A Hazy Black Ring

Wednesday, July 18th—5:22 p.m.

1,131 words. Approximate reading time: 5 minutes, 39 seconds.

Cross-posted to gunwithoutmusic.dreamwidth.org/10962.html

Thursday, November 22nd—4:31 p.m.

1,031 words. Approximate reading time: 5 minutes, 9 seconds.

Cross-posted to gunwithoutmusic.dreamwidth.org/10534.html

Katie cursed as the match burned her fingers, dropping it into the fireplace and waving her hand around in a futile effort to stop the pain. “You’d think I’d know how to do this right by now,” she muttered to herself. She rubbed her cold hands together to warm them as much as she could and reached for the box of matches on the mantle, then slid it open. “Only five matches left. Shit, okay. Get it together, Katie.” She pulled another match from the box.

It took a few strikes, but the match finally caught flame, and Katie quickly tossed it onto the pile of papers that she had collected from around the house and twigs that she had collected under cover of night from her backyard. As soon as the match landed on the pile, the papers caught, and the flames started moving to overtake the twigs. Katie watched the fire, waiting for the right moment to add more wood. She watched an old photograph start to curl on the corner as the fire took it over, burning away the likeness of herself and her best friend, embracing each other in front of a roller coaster. “I can’t believe that was only five years ago,” she said quietly.

She had a pile of larger branches that she kept next to the fireplace, branches which she had also collected under cover of night from her backyard. She eyed the pile, thankful for the fact that she lived in a somewhat wooded area, and wondered if she had enough branches to last through the night, or if she’d need to rustle herself awake at 2:00 a.m. again to go foraging.

She sighed and tossed a few bigger branches on the fire, letting them catch before adding a few more. Soon, there was a small fire going in the fireplace, and Katie sat beside it, letting the heat warm her body through. She watched the fire burn through the rest of the kindling—more old photographs, pages from old magazines, some newspapers, whatever she could find lying around the house—and ignored the rumbling of her stomach. She had already eaten today, and she was running low on food. She couldn’t afford three square meals right now, so she just sucked it up and tried to deal with it.

It had only been seven days since Katie’s access was cut off. She hadn’t been prepared for it at all, though she sort of suspected now that no one was ever really prepared for it. No one really thought that they’d actually go through with it. But here she was, a dirty “dissident”, trapped in her home in the cold November weather with maybe a few more days worth of food, a handful of old books, a few tree branches, and four matches.

When it first happened, she was in shock. The internet had never gone down before, at least without some notice, and it was never down for more than a few minutes for maintenance. When it would come back up, everyone would jump back into their chat rooms and the next few hours would be taken up by people complaining about the internet access being down for five minutes, and how the maintenance schedule should be changed to be less often since there really shouldn’t be any reason for five full minutes of maintenance on the lines every two months.

This time, Katie waited five minutes, but the internet didn’t come back. She tried to call the customer support line, but couldn’t look up the number without the internet. It didn’t matter anyway, since her phone also appeared to be not working, like her signal was blocked. She wanted to check with her neighbors, but she had never really met them and didn’t know them, never mind the fact that going outdoors was effectively a death sentence.

So she waited, but the internet never came back. Her phone never started working again. After a day, her electricity was shut off and she started trying to learn how to build a fire in the fireplace that she never used. She risked going outside, into her back yard, in the dead of night to gather her twigs and branches and went through what she now realized were far too many matches trying to get a fire going.

Now, she was somewhat better at making fire, but she didn’t know how long she’d be able to make it last. She had to find some way to keep it going, or she might actually die from the cold. ‘What would be a better way to go,’ she wondered, grabbing a poker from beside the fireplace and poking at the branches as though she was doing something helpful, ‘Hypothermia or starvation?’

Katie idly poked at the small fire, disturbing it more than she should. “It’s not fair,” she said to no one. “I didn’t even do anything! I was only even there to try and talk some sense into them!” She had guessed that the problem was that one chat room. All those freaks that thought the Disease was overblown, that the quarantines were unnecessary. All those idiots deserved what had happened to Katie, and Katie took some solace in the thought that maybe they got what was coming to them, even if she had gotten caught in the crossfire.

Her stomach rumbled again, so she stood up and walked into the kitchen. She didn’t bother with the fridge, as all of the food in there would just make her sick. Opening the pantry, she surveyed the few items she still had. A couple of cans of vegetables, half of a stale loaf of bread, a few boxes of breakfast cereal. Something in the very back of the pantry caught her eye, something that she hadn’t noticed before.

