The Vault

Prompt: True North

When people speak of the things that hold them together, they speak of love, of trust, of family, or maybe of god.

I speak of nearly two tons of high tensile fire-resistant fabric knitted together with a foul smelling glue, a thin metal frame, and bladders of highly-flammable hydrogen gas suspended in a net above my head.

It is not much; certainly more ethereal than a man’s belief in his god.

The balloon is nearly inflated now, glowing silvery against the moonlight. It’s just my mother and I preparing for launch, secreted away along the edge of her expansive property. Our mission has been in the works for months, and if all goes well I will be the first woman to float to the north pole. And if all doesn’t, I will likely be the first known woman to die trying. That ought to frighten me, but it doesn’t. A thrill runs down my spine.

The actual compartment I will be flying in is not a typical fairweather basket, but a metal sphere not unlike a diving bell. Two layers of aluminum with packed straw sandwiched between as insulation. That will be all that protects me from hail, wind, and extreme cold. It stands, weighted down by sand bags, waiting for me to crawl inside.

“You have your journals, Ellena?”

We’ve weighed and re-weighed everything I will be taking. There is little room for margin once we take off, and there will be nowhere to stop to refuel the hydrogen bladders. But my journals were never on the table to be cut; without them I am simply a fanciful woman, with them I am a scientist.

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Prompt: Feckless

Synonyms: useless, without effect

It looks so good, dressed up on TV: a little pill, not too big, not too small. White, because white means clarity and health and purity and other marketing things that Henry doesn’t buy into. The commercials show people on a beach, doing slow motion beach things, bright glowing light dancing on everyone’s shoulders and hair.

“Love the sun again,” it boasts.

Henry takes a ship through the straw of his blood pack. He’s almost through the blister and it’s supposed to last him until Tuesday according to the nutrient plan his doctor put him on. Now that the cure’s out, insurance won’t cover the blood delivery any more so he’s had to cut back on the good stuff.

Sun’s going down outside and he can feel it in his blood, like a rising tide. He can’t see it from inside his apartment; that would be suicide. But the little red numbers on his clock say it’s almost seven o’clock. Thanks to winter and daylight savings time, it’s safe enough.

He dons his windbreaker, turns the collar up against the wind, and steps into the dusk.

San Francisco is a good city to be dead in. Lots of people selling their blood for cash, lots of people to buy black market blood from, too-- Hepatitis tastes a bit funny, but it’s better than going hungry.

Henry hits up a vampire standing outside a 7-Eleven who gives him a hit out of the blister pack he’s sipping from. Even if he’s metabolically dead now, at least camaraderie isn’t.

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There is spittle in her hair. Amenanta is standing over her, made hazy by her blurred vision and the swirling red dust. She looks like a god, smug and powerful.

“Walk it off,” Amenanta says from above her, arms crossed over her chest, and Heilia feels something boil in her belly. It’s red hot, and it wants to crawl out of her, and so she lets it take over. She rolls onto her knees and rises, slowly so she won’t faint or throw up as her body protests strongly. But then she’s standing at her full height which is taller than Amenanta by half a hand, squared up feet to hips to shoulders to fists.

“Do you want to taste dust again?” Amenanta is so sure, so pleased with herself, that the hot live thing in Heilia’s belly roars up and takes over her fists and she slaps Amenanta’s pretty face with her left hand and then swinging in hard and fast and heavy with her right, balled up in a tight hammer strike to the cheekbone.

The hit doesn’t land. It’s a good punch, but Amenanta is fast and out of the way like wind, and putting Heilia down into the dust like wind, too.

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Prompt: Impossible

She’s going to die.

Her vision starts to pulse and fade and she knows with certainty she’s seconds away from pulling that cursed involuntary gasp of seawater that will kill her, and she thinks, “at least I’m dying in the sea. I like the sea.”

Seawater rushes into her lungs and it tastes sweet. Satisfying. She breathes it. And then she wiggles her body free of the rigging that held her captive before, now floating around her like dead eels. She sees her life vest, too, floating beside her and still snapped shut, like she hadn’t just been wrapped up in it a second ago. Somehow she’s slithered out of that, too.

Nina’s lived on the ocean her whole life, sailed for most of it, swam in it and all its dangerous tides and creatures since birth. She knows this shape she’s become.

“I’m a god damned squid,” she thinks.

And then the shock ends and she’s at the surface again, and when she grasps at the ruins of her beloved little ship her hands are her own, ten fingers and mottled brown skin burned browner yet with the sun.

A coast guard ship is not a hundred yards out and heading towards her with lights shining and she thinks, “Oh, god I’m safe.” And then, “Also I was a squid.” Because both seemed equally true and equally impossible.

She goes home that night and visits her parents and her aunt down the street for dinner, like she does a few times a week, and it’s like nothing’s changed.

“Shame about your boat, but you’re damned lucky to be alive.” Her dad is a brusk man. A good man, but firm in what he believes and unwilling to censor himself. “Foolish of you to be out in weather like that, making the coasties come and rescue you.”

Her aunt shushes him and puts another heap of mashed potatoes on his plate. “We’re just happy you’re alright. Want any more ham?”

