Creases November 24, 2007
Posted by bobby in Writings.add a comment
Retired Judge Hannah Stone dug her fingertips into the creases of her left knee, trying to keep it from kicking the row in front of her. But the knee would not give, it was her lie detector, a nervous twitch she’d acquired in grad school at Harvard. Even through out her decades on the Bench, it flailed uncontrollably whenever an “innocent” defendant took the stand.
Today it was worse than normal, and already the dark skinned gentlemen in the white suit had turned around twice, asking her if there was a problemo? In answer Hannah smiled back as coy as a pair of flashing headlights. But then she’d always had that effect on men. Even at seventy-nine, many thought she was an aging model for a cosmetic line, despite the harsh truth of her dating life and harsher nickname among her peers, Judge Spinster was all show and no social.
She would keep up appearances till she returned to her chambers or, as was the case of the past seven months, to her brother Donald’s houseboat overlooking Lake Union in downtown Seattle. During dinner, she discussed the inside information she was still privy to as a friend of acting Judge Miller.
“You should have heard the facts Mack, the guy shoots 5 people at a truck stop, and nobody saw him do it!”
“What about the video cameras in the convenience store, didn’t they catch anything?”
“You would think, but he killed that employee then shot up all the equipment in the backroom.”
“No ballistics match? Fingerprints on the weapon?”
“Spoken like a true Lieutenant, and no… they haven’t found the weapon.”
“You do have survivors right Hannah? People he hadn’t shot at the scene?”
“ Yes there were eight of them. A mother of three and her kids who of course aren’t about to come forward. I believe she knows the shooter personally.”
“Umm what makes you say that?”
“Oh well he got there in her car according to the report.”
“He drove a carload of witnesses to a shooting?”
“No the shooting happened on sight, nobody knows what set him off.”
Once again Hannah’s knee started to swing forward in place, if not for the tightness of her laces, her comfortable shoes would have down a belly flop into the lake.
“Okay what’s that about?”
“Well his statement was some trucker took the first shot, he was just at the wrong place and time.”
“Who are the other four witnesses?”
“You won’t believe this, a band of college kids in a van.”
“Band? As in a real band?”
“Yes, some grunge band called the Bongs”
”Let me guess they were too stoned to see anything?”
“ Exactly.”
Hannah got up to walk off her nerves, while Donald drank his last beer battered salmon steak. Opening the fridge inside the tiny kitchenette, she popped the cap effortlessly with her right thumb, making sure her brother did not see.
Later when he passed out, she would dip into the water like a seal being chased by a torpedo, and cross the lake to emerge in the underground pool of a secret hillside cabin. The creases in her neck and joints would open up subconsciously, as she shot herself into the lab. All at once her natural eight-foot height, and bristling muscles would contract in place, causing the water to glide off her nubile swimmer’s build.
On her state of the art computer, “Lady Judgement” dawn the folds of her jet black leather corset and cape like robes. In the creases were several special sensors relaying all the information her lightweight night vision visor could acquire: thermal imaging of her cat, Liberty, density and alloy of the floor she stood upon, and lastly the dual heartbeats of herself and the animal who’d been missing her all day.
“Hey there girl, didn’t the automatic feeder come on?”
Hannah glanced across the room, and sensors told her of the electrical current running low on dispensing liver flavored Kitten Chow. A quick wave of her right metal gauntlet, now powered up as she redressed herself, and the feeder spattered a familiar sound to Liberty’s ears.
“We’ll catch up later Libby, I’ve got a mystery to figure out.”
Above her the shuttered ceiling opened up to reveal the crisp starry night, Hannah took in a deep breath before activating her low emission ethanol-boots. Ascending into the night, she had the license plates of every vehicle that had possibly passed through that truck stop cycling across her visor’s internal readout… Some run down from seven different DMVs, others filed in the most recent police report, and lastly several hundred off truck delivery invoices hacked into by her brother.
Rounding down to forty-seven possible leads, she decided to start at the bottom and work her way up. It might take several weeks, but one of those vehicles according to her alien intuition had a 38-caliber stowaway. With her right knee twitching like hell, she spread out the creases of her robe, billowing into two giant scale-like wings that would carry her hopefully towards justice.
