Sauterelle et lavandin

“And that?” The four-year-old’s voice was shrill, demanding.

The eight-year-old’s patience, thin from the moment her mother saddled the babything on her, was close to the breaking point. “A grasshopper. Reeeeaaallly. Don’t your parents teach you anything?”

“I haven’t any,” the smaller child squeaked.
“Everyone has parents, silly.” She picked a stalk of lavender, crushed the small purple blossoms between her fingers.
“I don’t!” it squeaked “I never did ever!”
“Here hold this.” She shoved the lavender into small pudgy hands.
“I don’t wanna! It’s icky!”
“It smells pretty, stupid!”
“You squished it!”
“I squished it to make it smell pretty! Argh!”

Irate, she rubbed it in his face, and he started crying.

“You’re such a baby! Baby, baby, baby!” She teased, blue pigtails bobbing as she mocked his crying.

Little freckled face pinched in anger, the toddler batted at her, grabbing handfuls of the smelly purple blossoms that wafted all around them and flinging them at her.
She giggled, amused at his combattive spirit.
“You think you can fight me? You’re only a baaaaaaby,” she teased mercilessly.
“I can fight you! I can fight anybody!” He grabbed more lavender, faster, bigger bunches, getting sloppy in his anger.
“You couldn’t fight that grasshopper,” the little girl stuck her tongue out, amused.
“I can fight a, a, a bunch of grass poppers!” He grabbed the grasshopper in a flick of unexpected speed, and threw it at her.

She screamed.

“MAAAAAAMAAAAAAAAAA,” Elisabeth ran down the hill weepingly. “HE THREW A BUG AT MEEEEEEEEEE!”

As the little boy stood in triumph on the top of the hill, watching her flee, his first taste of victory surprised him, more sweet and more fragrant than all the lavender in France.
The summer wind blew up his white-blond hair and shivered the blossoms around his legs.

With a malicious delight, his little eyes smiled.

(King of Fighters fanfiction. Ash Crimson and Elisabeth Blanctorche as kids? Awww.<3)

(Leader Desperation Move: GRASSHOPPER)

Spaghetti

“Sorry? sorry? Professor?”

“Mmh?” I turned in the hallway, expecting to have been called by a student. But this guy was way above high school age. “What is it?”
“You’re the Physics teacher, right? Mister Flaherty?”
“Yeah,” I frowned a bit. Who was this guy? How had he gotten in? For a moment I thought, Oh shit, I’m gonna end up on the news tonight as another of those damned school shootings. Guy was nervous enough to be a wannabe assassin. But why the hell would he target me? Fundamentalist with issues about the Big Bang or something?

“C…could I talk to you a bit? Ah, i-in p-, in private,” he looked around, fidgeting. “It’s… it’s serious.”

I eyed him, obese and pallid and balding.
“You don’t exactly inspire confidence,” I deadpanned. “Let’s talk out here in the hall.”

This seemed to alarm him. “Oh, oh no, the – the things I have to tell you are of utmost seriousness and, you know, importance,” he obejcted, beady pale eyes wide with concern.

I sighed, pulled off my glasses and wiped them on a shirttail. “Why don’t you try me.”
“B… but if people hear……!”
I thought, what’s this guy’s problem, he gonna confess his love for me or something? The idea sort of turned my stomach. Mister sweaty here wasn’t my idea of a good time.
“Professor Flaherty I swear this is something serious and potentially world-changing, and I need your Physics knowledge to help me. Please, Professor. I – I’ll pay you if you want. Anything, I – I just need you to hear me out.”

I looked at him again, unimpressed. Oh. So that’s how it was going to be. Not some gun-toting lunatic, not some skeevy admirer, just one of these guys.
“Whatever. Okay. Classroom okay?” I extended an arm back to the now-empty class I had just exited.

He almost fell over himself in thanks, and bustled into the classroom.

Pseudoscience weirdos weren’t new to me. I really wasn’t anybody, but I guess if you’re a moony living in your mom’s basement and you don’t have the stones to email Stephen Hawking, you’ll end up pestering the Physics prof at your local high school. I’d dealt with a couple farfetched homebrew ’scientists’ and conspiracy nuts before. I’d be done with this one just as fast as the others.

