Michael S. Atkinson's Blog, page 35

Birds

“So. Lady Sparrowhawk. At last. You’ll never escape my reinforced padamantium cage.”

Rosalind sighed. “You always say that, Doctor Sewerpipe. Incidentally, have you met my spirit animal, Spikey?”

”Who?”

”You thought the name meant what, exactly?” She whistled fiercely. “Spikey? Kill.”

*SKREEEEEEEEE*

Courting Death

Rain had planned to follow Hadley right into hell, she really had. But when she stepped forward into the doorway through which she had pushed Hadley, she felt as if she had slammed against a brick wall. Quite suddenly she found herself standing back in the open, five feet away from the door. She tried again, getting a running start and throwing herself forward. Wham. Again she was outside.  “Okay,” she said to Milroy Birnbaum, “what’s the deal?”

“I told you, that doorway allows any living soul to enter hell,” Milroy said. “Figured you’d know that didn’t mean you. Being Death and all.”

“You could have told me that before I pushed her in,” Rain shot back. “What if she needs help? She wasn’t supposed to go in there alone.”

“Can’t you get in anyway? You’re Death. Perks of the job, right?”

“Yeah. I’ve never actually been down there, though. I just send people there, I don’t follow them.”   She raised her hand. “Might as well try, though.”

“Erm, before you go, I was wondering….”  Milroy coughed nervously. It wasn’t often that a god of war, even a minor one, looked nervous.

“What?” Rain said, not really paying attention. She had already moved on to working out where in hell she needed to transport herself.

“I know it’s a bad time, but I didn’t have the chance before and….ah, forget it.”

Rain looked impatiently at him. “Just tell me, would you? And hurry. There’s not much time.”

“Fine. You doing anything Friday night?”

The incarnation of Death blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Are you doing anything Friday night?” Milroy repeated. “I got tickets to that Novaball game near the black hole in the Phoenix Cluster. Thought you might wanna go.”

“Are you asking me out on a date?” Rain said. “Here. Now. At the doorway to hell. Right when I’m about to go down there myself. And you’re asking me out on a date. “

Milroy shrugged. “It’s not a date. It’s just you and me, as friends, watching the game.”

“It’s two people doing a social activity together. It’s a date.”

“Whatever,” the god of war, 32nd precinct, said. “Look, if you don’t want to go…”

Rain considered. It had been a long time since she’d been in a relationship. Being Death tended to scare people off. She hadn’t been all that social even before she had become Death. There was William, of course. But he was fighting in a rebellion on her home planet.  She hadn’t seen him since her new career, and she didn’t much want to. In her line of work, if she saw William again it would probably be for business reasons, and Rain couldn’t bear that. She had to get away from this train of thought, and fast. Memories were coming back, of William, and the volcano, and what she had done, and her sister….

“Yeah. Friday. The Novaball game. Why not?”

“Fine,” Milroy said. “The game starts at 8 standard. Pick you up at 7?”

“Let’s just meet there.  I don’t know where I’ll be then. People could be dying. You never know.”

“Fair enough.”  Milroy hesitated. “So, after the game…”

Rain rolled her eyes. “Why don’t we just play that by ear, okay?”

Milroy nodded. “Yeah. Your call.”

“Right,” said Rain. “Now that we’ve got that settled…”  She waved her hand and vanished in a blur of shadow.  When things cleared up again, Rain found herself standing before an inky black river, with an ancient ferry tied up near the shore. An old man with an incredibly unkempt beard clung to a long ferrypole with one hand, while he waved towards her with the other. Rain almost turned back. She didn’t want to be in hell at all, really, especially now that she had a date for Friday. But if she didn’t go forward, she’d have to explain why to Milroy, and she’d never forgive herself for abandoning Hadley anyway. So, she never looked back, she just kept walking.

 

For Hadley’s previous adventures, go here. Thanks for reading!

Feelings

Sometimes Natalie wondered what it was like. She’d lifted trucks single-handed. She’d survived a megaton bomb blast. She never felt pain. She never felt rain either, or a spring wind, or a fire’s warmth. She wondered if the trade-off was worth it.

Enter Ahab; To Him, Catrina

The old man paced moodily back and forth on the bridge of his zeppelin. “Ay,” he declaimed, “ay, that cursed whale evades me even here. Oh what terrible fate is mine, lost amidst time’s swirling seas, sundered forever from my old true ship and wandering alone in this looming monster. Ay, ’tis a terrible-”

He might have gone on for hours in this melodramatic vein, but just then Catrina came smashing in through the window, shovel in hand. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Catrina. Who are you, and what do you mean by flying over my kingdom in a, er, whatever this is?”

