Bretigne Shaffer's Blog, page 2

The Fantastical Contraption Podcast is Up!

I’ve just launched the “Fantastical Contraption” podcast!

The idea is for it to be a little corner of Old-Time Radio in the podcast space… with an ever-so slight classical liberal bent.

I’m starting with a reading of “Elixir of Fear” – the Halloween story that’s almost as scary as the last four years. Let me know what you think in the comments!

I Walked on the Beach Today

I walked on the beach today

and this is what I saw:

*

A young woman throwing a ball into the waves

for her dog to chase,

and another dog running breathlessly

into the water

to chase it too.

I saw a little girl walking on tiptoes

into the sea.

I saw two people working together

to build a huge sand castle

out of gloopy sand.

And I saw this

perfect little seashell

and I picked it up.

*

And this is how I know

we will not be beaten.

*

Because the forces of darkness

cannot make a perfect seashell.

The forces of darkness

don’t make dogs happy.

The forces of darkness don’t care about sand castles,

AT ALL.

And the forces of darkness will never,

EVER,

be able to stop little girls

from wanting to walk on tiptoe

into the sea.

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"Annabel Pickering" on this Week's "Best Middle Grade Fantasy Books" list!

My fantasy novel, “Annabel Pickering and the Sky Pirates: The Fantastical Contraption” is featured on this week’s “Best Middle Grade Fantasy Books” list, over at Reedsy Discovery!

When I wrote “Annabel”, I was writing it with older children in mind: The “Harry Potter” age group. And of course, I look at all of those age groupings with an enormous grain of salt. There are more six year olds than you realize who are both ready for and interested in this kind of story, and likewise, a great many adults enjoy reading “middle-grade” fantasy stories. “Annabel” has gotten some great feedback both from children and young teens, as well as from adults, so if you’re the kind of adult who likes to read adventure fantasy, don’t let the “middle-grade” qualifier keep you away.

There are also – of course – strong political and philosophical themes in “Annabel”. But my hope is that those are more part of the background, and that the story and characters carry the show.

From the review on Reedsy:

If you had a chance to board an air ship that sailed the skies with pirates, would you jump at the idea or be fearful? Aren’t pirates supposed to follow a different code than most ‘normal’ law abiding citizens? It is this very reason that Miss Annabel Pickering finds herself among their company, and Shaffer certainly does make her journey fantastical!

As a thirteen-year-old girl, Annabel Pickering is far from perfect. She goes to school, she gets picked on, and she always avoids passing the spinster’s house on her way home for fear of even more torment from the mean girls. On one horrid day in particular, Annabel is on her way home when she sees men abducting her parents! Not knowing what she should do, her first instinct is to hide, but someone takes her from behind and drags her into a neighboring house before the men in black spot her. And to what house does she find herself holed up in…of course it’s the crazy old spinster’s house and her weird niece to boot! After some things are explained—but not much—Annabel must travel with pirates, escape the Queen’s Guard in a hotel, and forge friendships with those she would have never imagined in order to save her parents.

And yes, Book 2 is on the way! I’ll be posting more about that soon.

Alligator

A feeling of unease sat someplace between Nicole's sternum and her lower belly. If she tried to ignore it, it just welled up all the more, and fired off little adrenaline missiles to her heart and brain. The missiles were meant to warn her, she felt, but of what?

Inside the car it felt quiet and safe. Outside, rain pelted down against the windows, and the colors of nearby traffic lights and neon signs ran down the glass in rivulets before her eyes. Adam sat quietly at the wheel, and in the back seat, baby Abigail dozed in her carrier.

"Little Petal" they called her. Or, sometimes, "Blossom." They had noticed early on – early on being barely a few months ago – that her pink little fingers were precisely the color of the petals of apple blossoms. Hence the sobriquets.

As Abigail slept happily, Nicole turned to look back at her fat little cheeks and those apple-blossom fingers.

What was it?

The light turned green, and Adam maneuvered the car into the parking lot on the other side of the intersection. They came to a stop in front of a long, flat, sandy-colored strip mall.

"Here we are!" Announced Adam.

The missiles began firing from Nicole's belly into her chest and arms. Her mouth felt dry. She couldn't have said why. She gave a sigh and turned to her husband.

"Could we… maybe just wait a little longer?"

He looked at her, frowning.

"What for?" He asked.

"I don't know," she said slowly, glancing back at Abigail without even noticing she was doing it. "I just feel like something's not right. There's no rush, right? Maybe we need to learn a little more?"

Adam gave a little laugh. "Learn a little more from 'Doctor Google?'" he said, smiling. "Haven't you already done that?"

Nicole gave a defensive shrug. "I don't know… maybe… I just don't want to be rushed into this."

"Doctor Google" was the term their own doctor had used just over an hour ago, and also earlier in the week when they had been discussing the mysterious rash that had appeared on their infant daughter's tummy a few days previous. Nicole had mentioned that she'd gone online to try to identify the rash and learn what she could about what it might be.

It had been a little overwhelming. There was an abundance of information about all kinds of rashes that might appear on the bellies of infants, and Nicole had isolated the ones where the photos seemed to match what they were seeing on little Abigail's. Yet even with the trove of posts and articles she had found, there were no satisfying answers. The most promising hypothesis, she thought, was that the rash might be a side effect from the cold medicine they had given their daughter about a week earlier. The rash appeared soon after, and several of the posts had said that that cold medicine could sometimes produce this kind of rash.

Doctor Scrotley was not as enthusiastic about the information as Nicole had been.

"Well," he said kindly, "we're always eager to blame the medications that help us! And yes, it's a possibility. But a remote one, I think."

He went on to opine about the other possible causes lurking beneath the tiny raised bumps on their daughter's tummy, and some of them sounded a little frightening.

At one point, Adam interrupted him.

"But hang on," he said. "Isn't 'yaws' only found in the tropics?" Adam had spent some time in Asia when he had been in the military, and he knew about these things.

"Yes," the doctor nodded, "that's true. But in this day and age, with airplanes moving about the globe the way they do, it brings us all closer together than ever before. And we can't be too careful!"

