Michael S. Atkinson's Blog, page 39

V is for Venus

Previously, on the Catrina Chronicles, our heroine had been transformed from a theremin back into her proper human self. Now, on the beach of Kumquat City, the Atlantean fleet and Susan both gone, she must decide what she should do next….

“Gee,” Catrina said flatly. “I wonder what I should do next.”

“We could keep trying the transmogrification spell!” Katrina suggested hopefully.

Catrina shot her a death glare. “I’m quite sick of being transmogrified, thank you. What I’d most like is a year or so of peace and quiet, so I can do nice warm motherly things with my twins. Can I at least have that?”

Ermingard hadn’t said anything for a while, but at this point she raised her hand. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but…” then she considered. “Actually I don’t, really.  My family motto is Splat is coming. We’re practically professionals at bearing bad news.”

“Is it something I absolutely need to know right this minute?” Catrina asked.

“Not exactly…”

“Then you can tell me later. Right this moment, I am going to find the clone I apparently married.” She headed off back into the city.

Katrina wasn’t sure what she should do. She had played the villain role in the story, so that meant she should try to stop Catrina. On the other hand, she’d also helped out her heroic namesake on several occasions. It was most perplexing. “Like, now what?” she wailed.

She expected Ermingard to say something reassuring, or at least make some sort of sad observation, but Ermingard had gone off to join the search party for the Luke clone. Katrina drew her Sporksaber in frustration, hoping at least some sort of duel would present itself. The sun was setting by then, and in the dim light of twilight drawing over the beach, the glow of the green Sporksaber played over her face.

“Oh, yeah, description, finally!” Katrina said. “Cause dialogue sucks, yo. I thought this whole story was gonna be like, dialogue. Yay description!”

Then, all at once, she heard a noise. A sort of horrible gurgling coming from the water. Another green light, pale and sickly, lit up the waves.  The gurgling grew louder. Something was moving down there.

Now, a sensible person would have immediately retreated to a safe distance, rallied their friends to help, and only then proceeded in a cautious investigation of the horror in the water. Katrina, however, immediately decided to find out what it was all by herself. She marched recklessly forward into the waves splashing against the beach, flinching only just once as the water dampened her skirt. “Okay then, you creepy monster thing! Come on! I’m ready for you!”

She wasn’t. A mountain reared up from the waves before her. Huge, towering, massively green and sticky, mighty tentacles lashing from its indescribable bulk of a head, it let out a sound such as Katrina had never heard. Her mouth fell open in slack-jawed horror. Cthulhu had returned. And it wanted a snack.

***

Meanwhile, Catrina and Ermingard were leading search parties through the streets of Kumquat City, but to no avail. Luke wasn’t to be found anywhere, nor the rest of his Atlantean fleet either. Catrina, tired out from the day’s battles and exertions, paused for a rest in a convenient alleyway. She leaned back against the wall and slid to the ground, closing her eyes. Just once, what she wanted to do was have a nice long nap. She hadn’t had a good nap in forever.

Above her, the sun had quite set by now, and the stars had come out in a blaze of twinkling lights. One light remained steady; Catrina wasn’t too keen on the sciences anymore than she was keen on languages, but she had taken one or two classes in Astronomy. She recognized the steady light just over the horizon. “Ah, Venus,” she said. “Lovely.”  It seemed ironic that the planet associated with the ancient god of love should be in her view just then. “I don’t suppose you could render any help here?”

She hadn’t expected anything to actually happen. But then, she really should have, given all her experiences thus far. At any rate, there was a sudden golden burst of light, and Venus herself stepped into the alleyway. She was followed by a torrent of water that soaked everything in the alley, including Catrina. “My apologies,” the Roman goddess said grandly, “The lands swim on my world, and whenever I travel anywhere, the waters follow.”

The trouble was, she said this in Latin, as the last time she had visited Earth, everyone had spoken Latin. Catrina was notoriously bad on languages; she had flunked clean out of Beginning Quenya, for instance, and she only knew one or two words in Latin that people occasionally used for magic spells. She was, naturally, upset that a random person had appeared out of nowhere and splashed her with water. Then she paused. It wasn’t salt water. It was, oddly, quite sweet. “You’re….” she ventured, “not from around here, are you?”

“Quid dicam vobis?” Venus asked. She didn’t know English very much either. Then her eyes fell on Mlrning, the Shovel of Thor. This was really unfortunate. The Roman gods had a sort of running feud with the Norse deities on Asgard. Odin and Zeus hadn’t spoken to each other for three months; even Aphrodite and Freya, who had always been on friendly terms, now only made death glares at each other. Venus saw the ancient runes on the Shovel, and immediately leaped to the wrong conclusion. Catrina had somehow summoned her to that spot to whack her over the head with it. She flew into a towering rage. “You vile Norse betrayer! Viking scum!”