“Catrina,” mused the man. “Ay, I remember you. I sought your aid in the search for the White Whale.”

“And which whale was that, exactly?”

The man let out a cry like a heart-stricken moose. As Catrina had never before heard a moose in any emotional state, much less a heart-stricken one, the effect was somewhat lost on her. “Ay, the whale, the White Whale, ’tis he that dismasted me and shivered the Pequod and her crew to atoms!”

“The what did the what to the who now?” Catrina asked. Then she engaged in a rapid bit of deductive reasoning, noting the man’s metal-work leg. “The whale bit off your leg, didn’t he?”

“He did indeed,” groaned the man, in fine dramatic form. “And then he smashed me ship and sent it spiraling beneath the waves. I hurled my spear at him at the last, but he dragged me under.”

“Oh my,” said Catrina. “However did you survive?”

“I know not. I thought I was drowned for sure, but suddenly there was darkness, and then I found myself standing in a city square, surrounded by people of strange appearance and gifted with clever arts. They changed my wooden leg to this sturdy metal one, gave me a new spear and this mighty flying vessel. And better still, from them I learned how to navigate the very currents of Time itself!”

“And so,” Catrina summarized, “you decided to go back to my time and hunt down your whale’s grandmother, thus preventing it from being born and smashing up your ship.”

“Ay,” growled the man, “That I did.”

She decided not to point out the obvious paradox, that if he erased the White Whale from history, he would never have gone through the time portal and gone back in time to do the erasing. Time travel gave Catrina such a headache. “So how bad is this whale exactly? Can’t you just leave it alone to go about its whale-y business while you set up a florist’s shop or something?”

The old man’s face twisted with emotion. “Mark me,” he said, “’tis no ordinary whale. That whale is the embodiment of evil, it is the terror that haunts my dreams, it-”

Catrina rolled her eyes. “Oh, stuff it,” she said. “As I understand it, you want revenge on the whale because it bit off your leg. What’s the point of that? It’s just a whale, for heaven’s sake.”

“You sound a very Starbuck,” said the man. “Death and devils, do none of you see? That whale must be pursued! I will pursue it to the gates of hell itself!”

“I’ve been to hell, twice actually,” Catrina said. “No whales. I’m afraid I’m not in the business of hunting whales, embodiments of evil or otherwise. So,” and here she hefted the mighty Shovel of Thor, “why don’t you go off on those Time currents and I’ll stay here with my kingdom, and everything will work out swimmingly.”

The man laid a hand to his metal-work harpoon. Catrina sighed. Why did people always have to be so difficult? She swung Mlrning at him, and a blinding ice ray shot from the Shovel’s blade, aimed right for the harpoon. To Catrina’s very great surprise, the ice ray ricocheted off something in the air before it even touched the harpoon and bounced straight back. “What?” Catrina exclaimed, which was all she had time for before her own ice ray froze her solid to the deck of the zeppelin.

The old man laughed grimly. The harpoon beeped and whirred. “Ay, I know not what a proton shield may be, nor how this thing of metal and lightning can produce it,” declaimed the man, “but indeed it is a mighty spear. Now I shall pursue that blasted whale, beyond this primitive land, to the very gates of hell itself!”

He went on like this for several more hours, in an extended soliloquy ranging on all sorts of philosophical topics, with the frozen Catrina his only listener. Meanwhile, the zeppelin loomed ominously away into the stormy night.

This has been another exciting episode of the Catrina Chronicles. For previous episodes, go here. For my Amazon page where you can find several more stories involving Catrina (and her wacky friends), go here. Thanks for reading!

More Wedding Promises

I realized, after I made my last post on the subject, that I completely neglected several important wedding contingencies. Luck favors the prepared, as they say, so here are a few more wedding promises to my future bride, whoever that happy person turns out to be. :)

1) Under no circumstances will anyone be playing the Rains of Castamere at my wedding. It will ESPECIALLY not be played during the reception. If I have hired a DJ for the reception, I will be looking over the DJ’s musical choices to make sure he hasn’t smuggled in the Rains of Castamere among such other appropriate selections as “Love Don’t Roam” or “To Life“. It will not be heard so much as a ringtone on my guests’ cell phones. I won’t have it so much as whistled. Bad things happen when that song is played at weddings. Also, my wedding will not be color-themed. If by chance it is, it certainly won’t be red. Or purple. Mauve, now, mauve is a nice color. Nothing bad happens at a Mauve Wedding.

2) If someone is kind enough to give me one of the only four first-edition copies of a very rare and valuable book, I will not take a sword and hack it to bits. I will write them a nice thank-you note instead. Bad, yet delightfully karmic, things happen when one smashes up a valuable book with a sword.