Adam and Nicole had nodded solemnly and both looked over at Baby Abigail, who slept soundly in her carrier, oblivious to the tropical menace threatening her peace.

"However," Dr. Scrotley lifted a finger in the air, "I don't think that is the most likely cause in this case."

The new parents breathed quiet sighs of relief.

"So what do you think is?" Nicole asked tremulously.

"Well," the doctor sat back and spread his arms out wide. "We've been seeing a worrying rise in reports of Sub-Saharan Sand Mites around the country."

Adam and Nicole both looked at him with identical blank expressions.

"There was a paper in JAMA about it just last month," the doctor said, reaching across the counter for a stack of papers. He began to rifle through the papers, looking for the JAMA issue.

Nicole found her voice. "So, these… sand mites? They cause rashes like this one?"

"They can," said the doctor. "Ah!" He exclaimed, "here it is!"

He waved a copy of the latest edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association in the air. Nicole reached for it and he handed it to her.

"And," Adam ventured forth, "are they dangerous?"

"Well, we just don't know," said Dr. Scrotley. "That's a big part of what has me worried. Any time we're dealing with a life form from another part of the globe, well…"

Nicole was frowning.

"It says here," she said, looking down at the journal, "that three Sub-Saharan Sand Mites were found in the luggage of a passenger who landed at JFK last December, and that that passenger had a mysterious rash that later went away…"

"Mmmmm…" said the doctor gravely.

"…it doesn't say what was 'mysterious' about the rash…"

"Well," said the doctor, "they weren't sure what had caused it."

Now Adam was frowning. "So," he said, "they don't know that it was the sand mites?"

The doctor shook his head. "Can't be sure," he said. And then, to Nicole, "but read on!"

Nicole did, and frowned again.

"And in February, some 'suspected' sand mites were found in the lunchbox of a kindergartener in Marin County, California. 'Researchers are confident that the potential sand mites might very possibly be of the Sub-Saharan variety,'" she read.

"That doesn't sound very definitive," said Adam.

"No," admitted the doctor, "but science rarely is! People want certainty, they want black and white answers, absolute yesses and nos, and the best we can give them are the most promising hypotheses!"

"…it says here that the 'mites' had been smashed by an apple, and the researchers weren't even sure that's what they were," said Nicole, looking up from the journal.

The doctor spread his hands wide. "Again, 'promising hypotheses!' I can't give you absolute certainty! You'll have to go to your bishop for that!"

Nicole looked sideways at Adam.

"…or, you know, whatever your particular persuasion might be…"

"How did they even know to look there?" Asked Adam.

"Excuse me?"

"The lunchbox. Why were medical researchers examining a kindergartener's lunchbox?"

"Oh!" Said Dr. Scrotley blankly. "I don't know. Probably a routine check at school. But that's just it, I mean, think of all the lunchboxes that didn't get checked!"

Adam and Nicole thought about those lunchboxes.

"In any case," the doctor continued, "my point in showing you this is simply to drive home the reality that we could be witnessing the early stages of an unprecedented infestation of these insects!"

Nicole frowned again. "There were two instances where they were found. In the whole country." She looked down at the journal again. "Maybe only one."

The doctor nodded solemnly. "Yes," he said.

"How is that an 'infestation'?"

"Well," said the doctor, "in previous years, we hadn't seen any at all!"

"Was anyone looking for them in previous years?"

"That's not the point! The point is that, statistically, the increase is astronomical!"

"But…" Adam began.

"Listen," the pediatrician smiled broadly, "are either of you statisticians? Do you work with statistics?"

They both shook their heads.

"Then let's not get into the weeds here," he said kindly. "What's important is keeping little Abigail safe, isn't that right?"

Both parents nodded.

"So," Dr. Scrotley reached back into the pile of papers again and pulled out some colorful pamphlets. "Here's what I'm going to recommend."

He handed one pamphlet to Nicole and an identical one to Adam. They both sat quietly for a moment, examining the pamphlets.

On the front was a picture of a happy family, sitting on a sofa in their living room: A happy mother and father, two happy young children, and a presumably happy baby sitting on the mother's lap. All had clear, shining faces, and each one looked the perfect picture of health.

At their feet, on the carpet, lay an alligator.

For a moment, the two just sat looking at the image, afraid to open the pamphlet and learn more.

"Curalacertionium!" Dr. Scrotley said brightly. "A clever – and catchy – take on the Latin words for 'lizard' and 'cure.'"

The couple sat clutching their pamphlets as the doctor continued.

"Essentially," he said, "the idea is to use the sand mite's natural predators to eliminate it from the household, and from any hosts…" here he nodded towards Baby Abigail's carrier  "…it may have attached itself to."

"One of these known predators," he continued, "is the Egyptian Plover. You may know it as the 'crocodile bird', the little bird that goes inside the mouths of crocodiles and cleans their teeth?"

Adam and Nicole stared straight ahead at him. Adam nodded very slightly.

"So," the doctor continued, filling the silence that now echoed throughout the small room, "what we do, is, we bring in… um… a crocodile – an African crocodile" he hastened to clarify, "– and we place it in the host's environment. The presence of the crocodile – African crocodile – then draws in any plover that might be in the area, and those plover begin to feast, not only on whatever might be in the crocodile's mouth, but on any nearby insects, and especially any Sub-Saharan Sand Mites that might be in the vicinity!"

Nicole was now frowning deeply.

"But," she said slowly, as if struggling to find simple words to express what she was thinking, "WHAT plover? You said 'any plover that might be in the area,' but… I don't think there are any Egyptian plover in our area!" She looked quickly over at Adam, who looked back at her blankly.

"I mean…" she continued, "They're native to Africa, right? Why would they be here?"

The doctor nodded patiently. "Well," he said, "you'd be surprised…"

He reached again into the tall stack of papers and pulled out a magazine. A perky little bird with a black stripe running across its face and shoulder adorned the cover.

"'Nature' just had an article on this very topic," he said, handing her the magazine. "It turns out that, over the years, these birds have been escaping from zoos, people have been keeping them as pets… there are more of them out there than you'd think!"

Nicole opened the magazine and leafed through the pages until she found the article.

