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Week 514 (October 16-31). Story topic: Broken Lamp.
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AUTHOR: Garrison KellyTITLE: It Was All an Adventure to You
GENRE: Chrono Trigger Fan Fiction
WORD COUNT: 1,727
RATING: PG for language
“He’s right this way, Princess. Watch your step. He’s been lying here all day, it seems.”
Princess Marle knew who that male pronoun was meant for, but she didn’t want to say it out loud. She didn’t want his name associated with the grape-scented wine wafting through the forest. She intentionally slowed down, not because she didn’t want to step on her royal white dress, but to prolong the answer. She could have moved at a snail’s pace despite the urgency of her squad of knights, but this part of her future was inevitable. As a former time traveler, she knew something about grim futures.
The knight captain raised a branch so that Marle could pass through. Some of the leaves got in her otherwise perfect blond hair, but hers wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the young boy lying against the trees in front of her. Defeated, drunk, disheveled, and demonized. Four D’s, one shell of a former human being. It was indeed Marle’s ex-husband Crono, his eyes glazed over, his clothes a stained mess, his spiky red hair even messier than usual. All life had left his once bright eyes, numbed by the genie lamp-like bottle dangling in his right hand.
With her knights firmly behind her, Marle tiptoed toward her ex and took a whiff of the offensive air that poisoned not just the forest, but an entire human body. “Did you bathe in Genie’s Delight, Crono?” No answer, just drool, tears, and snot. Marle yanked the bottle out of his hand and sarcastically took a sip. “Mmm! You have fine tastes…despite the fact that you’re not even old enough to drink alcohol. Still…you have very nice tastes.”
Marle threw the lamp-like bottle against a nearby stump, the shattering noise jostling Crono around a little bit, the only sign of life he was capable of showing. Not even his ex-wife’s scowling contempt was enough to wake him up from this depressive stupor. “Arrest him.”
“It was all an adventure to you…”
The knights couldn’t proceed any further as Marle held out her arms like a barricade, wanting to give her ex-husband a chance to speak his mind…or whatever was left of it. “Come again?”
Crono spit a wad of blood onto a nearby patch of grass, as if that would be more effective at deforesting this area than his alcoholic miasma. “Time travel is supposed to be fun, right? We were all having a good time going through all those worlds…all those dinosaurs…all those dragons…all those bony old men looking for something to eat in a fucking factory…” He spat again. “I’m glad you had a good time, Marle. I’m happy all those lighting bolts and fire bombs didn’t scar you in the least. I was worried being in constant battle would take its toll on all of us…” He hiccupped.
“Crono…let me make something perfectly clear. Those battles were not my idea of fun. Nobody was having fun. We fought all of those monsters because it was necessary. We saved the world. Isn’t that something to be proud of? Isn’t that something you want to be remembered for?”
Crono burped.
“Answer me!” Marle’s arms folded like she was ready to make her final judgment upon this poor bastard in front of her.
Crono burped again. “I’m sure it’d be nice to be remembered as a savior. But that’s not how I remember it. All I remember was being burned alive and slashed to pieces.” Tears welled up in his eyes, much to the dismay of his ex-wife. “I died, Marle! I literally died! And before that I almost had my head chopped off by your kingdom! They were going to give me the guillotine for a fake kidnapping charge! The guillotine! To a little boy! That’s all that capital punishment is, really: state-sanctioned murder.”
Marle calmed down somewhat. “I agree.”
“I don’t,” said the knight captain, who earned himself a slap on the arm from her highness.
“You were cleared of all charges, Crono.”
“Tell that to the townsfolk. You think I don’t hear them talking? They still think I kidnapped you. They don’t buy that time portal explanation. Nobody does.” He pointed at an empty field. “Even that guy won’t stop talking about it. He wants me dead, just like everyone else.”
“Crono, who are you pointing at? There’s nobody there.” The weight of what Marle just said caused her to suck in a deep breath. Almost holding her hand to her mouth, she whimpered, “Are you delusional? Are you…hearing voices?” Her only answer came in the form of a weak shrug. “Is that why you drink so much?” He nodded. “You ruined our marriage over a few bottles of wine for this? Crono, why didn’t you tell me?”