3)  At some point before the ceremony is concluded, I will check beneath the veil to make sure the bride is the person I’m actually supposed to be marrying. She might have been switched out with her sister as part of a scheme by her father.  Also, I think a seven-year engagement before the wedding is overly lengthy. One or two years, tops. Fourteen is right out.

4) I will not say anything like “We’re superheroes. What could happen?”  If we were actually superheroes, I would remember that a great many unfortunate things are within the realm of possibility. For instance, there could be a wave of lawsuits that forces the supers to go underground. It’s been known to happen.

5) I will make sure that my bride has not been contaminated with huon particles, so that she won’t be accidentally teleported away while she’s walking down the aisle. Also, I will not enter the service of a spider alien and use my bride as a pawn in order to free said spider alien and let her revive her species.  I have more respect for my intended spouse than that. Also, if she is inadvertently teleported away, I will postpone the reception until she’s safely back.

6) I will tell people that we are married. This will avoid the difficulties of a secret marriage. If I should belong to an ancient order of powerful beings sworn not to marry or form any romantic attachments to anyone, I will leave the order and start a new one. Mine will probably be more popular, for obvious reasons. I will also not turn to evil, murder younglings, and attempt to take over the galaxy. I’d imagine this would create difficulties in my marital relationship.

7) My wedding will not be raided by Russian Cossacks.  Since, as mentioned in my last post, I will be inviting Wonder Woman, I will station her outside to deal with the Cossacks. If they come in a tank, I will naturally ask her to throw their tank away from the direction of the chapel. I will, of course, invite the bottle dancers.

8) If the wedding is videotaped, I will not subsequently tape over it with a recording of the Super Bowl. Fortunately, I’d imagine this is a moot point as these things are all digital anyway. In any event, if I am somehow responsible for erasing the wedding video and decide to renew my vows, I will memorize the vows in advance so I won’t look like an idiot when I forget them. As a precaution, I will write the vows down on a flashcard. Flashcards are everyone’s friend.

9) If I am on the verge of discovering Flubber, I will not become so involved in the discovery process that I neglect to appear at the wedding three times straight. Flubber will wait; she won’t.

10) I will query my bride well before the ceremony to see if she has any secret yet deep feelings for someone like, say, a photographer for a local newspaper, who may or may not be Spider-Man. If she does, I will ask her to resolve the issue, so as to avoid the awkwardness of having her run out during the ceremony.

 

 

 

Wedding Promises

I have been to several real weddings in my life, and they all turned out pretty well. I caught the garter at four of them, which I think means that I am destined to marry a quadruplet. In any event, while real-world weddings mostly go well, I’ve recently realized how many fictional weddings I’ve read about or watched on Netflix where things do not go well at all. (Not to mention some of my own stories, in which there’ve been several unfortunate weddings indeed). I’ve gotten a little paranoid about it, to tell the truth. Thusly, I decided to write this blog post. I’m not certain who my future wife might be as yet, but whoever you are, I would like to make you a few assurances.

1) I am not an immortal supervillain. Therefore, if you should be the princess of a small Eastern European country fortunate enough to have the resources to put a space station into orbit, I will not marry you in order to co-opt the space station for my own villainous plan. Also, Wonder Woman will not be throwing a tank through the wall of the wedding chapel. I will have sent her an invitation explaining that I am not a supervillain, and so she will be sitting in the pew remarking on how lovely everything is.

2) I do not have my prior spouse (who has tragically gone insane) concealed in my attic. If I had an ex with that unfortunate condition, I would have sought the help of proper medical authorities.

3) If a person comes up to me before the ceremony, claims to be my future self, and shows me visions of a terrible future in which I murder you with a frying pan, I will dismiss this as a hallucination brought on by pre-wedding stress. I will not back out of the wedding.

4) If I marry you in a quick civil ceremony, and there is another woman whom I have secretly had feelings for over the past seven years, and she announces that she is getting married to someone else, I will prudently decline to attend her wedding ceremony. If I am invited and find myself attending her rehearsal dinner the night before, I will not choose that very moment to declare my true feelings for her. After all, I am already married to you. If I did that, it would set in motion a chain of events that will lead to her and me eloping in a Winnebago. I have no interest in going anywhere in a Winnebago.

5) I will check before the ceremony to make sure the rings are actual gold, and not gold kryptonite in disguise. I will also make sure to pick a reliable best man, and one who is not secretly working for the supervillain Darkseid.