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Prompt: everything looks like a nail
Content Warning for premature babies and scary medical situations, nothing explicit

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There is someone I haven’t met yet who is 2 lbs 1 oz. He was born last week, 15 weeks early, and someday he’ll call me aunt.

This week everything I think of floats back to him. How is he doing? Is he growing the way he should? Is he safe? Will be be okay? Will be be blind or have cerebral palsy? Will he struggle with language and have developmental delays?

I’ll love him no matter the outcome, of course. That was never in question. And he has good, loving parents, too. This tiny person is my brother’s son. My younger, baby brother, who with his wife has wanted desperately to be a parent. They’ve tried hard, and had hard losses. And I still see the two of them as so, so young.

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“I love you.”

It’s whispered gently in her head and reverberates somewhere above her left eye, where her grandmother is buzzing around today.

Arvilla stirs clockwise six times, taps her wooden spoon thrice against the copper cauldron, and speaks the magic words. Then, with her grandmother’s love humming in her mind like a kiss, she decants the watery potion into the six waiting vials on her desk a few feet away. The wood face of the desk is scarred and mottled with years of potions accidents, knife scores from hasty chopping, and hard use. But it serves her just fine, just like the rest of the house. Two chimneys, a hearth half the size of the house itself, and a roof half made of vents on various pulleys to keep the place cool even in the heat of summer with the fires blazing.

It’s a good house.

She corks the six vials after blowing a kiss into each, and smiles when they shift from a slippery yellow color to a deeper purple.

“You’ve such a deft hand with potions. I know, there’s plenty else for a girl with your talents to be doing,” her grandmother says. She’s moved a bit, her voice coming closer now to her ear.

Arvilla rolls her eyes. “I like my life, grandma. I like it here. What would I do without this house? Besides, why can’t you go bother mother, hm? I think she’s in the bahamas right now, wouldn’t you rather be there?”

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Resolution and Revolution

The graffiti is stark and violent looking-- bright, poppy red with little drips down the word. Just the one word, with a slash cutting through the word it’s replacing. Simple, really. 

It’s been popping up all over town, and if there’s one thing Eli’s sure of it’s that this case of sign debasement is not being tolerated. Overtime is getting paid out, and that’s how he knows it’s serious.

So he’s out past eight o’clock because the money is good, isn’t it. Spends plenty fine. He’s got his bucket and rag, his rubber gloves, and his industrial bottle of acetone and he’s here to undo what’s been done, to try to put the rabbit back in the hat.

He works silently with only the sound of passing cars and far-away too-loud conversations to keep him company. It’s a weekday so there’s no alcohol permitted in the city, so at least there aren’t any drunks. And curfew is in an hour anyhow, so he’ll be alone and unbothered soon enough.

He dips the rag and starts to work, scrubbing until the poppy-red ‘revolution’ fades away, sliding towards pink as it drips to the sidewalk in a cascade of pungent chemical. It doesn’t fade completely-- spray paint has gotten good, and this is the illegal kind only available on the black market. But it’s better. ‘Revolution’ is just a shadow by the time he’s finished, at least in the hazy light provided by the streetlamp.

The letters spell out the government’s preferred motto now without alteration: In Resolution, Peace. It’s on the sides of almost every official building, stamped on driving permits, and emblazoned on the shirts of federal workers nation-wide. School kids chant it every morning. Eli used to, too.

Eli puts the bucket and rag in the back of his truck. It’s inching towards nine o’clock but he has a work pass to be out after curfew if he needs to be. He snaps a picture of his handiwork for his boss, who requires that, and then puts his phone in the car as well, in the passenger glove compartment where it always lives. He can’t turn the location tracker off-- no one can anymore. So the glove compartment is a good place for it.

Also in the glove compartment of his truck is a can of red spray paint-- the illegal, hard to source kind. He lets his fingers brush over the canister, and drives down the street to the diner that stays open to 10 o’clock to feed people with legitimate after-curfew permits. He parks the truck, orders a burger, and then goes to stretch his legs.

He stops by his truck on the way. His hands are clean when he comes to eat his burger, and of course his gloves have spray paint on them. That’s his job, isn’t it?

He gets the work order the next day, too. Not a curfew job, but a morning one. Same state building, same sign. Strange, unsettling, they said, that someone worked that quick. He nods and frowns with them. Strange indeed. But the money spends just fine, he says with a smile, and goes to collect his bucket.

“In Revolution, Peace.”

Bonjour. I do not speak French.

Once, in Paris, I hugged a woman who reminded me of the sun. She is bright and vibrant and her words can bring life and death. She's a ballet dancer and a lawyer and she walks through parks delighting in the world around her, bundled up against the gentle chills of Paris in the spring.

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I'm back on LJ... for the singular purpose of participating in LJ Idol. :)
Looking forward (and with some anticipation) towards Season 11...

So friend Cisyln convinced me to join up and join her team for this craziness while I was petting cats, my known weak spot. So I'll be doing the LJ idol mini season writing extravoganza with her and others on what is now known as Team Avocado.
\o/
:)