I perched on my desk at the front of the class, and stared him down.
“All right. Let ‘er rip, Einstein. What is it for you, aliens? More of this LHC bullshit?”

He fumbled, looking for a place to sit, finally deciding on the top of a desk in the middle of the second row. He looked at me anxiously.

I rubbed an eye. “Tell me, already. I haven’t got all day.” Lunch was already ticking away, hijacked by this fat guy. Aren’t you hungry? Shouldn’t you be eating a couple Big Macs right now?
He fussed and breathed, seeming to collect his thoughts.

“Tell me.” I sighed.

“I have a black hole,” he blurted. Looking at me, defiant.

I raised my eyebrows unimpressed. “I’m sure you do. You know what? You keep it to yourself and don’t even think of showing me-”
“No I mean it,” he frowned. He wiped his brow. “I… or maybe it has me……”

“Well,” I leaned back on by desk, “far is it for me to judge other people’s, ah, quixotic love affairs, but again, this isn’t my business.”
“Dangit,” the man wobbled in frustration. “I didn’t come here to be made fun of!”
I just looked at him.
“-I really do have a black hole. I……” He looked a bit dizzy for a moment. “I didn’t notice it at first, you know, but as it grew it’s been… changing me,” the man made a face.

“Changing you.” Why do I even ask?
He noddled ferociously. “In bad ways, p-professor. Baaad ways.”

I crossed my legs. Jesus, this was worse than that chick with the aluminum foil.
“Oh do regale me,” I said disinterestedly, leaning forward now to lazily listen.

He clenched and unclenched his fists a few times, then started. “I… it’s stretching me out,” he said. “Right out, like spaghetti. From the middle, like… like spaghetti, Professor.”

“Spaghetti.”

He nodded emphatically. “So thin now it’s… My feet are so far away I can’t see ‘em anymore…” he looked down, dizzily. “A-and it’s hard to move…… like going anywhere’s a big deal. Like I gotta keep track of where all the parts of me are. It’s awful, doc. Awful, I tell ya.”

Oh, come on.
“Uh-huh. And where is it, this black hole of yours?”
“Right here,” he lifted up his shirt. His stomach was flabby and huge and hairy, hanging over the waistband of his pants.
“Oh hell no,” I shielded my eyes! “I’m not looking at that, put your shirt back down!” I hopped off my desk. “What kind of freak are you, you get off on flashing Physics teachers?”
“It’s in my belly button!” The man shoved his shirt down angrily, glaring at me emotionally. “The black hole is in my belly button. And you’re very rude, sir! I came all this way in spite of being stretched out like a spaghetti to get your advice-”
“You want my advice?” I headed for the door, but stopped and turned to him. “You need a psychiatrist, not a physicist.”
“But my black hole-”
“A black hole inside your godawful belly button would not stretch you like a spaghetti, you have to be inside a black hole to experience that, and if you were so would I be,” I huffed angrily. “You can’t carry it around with you. You can’t see your feet because you are hugely fat, sir, same reason it’s hard for you to move around. The only black hole in your belly is the one you keep shoving food into. And I know I’m rude, but that just means I have a leg up on you, since you don’t even know you’re crazy as fuckbeans. I can’t help you because there’s no physics in the solution to your problem.” I opened the door energetically. “Go get treated by a shrink and get out of my classroom. Please,” I added, politely.

I thought that would be that, but the guy seemed to wobble in place, face red with emotion. At least, I hoped it was emotion. I would be seriously pissed if the guy keeled over with a heart attack in my classroom.

I waited, holding the door open, encouragingly. Yes? Leaving?

“I don’t eat all the time!!” He shouted, almost in tears. “I know I look fat to you, but that’s just because my black hole keeps absorbing matter! I’m… I’m a public danger, and I came to you for help! You – you just wait, if I get too close to you I’m gonna absorb you!!”

“Well, good thing you’re not going to get close to me, then,” I turned a thin smile on him. “Because you’re leaving. Did I mention school security is equipped with Tasers?”
I held the door open insistently.

He wobbled some more, and then angrily walked out, as fast as his body could take him. As he left, he looked almost huger than before.

I went back into my classroom, took off my glasses and rubbed a hand over my face. Jesus. I was going to be crabby all day after that… Asshole had gone and ruined a perfectly decent day.