6) I will consider asking the minister to skip over the part about asking anyone in the audience if they have any objection to the wedding, and to speak now or forever hold their peace. If they had an objection, they should have made it clear in advance so as not to disturb the ceremony. Procrastination is no one’s friend.

7) I will not skip over any other part. I will also make sure that the officiating clergyman enunciates clearly. I will not plan to have you murdered after the ceremony. I will not attempt to murder the person you secretly love, and then tell you that he went away and that you might as well marry me in the alternative. That person will show up anyway, and things will go awry. Also, I will not employ a six-fingered assassin who has killed someone else’s father. If I find myself with the need to employ any assassin at all, I will step back and consider whether I have been making appropriate life choices.

Now Landing at Circle Seven

“Until the day I die, I’ll never forget those glassy unblinking eyes,” Hadley Baxendale thought as she tumbled through the inky darkness of hell. Yes, that would be a wonderful opening line for her memoirs, if she ever wrote them. On the other hand, the woman who had so unceremoniously shoved her through the doorway into the infernal regions, didn’t have unblinking eyes at all. Rain blinked like a pro. So Hadley would either have to meet someone who didn’t blink, or change the line. It was a puzzlement.

Sadly, she had worse problems than devising a good opening line for her memoirs. She was falling like a mauve star into the depths of hell. All around, in the seemingly endless night, she heard mournful wails and terrified shrieks.  This was not the most cheery place she had ever been. Hadley swore she’d get back at Rain for this.

Then, quite suddenly, red light lit up the darkness around her. Before Hadley could get her wits about and look around, she was splashing down in something very wet and sticky. Hadley went under, floundered for a second, then reemerged, gasping for breath. Red liquid bubbled fiercely all around her. Hadley realized she was flailing about in a river of blood. “Well,” she tried to say optimistically, “I suppose there’s worse rivers to be stuck in!”  She could have fallen into a sewer, for instance. Somehow that thought wasn’t as comforting as she hoped.

An arrow splashed in the red muck near her head. “‘Ey, you!” bellowed a centaur on the bank. “Get back under there!”

Hadley saw more centaurs riding about, carrying bows, and assumed these were the proper authorities. “Excuse me,” she called, “but there’s been some mistake. I’m not actually supposed to be here!”

“Yeah, that’s what they all say,” laughed the centaur. “You’re really innocent, aint’cha? Y’ only wiped out that village by accident when y’ dropped the proton bomb square on it, yeah? Sure ya did. This is hell, ya nitwit. You did the crime, now you do the time. Eternal time.” He chortled viciously.

“I’ve never even seen a proton bomb, except in holo-films!” Hadley protested. “Also I’m alive. Not dead. So I can’t really be sentenced to eternal punishment now can I?”

The centaur blinked. (Drat, she thought. She’d never get to use that line).  “Ey!” he said. “You’re alive!”

“Yes. So I am.”

“Y’ can’t be alive! Only dead people are allowed down ‘ere!”

“And do you see dead people?” Hadley countered. Then she paused. Actually, she didn’t see any dead people. At all. No one else was in the bubbling river. She had only read a pamphlet on Dante, on her first and only visit to a traveling exhibition on ancient Earth texts, but she vaguely recalled that there were supposed to be a lot of people in hell. She didn’t see a one. That seemed unusual.

“I’m gonna have to report you to the authorities,” the badly confused centaur said. “We can’t ‘ave dead people in ‘ell. It’s against the rules!”

“Yes, good, excellent!” Hadley said. “So, I can come out of this then?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. You’ll ‘ave to. I’ve gotta report this!”

Hadley scrambled towards the shore, delighted that she was making progress. Once she met with the authorities, she would dramatically confront them about the battle fleet that had apparently unleashed on the universe, the one that had blown up her planet. They would naturally confess their villainy and recall the fleet, and she would be a hero. Hadley hadn’t quite put it together what the centaur meant by taking her to see the people in charge of hell.

A short time later, she found herself setting in a plain boring room, with a perfectly ordinary sofa and chairs. A painting of someone she didn’t know hung on the wall. Hadley stared at it. It wasn’t a holo-painting; it was an antique. That meant the man wasn’t blinking! She could use the line!

Before she could really work up her excitement over this, a door in the room opened. Hadley leaped from her chair, turning bright with excitement. At least she would see the person in charge, she could register her complaint, everything would be fine, and-

A giant snake coiled into the room. It slithered at her.

 

Hadley did not like snakes at all. At least, she thought bravely, it wasn’t a bunny.

For previous adventures with Hadley, go here. Thanks for reading!

The Search

“Turn left here,” the voice intoned.

“Take five paces. Turn right.”

