Josefer Martin - Turning Point - Chapter 1

The silence was such that you could, if you were so inclined, or powered, cut it with a knife. The video, which was still playing, had muted when I entered the room, so Mike and I were watching it in silence. A minute or so passed before he turned in his seat, his left arm resting on the top of the cushion.

“You gonna talk, or are we going to sit here all day?”

I mouthed a few words, but nothing came out.

“Yeah, I know. It was a glamour. Zelda popped it off before you and Jess ‘ported in. Allowed me to sneak in here with another glamour, since they were looking for what Zel and I looked like at graduation.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, then spoke up, “Mike, why?”

“Why? You have to ask why? I told you. It’s about proving that I’m better than you. But that’s only half of it,” he looked down and pulled my father’s goggles from inside his jacket, which was not the same flame-motif he wore before, instead it was just a well tailored black sport coat. He whirled them around on his right index finger by the strap, “The real reason? I want you and Jess to work with Zel and I. We make a good team, the four of us. A Gadgeteer Intuit, Pyro Hyper-Genius, Package Deal Psychic Teleporter, and a Mage Manifestor. We could be unstoppable, we will be unstoppable.” He gestured to me, then himself, and then to the screen, which showed his younger self looking first to Jess and then to Zelda on our last mission together last year.

“You know I’m never going to turn. My dad’s a Supe, my mom’s an ADA, Jess’s dad’s an EMT and her mom’s a Supe with dad. It’s the family business.”

“But what business is being a Supe?” he asked, tossing the goggles onto my lap. “The pay is horrible, the government puts loads of restrictions on you, plus you might get called up to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. Plus, there’s no guarantee that once you and Jess finish college that you’ll stay together, even if you two get married.”

“Married?” I stammered. I hadn’t ever thought that far ahead, thinking more of MIT or CalTech than where Jess and I were going in our relationship.

“Yeah, married. It’s eventually going to happen. You may be an Intuit, but I’m the Genius, I know you better than you know yourself.”

He gestured to the goggles, “It’s a gift. If you ever change your mind, Zel and I’ll be there. But talk to Jess. This is not just your future, but her’s as well.”

I picked up the goggles, but as soon as I did, my limbs went stiff and I couldn’t move.

Mike chuckled, “What, you think I’d let you have it without a price?”

Another chuckle manifested from the shadows at the front of the debriefing room theatre. As she stepped into the light of the projector, I saw that it was Zelda, wearing a stylish yet ordinary black mini-dress, “Toodles Joe. We’ll see you again.”

They both disappeared, and about fifteen seconds later, I was able to move, and the sound returned as well, allowing me to hear the pleading announcement for me to report for a meeting.

As a stood and stuffed the goggles into my backpack only one word came to my lips, “Shit.”

Alternating Stories

Okay, I'm going to try to alternate my stories (Delving, Costco, and Josefer now that I've re-read year old material and got caught up with my old characters) for a while, just to get into the habit of writing and posting, but also so that I can get some of the ideas out of my head.

Also, I've finally put some of my behind the scenes development of my stories (at least Delving) onto the Net. It's just for me right now, but eventually I'll release the info to the net at large (not that anyone actually reads my stories anyway).

I might not get my stories up as quickly and as regularly as I hope, but I'll at least try. November is NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month). I'll be using that as an excuse to write, though this shit will probably never make it into print (unless I someday do a Lulu compilation.

Delving 101 - Chapter 4

Mary, leaving her comment to Rob hanging in the air, slipped into the girl’s locker room. Once she was far enough from the entrance, and was sure that Rob was mouthing off to Zeb in the boy’s locker room next door, she began to talk to herself. “Okay, it’s not that bad. There’s still a away to recover.”

“Mary, you talking to me?” asked a voice hidden by a wall of lockers.

“No Jody, just myself,” replied Mary, as she flung herself around the corner of the locker wall. Like Zeb in the men’s locker room, Jody was sitting in the final row of the locker room. Mary caught herself before she fell, and then strode over to plop herself down next to Mary on the bench.

“So, Rob did the switch thing with the Scroll?” asked Jody as she bent over to tie the straps on her boots. They were flats, but the supple black leather extended all the way up her calf to her knee. Above that, the tight links of chain mail encased her legs until it hid under Jody’s mini-skirt.