As I finally left for lunch, I noticed there was one too few desks in the second row. I made a mental note to tell one of the janitors, and went to grab a sandwich.

(omg I wrote a short story! This might be a first. Not based on anything or part of anything.)

Bluestar

Delph put a hand on Thyatira’s shoulder, coming up behind him where he sat. “Lookin’ at the stars?”

Thya nodded, glancing his way. “Yeah…”
“What has your attention tonight?”
“Blue one over there,” Thya pointed.
“That one, huh? Why?”

The young man smiled and sat beside his friend on the bench under the little overhang on their rooftop. Thyatira shrugged.
“Dunno.”

Delph rubbed the boy’s shoulders, then they both fell silent.

“………” Delph put his hands on his lap. “If you want to go back out there–”
“No,” Thyatira shook his head. “I’m happy here. Here is where I wanted to come back to, you know? Come home.”
Delph’s heavy blond hair fell forward as he turned his head.

Thyatira hunched his shoulders, shying away from the gaze.

Delph reached to touch his shoulder again, but Thya shifted down the bench, evading.
Delph sighed. “I can’t read minds, you know.”

Thya hid behind his bangs.

“…I can read you, though,” Delph followed him down the bench, and leaned close, tucking Thya’s bangs behind his ear with a soft gesture. The boy frowned crankily. “Hm? You say you’re happy, but you’re not. You’re thinking about going back out there… about what your life could be, not stuck on this planet.”

Thyatira slowly had a kind of smirk. “Thought you said you couldn’t read minds. – And it’s a moon, not a planet.”

Delph laughed, and embraced him in a loose hug.
“You know space isn’t my thing.”
“Space totally is your thing,” Thya sighed. “That’s why you don’t want to go up there. Again.”
Delph raised an eyebrow. “No, I don’t want to go up there, because of the people up there.”
“Your brothers?” Thya chuckled, looking at him.
Delph rolled his eyes. “Them too.”

Thyatira giggled! “I dunno, they’re not so bad.”
“I’m not the space-station type.”
Thyatira glanced at him, playfully assessing. “…Too busy, or too still?”
“You’re not the space-station type, either,” Delph deflected.
“Never said that’s where I wanted to go.”

Delph sighed, and leaned his head on Thya’s. He looked at the inky sky, thick with constellations he had come to know well.

The wind whispered in the fronds of the overhang.

“……That blue one’s Celaeno. It’s one of the Pleiades.”

Thyatira turned to look at him. He smiled.
“You’ll take me back out there some day?” the boy asked.
“When things quiet down,” Philadelphia sighed. “Once you’re out of school and I know what my big brother’s planning.”
“You mean never.”

Delph laughed. “Maybe someday,” he said, confidently. “If anyone can understand him, it’s gotta be me.”
Thyatira thought, maybe if you tried a little, but he bit his tongue.

The boy had a shiver. “Let’s go inside,” he said, standing.

Delph looked up, then stood also. “Cold?”
“Mh.” He started walking inside, and his older friend followed him.

He put an arm around Thya’s shoulders again. “There’s custard.”
Thya smiled. “Okay…”
Philadelphia gave a little squeeze, and they left the stars behind for one more night.

(fanfiction for a friend’s unpublished opus, Phaedrus)

The House on Viridian Street (opening)

There is still a house on Viridian Street. Abandoned long ago, it stands no longer on the corner lot it occupied then, but crushed between ragged storefronts, ever since Duirmoor Alley shut down and buildings sprung up in its stead. Stephanie’s windows look onto red brick, and the years of dust (along with the few hours of soot they cover) trickle through the sinking floorboards with each heave and creak. In time, nothing will remain of the building; but in time, nothing remains of all things.

(a possible opening passage for something I’m working on)

One nonfictional post, and we’re off to the races

For future reference, this blog is my personal forum for splooting fictions into the ether. I love writing, and I’ve been meaning to take every opportunity to do more of it, so here we are. Who knows what will show up on these pages. Expect it all to be fictional, probably most of it original with splashes of fanfiction here and there. Some things might follow from others, in which case I’ll try to keep related posts identified via tags. I have no expectations and no rules. Let’s see what happens! Wheee!