitter @Miss_Emily_Blue.
Now, here's "A Journey Completed." Enjoy!

I have left the ruins far behind, but I cannot stop. I trudge on through the desert, the sun an oppressive force in the pallid sky, the weight of my backpack digging into the welts on my shoulders. Blood and pus have long since plastered my shirt to my skin. The stinking emissions of my own body sear my parched, blistered skin.

I know what is happening to me. I have no water left and there is no moisture anywhere to be found in this hellscape aside from mocking shimmers in the shallow, shaded slopes of the ceaseless dunes, which evaporate when I come near.  Dry skin sloughing from my cracked lips is all I have to eat. My brain is shrinking in my skull, starved of essentials. I am going to die.

And yet my legs move, carving furrows in the scintillating amber-and-white sands. Only the exact shape of the dunes ever changes, which curl in serpentine patterns around me like suffocating python coils. Each step sends dull throbs racing through my muscles, trailing up from my bloodied soles to right behind my shriveled eyes. I have a purpose to serve. 

I stumble, my feet tangling together. Throwing my hands out, I try to catch myself. My arms crumple in on themselves and my face bounces off the sand. I lay there, groaning, throbs of color flashing behind my eyelids. In those flashes of light, like suns dying and being born, I see again the strange temple ruins which reminded me so much of a ziggurat. I could find no entrances made by human hands, only cracks in the weathered surface which led nowhere. The ziggurat lacked any features or visible function, including stairs, forcing me to climb the pocked formation using only my bare hands and my will. 

Why I did not return with a team and proper equipment, I have had much time to consider. I once thought my stupidity to be pride. Now I know otherwise. I was summoned by an ancient call which must have been sounding for millennia, awaiting a creature with a weak enough mind to entrance. 

The artifact.

No, the egg.

My mortal burden shifts and undulates inside the pack as I lay on the sand, stirring me from the haze of memories. My charge makes its terrible sound, one which has increased in volume and intensity even since this last dawn: soft crackling, almost musical, like breaking glass. I feel, deeply, rather than hear, the new accompaniment to the cracking of the shell. It is effortful grunting, forced from the throat of a creature as far from being human as is possible in this world -or any other. The shaking grows more terrible and phrenetic, the grunts turning into muffled bleats which make my soul quiver in my chest. 

The time is now. I know it. 

Grunting myself, I push against the sand and roll to the side, and slide free of the imprisoning backpack straps. I undo the zipper with shaking fingers, covered in cuts from my climb up the temple, which have not healed. 

The pack convulses, flashes of abominable green-swirled eggshell glimpsed through the gap. A sharp crack pierces the desert silence. Moisture pools through the bottom of the bag, darkening the sand. The pungent aroma, reminding me of many breakfast preparations, sends my empty stomach into spasms of its own.

Yolk pours from the opening of the backpack, streaked with white strands and ribbons of blood. Movement from within, more purposeful now. A slick, slimed nightmare emerges, eyes slitted and scaled nostrils flaring. It slithers, tail lashing, sprays of grit flying to either side.

This terrible child waited, slumbered, at the top of the temple which was not, a temple, no. The staggered steplike sides were just that. Steps. Steps built for vast and unknowable legs to climb to the top of the pedestal, where this egg was laid so eternally long ago. 

I close my eyes.

I don’t want to see.

I have outlived my usefulness, ferried my charge as far as I could. And now I will serve another purpose, to give this loathsome infant my remaining strength so it may go the rest of the way to wherever it wishes to be.

I am too tired to weep.

I hear sand cascade, wind sliding over the armor of the horror’s body. A heavy weight slams into my shoulders. My eyes spring open as I fall, staring directly into the dripping maw of the child I stirred into life. The fangs curve inward, as white as icicles, and cold pain slashes through me. The cold is worse than anything I have ever felt, but somehow the flood of heat after is worse, however short-lived. My breath ceases. I am severed.

I drown.

©2018 Emily Blue

A Short-Short Story!

I want to try to spend more time writing in my free time. I have so many hobbies and I gain new ones all the time, but I have to remember my first true love: the written word. I recently wrote a short piece that I'm very proud of and I've decided to post it here. I hope I'll be doing more like this soon.
I'm going to go ahead and do all my usual stuff here. Please consider following my author page on Facebook. It's www.facebook.com/authoremilyblue/ Or, I'm also on Twitter @Miss_Emily_Blue if you want to follow me there. Thanks!

Without further ado, here is "Never Once." Please Enjoy!

Never once did I believe, during those hazily-remembered days of summer warmth spent in the yard, curled in a grass nest with my imaginary tail over my paws, observing the neighborhood through slitted eyes, that my pretending hinted at more. An ancestry, a curse, a long-forgotten twist of fate which defined me long before I knew of it.

Mother wept often when she thought I couldn’t hear. I understand now my tendencies saddened her. She couldn’t enjoy who I was for the truth of what I would become.

I think, perhaps, she was wrong to worry. I used to, as well; I have learned much since those first trepidatory nights of terror and pain. I wear my battle scars with pride, the jagged points of my torn ears like a queen’s crown. But, I have no domain. I have found peace in the past and chose to leave that idyllic harmony behind in search of more. My spirit paces.

Tonight, it has taken me here to what feels to be the top of the world, pulses of chill wind caressing my tabby pelt. The city scintillates far below this tower, as if the stars in heaven saw fit to come to the earth. The city breathes, as alive as myself, as alive as the people who course through its veins in persistent rhythm. Its heart throbs in time with blinking neon and flickering lights magnified through countless windows.

Looking at this, I wonder if my curse may actually be a blessing.

©2018 Emily Blue