Haiku, and you?

Haven't done a challenge post in a long while (been working hard on stuff to send out to paying markets), but this one (3 linked haiku, combining to tell a story) seemed too easy to pass on. 45 minutes and 15 versions later...

 Titleless, for now.

 ---

the Visitors fell,
yes, you say that i saw but
i can’t remember–

how could i lie to
a jumper cable with my
legs bound apart dear

god i would tell but
the black-jacket man had such
forgetful needles

Fighting Demons

Zhang Pi wakes to the snores of the apprentices. Slipping from his straw bed, he pads shoeless past the forge, to Master Ma's sword in its place of honor on the smithy wall. The simple white hilt smolders red in the forgelight.

When the others awake, this will seem a thievery. It is regrettable. But Pi's sword was  left behind, with his true name.

Pi grimaces, and lifts the sword, and does not feel the slightest eagerness at its perfect balance in his hand.

The Next Big Dragonslayer

"Thing is," Ril tells Norry, "I'm not even sure she wants a new broom. But day after day--"

"Lannald will give you credit," Norry says. "Let tomorrow worry about itself. A happy wife makes a happy husband, I say."

Ril shakes his big head ruefully. "I'm more than this," he says, sweeping his hand to take in all of Slayer's Rest. "One day, Norry."

"One day we'll all eat cake and--hold on. Who's that, then?"

That is the tall, fierce-bearded man leaning casually against the bar, talking to Jick, the owner.

"Dunno." Ril squints through the torch-smoke. "Looks tough enough. Think he's a slayer?"

"We're about to find out," Norry says.

Filling the Void

That night, we occupied the bar in the windowless room within B-'s favorite mansion, before the curtain that led to the door that would almost end the world. For the past few weeks I had been handsomely paid to tend the bar at these events, to ask no questions and spread no tales; tend the bar I did, and if I had questions or tales I kept them to myself.

As had become the custom of late, Charisse stood blindfolded on the low table at the center of the room. For the amusement of all, one of the ladies had gifted Charisse with leather underthings, and of course there were always fresh stockings. The heels were the same that she'd been wearing the first night, when the men had taken her.

Roger was piloting Charisse, blindfolded himself. The better to focus, he had told me the first time I had witnessed the exercise of his talent. Privately, I had always thought it an affectation, but given how this all ended--well, perhaps I was wrong about that, too.

Scary Story in Three Sentences

Moonlight through your baby girl's window and the doll’s cradle by her bed crawling with chittering white-toothed shadows; for just a moment, even before you start to wonder how they got there in the first place, you can’t understand why the fuck the rats are eating the doll.

And then the bloodshitfeardeathsulfur reek, the empty toddler bed and the broken circle, the realization that rats don’t have tentacles.

And the whispers in your head like screams that never end.



-----

Chuck Wendig asked to have the shit scared out of him in a three sentence story of less than 100 words.

I think this one's okay.

Black-Clock Dreams

Yuri learned of the old man from Gregor, who had it from Peter Samovitch, whose prababushka forbade him to tell anyone what she knew. Ordinarily this hearsay would carry all the consequence of a sugar cube, but everyone knew Peter's prababushka for a witch, and a powerful one at that. When she finally died at one hundred and thirty-two, baking cookies for her pravnuks, the residents of every village for fifty kilometers had braved the bitter cold for her pogrebal'nyi. Hers were not words to be taken lightly.

And so the distance has passed under wheel and under foot, and now Yuri finds himself a hundred and fifty kilometers north of Volsk, standing outside the old man's door, one gloved hand in the air and the other clenched around the pistol in the pocket of his fur-lined parka. A large black bell hangs from the iron hook by the door.

Yuri inhales deeply so that the cold bites his lungs. When he exhales, the moisture turns to snow that whips away on the wind. He breathes again. He is not ready for this.

Just Curious

Do me a favor, would you?

If either you've come across this blog serendipitously, or if you've initially arrived via link but have come back because you like what you find here, do me a favor and either say hey in the comments or click one of the vanity radio buttons at the bottom of this post?

If you're only following links and don't plan to come back unless I shove another link in your face, I'm glad to have you... but I'd love to have an idea, a couple months into this project, if my stuff is being read by anyone just 'cuz they like it. :)

Thanks!

Coming Home

Truck paused at the base of the stairs to look up into the shadows. The light was out at the top. Dory wasn't expecting him.

That shouldn't have hurt, but it did.

The smell of boiled cabbage and fatty meat hung in the air, oppressive as poverty. His fault. If he'd stopped for that light--

Truck stood the Mulick kid's bike up against the wall, and started up. The wooden stairs were sticky. They creaked underfoot. By the time he was halfway home, he was clutching the railing, his heart pounding, the darkness blurry before him.

"Stay another night," Dr. Simkins had urged him. "Just for observation." But Truck had been in a coma for seven months, and another night was a lifetime.

Endgame

The wicker basket is precisely centered on a table in the back of one of Atlanta's better steakhouses. The scaly black talon that prods at the rolls within is attached to a multi-jointed arm. The arm terminates out of frame.

"Well, that's unsettling," Coop mutters into the earpiece in John Hartlesby's left ear. "Give me Three."

Hartlesby teases the joystick to back Three's focus away from the table, so it takes in the human diners immediately around the pair. He taps a button and the display on the main monitor shifts. The diners are being paid to eat, and they do a wise job of ignoring the players. Eye contact is strictly prohibited.

The guards, of course, have been coached where to stand to remain off-camera.

"This lowly one simply does not understand how one monkey could have so long evaded us," Chirp says through the translator bug in John's right ear. "But you have found him, magnificence. And, by your leave, this humble one finds himself hungry."

The Novice Conquers the Rhythm...

Thorn leaned over the study desk, eyes squinched in concentration, tapping the words out against the wood with the sides of his thumbs. The air smelled of musty parchment and his tutor's spicy perfume. From the enclosed carrels around him came similar tapping, quietly furious. Exams were coming.

Leaning over his shoulder, Abby was a petite furnace with long dark hair that tickled his cheek.

"A novice revenges the rhythm?" he guessed.

"Close," she murmured, her voice gray velvet in his ear. He felt her hair move against his face. Then she was reaching past him, to indicate a group of scratches on the scroll. "Try this bit again."