The Strange Tale of Solomon Jones

A new story to go with the new semester (which I am not participating in because nyah, I don't wanna). Also because I am lazy and now it looks like I'm going to have graduate, low GPA or no. Which...is terriyfing. Absolutely terrifying.

But on to the fic. This began as a very late night chat fic with the Captain as we killed time waiting for Steam to load. He needed a haircut and I was feeling exceedingly silly. Enjoy it in the spirit in which it was written.

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On the morning of February the 23rd, Solomon Jones opens his eyes and curses. He cannot see, can barely breathe, and the sound of his alarm clock is unmistakably muffled. The Curse of the Poof has flared up again. Solomon Jones staggers across the room, blinded by the Curse. It is flaring up in shorter intervals, especially since he had started seeing the Mad Korean for an antidote. He doesn’t have a choice, though. Not after what Ines Hernandez did to him the last time he had seen her for the cure.

Jason Stenham & the Tuesday Unicorn

Finally, finally wrote something. I might...at some point... write up a thing about the crushing depression I suffered last year and how that made me just drag myself around the house in Despair and Angst and Nothing Good came of it. But! It's a new year and a new season and new things have happened and
I.
Wrote.
Something.

My God, it's not even an analysis of the works of late American authors. It's honest to God fic.

Yay!!

Click the link below for the story.

Three Word Wednesday: Simulator

Grip;  Prefer; Thread

"Would you prefer the flashlight or the headlamp?" the helper-bot asks in its pre-programmed voice. 

He'd prefer to be home, all things considered, but he pushes his glasses back up his nose and holds out his hand. 

"Headlamp, please," he says. There is a whirr of hydraulics as the 'bot lifts its arm and then the headlamp falls into his outstretched hand. "Thanks," he says, pushing himself out from under the busted simulator and adjusting the lamp against his forehead. 

"Why do you talk to that thing?" a voice says from the corner, "you know it's not really talking back." The man who is underneath the simulator is silent, his hands occupied with the long stretch of wiring he is methodically pulling from the machine's insides. 

"You can't ignore me forever, Felix," the voice says. There is a note of anger threading its way through the words but the man beneath the simulator does not answer. 

"Pass me the 3/4 inch clamp, please," he says instead, directing his request to the helper-bot that is still hovering.  

"Felix!" the voice yells, the word barely audible over the noise of the helper-bot rolling across the workshop and returning with the clamp.  

"I'm not listening to you," Felix says, his voice muffled by the bulk of the simulator he is repairing. His hands are tangled in the machine's cabling and he grunts slightly as he pulls on the ones he needs. 

"You're not allowed to ignore me," the voice says, getting closer. "You're the one that came to me, you're  the one who didn't want to come home alone." The voice is quiet, then it sighs. Felix doesn't take his attention from the delicate cable splicing his hands are doing. "If you'd just left everything alone we wouldn't be in this mess." 

Felix tilts his head back, the headlamp's beam reflecting off the bottom of the simulator and shining through the two bare feet standing near the sim's rounded edge. The feet shift slightly as Felix pulls himself from beneath the simulator.  

When he is standing, he pulls the headlamp from his forehead and flips the switch that turns it off. Felix can still see through the figure that is now crossing its arms and glaring at him from beneath delicately arched eyebrows. 

The girl is mostly translucent, the forms of the table and tools behind her vaguely discernible through her body. She is barefoot and bare-armed, wearing a knee-length dress that is swaying slightly in a wind that is not present in Felix's workroom. When he pushes past her to put the headlamp on the table, his arm passes through hers. The only indication  he has that she is not a figment of his imagination is the short crack of electricity he feels when he presses past her shoulder. It makes the hairs on his arms stand on end but Felix doesn't change his expression, setting the headlamp down on the table and collecting a screwdriver. 

"Felix," she says. Her voice sounds as if it is coming from far away and her chin-length hair is blowing in the same wind as her dress.  

"Sanri," he says, crouching down with the screwdriver gripped tightly in his left hand.  

"I want to go home, Felix," Sanri says. She sits on the floor, resting her head against the side of the broken simulator and watches as Felix slowly screws in the simulator's face plate.  

