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 Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 7:25 pm
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Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 7:49 pm
{part 1}
It had been a bad day for Mishka. First getting caught stealing, then running in to some stupid ugly stupid STUPID woman and her stupid ugly baby, and then getting punished for making the brat cry, and then that stupid mean STUPID woman had made HER cry.
"Ugh," Mishka said, running all the way home, her scarf flapping behind her. "Ugh ugh ugh UGH."
She ran through streets, sidewalks and alleys, pushing people out of the way, jumping over garbage cans and stray dogs who barked and yelped at her. She ran all the way across the town, lungs burning and legs screaming protest. She finally slowed to an exhausted walk as she approached the big old building she called home, wiping her face clean of tears and sweat.
She didn't climb over the chain link fence as was her habit, or wriggle under it, or slink through one of the little holes in it. She kicked open the gate angrily, slammed it behind her and chained it up. She marched past empty warehouses and sheds that populated the complex, empty things in a forgotten place. She kicked open the door to the big building at the end of the cul-de-sac, slamming the heavy door behind her.
The inside of the building was cluttered, well-aged and messy with a purpose. It was comfortably lived-in, with warm wood paneling on the old walls, Mishka's workshop taking up most of the first floor. Above near the exposed rafters was a large open-air loft, and theceiling was very disturbingly covered with gigantic spiderwebs.
Mishka sniffled, gasped, and sucked in a deep breath.
"OLIIIIIIIVIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAA!"
Her scream echoed throughout the gigantic space, and suddenly the seemingly empty warehouse was buzzing with activity. Something horrible-looking with great sunken eyes and long, long teeth heaved itself out of a shallow pit in the floor in a lone corner, slithering and dragging itself across the floor.
"Mishka, Mishka, what's wrong?" it asked, its voice sounding like grinding glass. It laid one malformed hand on the tiny girl's shoulder, trying to comfort her. Mishka shrugged it off, her face beet red.
"I want OLIVIA," she shrieked. The hulking creature took the rejection in stride, nodding its heavy head and writhing away. The other monstrous things that had come out to meet the girl all scattered, hunting for Olivia.
"Darling?"
Mishka's head snapped to the ceiling. Something huge, something horrifying, was poking its bear-sized head from the nest of webs. "Oh, darling, I'm sorry! I dozed off, I'm coming."
And come the creature did, lowering itself carefully on a rope-thick strand of spider's silk. A woman, or a spider, some terrifying cross between the two, stood before Mishka and scooped her up into its arms.
"Oh, darling, you're a mess," the spider-woman said kindly, going into the bright corner of the house that served as the kitchen. "Come on, I'll get you some nice biscuits and you can tell me what happened."
As the spider-woman bustled about the kitchen, Mishka hopped up onto a counter and wiped her face roughly with her scarf, pouring out the story. She glossed over nothing - Mishka was many things, but not a liar.
"-and, and she said that people'd HATE me and that m-my friends weren't people," she finished, munching on a cookie that the spider-woman had given her. The woman tutted gently, a sound made unnerving by the clicking of sizeable mandibles.
"Dearest, you let your temper get away with you so often," she said. "In a way, you know, she is right."
Mishka glowered.
"Nuh uh."
"She is," the spider said patiently. "We're not. Certainly not me. But that doesn't mean we love you any less."
Mishka finished her cookie and sniffled, wiping her eyes again.
"Mean it?" she asked, wringing her hands. "Mean it, Olivia?"
The spider-woman nodded, and smiled in a way that would have sent grown men screaming for their mothers. Mishka took comfort from the expression, and leaned into Olivia's four-armed hug.
"Love you too," she said fiercely. Olivia chuckled, patting Mishka on the head with a bony, taloned hand.
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Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 5:35 pm
{part 2}
Mishka was sitting on the roof of the warehouse, watching the sunset. She liked to sit and brood sometimes up on the roof - there was a boarded-up smokestack that provided an excellent roost, once she shooed away the pigeons and other birds that spackled the crumbling bricks with feces. She sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, ignoring the cold autumn wind as it tore mercilessly at her hair. Below her, waiting at the foot of the short smokestack, a flock of pigeons and magpies pecked at the white-spattered aluminum roof, squalling and squawking and carrying on.
"Shut up," she shouted down to the birds, waving her arms to try to scare them away. A few looked up at her with bright orange and button-black eyes, uncomprehending. Mishka huffed and wrinkled her nose at them. Stupid birds. Stupid world. Stupid everything.
