In the late 1970s a glowing orb appeared in the sky. Every day at about 5:00 Greenwich standard time, the orb would go somewhere new, shoot out something similar to a laser, and kill one person. Every day, always at the same time, always exactly one person.
The person killed by the orb seemed completely random, with almost fifty years of studying it we've been able to find no rhythm or reason to who it kills. It kills the old, the young, the rich, the poor, the urban, the rural, anyone. Every human on earth seems to have an equal chance of being killed by the orb. It's a headline the few times someone of note is killed by the orb: Britain famously lost a Parliament member to the orb, Brazil to this day remains the only country where a head of state was killed by the orb while in office, there was a short lived sitcom in the 1990s called Freinds that ended halfway through its first season due to the orb killing one of the main actors on set. However, these are outliers, on any given day the person who dies via orb is very likely to be someone you never heard of. There are billions of people on earth, and only one is killed by the orb every day. In almost fifty years only a little over 18000 have died because of the orb, which is nothing in the face of the sheer amount of humans that exist.
When the orb first appeared people were horrified. Both the US and USSR thought it was a weapon from the other side. Almost every religion made some claim of it being proof of their beliefs, oftentimes claiming it was divine punishment. Atheists claimed it was proof no loving God could exist. People were so very apocalyptic and horrified by it, they thought of it as part of the end times, because when it was new that's really how it looked.
However, it's been long enough so that's changed. Most people have lived their entire lives in a world where the orb exists. The orb isn't that scary a concept. People know their odds of being killed by it are low and that it's not going to end the world or anything. The orb has become normal, and we've accepted that the orb is just something that kills people the same way cancer, or heart attacks, or natrual disasters, or car crashes kill people. In the nineteen eighties there were efforts to find a way to stop the orb, but it's since proven to be extremely difficult, and it's as distant and nebulous as finding a cure for cancer. When a community is struck by the orb you'll see that community in mourning, but it's not a global thing anymore.
So people grow up learning about the orb, as part of science, like anything else. A lot of gen z remembers learning about the orb from Magic School Bus. It's just something normal. There are a few people with an orb hyperfixation, and a few cults that give the orb importance but it's not most people's concern. The orb is how we first confirmed that interdimensional objects existed and are possible. A lot of people theorize dimensional studies wouldn't exist without it, meaning without the orb we might not have thermitizers or grand drives, we might not even have a moon base without the orb. Some have even rather tastelessly claimed that the orb has saved more lives at this point than its taken with all the knowledge it's given us.
Which is why I regret to inform you, that just last week, without warning, the orb killed two people in one day. And for the past seven days it's been killing two people instead of just one. Nobody knows why.
God's Favorite
Lucy wakes to the soft tapping of rain against her window, and she is God’s favorite. She knows this in the absent sound of her alarm, and she knows this in the yawning rumbles of thunder, and she knows this before she touches her phone alight to the notification screen.
8:43 am. Far from the 4:30 am alarm she’d needed to heed to make it to her flight. Her screen is awash with airline notifications.
She scrambles from bed. Her urgency is an apology. Lucy skips the shower and skips the hair washing and paints on deodorant before stowing it back in her carryon and calling her uber.
“Crazy weather,” her driver with the big mustache remarks. His windshield wipers swish through a river of rain.
“Yeah,” Lucy answers. She glances at her rumbling phone. She glances at the rumbling clouds. The road is clear. It shouldn’t be, not this route and not at this hour. A gas main broke somewhere up the highway that feeds this street. A freak accident. 2 injuries. It’s kept this road clear for just the locals since it happened. Lucy encounters no traffic enroute to the airport.
There are pockets of planes grounded across the runways, barely visible behind the sheets of downpour. They look like herding animals, herbivores, standing stock-still in brace against the weather. Lucy stares at them only a moment while the driver pulls her carryon out of the trunk. She grabs her jacket closed against the wind, and grabs her carryon handle, and thanks her driver. The rain does not reach her here, though the wind does.
Inside Lucy drags her bag past the help desks swarming with the orderly filings of people in disarray. Parents leaning too hard on help counters with kids pulling on bag handles. Hurried conversations and requests and arguments. The electronic boards are awash with deeply red DELAYED and CANCELED. The airport is choking. Lucy, who God loves, glides through security unimpeded.
At gate-side, Lucy finally looks to the large red board of DELAYED and CANCELED etchings to confirm what she knew without even checking her phone notifications. Gate A14. Her carryon wheels pitter and patter across tile as she walks, striding quickly, with apology.
