Marian Allen's Blog, page 362

27 Sleeper: A True Story @StoryADayMay

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A “sleeper,” in case you don’t know, means something that lies dormant until it, you know, doesn’t.

We’re coming down to the wire for Story A Day in May. Beginning this Sunday, instead of posting every day, I’ll be back to my regular schedule of … well … posting every day. Not a story every day, though. My regular schedule is:

MONDAY — something writeyTUESDAY — random, but foody/writey at Fatal FoodiesWEDNESDAY — something foodyTHURSDAY — randomFRIDAY — I recommend a book, website(s), band, movie, product, or some damn thingSATURDAY — My Russian blue, Katya, will back at work doing her Caturday postsSUNDAY — Sample Sunday will return to being excerpts from books/stories I’ve published or am working on, with the very occasional original flash fiction.

Now here’s today’s attempt:

Sleeper: A True Story

by Marian Allen

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who loved stories. She would happily sit for hours, listening to stories being read or told.

Many times, a grownup would stop another one just when the story was getting fascinatingly odd, with the words, “Shhh! Little pitchers have big ears.” Then she would be sent outside to play, and she would miss the best part.

Grownups were so mean and selfish, sometimes.

The little girl loved television dramas and comedies, and old movies on television. The commercial breaks gave her time to think about the stories and characters, and sometimes there were inexplicable gaps (which she later learned were edits made for community standards or to make time for the commercials) that made the story even more intriguing. The most excitingly strange story she ever watched, she was disappointed to learn, owed its mind-expanding wonder to the fact that the station programmer had switched two of the segments. The dead lady didn’t really appear again, with her friends and family acting like a dead lady back alive wan’t no thang. Alas. But what if the story did go that way…?

Her mother didn’t believe in spanking, but she was sorely tempted: When she put the girl in Time Out, she would come back to release her and find the girl happily telling stories to her feet. What’s a mother to do?

The girl told fewer lies than one might imagine. That would be too much like work, and stories were for fun.

The kids in the neighborhood came to her when they wanted to play ‘Ten’ Like, because she was good at coming up with playable scenarios. In case you never played this game by this name, ‘ten’ is short for pretend. “Okay, ‘ten’ like John is the sheriff and ‘ten’ like Lily is your girlfriend but she’s secretly the head of a gang of bank robbers….”

What a lazy girl! All she wanted to do was sit around and read or watch television or gaze at nothing. The grownups had to wake her up from some kind of daze to get her to do anything. She got punished at school for daydreaming instead of listening, and her teachers couldn’t understand why such a sweet, quiet girl was always late finishing her classwork.

So she grew up, married an English teacher, gave birth to another story addict, wrote books and stories, became part of a publishing house, did Story A Day in May Writing Challenge, and lived happily ever after.

Not just in her dreams, either.

~ * ~

That statue, by the way, was a gift from my mother’s mother, who died when I was a young teen. She said it reminded her of me. It reminded me of me, too. Thank you, Grandma. ♥

I’m posting at Fatal Foodies today on the subject of Caek Of The Birfday Kind.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Daydreams.

MA

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26 Cave Art @StoryADayMay

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Sorry I’m late posting; I turned off my alarm and overslept.

I bought this painting at a student art show at Eastern Kentucky University sometime between 1968 and 1972. If anybody knows the artist, please let me know. I love this painting! I have it on the wall of my office.

I’ve been wanting to write a story about it for a long time, so thank you, Story A Day May, for making that happen.

Cave Art

by Marian Allen

Dr. K did something she would have dismissed one of her archeology students for doing: She left the dig without a buddy and without telling anybody she was going. She had her cell phone with her and she left a note on her camp table with her general direction marked on a reusable map overlay, but that was it.

She had a hunch, and she didn’t want to share it until she had something besides archaeologist’s intuition to back it up.

Spain was hotter and more humid that usual this year. She was grateful for the clouds that blocked the fierce summer sun, even though the air became so damp she felt she could tear off a chunk and wring it out like a sponge.

Dr. K sighted her goal, a recess in the rock halfway up a cliff face, and plotted an ascent. Her hunch had begun when she, stretching her legs with some of her students a few days earlier, had noted traces of what might have been a path from the ground to the recess.

She pulled out her camera and took pictures as she climbed, annotated them with text and voice.

“The path may have been much wider at some time, but erosion of the path itself and scree from erosion from above have erased some of it.”