“I’m not certain what you’re saying,” Catrina said. “But you seem upset. Perhaps if you just calmed down a bit and maybe we could try and understand each other…”

Venus hadn’t paid much attention to what Catrina was saying; she was working herself into a full-fledged divine wrathful monologue full of imprecations. “Supprime tuum stultiloquium, ructatrix!” she finished off in a flurry of angry golden light.

Now, it was true that Catrina didn’t know very much Latin. She didn’t recognize the first part of that sentence, in which Venus had told her, literally, to suppress her fool-speak.  But aside from the odd incantation, she had also heard one or two other Latin words around the castle. Ructatrix was one of them. It meant “She Who Belches.”

“That,” said Catrina, “is positively the last straw.”  She raised the Shovel of Thor. “Leave. Now.”

A sword flashed in Venus’s hand. “I am Venus!” she said. “You dare threaten me with so puny a shovel-”

But it had been a long time since she had actually encountered Mlrning, and she had forgotten what it could do. There was a thunderclap and a burst of wintry power, and an ice-blast knocked Venus back on her heels. She came down hard, smack on a small glass object. It shattered beneath her. There was yet another flash, and a sudden swirling rush, and suddenly the sky above Kumquat City was filled with Atlantean ships crewed by dazed Atlantean soldiers. Luke, their ostensible leader, found himself suddenly in the alleyway only two feet from Catrina.

“Oh, good, I’ve found you!” Catrina said. “We need to talk.”

“Aren’t we mortal enemies?” Luke asked. “I am the Emperor of Atlantis. I should be demanding your surrender.”

“About that….” Catrina said, trying to find the words to tell him that he was actually a clone of the real Luke, who had never left Atlantis in the first place. She noticed that he was going for his magical wand, so she casually knocked him unconscious with Mlrning so she could have time to think. Relationships were so complicated sometimes.

“Ow….” said Venus, lying on the ground, a very uncomfortable feeling in her Venutian bottom.

“You keep quiet,” Catrina said.

This has been another exciting episode of the Catrina Chronicles. For previous episodes, go here. For other stories I’ve written, some of which involve Catrina, go here. Thanks for reading!

 

 

Searching

This week’s Trifecta prompt was to write 33 words based on the picture below. I decided to write about Constance, before she became a guardian angel. A flashback, as it were. Enjoy! 

Thomas Leuthard / Foter.com / CC BY

 

“Crudmuffin!” Constance swore. All that time poring through St. Expeditus’ Journal. The whole morning spent translating a single knotty Aramaic verb. Not a word about the treasure. She was out of coffee, too.

***

Photo credit: Thomas Leuthard / Foter.com / CC BY

Episode the One Hundredth

Last time in the Catrina Chronicles, our heroine had just been transmogrified back into her human self from a theremin by means of the magic word “uvula”. Before she continues on with her adventures, however, our story takes a short detour to recognize a Very Important Moment in the Catrina Chronicles, an anniversary celebration inspired in part by a certain episode of a certain space western….

Once upon a time, in a far away land, there lived a princess. And in a small out of the way corner of her kingdom, there was a locally beloved little pub called the Blue Newt. One fine spring afternoon, the pub was crowded with its usual regulars getting themselves thoroughly plastered, when its doors flew open, and in walked a brown-haired woman in a black denim jumper, with little silver skulls where the buttons should be. She stalked to the bar and demanded a drink. Then, having gotten the attention of pretty much everyone there by her dramatic entrance, she raised her drink high. “A toast! I got words,” she said. “I’m saying, this is an auspicious day. And since I’m not a random purple-coated minion, I’m pronouncing auspicious like Australia, not like Asgard, just so you know. Anywho. We all know what day it is. It’s Susanification Day!”

There were a few perfunctory cheers, as the Blue Newt’s patrons tried to remember what Susanification Day was supposed to be. At the end of the bar, another woman abruptly slammed down her tankard of blueberry cordial and rose. Her green eyes flashed. The patrons gave a much heartier cheer when they saw her, for they recognized her as their own Princess Catrina. “One. This isn’t your anniversary, it’s mine. You haven’t had a hundred stories about you; you weren’t even introduced until Episode Eight! Two, you’re the villain. This isn’t the Susan Chronicles; this is the Catrina Chronicles. So why don’t you just go away so I can have my milestone celebration in peace?”