He laughed like the madman he was becoming. “How am I supposed to bring that up in conversation? Oh, honey, these mashed potatoes are delicious! By the way, I’m hearing things that aren’t there! Your knights would have given me the guillotine just for that. I guess there’s no better way to relieve head trauma, am I right?” He chuckled at his own form of gallows humor.
Marle’s breathing became more erratic and jittery as she fought back tears that she never wanted her loyal knights to see. “Crono, if you would have told me, I wouldn’t have judged you for it. I would have helped you through it. We all would have.”
“I wouldn’t have,” said the knight captain.
“SHUT UP!” yelled Marle, an order that was quickly obeyed. “Crono…we married each other…we shared moments…and you threw it all away with that disgusting wine! You could have told me what was going on!”
“Not even your healing magic would have done me any favors, Marle!” Crono snapped back. “You want to help me? Reach inside my head, pull the demons out one-by-one, and throw them away for good! Can you do that? Can anybody do that?!”
“…No…I can’t…” Marle’s tears were slowly eroding away her royal toughness.
“Look…if you’re going to arrest me, then do it already. I’m beyond help at this point. Those combat memories won’t go away on their own. Those chatty bastards won’t stop spreading rumors about me. And I’ll never get the taste of Genie’s Delight out of my mouth. Ah, who am I kidding? Everything tastes like blood nowadays. I’ve been stabbed so many times that I can taste it every day. I’ve been burned so many times that it tastes like crispy black scabs. Just arrest me or kill me, okay? I don’t care what you choose, just do something.”
Marle wiped her eyes on her arm glove before using her arm like a barricade once more to stop the knight captain from arresting Crono. “I’ll handle this. Take the rest of the day off, Captain. You’ve done enough.”
“But Princess, I…”
She lifted a finger to her lips. “Not. Another. Word. Let me handle this. Go.”
The knights hesitated for a while before marching back to the castle, leaving Marle to wrap Crono’s arm around her back and hoist him to his feet. His dizzy equilibrium made him harder to carry, but she was still willing to do it. He was so slippery that she just decided to carry him baby style in her arms. He seemed comfortable in that position from how easily he closed his puffy eyes. Marle didn’t even have to struggle that much to hold him, suggesting to her that he hadn’t had much food to go with his copious amounts of alcohol.
Marle carried the remains of her ex-husband through the dark forest, the one where they used to “level up”. The one where they escaped from the castle guards by traveling to the future, the future of broken down factories, skinny survivors, constant hunger, and dark skies. Maybe there was some validity to Crono’s trauma.
She carried him like the mother she originally wanted to be. She climbed many castle stairs, receiving dirty looks from the guards along the way. She didn’t care. She climbed more stairs. And more. And more. And then she introduced Crono to a room he thought he hadn’t seen before. “This doesn’t look like a drunk tank…”
“That’s because it isn’t. It’s our old bedroom. The bed is a lot softer here than in a drunk tank.”
A little bit of life returned to Crono’s eyes as he looked around the old bedroom he shared with his now ex-wife. Marle took it in as well. The stained glass windows, the bookcase full of knowledge and wisdom, the beautiful artwork that was a mirror image of the battles they fought together, and more importantly, the bed that felt like laying on a cloud of vanilla ice cream.
“I think you’d be more comfortable with your shirt off.” Sure enough, Marle stood him up and removed his wine-scented tunic, revealing visible ribs underneath. She elected to leave everything else on his body in order to keep it PG. She hobbled him over to the bed and laid him down on his stomach, face first into the silky eiderdown pillow. He was asleep almost instantly, snoring like a coffee grinder and snorting like a pig.
Marle gazed down upon her once beloved with watery eyes. She threatened him with arrest back in the forest, but she knew in her heart she could never carry out such an order. He was so irresponsible, but he was also hurting. She couldn’t leave someone like that alone in the forest at the mercy of conservative knights. He looked almost as pained as the starving twigs from the future. He looked like a corpse ready for his permanent dirt nap. He was drunk out of his mind, yet he clung to life all the same. She knew he wasn’t ready to surrender.