The heart-stopping crack of thunder, simultaneous with the nova of lightning that produced it, nearly sent her to the canyon floor. She retained her balance and reached the slightly wider ledge of her goal two steps ahead, but she did it in more of a blind lunge than a deliberate process; she turned an ankle and landed on a knee more heavily than was good for it.

That was when the clouds opened and dumped bucket after bucket of water, heavy with warmth.

Dr. K used language only a dock worker or an archaeologist would use.

Even as the curses rolled from her lips, she noted triumphantly that, seen from this angle, the recess was clearly a narrow doorway, shielded from view from below by a natural curtain of rock. A doorway means something beyond it. In the current situation, it meant somewhere dry.

She wasn’t about to try to put weight on the leg that throbbed in two places already. But one limb out of commission just meant three perfectly good limbs, so Dr. K used them to ease herself through the shielded door. Just inside, she pulled out her phone and used the flashlight app to survey what she was getting into. Entering a wild animal’s lair would be A Bad Idea. Scorpions would be worse.

Nothing on the floor of the small chamber. Nothing on the walls. On the ceiling – Oh, only bats. Bats were all right.

She turned off the light.

Outside, the deluge continued.

All right, then.

It was disappointing that her phone didn’t transform into a telescoping cane. It did damn near everything else, so why not that?

She turned the flashlight back on and played the light over the walls again. And she saw it.

In the back of the chamber was a flat section. Now that her eyes were adjusted to the cave’s gloom, the small electronic light was bright enough to show what she had missed before: intentional charcoal strokes forming pictures of animals.

She turned off the light, crawled closer, and turned it on again.

Yes! Cave art, never reported here before.

She took picture after picture, her mind only gradually registering what she was recording.

Horses. Horses fighting. Horses with poky things on their heads.

Unicorns.

Cave art of unicorns fighting.

She switched from camera to light and gaped.

There could be no mistake. It was a cave painting of two unicorns locked in battle.

She accessed her picture gallery, selected all the pictures she’d taken of the ledge and the cave, and clicked on the Share icon. She needed to email these to herself, in case her phone broke before she got back to camp. She hadn’t gotten her doctorate by being careless. Well, today had been foolish, but look what had come of it!

No go.

She checked her settings and made sure her GPS was on. She rebooted the phone. No signal. Some combination of factors seemed to have put her into a Faraday cage, with no signals going out or coming in. Oh, well. She’d just have to be careful, going back down….

And how was she getting back down, without being able to walk? She couldn’t crawl down a path that was six inches wide in some places.

Maybe she could get reception on the ledge outside the cave. When the rain stopped, she’d try.

She shivered.

The cave was chilly and she was soaked to the skin. She must be a little shocky from the tumble she’d taken and the pain from her ankle and knee.

Not that she doubted what she was seeing.

Okay, now she doubted, because what she saw now was movement.

The unicorns turned their heads to look at her. As the heads turned, they blended. They came toward her, out of the drawing, moving together, bodies blending and rounding out.

Apparently, in dimensions, two plus two equals three.

The unicorn came off the wall and onto the floor in front of her. It looked as big as a Jeep. Its black eyes glowed green in the light of the camera’s beam.

Without knowing how it happened, she found herself on the unicorn’s back. They melted through the rock curtain. Dr. K didn’t feel the passage, just the transition from cool shelter to the pummeling of warm water.

The unicorn picked its way down the cliff’s face.

When they reached the canyon floor, Dr. K felt herself sliding off the creature’s back. She tried to hold on, but she had no traction and she couldn’t tightened her grip. Helplessly, she dropped to the ground.

The unicorn aimed its horn at her. She couldn’t move away. It touched her forehead with the tip of its horn.

It was gone.

The students were all around her before the downpour let her hear them coming.

“Did you see it?” she asked them.

“See what?”

See what? She couldn’t remember. “That lightning.” She remembered a stunner of a flash. That must be what she meant.

“Yeah. And we couldn’t find you and we didn’t know where you went,” her dig assistant scolded. “If one of us did that, you’d send us home so fast our head would spin.”

Dr. K apologized, and accepted their help back to camp and their subsequent teasing with good grace.

She had had a good reason for going off alone but, unable to remember what it was, she couldn’t insist on it. Whatever the reason had been, it must not have panned out, because there were no pictures, notes, or recordings of the three hours she was unaccounted for.

She never went off alone and in secret again.

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25 Holly And The Gift Of The Maigret @StoryADayMay #SampleSunday

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I’m sorry today’s story is a bit long; I don’t have time to make it shorter.