“Yeah,” admitted Mary as she picked up Jody’s other boot, which limply sat between her own. Hers were un-dyed leather, and only came to mid-calf, allowing the this fabric of her khakis to flow up her calves, bunch loosely around her knee, and then become ever tighter as it come to her waist. She set the boot on Jody’s mailed thigh, eliciting a light tink.

“Thanks,” said Jody as she grabbed the boot and set it down next to her left foot, to which is belonged. As she tucked a stray strand of her raven hair behind her lightly pointed ear, she leaned back, resting on her right hand extended behind her. “So, what’re we going to do?”

“I’m thinking the only thing we can do,” replied Mary, swinging her pack around her right side, so as to not hit Jody, and then leaning over to look inside.

“What?” asked Jody, as she watched Mary dig in her magical pack just like her partner Rob was doing just a few meters away. Like Rob she pulled out an exact duplicate to the Scroll of Fire Rob had handed to the Professor minutes before.

“Counter-cheat,” stated Mary as she set the Scroll on the bench between them. She reached into the left hip pocket of her khakis, pulling out a tarnished pocket-watch. She popped it open and examined the time. “Okay, we’ve got fifteen minutes until you and Zeb are up.”

Jody carefully picked up the scroll, “So, are you sure you got the right one?”

Mary smiled, held out her left hand in front of her, “Definitely.” Before she finished the fourth syllable, Jody’s chain mail top, which had been sitting in a pile on the floor next to her, was now hanging limply in her out-stretched hand.

“Ah,” said Jody as she set the Scroll back down beside her. “So, now that you’re holding my top, you want to help me put it on? You know how hard the back straps are.”

“Actually,” said Mary as she stood and turned on her left heel, causing the mail the sway back and forth. “I don’t.”

Jody grimaced as she stood, her left foot still next to her left boot, causing her to drop slightly to her left as her weight shifted from her booted right to her stocking left. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. I swear, you wizards. It’s bad enough you’ve always got you heads stuck in those books of yours, but do you have to rub the fact that you don’t have to wear armor in the faces of us lowly clerics?”

Mary chuckled as she leaned back against the lockers, “At least you don’t have to rigorously study each and every spell before you can even figure out how to cast it. It’s just a simple hour of prayer every morning, and bam, time to select from the library.”

Jody joined Mary’s chuckle as she returned to the bench and bent back over to put on her boot. “Well, at least you’re smart enough to ace all the other tests. I had to use a comp languages just to understand my algebra.”

“Jody,” chided Mary, a more serious tone in her voice. “You know you’re not supposed to use divine intervention for our classes. That’s cheating. Plus, you know you can always come to me if you have questions about the homework.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, it’s just… Zeb’s always wanting my help in thaumaturgy, the stupid git, and then he’s off sparring with Rob until curfew instead of staying for my tutoring. It’s bad enough he expects me to put out.”

Mary nearly dropped the chain mail, “Wait, Zeb wants you to put out? So does Rob. He’s always insisting that Zeb’s getting some from you, and that if we’re going to ever be a cohesive party after we graduate he’s going to have to trust me. Like sex has anything to do with trust?”

Jody, now about halfway up her calve with her lacing looked up at Mary, “Zeb’s the same way.” She shook her head, “Boys.”

Okay… wordcounts

Well, I now have three chapters of "flash" fiction, up, and if there's anything I've learned it's the following…

1 - Writing to a budget is hard.
2 - 365 is a very small budget.
3 - Limiting myself to a small budget is hurting, not helping, my writing.

So, I'v decided to continue the Fort Costco and Delving 101 storylines, but in whatever length each installment wants to be.

Fort Save-Co - Chapter 3

Robert grabbed his hat, a wide brimmed suede heat with a tall indented crown, which he had always called his ‘outback’ hat. He set it on his head, and strode towards the door. The door, which was once an automatic sliding glass door, was now a heavily reinforced sliding wood door. He gripped the handle, which was on the left side of the door, with his right hand, and pulled it open.

The bright daylight streamed into the much darker storeroom, and Robert shielded his eyes momentarily with his left hand as they acclimated. He stepped over the threshold and looked around. The area outside the storeroom had once been a portico protecting the entrance from the weather, now it served at the guard for both the storeroom and the main keep, low brick wall funneling people through the checkpoint, and protecting the keep from those who would attack it from within.

