Shadows Edge

Beer, Brawls and Baubles

Tom Onsof was surprised to wake up on Monday morning. But only because he clearly remembered the world ending on Sunday afternoon. Or at least he thought he did. Maybe it was Saturday afternoon. The memory was pretty clear though. As clear as any of his memories these days, anyway.

Bare feet slapped the tile floor as he sat up on the edge of his bed. Bloodshot eyes blinked several times as his vision steadied and cleared. The aging B-list star rubbed his had over a chin that bore at least two days worth of stubble and yawned carefully. His head was already throbbing and his stomach was threatening to eat his backbone.

When had he eaten last? He considered the question as he stretched and ran a hand through his mousy shoulder length brown hair - or tried to anyway. His fingers got stuck halfway through, caught by a rat’s nest of tangles and hair spray. Tom groaned as he disentangled his hand, wincing as he managed to pull out a few hairs in the process.

Heaving himself to his feet, Tom gave up on the questions and headed for the shower. He looked at the bedside clock, noting the time. if it truly was Monday, and he was still none to sure of that, then he had a scheduled gig in a few hours. A shower, food and a dip into his stash were in order before Ginny showed up to drive him over to the club.

Tom let the hot water pour over him for a few minutes, eyes closed and unthinking. Finally he roused himself, dumping shampoo on his hair and scrubbing. He knew it was going to take at least two washing to get the hairspray out - of course, he’d just be putting more hairspray on it when he got to the club. Lather, rinse, repeat. Lather, rinse, repeat. And finally, when he could dectect no more stiffness or stickiness, conditioner. Too much probably, but he didn’t feel like pulling out half of his already thinning hair when he tried to comb it out.

He scrubbed quickly, knowing he wouldn’t have much hot water left. His lanky body was dripping as he stepped out of the shower and grabbed the towel that hung on the knob of the bathroom door. He towelled his hair until it no longer dripped then finished drying himself off.

Wrapping the towel around his waist, he wandered back out to the main room of the studio apartment that served as his current home. A quick check verified that he’d neglected to set the coffeemaker up, so he filled the water reservoir and dumped some grounds in the basket before pressing the On button. He pulled open the door of the mini-fridge and frowned. Creamer, a tupperware container with some leftover spaghetti and some parmesean cheese. A survey through the few cabinets yielded only some saltine crackers, sugar and a half-empty bag of stale tortilla chips.

Tom noticed his hands shook slightly as he poured a cup of coffee. Leaving it on the counter, he returned to his bed, rummaging through the pile of clothes at its foot until he found his jeans and a a t-shirt that wasn’t too wrinkled. Dressed, he wandered back into the bathroom and concentrated on dragging a comb through his hair without losing half of it. When his hair was de-tangled to his satisfaction, Tom went back to the coffee he’d poured. Heavy doses of sugar and creamer made it drinkable and he contemplated the container of left-over spaghetti in the mini-fridge.

It kept him from worrying about where he’d put his stash, at least for the moment. He pulled the container out of the fridge and looked at it. It had a date written on the lid - Ginny must have left it for him. A quick tally of days in his head told him it was probably safe to eat, so Tom opened it and shoved it in the microwave to heat up. When the spaghetti was ready, he scarfed it down, tossing the fork and container into the sink to be dealt with later.

His hair had dried while he was eating, so he went into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror. Tom grimaced. His hair wasn’t exactly straight, but it wasn’t curly either. The only definite about it was that it was frizzy. He sighed and shook his head as he grabbed a hair tie and his brush. It only took a minute or two to pull it back and secure it.

Tom took a moment or two more to search the drawer and medicine cabinet. He even checked behind the toilet tank. Still no stash. He felt a tinge of panic and forced it down. There were still places he hadn’t checked. Not many, perhaps, but he still might find it. And eve if he didn’t, he could always get his hands on some more. It wasn’t that hard to find. He just had to hope he had the money for it. Well, that and hope the import shop was open.

