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 Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 5:25 pm
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Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 5:31 pm
May 31, 2008
Sometimes Aunt Smerdle dreamed about books she had read. A lot of the books were very boring or flew so completely over August's head that he simply didn't care. Over his head. The very phrase went over the boy's head. There were a few that he enjoyed vicariously recalling, silly things full of magic and dragons and people with pointy ears. He told them to himself like mental bedtime stories, more pictures than words, missing pieces and all - the parts his aunt liked best mashed into choppy fantasies.
Some of the stories gave him ideas. On his own, August might not have had these ideas, but under the influence of some of the other children he had met, most notably a young girl who wanted to go to space and another who sold fairy dust in a phony store, August was gaining something he might not have been otherwise predisposed to. August was gaining a personality.Quote: The red and gold leaves had been carefully cleaned from the ground for at least a hundred feet in all directions in front of where Keren was standing, and laid out on the grass was a carefully plotted maze, the boundaries of its corridors marked by a line of paint on the grass. The corridors were only about two feet wide at the most, and it would take careful watching to avoid stepping on the paint. The maze itself was, as Keren had indicated, very complicated, and since the corridors were not demarcated by anything but the paint on the grass, there would be no way the blindfolded Talia would be able to tell where they were by feel.
Rolan stood beside Keren, on a little rise of ground that gave him a good view of the entire maze. According to Talia's plan, he would be her eyes for this task. If the bond between them were as deep and strong as she thought, she would be able to traverse the maze with relative ease.
While Keren, Skif, and Elspeth watched in fascination, she set out to make the attempt.
Halfway through, she hesitated for a long moment.
"She's going to end up in a dead end," Skif whispered to Keren.
"No she's not - wait and see. There's more than one way you can get through this, and I think she just chose the shorter route."
Finally Talia stopped and turned blindly back to her audience.
"Well?" she asked.
"Take the blindfold off and see for yourself."
She had threaded the maze so successfully that there wasn't even a smear of paint on her boots. "It worked -" she said, a little awed, "it really worked!"
"Ready 'Fonso?" August asked in his quiet voice. He doubted the Thought could understand him, but he hoped that at the very least the comforting feelings he was projecting at Alfonso would make this less of a shock. August was also concerned about possible pain, but not worried enough to consider stopping his experiment. He placed the animal at the start of the maze, and tugged a little scrap of fabric over Alfonso's eyes. There was a strong possibility the bird-rabbit creature could see, but it wouldn't help much. He was much shorter than the walls August had erected and the boy imagined it would be fairly easy to tell if the Thought was actually following mental instructions or just flailing around on his own.
August concentrated, and he eventually felt a sort of mental pop that he could only assume indicated he had penetrated Alfonso's inner eye, or something equally disturbing. The Thought froze, his normally twitching ears and nose still. August panned his eyes from the bundle of Alfonso near his feet to the maze itself, in the hope that the animal would figure out what he was supposed to do. Instead, the Thought stumbled forward a few steps, then changed direction and made his way back to August's feet. If Alfonso was truly seeing things through August's eyes, perhaps he had decided sitting at the boy's feet was preferable to clumsily lumbering through a maze.
August folded his arms. This wasn't how it was supposed to go at all. He pushed a little harder, suggesting to Alfonso that it might be nice if he were to turn around and go back to the maze. The Thought let out an irritated chirp, but remained still. August pushed harder.
He was never sure how long he had pressed, pushing the little animal's mind with his own before he felt the wet swipe of Pepper's tongue against his face. He was lying on his back and probably had been for at least a couple of minutes. The dog whined quietly as August brought his hand up to his nose. It came away bloody.
Pepper's ministrations had taken care of most of the mess, but August still tried to keep as quiet as possible as he reentered the house and made his way to the upstairs bathroom.Excerpt from The Heralds of Valdemar. lol horses
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Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 7:10 am
July 3, 2008
The old house had tried to warn Baxter, but in the end it couldn't save him. It was dark and he was tired, but when the floorboards squeaked and shuddered at times and in places they weren't supposed to, he knew something was wrong. He hoped it was the monkey. He thought he could stand raising Dora if the monkey wasn't involved. She was a sweet girl all by herself, but her moving toy was a constant reminder of all the moments that had passed over the course of his life that Baxter wished he could have changed.
He picked up the bat he kept behind his bedroom door, just in case.
"Isadora?" Baxter held the weapon out in front of himself as he began to exit his room, never thinking that his intruder had been watching him sleep.