Holly And The Gift Of The Maigret

by Marian Allen

It was the Festival of the Anti-Hot Solemnities on planet Llannonn, and Assistant Librarian Holly Jahangiri was away from home. Everyone went home for the Solemnities!

As it turned out, almost everyone went home.

Head Librarian Devra Langsam, director and house mother of Council City’s main living library, lived in Council City, so she had always sent Holly back to Meadow of Flowers Province for the festivities. This year, though, the head librarian had been forced to take compassionate leave for the entire month.

“I hate to do it to you,” she had told Holly. “But my grandmother is filing for Lady Bountiful status, and the whole family has to move in with her for a month and accept her lavish hospitality.”

“I understand,” Holly had said, mindful that her own grandmother had qualified easily, years ago, and without having to stuff the charity box to do it. That was city folk for you.

She had hoped the books would go home, too, so she could close the library and leave in time for the main feast. Some of them did have families to go to, and did leave. Others, especially the ones set during Earth’s anti-hot and/or anti-hot-holiday season, were checked out. Still others had become favorites of families or individuals and were invited to join them with the understanding that they wouldn’t be asked to recite more of themselves than brief excerpts.

But, as they say in the book biz, it takes all kinds to make a library. There were still four volumes in need of care, and of course Parlourmaid Tambar Miznalia and The Art of French Cooking (the library chef) had holiday breaks in their contracts.

And now there were five.

The books on hand had drawn names to be one another’s Anonymous Donor, and their gifts crowded under the Tarp of Joy, wrapped and labeled, ready for the Big Reveal on Swag Night.

Holly answered the ring at the library door, ready to either tell a last-minute reader that the library was closed or hand out candy alley-jammers to Anti-Hot-Solemnity carolers. It was neither. It was an elderly man dressed in a three-piece suit, a heavy overcoat, and a hat. In one hand, he held an empty pipe; in the other, a sheaf of papers.

“I am Three Adventures of Inspector Maigret, by Georges Simenon,” he said.

“We weren’t expecting you until after the holidays!” Holly stepped aside to let him in.

He refused to surrender his hat and overcoat, but willingly followed her up to the Head Librarian’s office for a glass of white wine.

“My papers came through today,” he said. “I have no family. I’ve been living in a rented room and can no longer afford it. I spent my last eent on my costume. I couldn’t even afford tobacco for my pipe. I hope that won’t be a problem.”

“We provide our books’ costumes and props,” Holly assured him. “You’ll be reimbursed, as soon as our Head Librarian returns. In the meantime, you’re welcome. Your room is ready for you.”

She rang for Parlourmaid Tambar Miznalia, remembered the staff was away, cursed under her breath, and rose. “I’ll show you to your room. Then, if you’ll come downstairs to the library proper, I’ll introduce you to your fellow volumes.”

She left them there chatting, wrapped her signature purple feather boa around her neck, and ducked out of the building.

Nothing. He has nothing. No family, no place but the library, no Anonymous Donor. Holly’s magnificent heart would not allow a book to look on, bereft, while others opened presents.

She found what she was looking for: a shop specializing in items imported from exotic Earth. The register would be closed until after the Solemnities, but perhaps something could be arranged.

She returned to the library with her neck bare, and wrapped and labeled the small package she carried.

When Three Adventures of Inspector Maigret accompanied the other books out on a round of caroling, she tucked her package under the tarp.

At last, it was time for the Big Reveal. The books settled around the Tarp of Joy. All together, the chanted, “One. Two. Three. Four. What????” and Holly whipped the tarp away with a practiced flourish, revealing what were now five packages.

No, six!

For not only was there a package for Three Adventures of Inspector Maigret, there was one addressed to Assistant Librarian Holly Jahangiri.

The other books tore open their gifts and raced each other to the kitchen for the Post-Reveal treats that waited there.

Three Adventures looked up from the package of pipe tobacco he held, and Holly looked up from the lizard-monster scarf pin in her hand.

“This is from you,” she said.

Three Adventures nodded. “You could have turned me away, but you welcomed me. The other books said you have a purple feather boa and a strange fascination with a giant Earth lizard monster.”

Holly didn’t know whether to chuckle or weep, so she did both.

“I traded my boa for your pipe tobacco,” she said.

“That’s all right,” said Three Adventures. “I traded my pipe for your pin.”

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24 Katya In Florence, Italy @StoryADayMay

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Katya Graymalkin here.