When Gate A14 comes into view it is smothered with the weight of two or possibly three flights worth of people. There are people asleep clutching backpacks and curled on the floor. There is a four-year-old girl with her face buried in an iPad and a mother having a phone call whose clipped urgency infects Lucy. There is a man leaning over the counter to talk to the gate agent, and his hands pulse with each tensing of his fingers. “…to the hospital before she…” Lucy makes out, or thinks she makes out. She doesn’t hear the gate agent’s response, but she can read the defeated shake of her head.
Lucy’s carryon wheels clunk where the smooth tile of the terminal shifts to carpeting. She doesn’t think to grab a seat because there are no open seats. So she positions herself in a way to unmistakably say she is at the gate, threading between stagnant suitcases and kids splayed on the floor. Lucy approaches the rain-splattered windows, and like a conversation shy upon being overheard, the thunder recedes from her advance. The rain draws to a polite close. The clouds split along a seam and pull away, as if they were only ever a wave that had transiently crashed to shore. The sky is beautifully blue.
You’ve been getting abducted by aliens at night for months now with the aliens performing all sorts of medical examinations on you. But, hey, it’s cheaper than health insurance.
“I think there’s been a mistake. Maybe you’re new here. Can you tell the receptionist that you have Heather Martinson in examination? Or you could just ask Mil’kan’it if she’s here.”
The insectoid alien stared at me for a long moment. It was funny how a look of stunned confusion was so often similar across species. All it included was a strange lack of movement and their eyes, whatever form they took, examining what was in front of them as if it might change into something more sensible. “I… What?” Their chittering translated back to me, as my English had to them.
“The straps aren’t necessary,” I told him, giving him finger waves from both immobilized hands. “Everything goes a lot faster if it’s easy to move the patient, right? And muscle relaxants and anesthesia mess with results. Plus, Mil’kan’it said some of the stuff they use on humans gets put on backorder so often.”
The alien glanced at the data on their tablet and then looked back to me. “If you’ll…excuse me.” With a final glance, they left the room through the automatic doors.
Leaning back into the headrest with a sigh, I stared at the smooth metal ceiling of the examination room in the alien spacecraft, feeling as if I were at the dentist. The biggest difference being that the lights in here weren’t shining directly into my eyes. One of the scientists had laughed when I told him about that issue. I guess when you’ve got a certain level of tech, needing sunglasses to have work done on your teeth would seem hilarious.
They had actually done a couple scans on me over time that took a while, leaving me laying down with nothing to do, but unlike the dentist, the folks here were delightfully generous in entertainment. I’d been able to see two movies so far that had hadn’t even been released on streaming services yet, projected on the ceiling above me. When I explained it was no problem for me to lay there for two hours if I had something to watch, they’d immediately asked me for my to-watch list. Apparently, there was even one special request from their psychology department for a brain scan to be done specifically while I was watching a movie, and the more complex and emotional it was, the better.
The doors smoothly opened, and I heard a familiar voice say, “Heather! How are you?”
“Ixira,” I said in surprise. “I thought you were heading back home?”
The scientist’s antennae flicked in what I recognized as irritation as she came over and used her graspers to unlatch the straps on my wrists, ankles, and forehead. “I did. Then I came back, because apparently this place falls apart without me. It’s a whole mess, forget it.” I sat up, stretching. “I’ll be off on my vacation for real soon enough.”
“All right then. Introduce me?” I asked, motioning to the alien beside her.
“Right. This is Unkiwar. He’s been with us for…about seventeen…Earth days? I think that’s accurate.” She motioned to me. “Unkiwar, this is Heather. She’s a regular here. We pick her up once every {six weeks} or so, ever since that first abduction when we worked out she’s fine with it.”
“Fine?” he echoed. “That’s not the typical…reaction.”
I chuckled. “This is free healthcare, my alien friend,” I said. “Free hyper advanced alien healthcare. You know what that means to an American Earthling?”
Ixira gestured her agreement. “Where she lives on her planet, the health issues she struggles with cost an extraordinary amount of currency. So, she’s happy to donate time to our research when she also benefits. It was an easy deal to make. Being able to pick up the same subject for repeat examinations, with full cooperation? It’s been fantastic. Two other humans have the same deal and we’re working to increase that number. Heather advised us to go to certain territories on the planet, where healthcare is sparse.”
“Yeah, and as soon as you explain the whole colonoscopy thing, you get a much less pervy reputation.”
“Pervy?” Unkiwar exclaimed. “It’s an examination of where your waste exits your body!”
