Michael S. Atkinson's Blog, page 21

Mind Your Surroundings

Sam breezed into the treasure chamber, intent on wealth. He forgot the snakes.

Madeleine in the Wind

“You sure we’ve got to go into that?” Evil Madeleine shouted.

Madeleine Prime shrugged. “Yep. Only way out.”

“Oy,” said Evil Madeleine.

They were standing on the brink of a tornado. Both Madeleines had seen tornadoes before, of course. In both universes, Edison City was located in the Midwestern heart of America, and its variety of climate included a fair share of thunderstorms and twisters. Madeleine Prime had helped with search and rescue once after one massive F5 had flatted an entire suburb. Evil Madeleine, faced with the same disaster, had set the suburb on fire.

This tornado was way beyond anything they’d ever seen. It wasn’t on the Fujita scale; it broke the Fujita scale. A wall of banshee-howling wind stretched from horizon to horizon, black with dirt and blinding rain, shaking the ground beneath their feet. And as they looked into the maelstrom, Madeleine could see shadowed forms tossed about like leaves. They weren’t leaves, not really; they were people. They weren’t soaring, either; they were flailing and screaming and generally waving about in eternal terror. Madeleine wondered which one was her ex-boyfriend. Given how hell worked, she was probably going to find out.

“So…” Evil Madeleine said, “how do we get through, genius?”

Madeleine Prime sighed. “You know our powers still work down here, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“The name’s Gaseous Girl. I picked it because it fits what I can do. It’s not just flame-blasts and flying brick stuff. You and I can control the gaseous state of matter.”

Evil Madeleine hadn’t quite caught it yet. “Yeah, yeah, I went to science class, okay?”

“You should’ve paid more attention,” Madeleine said, as she turned to face the unending windstorm. “Wind is moving air. And air is gas.”

Then she got it. Evil Madeleine’s eyes went wide as dinner plates. “You mean…. ” 

“Yep.”

Madeleine Prime set herself, scrunched up her face, and concentrated hard on the tornado. Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, the wall of wind opened up. A corridor lanced down the middle of the storm, calm as the eye in a hurricane. The two Madeleines advanced cautiously into it. The wind closed up behind them, so that they stood in a quiet bubble surrounded by howling chaos.

They kept moving forward. It was hard work. Madeleine’s head pounded unmercifully with the mental strain of holding the tornado back. Sweat beaded across her forehead. She pushed on, driving herself forward. She only hoped she was headed in the right direction. Madeleine had done well so far, but still, it wasn’t like there was a signpost informing her that it was 216 kilometers to the Exit from Hell. The infernal regions, alas, had a deplorable lack of signposts. Phone service sucked down there, too, so her GPS app was right out.

At first they met no one. Then, suddenly, Evil Madeleine yelped in alarm. Madeleine Prime was a little resentful of her evil twin, who apparently wasn’t doing anything to help her counterpart in the effort of holding back the winds. Still, she looked to see what her alternate self had spotted. A tall figure, blond and athletic, had quite suddenly tumbled in their path. Madeleine gave him a dour look. “Stand aside, buddy.”

He drew himself up in offended wrath. “Buddy? I am not your companion, and you are no mighty Amazon warrior either; I am the great Achilles, whom you know!”

“Yeah?” Madeleine said.

“Yeah,” Achilles said sulkily. “Now, you appear to have found a way to flee this dread storm. I command you to open the way for me as well, that I might escape and rejoin the living world!”

“Sure thing,” Madeleine said. Achilles heard the cheerful note in her voice and assumed she meant it.

He spun around, facing away from her, and stood ready. “Let us move forward!” he declaimed.

“Oh, Achilles?” Madeleine said.

“What?” he snapped, irritated at the delay.

“Heel.”

“What?”

She shot a flame blast at a certain spot. The Greek hero yipped in pain. Then, Madeleine let up her concentration, just a bit, and Achilles was smacked away into the storm.

“Jerk,” Madeleine said. She took a step forward. To her annoyance, someone else had just landed in the calm bubble around them. “Right, who are you then, Cleopatra?”

Then she saw him. Evan. Madeleine stopped. In that instant, she forgot everything else. Then the storm closed around them.

This story was written for the Mutant 750 challenge at Grammar Ghoul Press, and is part of the ongoing adventures of Gaseous Girl. 

The Peril of Silence

Supervillains monologued. The capes all knew this, and even enjoyed the scenery-chewing speeches. Shapeshifter Scarlett rewrote one as a musical, The World Will Be Mine!, to rave reviews.

Winter Banshee was smarter, and quieter. No one noticed him. Then, the Moon exploded.