Flash 11/15/06 November 24, 2007
Posted by bobby in Uncategorized, Writings.add a comment
The sultan Nadji had killed his daughter. That much was true. That is what the royal Prosecutor Calim had proven, and what the witnesses had testified to seeing in broad daylight. Jumeira had entered the town square with 4 of her classmates. They were to witness the selling of foreign slaves, and report back to their history class about the differences between the Free Peoples, and the barbarians running wild outside the city of Udad.
Jumeira had eyed the newest Stranger, the one with the golden hair and eyes like polished sapphires. Gagged and bound by the flesh peddler Kumah, the Stranger was chained to an stone post inlaid with iron runes. Below the copper grating at his feet was a swirling bath of vinegar and spoiled wine, and above the pillar was a sign calling it, “ the Light of God “. It had but one purpose, to garner the truth from this particular occupant, a truth which every citizen of Udad already knew, but were terrified to speak aloud.
The Hordes had been camping for weeks, there were rumours that a garrison of the royal Calvary had been slaughtered, their horses eaten over great fiery pits, turning like pigs slowly before the meal tents of the foreign army. Udad had sheltered itself from within ever since the new moon had cast the shadow of the city over the western cliffs, where the Crashing Sea awaited it’s dead.
Kumah however had struck gold, his personal guards had spotted the Stranger climbing the western walls, and like a sandstorm, he was swept up before any other merchant could discover him. But then Jumeira had stopped the bidding, she insisted on hearing the foreigner speak. She ordered Kumah, who was greatly below her station, and he complied while cursing under his lips. The Stranger spoke these words, which is as best as those in the marketplace could remember, all agree it is utter nonsense:
I am come through Time to rescue you
Within my Host, I will bring the true meaning
We cannot be separated, She who owns me
Is my mated soul and your Flame.
And while it was not questioned that the barbarian spoke the holy tongue, or how he could know he would be “bought”, one thing was true. Jumeira had been placed under his spell. She ordered the guards to release him to her under pain of death, in a panic Kumah stopped them and tried to persuade her to reason.
“Enlightened One, please I cannot allow this, you must not allow this, no foreigner is permitted to address the house of your father. For that alone his tongue should be cut out.”
“That is for me to decide, I will have this one for my personal entertainment.”
“Please I beg you, allow me to test him first, they are liars, all of them…”
“Test him? With the Light of God? You will singe off all the hair on his body and he will be useless to me…”
(sorry out of time, started late)
Flash 11/25/06 November 24, 2007
Posted by bobby in Uncategorized, Writings.add a comment
On the abandoned tenement roof top, Mikey set his watch to noon and began his daily work out. He was safe up here; the six or so surrounding buildings enclosing him in had been too ruined to enter. In fact the whole block had been condemned by the city. This was perfect, a fortress of solitude hiding him in a maze of broken landings, holes in walls too small for an adult to follow, and windows on the ground floor boarded up four stories high.
To him it was one giant cement tree house, and he’d borrowed enough rope from his day job at the family hardware store to fashion a perfect web of ups and downs. The rats left him alone, the junkies knew the area wasn’t safe and no one in there right mind was going to follow him inside, even if they knew how he did it.
Pumping the eight tied bricks, Mikey concentrated and began his sets. On exhaling he would listen to the police band radio he’d hotwired to the city’s power line and make notes in his binder. He’d been at it for a little more than a year now, and he knew which areas had the most murders, stolen cars, and by reading the obits he could narrow down, which neighborhood needed him most.
The time had come; he’d been fastening in his mind what kind of disguise to wear. And it was clear that the most important thing was that his face could not be seen. The jet black diving suit he had mail ordered helped with that. As did the matching gloves, the military boots he’d stolen from his father’s trunk, and the gas mask he had altered for more visibility and just the right amount of shock value. He had spray painted the mask to match his suit, and in the shadowy corner of an alley he was nigh invisible.
At five feet three, Mikey was a deceptively dense but wiry freshman. He hunched wile he walked through school, he always slicked his hair in a ridiculous middle half part, and with pants tucked up high, he anybody’s nerd. Mikey figured if Clark Kent could hide in plain sight, there had to be something to it. At close range he was often browbeaten by his peers for his cockeyed appearance.