I grimaced and glanced to Ixira. “Just tell him later.”
“Yeah,” she said dismissively.
“Teeth health is a big deal too,” I said, clacking my jaws together twice. “I lost the genetic lottery, and even brushing and flossing like it’s a religion only does so much.”
Unkiwar turned to Ixira. “I don’t understand. Why are the bones in her mouth difficult to maintain?”
“They’re not bones,” she explained. “Human skeletons are protein collagen and calcium phosphate. Teeth are dentin, enamel, and cementum.”
The male alien shifted in a way that indicated an irritated dismissal. “So?”
“So,” I sighed, “they need maintenance because they can’t heal themselves. If they get infected under the tooth, it can be agony. And if they get damaged it costs somewhere between my cell phone bill and a new car.”
“I…don’t know what that means,” Unkiwar said slowly, “but it doesn’t sound pleasant.”
Ixira looked down at her tablet to poke and swipe at it. “It’s all in this seminar lecture I watched a while ago,” she said absently. “There. You should watch that one and…this one. Human biology is fascinating, despite the nonsense their evolution has put them through.”
“Anyway,” I said, drumming a beat briefly on my thighs, startling Unkiwar, “what’s on the agenda today?”
“Let’s see… Standard examination,” Ixira said with a nod, reading something on her tablet. “We’ll also need four blood samples, because not only have the labs not gotten their act together about sharing yet, but we have a fourth lab that just qualified to assist in research.”
Grinning, I chuckled. “Ah, I’m just too popular.”
“Indeed. Today is Muscle Day, so we’ll be taking those samples as well,” she said slowly, “and it’s time for another full body scan.”
I sat up straight. “Do I get a movie?”
Ixira’s body language shifted to haughty delight. “I got you the new Mean Girls movie.”
My jaw dropped. “That’s not even in theaters yet!”
“Apparently stealing a film is not as difficult as stealing a human,” the scientist chuckled. “Go figure.”
/r/storiesbykaren
Thought tumblr might appreciate this story so I’m gonna relay my Tale Of Woe™️ from the other day.
So my University hosted a trip to the New England Aquarium in Boston this past Saturday, and I love going to Boston so I signed up as soon as the invites went out. Because we’re not children anymore, we were basically set loose after the initial headcount and were told we had to meet at Faneuil Hall (down the street) at 6:30 to get back on the bus. So I enjoyed the aquarium for the majority of the day with my classmates, but had something else on my mind.
I’m a simple person, and I really wanted to stock up on Boston Goodies to take back to school with me. One of the Boston Goodies in particular that I wanted was Ube Cake. I am a greedy little slut for Ube Cake and unfortunately happen to live in an extremely White part of America where nobody makes Ube Cake (and I suck at making cake rolls). So whenever I go to Boston, I go to this little bakery in Chinatown called Bao-Bao to stock up on their pre-packaged Ube Rolls.
So after getting lunch I go to Bao Bao and unfortunately, they’ve sold out of their famous Ube Rolls for the day. But they have individual slices of Ube Crepe Cake! I’m a slut for Ube Cake, but I’m even more of a slut for crepes, so I buy a slice.
The lady who served me puts it in this little fold-up box that I can only describe as being a like a lamination sheet. I did not trust this box from the moment I saw it, especially considering that I was going to have to transport this cake in my backpack. So I resolve to be extra careful, and I check the box every so often to make sure it hasn’t exploded.
Fast forward a few hours and I get on the bus to go back to school. I had nearly had a cake-slip a few minutes prior while getting some stuff from Bova’s but had fixed the box and I just wanted to check it to make sure it was stable.
To my horror, the box has exploded and my Ube Cake is about to fall out into my dirty ass backpack. My containers from Bova’s do NOT have enough room for this piece of cake. I am a cornered animal and I am out of options.
So I begin to shovel this pile of purple crepes and whipped cream into my mouth like a lioness on a kill.
People were getting situated on the bus and just about everyone saw me. One person asked me “…Elsa are you just eating an entire head of cabbage?” I drew a self portrait to capture this primal moment with the help of several eyewitnesses.
So I eviscerate this cake down to one bite, and by now the bus is moving, the roads are bumpy, and I’m starting to feel slightly motion-sick so I put the last bite in one of my other pastry boxes. Now the main issue at hand is that my hands and face are absolutely covered in whipped cream.
