Author: Douglas

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Something Characteristic

“Come on, schab. This…” Uma inspected the body. “…this girl’s heavier than she looks.”

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“If she’s being looked for and they find us carrying her we’re not going to…”

“Yah, yah,” Uma said as she set her end of the girl down. The girl’s arm flopped to the floor and the back of her fingers smacked the concrete. A metal cylinder tumbled out of her vest. The heavy but hollow sound captured all three mechanics’ attention.

The cylinder rolled in a shallow arc till it wedged under a wheeled Bainbridge tool cart a step from Narkkid. [describe the cylinder].

The girl twisted, and Narkkid, who still held her feet, crumpled to the floor. The girl rose to a low crouch; her stance wide and her arms out like a bear. Behind and above her, Uma stooped to catch her up like a child picking up an hissing kitten. The girl thrust upward when Uma contacted her. The effort lifted the larger rounder woman off her feet and tossed her into a plastic locker.

No one moved; the girl straightened up. She surveyed the front bay from the back corner over her left shoulder all the way around to Uma’s landing place over her right with a rotation of her head. When Tjon, then Narkkid came directly in her line of view her eyes darted to theirs. For Uma, she tilted her head to see better, then bolted out the garage door and down Honeyfarm Circle past Red Rodney’s.

Narkkid put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. The girl stopped abruptedly and turned. Narkkid waggled the [something characteristic] cylinder in her hand. Even at the distance she was Narkkid could see her lips tighten into a pissed sneer. The scanned up, looking to the sky over the Hartwhile shop.

“Incoming,” Tjon said. When the three looked back to the girl, she was gone.

“Hide it.” Narrkid handed the cylinder to Tjon. “Uma, get up out of there and get back to work on that Shortle’s flit. He wants it before noon.

Narrkid was scooping coffee grounds when the police landed.

350 words on day 886

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Outright Embarrassed

It felt like autumn and it felt like morning, but it was the height of summer and noon. Overnight, storms cuffed the dry plains north of the city. Now, those storms bleaked the southern horizon and turned summer to fall and noon to morning. Everyone walking the streets on their way to lunch or other appointments bent their heads downward intent upon the wet-in-spots sidewalks.

Some seemed lost in their own thoughts other seemed to avoid eye contact so that the narrator didn’t call them out individually to walk them in front of a car or to name them. Others seemed outright embarrassed to be in this particular scene and were making side glances for unexpected alleys to turn down or even a stoop to run up.

127 words on day 884

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A Tall and Narrow Notebook

Kera wiped the long day out of her eyes with the heels of her hands and leaned back in the burgundy leather chair. Her two lab-mates were finally gone and she could attend her spell notes in private. Relying on the clarity of their spells to convey the import, few mages kept additional notes these days, but Kera’s grandmother had given her a shingle-sized notebook for her thirteenth birthday and she had kept notes ever since. None of her notes were extensive—maybe a short paragraph or two. And it wasn’t likely they could help another mage in any significant way. But Kera liked the ritual of mixing the India ink and composing her thoughts.

Kera looked up from placing the period at the end of a sentence when a double-knock on her open door drew her out of [the zone].

“I’m sorry. We hoped you were finished.” A woman Kera had seen before but couldn’t place stood in her doorway. The woman’s blond hair was French braided into two short plaits which barely went past her ears to her neck. She wore a sea-green back-buttoned cassock and clutched a clipboard to her chest. She twined a pen, a hank of keys, and a pair of sunglasses in the same hand holding the clipboard. Kera couldn’t tell if the woman was important or just thought so.

“I was. Just.” Kera set the pen down and left the narrow notebook propped open. Looking around for the rest of the ‘we’, Kera used her phone voice to ask, “How can I help you?”

260 words on day 883