FFJ - 21 - Cherished

You are lost in a failing mind. Fragments of memories clutched in hands that still feel young, despite their mottled appearance. You have never truly felt your age. Displaced, ejected from the standard flow of time that others experienced. You let it wash over you, something to be celebrated and not feared. Yet, now, you find that that resolve slipping between your fingers as who you are erodes. Where once was a bastion of will you find a crumbling edifice. The gates have been blown open; the inner temple raised. 

You hang on from the ramparts, but the inexorable rot snakes its way towards you. There are days where it takes you whole, swallows you. Memories wink out like a draft through a church hall. Who you are is stripped down to its bare parts, fear, hunger, pain. So much pain. But all of that is overshadowed by the perverse confusion that grips you in moments of clarity. Those moments where you push and break your head free of the dark that pulls you to its center. Those times where you know something is wrong, so deeply wrong, but you cannot tell what. You awake with just enough to know you are irreparably broken.

Faces swim and melt, loved ones and strangers meld. Voices with a touch of familiarity cloy at your struggling faculties. You are loved. You are hated. You are touched softly. You are screamed at by a man with tears in his eyes. You feel deeply and not at all. Places resonate with you, each doorway brings you to somewhere past, present, and future. There are days where you feel this is an immense punishment and others where you are content. Most, however, are nothing; faint ripples from a stone dropped miles away. The place you reside in is within not without. Only forcibly are you brought to the forefront of the land of specters, the dead, and faces that spark love but not recognition. 

You are tired. You are angry. You are sad at the loss of something you cannot begin to understand. Who you were is a shroud, a hint of a memory. You’ve lost that face and now wear a mask, this facsimile of a person. There are times you know this truth and others when it eludes you. Time is no longer a linear experience. You experience it in bouts of clarity, finding yourself standing in a room you don’t know surrounded by faces you have never seen. You do not recall dressing yourself, eating, or the days that followed to this moment. 

You awake in a bed, cold, in a time as foreign to you as the linen swaddled around your form. When you next close your eyes, you fear for when and where you will wake.

FFJ - 20 - Choppy

The crowd had become restless. Conversations popped out in short bursts of moderation, glances stolen toward the stage during each pause. The speakers knew they were soon to be cut off with the start of the show This rustle came and went, a collective held breath. Jack was quiet and had managed to steal toward the front row. He was unadorned with Choppy merchandise, nor did he think to bring any disparaging signs. 

He was conflicted. The whole spectacle was grotesque, but it was the merch that bothered him the most. Seeing children walk around with key chains, plushies, twirlers, and hats depicting the bloodied guillotine that hawkers had taken to calling Choppy didn’t sit well with Jack. Whether it was the rampant consumerism or the sugar-blasting of a grim task that made his stomach twist, he couldn’t say. Everyone else had gone and accepted it. The kids had to get acquainted with it, parents would say. They have to learn about the world, others would quip. But there was something about a little girl running around with a shoddily built guillotine toy with red LED eyes and a hand-clamp that brought the blade down on a fake head while a tinny speaker played a harrowing scream that he simply couldn’t find it in himself to indulge. He kept this discomfort to himself. It would do no good to cause a stir, far in the minority that he was. 

Yet, here he was. Every month he came to watch without fail. He thought this to be a personal failing. It was a guilty pleasure, and he’d disparage the event if the topic came up. It was barbaric. If it has to exist then it should at least be done with respect, not this mess. TV cameras flanked the black fences keeping the crowd at bay. A drone buzzed above, ready to swoop down and get a close-up of the action. Families were readily phones and cameras. Children rode on parent’s shoulders to get a better view, paper Choppy hats askew on their small heads. 

A momentary silence as the curtain swept back on oiled rollers. Then, a roar of fervorous applause. Lights winked from hundreds of cameras. The drone buzzed low and fast. A black-hooded man sat on his knees before the guillotine, its dark blade reflecting the studio lights around it. Next to him stood a blonde man in a severe suit, microphone clutched in a carefully manicured hand. Edmond Dole, the month-on-month host of the event. He cocked a perfect smile, a squeal of feedback from the mic as he brought it to his lips. 

“Welcome, welcome. It is a pleasure to see so many familiar faces in the crowd. Is that Leo?” He dropped into a squat, looking at a young boy atop his father’s shoulders, “It is! My, keep your dad in check for me will you?” 

He winked, getting back to his feet and wandered the stage. “My people, you all know why it is we’re gathered here today, but I must indulge the powers that be with the formalities. This fellow, quite frankly, is a vile, vile man. Wouldn’t you agree?” Edmond turned, offering the mic to the crowd with an outstretched arm.

The people all around jack hollered and screamed with agreeable derision. Something hurled through the air and hit the ground near the hooded man with a wet thud. 