On one hand, the school was nice to us and got us a coach bus for our travels because it’s a 5 1/2 hour drive from campus to the aquarium. So there’s a bathroom and a trash can right behind me because I’m sitting towards the back. I get up, throw the box away, and knock on the bathroom door but receive no answer, so I open it. It’s worth mentioning the lock on this bathroom door was broken… And I walk in on a guy who has been hitting on me all semester (despite knowing I’m a lesbian) taking a shit.
I quickly close the door and apologize and go back to my seat, mortified and still covered in whipped cream. I sat there covered in whipped cream for another fifteen minutes rethinking my life choices and every choice I made that led me to this moment, and then finally this guy comes out. I apologize again and he says, with a wink;
“Don’t worry. You haven’t seen all of me yet.”
And pats me on the shoulder before going back to his own seat. I sit there for a moment in silence, and my friend across the aisle is like “what the fuck???” But finally I get to go wash my hands. So I go into this bus bathroom that I hadn’t been in before…
Two Sentence Horror Story: There is No Sink. Only Hand Sanitizer.
This would have been worse if I hadn’t been somewhat of a road trip veteran, and I resolved this by taking some toilet paper and pouring water from my water bottle on it and wiping my hands down with that.
So yeah that’s my road trip tale of terror. How was everyone else’s weekend?
After the occupation, the princess was confined to the palace.
Once a month she'd be taken on a walk around the city, heavily guarded of course, to show the people that she still lived. It also served, of course, as a reminder of what they stood to lose if they made trouble. The princess did her best go wave and smile and give the people what encouragement she could.
The rest of the time, her life was spent in musty rooms and dusty towers. She filled most of her time scouring the castle for materials which she would sew into more and more elaborate outfits, which she would show off on the days when she was allowed outside.
Indeed, the public loved their princess and her dresses so much they'd often sketch or paint them along the route and pass the images on so that all could see the princess at least was well.
This pleased the occupiers for two reasons. First: it kept the princess out of trouble. Second: it gave them a reason to sneer and they did love a good sneer.
"What a vain creature she is!" They would remark.
"Doesn't even care we murdered her brothers so long as she gets enough satin to make her little dresses!" They squawked.
This was unfair, of course, for to call her creations "little dresses" was to call Queen Murderfun the Needlessly Genocidal "a tad piquey". Her dresses were gravity-defying wonders lace and pearl. They were thunderstorms captured in velvet and waterfalls summoned in silk. She was a wizard with silk.
Still, she bore their mockery with a tight smile and careful deference.
"Please, good sirs, my home, my people and my city now belong to you. Let me keep, at least, this one last joy."
And they sneered and they crowed most unpleasantly, but they let her keep her sewing room.
Of course, they would have known their mockery to be doubly unfair had they realised the true purpose of the princess's elaborate designs. For hidden in the intricate embroiderings across her gowns, jackets and fans, the princess had encoded secret (and very detailed) messages. When she would go on her monthly walk, the city's loyalists would line the route, sketching down the patterns to decode later.
Thus did the princess transmit all the occupiers' secrets (unearthed while supposedly 'searching the castle for old fabrics') to the city and thus did she build her resistance.
On the day the revolution finally came, she girded herself in armour of thick spider silk and whale bone. She cut a fine figure with a lacy handkerchief in her top pocket and a razor sharp knitting needle keeping her hair up.
As she waltzed through the castle to open the door for her army, the Usurper King tried to stop her and she simply unfolded her handkerchief and showed it to him.
Upon seeing the impossible arcane pattern emblazoned across it, he fell to the floor with blood streaming from his eyes.
She always had been a wizard with silk.
I want to write a movie that is sort of the flip side of a Hallmark holiday movie. Not an anti-Hallmark movie, just like the other side of the same coin.
It starts with a well-dressed professional woman driving a convertible along a country road, autumn foliage in the background, terribly scenic. She turns onto a dirt road/long driveway, and stops next to a field of Christmas trees, all growing in neat, ordered rows, perfectly trimmed and pruned to form. She steps out of the car--no, she's not wearing high-heels, give her some sense!--and knocks on the door of a worn but nice-looking farmhouse. An older woman, late fifties maybe, answers the door, looking a bit puzzled. The younger woman asks if she can buy a Christmas tree now, today. The older woman says they don't do retail sales--and the younger woman breaks down crying.
