Martha.net

Normal people got to play Monday morning quarterback and gripe about 20/20 hindsight, they got to say things like ‘it was totally unexpected’ or ‘no one could have seen that coming,’ and worst of all, they got to stand in the cold early-morning rain, watching steam rise from the twisted metal and finding comfort in shared ignorance.

Cee, on the other hand, was just as cold and just as wet, but didn’t have the same luxury. She’d seen Dean’s death in all it’s minute variations, but the visions had come too late for her to do anything but direct the ambulance where to go. The future was malleable and fluid–she saw probabilities, not certainties, but they had always been enough before. Instead of visions that layered themselves one upon another another until a common future shown through, she found herself skipping from one possibility to another without any hint which way things would unwind.

This was the third murder she’d seen too late and she didn’t have to look to know it would be her last.

One morning Henry awoke to find a particularly odd message scrawled on his ceiling in lipstick.

“Dear Henry,” it began, “congratulations! You have found a way to travel between parallel universes… If you find a way to stop, please let the rest of us know.”

“Signed, the Henry who puts his keys in the right front pocket, the Henry who chose the red overcoat instead of the rust orange, and the Henry who did not marry Anne.”

“Oh.” Said the Henry who put his keys on the table by the door, had done with the nice gray cloak, and had also very definitely not married Anne.

Suddenly the past few weeks made much more sense…

This is a rough of something, I think… *pokes story*

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“They found her in a room tied to a chair watching this whole bank of tvs; sports channels, pay per view matches, everything and anything you can bet on.” The officer shook his head as he led them through the hallways. “She had a stack of paper on this desk in front of her and there was this godawful tape repeating ‘Who will win?’ over and over… damned creepiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“And they seriously thought she could tell them?” The detective was two seconds from turning around, going back to the real work waiting for him.

“Didn’t think,” the cop finally stopped by one of the doors, “knew.”

~*~*~*~*~
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So here’s a thought, although a slightly overdone one: if vampires existed and everyone knew about them, what then? Assuming of course that these are vampires willing to ‘live in harmony’ and not the ones made from crazy-cake recipes.

1. People would put ‘vamp’ or ‘do not vamp’ in their living wills.
1a. Or medical bracelets.
1aa. Or tattoos. Continue reading →

“So I’m some sort of mystical savior meant to prevent the world from certain doom.”

“Yes.”

“And I can’t tell my husband.”

“Right.”

“Because you’ll have to kill him.”

“Pretty much.”

“And you think I won’t stop you.”

“Well no, I think you’ll try–”

“Right.”

“–I just don’t think you’ll succeed. After all, there are hundreds of us and one of you.”

“I’ll kill all of you if you touch him–”

“But you’ll still save the world.”

“What?”

“Even if you kill all of us, because we’ve killed him, when the time comes you’ll still save the world.”

“No I won’t.”

“Really? You’d kill billions of innocent people because we did something we told you we would do?”

“You can’t kill my husband!”

“I’m hoping we don’t have to.”

“Well what if I tell everyone? You can’t kill everyone.”

“What?”

“If I go on TV, on the news and I tell everyone about this whole dammed mess–”

“Then saving the world stops being an option.”

“Why?”

“Look, let’s start with this. You agree not to tell anyone anything until we have a chance to explain it to you first. This is not a simple five minute explanation; we’re talking twenty hours of lectures, five hours of labs–”

“Labs?”

“Well I don’t expect you to believe it without proof.”

“Good point.”

“So do we have a deal?”

“Considering my apparent options are death, more death, or the end of the world: Yes.”

I was twelve when the dam broke and the river took back the ground she’d lost.

If you look down the street from the Lucky’s old house —or Old Lucky’s house, depending on how you look at it— you can just see the edge of the lake lapping at South River Road. The street sign’s a bit more literal than it used to be, but other than that the neighborhood hasn’t changed that much.

Mrs. Tash still lives on the corner, stubborn as ever and twice as mean. She’s moved her glaring from the first floor to the second, so now Mom get’s reports of our wrongdoings in a slightly larger radius. Not that we had any wrongdoings, only so much mischief you can get into when there’s four feet of water on the ground.

Besides, most of the trouble came from the fights between the pookas and the kelpie, not the kids, and everyone knew it. Mrs. Tash just didn’t want to admit she could see them too.

