"I Can Explain...."

“Fergus! What happened here?!” Fergus heard Father McCollum cry, and the sound of boots on grass quickly approached behind him. 

Fergus swallowed nervously and kneaded his hands together.  He had been utterly impotent to stop the fire, but hadn’t run and hid when it had started, like his cowardly instincts had told him.  “Something happened, and now the barn is on fire.”  He said it with a slight inflection at the end, making it sound like a question, as if Father McCollum's question might have been rhetorical.

“Clearly!” Father McCollum cried, his billowing robes appearing in Fergus’s peripheral vision.  “What happened to cause the fire?” 

Fergus’s face was warm, though he was quite a distance from the blazing shed. It was past dusk, but the well-kept monastery grounds were easily visible in the radiant, orange glow.  Before he knew it, his knit peasant’s hat was in his hands and he was wringing it back and forth.  “I … I don’t know,” Fergus lied.  “I saw the light from my window, and I came down here as fast as I could. By the time I made it down all those stairs, it was like this.” 

His stomach hurt from lying, but what was he supposed to do? Tell the truth? There was no way Father McCollum would believe him, and he’d simply have to spend the week in the tower without supper again.  Still, guilt chewed at Fergus’s insides.

“Where are the cows?  Are they still out to pasture?” Father McCollum asked urgently.

“Yes, Father,” Fergus stammered.  “I put them out just before you left for the trader’s market, just like you asked.”

“Thank the High Ones,” Father sighed.  “We would have been sore off without them.  What about the chickens?  How many are accounted for?” 

“I found Mable, Isold, Darby, Juniper, Silverbeak, Penelope, Fiona, Tristina, and Janet,” Fergus reported mechanically.  “But there’s no sign of Caneil, Harriette, or Regina.”

Father McCollum rolled his eyes.  He had never thought much of Fergus’s propensity to name livestock.  Still, his face was thankful.  “More saved than lost.  Good lad, keeping up with them.” he said.  “And there wasn’t anyone inside the barn? The other acolytes and scruples are still at the communion in Talonwood, then?”

“Um, yessir.  It’s just been me here, all day.  All by myself.” 

Fergus held his jacket tightly against his sides. 

Father McCollum placed his hands on his hips and started up at the leaping flames.  The barn’s roof collapsed, the wooden shingles finally giving way to the corrosive power of fire, and filled the air with glowing ashes and smoke.  The trees from the nearby wood were painted an eerie orange.

“Come on, then,” Father McCollum said. “There’s little we can do about it now.  Dew’s fallen, so it won’t spread to the monastery.  The best we can do is wait for it to burn down, and then examine the ashes for any sign of who did this.”  For a moment Father McCollum didn’t move, except for crossing his arms over his chest.  Fire reflected off of his bald head.  “These are dark times we’re living in, Fergus.  Dark times, indeed.” 

“Y-yessir,” Fergus replied. 

The Father turned to leave, presumably back to the cart that he had brought back from the trader’s market. When he was sure that he was alone, Fergus opened his jacket ever so slightly and hissed into it, “Now look what you’ve done!  You’ve gone and gotten us both in such deep trouble!” 

Two amber eyes blinked open, catching the light of the fire, and a scaly head, the size of Fergus’s thumb and the color of the leaping flames, poked its way from beneath Fergus’s arm.  The creature hiccupped, and a gout of fire the size of the boy’s open palm erupted into the air.  Fergus twisted away from fire before his clothes could catch, but the heat made his face and fingers sting. Silently he hoped that Father McCollum wouldn't later notice his lack of eyebrows. 

Tending a monastery by yourself can be ever so boring.  But when Fergus had gone exploring around the grounds that day, he had no idea he would stumble across the huge, brown egg in the crags south of the abbey.  Though he was beginning to appreciate why the monks called the area ‘Forbidden Gulch’. 

Already Fergus was making a list of things he would have to do that evening, in addition to helping Father McCollum unload the goods from the cart. 

Number one: find out what had happened to Caneil, Harriette, and Regina. 

Number two: dispose of the brown egg shell pieces in his bedroom.

Number three:  figure out how to muzzle a dragon hatchling. 

"Ungrateful Arms"

The grey sky outside is still lit by the afternoon sun, though it's filtered through the grey cover like a filthy window.  Trees bow and sigh, moving in the wind like fish caught in a current, their leaves glittering scales as the first raindrops patter upon them.  The air smells heady and humid, like grass and dirt and life, and the pre-storm squall blows it into my modest home.  Tossed asunder, the fingers of the curtains beckon me closer to the window. 