"But," she began, still looking at the magazine, "how do they know to come to where the…"

"That looks like an alligator!" Blurted Adam, who had been frowning at the brochure with the picture of the family on the cover.

Nicole turned to look at him.

"On the pamphlet," he said, showing it to her, and then to Dr. Scrotley. "That's an alligator, not a crocodile!"

"What?!?!?" Said Nicole.

"It's got a wide nose!" Adam, all of his his seventh-grade biology class flooding rapidly back into his head, exclaimed. "That makes it an alligator!"

Nicole gave her husband a look that asked, wordlessly, whether he might not have taken leave of his senses.

Dr. Scrotley nodded, and took the pamphlet from him. "Yes," he said, looking down at the picture. "There were some errors in the first promotional materials. In fact," he chuckled, "early on, a lot of people began calling it the 'Alligator Cure', and I'm afraid that name has stuck!"

"But rest assured," he continued with a gentle laugh. "we're we're not going to ask you to put an alligator in your child's bedroom!"

Nicole and Adam both felt themselves relax just a little.

"No, no," the doctor spoke reassuringly. "This is definitely not an alligator!" He gave another little laugh. "Why, the FDA would never allow that! No. This is a crocodile. An African crocodile!"

"Not an alligator?" Asked Adam, looking again at the pamphlet.

"Not an alligator."

Adam and Nicole looked at each other. Adam breathed a little sigh of relief. Nicole tightened her grip on her pamphlet.

"So…" A million questions vied for attention within Nicole's mind. With effort, she plucked from them the easiest to articulate: "How exactly does this work?"

Dr. Scrotley smiled. He reached for Adam's pamphlet, and opened it up for him. Inside was a cheery welcome message, followed by a list of bullet-pointed items.

"It's all really very simple," he smiled, and looked down at the bullet-pointed items.

"We'll send you home with everything you'll need: a plastic wading pool, which you can fill with water, a sun lamp, and enough crocodile food to last a couple of weeks. After that, you'll be getting regular supplies from one of our vendors. All you need to do," he looked up at them both, "is to pick up the crocodile itself, bring it home, and install it in little Amanda's bedroom!"

"Abigail." Nicole corrected him.

"Abigail! Yes! Sorry!" He chuckled.

Nicole was frowning. "And… how long does it stay there?"

"Typically, the whole process takes about a month," he answered. "What with allowing the plover time to come in and get settled – oh, you'll need to leave a window cracked open – and then for them to eat all of the mites… and their eggs. About a month, I'd say."

Nicole nodded. She looked over at Adam.

"What do you think, honey?"

Adam shrugged. "I think it's worth a try!"

"I don't know," said Nicole. "I'd just like a little time to think about it, maybe look into it a little more, do a little research…"

"Ah!" Dr. Scrotley’s eyes sparkled. "Would that be with 'Doctor Google'?"

Nicole could feel her cheeks turning red.

"Listen," said the doctor, "take some time, think about it, get whatever information you need. I don't want you to feel rushed into this."

Nicole nodded. Adam nodded.

"But remember," he cautioned, "every day that this rash goes untreated is another day that little Am… Abigail is at risk!"

The couple's eyes widened.

"At risk of what?" Asked Adam.

"Well," said Dr. Scrotley "that's just it, we don't know precisely. But these illnesses from that part of the world… well, they can be tricky. And unpredictable. And some rashes can progress quickly, and even become fatal! You've heard of Stevens-Johnson syndrome?"

Both parents shook their heads.

"Well, that's something to ask Dr. Google about," he said ominously. "It's not something to mess around with."

Adam and Nicole looked nervously at each other.

"But take your time," the doctor said reassuringly. "Let's touch base at the end of the week, and see where we are?"

The two nodded.

"Oh, and I should add," he said as if in passing, "if you decide not to go ahead with the treatment, I'm afraid I will no longer be able to see Baby Abigail."

Adam and Nicole both frowned.

"And… why is that?" Adam asked.

The doctor shrugged. "It's just a question of integrity," he explained. "If you can't trust me on this, you're unlikely to trust me about anything else. And that's no kind of healthy doctor-patient relationship. Wouldn't you agree?"

Adam nodded slowly. Nicole's eyes tightened just a little.

That night, Nicole sat up late with "Doctor Google." She knew enough to look beyond the first few pages of results. But she was surprised when, 18 pages in, she still hadn't found anything that raised any kind of serious concern about the "Alligator Cure."

The first couple of pages were full of references to a very large post-licensure study that had just been completed the past summer. The study had looked at thousands of families who had tried Curalacertionium. It had found that, while the treatment was not always completely successful – seventeen percent of families had only partial success, while five percent had no success at all – there had been no significant adverse outcomes at all.

"See?" Adam had smiled and squeezed her shoulder. "It's perfectly safe!"

Nicole frowned. "I'm just going to do a little more looking…"

By two in the morning, she still had not found anything that worried her. There were some reports of wading pools breaking and causing water damage in a few of the homes; and there were several instances of plover pecking at the sand mites and causing further irritation to the existing rashes. But neither of these outcomes caused her any great concern. If the worst risk to her baby was a little worsening of her rash for a short while, she was willing to take that risk.

Still, something gnawed at her. Everything she was learning about this treatment told her that it was perfectly safe, there was nothing to worry about. But something just didn't seem right. What could it be? She lay in bed tormenting herself with this question until it was time to get up and feed Baby Abigail again.

The next day she resumed her online search, with the same kinds of results. She also emailed a few friends who worked in healthcare and asked whether they knew anything about the treatment. None of them had had any direct experience with it, and they all said that the best thing was usually to listen to your doctor. After all, they're the experts, and that's what you're paying them for, right? One of her friends forwarded a link to the relevant page on the CDC website.

On Friday, they met again with Dr. Scrotley.

"So," he asked, smiling before them, opening his hands wide out to the sides, "how are we feeling about Curalacertionium?" The name rolled off of his tongue like candy.

"Well," said Nicole, "I did some looking…"

"And what did Doctor Google have to say about the 'Alligator Cure'?" He asked, still smiling.