“Score!” she shouted as she reached into the back of the pantry and pulled out a box of snack cakes. “I forgot I even had these.” She checked the date on the box. Still good. She reached into the box and pulled out one cake, unwrapped it, and ate it slowly, savoring every bite.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” she murmured to herself, as the flames in her fireplace receded into embers without her noticing.

Friday, July 21st—5:22 p.m.

1,728 words. Approximate reading time: 8 minutes, 38 seconds.

Cross-posted to gunwithoutmusic.dreamwidth.org/10289.html

Jeremiah skidded his bicycle to a stop in front of the neighborhood park. It was a beautiful summer evening, with the sun hanging low in the sky but still hours away from setting. The air was stagnant and slightly damp, leaving every bit of Jeremiah’s skin that was exposed covered in a film of sweat and humidity, but that wasn’t unusual for summers, and Jeremiah kind of liked it, especially when an infrequent breeze would come by; the feeling of being cooled all over at once was one of Jeremiah’s favorite things.

His gaze roamed over the park, taking in everything. There were benches with wrought-iron frames, pieces of rotten wood holding on desperately in a few spots. There was a playground filled with faded and weather-stained plastic equipment that hadn’t been used in decades. In the center of the small park stood a fountain, bone dry and filled with leaves, topped by a statue of some man whose left arm and nose had broken off years before. “Old No-Nose,” Jeremiah and his friends had always called the statue. There was a plaque on the fountain that might have elucidated the man’s real name and history, but Jeremiah had never read it. The park had been completely fenced in for as long as he could remember, so the only people that might have gotten a chance to become familiar with Old No-Nose were definitely up to no good.

Wednesday, June 19th—2:14 p.m.

1,214 words. Approximate reading time: 6 minutes, 4 seconds.

Nelle sighed and grabbed another handful of potato crisps, her greasy fingers crushing a few of the smaller crisps into crumbs. She moved her hand toward her open mouth and shoved the entire handful inside in one smooth, seemingly well-practiced motion. The voices had been particularly active today, and it was getting on her nerves.

It was hard enough for Nelle to deal with the voices when they were just quiet mumbles in the back of her mind, but when they started getting more active like today, it was all Nelle could do to keep from just screaming endlessly to drown them out. It sounded like they were arguing with each other this time. She very rarely could ever make out actual words, but she could feel the “mood” of the voices, and often found her own mood shifting to match theirs.

The best way to drown out the voices, Nelle found, was snacking. She never really felt hungry and usually had to remind herself to eat something, especially when she got very focused on something like work or a new VR game. But when the voices started getting too loud or distracting, she would always reach for a bag of crisps. Or pretzels. Or cookies. Anything that would crunch loudly enough that the noise of snacking would take precedence over the voices.

Monday, August 12th—7:38 p.m.

1,913 words. Approximate reading time: 9 minutes, 33 seconds.

Rhian stepped into his bedroom and softly shut the door behind him, then walked over to his bed and promptly collapsed onto it. He had told his parents that he was tired from his first day and wanted to get to bed early, and, while that was certainly true, he didn’t feel like going over the whole story with them. It hardly seemed worth it, anyway. His dad would just give him some grief about not being “adaptable” and say something about needing to “learn to adjust to a new way of life here.”

Rhian had heard it all before. Whenever he’d complain about being stuck inside all day over the summer or how VR wasn’t like the real thing, he’d get a big lecture from dad about what a great opportunity this was for the family, how Rhian shouldn’t be ungrateful, all that sort of stuff. Dad didn’t get it, and mom wasn’t much better.

Over the last few months, she’d basically become a completely different person. Rhian still remembered his mom how she was before, when she’d come in through the back door with dirt under her fingernails and sweat dripping from her forehead, proudly proclaiming that the tomatoes were coming in well. Or when he’d find her in the kitchen, flour covering her apron, and she’d smile at him and have him come stir the batter for the cake she’d been making. He had lots of memories of mom as a caring person who loved her family and loved life.

Monday, February 1st—7:45 a.m.

1,849 words. Approximate reading time: 9 minutes, 20 seconds.

The bedroom lights turned on, slowly brightening as Michael’s handheld tablet began playing soft instrumental music. The music swelled with the lights, welcoming Michael and his wife Cindy to the new day.

