30 Story Seeds
From Thanksgiving 2014.
I may have just learned the secret to the perfect murder...
The first I knew of the fortress was when I was exploring the local woods, and I came across a very low wall -- not more than an outline, really -- made up of rough-hewn stone blocks. When I came back a week later, the wall was a row higher. And then the week after that, the same. I expected to see tire tracks, maybe even trucks hauling all those stone blocks. But I never saw anyone.
But it wasn't until the fourth week that I finally saw someone working on the wall: a short, gray-haired, but very strong-looking man pushing a wagon with two blocks in it. He pulled the wagon up to the wall, lifted out a block, and placed it on the wall. Then for nearly thirty minutes, he carefully nudged the block back and forth, using only his eyes as a gauge. Finally he must have been satisfied with his placement of the block, as he picked out the second block and went through the same routine again.
He had been so intent on his work that I hadn't dared disturb him while he was placing the blocks; but once he was done, I called out greetings to him. He looked up at me politely, nodded, but then turned back to his wagon and pushed it away.
He came back an hour later with two more blocks. This time when he left, I followed him, whistling as I walked so he had to know I was there. He didn't seem to mind. Soon we came to a quarry. I hadn't known there was a quarry in the area, but there it was, and someone had carved out hundreds, maybe thousands of the stone blocks. The man walked over to a pile, and I followed him. When he bent to pick up one block, I picked up another. He looked at me and smiled when I put my block in his wagon. But still he said not a word.
But he DID speak when we got back to the fortress, and I tried to place my block on the wall. One clear word: “No.” He would let me carry blocks, but not build the wall. Still, when the blocks were both placed and aligned to his satisfaction, he smiled again, and he held out his hand to shake mine.
In that way, over the course of the summer, we built the fortress. Every night I went back to my warm, comfortable farmhouse (though the farmland was long gone, sold off to some corporation), and was too exhausted from my day to stay up and watch some drivel on television; and every morning I went out into the woods and worked with my hands and simple tools as if I had stepped back in time. Eventually, after much studying on my part, the man let me place blocks in the wall and line them up; but he always had the final judgment on the placement of each block. Sometimes, showing amazing strength, he swept aside my block in disgust. Then he picked it up, placed it again, and frowned at me. But as the weeks went by, I learned to build the wall to his satisfaction. Once in a while, he even said so. “Good.” “Yes.” “Suitable.” Always one terse word. The day he said “Nice job,” I was so surprised I practically dropped a block on my toe.
One day, nearly autumn, I arrived in the morning. He was always there before me, he always left after, and I never saw where he went. But that day, before I ever arrived, he did some work that surprised me: he had installed a portcullis in the entry, as well as bars in the windows. When I arrived, he proudly raised the portcullis and ushered me in.
That was the day he started training me in sword and crossbow and other weapons. And eventually I realized: We were preparing for a siege. It seemed ludicrous back in my farmhouse at night, surrounded by electric lights and electric heat and electric entertainments; but it seemed perfectly sensible out in those woods, shut up in stone walls with deadly weapons and an old man who was teaching me to kill.
Harriet was unused to having company in bed, and so she was sleeping closer to the edge than was her habit. Late at night she rolled over and fell right off the bed; and being less than half awake, she fell right off the edge of the world and into the space between spaces. She was still not quite awake when she finally landed on a large pile of blue sheep grazing next to a nectar stream. The sheep bleated loudly and scattered, dropping her onto the shiny white grass. Then they gathered around her as her eyes opened, she yawned and stretched, and she looked around. No Jack, no bed, no bedroom, and two dozen blue sheep. This was the third-strangest awakening she could recall.
$5,000... That would last Rick months if he stayed home. Of course, if he stayed home, or anywhere where anyone knew him and Mr. Tuttle's men could find him, he would be dead within days.
$5,000 was all Rick had to move to a different state, maybe a different country, and try to find a place to live and a way to survive. It wouldn't be enough. He needed more, but he only knew one place where he could find more on short notice.
Rick could see no other alternative. He had to sneak back into Tuttle's estate...
Edward was practically the perfect husband material: from a good family, well-educated, apprenticed to one of the top barristers in Londontown, and thoroughly devoted to Millicent. His proposal to her had left her flush for days after, and his sweet words echoed in her ears still.
Edward's one drawback, unfortunately, was that he was quite recently deceased. But Millicent was determined not to let that stop her.
Dr. Harris's laboratory technique was impeccable. Everything was recorded, every piece of glassware and every specimen had a designated place, and everyone in her lab followed her exacting procedures.
Unfortunately, the building maintenance and janitorial crews were not nearly so meticulous. The building, one of the oldest on campus, had literally decades of rot and decay and detritus from old experiments. So no one knew quite what mold, bacteria, or fungi contributed DNA to the hybrid organism that emerged from her lab. Had they known, they might have devised a bioweapon sooner, and the organism might not have devoured the south half of the city.
"Computer, what time is it?"
"8:43 a.m. Friday."
"No, no, no. What YEAR?"
"Oh. 2247."
"2247? I'm not due to awaken for another 50 years! Where's Captain... Captain..."