He finished getting ready, tuned his guitar, and sat, fidgitting. Even the emergency stash he’d kept in the guitar case was gone. Tom cracked his knuckles, then got up and paced as much as the small studio would let him. He had to turn his mind to something else, had to get it away from his missing stash.

If the world had ended yesterday, and he was still fairly certain it had, how was it that he and everything else was still here? What exactly did he remember from yesterday anyway? He’d just taken a hit, so he’d had his stash then. . . and then there’d been a noise like a thunderclap, a bright flash of light, and then darkness and the sense that he’d been falling. And he’d woken up in his own bed. But he hadn’t been at home. He’d been at Jasper’s place.

Now that he thought about it, there were more blank spots in his memory than he’d thought there were.

The knock at his door startled him and he jumped off the bed and to his feet. it only took a couple of steps to get to the door. It took a couple of seconds more for him to get the lock to disengage and wrestle the door open.

It was Ginny, hand raised to knock again. She lowered her hand and looked him up and down. “Jeez Tom, what were you up to this weekend? You look like you just got out of bed.”

“Just the usual.” If his voice was a touch sullen, Ginny was used to it. She laughed softly, still standing at the door. “Come on, Wonder boy. We’re running late.”

He swore but went to get his guitar, returning a moment later. Ginny gazed at him with a raised brow, then took a closer look at him, noting the slightly shaking of his hands and the bloodshot eyes. “How much Fairy Dust did you have this weekend, Tom?”

He muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like “all of it” and Ginny couldn’t help a little laugh. She shook her head and gave him a rueful smile. “You’ll just have to manage without it until after the gig. I don’t know how you can even stomach that sugary stuff in the first place. And you’re the only person I know who could manage to get himself addicted to a candy!”

Tom shrugged, checked the lock, double checked that he had his keys, and pulled the door shut. He followed her down the hallway and stairs and slid into the passenger seat after carefully stowing the guitar in the back. He drummed his fingers on the armrest, tapping one foot and generally fidgetting, but Ginny only glanced over a him once or twice and shook her head.

The drive to the club didn’t take long and Ginny ushered him in, showing him to the stage and then to the “green room” such as it was. Tom slumped into a cheap chair, staring at nothing for a long moment. He was going to have to do this gig without his Fairy Dust. How long had it been since he’d done a gig without the stuff? Too long for him to remember.

He felt the sweat break out on his forehead and pushed himself to his feet. Fear filled him, made him restless and he paced, trying to get rid of it. He checked and rechecked the tuning of his guitar, gulped down what seemed like gallons of water. The sound check went by in a blur and he found himself back in the green room with no memory of how he’d gotten there.

Through the walls, he could hear the thump of dance music as the club opened its doors. he turned to Ginny. “Ginny, I don’t think I can do this.”

She looked at the wide, bloodshot eyes and smiled gently. Putting a hand on his arm, she led him to a chair and pushed him into it. “You can do this Tom. You’re looking better - getting some color back in your face. You know these songs so well you could do them in your sleep. And Lighthouses will always be yours.”

Tom only nodded, sitting still for a moment. It was then that he realized the canned dance music had stopped. He sent a frantic look at Ginny before nerves moved him up and out of the chair to grab his guitar. He fidgetted as he stood offstage waiting for the DJ to introduce him.

“Welcome to Red River, folks! Tonight we have the honor of having the songwriter and artist responsible for a song that hit number one on the charts ten years ago with us tonight. So help me give a warm welcome to the artist responsible for ‘Lighthouses’, Jarboe!”

Tom took a deep breath, plastered a slight smile on his lips and took the stage. Every light but the spot died as he strummed the opening chord of ‘Lighthouses’ and looked out at the sparse crowd, wonder how he’d get through the set without the boost he usually got from his Dust.

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Where Are You?