“Not to be a pessimist, but do you really think anything you say is going to make a difference?” Shelly glanced over at the other group of survivors, “We don’t have anything they need.”

“Unless you’re talking a merge.” John was standing unnaturally still, which did little for Shelly’s nerves. “We aren’t, are we?”

“No.” Simon finished unloading his eclectic collection of personal weaponry. “No mergers, no concessions. I’m tired of letting these groups bully us around.”

“Oh God,” Shelly grabbed Simon’s sleeve, “don’t kill them, please? I know this is really—”

“I’m not going to kill them!” Simon tugged his arm free, “I’m going to scare them, if needed, I’m not going to hurt anyone.”

John gave him a skeptical look, “And if they try to hurt you?”

“Then I’m going to let them.” Simon unhooked his necklace and bracelet, handing them over to Shelly for safekeeping. “And you are going to run, got it?”

John glared at him for a moment, then stooped to pickup his rucksack. “Fine. Whatever. If I’d known immortality is apparently an excuse to get the shit beat out of you, repeatedly, I would have left you in the church.”

“Wouldn’t change anything.”

“Yes it would.” John snapped. “We’d either be merged or dead, and I wouldn’t haven spent the last seven months living in a B-grade horror movie.”

“Did you want to merge then?” Simon had gone still.

“No, no, I just—” John finished tightening the rucksack’s straps and looked over at the other group. “I just want to avoid them. Go around their territory, not thought it. They can deal with their own monsters.”

“We should at least warn them.” Shelly offered, “Tell them what it is, and how to kill it.”

“And if they still blame us?” Simon had relaxed, but only slightly.

“Then we run.”

“Do you really want to live forever?”

“Not really,” he scrapped his boot against the moss that was threatening to takeover the courtyard. “But I don’t have a choice.”

“But you can give it away,” she tried to sound disinterested, “right?”

Jay gave her a look that clearly said he hadn’t bought the act. “I don’t hate anyone that much.”

“But think of all the good you could do!” She gestured at the city as a whole, “You could fix things, help people, I dunno, change things.”

“Most people say ‘learn things’ or ‘do fun stuff’, and you want to change a city.” He raised an eyebrow. “You do realize there’s a difference between being immortal and being Batman?”

“Hmrph.”

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These snippits are copyright Martha McMahon Bechtel and may not be reproduced or distributed without express permission. All rights reserved.

Technotari Tags: Fiction, Fantasy

It wasn’t until they sent him to the psychiatrist that Ari realized dogs weren’t supposed to talk. Prior to that, he’d simply figured that his parents were kidding.

After all, when the dog wanted out, they let him out; when he wanted food, they gave it to him (or lectured him about begging, which was basically the same thing). They never acted as if they didn’t understand what Titan was saying, they just acted like they didn’t care. The Newfoundland never took offense to the slights –he was a rather happy-do-lucky mountain of a dog– so Ari didn’t either.

And now he was sitting in a pleasant beige and green office, filled with lots of books, and toys, and framed bits of paper that meant the lady sitting here playing Legos with him apparently Knew Things.

Ari wasn’t stupid; a little overly generous when it came to assumptions about other people’s comprehension levels, yes. Stupid, no. So when the very concerned psychiatrist suggested that maybe dogs couldn’t talk, he immediately agreed. This got him a cookie, a pat on the head, and a pair of immensely relieved looks from his parents. All was once again well with the world, and the family returned home.

Once the coast was clear, Ari snuck off to have a good long talk with Titan…

Morning wasn’t something she’d had to deal with in ages, and Ann watched the sun come up with something akin to dread. It wasn’t as if the sunlight could actually hurt her, but there was something harsh and unforgiving about the amber glow.

Chris muttered something suitably insulting, which she heard more by tone than by content, and stepped over her, heading towards the campfire. She resisted tripping him, only because she was still curled up in her sleeping bag and it really was too much of an effort.

Pat paused by her with a slightly worried look and Ann made faces back at her. Which got her a laugh and a shake of the head that probably meant something akin to ‘kids these days’ which wasn’t bad considering for Pat ‘kids these days’ meant something from the thirteen hundreds.

It wasn’t easy living among immortals, but she figured it wasn’t any easier than them having to live with her, so it balanced. They reminded each other of all the things they wanted but couldn’t have, but at least Ann had the comfort of knowing she’d only spend decades with the regrets.