Mom has stopped teasing me and trying to get me to write her Story A Day stories on Caturday. She says she’ll be glad when May is over, so she can have a day off. I pointed out that nobody forces her to blog every day, but she just says, “Hesh,” which she says was her great-grandmother’s version of “Hush.” She’s a little bit weird, my mom.

But she gave me a fun adventure this week. She says the last day in May is a Caturday. I still maintain I can’t write the story for her, but maybe I’ll collaborate with her on it. We’ll see.

Katya In Florence, Italy

by Marian Allen

When Katya retired from being a house cat, she decided to spend her considerable savings on travel.

Because she had heard her human mom praising it so, the first place she wanted to see was Florence, Italy. So she bought herself a first class ticket and off she flew.

Her mom had told her to take a hat, but Katya loved to sit in the sun, so she had saved her hat money to spend on the trip. As soon as she stepped off the plane, she was very much irritated to admit her mom had been right: The sun in Florence was beautiful but intense, like molten gold. So what was the first thing she bought?

A HAT!

It was made of woven straw, with a colorful scarf in place of a hatband. The second thing she bought was a silver brooch shaped like a turtle. She would give it to her mother as a souvenir but, meanwhile, she fastened it to her hat.

The cats of Florence all told her she needed to visit Rome, where cats roamed wild all over the city. Katya thanked them politely, but resolved to stay in Florence. She enjoyed sneaking outside on nice days, but that was as wild as she cared to roam, thank you. Neither did Venice sound at all appealing, with its canals and rising seawater. It made her shudder, just to think about it.

She wandered the streets and byways of the glorious city, eating whatever she pleased, thanks to the power of her enchanting green eyes and silver fur.

Turning one corner, she came upon a group of street musicians. She crept close to them, the better to hear them and feel the beat. Their donation box, empty before Katya stopped by them, began to fill.

The female singer, who didn’t play an instrument, knelt and stroked Katya’s head and back. Katya purred, but also squawked, which was Katya’s way.

Oof! The woman grabbed her! She stuffed Katya into an empty sack and cinched it closed.

But Katya wasn’t to be so easily taken. She protested loudly and fought against the muffling cloth.

From nearby alleys and distant squares, the cats of Florence came running. The musicians found themselves surrounded by growling, snarling felines.

“What is the commotion?” A policeman ran into the square. “What do you have in that sack, that has the attention of all the cats?”
“It’s a fish,” said the singer.

“It sounds like a cat.”

“It’s a catfish. Imported from America.”

“America, eh? America, I believe. For I know that hat, which is lying on the ground at your feet. That is the hat of the magnificent American tourist, Katya Graymalkin. It is she, who is in the sack. Release her at once!” He blew his whistle.

The singer released Katya with a grudging apology.

Katya’s Florentine friends greeted her with joy. They all took her out for wine and shrimp pasta, and they saw her safely onto the plane the next day.

Katya’s mom loved her brooch. Katya never told her about her adventure, not wanting to worry her, not even when her mom said, “Aren’t you glad you took a hat, like I told you to?”

~ * ~

Some bad jokes, Mom, but that was fun. >^..^<

A WRITING PROMPT FOR ANIMALS: If you could travel, where would you go?

KG

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23 From The Book Of First Bambi @StoryADayMay

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Why in the name of hand-made hell did I take a picture of pruning shears for a prompt? ~sigh~ My muse has some heavy lifting to do this morning. I just hope she isn’t out drinking with my guardian angel.

Here goes nothin’.

From The Book Of First Bambi

by Marian Allen

In the land of Corydon, there dwelt a man who kept a garden.

He had a dog who rolled and dug in the freshly turned earth, and the man cursed him roundly.

He had tomato plants and kale and cabbage and asparagus, and insects did eat them and lay eggs between their leaves, and he cursed the insects.

He had strawberries and beans, and rabbits did eat the plants, lo, even down to the soil line, and the man cursed the rabbits.

He had cucumbers and squash, and turtles did eat them, and he cursed the turtles.

He had blueberries, and deer did come up, yea, even within sight of the dog, and ate the blossoms off, and the man cursed the dear.

He also cursed the dog again, for good measure.

Now, the man had a pair of pruning shears, which he used to trim off any dead or unproductive plant growth, or any bit he termed “a sucker,” which drew energy from the part of the plant he wanted to be strong.

One day, he put the shears down and went inside for tea and got a phone call during which he and his friend would have solved all the problems of the world, if only the people in power had taken their advice,

Then he remembered he needed to paint the porch,

Then he decided to strip and re-wax the kitchen floor,

Then he turned on some music and took a nap.