Knowing full well he was knocked out from the drunkenness, Marle climbed on Crono’s back and gave him a massage anyways. She didn’t want to squeeze too hard out of consideration for his visible bones, but she squeezed just enough to hopefully put some better memories in his traumatic nightmares. If the gentle touches weren’t enough, she leaned into his ear and whispered something she wanted to say, but couldn’t get through to him during their crumbling marriage: “Crono…I never stopped loving you!”
“It Was All an Adventure to You” is a plunge into a couple of scenes so realistic and fast moving that the end of the final paragraph arrives unexpectedly, like a film running out. This is vivid, engaging writing!
Thank you so much, M! I had my doubts about what I've written (damn Impostor Syndrome), but I'm glad to hear it resonated with you. :)
GenieKylie peered around the corner into the kitchen, the lamp clutched to her chest. Her mom was humming, back to the door, busy washing dishes. Her little brother was absorbed in pushing toy cars across the linoleum. Kylie darted past as quickly as she could and tiptoed up the stairs.
She hadn't done anything wrong - she had spent her allowance on the lamp and her parents never told her how she had to use the money she got for doing her chores. A broken lamp from the shop down the road might have given them pause.
But she needed this lamp.
Her room was dim, the afternoon light slanting through the window the only illumination. Kylie kicked the door closed, not flipping the light switch, and set the lamp on her bed. It was old and dusty, dented and worn. But she didn't need it to work, at least not for light.
It had the mark - right there on the base, just below the twisted handle. There was a genie in this lamp. A genie that would grant her wishes, if she could call it out. It wasn't as easy as the movies claimed - just a rub and poof - but she knew the words.
"Please work," she whispered as she closed her eyes, fingers wrapping around the cool metal. She whispered the summons as her thumb rubbed the engraved symbol of the genie. Keeping her eyes closed, holding her breath, she waited. It would take several seconds, maybe minutes, to work.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Kylie opened her eyes. A young woman, only a few years older than herself, sat on the edge of the bed, the lamp at her side. Her arms were folded, legs crossed, toe bobbing in the air. Her black hair fountained from a ponytail at the top of her head, falling over her shoulders in sleek waves.
"Genie?" Kylie asked, uncertain.
"Call me Lise," the woman said. Her voice had a slight husk, like the singers Kylie's mom liked to listen to on the radio.
"Um, Lise… you're a genie? You'll grant me wishes now?" She could already think of what she might wish for, if only she could narrow it down. There was always a limit.
"Wishes?" Lise laughed, her body unfolding as she pushed herself to her feet. "The lamp's broken - I haven't been able to grant wishes in decades, centuries maybe." She smiled and her dark eyes flashed. "Curses, on the other hand, those I can do. You want to send the world to war, widespread famine or pestilence? I'm your girl. Just say the word."
"C-curses?" Kylie stammered, the color draining from her face.
Lise narrowed her eyes, cooking her head as she studied the younger girl. There was a depth to her gaze that Kylie had never seen in anyone before. For the first time, she started to realize just how old this being was, despite her young appearance. She felt cold under that gaze.
"You're young," Lise said as if just noticing. "Your curses are probably smaller - any enemies at school? I've heard the chatter of the kids in town while I've been stuck in the shop, there must be someone among them you want to curse. It doesn't have to be anything too bad - payback for something mean."
Kylie frowned, Lise's words brining Emma to the forefront of her mind. They had been friends, but a few weeks ago Emma hadn't invited her to her birthday party. And then, today, Emma and some of the other girls had left the bus stop together, none of them asking Kylie along. She knew they had seen her.
"Ah, the look." Lise smiled. "Let's go to her house. It helps if I'm close for the personal ones."
Fifteen minutes later, they stood outside the fence that surrounded Emma's house and pool. Kylie clenched her fists as they listened to the giggles and splashes - why had Emma not invited her?
"That one," she told Lise, pointing out Emma's laughing face through a gap in the fence. "What do you want to do to her?"
Lise shook her head. "Not me. You. What do you want to do to her? Hair loss, maybe? She won't be so giggly when those beautiful locks start falling."
"Umm," Kylie faltered. Did she really want to do this? The laughter from the other side of the fence solidified her resolve. "Ok."
Lise smiled. Her eyes seemed to flash with brilliant light and she tapped a finger against her chin, murmuring something Kylie couldn't hear.