“You have triggered the wall spikes. Recalculating. Duck now.”

“Your destination is on the right.”

As Connecticut Smith retrieved the ancient idol, he reflected how much easier quests were with GPS.

Going Down

Milroy Birnbaum’s creaky old star fighter fell out of hyperdrive at the spot where Hadley’s planet should have been. It still wasn’t there. As Hadley gaped out of the viewport at the bits of rock that floated serenely past in the black emptiness, it hit her for the first time that her entire planet had been destroyed. A billion and more people, all her friends, the police detective for whom she’d solved so many cases, her home, every place she knew…..all of it had been reduced to so much space dust. “I wish I’d been there,” she said mournfully. “I could’ve helped.”

“Like how?” Rain said. “You’re unarmed. You’re a shade of color. What would you do, glow at them?”

Hadley bloomed into a red fury. “I could’ve done something! And what would you know anyway? You’re Death, right? All this is just a normal day’s work for you, isn’t it? Oh, dear, another planet’s blown up, so sad, better start packing people off to heaven or the other place, wherever. What do you care?”

Hadley had expected Rain to make a blistering retort. But she didn’t say anything. She just stared out the viewport.  Finally, she said, very quietly, “I’ve lost people. I do care.”

Before Hadley could say anything else, the hatchway to their corridor squeaked open, and Milroy Birnbaum, god of war, stepped through. “We got a problem.”

“No kidding,” Rain said, back to her usual acid self. “You noticed that the planet’s missing too?”

“Not that. I’m a god of war, remember? So if someone’s fightin’, I can usually tell who they are, what weapons they used, that kinda thing. It leaves residue. It’s hard to explain, but you get the idea.”

“So… you know who blew up the planet?”

“Yeah,” Milroy said unhappily. “But you ain’t gonna like it.”

Rain and Hadley waited. Milroy didn’t continue for a long moment. Finally, he took a deep breath and started. “I picked up Dantean wave particles. Those come from only one type of fighter. Those ships weren’t from Earth. They weren’t from anywhere known. They were from someplace else.”

“Will you stop being dramatic and just spit it out?” Rain demanded.

“Right,” Hadley said hopefully. “It can’t be all that bad, can it? Wherever it is, we’ll just go there and find out why they did it and tell them to stop, and-”

“They came from hell.”

“Oh.”

There was a long silence.  “Well,” Rain said, “I can get there, perks of the job and all, but Hadley’s still alive. She’s going to have problems.”

“That’s okay, I didn’t really want to-”

“Back on my planet there’s a door,” Milroy said. “It lets any living soul pass through.”

“But I’d really rather not-”

“Let’s go then,” Rain said. Milroy nodded, and without further discussion went back to the bridge of the fighter and whipped the ship around towards his planet. Hadley would’ve preferred further discussion.

***

The weather on Milroy’s planet had not improved. The clouds shifted, casting an ominous shadow on the ground. Hadley usually avoided ominous shadows if she could at all help it. She trailed miserably after Rain and Milroy as they marched on, not even looking back, until they arrived at a metal door set in the wall of a rocky canyon. The shadows were particularly ominous round the door. Hadley could just make out some ancient writing. She couldn’t make out what it said, and didn’t particularly want to. A red warm glow filtered underneath the door, and trails of inky black smoke coiled at its edges.

Milroy produced a key and unlocked the door, tugging it open. It creaked noisily as it moved, and more smoke billowed out. Beyond was all black and red, that Hadley could see. “There,” Milroy said. “The only door that a livin’ soul can pass.”

“As I said before, I’d much rather not, thanks,” Hadley said. “Why don’t you guys go in and I’ll stay out here and, um, keep guard! I can do a lookout with the best of them!”

Rain rolled her eyes. “Honestly. It’s not that bad.”

“Not that bad? It’s hell! That’s like the absolute pinnacle of bad! There’s not much more bad you can get!”

“Then let’s get it over with,” Rain said, and with that she moved behind Hadley and gave her a hearty shove. Hadley tumbled forward, flailing wildly, right through the open door into the dark.

For previous chapters in Hadley’s Story, go here. Thanks for reading!

M.E., A Name She Calls Herself

“What’ve we got, Jim?”

“Laser Beauty, cape from Eastside. Real name’s Sarah McCallister, medical examiner, 6th precinct.”

“Shame. Doctor Sting’s Death Bees got her, then?”

“Yeah, but she took a whole swarm with her.”

“Ah. So ‘twas Beauty killed the bees.”

“Yep.”

 

I was thinking I hadn’t written a superhero story in a while, and I was thinking about bees, and, well….this happened. I don’t like bees.