When he went back to work, he had forgotten where he put the shears and he never found them again.

And centuries passed, and men and the children of men walked no more upon the earth.

Nor their little dogs, either.

Ungulants and lagomorphs developed opposable thumbs and worked side-by-side in the garden.

And they cursed the insects and the turtles.

And the God of Irony looked down, and saw that it was good.

AMEN

There used to be a stripper in Louisville who went by the name of Bambi Deer. I guess nobody ever told her that Bambi was a boy.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A tool is misplaced or lost.

MA

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22 One Rainy Day In The Woods @StoryADayMay

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Cosmo fans will be happy to learn that this is a Cosmo story. I haven’t spent any time with him in a long time, so I was delighted when he showed up this morning to tell me this story.

One Rainy Day In The Woods

by Marian Allen

It was as cold inside the ruined house as it was outside, but at least there was one room with a roof to keep the rain off. There was only so much you could expect from a coat, and Cosmo was way past ready for shelter.

Nobody had predicted this cold front to dog-leg down from Canada and turn a muggy Spring into a little slice of torrential Hell.

Cosmo shrugged out of his coat, a knee-length, many-pocketed reversible, lightweight gray wool on one side, gray oilskin on the other. The first thing he retrieved from it was a protein bar. Fighting the cold and wet burned a lot of energy.

He finished in three huge, teen-age bites, then tucked the wrapper into the big pocket he lined with a plastic grocery bag. While he was at it, he collected a couple of plastic bottles and food wrappers apparently left by other, earlier shelterers who didn’t share his distaste for leaving their marks.

He dropped the coat on the floor when a man’s voice said, from a corner,

“Good for you, son.”

Cosmo retrieved his coat, making no sudden moves, slipping his hand into the pocket where he kept his switchblade.

“I didn’t know this was somebody’s place,” he said. “I just ducked in out of the rain, but I’ll leave. No hassle, okay?”

“It’s not a problem, son.” The man stepped into what light there was and held out empty hands. “Been a long time since I was dangerous.” He made a soft, laugh-like sound. “I was just wishing somebody would come in and make a fire.” He jerked his head in the direction of a brick chimney, with a fireplace shut away behind folding glass doors. “I laid it a long time ago, but I can’t light it.”

Cosmo let go of his knife and checked out the fireplace. The yellowed newspaper, kindling, and wood were all damp from the humidity, and punky from dry rot. The tips of the matches on the mantle flaked off when he tried to strike one.

“See?” The man’s voice put more regret and wistfulness into that one word than Cosmo had heard in his entire life.

“Is there more wood?”

“In the box. I brought it in before I laid the fire.”

The woodbox was filled with split logs, riddled with bug tunnels and the occasional mouse. Cosmo pulled a half-dozen pieces from the heart of the box, dryer and more solid than the ones on the top. He stacked a couple on top of the punky ones already laid.

Cosmo had a roll of waterproof matches in one of his pockets, but he saved them for when nothing else worked. His flint-and-steel firestarter did just fine this time; after a grudging smolder, the old paper caught and flamed. Cosmo closed the glass doors until the bottom draft had sucked the fire up into the wood, then opened them and fed another piece onto the pile.

“Ah!” The man stepped closer to the fire, his palms out to the dry warmth.

“You hungry?” Cosmo carried more protein bars, some jerky, dried fruit, a canteen. “Thirsty?”

“No, no, I’m fine. You have something.”

The teen settled where he could get to the poker if he needed to and ate. When the fire got low, he added more wood, replacing what he burned with pieces from the box, up-ending them first on the hearth to dry.

“You know what you’re doing,” the mad said.

“I like knowing what I’m doing. It’s kind of my hobby.”

“Not a bad one. Not a bad one.”

The storm passed and the light strengthened.

“I better be getting home,” Cosmo said. “Mom always calls me on her break, and she’ll worry if I tell her I’ve been out in this weather.”

“Don’t tell her.”

“I don’t lie to my mom, man. That’s been done, you know?”

“I guess you gotta go, then.” Regret. Resignation. Acceptance.

“The fire’s going good, though. Just keep feeding it. Is there more wood stacked outside? I’ll bring some in.”

“No, close the doors and let it burn out.”

“You got somewhere to go?”

“No. I’m staying right here, but I can’t move any wood.”

Cosmo never asked people Why?. They either explained or they didn’t.

