vortexae
Synopsis
You know those little shops that suddenly appear and then just as suddenly disappear, leaving you with an unwise purchase on your hands that kickstarts your unwanted journey into magical adventure? Don't you hate it when you find that magic ring or enchanted dress to be more than you bargained for, but the shop's return policy is ALL SALES ARE FINAL? Did you ever wonder about the shopkeeper? She never wondered about you... until now.
I'm flying by the seat of my pants here. The plan is, whenever I run out of steam, I'll pilfer my collected dream journals for inspiration and new plot twists. With any luck, something will cohere. At the very least, I won't lack for writing prompts. I've been writing down my dreams for *years.*
Excerpt
Part 1: Martha Tries On a Dress
It was the kind of dress that tells a girl she might as well just go home and slit her own throat. It was a slinky, form-fitting sheath of black with a spiderweb of lace over the parts of the bosom that the silk didn't cover. It wanted a wasp-waisted, size 3 woman to fit it -- or maybe size 2; Martha didn't look at the sizing tag. She just looked at the dress and sighed.
Martha wasn't the sort of woman who could fit that sort of dress. She was short where the dress said tall, wide where the dress said narrow, and flat where the dress said round. And that skirt barely got past the underwear line; Martha didn't have the sort of legs anyone wanted to see, she was sure of that. She'd been told that point-blank, in fact.
* * *
She was... not aware of the rest of the process. It was like the cut-cut-cut of a movie montage, one still after another; the garment spilling over her hands like liquid, the garment pooling on the floor around her bare feet, the shift and slide of the dress up her thighs, and then -- it was on her. She was wearing it. She was wearing it, and it fit. And she wasn't surprised that it fit. There were shoes on her feet that she hadn't had walking into the store, and she walked out of the changing room in them as though she'd walked on spike heels all her life.
She knew precisely how good she looked. And then she didn't even think about it.
Part 2: Maggie Buys a Computer
Immediately she had a dilemma. The amazingly tiny mini-laptop didn't appear to be large enough along any axis to admit a CD. Perhaps it needed an external drive? Maggie was on the verge of calling the clerk for help when her fingers tripped a release switch and the computer extracted what was unmistakeably a disk drive. It was pretty skeletal, for sure, but it was a CD-ROM drive for all that. She snapped the disk onto the flat spindle, then, doubtfully, pressed the button that had released it in the first place.
The CD-ROM drive retracted into the computer's body with a jerky motion. Maggie watched, expecting the drive shelf to stop at any moment. Once half the disk was inside, that was surely enough for the drive to read the disk, right? But the disk shelf kept on going until it had retracted completely. The outside of the computer was smooth and the disk had entirely disappeared, without even the faintest sound of disk destruction, into a space that was patently too small for it.
Maggie stuck around to install and run as many of the OEM disks that she thought she'd have use for, and all the programs ran flawlessly. But it was the impossible insertion of that first disk that decided her. She had to have this machine.
* * *
"This thing, the computer store worker hand-sold me. Maybe it's more like he hand-sold me to it. That's how it feels, anyway. Feels like he fed me to some hungry machine that swallowed my whole life, except for the bits it's still chewing on. All I wanted was a mini-notebook to deal with email and schoolwork. I didn't ask for a fucking genie in a bottle!"
"So it's powered by magic and it exists according to no known geometry. So far so handy. What's it done?"
"What hasn't it done." Maggie suddenly pushed her treasure trove of donuts away from her, dropped her head in her arms, and began to sob. The laptop sat next to her ear, its display bright and eager. Ben couldn't help but think the machine was gloating.
Part 3: Still Life with Tea Cozy
The tea things were indeed splendid; Hank was impressed in spite of himself. Some of the tea pots looked like japanese imports, flattish steel implements lovingly tooled, waiting only for the perfect leaves. The cannisters were by contrast merely decorative. They looked like limited edition blends from various trendy purveyors. The requisite Republic of Tea cannister with the metallic lid, for instance, or a stack of tiny boxes with different candies depicted on the front. But there was also a round of aged and pressed pu erh on a tripod and a glass container of jasmine pearls.
The tea cozy caught his attention unexpectedly. The constellations it displayed in its squares of blue and blue and blue... they weren't imaginary. He recognized them. And they didn't belong in any sky visible from Earth.
Hank considered himself an expert on this matter. He was not, after all, from Chicago, but in fact a good deal farther away.