Legio Mihi Nomen Est

Constance loved the engine room of the Blooming Onion. The place glowed with aquarium-blue light that radiated from the padamantium crystals powering the warp drive. The mighty engines themselves gave a steady whum-whum-whum that resonated beneath her feet, like the purring of a gigantic and contented space cat. She would’ve loved to stay there for a while, leaning against the cool curving walls, listening to the engines’ constant thrumming. It was a pity she had to wreck it.

Being an angel, wrecking the engines wasn’t the only way she had of keeping the starship from going where it wasn’t supposed to be. It was, unfortunately, the best way. She could’ve gone for the direct approach. Pop in out of nowhere on the bridge itself, get her glow on, proclaim something dramatic while choirs trilled in the background. But that sort of thing only counted if people actually believed in angels. She had scoped out the bridge crew. Captain Jolene was a living shade of auburn, and her people worshiped the Great Paint Pot. Paintpotianity did not hold with angels. The first officer was a rock of debatable sentience, Science Officer Spivey gave her the creeps, and Mr. Stamper at tactical was absolutely hopeless. She very much doubted their theological soundness. And if you didn’t believe in angels as divine messengers, you were likely to take badly to a glowing being materializing out of nowhere on your bridge. Constance had no desire to be shot at by phasers. It wouldn’t hurt her, but it might singe her wings, and that was just rude.

That left the indirect approach. Thus, she had flown to the engine room. All she needed to do was push a few buttons, kick some panels in, maybe reverse the polarity of the isolinear dilution matrices, or some such thing. Constance was an angel, not an engineer. She couldn’t necessarily explain how the engines made the starship go, but she was pretty sure some good hearty smashing about would make it stop. Constance giggled. This was going to be fun.

She was just about to pitch into a console when she heard the distinctive woop of a laser rifle powering up. Constance turned slowly around. It was, of course, Mr. Spivey. He looked pale as ever. “You didn’t set off the intruder alarm.”

“Nope,” Constance said. “That dog’s not going to bark.”

“What?”

Constance reminded herself to check if dogs were still around in this century. “Forget it. Yeah, I didn’t trigger the alarm, ’cause I’m an angel. I go where I want.”

“You’re a dead angel, then, whatever you are.”

“Oh, please,” Constance said, rolling her eyes. “You can’t kill an angel. We’re immortal spirit beings, yo. You can’t just zap me with your laser rifle.”

Mr. Spivey threw the rifle away, and smiled. It was a sudden, evil smile, and Constance didn’t like it at all. “Then I’ll have to use other methods. You’re not the only one with supernatural connections around here.”

“Ooh, Mr. Spivey, I’m so scared.”

“My name,” said the science officer, “is not Spivey. My name…is Legion. For we are many.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, so’s your mother,” Constance shot back. “I’ve been around the block, bud. You know how many third-rate idiots I’ve run across who say that? You all read the story and you remember the line, or you saw that Nicolas Cage movie, whatever, and now you’ve all got to be Legion. Please.”

Spivey hadn’t stopped smiling. Suddenly there were two of him. Then three. Then twelve. Then thirty-nine. Then the engine room filled with Spiveys, creepy pale smiling Spiveys with laser rifles, and the aquarium-blue glow of the chamber went suddenly dark. Constance had a sudden horrible suspicion that this guy wasn’t just quoting a line. He meant it.

L’amour

Winifred was an ex-incarnation of Death, now a shop girl in a sprawling metropolis on Verin Prime. Phil was a volcano spirit haunting a sun-drenched Earth island. Their relationship seemed a chimera to some people. Still, they liked Anne Hathaway movies and minty ice cream. You can build a lot on that.

This story was written for the Shapeshifting 13 challenge at Grammar Ghoul Press.

Stormy Weather

Madeleine had been through a lot of foul climates during her trek through hell. She’d been through ice, and scorching desert heat, not to mention the foul-smelling rivers and ditches she’d sailed across or flown over. Now, however, as she trudged on through sheets of icy rain, her boots splashing through endless torrents of slush, Madeleine thought, once again, on how much hell truly sucked.

She and her evil twin were several hours into Circle Three by now. They had no umbrellas, which meant that they had gotten well and truly soaked. If it had been cool, clear shower water, or even an average summer rainstorm, Madeleine wouldn’t have minded so much. But this grey water, pouring down her face and seeping through her socks, tasted horribly and felt worse, a sort of concentrated essence of ickiness. Madeleine would need to bathe for weeks to get rid of it, if she ever could. Her evil twin, meanwhile, splashed gaily through the slush like a kid in puddles. Madeleine really hated her evil self.

No one challenged them as they plodded through. Madeleine heard a distant howling, and vaguely remembered her Dante. She hoped the Cerberus part wasn’t accurate. Madeleine was a cat person, and not keen on dogs, especially giant three-headed ones that rent evil spirits with their mighty jaws. Happily, Cerberus appeared to have other engagements. Madeleine thanked heaven for that, somewhat ironically.