“See you, then,” he said.

“Maybe.”

Cosmo pulled on his coat. “Want me to leave some matches? The damp won’t hurt them.”

The man brightened. “That’d be great! Thanks!”

Making a mental note to replace them, Cosmo left his roll of matches in the center of the mantle, where they could be found easily.

As he left, he turned in the doorway for a final wave at his short-term companion.

“Thanks for the fire,” the man said. “It was heaven.”

Cosmo wasn’t surprised when the man vanished.

~ * ~

Cosmo makes appearances in most of the stories in THE KING OF CHEROKEE CREEK, one of my 99-cent short story collections.

Read about it and sample it.
Buy it for the Kindle at Amazon.
Buy it from iTunes.
Buy it for the Nook at Barnes and Noble.
Buy it in other electronic formats at Smashwords.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Someone gets caught in the rain.

MA

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21 Best Ride In Space @StoryADayMay

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The best ride in space is NOT on the Millennium Falcon.

This would have been a good story for The Race To The Hugo Award, but I didn’t write it until now so, unless I can go back in time, it’s too late. ha!

The Best Ride In Space

by Marian Allen

“That rocker was my great-great grandmother’s,” Captain Thierry told the rare passenger or crewmember admitted to her private quarters. “The only thing I have of hers. Yes, I knew her; she was one of that last generation who did the longevity stuff.”

Although the medical and technological ability to prolong productive and healthy lives still existed, few people took advantage of it anymore. Healthy lives, strong bodies, yes. But long, healthy lives, it turned out, made people either too conservative of their lives and health to take any risks or, on the other end of the spectrum, suicidally reckless.

“She was one of the first colonists to leave the solar system,” the captain would say with pride. “One day, she’s rocking little me in that chair, the next I know, she’s a passenger on this very ship on her way to The Ark for ‘The Ride To Take Humanity To The Stars.’ She’ll outlive me by at least a century. Crazy, huh? So she brought along a few things from home, but it turned out she overestimated the room she had in storage and she had to leave the chair behind. So I kept it.”

A glider, not an actual rocker, it was bolted to the floor, and the cushions were Velcro’d in place. The captain liked to sleep in zero gravity.

Being captain meant the occasional night when concerns or a general sense of responsibility made it hard to sleep. Medication wasn’t an option.

On those nights, Captain Thierry dialed down her thermostat and cocooned herself in a flannel blanket. She curled up in the chair, snaked one arm out to fasten down the web that would hold her in place, then pulled the arm and her head into the web. One good and well-practiced thrust against her restraint started the chair on an equal-and-opposite reaction glide. The lack of gravity countered the slight metal-on-oiled metal and molecule-against molecule friction, so the rocking continued for some time.

More than enough time for someone with a spaceship full of responsibility to rock herself to sleep in her great-great grandmother’s wooden rocking chair.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Imagine something of yours in the distant future.

MA

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20 Double Vision @StoryADayMay

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Double vision can be a Bad Thing or a Good Thing. Those crazy pictures that were all the rage for a while, that you had to cross your eyes to see, were both. It was never worth the headache, really.

This story is about a good kind of double vision, featuring a doo-dah I picked up somewhere in my checkered past.

Double Vision

by Marian Allen

Don Arquebus supplemented his Social Security by buying old junk in shops and at yard sales, and reselling it on eBay and Etsy.

That was where he had found the stereopticon and its cards: in a small-town antique shop. The stereopticon wasn’t in the best condition, so it was going cheap. Ordinarily, he would have ignored something so obviously un-resalable, but it appealed to him.

It was like one of those View-Masters he had had when he was a boy, except this used cardboard with pictures pasted or printed on it instead of slides, and this needed the light coming over your shoulder instead of in front of you.

The first card he looked at, there in the shop, was a black-and-white picture of a maid in a long dark dress, a long white apron, and a frilly cap, trying to serve at table. The fat man she was trying to serve was laughing and throwing an arm out in an extravagant gesture; judging from her alarmed look and off-balance stance, he had nearly knocked the serving platter out of her hands.

Don laughed, delighted and startled at how 3D the picture was. He took the card out and examined it.

The two pictures of the same scene, pasted side-by-side onto the stiff rectangle, appeared identical. By some combination of printing or placement or lens, viewing the card through the stereopticon produced, as the View-Master had, the effect of three dimensions.

Don bought so much other merchandise, the shop’s owner threw in the stereopticon and its cards for free.