"Captain Randall is supposed to be on duty this year, but he has disappeared. Captain Tanner is his designated replacement, but her cryo chamber has failed. Same for Captain Petrov, Captain Wolfe, and Captain Gupta. You're the next living captain in rotation."
"But that's..."
"Too improbable for coincidence, yes, Captain Heller. Wake up, and watch your back."
Freeze-dried turkey. Cranberry powder with just enough water to make a paste. “Stuffing” that consisted of paper-dry bread crumbles with a few crumbs of walnut.
And a view that included Olympus Mons and Valles Marineris, plus Phobos and Deimos if he turned that way. Best. Thanksgiving. Ever!
It took him weeks to notice, and three more weeks to confirm. He planted stakes, stretched tape measures, and took photos. Eventually there was no denying it: every tree in the forest was leaning away from his house, and leaning a little farther every day. At eye level, each tree moved as much as two millimeters per day, and they were ALL moving AWAY from his home. At first he rejected this idea as nonsense; but eventually, reluctantly, he wondered: what did the trees know that he didn't?
"What am I doing? What does it look like I'm doing?"
"Procrastinating."
"Oh, is it that obvious?"
"Lost at sea, day... 74, I think. I might have missed a day due to last week's fever. Still no sign of land. My water bucket is nearly empty, so I hope there's some rain by tomorrow. But at least the fish are plentiful, and easily snared, so I have plenty to eat. Though I find the tentacles odd -- disturbing, actually -- they're quite tasty after you dry them in the sun. A little chewy, though."
You would think that the chefs in the kitchen would smell the burning casserole before the guests in the hall did. But they didn't, and so the perfect feast was ruined for yet another year.
"The murder weapon was quite common, I fear, an ordinary kitchen cleaver. I'm sure it has been dropped deep into the Thames by now. But the bait that drew our victim to this site was a most extraordinary tin of cherry cordials."
"Ah, he could hardly resist those, now could he?"
"End of the line."
"But we're not at a station."
"End of the line."
"We can't get out here! It's dark out there. We can't see where we're going."
"End of the line."
"It's freezing cold out there! We'll be dead by morning."
The conductor slowly nodded. "End of the line."
The goose waddled down the gravel road toward the pond, stopping now and then to nibble on a tender bit of grass alongside the road. He couldn't know that he was about to witness the splashdown of the Akranian Armada; but had he known, he still would've been more interested in the grass. He was only a goose, after all, and completely unprepared for his role in defending Earth from invasion.
"You really think you're something, don't you?"
"No, but you do. And that infuriates you."
"I'm old enough that I don't care, but not so old that I don't notice."
"Here we are! Crazy Sid's No-Questions-Asked Cheap Meat Emporium!"
"They're asking for the Moon. He's offering Hoboken, with an option on Hackensack."
'"You're about to say that no one knows what you're going to say until you say it -- not even you.
"Then you're going to ask how I knew that when YOU didn't even know you were going to say that.
"Then you're going to tell me to get out of your head!"
"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"
"So let's go! We'll give it that good old college try!"
"HOORAY!"
"Great job, men! I know you can do it!"
"What did you say?"
"I said I know you can do it."
"Wait a minute. You... You actually BELIEVE we can succeed?"
"Sure! You're fired up, ready to go."
"Oh, wow. Oh. Oh, no. We're going to lose."
"Then what was all that? All that 'good old college try' stuff?"
"Oh, sure, we're going to try. We're going to try, and we're going to lose. We're going to lose big. Spectacularly. We're going to lose like you have never seen before! But we're going to try."
"Never admit indebtedness to one such as I."
"Where we're going, we don't need roads!"
"You're not going anywhere."
"Exactly!"
"How long can this go on?"
"As long as you let it."
"That long, huh?"
"Fee fi fo fum!"
"Fum? What kind of a word is 'fum'?"
"Oh, I just made it up. For the rhyme, you know?"
"For the rhyme? You're going to rhyme it with 'Englishman'! Even as a slant rhyme, that doesn't work."
"Well, I sort of pronounce it 'Englishmun', so I can make it a slant rhyme."
"EnglishMUN? No one's going to buy that, you uss!"
"But come on... If the Help Line at the cable company WERE staffed entirely by zombies, who could tell the difference?"
The high point of my day, sad to say, was when I opened the garage door and The Thing in the Garage attacked me and ate me. It all went downhill from there.
The dragon flew over again last night. Dad still doesn't believe me, but Mrs. Morton's cow didn't walk away on his own, you know?
"Look, bird, you've got two choices. You can be small and cute and a good singer, or you can be big and tasty and a good dinner. So what's it gonna be?"
"The difference between a gentleman and a lout is the lout says what the gentleman only thinks."
"An' if the gentleman DOES say it, he says it so's the lady thinks it's a compliment."
On Thanksgiving Day, 2014, I jotted down these story seeds over ten hours after dinner. They’re just seeds. There’s no real stories here yet.* But maybe someday some of them will turn into stories.
*I have actually dictated the thing in the garage, but never transcribed it yet. I’m not sure I can find the audio today. It’s about a suburban witch, her neighbor the shaman, and escaped spirits.