“What are you gonna do, hit me with your shovel?” Susan said. “Or maybe one of your other weapons? You keep switching them out; first you had a standard laser sword, then a Sporksaber, then a towel, now this shovel thing. Make up your mind, why don’t you?”

Catrina had often been vexed herself at her author’s continuity errors, but she didn’t much appreciate Susan going on about them. Besides, Susan had friends. All at once from the crowd emerged Vladimir the Marauder, and his brother Murphy the Terrible, both of whom Catrina had defeated in one way or another. Susan snapped her fingers, and in a puff of smoke and flame appeared Catrina’s evil brother Edmund, followed by a pack of horrible monsters from Character Hell.  Behind them came a mob of zombie penguins ominously clacking their beaks. Susan smiled. “Even if you had all your weapons, you’re still way outnumbered.”

A slow smile spread over Catrina’s face. “Maybe not so much.” There was a crash from the opposite end of the bar, and in stormed Colin the Mime-Assassin, Master of Very Sharp Knives, accompanied by his bride Margaret the Vocal Coach Commando. Princess Ermingard drearily meandered in behind them, and behind her came Katrina, who wasn’t entirely sure which side she was supposed to be on. Along with them were Phoebe the Dryad, the Naiad Triplets, Fred and Sparky the Fire Gnomes, the Yellow Fairy, Thrud the daughter of Thor, and even Jennifer, the random civilian Catrina had once rescued from an imminent squishing by train. Leading them all was Luke, formerly Perry, Catrina’s royal consort. “Hey, dear,” he said. “I brought friends.”

“So you did. Well done, love,” Catrina replied.  “I think we can get this party started now.” She raised Mlrning (the Shovel of Thor!).  “Unless you’d like to surrender, Susan?”

“Oh, no,” Susan said. “Not on your granny’s corset cover.”

“Thanks for that mental image.”

“No problem,” the ex-mistress of all Character Hell said. “You want a party? Fine. Let’s party!”

Susan gave a piercing evil whistle, and suddenly the walls of the Blue Newt smashed in. Beyond, on the green fields outside, a huge army of sheep had assembled, far outnumbering Catrina’s plucky band. Leading them was Floss Anita, major domo to the Cow, whom all the sheep worshiped. The army began to chant as one voice. “EM-ta-LA! EM-ta-LA!”

Jennifer blinked. “Are they chanting about the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act?” She was a nurse in a hospital, so she would know.

Catrina shrugged. “I don’t know. My author never explains these things to me. A hundred episodes, and I never got a satisfactory explanation for anything. I’ve been killed off and resurrected so many times I lost count. I’ve been kaboominated. I was turned violet, and magenta. I’ve been miniaturized. I’ve been teleported. I’ve been transmogrified. I got married, had twin babies, and skipped the whole nine months of pregnancy after eating alien apricots.  I was put on trial for murder of an alien blob, attacked by a mummy juror on a towel dispenser, and nearly executed by a fleet of space-traveling bugs. I was even subjected to a Justin Bieber metaphor, which is singularly unfortunate under the circumstances. I can’t recall what it exactly was now, but…”

Catrina’s shoulder angel rushed up with a helpful flashcard. “Thanks,” Catrina said. “Right, so it was, ‘Time and space broke apart like they were in a relationship together and time had just asked space whether she was interested and space said no but they could still be friends, and time was like baby, baby, baby, oh, like, baby, baby, baby, no, like baby, baby, baby, no, thought space would always be miiine.’”  She rolled her eyes. “Honestly. I should just let Susan kill me now.”

“Well, since you asked…” Susan said, and the sheep army of Emtala readied their weapons, as did all the other minions and antagonists with them. “Any last words?”

“A few, actually.” Catrina pulled a small notebook from her pocket. “You see, I’ve consulted my planner, and today really isn’t a good day to die. Maybe next Tuesday. I have an opening next Tuesday. But till then…”

All at once there was a flash in the sky, and in flew a spacecraft, shaped like a gleaming white comma, laser cannons aimed right at Susan. From it boomed the squeaky but thrilling voice of Ferdinand Roderick Marshalham Willingsford the Seventh, captain of the good ship Dangling Participle. “Every sheep there put down your weapons, or we will blast a new hole in this medium-sized planet.”

Susan, with little choice left, signaled her army to back off. She snarled a final insult at Catrina; unfortunately, the thrum of the Dangling Participle’s engines made it impossible to hear what she said. “Mutual, I’m sure!” Catrina yelled back as Susan stormed off.  Then, as the space hamsters teleported down to them, Catrina laid down her shovel and raised her glass of blueberry cordial. “Now that the antagonists are gone, I think we really can have a party. But first, a toast. To my author, and his friends who contributed ideas and random words. I’d like to keep on having adventures, but not too many, nor too stressful. And that idea you’re having about the treasure hunt and the war on Atlantis or whatever? Don’t, please. Thank you. At any rate, to life!”