I've always easily fallen for lovers that could care less for me.  Not necessarily those that are outwardly malicious, but undeniably those that were callously indifferent.  And the storm is just that.  I am nothing more to her than another warm body to kiss with her raindrops, to tease with her voice and her sweet smells.  But, as is so often the case, risks are so difficult to assess in the presence of a beckoning hand, a sweet smell, and a seductive voice.  And the approaching storm has them all. So I take my coffee and my guitar and venture into her bosom, seeking the sweet peace that she peddles. 

The hilltop already belongs to her when I step outside. The fields worship her, bending in deep green-golden waves as she whispers over top of them.  She’s already begun singing her song, her first notes tapping a staccato beat on the metal roof of the porch.  I settle into a chair, and immediately her teasing begins.  A sweet-smelling breath blows on the back of my neck, tossing my hair and parting the collar of my shirt.  A raindrop kisses me lightly on the cheek.  Her voice, deep and throaty, echoes somewhere in the distance, promising to be here soon.

Samson, my huge, grey cat, has followed me outside, and even he seems to wonder what possessed him to do so as he curls beneath my chair.  After one last sip from my coffee, I place my guitar on my knee and let my fingers slide along the strings.  I don’t play anything in particular:  just a few chords, some scales, some songs I know by heart.  She doesn't care.  I mean nothing to her.  And yet, I continue to throw her my affections. 

A raindrop strikes my guitar’s wooden body.  I’ll have to dry it soon or the finish will be ruined. 

The strings are already expanding from the humid air. It’ll need to be tuned. 

Steam rises from my coffee cup.  It will soon be cold. 

Samson mews pleadingly from beneath my chair. 

But still I play.  She continues to ignore me in her approach, dispassionate to my efforts.  I don’t mind.  Because her voice, her smell, her damp, cool kiss, are all I need in that moment.  I've always easily fallen for lovers that could care less for me; but, for this moment at least, I am satisfied. 

"The Beat"

My heart thundered like a jackhammer beneath my shield, pumping blood that seared like hot coffee through my aching legs and arms.  Everything begged me to stop.  My legs, full of sand after three straight blocks of sprinting.  My lungs, which turned a breath of fresh air into acid.  My head, which was starting to throb from lack of oxygen as my out-of-shape body sent it to the parts that kept me moving.   

“NYPD!  Stop where you are!” I cried.  Ahead of me, the perpetrator shoved a woman aside, sending her armful of shopping bags scattering like bowling pins.  Bystanders screamed and ran in all directions as I cried out my warning again.  With a burst of adrenaline I didn’t know my legs still possessed, I leapt the shopping bags, my trench coat flapping behind. 

I held my hat on with one hand and produced my service revolver from its holster with my other.  The perp turned into an alley so quickly that he almost fell when his shoes skidded on the sidewalk.  I gained about five feet on him before his hand whipped from the waistband in his pants and produced a gun of his own.

I was barely thirty feet from the perp when the piece appeared.  Time seemed to slow down, and my jumbled mind whizzed through the hours I’d been briefed on what to do in such a situation.  Raw, naked fear took over, and my feet stopped on their own volition, sending me pitching forward. Only after stumbling a few feet was I able to pull some useful advice from my training, and I spun behind a newspaper stand a split-second before he started firing.

Two claps of thunder split the afternoon air.  Screams rang out from, I hoped, bystanders that were simply terrified and not hurt.  Three feet from my head, the wood of the newspaper stand exploded, showering the sidewalk with splinters.

My back pressed against the stand, I listened for more gunshots through my heart jackhammering in my ears.  A happy flow of adrenaline now dampening the other symptoms of the chase, I counted off five more seconds before venturing a peek around the corner.

Clear. 

I dove from behind cover, keeping my head down, and dashed into the alley after the perp.  It was empty, aside from a dumpster that belonged to the Chinese restaurant next door and a rapid jangling of metal from over my head.  My eyes followed the sound and I spied the perp, and beneath his arm the file that he had pilfered from headquarters under the guys of a delivery boy.  He clambered up the last run on the ladder of the neighboring building’s fire escape, and took off up the metal stairs two at a time.

Not wasting another second, I threw myself down the alley and leapt to grab the first rung on the ladder.  My arms screamed in protest, but I forced past their voice and pulled myself up high enough to get my foot into the lowest rung.  My hat tumbled off in a breeze that smelled of mushu pork, but I quickly forgot it as I ascended after the fleeing man. 

When I reached the first landing, a clap of thunder roared in the alley, and at the same instant sparks showered from one of the steps above my head.  A metallic ping met my ears before they filled with a high-pitched whine.  I only took a second to blink through the confusion of the gunshot before I charged up the stairs after him, barely able to make out the sound of his footsteps (or mine, I can’t really tell) through the white noise.