Nicole shrugged. "It was all positive," she said. "I mean, there were a few things, like irritation from the plover pecking at the bugs, but… other than that…"

Dr. Scrotley was nodding. "Good," he said sympathetically, "good. So, are we ready to get started?"

Adam and Nicole had said that yes, they were.

And now, here they were, sitting in the pouring rain in the parking lot of "Cavern of Reptiles," discussing it all again.

"I don't know," said Nicole. "Something still just doesn't feel right." She looked Adam in the eye. "Doesn't something not feel right to you?"

"I mean," he shrugged, "sure, it's unusual. But you've done your due diligence. You've looked into it. I don't know what more information you could hope to find."

Nicole nodded, still frowning.

"And," Adam continued, "he is the professional. I mean, that's what we're paying him for, right?"

Nicole sighed. "You're right," she said. shaking her head. "You're right. I guess it's just that it's something new, and… well, kind of strange…"

Adam nodded. "I know what you mean," he said. "The unknown is always a little scary."

She nodded. "Yeah."

"But it's for Little Abigail," he said, with a nod to the back seat. "We've got to do it for her, right?"

"Right," said Nicole, taking his hand. "Right."

By the time they'd gotten the plastic wading pool set up in Baby Abigail's bedroom, and carried the crocodile inside – it had required the help of Ben, their next-door neighbor's teenaged son – it was already past dinner time.

The instructions had specified that it was very important to make sure that the crocodile always had food available in the wading pool. So the first thing they did was to empty out a day's worth of dry Croc-Chow biscuits into a ceramic bowl that they then placed in the pool with the creature. They watched as it snapped happily at the biscuits, and then they refilled the bowl so that it wouldn't get empty again before morning.

It was dark outside when Nicole put a sleeping Baby Abigail down in her crib. She looked over at the open window and frowned. The rain had stopped, and the spring breeze was light and cool. But it blew directly into the crib. So she stepped over to the dresser – being careful to avoid stepping in the plastic wading pool – and pulled a blanket out of the bottom drawer. She walked carefully back to the crib and draped the blanket over the side of her daughter's crib, to block the breeze that had been brushing across her soft, plump cheek. Then she quietly turned on the baby monitor and walked carefully over to the door.

She stood there for a moment, listening to her baby daughter's breathing, and watching the wind gently push the curtains from side to side. Spots of light from outside glistened on the surface of the water in the pool, and misshapen bumps rose from beneath that water. Other than Abigail’s breathing, and faint sounds of traffic in the distance, all was silent.

"Goodnight little Petal," she said quietly, and then she closed the door.

Davey Sunshine and the Sexual-Justice Warriors

I wrote this, under a different title, in June of 2015. I hope you enjoy it!

Life is good, mused Davey Sunshine as he ambled across the wooden bridge to Kresge College. Sprinkles of sunlight drifted down through the redwoods and he could taste the scent of spring in the air – woody and fresh, with a hint of the sea that lay just below campus.

Davey Sunshine had just taken some mushrooms. He had mixed them in peanut butter to eat them, and it left a funny taste in his mouth. It occurred to him that the one thing that could make his mouth taste better was chocolate. It also occurred to him that the best place to get chocolate on a sunny afternoon in Santa Cruz was Sluggo’s at Porter College. So off he went.

This particular afternoon Darcy Fortinbras sat at a small table in Sluggo’s with her friend and comrade Simon Fisk. Visually, they made an odd couple. Simon was tall, lanky and seemed underfed. He wore a faded Cesar Chavez t-shirt and threadbare blue jeans. He sat slumped in his chair as if he was taking a short break from his work in the fields, his legs dangling casually down from the chair. But the tightness around his eyes and the corners of his mouth suggested something other than farming on his mind.

Darcy was much shorter than Simon, squat almost, with a trim, muscular build. She had dark black hair (friends wondered if it was her natural color or whether she dyed it to match her black wardrobe) which she had had carefully clipped to create the impression of having been hacked at carelessly. She had a wide mouth and large dark eyes, around which she had drawn heavy black eyeliner.

Like Johnny Cash, Darcy Fortinbras had pledged to wear black every day of her life until all injustice had been scrubbed from the earth. For Darcy Fortinbras though, “Injustice” had quite a different meaning than it had had for Johnny Cash.

As they often did in the afternoons, Simon and Darcy were discussing this injustice and what they were going to do about it. Darcy was hunched over the table, a look of intense despair weighing her down. Simon leaned back into his chair, frowning deeply.

It was at this moment that Davey Sunshine walked into the cafe, stepped up to the counter and ordered himself a double-dipped mud-pie delight.

“You know,” said Simon glumly, “sometimes I think people are so consumed with greed and self-interest that the larger social structure doesn’t even matter. They’ll just continue grabbing and… and grasping… and…”

“…consuming…” Darcy filled in for him, nodding.

“…consuming, yes… oblivious to the fact that everything they consume is taken from the mouth of another.”

Darcy nodded some more.

“And yet…” Simon continued, gazing upward, “I wonder also whether I am just as guilty. Whether, as a white male, I even have the right to have my voice heard in a world where the less privileged have been silenced for so long.”

Darcy frowned, nodding a little more deeply.

Simon shook his head. “Every word I speak, every thought that I utter… is a word denied to someone else – perhaps someone more deserving. By what right do I claim even one iota of the world’s bandwidth from those who have no voice?”

Darcy reached out and clasped his hand in both of hers.

“Inequality is everywhere,” she said to him gently. “It’s like a virus, or… a fungus… or like that mold people find in their houses. Just when you’ve scraped away one layer and you think your work is done… there’s a deeper level to it. There’s always more. But we don’t shy away from it. You show great courage in confronting your own role in the systematic oppression of…”

“Sorry to eavesdrop,” Davey smiled widely at the couple at the table next to him.

Darcy looked up slowly from Simon’s hand, her eyes burning with all the rage she felt toward the world. A normal person, an unimpaired person, would have recognized the rage, would have immediately understood the message implicit in that stare: “The world is burning. I spend my every waking hour working to quench the inferno, to rectify the injustice that engulfs the world and you want to waste my time with idle chit chat?” A normal person would have slowly backed away.