With a swift motion, Michael reached a hand out from under the blanket and slammed it down on the tablet, quieting the music. He sat up and immediately moved his hand from his tablet to his forehead, groaning softly.

Next to him, Cindy stirred and rolled over to look at him with bleary eyes. “Mike? You okay?” she croaked out before clearing her dry throat and sitting up.

“I’m fine,” Michael replied tersely, rubbing his temples with the index finger and thumb of his right hand, and using his left hand to prop himself up in bed. “I must have not slept well last night; I feel—” He hesitated. “—fucking exhausted.”

Cindy smiled a little and started to climb out of bed. “Well, Mr. Grouch, it’s time to get up and get ready for work. Want me to make you some coffee or something? That’ll probably help you feel better.”

“Fine,” he grumbled. “I’m just going to hop in the shower and then I’ll be down.”

Cindy crossed to the other side of the bed and gave Michael a quick kiss on the top of the head. “Don’t take too long; we’ve gotta get the kids up and ready for school, too!”

Thursday, December 12th—12:22 p.m.

1,845 words. Approximate reading time: 9 minutes, 13 seconds.

A light snow fell on Schubert Fulton as he quietly snuck behind the school gymnasium and pulled his vape pen out of his pocket. He lifted up the bottom of his balaclava, took the opening of the pen to his mouth, and pressed the button on the side of the pen, listening to the quiet crackle as the pen vaporized the cinnamon-flavored liquid. He waited a moment before slowly inhaling the vapor and letting the warm cinnamon full his mouth and his lungs.

He pulled the pen from his mouth, held his breath in for just a second, then emptied his lungs into the cold air with a plume of heavy vapor. The nice thing about it being so cold outside was that it was a lot easier for any teachers that saw it to just write it off as an exhaust fan or something, Schubert reasoned. Plus, he didn’t really have to worry about anyone following him to his private spot here and giving him away.

He had no sooner begun those musings than he heard the crunching of footsteps on snow coming around the side of the gym, and he knew he had been caught. He pulled his balaclava back down and shoved his vape pen in his pocket. Getting caught skipping class was one thing; getting caught vaping on school property was quite another. Maybe he could get away with a lesser sentence if it looked like he was just hanging out back here and avoiding Chemistry.

Tuesday, March 11th—10:43 a.m.

1,392 words. Approximate reading time: 6 minutes, 56 seconds.

“You can’t be serious with this,” Elaina said as she walked into her editor-in-chief’s office, holding up a few sheets of paper covered in text. Howard, the editor-in-chief, looked up from his computer at Elaina with an exasperated facial expression, and motioned for Elaina to close the door to his office behind her.

Elaina shut the door quietly, and continued, “I can’t believe you’re asking me to put a positive spin on this, Howard. How the hell am I supposed to do that?”

“Look, Elaina,” Howard sighed, “I get it. The world’s going to shit and it’s tough to make some stories look good, but these sorts of stories in particular need to have some sort of positive take on them.”

“Seriously? It was bad enough when there was a shortage of aluminum and I had to turn a story about empty beverage coolers in stores into a fluff piece about how people were having trouble finding their favorite soda and having to settle for the generic. But this, this is—”

“I’m gonna cut you off right there, Elaina,” Howard said. “This is your job, so you either need to do the work assigned to you or you need to start drafting a resignation letter.”

Elaina opened her mouth to protest, but Howard raised his hand up to stop her. “The station doesn’t want to lose you; you know that. But that doesn’t mean that you can just come in here and tell me how to present the stories.

Originally posted on Dreamwidth for LJ Idol Minor+. I'm cross-posting this here to LJ now because this is the piece that I'm planning using as the basis for most, if not all, of my entries for the upcoming LJ Idol: 3 Strikes. I may or may not come back to this character.

1,369 words. Approximate reading time: 6 minutes, 44 seconds.

It was 11:32 in the morning on Thursday when Maralyn left her home for her weekly grocery trip. She was two minutes behind schedule, which obviously made her a bit anxious. It meant everything to be on schedule, and she worried that she might not have enough time to get her food and get back home. Still, she had to make her best effort, because she needed food and had no other options.

She crossed her arms over her chest and hurried along the sidewalk toward the grocery, thankful that her house was normally only a five-minute walk away. Certainly she could still make it by 11:35 if she tried hard enough. While she walked briskly along her very familiar path, she let her eyes wander a bit, surveying the neighborhood.