I passed through the landing he had been standing on when he had taken a shot at me. It still smelled of gunpowder and cordite. 

When I reached the last landing, I was alone.  Holstering my revolver, I ascended the final ladder and cautiously peeked over the edge of the building’s roof.  I spotted a fleeing man, a folder tucked under his arm, and a nearby building that he was recklessly charging toward. 

I dove over the edge and cried “NYPD! Stop where you are!”, and had plenty of time to duck behind an air conditioning unit before he fired recklessly over his shoulder.  The shot didn’t even come close to me, but I couldn’t have him firing wildly.  There’d be no telling where those bullets might up. 

I charged after him. 

Suddenly the perp was airborne, leaping from the edge of the roof.  He seemed to hang, suspended, in air for days until he landed on the roof of the next building.  His knees gave way and he rolled in an attempt to reduce the impact of the fall, but it was less coordinated than he had intended.  Dizzy, he sprawled in a heap on the roof. 

It was my chance. But, once again, my body and its perfectly rational fears took over.  I skidded to a stop just short of the edge of the building, the chasm between the two like a gaping maw, ready to swallow a beat cop who was still twenty years from paying off his mortgage.  The alley below looked much further than seven stories; not that it needed to be, because seven stories would do just fine for turning me into a pile of pulp. 

Across the alley, the perp was finally starting to pull himself together.  It would be a matter of seconds before he was on his feet and running again, or he got his gun hand working again and risked his remaining two bullets on perforating me. 

So, once again, I tuned out the voice that screamed in my head to turn around, backed up twenty feet on the rooftop, sprinted, and jumped. 

"Hook, Line, and Sinker"

Title: "Hook, Line, and Sinker."  

Brigit's Flame March 2013 week 1 entry 

Prompt: Cards 

Wordcount/warnings: 1490 words, rated PG (alcohol and tobacco use) 

Author: Graham Patrick Smith

The air was thick and smelled terrible.  It swirled around his head like thick soup, composed equally of cigar smoke, fried meat, heady body odor, and whiskey. 

“You, sir!” Nick cried, aiming his long, black wand, white-tipped.  “You seem like a man who knows a thing or two about a thing or two!” 

The smoke that encircled his head, Nick thought, suited the fat man.  He wore a suit, the vest and jacket of which were each straining to stay closed by one button apiece.  His white collar was upturned but completely undone, and the man had tied his pristine white bow tie across it so as to mask the faux pas.  But this was not as a man who couldn’t afford a larger suit:  this was a man who wouldn’t allow himself to believe that his schoolboy figure had ballooned so terribly since his cricket days.  No, the man before Nick had enough money to afford a suit in whatever size he wanted, and this was the one he had chosen.  Nick pictured the man’s blood seeping through his veins like the sluggish, hot air, barely oozing along from the years of congealed filth.

The cigar the man clutched in his teeth probably cost more that Nick’s suit, and the whisky in the glass was probably older.   He stared at Nick with beady black eyes above red, piggish cheeks and a freshly oiled moustache, from beneath which hung a massive bottom lip, like a bloated, pink slug. 

“A thing or two about a thing or two?” The man scoffed, just enough slur in his voice to tell that he was hiding his true inebriation.  He removed his cigar from his teeth with the same hand he used to hold the knob of his expensive walking stick. “What’s that supposed to mean, boy?”

Nick smiled inwardly to himself without breaking eye contact with the man.  “Why, I merely mean to say that you seem as though you have a set of eyes over which it is difficult to pull the wool!”  When the man blinked slowly, Nick sighed patiently and summarized, “Not as easy man to fool, are you?”

“I should say not,” said the piggy-faced man. When he took a step forward, a little of Nick’s smile crept into reality.  He finished it off to make it seem genuine.

“A man such as yourself must not find himself challenged often,” Nick cooed, silver tongue fully engaged.  “So I feel you need … no, you deserve … a challenge on a night such as tonight.”

The man looked to and fro, slowly, drunkenly.  The other attractions in the old theater begged for his attention, and the attention of the hundreds of other patrons that meandered about during intervention.  He eyes the cigarette seller, the man behind the bar, the other posh London socialites that laughed with their expensive drinks in hand, even (no, especially) the girls with the long feathers in their hats and the beckoning fingers.  But Nick’s was the only magician’s stand, and he could spot a catch when one approached.  The man was on his line now; Nick didn’t even need to reel him in.  He simply needed to be patient. 