There was a shriek from the pool. Kylie looked through the fence and saw chaos. Emma was panicked, her hair falling out in chunks. Not just the hair from her head - eyebrows, arms, the fuzz on her face and neck. It was all sloughing off.
Kylie felt a pit in her stomach. What had she done? "It'll grow back, right?" She turned to Lise but the other girl was looking around the neighborhood, oblivious to the pain and humiliation behind her.
"Hmm? Oh, not sure. It might, but more than likely not. I wasn't very specific with the wording, which usually makes things a bit more extreme. Now come on, that crying is annoying."
Kylie followed reluctantly.
"Now...what about him?" Lise was pointing to a boy riding a bike down the opposite side of the road.
Kylie shrugged, noncommittal. He had teased her in gym the other day. Sometimes he pulled her braids. Last month he laughed when she tripped on the stairs.
"I know that look! He's a mean one, right? Hmm. Not hair loss again...maybe acne? He won't be baby faced for long - you think?"
"I guess…"
Lise was muttering before the words were finished. Kylie glanced to Logan - she could see his face breaking out from here. She had thought her wishes - or even curses - would have to be carefully and deliberately worded. It seemed she had been wrong. The slightest hint of agreement was setting Lise off. There had to be a way to stop this.
After two more cursings - pests in someone's house and a tendency to cry for another - Kylie had it figured out.
"Lise," she said, "I know what curse I want to give next."
The other girl grinned, anticipating a new challenge.
"I curse you, Lise. I curse you to lose the ability to place curses."
Lise shied back, eyes flashing. "How dare-"
"You have to do it, don't you? You're bound."
With anger still flashing in her eyes, Lise muttered the words that would end her spree of cruelty.
"This doesn't undo what you've already done. Those people will live like that forever. And," she added, leaning in close until Kylie felt her breath hot against her face, "it doesn't break our bond, since you're the one that called me out." She grinned. There was a promise of cruelty in the expression.
Interesting, Courtney! I didn’t see it coming that the genie would be capable only of curses; or that Kylie, horrified by the harm she had caused, would use the genie’s forced obedience to strip Lise of her powers. Very nicely written, too! The writing really flows.
Sibyl(About 2,170 words.)
Mordecai Ashland was the only person he knew who had been named after a black cat. The cat had belonged to Dora Story, an old friend of his father’s. Story had owned an art gallery. It was from that gallery that Mordecai, when he was thirteen years old, had bought his first painting.
By the time Mordecai bought the painting, he no longer went by his name but merely by the initial M. He had nothing against his name, or against black cats, and couldn’t have explained how it had come about that he identified with an initial. Inevitably, he was teased about it at school. The question was usually accompanied by a smirk: “Is your name Emily?”
His childhood friends knew him as Smooks, the nickname his father had given him when Mordecai was a toddler. It was a name M wore as easily as his real name. The peculiar truth, though, was that M never developed much in the way of an identity. His name could just as well have been a part number.
When M was nineteen, his maternal grandmother remarked to him, “Your father is right. You have no ambition.” M wasn’t sure what to make of that but had the clear impression that it wasn’t intended as a compliment. In high school, he had approached his father about the possibility of becoming a draftsman or an architect. Lloyd Ashland had replied sternly that his son’s choices were a career in law or medicine.
M might have answered his grandmother, on that unsettling occasion when he had come inside for a drink of water, “I have no ambition to be a doctor or a lawyer.” It hadn’t occurred to him to say that, however. He had merely gone back up on the roof of his grandparents’ house and resumed cleaning leaves out of the gutters.
Many years later, in mid-life, M related these things in the course of a long correspondence with Reb Townsend, one of his sisters-in-law. Reb had written an unpublished novel and would almost certainly have found what M had to tell her about Sibyl interesting, but their correspondence was several years in the past when M and Janet had returned to their old habit of going to auctions and estate sales.
Wandering the aisles of the auction house in Meryvale one evening in those strange, hollow months after his father had died, M glimpsed a bust that seemed to be gazing at him from behind stacked bric-a-brac. He carefully set things aside--mouldering books, a Capodimonte urn, a broken lamp, a wooden box of antique weights for a scale--and extracted the bust from the surrounding clutter. It looked as though it hadn’t been cleaned in a century.
