A Man and His Balloon

This story came to be in response to a prompt on McSweeney's Internet Tendency, with a few tweaks as editing demanded.  If anyone is ever in need of a writing prompt, I highly recommend using one of those.  You'll end up creating something completely out of the realm of sanity, and that's awesome.

The hot-air balloon landed with a splash of sand, interrupting the sun-bathers and the sandcastle builders, not to mention the sunscreen appliers. They all stared at it with the same expression on their faces, that classic mixture of emotions that can really be boiled down to a single question: “What the fuck?”

They didn’t have to wait long for an answer. The sand had barely settled stickily to their skin when a man popped up from the bottom of the basket- and nobody was surprised to see that this was one of the more eccentric people to ever appear on Venice Beach. He was dressed in clothing that had become outdated about a hundred years ago, complete with a bowler hat and a fob watch- though it looked like it was just a digital watch glued to a chain. His hair was theatrically windswept, and he moved with the frenzied energy of the stereotypical inventor from movies set in the nineteenth century. He almost pulled it all off.

“Greetings, heathens!” he shouted with joy at the amassed crowd. They all stared at him, dumbfounded; the many stoners there immediately vowed to cut back. A few people took out phones and started to record the scene for posterity. “I am Doctor Artemus Phileas Naudin, a traveler from a distant land called the United States of America, from the great state of Idaho. It is a very different place than this...” He trailed off, gazing around at the wide beach brimming with tourists and ringed with the bustling boardwalk and the dried-up coastal mountains.

Cold

She sits on a bench.  Her breath spills out of her mouth in clouds that swirl and dissipate before she can find shapes in them.  But the clouds are still there, floating invisibly around her, suffocating her slowly with poisonous gases.  Too slowly.  She has years left before her lungs stop expelling the hazardous waste.

She wonders why she was given a body resilient enough to conquer the poisons around her.  She marvels at her hands, still able to clutch at the newly loose fabric covering her flat stomach, despite the cold that colors them pale blue and reveals their waif-like thinness.  Her body continues on, despite everything.  So resilient.

But no matter.  Even a body so skilled at survival has weak points.  All she needs is the right catalyst, the key that will push the delicate membranes of her lungs, her heart, her brain into stillness.  The gases suffocating her are insufficient, but she knows that her body cannot continue forcing life through her veins if water invades her lungs.

The light shines grey through the clouds.  The people walk through the fog like ghosts, pale and cold.  Who can say they aren’t?  She is a ghost already, though her traitorous heart still pumps warm fluid through her arteries and capillaries and veins, vainly protecting what is already dead.  The chill of death’s winter worms its way under her heavy coat and wool sweater, finding every tiny gap in the woven threads of her hat and scarf and socks to numb the bare skin beneath.  But that isn’t enough for the cold.  It seeps through her skin even further, through the muscles and bones, creeping up her limbs and into her chest. But it stops at her heart, and at that place hidden behind her clenched abdominal muscles, because those places are already frozen with death’s sweet whisper.  Ghosts within a ghost.

She stands.  The bridge lies through an alley and around a corner; her legs will have to lift and carry in order to get her there.  It ought to be hard, like walking through syrup.  But it isn’t.  She thinks, Adam wouldn’t understand.  Her numb lips curl into a smile.  Adam wouldn’t understand, but then, he had never understood.  When death had first touched them with cold fingers he had turned his face away, toward the warmth of life, the heat and the sweat and the gasping breaths.  He doesn’t see the ghosts and demons that crowd around her.  She doesn’t want him to: they are hers, and no one else’s.

Doubter's Point

The bitter wind pushed at Rhys’ body as he ran.  Shoved him, guided him, but it didn’t matter which direction he ran as long as it wasn’t back.  As long as he was quick, quicker than she was.  He ran blindly.  Realized too late where the wind was taking him.  The crash of waves greeted him as he skidded to a halt.  The dirt he dislodged showered over the edge of the cliff into the foaming waters below.  Doubter’s Point, the servants called it when they warned him away from it.  He shouldn’t have come here.  He turned to run back to safety, but it was too late.  He would never make it back past the base of the Point.

Do you doubt yourself?

He ignored the voice; instead he raised his hands, as if his sister was a skittish horse.  “Please,” he gasped.  “Please, think about this.  I’m your brother, Celia.  Family.”

She walked toward him slowly, panting.  Her face was streaked with tears and dust and makeup, nearly hiding how bloodless it was.  Her hands shook as she raised their father’s old pistol.  “Family?” she asked.  Her voice shook even more than her hands. “I thought family was supposed to stay together, support each other no matter what.  Not destroy everything they’ve worked for.”  She stopped walking, unwilling to get too close to the edge.  She’d recognized where Rhys was headed long before he had, understood the danger even through her grief and fury.  “You’ve ruined us,” she spat at her brother.

“I didn’t-”

“Everything was tied to the pendant, Rhys!” Celia shouted.  “Our family is worth nothing now.  We have no more allies, no more money, we don’t even have each other!  You took all of that away when you stole that goddamn pendant, everything our family has worked toward for ten generations!”  A sob rippled through her chest, but she swallowed it with grim determination.  “Everything, Rhys.  Even... even William.”

Rhys’ eyes widened.  “What do you mean?”

Her eyes flashed.  “Don’t play dumb,” she snapped.  “He won’t marry someone who’s worthless.  The engagement’s off.  He even took the goddamn ring back.”  Tears streamed down her cheeks again.  She ignored them.  “Do you have any fucking clue how that feels?  To have the single greatest thing that’s happened to you taken away because your own family made you into nothing?”

'Demic

I'm writing a book!  The first book of a fantasy trilogy, set in a secondary world, tentatively called The Shadow of Ophelia Walker (I'm working on the title).  This story and The Southern Fort are both set in-universe, in a country called the Ilnos Confederacy, before the events of the first book.  I'll probably post more of these as I continue writing the series- little pieces focusing on secondary or background characters that don't fit in the books' structures, but that I like anyway.

Lina stumbled as someone bumped her from behind, her books slipping out of their paper bag.  She caught them before they fell.  Books might go unnoticed save for a few stares in the lower tiers of the city, but Upper Market street was too crowded with upright citizens for no one to care.

“Oops, sorry,” said the man who’d hit her.  He steadied her shoulders.  “Didn’t mean to trip you, miss.  Just a bit crowded is all.”  The crowd flowed around them, intent on their destination.

“That’s okay,” she said, shooting him an absent smile.

His eyes widened.  “Ilnos, you all right?” he asked.  When she looked at him blankly, he pointed at her forehead.

“Oh,” she said, touching the day old gash.  The cut itself didn’t look too bad, but the bruises around it were spectacular.  “It’s nothing.  I... fell.”  She clutched the bag more tightly to her.

He frowned, not quite believing her, but shrugged it off and held out his hand.  “I’m Ben,” he said, smiling.

“Lina,” she said, shaking his hand.

“A pretty name for a pretty girl.”  He winked.

She blushed.  It wasn’t the first time a man had noticed her, but it felt nice anyway.  Especially with a bruise on her forehead too dark to cover with layers and layers of makeup.  “Thank you,” she said.  “I’d take credit for both, but I suppose my parents did all the work.”