He did just the right amount of school work to stay under the radar, made sure to make his rounds through the clicks. A trick he’d used to garner information on their habits, what they wore, who they spoke to, and who they didn’t like. He was an unassigned, unofficial Narc for all intensive purposes, and the dealers in his school had no idea that he watched them. He had stayed after school and bugged their hangouts, searched their lockers without their knowing, and taken an inventory of anything and everything illegal.
But this wasn’t enough to stop them, for that he needed to instill fear; he needed to make an example of the largest and most dangerous fish. Even though it wouldn’t bring back his father, a gang war would half his work for him, it would cleanse the school, the neighborhood and accomplish his mission.
The Water Bearer November 24, 2007
Posted by bobby in Writings.add a comment
Camilla felt her bones melting but she was powerless to stop it. Here on the cold stone floor of her husband’s family catacombs, she lay helpless yet quiet as the puce like yellow mold devoured her body an inch at a time. Strange how she was still conscious, she thought of her husband Furio, and their last words to each other…
“Are you certain my love that this is permitted?” she said holding the torch, while he fiddled with iron keys clanging through the dusty passage ways.
“Heavens no! If my brothers found out that I had our father’s map, there would be blood all over it. Bring the light closer…” Camilla moved forward, and a wind of calm flowed over her. In the glow of the torch Furio seemed so innocent, so sweetly preoccupied to her. It reminded her of her good fortune. She “was” the envy of their village, to have been picked by him out of so many eligible girls. She had prayed for marriage so desperately now in her seventeenth year, and Furio had been her answer, finally.
No matter of her mother’s disapproval, strangers as beautiful as Furio came once in twenty harvests, it would have been foolish of her to turn him down, despite the quickness of their courtship, and his urgings that they elope. Those thoughts were futile details not worth her distraction which disappeared whenever he held her hand.
For now, the top of her cowl would on occasion catch some sharp piece of the briar patch growing wild along the low ceilings. It was almost as if the roots were falling into the halls, but that could not be avoided. Neither else could the scorpions, centipedes, nor beetles that formed tiles of clicking mounds. Her foot would step on the head of one, and the others would devour it instantly knowing it was soon for death.
And this is the feeling Camilla ignored as Furio brought them deeper into the tombs, always with the insistence that they were closer to the secret family vault. He could not be blamed; they had been poor from the beginning of their marriage. And Furio had long been cast out from his family for having already married once. He never spoke of her, his Rebecca, but the marriage had been short, Rebecca had left him for another man it was rumored, an aging nearby Count whose fortune would buy her the lifestyle Furio could not provide.
“Ah here it is, past this last turn and we will be twelve paces from the tomb of my great uncle, Aquarius! At last we’ll be rich my sweet, come let’s not hesitate anymore. I want you to be the first to look upon the grave…”
Camilla felt her feet rising on air, she ran so quickly the torch nearly blew out, and despite Furio standing his ground after they both turned the corner, she went the final stretch of floor, stopping right before the great statue of the Water Bearer.
This was Aquarius, both the constellation made into giant stone, and Furio’s great uncle, whose fortune lay hidden inside the enormous jar the girth of a horse. From it’s uplifted facing, Camilla could not see the necklaces, rings nor jewels said to be within, and it almost swept her mind, when the golem animated, it’s eyes lighting a bright chartreuse.
At once it turned to face her, it’s arms rising up to empty the great urn on it’s new victim.
An overwhelming putrid smell enveloped Camilla as gelatinous liquid poured itself past her feet like a tide of slow burning acid. It cemented her to the spot in excruciating pain, then as a thing alive, like a vulture’s wings spreading out to seal her fate, it enveloped her body pushing her down to the floor.
Suddenly the Water Bearer spoke,
“Furio, my favorite grand nephew… I see you come to me again with another offering.”
“Yes uncle, another bride’s bones to mix into your pot.”
“She will do, she will do.”
“May I have more of my inheritance?”
“What will it be this time? A ruby necklace, a set of pearl earrings?”
“No I think not, Camilla was a jewel among jewels, I desire a diamond ring!”
“Very well, reach into the now empty vessel, and take your prize…”
The ring fit him perfectly, it clasped on to his left hand, third finger, as the sign of a married man.
“Don’t forget to remove it.” The Golem replied and then was once again unmoving.
“Of course… of course, after all I am single once again.