Cut to the two women sitting at the kitchen table with cups of tea. The young woman (Michelle), no longer actively crying, explains that her mother loves Christmas more than anything, but is in the hospital with end-stage cancer. Her doctors don't think she'll live to see December, let alone Christmas. Nobody is selling Christmas trees in September, so could the older woman please make an exception, just this once? The older woman (Helen) regretfully explains that they have a contract to sell their trees that forbids outside sales. The younger woman nods, starts to stand up, but the older woman stops her with a hand and asks her what hospital her mother is in. After she answers the older woman says that "my Joe" will deliver a tree the next day. "Contract says I can't sell you a tree, but nothing says I can't give you one."
Next day "Joe" shows up at the hospital in flannel and jeans, with a smallish tree over her shoulder. Oh, whoops, that's Jo, Helen's daughter, short for Joanna, not Joe. Jo sets up the tree and even pulls out a box of lights and ornaments. Mother watches from hospital bed with a big smile as Jo and Michelle decorate the tree. Cue "end of movie" type sappiness as nurses and other patients gather in the doorway, smiling at the tree.
Cut to Michelle sitting in her dark apartment, clutching a mug of tea, staring out at the falling snow and the Christmas lights outside. Her apartment has no tree, no decorations, nothing. She starts at a knock on the door, goes to open it. Jo is standing there, again holding a tree over her shoulder.
Plot develops: the second tree is a gift, because Michelle might as well get it as the bank. The contract for the tree sales was an /option/ contract, which prevents them from selling to anyone else, but doesn't guarantee the sale. The corporation with the option isn't going to buy the trees, but Helen and Jo can't sell them anywhere else, and basically they get nothing. They'll lose the farm without the year's income. Michelle asks to see the contract and Jo promises to email it to her.
Next day at a very upscale law firm, Michelle asks at the end of a staff meeting if anyone in contract law still needs pro bono hours for the year. No one does, but a senior partner (Abe) takes her to his office and asks about it. She says the contract looks hinky to her ("Is that a legal term?" "Yes.") but contract law's not her thing. He raises an eyebrow and she grins and pulls a sheaf of paper out of her bag and hands it over. He reads it over, then looks up at her. "They signed this?"
More plot develops. Abe calls in underlings--interns, paralegals, whatever--and the contract is examined, dissected, and ultimately shredded (metaphorically). It's worse even than it looks--on January 1st Helen and Jo will have to repay the advanced they received at signing. The corporation has bought up a suspicious number of Christmas tree farms in previous years after foreclosure, etc.
Cut to Abe explaining all this to Helen and Jo while sitting with them and Michelle in a very swanky conference room. The firm is willing to take on the case pro bono, hopefully as a class's action suit for other farmers trapped by the contract--but there's no way it can go to court before January. Which will be too late to save the farm's income for the year. They might get enough in damages to tide them over, but….
After Michelle sees Helen and Jo out, she comes back and asks Abe if there's anything they can do immediately. Abe looks thoughtful for a long moment, then gets a really shark-like grin on his face. "Maybe…."
Cut to Helen wearing a bathrobe, coming into her kitchen in the morning. She looks out the window…and there's a food truck stopped in her driveway. She pulls a coat on over her robe and goes out--two more trucks have pulled up while she does this. Driver of the first truck asks her where they park. Another truck pulls up behind the others. Behind that is a black BMW--Abe rolls down the window and waves. Helen directs the trucks to the empty field/yard next to the house. Abe pulls up next to Helen's car and Jo's truck and parks. He and Michelle get out--Abe wearing a total power suit, Michelle in weekend casual.
The case will be easier if the corporation initially sues them for violating the (uninforcible!) contract, rather than them suing to corporation (damn if I know, but it's movie logic). So they're going to sell the trees now, and rounded up some food trucks and whatnot to draw people in.
Cue montage of Jo and Michelle running around helping people set up while Abe and Helen watch from the kitchen table. The table starts out covered in file folders…and slowly gains coffee cups and plates of cinnamon rolls. It becomes increasingly clear here that Abe and Helen are becoming as close as Jo and Michelle.
Everything gets set up and a very urban, very motley crowd appears--tats and studs and multiracial couples and LGBTQ parents and everything--and everyone is having a wonderful time eating funnel cake and choosing their tree so Jo and a bunch of rainbow-haired elves can cut it for them. At which point someone shows up from the corporation (maybe with a sheriff's deputy?) and starts yelling at Helen, who's running checkout. And suddenly Abe appears from the house and you realize why he's wearing that suit on a Saturday….
Cue confrontation and corporate flunky running off with their tail between their legs, blustering about suing. Cue Jo kissing Michelle. Cue Helen walking over and putting a hand on Abe's shoulder and smiling at her.