* * *
From the point of view of the small white-and-brown rat that lived, unbeknownst to Linda, in the living room wall, Hank simply put the crocheted thing on his head like a hat, adjusted it slightly, and disappeared in a flash of silvery light. When the afterimages cleared and the rat poked its nose back out into the suddenly frightening room, all that remained where Hank had been was a scattering of clammy mist, gray like smoke and red like sunset clouds, and soon it vanished too. It left an odd damp in the upholstery that would be dry by the time Linda and her carpool returned.
From Hank's point of view, the entire world disappeared in the blinding flash that originated from nowhere. Maybe it originated from him, who knew? When he got his vison back, he wasn't sure that he had. He couldn't see a thing. His vision was awash with the dark gray of soot highlighted with an angry blood red. He hoped this didn't mean he'd gone blind.
He took a deep breath. The air tasted fresh, unstained by smoke or mist. His skin had a clammy feel, but the source of the clamminess wasn't evident. He smacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth like a diner making a great show of tasting the soup. Taste -- tastes -- what did he taste? He wasn't entirely sure. There was a vinegar note, and a sudden sweet tang like berries, but the moment he focused on it, it drifted away until breathing tasted only like air. Neutral air.
Where do you get neutral air?
Oh. Oh shit.
* * *
Part 4: Bitsy Gets a Ring
Inside the box is a ring. It's not metal, like Momma's ring. Instead it's a hard shiny stuff like what her cereal bowl and Pa's coffee mug are made out of. No, not quite. Shinier, slicker, and all sorts of colors. Bitsy turns the ring around and around, following the colors. They make a movie behind her eyelids, a scene of ghosts blowing down the road. Bitsy thinks about Camerie blowing down the road and she goes hot-cold with fright. She jams the ring on her finger, the littlest finger on her left hand. She sticks the ring box back in the bubble. She click the bubble closed -- it makes another happy noise, like it can't think of anything more fun to do than open and close for Bitsy. She shoves the bubble into her coat pocket, and it goes way down to the bottom of the deep pocket. It won't fall out, that's for sure.
The man still hasn't reappeared behind his big, tall counter. Bitsy thinks about telling him goodbye, but she still doesn't want to talk inside the store. Maybe if she doesn't say anything, she won't have been here, and Momma won't be mad at her for coming in when Momma said no. Direct disobedience, Momma calls that. It means knowing that Momma said no and doing it anyway. Bitsy begins to cry as she runs out of the shop. It's not fair! She just forgot, that was all. It was an accident. And now Momma will be mad, and Camerie will blow away, and it'll be all Bitsy's fault.
Bitsy runs half the block away from the store, then stops. She isn't confused anymore. She knows exactly where her big old sister is.
* * *
This part of the highway is a curve. It straightens out to cross Bitsy's street, but before that it goes left and left and really hard left, and cars sometimes have a hard time going hard left. There are marks like with black crayon all over the cement guard rail that Bitsy climbed over. Camerie lives in one of those marks. It isn't a nice place to live.
"Big sis," says Bitsy, and her voice, which she didn't let get trapped in the store, sort of sticks to Camerie's house. "It's OK. See, I got a splinter today, but it doesn't hurt anymore." It doesn't. Bitsy can't even remember what the hurt was like. "Maybe it's been long enough that dying doesn't hurt anymore? How long does dying hurt for, anyway?" There are so many things Camerie could tell Bitsy, but she doesn't, she just sits on the guard rail like a very small old big sister, like a fairy big sister but without wings or smiles. Bitsy feels cold as she kneels beside Camerie, and she tugs her coat tight around her. The climb had made her hot and sweaty, but being close to Camerie's house makes Bitsy feel chilly. "If you come home with me, maybe it'll stop hurting."
Bitsy holds out her hand. Her right hand. Camerie gets even smaller, and Bitsy remembers the little ghost mouse she turned into all those years ago. So she holds out her left hand instead, and Camerie jumps right onto her new pretty ring.
Now Bitsy is cold all over. Her coat doesn't help at all. She just kneels there against the guard rail and shivers until Momma and Pa come driving up and bundle her into the car.
All of the Parts
I am not the one about whom stories are written. I am not the hero, weilding magical swords and enchanted armor into her climactic battle or casting great spells with the aid of a thousand-year-old wand.
I'm the one who sells her the sword. I'm not the hero of any story; I'm the one who gets them started.
That said, it occurs to me that, just by saying so, I've made what I said a lie. This, as it turns out, is my story.
I don't like being in stories very much.