“To life!” toasted the others, and then they all set about dancing, and so, once again, their story came to a satisfactory conclusion. And they all lived happily ever after. For the moment, anyway.

This has been a very special episode of the Catrina Chronicles. Seriously, it’s been fun, these past three years of Catrina stories, and I hope to have many more to come. For the previous 99 episodes, go here. For Catrina’s adventures in novelized form, go here. And, as always, thanks for reading.

 

To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before

I couldn’t decide how to fit this into Constance’s Story, so here’s a little space vignette instead for this week’s Trifecta prompt. I’ve watched a great many episodes of Star Trek. I’ve always wondered about this.

Star-cruiser Captain K’pid was confused. “Ah, chief engineer, where’s the restrooms?”

“Restrooms?” drawled the alien. “How quaint. We don’t need them, dah-ling.”

“What, we just go in a wormhole?”

“Dah-ling. How rude.”

“Oy.”

U is for Uvulas

Last time in the Catrina Chronicles, our heroine had been transformed into a theremin by her evil father-in-law, moments after learning that the person she thought she had married was in fact a clone. (don’t you just hate it when that happens?). Catrina’s nemesis Susan had driven off the father-in-law, captured the powerful gopherwood wand and gone off to find Cthulhu, leaving poor theremin-Catrina all alone on a beach….

Ermingard had watched the whole thing from a distance via telescope. She hadn’t heard a word that was said, and she couldn’t read lips, which meant that she had to make educated guesses as to what was happening. She and Katrina (the alternate evil movie version of Catrina) were supposed to play backup, in case Catrina and Susan ran into difficulties with the Atlantean fleet. It looked like they had things well in hand, and Ermingard was beginning to think she wouldn’t have to fire her crossbow at all. She was vaguely relieved. War was such a depressing thing. Then again, to Ermingard, everything was depressing.

Then things had gone all pear-shaped somehow. Susan had gone off somewhere, and Catrina had gotten herself turned into what looked like, and yet not like, a piano. Ermingard had run down to the beach (a complaining Katrina in tow), but once she got there, she wasn’t sure what to do. On close inspection, the musical instrument Catrina had become didn’t look like any Ermingard knew. She tried to play it; nothing worked.  “Well. This is a problem,” she said drearily.

“Maybe I should smash it with my Sporksaber!” Katrina suggested, a manic light in her eyes.

“Maybe you shouldn’t.” Ermingard said.

Katrina huffed. “Well, what should I do? I’m supposed to be, like, evil, remember? Not evil like Susan, but more traditional evil. Rules and monologuing and black capes and all. So I should want to smash the theremin. And then you try to stop me and succeed, and I try again, and we keep on having glorious fights about it!”  She waved her arm about dramatically to illustrate her point. By pure chance, her arm swept over the theremin. A bit of electronic music burped out.

“Do that again, would you?” Ermingard said, suddenly interested. Katrina waved her hand again, and more music came from the theremin. “Huh,” Ermingard said. “Curious. It plays by air.”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s genius. Can we fight now?”

“We don’t have to fight at all,” Ermingard noted. “This is an interesting puzzle. We should be using the logic of pure reason to work it out.”

If Katrina had been huffy before, she was positively inflamed now. “I’m supposed to fight! I’m an antagonist! That’s what we do! I’m antag, you’re pro-tag, and between us we make conflict that advances the story!  Duh! If I can’t be an antagonist, I’m as useless as…as a uvula!”

Katrina was, of course, referring to the little thing that hangs down in the back of your throat, which is of course not entirely useless; it helps to make certain sounds in speech, for one thing. What she didn’t know was that, in Catrina’s particular country and time period, uvula is also a word of a particularly magical sort. Magic words were positively ubiquitous back then; indeed, one could hardly get through a sentence without invoking a magic spell of some sort or other. This is one reason why Latin isn’t used so much in modern times; people got tired of inadvertently changing their eyebrows into centipedes, for instance. Katrina had barely said the word when suddenly there was a flash and a bang, and the theremin vanished. In its place was a small china teacup. It was filled with a fragrantly spiced tea, and a cocktail umbrella floated merrily in it.

“Well, shazam!” said Katrina.

Ermingard was torn. Being a teacup didn’t seem any better than a theremin. But at least they were making progress. Also, she was suddenly a bit thirsty, and that tea did smell awfully good. But she worried about the possibilities. Suppose the tea was part of Catrina? If she drank it, and then transmogrified the teacup back, Catrina might wind up missing a leg or something. That could prove disastrous.  This required science. “Maybe you should say uvula again?”