But Davey Sunshine was no normal person. He was happy. Happy about the colors that were leaping out at him, shouting their names, colors he had never noticed before. Happy about the glimpses he was seeing of the people around him – little sparkling reflections of their childhoods, buried beneath decades of busy-ness, trying to fit in-ness and working to keep up-ness, glimpses that he could see now and that made him smile. “It’s always new,” he chuckled to himself. “Every time…”

“Hey, sorry buddy,” Simon had seen Darcy’s look of utter disbelief and interjected. “We’re a little busy…”

“Oh, hey!” Davey put his hands up in the air. “Me too! Believe me, I understand! It’s just… I heard you guys talking about all the injustice in the world, and inequality and stuff and it just made me think, you know, one of the biggest forms of inequality is sexual inequality.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. Simon tried very hard not to get angry.

“Yes of course,” said Darcy with disdain. “Inequality between the sexes is one of the most obvious forms of social oppression…”

“No no,” Davey waved his hands again. Simon noticed that it was beginning to irritate him. “No, I don’t mean feminism and all that…”

Darcy and Simon exchanged glances.

“…I mean, there’s this great inequality about who gets to have sex and who doesn’t.”

Darcy and Simon were silent.

“You know, say you’re a dude, and you’re really built, and good looking and…”

“You mean your features align with society’s arbitrary standards for sexual attraction?” Simon corrected him gently.

“Yeah, yeah…” Davey went on. “Or let’s say you’re a chick and you’re like blonde and hot and, you know, you have tits and everything…”

Darcy very subtly tossed the dark black bangs off of her forehead.

Davey looked from one blank face to the other. “Well, you know…” he laughed, “…those guys are gonna get all the sex they want, while the rest of us… well, it’s not always so easy.”

Darcy had gone very quiet. Simon could tell that she was processing and knew to stay quiet.

Davey didn’t.

“Oh man!” He shouted, jumping up from his seat and knocking the remainder of his double-dipped mud-pie delight into the air. It landed with a wet thunk right in front of Simon. “That guy’s shirt is like psychedelic!” Davey cried out as he dove toward the door, barely turning his head back to say goodbye. “Hey, nice talking with you guys!”

And he was gone.

A spattering of mud-pie delight had come to rest on the front of Simon’s Cesar Chavez t-shirt. He picked up a napkin, dipped it in his cup of ice water and very coolly dabbed at the brown flecks.

Finally, Darcy spoke.

“You know,” she said, “I think that guy might be on to something…”

                    *          *          *

Meghan had taken to walking around campus in the early morning and again at dusk. She couldn’t bear to be alone in her dorm room, and she didn’t want to be around other people. She wanted to be alone… but not alone. So she began to take long walks as soon as she woke up in the morning, before anyone else was out, and again after her last class had finished – after she had picked at a cafeteria dinner that smelled just like the one the day before, and after she had gone through the motions of studying in the library.

She would walk with no goal in mind, no destination, walking just for the sake of walking, just to keep moving until she was tired enough to fall asleep. She had never felt this way before. It didn’t occur to her to talk to anyone about it. She wasn’t even entirely sure that she and Chrissy had been “together.” But she had become such a big part of her life, taken over so much of her existence that now she was gone the emptiness was too much.

She couldn’t have talked to any of her friends anyway, since the official line about the relationship – now that it had ended – was that Chrissy had been “toxic”, she had been manipulative, had taken her for granted and sucked the energy from her, that Meghan was so much better off without her. And it was all true. She knew that, but none of it changed the bottomless chasm she faced when she came into her room at the end of the day and shut the door.

The only things that made any remote sense to Meghan now were being near the ocean – listening to the rhythm of the waves, feeling the spray and seeing the vast expanse of open possibility spread out before her; her morning and evening walks on the solitary pathways through the redwoods; and listening to David Bowie in the dark.

                    *          *          *

Davey Sunshine was missing his two top front teeth. He wore a set of fake teeth that he would take out at parties sometimes, just at the right moment, when those around him had reached just the right level of inebriation to be most affected by the sight. If three different people asked him how he lost those teeth, there would be three different stories. At this point in his life, not even Davey was entirely sure which was true.

Right now, Davey’s two front teeth were on his mind. He was lying on his back in the middle of a field, totally and utterly stoned. He was wondering what it might be like to be an insect – a bee in particular – and whether insects – bees that is – needed teeth. He did not know whether bees had, or needed, teeth, and he was thinking that if they didn’t, it might be nice to be a bee. To go through life not having to worry about biting down on things, or dental care. He did know that bees saw colors differently than humans did, and that their ability to see ultraviolet wavelengths was crucial to their ability to locate flowers and thus to the very survival of their species. What must it be like, he thought, lying there on the ground, to see colors so vibrantly? To be drawn to massive, vibrating flowers and to dive face first into them?

Davey Sunshine decided he wanted to find out. He rose, unsteadily at first, and looked around. He was in luck, as the field was dotted with wild flowers of every description. He said a little “yippee!” to himself and took off down the hill, his arms stretched out in the wind. Davey planted his face first into one bunch of flowers, then another, all the while buzzing, as students walked by with their backpacks and their friendship bracelets, barely noticing him.

At the same time, in the middle of campus, about as far away from Davey Sunshine as it would take a real bee to fly in three minutes, Darcy Fortinbras was shouting at a large gathering of students. She wouldn’t have called it shouting. She would have called it “speaking.” But the absence of any microphones or other amplifying equipment meant that she was, in reality, shouting.

“Who here,” she shouted slowly and clearly as she scanned the multitude of faces spread before her, “thinks it’s fair that the people who happen to meet society’s arbitrary definitions of ‘attractive’ get to have more sex than the rest of us?”

Angry howlings from the crowd indicated that nobody here did think that.

“Who here thinks it’s OK that people who score higher in the superficial realms of beauty and physical fitness get to reproduce more than those of us who may be more intelligent, more creative, kinder…?”

More howling.

“Does anyone really think it’s acceptable that some people can have sex whenever they want to while others go with no sex at all?”

A loud chorus of ‘BOOO’s rose up into the redwoods.