The blade slid between Baxter's ribs from behind, and a startled gasp was all he could manage before he pitched forward and fell to the floor. Something was wrong. He couldn't fight back. It took him several minutes to die, just long enough to miss the knife as it sank into his skin again and again, until the pile of pulpy flesh left behind no longer resembled a human being at all.
***
August awoke from a dead sleep, his heart racing as if he had just run a mile. "Brownie?" he asked with his small voice as well as his head, but there was no answer. He closed his eyes. Across the street. Brownie was across the street. August slipped on his only pair of shoes and rushed outside, his distress making him forget things like locking the front door behind him or looking both ways before he ran across the deserted suburban street.
Baxter's door hung open on half of its hinges. The top portion looked as though it had been beaten in by several sharp swords or axes. Wings, August decided. He pushed on the door and tiptoed inside, passing a miniature whirlwind of books, papers and toddler toys belonging to his best friend Dora, Baxter's daughter. Baxter didn't like messes. August continued on, making his way through the darkened house toward the pull of his sister's mind. She wasn't answering, and the little boy feared what he would find when he finally reached her.
He was right to be frightened. The bitter tang of blood hung in the air of Baxter's room, and Brownie stood at the center of a pool of it, her breath coming in ragged pants as she glared down at the fleshy chunks that were all that was left of Baxter Green. She was older somehow, but August wouldn't see just how much older until several hours later. Her eyes met August's, but the child didn't flinch. He had been inside her head all of his life and he knew who she was. Still, when she looked away, tears sprang to August's eyes. Brownie was Murder, and now he knew she was also capable of it.
"'Gus? What you here for?" Dora asked, shuffling out of her room to stand behind him. August turned slowly, using his body to shield the girl from the carnage that was now her father. He was only slightly taller than she was, but it worked. Spotlight, Dora's constant companion, strode past August to see why the boy had come for himself, but quickly returned to climb up August's arm and nestle in his hair, adding to his height and further shielding Dora from things she didn't need to see.
"It was lonely at my house," August whispered. "C'mon. We can play Candyland. In your room." He took her arm and led her back where she had been. The tears were gone, for the moment. It was time to be a big brother.
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Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 1:41 pm
July 4, 2009
It was quiet. Nowadays, silence always seemed to be the precursor to something terrible. August and Dora stood on the opposite side of the river. The bridge between them lay shattered into perhaps hundreds of pieces. It didn't really matter how many there were; there was no way to cross. She stared at the children, a confused expression on her face, but did nothing when a wave rose up and swept them away. She turned, intending to walk home, but there was Baxter, silently staring. His face was sliced to ribbons, and the bloody chunks of flesh were black with rot, but she still recognized him. He said nothing and a moment later he leaped for her, faster than he had any right to be, puffy sausage fingers raised and bent into angry hooks.
Brownie gasped as she awoke, scrambling off of the bed into a crouch before she knew what she was doing. Her room was dark. There were no rivers, no bridges, no waves, and definitely no Baxters. The phone rang. She answered it.
"Hello?" The phone was in her room. She didn't recall it having been there before.
"Hey, kid," Chucky said, a smile in his voice. "Happy Fireworks Day." They didn't have Independence Day here on Gaia, but a lot of humans had taken to celebrating something like the American Earth holiday, simply because it involved barbecued food and loud noises.
She almost asked her father how he had gotten her number, if the cops were onto her, but she kept quiet. He sounded so happy. Was it possible he somehow missed the dead guy across the street, murdered using blades suspiciously similar to his daughter's wings? "Hey," she said instead. "How's life?"
"I totally woke you up, didn't I? Wake up! Explosions in twelve hours! Are you coming over?"
Brownie rolled out of bed, careful not to destroy her sheets. "August?" she shouted.
"No, today. What's wrong with you?"
She pushed open the door to the room August and Dora still shared. No one. Except... Brownie pulled back her brother's faded Ninja Turtle sheets. At the center of the bed was a large, clean vegetable. A cabbage to be exact. A familiar one.
Her thoughts began to race. "Dad? How's Aunt Smerdle doing?"
"She's fine. She wants to see you too."
Racing. "And the neighbors? That little girl and the red-haired guy I used to hang out with across the street?"
There was silence on the other end of the line for what seemed like forever. Then, "Are those like some imaginary friends you made up? The only person who lives even remotely close to 'across the street' around here is Miz Ekels and her forty cats. And I know you never hung out with any of them."
Brownie let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. She ran a finger over one of the cabbage's outstretched leaves. Whatever was going on, at least it appeared she was no longer a murderer.
"I've got a kid," she said, voice soft.
"What?! Seriously, what kind of trouble are you in?"
"I'm not in any, " Brownie answered. Not anymore. "Happy Fireworks Day, Dad."
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