This was one of the rare moments that made it worth standing around in the filthy, coagulated air for hours at a time.  Not the actual trick, not the looks on their faces when he baffled them, not even the payoff.  The moment when he piqued the curiosity of someone who really, genuinely deserved what was coming, and knowing that they were a ship in a whirlpool, being drawn ever closer to him and his cards.  It was an intoxicating feeling, one unequaled by drink or smoke.  

As the piggy man opened his mouth to inquire, Nick’s flew open, almost on instinct alone.  “What you see here is an ordinary deck of fifty-two cards,” Nick proclaimed as he whipped the small, rectangular box from the sleeve of his jacket and into his palm.  Two beady black eyes blinked slowly, and Nick could practically hear the gears in the man’s head turning, trying to process where it had come from.  With another flourish of his hands Nick had removed the entire deck from the box and spread them across the table in a long line, face-down.  “You will pick one card, without telling me what it is, and I shall divine your card from the deck.  I’ve never been good at maths, but I believe the odds are in your favor, sir.” 

“What’s in it for me?” The man asked, cramming the end of his cigar between that pink slug of a bottom lip and the oiled rat of a moustache.  He was clearly a man used to asking that particular question.

“Just a shilling, if I can’t choose your card,” Nick replied.  “I’m sure a shilling is nothing to a man of your stature, but who can turn down a free shilling?”

When the man nodded, Nick gave a flick of one wrist and flipped all the cards face-up, one after the other, like a string of dominos.  As the piggy man blinked slowly again, Nick proclaimed, “Now, sir, I will turn around and close my eyes, and when I do, select your card.  Please be sure to pick it up, commit it to memory.  When you’re finished, collect the cards together in whatever order you choose, making sure to conceal your choice.”  And with that, Nick turned, making sure to give a dramatic twirl of the edge of his cloak. 

Seconds passed, bringing the telltale sound of the turning of cardboard, and finally Nick heard the man clumsily collecting the deck.  When he turned around, the man had the cards clenched in fingers that strikingly resembled overstuffed sausages.  As he took the deck, Nick pictured smoky, fat-filled blood trying to pump through the swollen appendages. 

Shuffling cards, though not as satisfying as the lure, was the most enjoyable part of Nick’s job.  He could shuffle with one hand, shuffle in mid air, shuffle across the table, shuffle from one hand into the other, even off of the wall and onto the tabletop. Tonight he opted for the hand-to-hand; elegant enough to draw looky-loos, and flashy enough to completely disorient the fat, wealthy drunkard. 

Desired effect achieved: two beady eyes, nearly concealed by pudgy cheeks reddening from the now empty whiskey glass, rolled about after the flying cards.  The entire deck collected in Nick’s left hand, and with swipe of his thumb he displayed all of them on the old, wooden table.  After studying them for a few seconds, Nick mused, “Hmm. That’s peculiar.  I don’t seem to see your card here.” 

Before the man could say something idiotic, Nick leaned forward, placing one hand on the man’s vest and the other behind his right ear.  His wrist moved like a whip, and seemingly from thin air a card was clutched between his thumb and forefinger.  “Is this your card, sir?” He asked, displaying it for the man and leaning back behind the table. 

It was the king of diamonds.  Even if Nick hadn’t been able to hear exactly which card the man had picked, memorized its exact placement on the table and listened for it to be picked up, he still would have known it was the piggy man’s card.  It could not have been more obvious that such a man would pick such a card. 

But the pink slug twitched the oiled rat upward into a drunken smile.  “Wrong.  That’s not the card I picked.” 

Of course he’d lie, Nick thought.  Like you said: who can turn down a free shilling?  “You are a very crafty man, as I thought, sir,” Nick conceded.  “I can see I am no match for your wits.”  He produced a shilling from his pants pocket and laid it on the table, where the five sausages reappeared and quickly snatched it up.  “Care to make it a little more interesting?  Say, a pound?” 

The man dropped the shilling into his own pants pocket and glared victoriously back at Nick, clearly pleased with himself.  “No thank you, good sir.  Here’s the difference between you and me.  I didn’t get where I am being taken in by people like you.” 

“Clearly not, sir,” Nick replied, giving the man a slight bow and slipping the man’s wallet into the compartment beneath the table.  “A man like me could learn a thing or two from a man like you.”

“I’d say you could,” the man added before turning, with his walking stick, whiskey glass, and cigar.  “Good evening.” 

It wasn’t something Nick did often.  But when he did, he made sure it mattered.  After all, why throw out the line unless you’re going to catch a nice, fat one?  “Good evening,” he replied, folding up his table as the crowds retreated into the theater for the start of the next act.