I want the lawyers to be the heroes because they are lawyers and know the law. I want a lesbian who lives in the country with her mother. I want urbanites to turn out as a community to help someone who isn't even part of their community. I want Michelle to keep working at her high-power job, loving Christmas and grieving her mother.
the “bad guys” in hallmark movies end up always being the most respectful men ever.
because they will find out their girlfriend of 3 years (that they were about to propose to) went off to a random farm in minnesota, hours away from were the two of them built a life together, and she decided to just… stay there without even consulting him.
and then he decides to take a trip to make sure she’s okay, because this is generally alarming behavior, and then sees that she literally fell in love with her ex within one (1) week- and he wasn’t there, but you can TELL that they’ve made out a couple times.
and then she just strings him along for a few days, until fucking christmas eve, when she just breaks up with him and is like “i know we used to have the same values, but i’ve never loved you. mark makes me happier than you ever did. and you ONLY care about work, whereas i like christmas and fun, like a Good Person.”
and then, after finding out his entire relationship was a lie and he had his life turned upside down in a week and he got dumped on christmas, this guy’s just like “ok yeah that makes sense. i only wish you the best of happiness with mark. i hope you guys build a great life together in christmastreefarmville. thank you for everything.”
An AU where two Hallmark Christmas Bad Guys are both getting flights back to New York after being dumped by their respective Smalltown Blonde Girlfriends, and they bond over their shared experiences and fall in love in the departures lounge
@teashoesandhair your wish is my command :)
Probably, Levi should be more upset.
Probably he is still in shock. Right? He looks out of his taxi window (it's not technically a taxi, just some guy named Corey who offered him a ride to the airport, because Uber doesn't operate in fucking Tinyville, Bumfuck Middle-Of-Nowhere, Utah) and tracks water droplets racing each other down the glass, because of course it's raining, and his bad knee is killing him.
Levi sniffs and rubs at his eyes and then pulls out his phone and books a ticket back to New York, wincing as four hundred and twenty-six dollars are deducted from his bank account.
And, like, he should definitely be more upset.
He just got broken up with. He was engaged, for God's sake. A four-year relationship… over. Just like that.
Corey says, "Ten minutes to the station."
A novella featuring trade routes, magical fertilizer, and one girl’s centuries-long effort to impress a woman who is already in a committed relationship with a boat.
after seven years I have Been Informed that this no longer lives at its original home. so I have built a new home for it, which is on my website! please enjoy anew Suradanna’s attempts to get an A in immortality
i've seen enough horror movies starring upper-middle-income white families stuck in spacious haunted mansions. gimme stories about millennials stuck in haunted studio apartments. consider the realism:
why is this protagonist staying in an obviously haunted building despite the glaring warning signs? because a week at a motel would send them spiraling into credit card debt, they'll take their chances with the vengeful spirits. why did they chose this apartment complex to begin with, despite the many many unexplained mysterious deaths that show up on the first page of a google search? hon some of us don't have the credit score to move away from high (paranormal) crime areas. how could i be so careless as to sign a soul-binding contract with a demonic entity? bitch they're called LANDLORDS
okay :)
I. I made the mistake of reading this before bed, and now I'm sitting in the middle of my apartment with all the lights and lamps turned on hugging a salt shaker and glaring at shadows. Jesus Christ
Mirrors Do Not Make Promises
The evil-queen-to-be looked into the magic mirror and asked: “Am I beautiful?”
The mirror had not been addressed in many years, hanging like an island in the center of the iron chamber. The curtain was gone though. The room smelled of dust. There was light somewhere, oh lords, there was light.
The mirror, a phantom outline on the surface, peered down. A girl stood, hooked nose, thin lips, dark hair the texture of crow’s feathers, and ruddy skin– both too pale and flushed all at once. Teeth like overlapping piano keys and body gangly as a newborn calf. She wore the finest gown of deep purple, heavy and dragging on the dirty floor.
Her chin wobbled. She had a determined set to her gaze, but her cheeks were tear-stained, and eyes as red as daybreak, at least the types of daybreak the mirror could still remember. The mirror tilted her head.
“Am I beautiful?!” the girl repeated and stomped her foot this time, pinpricks of tears spilling out. There was a purpling welt across her right cheek, a bruise forming with a tinted yellow edge. She must be an island as well.
The mirror closed her eyes. She nodded. “You will be. You have been. You are.”
The girl’s eyes went large as entire skies, at least, the type of skies the mirror could still remember. “Promise?” It was a child’s whisper.
“I do not make promises,” the mirror replied, and the girl huffed.