Feeling bitter and sour in her stomach, Mishka hunched her shoulders and wiped her nose roughly with her long scarf. Olivia had made her feel better - temporarily - but Mishka liked to brood and sulk sometimes. And besides, they'd run out of biscuits and now she had no comfort food.
The sourness in her belly churned up into her throat, and Mishka sniffled, pressing her head against her knees and feeling ugly hot tears running down her cheeks. She was a bad person. People hated her.
Well, maybe not everyone...
"Bærinn minn, bærinn minn og Þinn...sefur sæll í kyrrþ, fellur mjöll. Hljótt í húmi á jörð, grasi mitt," she sang, coarsely, muffled, under her breath. "Grasi mitt og Þitt geymir mold til vors, hjúfrar lind, leynt við brekkurót. Vakir eins og við, lífi trútt... kyrrlátt kalda vermsl, augum djúps-"
A terrible shriek cut her wobbly song off and made Mishka's head snap up in alarm. Fire, bright and unnatural and dancing, was streaming from a bird that fell from the sky and landed with a hard bounce on the roof. The flames subsided and something lay curled up on its side, too big to be the little magpie that had caught ablaze. Mishka gave a horrified scream and leaped off the smokestack, landing hard on her knees and ignoring the pain as she scrabbled towards the fallen thing.
"Hey, hey hey!" she squeaked, turning the ashy thing over onto its back. "Hey-"
She choked on her words and stared. A boy. A bird. What boy had a beak? What bird had hands?
"...what are you?" she asked, dumbfounded.
"Buh," the boy-bird said. Hazel eyes filled with tears and he let out a ferocious wail, making Mishka jolt back. He followed her, unnaturally long fingers grasping desperately at her jumper.
"Duh-leef-me," he said, tongue flopping awkwardly in his beak. "Ama. Ama."
Mishka felt herself grow cold and swatted the boy-bird's hands away.
"Not," she said fiercely. "I'm NOT your MOTHER."
The boy-bird gasped and sobbed and gave such a heartrending scream that Mishka broke a little. She reached out and touched his fuzzy head, dusting off ash.
"I didn't mean to yell," she said, the apology tasting strange in her mouth as the oddly true words slipped out. "Didn't mean t'make you cry."
"Duh...leef meh," the boybird said again, eyes soft as a deer's. "Prease. Suh-hared."
"Why you scared?" Mishka asked, dusting more ash away.
"Suh-hared. Duh leef meh arr...arrrone. Duh leef meh arrone."
Mishka blinked, then sighed, wiping the dribbling tears and snot off the boy's face with the end of her scarf.
"I won't," she said, and unexpectedly brought him close to her, stroking his fluffy hair and shushing him, rocking like a mother with her baby. "I won't leave you alone. Hush, hush..."
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Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 8:57 am
A basket arrives just a few days short of Christmas, in the same manner as the basket that had originally arrived with the request to be filled. Many goodies are inside! Quote: I hoep yu lik kitenz  Happy holidays!
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Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 6:30 am
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Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 6:31 am
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Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 8:25 am
{part 5}
The storm outside was thundering murderously. Jack huddled under his blankets in his little loft room, trying to ignore the merciless roar that came from the sky, spitting sheets of rain on the warehouse's old tin roof. Everyone else was asleep, untroubled by the noise. Jack wasn't surprised by this, seeing as they were all basically the monsters children feared lived in their closets and under their beds. A thunderstorm wouldn't scare them at all.
A bone-rattling roll of thunder made him jump, clutching the blanket around himself. Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh. He hated thunderstorms. Steeling himself, Jack slipped out of bed, blanket trailing behind like a long cloak as he climbed down the ladder to the warehouse's main floor. The lights had been turned off - Olivia had told them that it was best not to invite a power outage - but Jack had no problem seeing. The lightning that split the sky lit up the place in sterile bluish-white light every few minutes.
He looked first at the corner of the warehouse that served as Mishka's laboratory. A new companion was sitting on the operating table, only a skeleton of metal at the moment. It looked a little like a boar to Jack, but he doubted it'd stay that way for long.
The kitchen too was empty, as well as the living room cordoned off by old velvet theater stage hangings. Jack had no idea where Mishka had salvaged them. He looked around, wondering where she was. Mishka had no set room in the warehouse, treating the whole thing as what it was - her own gigantic playhouse and laboratory, strewing her belongings everywhere. Maybe she was asleep in Olivia's spiderweb nest on the ceiling. Jack sighed, looking up at the gigantic nest of silk that hung like a bee's hive so high up above. Olivia was always very nice to him, but she looked like a spider. Spiders made Jack quite uncomfortable.