“I still think I should smash her. But whatever. Uvula!”

There was a second flash and a bang. The teacup was gone. In its place was a shiny white unicorn, with skittles lying scattered about its hooves. Sunlight glinted off its ivory horn.

“Hey, this is fun!” Katrina giggled. “Uvula!”

A third flash. Now the unicorn had become a cow. The cow mooed at Katrina in a most irate manner. Had she been able to speak cow, she would’ve been highly offended. In loose translation, the cow meant to tell Katrina to knock it off and transmogrify her back to her proper form. But Katrina didn’t speak cow. “Uvula!”

Flash.

The cow had become a plastic Slinky.

“Uvula!”

Flash.

A fluffy white poodle.

“Uvula!”

Flash.

A cinnamon bun.

“Uvula! Uvula! Uvula!”

Flash flash flash.

In quick succession, a Christmas tree angel, a model of Downton Abbey, and a Frisbee.

“U-”  Katrina started to say again, bouncing up in down in excitement.

“Oh, let me try,” said Ermingard. “You aren’t getting us anywhere. Uvula.”

Perhaps it was her flat, unaffected tone that did it. At any rate, there was a flash of a slightly different hue, and all at once Catrina stood there, back in her proper human form. “And I do hope I stay that way for a good long time,” she said. “I am getting so tired of being transmogrified.”

This has been another exciting episode of the Catrina Chronicles. Be sure to tune in next time, for the very special 100th episode of the Catrina Chronicles. For the previous 98 episodes, go here. For my Amazon page where you can buy the first year of the Catrina episodes in proper book form. go here. And as always, thanks for reading!

Red World

This week’s story was written for the Trifecta weekly prompt, which was to write 33 words in response to the following snippet: “The first time I saw….”   So here we go.

The first time I saw Mars?  They were there first.

Green things: all slime. They tried to eat my spleen.

They gave chase; I thought I was done.

Then I found their death ray.

I kept my spleen.

T is for Transmogrified Theremins

Last time in the Catrina Chronicles, our heroine had teamed up with her arch-nemesis Susan to defeat the Atlantean forces invading her kingdom by hurling a snowsharknado at them. They were saved at the last minute by Catrina’s royal consort, who had turned out to be working for Atlantis all along. He magically transported the entire fleet into a snowglobe, lost somewhere in the streets of Kumquat City….

Catrina was not in the mood to chase after Cthulhu just then. The Atlantean fleet menacing Kumquat City had disappeared. She had no idea where they had got to, and she didn’t much care at the moment. What she wanted was to go back to her castle and spend some quality time with her baby twins, and then work out how to explain to them that their father was a magical Atlantean emperor in disguise. Unfortunately, she had made a bargain with Susan, and what Susan wanted to do was charge off right then to hunt down the Lovecraftian menace. Catrina resolved that she would never again cut deals with incarnations of evil; it just never worked out.

“Couldn’t it wait, just a week or so?” she pleaded.

Susan rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure, princess. Let’s just let Cthulhu roam free around the galaxy while you go change diapers or something. It’s not like the world could end or anything. Oh. Wait.”

“You don’t have to be snappish about it,” Catrina said. “I was only asking for a week. I don’t think the apocalypse could happen within a week.”

Susan was about to object that apocalypses could happen within a very short time indeed (she’d started plenty of them, she should know) when suddenly the sea outside Kumquat City began to churn. Then a massive metal prow exploded from the waves, driving up on shore in a spray of sand. Catrina and Susan stood gaping. There before them was a ship that made even the Atlantean sky-ships look like toy boats in the bathtub. It was all sleek black metal, with gleaming windows running along the sides, and mighty propellers behind. Catrina had never before seen a submarine, and she certainly wouldn’t have imagined one to look like this.

With a sharp clang, a door opened up in the beached prow, and a ramp drove out into the sand. An old man came striding down it, clad in black robes, with a long white beard. He also wore a top hat and a pair of metalwork goggles, so that he looked very much like a steampunk Dumbledore. Catrina, naturally wary, kept a tight hold on Mlrning (the Shovel of Thor!) as he approached. “So who are you, then?” she demanded.

The man spoke in a weary, but still impressive baritone. “I am Madrigal, Lord-Emperor of Atlantis. I believe you married my son.”

Of all the people Catrina had expected to show up, her father-in-law was not one of them. “Oh. Yes. Erm, hello. You’re not upset you weren’t invited to the wedding, are you? I would have invited you, I spent hours over the invitations, truly, but well, I didn’t know you existed, you see. I thought your son was a completely different person; I had no idea he was really a spy for Atlantis. I’m actually a bit upset about that.”

