Winter

The gunshot is a flat, dead sound in the cold air, swallowed by the snow and ice. Behind him, the mountains loom silent.

He holsters the gun, pulls his scarf up so that it covers his nose, and makes his way across the lake. The ice here is thick; he can feel its weight, a vastness beneath.

Fulton is crumpled in the middle of the lake, his blood steaming in the white snow. Rasp pulls off his mitten and checks for a pulse. Then he stands, flips the hood of his parka up, and starts his way back to town.

Chasing Concordia: On Two-Song Hiatus!

Chasing Concordia will return on Wednesday, August 6. I’m gone for the weekend, to a cottage.

Thankfully, Greg has some spectacular stuff lined up for my absence — particularly on Saturday and Sunday. (To whet your appetite: Saturday’s features two monkey geniuses, and Sunday’s is written IN ALL CAPS. The entire thing!)

My two missed songs will be made up, though, on days which are currently being kept a surprise.

Juror #8

Louise is halfway through her notepad already, and they’re only in the first hour of the day. Lots of evidence introduced today, lots of testimony. She wishes again that she could take pictures in here, but she’ll have to make do with sketches.

In her room in the hotel where they’ve been sequestered, she has a chart on the wall, and a whiteboard with a timeline. When the other jurors ask, she says it’s for the book. She doesn’t tell them that she looks at it all at night, and thinks that maybe, just maybe, she sees something they don’t.

Juror #7

I’ve gotta go, I’ve gotta go, really really really really gotta go
Wasting my time, he did the crime
Bang the gavel, yes he’s guilty, we all know

I’ve gotta go, I’ve gotta go, really really really really gotta go
I’ve got a date, I can’t be late
I need time to put on my new eyeshadow

I’ve gotta go

I’ve gotta go, I’ve gotta go, really really really really gotta go
I’ve gotta go, I’ve gotta go, really really really really gotta go

The Trouble with Nicknames

“I can’t believe I’m out with the Unkillable Prince,” she says.

He leans forward, and a dagger thunks into the back of the chair. “Don’t call me that. Please. It makes it worse.”

“Aren’t you? Unkillable?”

He sniffs at his goblet and spills the wine. It hisses and eats the carpet. “Only so far. The title’s just a challenge now.” He tries to eat around the barbed thing in his chicken.

“So, listen.” He takes her hand. “How about we – wait.” He pulls her under the table, and they share their first kiss under the rain of a hundred arrows.

Tick

It doesn’t look like much, really. A few wires and screws, a big block of something, tied to a larger canister. The full package would fit in a shoebox. When it goes, it’ll rip out the whole foundation and bring the tower down on us all. Canned apocalypse.

There’s nothing I can do at this point. There’s no visible timer, and there’re just two cords going from the detonator to the plastique, both of them deadmen so if I try to disarm it it’ll just go early.

So here I am, waiting, thinking of her, and how I should have

Places To Be

Gabriella, I know you’ve got places to be
Darling, please, just one minute, listen to me

Let the pictures go (x4)

Gabriella, I know you’ve got places to be

The Fabric of the World

“A true hunt is not a competition,” said the old man, only a shadow among the clouds. “It is an understanding of patterns. Of the shifting in the fabric of the world.”

Below them, a panther stalked through the twilight, silent as the moon. In its fur the boy saw rivulets of old scars; in its heartbeat he heard the breadth of its life.

“You cannot defeat your prey,” said the old man. “You know that you already have.”

The panther stopped, sniffed the wind. The boy breathed deep, the air cold on his bare skin, and dropped like lightning.

Call to Arms

“It’s suicide, and I won’t go down there again.” Sean skitters back and forth across the office, but Brian only needs to spin in his chair to follow him. “You remember what happened last time?”

“I remember.”

“The rats? And the Pipe Rooms, and the, fucking, I don’t know. The paintings, and that bird… thing -”

“I remember, Sean.” Brian shrugs. “It’s Tomi.”

“Nurse your own damn crush,” says Sean, and sits. Silence, then: “We’d need headlamps, and a climbing kit, and holy water, anyway.”

Brian leans forward. “What else?”

“Well, a tazer, maybe and – no. I see what you’re doing.”

Breathing Ice

Restriction: Write the whole story in only one sentence.

In the second right before, when it’s like mountain climbing, like he’s breathing ice, he thinks maybe she moves just a little bit toward him, a shift of weight or intention or something, so subtle that, for years afterwards, he wonders if he imagined it, if he had wanted her to move so badly that he pretended, pretended that he had the courage to reach for her, touch her, kiss her, and all he wants to do is ask her, beg her to tell him and let him try again, and he would, if only he could see her again.