“Fine.” The curtain returned.
———————-
“Am I beautiful?”
The evil-queen-to-be was taller now, growing into herself. Her hollow cheeks had rounded, and teeth slowly straightened out through small spells and larger ones. The mirror had felt when she found that little black book, a moldy, stained thing, fleshy and dank. The mirror did not always spread her awareness out into the lives of men, but there was no ignoring the tremor through the air that night.
“Did you hear me?” The girl had returned, on the cusp of forgoing shorter hems and growing into the adult ones.
The mirror hummed. “You again. My girl.”
“You again, my mirror.” The girl sneered. She narrowed her eyes. “Do you even have a name?”
“No.” The mirror responded. “Do you?”
The girl rolled her eyes. “I suppose you do not hear them yelling it through the hallways, Esme! Esme! Foolish, tricky girl.”
“I do not hear them. No.”
The girl blinked several times. “Oh.”
“Esme.” The mirror tried out the name.
“You may call me Lady Esme.” She sniffed loudly and crossed her arms. “I’m nobility.”
“Of course, my lady.” The mirror inclined her head. “Ask your question then.”
The girl considered her for a long moment. “Am I beautiful?”
“Have you not asked before?”
The girl flushed a deep red and glared at her shoes. “You’re just like everyone else.” She twisted in place to leave.
“Of course,” the mirror murmured. “You are beautiful.”
Esme glanced shyly over her shoulder. “Really? You promise?”
“I do not make promises.”
The door slammed, but the curtain did not return.
——————–
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,” the young woman sang and skipped. “Who should I poison at the ball?” She carried a flower and small book tucked away at her side. The mirror had watched her fill the book with cramped tiny handwriting, coded through a complex numerology.
It was filled with the secrets of the tomes she unearthed and more she made herself. “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” she kept singing. “Who should I poison with my comb?”
“You jest.” The mirror spoke slowly. “But if you must poison one, poison the only son of the Duke of Engles. He plans to bed a scullery maid and will not be easily deterred by no.”
The evil-queen-to-be stopped in place and faced the mirror. Her clever face and clever eyes were cold and sharp. She was older now. “Noted,” she said thoughtfully and plucked at the flower in her hand. She lifted her chin up high, “this will be my first showing.”
“I know.” The mirror replied. “You will dance and make merry. Be careful of the wine, my lady.”
“How do you know so much?” Esme squinted and leaned forward. “What exactly do you know?”
“I know everything reflected in the world of men and more.” The mirror said and watched the light fall across the floor. She still wasn’t facing the window, and how her chest ached for it.
“But how?” Esme insisted.
“I am old,” she stated simply.
Esme rolled her eyes. “Well, I could have guessed that.”
“But ageless. Time cannot touch me, nor can I touch it. But I can peer through its many threads into the greater tapestry.”
Esme tilted her head thoughtfully, mind at work. “So,” she said with a cat-like smirk. “I really will be beautiful.”
“You are. You have been. You will be.”
Esme went blank for a moment before turning in place. “I must prepare for my debut on the market.” She sprouted an edged grin and looked over her shoulder. “And who should I marry there, my mirror?”
The mirror did not blink. “The king.”
Esme’s eyes lost their mischief, she frowned, and closed the door softly.
—————
“They’ll burn me, they’ll burn me!” Esme cried and paced back and forth. She was still wearing a luscious green gown with bell-shaped sleeves. It was torn in places, sullied. “Dammit, they know!’
The Late Traveller
I should have known, of course.
A little old hotel in the middle of nowhere, with a creaking wooden sign instead of neon? Red flag.
A hollow-eyed, weary-looking young woman at the desk who seemed hesitant to let me get a room? Red flag.
A picturesquely old-fashioned room with a patchwork quilt on the bed that smells a little too musty? HUGE red flag.
Only they’re actually not. Not the first two, anyway. I travel a lot. There are a lot more seems-haunted old-house-turned-traveller’s-rest places than most people think, and in my experience most night auditors are hollow-eyed, faintly eldritch, and disinclined to let someone check in just before dawn.
Of course, the patchwork quilt should have been a dead giveaway. Tired 80s decor and a chenille bedspread? Entirely normal. Patchwork quilt and nineteenth century charm for less than $100 a night? Sus. Very sus. Should have warned me then and there.
In my defense, I was really tired. I’d been driving for two nights and a day, I was exhausted, all my car snacks were gone, and I just wanted to close my eyes and get horizontal. I handed over some cash, stumbled upstairs, made sure the blinds were down, and passed out.