"Jack?"
Jack jumped, startled, and turned. Mishka was in her pajamas, using a flashlight to find her way towards the kitchen.
"Why are you awake? You're little. Littles go to bed when its late."
"The storm woke me up," Jack said, playing turtle in his blanket as Mishka shone the light on him. "It's scary."
Mishka snorted.
"Tchah! Littles are scared of the dumbest things," she said, though she didn't sound too mocking. "I was going for cake. You want cake?"
"Yes!"
Mishka took his long-fingered hand in hers, leading him to the kitchen. He sat on one of the mismatched chairs and waited eagerly as Mishka raided the fridge.
"I want choc'ate milk."
"You can't have chocolate milk with CAKE. That's TOO sweet."
"Isn't!"
"You are a lucky little. Other littles eat cake and drink chocolate milk, it'd make their teeth fall out. You're lucky you don't have teeth."
Jack would have laughed, but another savage roar of thunder made him whimper. He tugged his blanket over his head.
"Are you still scared of the storm, little?"
"Yes..."
"Don't be scared. It's just weather."
"Why does it thunder?"
Mishka thought instantly about launching into the technical explanation, but she knew Jack wouldn't understand. She pushed a plate laden with a thick-frosted piece of cake into his hands, nose wrinkling as she thought.
"There's giants in the clouds," she said eventually, taking a bite of cake. "And they're fighting. Every time there's lightning, it's the sparks that fly when their swords hit their armor. Every time there's thunder, a giant's falling."
"Do they get up again?"
"Maybe. I don't think so, though."
"Is the rain their blood?"
"No, silly. They're fighting in the clouds. Every time they take a step, they squish the water out."
Jack nodded, looking towards one of the windows. Rain was coming down in almost preternatural torrents.
"Must be a big fight. Why are they fighting each other?"
Mishka shrugged.
"Maybe there's something up there they all want, but only one side can have."
"Like what?"
"Something precious."
Jack thought about this. What was precious in the sky?
"Maybe they want the stars," he said eventually.
"That's a good thing to want. I know I'd want them."
"But there's so many," Jack protested. "Why can't they share?"
Mishka shrugged again, finishing off her cake.
"Because everyone always wants everything all for themselves," she said. "Why share and have less when you could keep it all for yourself and have more?"
Jack shook his head.
"Giants are stupid."
"So's everyone else."
"Even you?"
Mishka laughed.
"Everyone is stupid but me. And Olivia."
"I'm not stupid."
"And you. We're the only smart people in the world."
Jack giggled. Mishka seemed pleased with herself that she'd made him happy, and picked him up once he'd finished eating.
"C'mon, little. Back to bed."
Mishka tucked Jack back in, giving his fuzzy head a pat before going back downstairs. Jack curled up in his nest of blankets, watching the lightning and listening to the thunder and rain. The rolling roars no longer frightened him, and he imagined the battle that was raging up above. He fell asleep, and dreamed about stars being shaken from the sky, falling like jewels to the earth below.
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Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:45 am
{part 6}
Today was Cooking Day. Jack had an apron, chef's hat and safety goggles on, and was loyally attending Mishka as she tackled the cookbook with an enthusiasm any hobbyist-cook would envy.
"I don't think it's supposed to smell like burning rubber," Jack said. Mishka stuck her tongue out at him, mixing the ingredients together.
"...or smoke."
"It is a work in progress, little. Stop being nosy."
"Or turn green Mishka what is in this."
"...hm."
"Yeah."
"Maybe should be ordering pizza."
"Y'think?"
"Do not be sassy, little. I am much taller than you and I am made of sass. I will sass you into next week."
"You couldn't sass your way out of a paper bag," Jack said, sticking his own pointy tongue out at Mishka. She retailated by pinching it between thumb and forefinger, and smearing a glob of the stinky green goo all over it. Jack gave a mortified shriek at the taste and tore away from her, running into the bathroom to guzzle mouthwash. Mishka cackled, raising her hands and doing a one-person Wave.
"Flawless victory! Mishka wins!"
"MISHKA IS TRYING TO POISON HER FRIENDS."
"I never poison friends, little," she called back, listening to Jack's frantic gargling. "You is just needing your tastebuds tuned to my delicacies."
To prove her point, she slurped an entire spoonful of the mess right down. She smacked her lips, thoughtfully considering the flavor.
"...I think I am going to throw up."
Within the bathroom, Jack would have given a spiteful cackle of his own, but he was too busy getting sick.
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