“Some cry ‘free choice’”, Darcy continued, “but it’s not about choice, it’s about the unequal distribution of sexual benefits, it’s about one privileged class getting more than others, and all because of the way they were born, the way they look. It’s not your ‘choice’ to deprive an entire class of people of their sexuality.”

Cheers erupted.

“What gives one person the right to have more sex just because of the way they were born?”

More cheers.

“Do we really want to allow our society to continue to be based on superficial values? Judging people and rewarding people based on their appearance? No! It’s time for a change!”

At this moment, Meghan – who had been pretending to study in the library – stepped outside to see what the noise was all about. She was just in time to hear Darcy’s big announcement:

“We call on the state of California to pass the ‘Equal Distribution of Sex Act’ – guaranteeing sex to the sexually underprivileged, to those people who do not meet society’s standards for ‘attractiveness’!”

The crowd went wild. Now even Darcy would agree that she was shouting.

“And we hereby announce a STUDENT STRIKE…”

Meghan hadn’t thought the crowd could get any louder. It could. She began fishing frantically through her over-the-shoulder bag for the earplugs she always carried with her for the occasions when humanity became too irritating.

“…UNTIL THIS LEGISLATION IS PASSED AND THIS INJUSTICE IS MADE RIGHT!”

The crowd was now unbearable. Unable to locate her earplugs, Meghan turned quickly on her heel and almost stumbled over a young man sitting cross-legged on the pavement and whooping as if his life depended on it. Meghan shook her head. Earlier, she had seen a grown man in a tie-dyed shirt running around a field buzzing and diving headfirst into bunches of flowers. Now this. The day had all of a sudden become too much.

“Maybe I just need to get the hell out of here,” Meghan muttered to herself as she stepped over the cross-legged man and wove her way through the onlookers and back to her dorm room.

The weeks that followed were filled with rallies and sit-ins. Meghan’s classes were nearly empty and some were simply cancelled. Euphoria filled the spring air and students ran – and often skipped – around campus shouting slogans and waving banners.

Darcy was interviewed on the campus radio station:

“And uh… who will provide the sex?” Asked the befuddled host.

“Everyone will be responsible for complying with the law,” said Darcy smartly.

“But… who will provide the sex?”

“The Board of Sexual Equalization will determine who is eligible for State Mandated Sex,” she explained, “and partners will be assigned based on a number of criteria including experience, desirability …and merit.”

“So… you mean… the government will force some people to have sex with other people?”

“We don’t like the word ‘force’,” said Darcy. “We prefer to say that the state prohibits the withholding of sex from the underprivileged.”

“But isn’t that… rape?”

“No, it’s not rape, because it’s done through the democratic process. So you’ve already consented to it by being a part of a democracy. We as a society agree that it’s the right thing to do, so to think of it as ‘rape’ is incorrect. It is Sexual Justice.”

The first time Davey Sunshine saw a student with a large red and white pin that said “Sexual Justice Warrior”, he pumped the air and shouted “right on!”

When the banners appeared proclaiming “Sex is a Human Right”, he said a silent “amen!”

When he saw a few more people wearing the pins, and a few more banners, it no longer seemed as original and he was less impressed. It wasn’t until he noticed that nearly everyone was wearing a pin or a t-shirt declaring themselves to be a “Sexual Justice Warrior”, that he started to wonder what it actually meant.

One day, as he was walking past one of the now daily rallies, he heard a voice call out to him:

“Hey! Rainbow Man! Yeah, you! The guy in the rainbow t-shirt!”

Davey turned and saw that it was the young woman up on the makeshift stage calling out to him. He thought he recognized her, and smiled.

“Come on up Rainbow Man!” Darcy called out. “You’re the one who started all this!”

Darcy introduced him to the crowd, and told the story of how they had met at Sluggo’s and how Davey had very astutely raised the idea of the Equal Distribution of Sex. Davey was ahead of his time, she said. He was a prophet, she said. We should all learn from Davey, she said, on this Victory Day of all days.

It was all coming back to Davey, and by the time Darcy handed him the microphone, he had some grasp of what this was all about.

“You guys are beautiful!” He shouted to the crowd. The crowd roared its approval.

“Man,” he said, wiping his brow and looking at the great throng before him, “who would have thought a casual conversation in a cafe could lead to all of… THIS!”

He said a little more about how beautiful they all were and how inspired he was by their action, how they had accomplished so much in so little time. He told them he was only the guy who came up with the idea, while they were the ones who had done all the work. He said it was they who should be up on stage, not him. And then he invited all of them to come up onto the stage with him. That was when Darcy said that unfortunately they had to move on because they had a message of congratulations from the Governor of California and suddenly he didn’t have the microphone anymore but he waved goodbye to everyone and they chanted his name several times and then it was all over.

He was still smiling by the time he got up to the Whole Earth Restaurant. He grabbed a newspaper from one of the tables, ordered some vegan chili and a sprouted muffin and sat down. He looked at the headline on the paper: “Signs of Water Found on Mars.” He chuckled to himself, shaking his head.

“Well you just never know,” he said to himself.

                    *          *          *

Several weeks later, Meghan still could not bear to be alone in her dorm room, but the searing pain had been replaced by a dull numbness. The gaping hole was still there but it was smaller, having been filled somewhat with the minor distractions that made up her life. Her daily walks now gave her a little happiness rather than merely relief from the emptiness.

Meghan found herself sitting in the quad with some friends, puzzling over a pamphlet that had been hand-delivered to every student. The pamphlet was bright pink and had pictures of happy faces of various genders and ethnicities on the cover.  Emblazoned in cheery yellow letters were the words: “Your Sex, Your Rights!”

A girl named Angie was looking through the pamphlet trying to see how it might apply to her. A pale blonde girl named Jessica stood next to her quietly.

“So… how does this work?” Angie asked of nobody in particular.

“Well,” said Candy, who had already read a good deal of it, “it says here, if you believe you are sexually underprivileged or have been unjustly deprived of sex, you apply with the BSE to get Sexual Equalization. ‘The BSE will evaluate your claim and if it is found to be valid, will assign you a sexual partner based on Equalization Criteria. Each pairing will be based on criteria that is designed to bring about the equal distribution of sex.’”