Robert nodded to one of the guards as he reached around with his left arm behind his back to close the door he came through. The guard, Selma, nodded to him. She had one of the requisitioned M16s resting on a slight across her chest as she guarded the keep’s portico.

“Hey Bob!” she shouted in greeting.

Robert cringed slightly. He hated being called Bob. He felt that his position warranted more respect than that, not to mention the large gold star sewn upon the chest of his shirt.

“Hey Selma,” he replied with a smile, not letting his aggravation show. “How’s it going today?”

“Well,” she replied, nodding. “Very well.” She nodded at Robert, “So, what with the rifle boss?”

Robert smiled, finally getting the respect he thought, knew, he deserved. “Oh, just searching for something. Might have to leave the Fort, so I thought I’d be prepared.”

Selma raised her eyebrows, “Ah, well, I’ll make sure to tell anyone you’re out if they stop by.”

Robert nodded to her as he began to turn away, “You do that Selma, you do that.” As he stepped out from under the portico his eyes finally adapted to the light, and he looked out upon the bailey. “Twelve years,” he said to himself. “Twelve.”

Fort Save-Co - Chapter 2

Robert paged through the forms, removing all the requisitions, whether open or closed, for M16A2 rifles. There were eighteen from the last year, as far back as he kept records before having to recycle the parchment forms.

He took the eighteen sheets of parchment, and sorted them as he walked around the desk and towards the weapon's locker. By the time he arrived he had sorted the eighteen forms into open and closed requisitions, nine of the former, and nine of the latter. He unlocked the locker and stepped pass the crates of ammunition to the weapon's racks.

His eyes swept past the pistols and crossbows and settled on the rifle racks. They were wooden, like everything in the warehouse, and contained a variety of weapons. He kneeled down, so as to not look at the hunting rifles, and focused on the twenty slots he had cut over a decade ago for the M16A2 rifles. There were ten rifles there, which meant he hadn't miscounted earlier.

He looked through the open requisitions and matched the serial numbers to the matching empty slots, then matched the closed requisitions and matched the serial numbers to the matching rifles. There was one rifle remaining, when there should have been two. He checked the serial number of the missing rifle and noted it on his worksheet.

"Okay, so, someone took a rifle without requisitioning it," he said to himself as he removed the tenth rifle, the one that hadn't been requisitioned during the previous year. He then slung it over his shoulder and picked up the forms as he stood up.

He turned and grabbed a magazine of rounds before locking the weapon's locker behind him.

He stopped, shook his head, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and strode over to his desk. He opened the drawer, and removed one of the yellowed, yet still usable, requisition forms. He took out a pen, something that the council hadn’t begun to ration, yet, and quickly wrote up his recent transaction.

“Purpose?” he asked himself as he got to the final line of the form. He smirked to himself and began to write, “Reacquisition of lost supplies.”

Writing

You know what, I love writing. I love crafting words into evocative phrases, descriptions that evoke an image of exactly what I want the reader to imagine.

For instance, I just wrote this tonight:

She then turned and began to pace, wringing her hands. As she paced, she made barely a sound, each step on the ball of her foot, her hell barely hitting the deck except when she used it as the fulcrum of her turn.

And that's not it. In the same RPOL post, I also wrote this:

Melissa cocked her head to the side, her face scrunched up in thought, her eyes looking up into her eyebrows, and her teeth lightly biting the inside of her left cheek.

I don't know if the images I want to convey actually come across, but I try.

He sat upright in his chair, legs slightly crossed, his left root resting atop his right. His knees were far apart, farther apart even than the considerable width of his rotund stomach. His arms rested atop that stomach, reaching out and forwards, the edge of his laptop biting into his wrists. His fingers hovered above the keys, left thumb above the trackpad, right thumb above the space bar, his right ring finger occasionally reaching up and to the right for the delete key, the pinky curled up and out of the way. His face was slack, expressionless, his eyes focused on the screen before him, eyes scanning the screen as he typed, flitting from the keys to the blinking cursor and back. He wrinkles the left side of his mouth, thinking, but saying nothing. He composes the words in his mind as he writes them, going back and forth on the phrasing, deleting and rethinking the words as his fingers delete and retype the same.