"We all want something we can't have," Felix says around the last two screws he is holding in his mouth.
  

Sanri frowns and stands. Felix thinks he can see grass poking between her bare toes and finds himself wondering where she would be standing if she were not stuck in his workshop. 

"You invaded our home," Sanri says finally. "You convinced me you weren't real. You told me you were lonely, that you needed me to come back with you to prove that you were alive..." She trails off and when Felix looks up at her, her eyes are heavy with the promise of tears. 

Felix puts the screwdriver down next to his knee and leans against the side of the simulator. He holds his hand out and Sanri collapses into a puddle of girl at his side. The static-shock of her presence doesn't make him flinch and he puts his arm around her shaking shoulders. If he closes his eyes, he can pretend she's really there. 

For all he knows she is. 

"I didn't know the simulated worlds were real ones," Felix says finally, fixing a blank-eyed stare against the back wall. It is covered in charts and schematics, traceries of nebulas and rudimentary maps of not-so-imaginary worlds. 

"Of course they are," Sanri sniffles. "Everything is real." 

"But I didn't know that," Felix insists. 

"And now you don't know how to send me back," Sanri says, her voice small and resigned. 

"Yeah," Felix says, closing his eyes to block out her crying. 

They sit in silence, the room buzzing as the simulator warms up. The helper-bot is quiet in its corner, arm outstretched. 

"Can we try one more time?" Sanri asks, her voice a whisper. It is so quiet, Felix can almost pretend she didn't say anything, that her voice was lost in the electric whine of the computer booting up, the simulator's engine humming to life. 

Felix opens his eyes and stares at the far wall. Sanri is an electric presence against his side, the simulator that brought her here is an electric presence at his back. 

"Yes," he says.

Three Word Wednesday: Knowing

Grace Jitter Thin

Once upon a time there was a small child. He was smaller than most of the boys his age, and certainly smaller than the children of the giants that had been brought in from over the mountain. He was shorter than the satyr-children and slimmer than the dryadlings. His voice was higher than that of Aeolus’ daughter and thinner than the songs of the merchildren when they sang in concert.

He was called Thomas and everyone knew his name.

His teacher, a centaur who wore a turban and not much else, called it in anger when Thomas insisted that he had turned in his assignments, how could he be doubted?

His mother, a quiet woman who stared often at the sea with a longing matched only by those who were born there, called his name with a quiet authority that rang through the house like the peal of a bell.

The trees that lined the pathways he walked each day to the schoolhouse sang it in unison, a rustle of leaves and branches that spelled “Thomas” in the crisp morning air.

His father called it through the wireless radio each night before Thomas went to sleep, his tone sibilant and crackling across the broad wave.

Everyone knew Thomas and Thomas knew everyone. Even Adrien, who listened to the plants and did not speak, knew of Thomas, moving his fingers in the forms that meant his name whenever Thomas passed him.

Thomas was graced with the gift of knowledge. And while this allowed him to see things and Know them, it also meant that those who saw him would Know him, too.

When he moved his leg up and down under his desk, the astronomy teacher noticed, and Knew it was because he was too full of fruit punch. Thomas did not even have to ask for the hall pass, it was already on the desk at the front of the classroom.

This also meant that when Thomas was fourteen years old, Maya the warlock’s daughter Knew all about his dream from the night before and laughed in his face before he could even ask her to the Halloween Ball.

When Thomas was seventeen years old, he stomped home beneath an avenue of trees that rustled his name and turned into his house, pushing past the garden gate that squealed a high-pitched thomas as he forced it open. His mother, more grey in her hair than selkie black, stood on the front porch and Knew that Thomas was frustrated.

“Thomas,” she said, her voice sonorous and as soothing as the rush of waves along the shore, “It will all turn out alright.” 

Thomas sighed and ran his hand through hair that was long and unruly and cut in the latest fashion.

“I’m tired of being Known, Mama,” he said. Thomas’ mother smiled softly and put her hand on his shoulder as he sat on the steps with his head in his hands.