After a day on the computer, it pleased Don to get out the old technology and work his way through the stack of cards, spending a few minutes each evening losing himself in one old vision. It surprised him, which cards looked boring to the naked eye but fascinating in the device. So far, his favorites were a gnarled tree, a view of the far bank of the Nile at sunset, and a hotel dining room.

Eventually, he came back to that first card, which he greeted as if it were an old friend he’d lost track of. Odd, though, that he had remembered it as being black-and-white, when it was in warm sepia tones.

Now that Don had had some practice, he was able to appreciate the picture’s fine details. The expansive gentleman’s napkin was sliding off his lap. The alarmed maid had a sweet dimple in her right cheek. A door without a knob – probably to the kitchen – stood slightly open, and the face of a small dog, visible through the crack, mirrored the maid’s dismay.

When he had worked through all the cards – and all the cards he could find in his rambles – he shuffled them all and went through them again.

And here was the one with the maid, only in faded color! After the initial shock, Don realized that the picture must have been a popular one, and he had lucked onto three versions of the same card. Some day, he’d go through his collection and find them all.

The color one showed even more detail: The expansive gentleman had a bit of food in his mustache. A border of embroidered flowers trimmed the maid’s apron and cap. The little dog was brindled, and had one blue eye and one brown eye.

Now, at every shop and yard sale, he specifically looked for stereopticon cards. He only asked for them in the shops, having tired of explaining what they were to people who obviously didn’t have any. He seldom found any, and the ones he found were usually in worse shape than the ones he already had, or were too expensive for his budget. He always looked through them, though, but none of them were of the startled maid.

He was leaving a shop when he bumped into a passer-by. He stepped back and opened his mouth to apologize, and was somehow not surprised to find himself looking into the startled face of a woman of about his own age, with a sweet dimple in her right cheek. The decorative white scarf around her neck had a border of embroidered flowers. She led a small brindled dog on a leash. One blue eye and one brown eye. Check.

Apology. Conversation. Coffee. Telephone. Lunch. Dinner. Courtship. Marriage.

Don only hoped he never ran into that overstuffed blowhard with the dirty mustache. The nerve of the pompous walrus, upsetting a fellow’s wife like that!

~ * ~

I’m posting today at Fatal Foodies on the subject of plates.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: The past comes to life in some way or another.

MA

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19 Halves Of A Whole @StoryADayMay

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Halves Of A Whole

by Marian Allen

Rosamund and Violet smothered their giggles as their governess’ head drooped and her snores began. Papa was right to suspect Barrington, the butler, of appropriating brandy, but the girls knew more: Barrington shared his takings with Miss Edgings, who kept her share in medicine bottles and added it to her tea.

“Let’s go!” Violet stopped writing in mid-sentence, but Rosamund made their special be a statue sound, and Violet froze in place.

“Finish the assignment,” said Rosamund. She was a year older than her sister, and carried her responsibility with all the gravity an eleven-year-old could muster, which was a great deal of gravity, indeed.

“She might wake up!”

“She always sleeps for fifteen minutes after luncheon, and I slipped some extra ‘medicine’ into her cup today, while she was helping you with your sums.”

“You didn’t!”

“I did.”

Violet never really doubted that Rosamund had done it, but her sister’s enterprise and fearlessness never ceased to astound her. She dipped her pen into the ink again, and finished copying the text she had been set, managing only slightly more than her usual number of blots.

When Violet had finished, Rosamund breathed, “Cork the ink bottle, wipe your pen, and straighten your paper. If she wakes while we’re gone, we want it to look orderly. If it looks as if we bolted, she’ll raise the alarm.”

It was a shame, Violet thought, that women weren’t allowed in the army. Rosamund would make short work of any enemies of the British Empire.

Hand in hand, with Rosamund leading the way and Violet checking for pursuit, the girls crept along the hall from their top-floor schoolroom to the workroom of Standish, Mama’s lady’s maid. There, they found the object of their foray: Discarded trimmings, purchased by Mama and then discarded on further consideration. Standish kept these discards in a cabinet, her Scottish thrift forbidding her to do anything else.

The girls could have requested the materials they wanted and would have been given them, for Papa and Mama were indulgent (though not overindulgent) parents, but this was a secret project.

After a delightful inspection and discussion, during which the girls felt the giddy, greedy joy their mother must feel at having her choice of visual sweets one could consume and yet still have, they selected a length of ivory velvet ribbon and a ball of blue embroidery thread.