“My, my, it is so very good to see such an excited crowd this evening. Keep hold of that energy!” He strutted to stand next to the man, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Now, this fellow is here to face his end because he couldn’t cut it amongst us civilized folk. Three times he failed the rehabilitation program, and you know what he said when we offered him a fourth try?”

“NO!!”

“...That’s right, he said no! What do we call folks who say no?”

“COWARDS!!”

“Exactly right my friends, exactly right. And what do we say to this man for freeing us of his burden on society?”

“THANK YOU!!”

“Precisely! Thank you for doing the right thing. This, this is your tax dollars at work, people! Now what do you say we get this show on the road, yeah? What do you say about that?” 

“CHOPPY!! CHOPPY!! CHOPPY!!” The crowd screamed, and Jack found himself joining the chorus, that funny feeling lost in the excitement.

FFJ - 19 - Death and Taxes

Resurrecting the CPA was the easy part. Getting him to do my taxes was proving difficult. Turns out that the afterlife gives perspective, the kind of perspective that makes taxes seem “mundane” and “pointless.” As much as many would believe otherwise, necromancy was more conditioning and shepherding than it was dark rituals and profane arts. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a decent bit of the latter. It’s just that it gets overshadowed by paperwork, behavioral therapy, and upkeep. They say the same thing about other exciting jobs, no? Firefighting is only fighting fire on occasion. 

It was a similar situation. And, I really needed Carl Baker to get his motivations in order. April 15th was in a few short days, and I had been using the man for nigh on four decades to catalog, sort, and file my taxes. Soul contractor. Exemptions. Where did bodies factor in on deductions? I had no idea where to begin, but Carl had always handled it with practiced ease. I brought the dead to life and he made sure I wasn’t haunted by the foul specter known as the IRS. They were practically this era's inquisition. They may not bring death in the physical sense, but one slip up and my business would be as dead and buried as Carl was last night. 

I had my file set in front of him, thick as the necronomicon and nearly as powerful in terms of my soon-to-be-decided fate. 

“Carl, I beg of you. You must finish what you had begun. My unlife’s work is on the line.”

He issued forth a series of groans and gestures that could only have meant, “Exedirius the Powerful, I understand the predicament that has beset you, my friend. However, I have seen that which lays beyond the fold, and I no longer wish to meddle in affairs so trivial, so mundane as these. My time as a CPA is behind me. And, more importantly, my stamp would no longer be valid, as I am registered as deceased.” 

“You see my rotting friend, that is where you’re wrong. I struck down the coroner with a bolt of necrotic lightning before he could file that vile paperwork. To the waking world, you are still a practicing CPA. I will rectify this if you just finish this stack at once.”
His unseeing eyes lolled listlessly, and Carl’s jaw clacked out of place. It was a clear display of disapproval. If I had a heart, it would have sunk to the pit of my stomach, should I have had one of those, too. It was hopeless. Carl had always been a man of principals. It’s what made him such a damn good CPA. 

“Is there nothing I can do to convince you?”

Stoic as he was in life, he met my eye with a leveled gaze. It was no use. The man wasn’t going to budge. It was possible to force the issue using the necromatic arts, but I reserved such powers for vile enemies. Such methods would be immoral to use on him. Killing IRS agents wasn’t a viable solution, at least not in the long-term. Everything was online these days. Bah. I’d have to go back to the drawing board. For the first time in eons, my time was ticking.

FFJ - 18 - Fear

"So, this is a redo of one of the very first pieces of fiction I wrote. I started a creative writing club in high school, and we did prompts each week. This was our first week: Fear. I tried to keep some of the same metaphors and language I used, and the story structure is, essentially, the same. Thought it would be fun to do revisit since the spirit of this project is similar, just without the prompts. "

Ellie loathed the city. It was oppressive. People didn’t give a shit about you. They stepped past the homeless and the dying without a glance. Eyes locked ahead. Empathy held in a glance never given, never acknowledged. She left it whenever she could. It was a pleasure to be surrounded by nature, dancing at the edge of civilization. But, even then, the city lights were at her back: the leering gaze of a monster with a million eyes waiting for her to return. This time, it was different. She had pushed ahead into the serenity until she could no longer hear the idling thrum of her aging Civic. 

Daylight softened to twilight quicker than she anticipated. It was time to go back, but she was uncertain of the way she came. She had never gone far enough to leave markers or bring anything aside from a snack and a pocket knife that was more for utility than defense. Her phone flashlight did little to abate the burgeoning dark. Shadows swayed from twisting live oaks, cast aslant by the recent tropical storm. Ellie centered herself, tried to abate the panic, but it had already wormed its way into her thoughts. If her brother would just shut up and stop provoking mom, maybe she wouldn’t have come out here. She couldn’t stand to be around the two’s constant shouting. Once she was out of school, she was leaving and not looking back. 

She cast around for any sign of the way she came and found none. The lights of the city had winked out; the beast slumbered. She moved back toward the way she came, searching for any cell signal, but there was none. If her car still idled, she couldn’t hear it over the blood rushing in her ears. She yelled, calling out to anyone, but the swamp was silent but for the constant hum of insects.