It was about two feet high, of terracotta, of a girl perhaps in her late teens or early twenties, with a scarf tied around her hair. Her expression was pensive, as if she had been told something that had taken her aback, or had encountered someone she hadn’t seen in a long time. At the base was the name Sibyl. In the weak light of the vast warehouse, M turned the piece over. It was signed V. Audel, 1907.
The auction had been in progress several hours and was winding down. What remained of the attendees were restless, scattered among the rows of stacking chairs. Janet was sitting in the back row, engrossed in something she was reading on her iPad.
On a podium stood Welton Baird, the auctioneer. “This is another piece from that seven-million-dollar estate in Dallas.”
Baird was a portly man of about forty. He had grown up in Meryvale, had started with nothing, and now had eight warehouses in town. They were filled with European antiques. He kept an apartment in Belgium and spent several months of the year there. He wasn’t good at advertising, however. Dealers often remarked that his auctions and hoard of antiques were the best-kept secret in the region.
A burly member of the staff brought up a large chair that looked like something out of a movie and held it up for the dealers to see.
“Dealers, dealers,” said Baird, “when do you see an eighteenth-century French fireside chair in this condition?”
The young man who was displaying the chair looked for the label, then read the number loudly: “LS 216!”
“Do I hear fifteen hundred for this fine chair? Fifteen hundred. Fifteen hundred.” Met with silence, he looked out at the dealers in disbelief, then turned, stepped down from the podium, and walked around a small mountain of stacked furniture to examine the chair for himself. He pointed. “There’s not a scratch on it. No cracks. The upholstery has been meticulously restored.”
He returned to the podium, consulted his notes, groaned, then said, “Nine hundred.”
A dealer asked, “Will you take five hundred?”
Baird smiled. “Mr. Roylston, I’m going home, not out of business.”
One of the attendees, a contractor from Longview, interrupted. “Welton, you said this is out of that Dallas estate?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
The contracter scratched his head. “Did the owners die?”
The auctioneer laughed in a tired way. “No, but they will when they get their check.”
M motioned to one of the staff and asked him to take the bust up to be auctioned. Returning back along one of the aisles of stacked furniture, M resumed his place in the chair next to Janet’s. She smiled, then gave him a inquiring look as he slid the bidder’s card out of his pocket.
Baird, who had a remarkable memory for everything in his warehouses, didn’t seem to remember the bust. He studied it for a moment, then held it up. “A beautiful, Art Nouveau bust!” He tapped it. “It appears to be ceramic.” He glanced over at Pam, his assistant, who at a large trestle table was writing tickets. He gave her an identifying number, then began the chant: “Do I hear two hundred, two hundred, two hundred for this beautiful bust? Two hundred?”
None of the attendees appeared to be interested. M maintained a poker face.
Welton turned the bust around. “She’s in pretty good condition, considering how old she is.” A little perplexed, he gazed out at the attendees. “First hand up, a hundred dollars!”
No cards went up in the air. M was ready to raise his card in an instant if it looked as though Baird were about to set the bust aside. It was late in the auction, however, and M knew from experience that the auctioneer was in a mood to sell. This was the time to get good deals.
Baird hesitated. “Seventy-five!”
M’s card was in the air. He heard the auctioneer say, “Sold to Number 7!”
As Baird handed the bust to a waiting employee, he remarked to M, “I’m glad you bought her. I was getting tired of feeding her.”
When M and Janet got home, M put Sibyl on his bedside table, next to a lamp his father had made from the bilge pump of a whale boat. A bedside table is ordinarily a small piece of furniture, but this one had a glass top three feet square, supported by the columned pedestal of what had once been a dining table. M had a habit of reading before he went to sleep. The table offered plenty of space for books to accumulate.
The bust made a striking addition. It also looked at home, as if Sibyl had assumed ownership of the space. In a certain light, her expression seemed diffident. In another light it seemed imperious. By lamplight, she seemed as if she had just bared her shoulders and were about to remove the scarf from her hair.