They carried off their prizes and stowed them under Rosamund’s summer hat in their shared closet. They were back at their desks before Miss Edgings, with a snort worthy of a carthorse, awoke.

More than a century later, in attics an ocean apart, two women who didn’t even suspect one another’s existence went through piles of old clothes. One found a length of ivory ribbon embroidered, in the childish precision of upper-class girls in the Victorian era, the word Forever. The other found, done in a slightly more childish manner, the word Friends. Each thought her ribbon looked as if it were only part of a longer sentiment. Each wondered what the whole had been, and why it had been cut.

Rosamund and Violet had been true to their project. They had never quarreled. Their lives had separated them by distance, but their project had always been two halves of a whole. It always would be.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write about friendship that knows no law.

MA

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18 Holly And The Turtles Of Llannonn @StoryADayMay #SampleSunday

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Holly And The Turtles of Llannonn

by Marian Allen

“I never seen nothing like it.” The exterminator removed his cap and scratched his head, in case the traditional poor grammar of his profession was indecipherable to his client. She was, after all, the Head Librarian of Council City’s Living Library, specializing in books from far-away, exotic Earth.

Head Librarian Holly Jahangiri, who grew up in rural Meadow of Flowers province, understood him all too well.

“How much do I owe you for that opinion?”

“Don’t be like that, Miss. Tell you what: No charge for today, and you give me a chit to come early to the next Friends of the Living Library used costume sale. The missus loves Earth clothes.”

Holly agreed.

“Remember,” the exterminator said, as he left, “it ain’t alley jammers, I do know that. Don’t let anybody tell you it is and charge you for it.”

Alone in her office, Holly called pictures of the pest’s depredations up on her desk screen. Whatever it was, it was making a mess of the library garden. It was hard enough to grow anything in the city, let alone Earth plants, but the books always wanted to see the origins of the foods within their texts, and the library hadn’t room for Clan of the Cave Bear‘s mastodons. Tess of the d’Urbervilles, of course, had to have strawberries, and The Importance of Being Earnest threatened to go on strike for cucumbers. And here were the fruits of these plants and more, each fruit with one triangular bite taken out of it.

Parlormaid Tambar Miznalia barged in without knocking, carrying a tray of Holly’s tea order. She plunked it on the tea table.

Knowing the answer would be affirmative, Holly followed etiquette and asked, “Is something bothering you, Parlormaid Tambar Miznalia?”

“He didn’t stay long. He didn’t know what’s doing it, did he?”

“No. He didn’t.”

The parlormaid, who was also the tea cook, crossed her arms to match her mood. “It’s nasty. I don’t like working with spoiled food. Besides, it might be under a leaf and bite me.”

That was true. If any employee ever took someone to court for allowing a wild animal to bite her in the garden, Parlormaid Tambar Miznalia was that employee.

Then the maid justified her employment. She said, “It’s eating Earth plants; maybe it’s an Earth animal.”

Holly leaped from her chair and embraced the sullen domestic, who burst into tears. So few people ever wanted to hug her, the over-stimulation threatened to send her into hysterics.

“There, there,” said Holly absently. “I apologize for taking the liberty, but that’s such a good notion! We’ll ask the books if they can put their texts together and figure this out.”

As it happened, only one head was needed, for the non-fiction Diode’s Experiment: A Box Turtle Investigates the Human World knew exactly what it was.

A call to Holly’s friend on the Council City policing force, Pel Darzin, told them the rest of the story.

“People buy these exotic pets,” he said, “then they get bored with them or don’t know how to care for them properly and turn them loose. Sometimes they drive them into the provinces to release them, but sometimes they just put them out on the street for alley jammers to deal with.”

When parlormaid Tambar Miznalia heard that, she joined Holly and the books in a thorough search of the grounds and, when the culprit was found, claimed him for herself. With the help of Diode’s Experiment, she set up a safe and comfortable habitat for him in a corner of the garden, and devoted at least an hour every day to personal interaction and turtle enrichment.

Holly personally coached every book in the library to begin each self-recitation with a Public Service Announcement about the importance of responsible pet ownership.

As a result, the Turtle Rescue Association of Llannonn And Liveable Asteroids awarded the library its badge of honor, the coveted TRALALA.

~ * ~

Wasn’t it self-effacing of me to use today’s Sample Sunday to write a Holly Jahangiri story, when the prompt was obviously suggesting I push my SAGE trilogy? Oh, what the hell: check out my SAGE page to see what these chelonians have in common with fantasy.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write about turtles.

MA

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