Silver was already up and cheery, making something that smelled tolerably like breakfast over the campfire. There was a bitter scent of something not quite coffee, but Ann knew better than to hope for caffeine. Whatever Pat and Chris were -and so far all Ann had been able to do was figure out what they weren’t– they didn’t tolerate any sort of ‘uppers’.

Ann sighed, finally convinced herself that she couldn’t hop over to the fire encased in the warmth of the sleeping bag, and headed over to grab breakfast. They might have thrown her sleep schedule out of whack, but from what Sliver had said, this time it was actually for something important.

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These snippits are copyright Martha McMahon Bechtel and may not be reproduced or distributed without express permission. All rights reserved.

Technotari Tags: Fiction, Fantasy

“Could you at least pretend to be embarrassed?” Rasine whispered, hiding behind a magazine at least six years out of date. She was still getting used to Yanni’s ability to ‘mask’ their conversations from the world around them.

“Mmm, why?” The fae was focused in on the brushwork of the woman carefully detailing his left hand in henna ink. His right hand was already covered in the drying dye, held carefully away from anything it might stain. The woman was whistling something Rasine couldn’t quite place, and no one else in the store seemed to think the six foot tall thickly-built man was at all out of place.

“Because most people would be!” Rasine couldn’t actually see him, but she could feel the brush dancing over her hand in phantom patterns and the flaky itch of the drying henna. Today was going to go down in the history books as the flat out winner for ‘Weirdest Day Ever’.

“I’m not ‘most people’, am I?”

“Well, no, technically, but– look, you want to be human, right?” Because that was the deal, she showed him how it was to be human and he showed her what it was like to not be… only she was starting to regret ever making the bargain.

“This is correct.”

“Then be embarrassed for godsake!” That was more of a hiss than a whisper, but her Yanni mood-o-meter didn’t change at all. It was like he was made of Care Bears or Teletubbies or something.

“I never said I wished to emulate your flaws.” Smug Care Bears.

Rasine: Polish, a rose

“Rather an-,” he searched frantically for a less insulting word than ‘uninspired’ and finally had to settle on “-unpleasant way to die, don’t you think?”

“Well, yes.” She paused, tapping the nail gun against her thigh thoughtfully, “But that’s rather the point, don’t you think?”

“I thought you were trying to get me to talk, not bleed to death.” Because, truthfully, he didn’t think that nailing someone to an inverted cross -not matter how appropriate the cliché- was at all an effective method of coercion. “You do realize I’ll most likely pass out when all the blood -well what’s left of it- rushes to my head?”

“Oh. Hmm,” she blinked, “Hadn’t thought of that actually.”

“More of a thematic thing then?” He was getting better at not flinching as she gestured at the cross with the nailgun. Some people just shouldn’t talk with their hands.

“You’re a vampire, I thought it was ironic.” Her attention was focused on the cross now, which was somewhat of a relief. “This sort of sucks though, I mean, you know how long it took me to find someone who’d make silver nails?”

“Those are for werewolves.”

“What?”

“Silver works on werewolves; crosses and garlic work on vampires. Plus, I’m not a vampire.”

“Technically.”

“Technically.”

Very little was left to be said, at least what could be said in mixed company, but she felt like she had to keep trying.

They’d been over the same ground a dozen times; Alastair remaining insufferingly noble and Priss becoming more and more despondent as his mule headed inclination towards self-sacrifice seemed insurmountable. if they’d been alone she could have leveraged his sister’s child against him, but Alastair had kept Bethy and Vernon trapped in the sitting room, like a cat corralling mice.

Priss’s temper finally snapped when Alastair tried to physically stop Vernon from leaving. Vernon was too much of a pushover to actually fight back, so Priss intervened on his behalf with the fireplace ash shovel.

That quickly disintegrated into an all-out brawl between the two, with Vernon and Bethy taking refuge behind Grandmother’s couch.

There were, perhaps, better ways to break the news to their cousins that Alastair had been bitten by the were-leopard on loan from the Indian National Zoo, but it was quite effective.

When the ash had settled, Alastair had retreated behind Great-grandfather’s stuffed chair, snarling to himself and threatening -via half-hearted swipes- to claw the furniture.

Priss took the opportunity to fill Vernon and Bethy in on the whole incident, Alastair’s sister’s daughter included, thus bringing an end to the whole charade.

Sadly, their cousins were not made of firmer stuff and had to be revived several times with smelling salts during Priss’s explanation.