I didn’t wake up until late afternoon, and I felt like shit on a shingle when I did. It took me a couple of attempts to put on my pants and stumble out of the room to look for some sustenance. My expectations weren’t high, but most places at least have coffee-making facilities, and in a pinch a cup of coffee and chugging all the available milk will keep me going for a while. There might even be some of those little packages of cookies, which usually give me an upset stomach but are better than nothing.
There wasn’t a coffee station. What there was was a vending machine with a buzzing, flickering light inside it that made the dusty snacks look even less appealing than they already did.
I was debating whether to risk a can of soda of unknown brand and vintage - sugar and caffeine don’t readily go bad, and I was starving - when I heard a little cough behind me. “Are you a guest, dear?” the old woman said when I turned around to blink at her. She was thin and tottering, faded-looking, and while there weren’t actually cobwebs on her, she looked as if there should be.
“Yes. Is there a kitchen or something where I can get some food from this century?”
Her eyes flicked away. “There’s a diner,” she told me. “Not far down the road. You should try there. I’m afraid the facilities here aren’t what they once were.” She sighed deeply.
Belatedly, my sense for the uncanny started to tingle. “So I should check out and keep moving, huh?”
“Yes, dear. If you can,” she added, and she glanced over her shoulder. “Before sunset.”
Aha.
Text: We used to talk through the wells, a whisper carrying to every farm that had one. There is no one left to send well whispers, and yet I hear one, on a dark, gray afternoon.
Warning: Blood, self harm, human and animal death, horror themes, discussion of new magical systems.
Note: this started out as a simple creepy story and then the world-building just overflowed.
#
Whispers used to pass from farm to farm, messages that crossed miles, an old magic that no-one understood anymore. Raising the ghost trees requires space, untouched earth, and height. Our farms are hundreds of miles apart, each high on its own mountain. The wells are the only way we can contact each other... or they were.
I'm not sure what happened to some of the farms. I was too young when it happened. I know that some families left, betraying their trust, and some died out, and some just went silent for no reason we ever knew. This is the last farm still being tended, as far as I know, and I am the last farmer.
I need to find someone to help. I know I do. I should find young people to join me, teach them to tend the trees so that they can go to the other farms and re-seed. But I have never left my farm, and the thought frightens me. When my cousin Gilly died, I was so young, only sixteen, and the last. It's been twenty years, and I've kept the farm going, but I have never dared to leave. What if something happens to me? What if I don't come back? These are the last ghost trees. I have to care for them.
Every full moon at sunset, though, I come back to the well. The well that is the heart of the farm. The well whose water glows pale gold in darkness and poisons everything but the ghost trees.... or those who have eaten their shoots.
I feed the spring shoots to my goats and my birds, every year, and eat handfuls myself. They tasted bitter to me, the first year, and the animals that haven't tasted them before have to be forced to swallow. After that first taste, though, we all learn to love them. Bittersweet and rich, they taste like sunset on snow and the smell of spring. I suppose I could avoid the whole process - there's a spring of ordinary water - but it freezes in winter, and why go to all the trouble of thawing tasteless, dull water from the spring when the well water never freezes or even grows too cold to drink safely, when it tastes so much better and makes us so strong?
I drink the well water. And every full moon I come back to the well to whisper news into it, or the names of my family, or of the farms that existed once and are now lost. I whisper, because a voice that's too loud will echo and distort. I think that's why. I'm not so sure any longer.
Then, one evening in early autumn, I hear a whisper coming back. "Antorune... Antorune..."
Antorune is the name of the mountain, and the farm, and though I'm shaking and sick with shock, I remember how to answer. "Antorune is bright," I whisper. "Who are you?"
"Antorune..." The voice is eerie and hollow, and I can't remember if they always sounded like that. It's been so long. "Antorune, they're coming. They're coming."
"Who's coming? Why?"
"Yours is the last farm. The last trees. Do you know how to scatter?"
My mouth goes dry. Scattering is a terrible thing. Gilly told me stories about it. Scattering is the last act of a farmer under siege, the last desperate hope for the trees and for the world. We all know how to do it, and all pray we'll never have to. "I know. Is it time?"
"It is time." The hollow voice sounds very sad. "Be brave, Altorune. Be resolute. You must save the trees."
"I must save the trees," I repeat, and then I pause. "Voice... my name is Tula. I am the last farmer. I... I wanted someone to know my name."
"I will remember your name, Tula." The whisper was fainter now, but I heard it. "I will remember your name..."