Mary Gibson planted both hands on her hips and glared down at the turtle. “You,” she said, “are wasting my time.” The mother of six looked at her youngest son’s pet turtle - or maybe it was a tortoise - she could never remember. It wasn’t one of those cute little turtles though. It had to weigh forty or fifty pounds and she couldn’t lift it out of the sandbox.

That was a problem, since she suspected that her keys were lying underneath it. Running a hand through frazzled blonde hair, she sighed and knocked on the turtle’s shell. “Come on, Pokey, move.”

Mary tried pushing, pulling and even digging. Nothing worked. Pokey wouldn’t move. Finally it occurred to her to try tempting the turtle with a treat of some kind. She went back inside and opening the refrigerator, rummaged in the vegetable bin for a moment. Suddenly she grinned as she pulled her hand from the bin, the missing keys dangling from her fingers.

Mary set the keys on the kitchen counter and rummaged around in the vegetable bin again. She pulled out a few carrots, opened a drawer and got a knife out. A couple of cuts whittled the carrots down to a reasonable size and she took them out to the turtle.

She was on the way back into the house when a sudden, bright flash of light startled her and made her eyes water. Mary blinked a few times and rubbed her eyes until she could see without spots. Green eyes looked up at the cloudless sky and then she shrugged and went back inside.

A quick look at the clock told Mary she was now running a little late. She went to the bottom of the stairs and listened for a moment. No noise. That meant the kids were dawdling.

“John, Timothy, Mary Beth, Anthony, Sally, Mark! Get your butts down here in less than five minutes or it’ll be extra chores this weekend!”

Mary remained at the bottom of the stairs for another minute, listening. Doors slammed, feet ran down the hallway, water ran. She nodded. Now the children were moving and hopefully they wouldn’t end up running too much later than they already were.

Mary returned to the kitchen, making sure that each of the six different reusable lunch bags had the appropriate lunch items in them. That done, she opened the freezer, surveyed the contents and pulled out a lean cuisine. Setting it on the counter, she looked at the counter, remembering for once that she’d set her keys there. She had, hadn’t she?

No keyes anywhere on the counter. Mary bent down and scanned the floor and under the appliances. Still no keys. She stood up with a sigh, just as the kids came trampling down the stairs in a noisy herd. Mary Beth looked at her and started giggling. “You lost them again, didn’t you, Mom?”

Mary shot her oldest daughter a look of exasperation, before nodding. As soon as they had the confirmation, asll six of her children spread out and started looking in every niche and corner. She was forever losing her keys and the kids knew the drill. The sooner the keys were found, the less scatter brained and frazzled their mother would be.

Only Mary Beth stayed nearby, a grin on her young face. “Okay Mom, think for a sec. Where is the last place you remember having them?”

Mary blushed. “I found them in the vegetable bin in the fridge and set them on the counte. Then I took some carrots out to Pokey. When I came back inside, the keys were gone.”

Are you sure you actually took them out of the vegetable bin, Mom?”

Mary nodded but opened the refrigerator anyway. Embarrassingly enough, she had - on more than one occasion - thought she’d moved her keys, only to find them in their original location later. She knew she was scatter brained, but it seemed odd that she could be so certain of the having done something only to discover that she hadn’t actually done it.

Mary looked at all the shelves of the fridge first - if she had pulled the keys out of the vegetable bin, it was possible she’d set them down on one of the shelves instead of on the counter.

No luck.

She sighed and opened the vegetable bin, green eyes hesitating before she looked inside it. Wilting lettuce, a couple of tomatoes, and unopened package of carrots. . . unopened package? Hadn’t she opened that package to give a few carrots to Pokey? She lifted the carrots, and there, sitting on the bottom of the bin, were her keys.

Mary grabbed the keys and slowly closed the vegetable bin and then the refrigerator. As she turned around to look at Mary Beth, she shook her head. Her daughter only grinned and yelled to her siblings. “Found ‘em!”

The rest of the children piled back into the kitchen, turning it into a scene of momentary chaos as each grabbed their lunch bags and headed out to the SUV.