Madrigal smiled grimly. “I’m sure you are. Well, perhaps this will put your mind at ease; you’re not actually married to him. You have no claim on the Atlantean throne whatever.”

“I beg your pardon?”

The Atlantean Emperor sighed, as if he had hoped this would be self-explanatory. “You don’t think I’d send my real son on a mission like this, do you? The real Luke is safely back at home in Atlantis. What you married was a magically created clone, Luke the Third.”

“….the Third?”

“Well, the first clone had a few minor difficulties. We had to scratch him. You understand.”

Catrina didn’t, actually. “So…Luke…the Third…isn’t a real person?”

Madrigal exploded. “I did not come here to debate the finer points of clone philosophy! I came here because the clone I sent has so clearly bungled this campaign that I’ve been forced to mop up! I had been given to understand that clone troopers were far more efficient.”

Susan, meanwhile, had been looking from one to the other in rising hilarity. Finally she couldn’t contain herself. “Well, toupee on a tribble! You married a clone! A clone who’s getting sacked, no less! Oh man. I am so glad I came with you on this.”

“You be quiet,” Catrina shot back. “Anyone who gets kicked out of Character Hell by their own minions is in no position to criticize.” Then she turned back to Madrigal. “When you say mop up….”

Madrigal’s voice went very cold. “I mean I’m going to dispose of the clone and his incompetent fleet and start over again.”

“Dispose. You mean kill.”

The Atlantean emperor shrugged. “What does it matter to you? He betrayed your trust, did he not?”

Catrina raised the Shovel of Thor. “He did, and we’re going to have a good long talk about that, and we’ll probably have to attend several sessions of marriage counseling. But still. This is my kingdom. And I’m not too keen on anyone doing murder here.”

“Do you think you can stop me?” Madrigal asked. A thin wand, adorned with what seemed a superfluity of metalwork, slid into his hand.

“I have the Shovel of Thor,” Catrina said. “You just have that. It’s not even your most powerful wand, is it? Luke has that.”

For the first time since he’d landed on the shore, Madrigal smiled. “The gopherwood wand, you mean? That was cloned too.”

“Oh,” said Catrina. And that was all she had time to say, before Madrigal’s wand sparked, and she found herself unceremoniously transformed into a theremin. Madrigal waved his wand again, and the theremin played a quick version of the theme to Doctor Who.

Susan giggled. “Bravo. I’ve been wanting to get rid of her for months. You don’t even know.”

Madrigal rounded upon her. “And now I shall be rid of you.”  He had, of course, just committed the classic villain mistake of announcing his murderous intentions before actually doing the deed. Susan picked up on it practically from the words “And now.” And so, by the time he got around to actually raising the wand and performing the spell that would’ve transformed her into a small snare drum known as a tabor, Susan had her laser pistols out and firing. It turned out that a well-aimed laser blast is just as good as “Expelliarmus” when you want to disarm someone of their magic wand. It flew from the surprised Madrigal’s hand…and right into Susan’s.

She didn’t waste time with saying something dramatic like, “And now, back to Atlantis!” She just did it. There was a flash and a boom of water, and suddenly Madrigal and his submarine weren’t there anymore. Then, and only then, did Susan smile. With the gopherwood wand, she had more than enough power to go after Cthulhu. She didn’t even need Catrina now. “Bye,” she said, giving the theremin a fake-friendly pat. “The sad thing is, you’re an electronic instrument now, and you’re stuck in a medieval age. No one’s gonna be able to play you, or turn you back into a person, or even know what the heck you are. Sucks to be you, doesn’t it?”  And with that, she used the power of the wand to transport herself away, leaving the Catrina-theremin alone and quiet on the deserted beach.

This has been another exciting episode of the Catrina Chronicles. For previous episodes, go here. For other adventures of Catrina and more, go here. Thanks for reading!

Consequences

This story was written for Trifecta’s weekly prompt, which was to use the word “whatever” as a an adverb, “used to show that something is not important. It is also another entry in Constance’s Story. To recap, Constance is a former treasuer-hunter, who became the guardian angel of newlyweds Amy and Steven after she accidentally caused them to meet each other on Christmas Eve. Shortly after their wedding, however, Amy was killed in a bus accident. Constance tried to resurrect her, but unfortunately Amy came back as a zombie. Steven was a bit upset by this, and told Constance he wished she had left them alone. Constance granted his wish, and things went very badly indeed…

Sirens wailed like so many toddlers crying to have their toy back. Steven paid no heed to them, or to the people running headlong past him to get out of the city. They kept yelling at him that he was going the wrong way. Steven didn’t care. Amy was alive. She was somewhere in the city, and so was a gigantic green Godzilla-type monster. Steven had to find her before the monster did.