Finally, just when she was beginning to think they’d gotten lost in the rain, and shivering with the thought, she saw light. The two emerged from the endless rainstorm at last, their boots squelching as they pulled free of the mud. “When this is over,” Madeleine said, “I’m moving to someplace dry. Arizona, maybe. New Mexico. They’ve got supervillains in New Mexico, right?”

“Wouldn’t know,” Evil Madeleine said. “Last time I was in New Mexico, I broke it.”

“How do you…. oh, never mind.” Madeleine wanted to take a breather, partly because it had been exhausting work going through Circle Three, and partly because she was afraid of Circle Two. She remembered the warning of the incarnation of Death. She knew people there. Specifically, she knew Evan Benjamin Wizowsky.

She remembered the first time they’d met. It was a high school get-together, some sports party thing. She was bored. This was before her powers. Evan had found the karaoke machine, and did something in the way of 90s pop. He didn’t kill her softly or anything, but he might have slightly injured her. Then he did Timon and Pumbaa’s part of “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?”, and Madeleine, amused despite her boredom, laughed aloud. He heard her, and the rest was history. History, of course, often becomes tragic.

Madeleine wondered how Evan had ended up in hell. The obvious answer presented itself, but she wondered how it had happened. Car wreck? Supervillain? Plague? Her eyes, curiously, went misty. Maybe it was lingering rain from Circle Three. It was the rain, of course. Evan had cheated on her, dumped her for Lizzie Dern, and it had all been a long time ago. She was Gaseous Girl now. She was a flying brick. She could manipulate the gaseous state of matter. She Who Dealt It, they called her. She didn’t need Evan, or miss him. Right?

“You okay?” Evil Madeleine said, more from idle curiosity than anything else.

“Yeah,” Madeleine replied, wiping her face with her sleeve. “Peachy.” Then, slowly, she turned away from the rain, and began walking towards the howling winds of Circle Two.

This post was written for the Mutant 750 challenge at Grammar Ghoul Press, and is part of the Gaseous Girl adventures.

Too High

Shelley, being poetic, said she wanted the moon. Frederick, being a mad scientist, took this literally. The Miniaturization Ray worked wonderfully well. Shelley was ecstatic. Then, an asteroid flew where the moon had been, and obliterated Shelley and everyone else on Earth.

New Mission

Jolene, captain of the starship Blooming Onion, was not happy with her crew. She would’ve liked to pick them herself. Especially on a big mission, flying through a wormhole into another universe, she wanted people she could rely on. But, her superiors had thought otherwise. She might’ve protested, but then, she was the only sentient shade of auburn to command a starship, and Jolene liked the feel of the big chair. So, reluctantly, she went along. Jolene still wasn’t happy, though.

Her tactical officer was a space otter who didn’t say much. Stamper wouldn’t even make small talk during the morning briefings; he just reported on weapons readiness and potential security threats and then shut up. Jolene suspected that there was something going on between him and her communications officer, another otter, who called herself Maria. For being members of the same species, they didn’t seem that friendly.  Then there was her first officer, a small Martian rock  named Florian, who was claimed to be sentient but hadn’t really done anything much to prove it.  She had an assortment of random redshirts filling out the crew, and an absurdly cheerful medical robot installed in the sickbay. Finally, there was Mr. Spivey, science officer. There was something about Spivey that gave Jolene the creeps. He kept lurking in corridors to no purpose, and he never appeared to sleep. Also, he seemed inordinately pale, as if he hadn’t seen sunlight for a good long time.

On the bright side, Jolene knew exactly what her mission was. Fly through the wormhole, look around, do a bit of exploring, fly back. Easy as pie. She had no intentions of starting an inter-dimensional space war, or getting caught in some sort of time warp. Fly in, explore, fly out. She kept repeating the words to herself as the Blooming Onion glided towards the wormhole.

An ensign, Billy somebody, currently had the navigation controls. “Take us in, Mister, ah, Billy,” Jolene said.

“Aye, aye, ma’am!” said Billy. The eager ensign pressed a few buttons, and the starship lurched forward into the wormhole.

It was surprisingly anticlimactic. Space blurred, and then it didn’t. When the viewscreen sorted itself out again, Jolene looked at stars she’d never seen before.  “Well…” she said, feeling that it was a moment to say something dramatic, “We’re here.”

A short pause followed. Jolene was about to say something about humanity and the Thrill of Discovery when Mr. Spivey piped up. “Captain, a word. In private.”

Jolene sighed, and ordered Florian to take the bridge. The rock did nothing. She was beginning to doubt its sentience. Mr. Spivey followed her into her ready room.  “What, Mr. Spivey?” she said, once her door had closed.

“I have new orders.”