Mary remained for a moment after the last child left. She looked around the kitchen, keys in her hand. There was something weird about this, but she didn’t know what. After a moment, the sound of car doors slamming got her attention and Mary Gibson, mother of six, grabbed her frozen, diet lunch from the counter and left the house, locking the door behind her.

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Mission implausible: perfectly planned, poorly executedIn a gargantuan explosion of fire and dust and ice, the earth, the solar system and a good chunk of the galaxy blew up. And in the resulting silence, all that could be heard was a sheepish, ” oh… Bugger. ”

I knew that voice… And that particular phrase. ” Ezekiel? What did you do this time?”

“Nothing really… Well nothing I can’t put right in just a little bit, Boss.”

I looked at his view screen. ” Zeke, please tell me that you were just running a simulation. ”

He had the grace to blush as he took his hands away from the data pad. “I um, well actually Boss, it was supposed to be an experiment.” Zeke glanced at the screen and wouldn’t look at me. “I thought I’d set all the parameters correctly but I guess I miscalculated somewhere.”

I took a deep breath and studied the screen and its data. ” at least one. And now we’ve got one hell of a mess to clean up.”

He flinched and twisted his hands in his lap, wings fluttering slightly. Ezekiel Angelica hated it whenever I made a reference to hell. Never mind that neither Heaven nor Hell even existed except in the minds of certain sentient beings.

” I can fix it Boss. Really I can. Just give me a day or two.” He was earnest. He really believed what he was saying. And an average operator would be able to do exactly that. Ezekiel was not your average operator. Apparently he was no more an operator then he was a guardian, or a creator, or a guide.

Which is to say that we were running out of jobs for him. So far, everything we put him to had been an unmitigated failure.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t try. He did. What ever it as we gave him, he threw himself into 100%. And it wasn’t that he lacked the knowledge, or even the capability. By all accounts, he should have been one of our best. But the reality didn’t match the theory, unfortunately.

” I’ll take care of it, Zeke. Your shifts about over anyway. Take tomorrow off and don’t worry about it.” My eyes never left the view screen. They didn’t need to. I already knew what I’d see. Zeke would be looking at me, eyes sad and wings drooping. I glanced at the time display instead. ” go home Zeke. I’ll give you a call later.”

” but Boss.”

” Zeke, go home.”

Even his voice was crestfallen. ” OK Boss.”

I stepped back and let him pass me, waiting until the door shut behind him before activated the intercom. ” you catch all of that Control?”

” yeah. Don’t know where else we can put the poor bastard though Boss.”

“I know. He’s not going to be comfortable in any of the positions we have left.”

“Can you fix it?”

I was surprised by the uncertainty in Controls voice.

” any competent operator can fix it. But I’ll take care of it. No need to let the extent of this one get out.”

” OK Boss. Next shift is isn’t due in for two cycles.”

I seated myself in front of Zeke’s view screen and put my hand on the data pad. “Let me know half the cycle before their start time.”

” will do Boss. Good luck.”

I nodded absently, already processing the parameters Zeke had set and overlooking his code.

Half a cycle later, I sat back with a frown. At first glance. I couldn’t see where he went wrong. I got up and poured myself a cup of the sludge that passed for coffee and paced the length of the room a few times.

Maybe it was the stimulant, or maybe I had just needed it to stretch my legs, but suddenly a light went on. I hurried back to the work station and pulled up the code. After a moment, I nodded. There it was. Change that piece of code and adjust the associated parameters and that should put everything back to rights.

I manipulated the data pad quickly, taking care to double check the changes I made before saving. Then I ran the modifications through the simulation mode. The galaxy, solar system, and earth reappeared on the view screen. I sighed in relief just as Control notified me I had a 1/2 cycle left.

Then a tiny blinking icon located on one of earth’s continent’s caught my attention. I looked closer, finally zooming in. When I could see what the icon represented, I groaned.