“Okay,” he said frantically to himself, “If I was Amy, and I was being chased by a monster, where would I go? My basement, that’s where. Amy lives on Third Street. She’s gotta be there. She’s gotta be.” 

He ran towards Third Street hard as he could. Along the way, he noticed that the city had changed somehow. Its buildings had once been charming and quaint; now it looked like Joel Schumacher had set a Batman movie in it. There was more neon, more metal, more hard edges, more smells of oil and Listerine. Steven didn’t know how things had gone wrong, but if he could only find Amy, he was sure it would all be right again.

He rounded a corner onto Third Street, and stopped in his tracks. Piles of smoldering rubble lay before him. Constance was perched on one of the piles. “Hey.”

“Where’s Amy?” Steven demanded.

“I’m not supposed to tell, you dimwit. This is your wish. Live with it.”

“I didn’t want all this!” he yelled, waving at the chaos around him.

“Whatever.  I don’t care what you meant, you still made the wish. I left you alone. So Amy never met you. So she became a ruthless corporate raider, nearly got arrested, lost her job, started making crystal meth, and then fell into a chemical vat. Way to go.”

Steven grabbed Constance by her shirt collar. “Where’s Amy, Constance? Where’s Amy?”

“She’s rampaging over there, through the library!”

“…rampaging?”

“Yeah. She’s not being chased by the monster. She is the monster. Duh.”  

 

 

S is for Snowsharknadoes

Last time in the Catrina Chronicles, our heroine enjoyed a lovely Christmas episode. But before that, she had just struck a deal with her archenemy Susan, in which Susan would help her regain her homeland, in return for which Catrina would help Susan recapture Cthulhu….

“Okay then!” Susan said. “Let’s get after the big guy!”

“Ah, no, I’m afraid we won’t be doing that just yet,” Catrina retorted. “First you help me with Luke, then we go after that squid-headed…thing. If I help you with Cthulhu first, what guarantee will I have that you’ll still help me afterward?”

Susan scoffed. “Works both ways, sister. How do I know you’ll help me with Cthulhu once I help you?”

“Because I’m on the side of good, which means I’ll keep my word. You, on the other hand, would break your promise at the drop of a proverbial hat.”

Susan had to admit that Catrina had a point. She had, in fact, been planning to ditch Catrina the moment Cthulhu was safely locked in ice again. Drat her for figuring that out. “Fine, whatever,” Susan said. “We’ll go after your ex first.”

“So we will.” Catrina’s hand tightened round the handle of Mlrning (the Shovel of Thor!).  “So we will.”

***

Lightning still crackled round Morgana LeFay’s castle, the weather being as typically stormy as ever. The constant flashes lit up the courtyard and played across the faces of the garden gnomes strewn there. Morgana was inordinately fond of garden gnomes.

Susan and Catrina dropped in from the sky, Catrina holding fast to the Shovel of Thor and Susan holding in her turn to Catrina’s belt. Catrina looked ’round. “I don’t see Ermingard. Or my evil twin. Are you certain they’re here?”

“Yeah,” Susan said. “They got turned into garden gnomes. I doubt they’re going anywhere.”

Catrina looked icily at her nemesis. “Did they. And how, exactly, did that happen?”

“Let’s not bicker and argue over who gnomed who,” Susan said. “Oh, look, I found them.”

Ermingard and Katrina were fairly close by, and looked as gnomish as any other of the gnomes arrayed in the courtyard. Catrina sighed in relief. “Right, so change them back now, please.”

Susan scuffled her feet nervously. “Well. Heh heh. About that….”

Catrina’s eyes narrowed. “Change them back, Susan. I assumed you could.”

“I never said that.”

“You implied!”

Further semantic discussion was interrupted by a sudden trumpet-call of alarm. Lights flared in the castle. Lightning blasted even more violently in the sky. “Oh joy,” Susan said. “Well, we can’t stay here. You’d better blast us out of here with that shovel thing.”

Catrina smiled. “What do you mean, us? This is your problem. You deal with it.”  She raised the Shovel in preparation to blast away.

Susan wasn’t at all sanguine about facing Morgana’s wrath; she felt she could handle the witch, but it would take some doing, and Susan really wasn’t interested. “Fine!” she said in exasperation, pulling the Ugly Stick from a pocket in her jean jumper. “They got turned into gnomes in trade for the Ugly Stick. So if I give the Ugly Stick back…”

“Better hurry,” Catrina observed calmly. “I’m guessing we’ll be under attack in a minute or so.”