“Oh. So you don’t get a say in who your partner will be?”

“Well… it does say that ‘every effort will be made to accommodate special requests. If there is a specific person you would like to be your partner, please provide that person’s name, address, date of birth, social security number and/or any other identifying information…”

Jessica nodded along as Candy read. Meghan had only been half paying attention, but now something occurred to her.

“Um… what if someone requests a… partner… and that person has a different sexual orientation than them? You know, what if a straight chick requests a certain guy, but he’s gay?”

“Hang on…” Candy flipped through the pamphlet. “OK, here… ‘as the purpose of this legislation is Equal Access for All, differences in sexual orientation will not be considered valid criteria for an exemption or reassignment…’”

Jessica nodded.

Meghan found this last part somewhat troubling, but as she didn’t think of herself as ‘conventionally attractive’ to hetero males, she wasn’t too worried about it. Indeed, she wasn’t even ‘conventionally attractive’ within the lesbian circle in which she now found herself. When she thought about it, she didn’t really understand what had attracted Chrissy to her at all. Maybe it was just the fact that nobody else was attracted to her. Maybe it was that she thought she’d be easy to control, to dominate. The pamphlet wasn’t turning out to be the pleasant distraction Meghan had hoped it would be.

A girl with long red hair who she didn’t know was asking “…and… if the person you want is… you know… with someone else… does it say what happens then?”

“Um… let me check…” Candy flipped through again.

“Here it is, here it is, I found it… it says… ‘Should a person be found to be an acceptable match for a claimant, but is already in a relationship with another person, he or she will not be required to leave that relationship but will be required to fulfill his or her obligations to his or her legally assigned sexual partner. These obligations must be fulfilled during times that are convenient for the person to whom he or she is assigned. Should a conflict arise, the claimant should contact the BSE for assistance. If necessary, the BSE will impose a mandated schedule for couples who cannot come to agreement on their own.”

“That seems fair,” said Jessica, still nodding.

                    *          *          *

It was very early in the morning when Meghan first heard the screaming. By the time she had roused herself from bed and opened the door of her dorm room, a small crowd had gathered in the hallway.

At the end of the hall, six uniformed officers with guns were wrestling with a young woman. At first Meghan didn’t recognize her, but somebody nearby whispered “Stephanie…” and Marcie realized that she did vaguely know her, having seen her around the dorms. She had just never before seen her without makeup – or sobbing and distraught.

“Please God no!!!” She was shrieking at the top of her lungs. The officers remained calm.

“Ma’am you’re going to have to come with us,” one of the officers said. “You’ve had ample warning. You have failed to make contact with your assigned partner and you have not responded to attempts to contact you. You are in contempt of the law and you need to come with us.”

“Nooooooo!!!” Stephanie wailed and went limp, dropping to the floor. The officers pulled her back up roughly.

“Not him!” She screamed, eyes closed. “Anyone but him! He’s grotesque!!!”

Some of the students shook their heads.

“Entitled bitch!” A female student called out from the small crowd.

“Yeah, check your privilege, princess!” Spat a male student.

Stephanie’s screams continued as the officers dragged her from the hallway. The students moved aside respectfully to allow the officers through. One of the officers nodded his thanks.

“It’s a shame when some people think they’re above the law,” he commented as he pulled the girl through the doorway. The other students nodded their heads in sympathy, agreeing that it was indeed a shame.

                    *          *          *

It was early morning when Davey began the walk home, having spent several hours wrestling with a burst water pipe in the Stevenson dorms. He was shivering with cold, and tired, but somehow exhilarated. He had forgotten just how stunning the world was when he was sober, how serene the woods were, how delicious the early morning air could be, even as it stung to breathe it in.

Just past the library, he was surprised to see that he wasn’t the only person on the paths at this hour. Up ahead, a young woman walked at a deliberate pace, her arms wrapped around herself – less it seemed for warmth than for strength. She was dumpy looking, with nondescript mousy hair that hung down limply. She wore heavy round glasses and as he approached, he could see that she looked like she could use some cheering up.

“They told me the rally was at five,” he said to her. “I guess they meant pm.”

Meghan smiled faintly. She had seen this man somewhere before. His face was familiar but she couldn’t quite place it.

“This part of campus is so beautiful in the mornings,” he said. “I totally get why you’re out here now. I’m surprised everyone’s not out here now…”

She laughed a little to herself. Of course he had no idea why she was out here. But he was right. It was spectacularly beautiful here under the trees just before the sunlight hit them. The man was still talking. Where had she seen him before?

“…you know, cheering, waving banners, ‘Go sun!’ ‘Yay dewdrops! you’re doing great!!! ‘Way to go redwoods!’ ‘Nice job swirly pink clouds!’”

“It’d sure beat the Sexual Justice rallies,” she smiled.

“Yeah!” He exclaimed, “what’s that all about anyway?”

Meghan shook her head.

“I have no earthly idea,” she said to him. They were both quiet for a few minutes.

Then she told him about watching the woman from her dorm being dragged off screaming, listening to the other dorm members hurl abuse at her as the police took her away. She told him about the crowds that wouldn’t stop shouting and the banners and the pins and the t-shirts. She told him about the stupid pink and yellow pamphlets that had been delivered to every student. And then she found herself telling him about Chrissy.

She told him she had never expected to get so attached, that she just thought they were having fun. She told him that she didn’t even think of herself as ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ – she was just in love with a woman. Or had been. And she had never before known how dark and empty the world could be – how there was nowhere to hide from it. She told him that every time she thought she was over it, she’d find herself pulled back into the darkness, into the emptiness. She found herself sobbing now, having to stop talking in the middle of a word so she didn’t choke. And then after a while, she found that she had nothing more to say.

They walked in silence for a while. The sun was fully in the sky now, casting morning light and shadow on the path ahead of them.

“So what do you think,” asked Davey finally, “is there life on Mars?”

And for the first time in what seemed like forever, Meghan laughed out loud.