“I’m sorry, my son,” she said. “When you were born we Knew that your gift would be seen as a curse.”

“That’s ‘cause it is a curse, Ma!” he said, a sob hanging at the far edges of his phrasing. His mother saw it and Knew that Thomas was reaching a tipping point.

“I’m just so tired of this town and everyone Knowing me before I can even figure it out for myself,” Thomas said. “I’m all jittery when I sit in class, I can’t make eye contact, I can’t even really speak because they all Know what I’m really saying.”  With his head in his hands Thomas muttered, “And today Maya broke up with me because she said she Knew something bad was going to happen.” Thomas groaned and stood up. “I haven’t even done anything yet!”

Thomas’ mother smiled sadly and reached behind her to open the front door. Sitting innocuously in the hallway were a full backpack and supplies for a journey she Knew Thomas would be taking.

Thomas wasn’t finished with his tirade. “I just need to…”

“Go somewhere else for a while?” his mother finished. She smiled a genuine smile, and motioned to the packed travel supplies.

“Mom…” Thomas said, his face sliding into lines of genuine happiness for the first time in weeks. He slung the bag over his shoulder and fastened the sword at his side, slipping his father’s hat onto his head and his mother’s scarf around his neck.  Thomas’ mother gave her son a kiss on the forehead that lingered in salty lines until he scrubbed his hand against it.

Thomas set off down the path that whispered his name and did not look back.

His mother Knew he would not return for years.

Three Word Wednesday: Bread

knead, cleanse, melt

He had spent most of the morning moping. It wasn't as if he hadn't been productive earlier, he was entitled to moping. His mother had called already, her tone concerned. He could almost see the fine lattice of lines that was sure to be hanging between her eyebrows, the downturn to her mouth as she forced her voice into a more upbeat register. He had fended her off with platitudes and assurances he didn't feel, but she had hung up with a light, "I love you," and he had sighed and unplugged his phone from the wall. His cell phone hadn't had battery since the funeral. He wasn't planning on charging it. 

The sun was going down, tinting the blinds a brilliant orange and illuminating the apartment that had too many boxes stacked near the door, too many empty spaces on the walls. He sighed and put his hands in his pockets. He had packed up everything of Max's earlier. Lovingly organized books in boxes, selected clothes for donation, compressing a life into a few bits of cardboard and two plastic bags. They were all sitting by the door now, and he didn't want to look at them. 

He was sure that he had been productive enough for one day. For a week maybe. He wasn't sure what the protocol was for these things. But he wasn't used to being idle, his fingers already drumming against his thighs in anticipation of the something he knew he should be doing. 

He is in the kitchen without really remembering how he got there. When he cleaned, something else he knows he did without remembering when, he had washed all of the pots and pans, cleansed the countertops with a lemon-scented cleaner he didn't remember buying, and emptied the fridge. 

He puts an empty pot on the stove and clicks it on, melting half a stick of butter in it, his hands moving, adding things, stirring without any conscious decision on his part. The smell of chocolate fills the small kitchen and he turns, dusting the counter with flour and pouring the concoction into a glass-bottomed pan.  

The sun is setting, the blinds glowing a dusky purple and the light on his balcony snaps on with a loud click. He jumps and clutches his chest before he steps back from the counter, leaving white streaks of flour in his hair as he runs his hands through it.  

His sister had insisted that he needed to cry, earlier. When, he couldn't exactly remember, but he knew that had been a conversation he had participated in. Probably. He had insisted that he didn't need to. Jeez. I'm fine, he had said.  

He is wondering, halfway through a batch of banana bread, if maybe he needs to cry. But he hasn't felt teary, so he rubs the sleeve of his rolled-up dress shirt against his face and turns to finish kneading out the dough. 

It is only after the loaf comes out of the oven, perfect and glowing, that his breath hitches in the back of his throat and his eyes burn. When he cuts two slices from the bread without thinking, laying one out on the blue plate with the chipped edge, he remembers. 

The bread cools, the kitchen light casting a harsh fluorescent sheen across the counter, and he turns his piece in a forlorn circle.  

The sun sets completely and the curtains go opaque.  

He cries.