“We’ve got orders,” Jolene said, confused. “Fly in, explore, fly-”

“Well, they’ve changed.” Without further ceremony, he produced a sealed envelope. Jolene gasped. Paper, actual paper was rare enough that it meant serious business. Carefully she opened the envelope and drew out the single sheet. The orders were crisp and clear. They would only be exploring one little moon. There was an artifact on it her superiors wanted. They were to fly to the moon, retrieve the artifact, fly back. It was close enough to her original mission as to be comforting.

“Why didn’t they tell me before we set out?” Jolene asked. It struck her as needlessly inefficient, and she didn’t approve.

“Security,” Mr. Spivey said. “You have the moon’s coordinates. This should not be a problem.”

Jolene had the oddest feeling that Spivey fancied himself in command of this mission. Well, he wasn’t. “Very well, Mr. Spivey,” she said crisply. “That will be all.”

He left, glowering. Jolene sighed. Her first ever starship assignment had been a neat tourist run to Mars. Fly in, orbit while the people shopped, fly out. She missed those days.

”

Uninvited

The two pencils clicked together in cross-form on the sheet of paper. Kendall arranged them properly, exactly over the two lines she’d drawn. “Okay, everyone set?” she said, looking around at the pajama-clad slumber partiers gathered in her bedroom.

Maia still looked doubtful. “I don’t know…” she ventured. She still wasn’t convinced of the wisdom of attempting to summon a potentially evil spirit, even if it was named something friendly like Charlie. She’d been thoroughly spooked by the videos lighting up her Twitter.

Kendall rolled right over her objections. Kendall was captain of the cheerleading squad, class president, and half a dozen other things besides; she tended to roll right over anyone in her way. “Look, it’ll be fun,” she said, “and it’s cool, and we could go viral. Trish, you’ve got video?”

“Yep,” Trisha said, holding her smartphone up for everyone’s eye, like Rafiki presenting Simba in The Lion King. She was Kendall’s second-in-command, as it were, the Grover Dill to Kendall’s Scut Farkus, if Grover Dill had worn braces and Black Widow pajamas.

“Awesome. Lights!”  Someone near the door flicked the switch. Only a nightlight glowed eerily now, fitting the mood perfectly.  Kendall took a dramatic breath. “Charlie, Charlie, are you-”

Without any warning, without so much as a spooky chord of music, the two pencils burst into flame. Blinding light blazed in the room, snapping away the shadows like rubber bands. Everyone shrieked and scrambled back, as the flame from the pencils mushroomed up towards the ceiling. Through the impossibly bright glare, Maia saw a form, outlined in fiery orangey-yellows, with wings all over, wings where there shouldn’t be wings, and eyes, lots of eyes, staring terribly-

A voice, dissonant and clanging, blasted at them from all corners of the room. “Why have you summoned me?”

Kendall threw up splashily. Trisha gathered what fortitude she had. “Um-” she squeaked, trying to sound defiant.

“Flee,” said the voice. “FLEE!”

They fled, shrieking. The light faded, and the fire dwindled down like a used-up birthday candle. A smaller figure, yellow-white, appeared by the bed, trying to stifle a laugh. “Bravo, Raph,” she said, clapping. “Bravo.”

“That was what you wanted, right?” said the voice from the fiery collection of wings and eyes. “I thought the pencils flaming might have been a bit much….

“It was perfect,” Constance said. Being a guardian angel could, occasionally, be fun. Especially when you could do things like this. “Bet she didn’t plan on summoning a seraphim.”

“No one ever does,” sulked the seraphim.

“Oh, grow up,” she said. “Right, who’s next?”

“Birthday party, Third Street, fifth house on the left. They’ve almost started.”

Constance smiled, extending her wings. “Pencils down, kids.”  She and Raph disappeared, in a flurry of light.

This is a more developed version of the idea I was aiming at in the story I wrote for the gargleblaster challenge at yeah write this week. I read the article about the Charlie Charlie challenge going viral, and I got to thinking; what if the good guys decided to get in on the fun? And why doesn’t anyone try to contact the angels, anyway? It’s a thought. Also, I’ve been interested in the idea of terrible angels (terrible in the classic sense, natch) ever since Raiders of the Lost Ark, not to mention “Knowing”, the interesting film with Nicolas Cage. We always think angels are fluffy-winged beings with halos who show up and do the Touched by an Angel bit, but  I don’t think it’s really that way. In the Christmas story, the shepherds basically panic when the angels show up. The first thing they always say is “Fear not.” Would you be afraid of a human-like person with fluffy wings and a halo? Maybe that’s why no one tries to contact the angels…

A Mistake in Recitation

“The words don’t matter,” declaimed wizard Billy Cunningham-Schultz confidently. “Don’tcha know, it’s the will!”

He was wrong. Billy chanted vortumnos instead of vortumno. His wand sparked and flashed. Then there was no Billy. There was only a microscopic apricot.