Hours dripped by, the dark feeling in her gut solidifying into a constant dread. Night was complete. The chorus of insects was joined by the dirging croak-songs of frogs. Humidity cloyed, mixing with sweat that stung her eyes. She pushed through underbrush, any semblance of logic had been eaten away by the dark. She had to get somewhere, anywhere. If she just kept going, she would find something. A power station. A campground. Ellie reasoned there must be plenty of trails this close to the city. There had to be. 

Her foot plunged through another bush and hit something firm. A sharp, piercing heat blossomed in her calf. Ellie cried out, tumbling down, mind racing. She fumbled for her leg, pulling at whatever had locked around her. A black bear trap, she thought for a fleeting moment. No, it was slick and writhing, tightening like a vice.

She scrambled for the phone and cast the light towards the source. A snake. Olive green and black, camouflaged amongst the foliage. It was massive. She pried at it with her fingertips to no avail. It tightened, coiling itself further up her leg. She tried to stand but couldn’t under its weight. It had bitten her, she could feel the blood slick beneath its scales. Its black eyes glinted in the dark. The creature’s tongue darted as though tasting her fear. Something creaked in her leg under the force of its twisting body as the hulking thing tried to wrap itself around her torso.  

The knife. She dropped the phone and fished it from her pocket and flicked it open with unsteady hands. She brought the blade high and down into the snake’s body. It tensed, constricting her further. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t take in enough of a breath. Again, again, she cut into it. Just as dark roses threatened to blot out her vision, it slackened. She freed herself from its blood-soaked corpse. Her leg was weak and burned from its bite, but she was free, back into the grasp of the night.

FFJ - 17 - Tanaka

“Go again.” Sourceless, modified. 

Tanaka kneels, pushing sweat slicked hair from her face. Her hand shakes as she slips the slim headset back over her eyes. An exhale of air through slats near her ears causes her to flinch involuntarily. Pressure builds at her temples. The strap tightens, and her world shifts. Her body reacts, trying to gain purchase on ground that no longer exists. A stumble in one’s dream, but she does not wake. The vertigo crescendos then halts, nausea lurches in her stomach. Her heartbeat thuds in the back of her head against the too-tight strap. Her eyes feel like they’re bulging out of their sockets. 

Finally, the pressure equalizes. Her body settles into its new environment. An amber light glows overhead, woefully dim. Three men circle a table where another lays prone, clothes removed from his torso. Fine grey suit pants are muddied with blood, still fresh and oozing from a bullet wound in his chest. He is groaning, head hanging back over what appears to be a dining table in a closed restaurant. His eyes are a bloodshot panic, desperation holding her gaze. The man to the left says something in a language she doesn’t immediately understand. 

Translated text generates in Tanaka’s vision, “Did we get one? It’s moving. There a doctor in there? Get a move on. We pay how much for this shit and it takes five goddamn minutes to get someone. You. Hello? Your paying client is dying.” He snaps his fingers in front of her eyes.

He startles, something about her sudden movement scares him. The other two look on warily. Tanaka smiles but prevents her simulacrum from processing the gesture. “Describe what occured.” She says, a measured voice automatically adjusts to their native tongue.

“Take a guess.” The one who she presumes to be their leader continues. 

“No. Describe what occurred.”

“What’s it look like you fucking machine, he was shot.”

“When.” 

He looks at his watch, flecks of blood dot the face, “Fifteen minutes ago.”

“Who shot him?”

“Just fucking help him. What does it matter?” The man slams his hands on the table. 

Visual processing has completed. The man on the table is Ivan Egorov. White-color criminal. Leader of a local criminal syndicate that deals, mainly, in weapons smuggling. Rich. Recently divorced, two kids. Both estranged. Genetic details follow. He’s on blood thinners and speed. Two bullet wounds, both from a .22. Medium range. Collapsed lung. Advanced blood loss. 

The other three are irrelevant. She steps forward, the fatigue in her body is kept at bay here. Her mind is sharp as the scalpel that emerges from her fingertip. 

“Step back.”

They do. The workplace is far from sanitary. Figures flood Tanaka’s mind. Probabilities rise and fall with each action she takes. She releases a mist to keep particulates at a minimum and approaches her patient. The procedure is performed with precision and deftness. Her mind and body move with exhilarating deftness. Artificial blood is transfused from a bank in her stomach. The bullets are removed in moments, followed by repair of the flesh and sinew. And, yet, she is too late. He flatlines. Resuscitation fails. Unerring perfection cannot roll back time. 

“Depsite Healing Hand’s best efforts, the patient is deceased. You will…” the automatic script plays as she returns to her body. Shouts fade, no longer perceived.

Tanaka wakes, retching. Pain is omnipresent. She gasps for breath, muscles straining to hold her to her feet. 

“Go again.”