Urban Yogini: The Christmas Episode

Urban Yogini: The Christmas Episode

NOTE: I wrote and published this in 2017. Obviously quite a lot has changed in the intervening years. But I think the theme is, if anything, more relevant than ever.

Merry Christmas!

…stay tuned for Part 2!

Call for "Pandemic"-Related Fiction

I’ll start off by saying that I have no idea what I’m doing. But I just realized earlier today, or maybe it was last night, that I’m going to put together a little anthology of “pandemic” (in quote marks because I still don’t know what I want to be calling this thing)-related fiction and poetry.

To be clear, I’m not looking for pieces that present the lockdowns and other crimes against humanity as if they were legitimate or beneficial (or “necessary”.) Believe me, there’s been enough fiction written about that over the past three and a half years, thank you very much.

But all other fiction (by which I mean short stories and poetry) is welcome. It doesn’t have to even be explicitly “anti-lockdown.” It doesn’t have to take a position one way or the other. I’m just not going to publish anything that is explicitly pro-massive-human-rights violations.

It’s fine if it’s been published elsewhere, and you’ll keep all of your rights to your work, I’ll only ask for the right to publish.

As I said, I don’t know what I’m doing. So I probably haven’t given you enough information here. Please email me if you have questions!

Elixir of Fear

After the doctor was gone, it took a little while before everyone came back to their senses. The great mob of people that surrounded Harrison and his grandparents–and CubeSquared–just stood around looking confused at first. And then some people started

looking embarrassed and making excuses to leave. The crowd started to thin out.

Harrison heard his parents calling him. They couldn't remember why they were there, so Harrison told them that they had all come up for a big Halloween party at Gramma and Grampa's house. He told them he wanted to stay a little longer, and they said that was fine, but that they'd head home now.

After everyone else had left, and whatever remained of the fires had been extinguished, Harrison and Gramma and Grampa and CubeSquared all went into the house. They sat around the kitchen table drinking pumpkin-spice hot cocoa, and eating Gramma Rose's Halloween cookies.

"When he found the phone, it was terrifying," said CubeSquared, whose real name was Marie. "It genuinely felt like he could have just oozed through the phone lines and been there in the room with me. I was scared!"

"But then I figured you'd be the one who'd be in danger–and you didn't even know he'd found out! So I ran down to the greyhound station, and I caught the first bus I could get to New Zebedee, and, well... here I am!"

"And it's a good thing you did!" Exclaimed Gramma Rose. "Your bravery, and your concern and your friendship for Harrison, may well have been just the last push that our spell needed in order to succeed!"

"Grampa," asked Harrison, who was still very shaken up from the whole experience. "If we hadn't succeeded, if the doctor had won... would he really have had control over the whole world? Over everyone?"

"Well," said Gramma Rose, "that's what the spell books say would have happened, if he had completed his spell."

"But you, my boy," said Grampa Lewis, "you threw a wrench in those plans!"

"How?"

"For whatever reason, you didn't go along with the fear. Somehow, you were 'immune' to it."

Harrison frowned.

"Why was it that I wasn't affected like everyone else?" He asked.

"I don't know," said Grampa. "But I've been thinking about it, and I think it might have something to do with the fact that you've already spent so much of your life being afraid of all kinds of things: Bugs, germs... sharks, tornadoes..."

Harrison could feel his cheeks turning red.

"...and also because you've been confronted with your fears so many times. Unlike a lot of people, you can function quite well while you're afraid, because you're used to it."

"I suspect," said Gramma Rose, "that quite a few of those other kids at your school have fears too. But they've hardly ever had to confront them. So when something comes along that scares them, they don't know what to do. It's not a muscle they've ever exercised."

"Another thing, Harrison," his Grampa continued, "is that you've got a lot of self doubt."

"I know," said Harrison, embarrassed. "I need to be more confident. Everyone's always telling me that."

"Well, not necessarily," said his Grampa. "Not if it means being confident without thinking. You tend to second-guess yourself a lot. But that means you also second-guess others too–including our Dr. Fustibus. Most other kids would have missed the inconsistencies, the problems with what the doctor was telling you. But not you!"

Harrison tried very hard not to smile when he heard that.

"Now," said Gramma Rose, "the fact that you didn't respond the way Dr. Futzit expected you to tells me that his spell might not have worked anyway. After all, I have to imagine that there would be others, like you, who he couldn't control."

“So, Marie," she now turned to the person Harrison had always thought of as CubeSquared, and who he had not known, until tonight, was a girl. "Where is it you live?"

"Oh I'm up in Milford," she said. "It's not far."

"No it's not," said Gramma Rose. "Maybe we can all come up and visit you sometime!"

"That would be nice," she nodded.

"My goodness!" Gramma exclaimed. "Your poor parents! What must they be thinking?"

"Well, I told them I was going over to a friend's house..." said Marie.

Gramma Rose insisted that she call them right away and let them know where she was, and that as it was well after midnight, she might as well spend the night, but to not go into certain rooms, which they would tell her about.

"Yeah," said Harrison, "believe me, you don't want that kind of trouble!"

Gramma Rose and Marie called Marie's parents, who were a little upset at first, but in the end said it was just fine that she spent the night, now that they knew who her friend was.

They all sat up talking for a while longer. Grampa uncovered the fact that Marie was actually quite good at chess, and so extracted from her a promise that she would also come back to New Zebedee on occasion so that they could have a game.

"Now," said Gramma Rose, as she began to clear the plates away from the table, "you remember how we said that all magic comes at a cost?"

Harrison nodded, and Marie looked confused.

"Well," she continued, "that cost, for me tonight, was a whole lot of energy. So if nobody minds, I'm going to head off to bed."

Harrison suddenly felt a little sad.

"I'm going to miss you guys!" He blurted out.

"Why Harrison, why do you have to?" Asked Gramma Rose. "We're right here. Right up the street. You can come over any time."

"That's right," said Grampa Lewis. "We don't have to be engaged in a battle with eternal evil in order to spend time together! Come on over for a game of chess, or chocolate-chip cookies, or just to shoot the breeze!"

"How often do you have chocolate chip cookies, Grampa Lewis?"

"They're always here, Harrison. Always have been."