It was Ezekiel and the modifications had -not- run in simulation mode. They had run in active mode. I sighed and told Control to look at the results, only one thought running through my mind. ” that didn’t turn out right. Oh my god, what have I done?”

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It’s here again - NaNoWriMo.

Last year I made the 50,000 word goal but I didn’t finish my story. It got too stale by the end because I’d over-planned it. This year I’m taking a different tack - my planning consisted of pulling things out of NaNo’s dares and “Adopt-A-______” forums. I’m also doing the initial writing longhand.

*laughs* yes. I’m insane.

But you already knew that.

My story - my first attempt at something humorous - has 6 main characters. Each is introduced in its own chapter - so the first six chapters are really just there to establish the characters.

I’ve had a few people ask to see what I’m writing, so I thought I’d post the first six chapters so that you can meet the characters. You’ll have to wait until after NaNoWriMo is over to see the rest. I’ll post one chapter each day for the next six days.

Enjoy.

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I’ve been all over the place this year and I just found my way back onto the map.? Starting tomorrow, I’m getting back to writing and to working on other projects I’ve started but not finished. And I’m getting back to posting here on a regular basis. It’ll be mostly snippets and pieces of things - I’ll just have to see if any of them go anywhere.

I do have some updates to the map that I posted at the beginning of the year, and I’ll be posting them in the next couple of days.

Things are starting to move forward again - and this time the road is clear and visible.

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This short piece is based on Say What? Take #44 on YourCre8tivity.

I’m a curious person, always have been. I can’t help it. Even the hint of a secret makes me itch. They say that curiosity killed the cat - makes me glad I’m not one. Though I do wish for the 9 lives cats are supposed to have. I could use them about now.

See, digging for those secrets, I learn stuff. Most of the time it’s silly things. Useful for satisfying my curiosity, but not good for much else. So I know things. And sometimes I get in over my head. Because, you know, sometimes “knowledge is power, if you know it about the right person.”

At the moment, a senator and a big corporate CEO know that I know their secrets. Like I said, in over my head.

Know any cats looking to get rid of a life or two?

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I’m not sure what it is lately, but I’ve been in the mood for stuff with a paranormal twist.? From TV to books, reading and even my own writing. Interestingly enough, I’ve been seeing more recommendations for things with this twist on the ‘net - at least in the areas I frequent.

No doubt you can see it in some of the past posts I’ve done - with Jimmy especially. Urban fantasy, paranormal whatever - It seems to be a genre in which my writing fits. We’ll see - certainly most of the works that are actively in process tend that direction.

I need to get back to writing and editing!

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Well, I definitely got off track with my writing. NaNoEdMo pushed everything to the back. And now, I have characters in the back of the head that want my to write about them.? But I’m too far behind on my 2YN and editing for Revenant.? ? Then there are the short stories that have been started.? It’s going to take a couple of weeks to get back on track I think, but I’m working on it.? I have to get there before June when Script Frenzy starts!

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This comes from YourCre8tivity’s Say What? Take Four, though I used the? quotation more as an Inspiration Tag. Here’s the quote:

“Fortune can, for her pleasure, fools advance,
and toss them on the wheels of Chance.”
–Juvenal

Fortuna smiled as she watched the fools below maneuver for position. Not one of them had any idea she was watching, much less that they were there for her pleasure. The lure of wealth and the illusion of power were the bait that had drawn these self-important businessmen and power-brokers.

A few would be granted potentially lucrative contracts. It would be entertaining to see what they did when those contracts proved more difficult than expected. What would they do when the future of their fortune rode on their own efforts and Chance?

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This is from YourCre8tivity’s Inspiration Tag #4

Noon, in the middle of summer. Stephen was the only person outside. He knew things were changing as he watched shadows crawl against the sky.

Air conditioners should have been running all across the city. Kids should have been playing in yards and at pools. They weren’t.

The streetlights cast pools of light on the empty streets. Noon, in the middle of summer, but it could have been an overcast midnight in fall. And the storm was going to break soon.

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