Susan smashed the Ugly Stick down hard on the paving stones. There was a flash of sickly green light. The Ugly Stick vanished, and the two garden gnomes went with it. In their place appeared Katrina and Ermingard. Katrina ignited her Sporksaber in a flare of plasma energy. Before she could attack, however, Catrina yelled to the Shovel of Thor to carry them away, and in a sudden blast of wind they all swept into the sky, leaving behind the astounded forces of an extremely upset Morgana LeFay.

***

The Atlantean sky-ships floated calmly above Kumquat City. Luke stood casually on the bridge of his flagship, the Glorious Porpoise, and looked out over the teeming streets below him. His eye fell on a range of hills just beyond the city. A few small figures had suddenly popped up there. He wondered what they were about. Curious civilians come to take in the sight of the invaders? Luke was just about to order a patrol to investigate when he saw a sudden gleam of white light. Instinctively his hand went to the gopher wood wand at his side. Then he gasped.

White clouds swirled into existence over the ocean, beyond the city and the Atlantean fleet. Snow poured down, and then began to swirl, round and round, in a mighty cylinder of wintry power. It was a veritable snownado, called into existence by Catrina and the Shovel of Thor. Then, as the snownado grew bigger, Susan added her own dark powers to it. Being the former mistress of Character Hell, she had learned a thing or two about sharks.  Sharks were quite amenable to dark magical forces. Now they came from the oceans, jaws wide, teeth gleaming, and were swept up into the roaring snownado, so that it wasn’t just a snownado anymore. It was a snowsharknado. The massive cloud of ice, snow, wind, and sharks lumbered ponderously forward, aiming right for the Atlantean fleet.

Alarm calls shrilled aboard the Atlantean ships, and soldiers ran to their posts. Most of them assumed they’d be retreating on the double.  They’d gotten a bit tired of the invasion anyway; they hadn’t been allowed to do the usual things invading armies got to do, like plunder and pillage, sing their battle songs raucously in the bars of the occupied country, or change the measurement systems of Kumquat City to conform with Atlantean metrics. Mostly they’d been confined to their ships, for reasons the Fleet Command hadn’t bothered to explain. And now a snowsharknado was hurling at them. They wanted to go home. There weren’t any snowsharknadoes in Atlantis, that was certain.

But Luke wasn’t ready to give up yet. He had faith in the power of the gopher wood wand. Luke took aim, and tried to think of all the magic he knew, anything powerful enough to block a snowsharknado. He could think of only one thing. “Nix convexum!” The wand shook in his hand. A massive glass dome flashed down between the ships and the oncoming wintry storm. Then the dome got smaller, really fast, and everything inside with it. In a trice, the entire Atlantean fleet had vanished. The snowsharknado swept harmlessly out to sea.

Meanwhile, in a deserted alley within Kumquat City, a snow globe materialized on the ground. Inside tiny ships floated about, with even tinier Atlanteans gaping at their microscopic prison. Luke sighed. This wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind. He only hoped he could create the spell to reverse it before someone discovered them.

Catrina, on the ridge overlooking the city, wondered what had just happened. She and Susan had sent the snowsharknado hurtling towards their enemy, and then suddenly the enemy wasn’t there anymore. “Well…” she said. “I suppose that problem solved itself then.”

“Yippee,” said Susan. “We can go after Cthulhu now.”

“Ah. Right. Let’s…do that then.”

This has been another exciting episode of the Catrina Chronicles. For previous episodes, go here. For further adventures of Catrina, and other people, on Amazon, go here. Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!

Resolution

For this week’s Trifecta prompt, we were asked for our New Year’s resolutions, in only three words. This year promises to be a momentous one for me personally, for a number of reasons, I’m graduating from law school, taking the bar exam, beginning Doctor Who and Babylon Five….at any rate, this phrase came to mind.

See the mountains.

Now, you might take that as some sort of metaphorical reference to the Sound of Music, climbing every mountain and fording every stream like the Oregon Trail computer game all over again, and in some respects it is, but it’s also literal. I have never seen the mountains. That is to say, I haven’t seen really big mountains. I live in Southern Indiana; we have the occasional bit of hill, but not like that. I’ve driven through the Appalachians in Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, and those are very nice and picturesque, but I’ve never been out west, to the Rockies. I want to see peaks. Colorado. All that. The proverbial “Go West, young man” has a certain ring to it. Plus, hey, after three years of intense legal study and agonization, road trip!

Anyway. There it is. 2013 has been an interesting year. 2014 promises to be even more so.