M brought in a wine rack Janet had bought, made himself a drink, and for a few minutes sat at the library table in the master bedroom and worked on a psychological tale for the month’s topic in Pulp Writers, an online group he had been a member of for years. Janet sat at the bar in the kitchen and played a tile game on her iPad.
When M undressed for bed, he had the peculiar feeling that the bust was watching him. She had a chaste, downcast gaze. M dropped to one knee in front of the bust and looked up into her face. Her eyes seemed to peer into his searchingly, as though she knew things.
He climbed into bed and reached for the book he had been reading the previous night. The bust seemed almost a presence, as if it were alive. “It’s been a long day,” M thought. The auction had started at one, and he and Janet had arrived for the preview an hour before that. As a diversion, the auctions had proven not only expensive but time-consuming and tiring.
In the early hours of the morning, he awakened from a dream so vivid that for a few moments he couldn’t figure out where he was. Janet was sleeping soundly. Atop the pair of bookcases by the door to the walk-in closet, a pond yacht from the 1920’s was streaked with moonlight. A large French painting of an autumnal beech alley looked down from the wall over the fireplace. M had bought the painting years before at one of Baird’s auctions and had contacted the Smithsonian Institution for instructions on how to clean it.
The setting of the dream had been an artist’s studio in Paris, in a run-down district that was a survival from the Middle Ages. A girl in her late teens, naked from the waist up, was sitting on a stool as with his fingers and with implements he worked what had been large blob of clay into a likeness of her. He worked quickly and with the skill of formal training.
Holding the pose, the girl chatted occasionally, in a soft, colloquial French he understood in the dream but could no longer remember on waking. Her blouse was draped on a chair. Her long, dark-brown hair was pulled up and was covered with a plain scarf. She was from Beziers and had escaped from a life with a man who had beaten her. She knew it was only a matter of time before he would find her, though.
“J’aurai dix-neuf ans en novembre,” she had related. That was less than two months away. M remembered that from the dream, as he lay there, trying to remember the details. She hadn’t told him that she was in love with him but it was obvious, from the way she lingered after the sessions, the way her gaze fell on him, the way she moved toward him then hesitated.
Her father was a sailmaker, a kind, patient man with striped trousers and billowing sleeves. M remember having met him, but the circumstances were forgotten. It seemed his surname was Lisotte. The girl had grown up cutting canvas and operating a stitching machine. She knew also how to make stitches by hand and in Paris had been supporting herself as a seamstress.
Though it was rainy this time of year in Paris, the studio was filled with light from windows high in one of the white-plastered walls. It was a space he leased with another artist, and it was cluttered with canvases and studies for sculptures. There was a shabby foundry on what was then the outskirts of town, near one of ancient city gates, and several of their bronzes had been cast there.
On waking, M still had fragmentary but very clear recollections of these things. The girl seemed to be sitting there, talking occasionally of her life, her unassuming yet desirous gaze resting on him. Beyond the studio door and narrow streets, on the grand boulevards and along the river, the leaves had begun to turn on the maples and the black locusts.
Clear images came to mind of a workbench, of various scraping and modeling tools, and of a ceramic basin in which he washed the clay off his hands. There was a glimpse of an awninged café he often visited, and for a moment he recalled the name of it. Then the last living images of sleep began drifting away like shreds of evening clouds.
He knew that he should get up and write down everything he could remember about the dream, or that the details would be lost. Instead he drifted back to sleep, to dreams of a contraption he had built in the yard and that now was coming to pieces because he had never bothered to maintain it. The alarm awakened him at 4:30.
Sometime during the day, he went online and researched the bust. He didn’t find much about it. The sculptor, Victor Audel, was French, had worked in Paris, and had lived from 1882 to 1917. M wondered if Audel had died in the war, and what had become of the girl. He cleaned the bust carefully, then put it back in its place on the bedside table.
Please post directly into the topic and not a link. Please don’t use a story previously used in this group. Only one submission per person is allowed.
Your story should be between 300 and 3,500 words long.
REMEMBER! A short story is not merely a scene. It must have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
This week’s topic is: Broken Lamp.
The rules are pretty loose. You could write a story about anything that has to do with the subject/photo but it must relate to the topic somehow.
Most of all have fun!
Thank you to Edward for suggesting the topic!