Another Short Story Because I'm Not Coherent Enough to Write Something New

I just deleted a dumb post about pooping at work. I swear it seemed clever (for a poop post anyway), but after banging out two paragraphs, I realized that it was NOT clever. It would seem that I lost the point between conceiving of it in the bathroom (I wasn't the one pooping) and getting back to my desk and opening up Blogger. Instead, I'll post another one of my short stories. This one has a more obvious fantasy bent than the last one.

Rechette looked at the piece of chalk in her hand, then down at the floor, and realized that she didn't have the first clue what she was doing. She was so screwed.

"Well? Get on with it!" The woman's voice was impatient.

Rechette tore her eyes from the mess of chalked markings on the floor and reluctantly met the gaze of the speaker.

"This isn't like a controlled lab experiment. I don't put chemical A into flask B and bubble through gas C to get a predictable result. This is partly about feeling and intuition and intent." Rechette was lying through her teeth. What she was attempting to do went so far beyond the boundaries of her knowledge, that they weren't even sharing a time zone.

The woman stepped in close, her gray eyes a dirty frozen pond. "I intend to hurt you in wonderfully inventive ways if you don't feel like this is working." Her ivory skin stretched tight over her cheekbones as she bared her small sharp teeth in a vicious smile. "Is that enough incentive for you?"

Rechette swallowed audibly and made a valiant attempt not to vomit. While the terrible gray-eyed woman would enjoy the fear she inspired in Rechette, she would no doubt be extraordinarily pissed off if Rechette puked on the woman's Manolos. "OK, I get it. One summoning, no waiting."

"Good." The woman stepped back and folded her arms across her chest. Rechette pushed a handful of brown hair out of her eyes and took a deep breath. She squatted next to the squiggles and hash marks on the floor and made a few seemingly random marks amid the mess already there. "That, ah, that should do it."

"Demon spawn, come forth to do the bidding of-" Rechette broke off the incantation and looked at the woman. "What's your name? Your true name; a false one won't work." Sure, that sounds good, she thought.

The woman flushed slightly. "It's Sissy."

Rechette smothered her wild urge to laugh and began speaking again. She was pleased that her voice barely shook at all. "Demon, come forth to do the bidding of Sissy. I bind your powers to her. You will be subject to her will, you will be eager to carry out her orders." She paused. "And you won't smell too much like brimstone or anything. Demon, I summon you!"

Rechette and the woman both looked into the haphazard circle. Where nothing at all was happening.

"Why isn't it working?" The woman stared daggers at Rechette. "You said you could work great magic!" She took a slow step towards Rechette, moving across the circle. "Make it work or I will make you suffer."

"Let's not be hasty. Maybe the casting takes a while to work its way through the different levels of Hell. Your custom-ordered demon could be winging its way to you as we speak." The woman took another step and moved fully into the circle. Which began to emit a sullen red glow between the chalk marks. Wavy lines like heat haze shimmered over Rechette's fake demonic summoning symbols. Rechette took a large step back. Two, in fact. With no more fanfare, a demon popped into existence behind the gray-eyed woman.

"WHO SUMMONS ME?" The demon's voice shook dust from the rafters. The woman whirled around, her initial look of shock morphing into satisfaction. She drew herself up. "I summon you, demon. You are here to do my bidding."

The demon, seven feet of impossible topped with a thicket of horns, cocked its head. Its eyes were a surprisingly pretty human blue, its nose was a gnarled lump. Some sort of acidic drool leaked from the corner of its fang-filled mouth and sizzled on the floor. Its eyes flicked over to Rechette and then returned to the woman it shared the circle with. "You summoned me?" The demon's voice was much quieter this time.

"Yes."

"Hmmmm," the demon looked thoughtful. It reached out a hand and drew a pointy yellow fingernail down the woman's cheek. "You are very bold."

Rechette gnawed nervously on her thumbnail. She wondered if now would be a great time to escape. Considering she wasn't expecting to be able to summon a fart, much less a demon, she didn't see what other purpose she could serve. Besides as a post-summoning snack for the demon. She took another step back and felt the wall behind her. She edged slowly towards the door to her right, eyes glued to the pair in the circle.

The woman twitched back from the touch and turned gray. The demon smiled widely, its pebbled skin darkening from pale red to black. It leaned in closer to the woman and inhaled deeply. So deeply, in fact, the the woman was pulled even closer. She moaned and pushed at the demon's chest. "Humans," it purred in a bass rumble, "so small and tender." It looked over at Rechette and she quickly lowered her gaze to the floor. "So ignorant as to what really hides in the dark." Its blue eyes focused back on its prey. "So arrogant to think that they can control what they summon." It snorted a small greenish flame. "Better magicians than you have tried, Sissy."

How the hell did I summon that thing? Rechette was frantic. Her only hope at this point was that the demon was contained within the circle and would vanish once it was finished tormenting Sissy. She took a deep breath and prepared to make like a rabbit. Too bad she felt more like a deer-in-headlights.

"Rechette." Her name was gravel in the demon's mouth. She tried to maintain her gaze on Sissy's fancy shoes.

"Um, yes? O denizen of Hell?" To Rechette's immense surprise, the demon threw back its head and laughed. It was disturbing how normal it sounded. Against her better judgement, story of her life, she looked the demon in the eyes.

"Oh Rechette, I wish I could take you to Hell. I think you would be very entertaining." The demon now had Sissy in a one-handed grip by the neck. The woman had fainted and hung limply from the twisted, many-jointed fingers. "Unfortunately, I can only take the one who intended to control me. You," it pointed at Rechette, "are safe." It licked Sissy's cheek while never looking away from Rechette. Even in the depths of her swoon, Sissy whimpered at the contact.

"Ah, demon, sir? Am I like, safe safe? Or safe until you're done with Sissy safe?"

The demon chuckled. "Oh, the innocence of this one! You are safe as long as you stay out of trouble. I have no control over what other nonsense you may get yourself into. And I smell bad choices all over you, Rechette. Perhaps you and I will see each other again." With that final pronouncement, the demon disappeared, taking Sissy and her Manolos with it. Rechette promptly collapsed on the floor. She drew her legs up to her chest and stared at the smeary chalky mess on the concrete. Hints of the sullen red still peeked through but even those faded within half a minute. After five minutes, the chalk marks were scoured away by an invisible hand. Rechette decided to start making smart choices, pushed herself to her feet and ran like hell.

A Little Change of Pace

Because I have enough ego to believe that people want to read my stuff, I'm going to be posting some of my short, short fiction. This first piece, which I know many of my 3 readers have already read, is one I submitted to a contest on NPR. I didn't win. Or place. That doesn't mean it wasn't good though.

The nurse left work at five o’clock. As he was walking out the ER doors, a tall man rushed inside, almost knocking the poor tired nurse off his clogs.

“Sorry, sorry!” The man shouted over his shoulder. “I have an emergency! Please, help me!”

The nurse hesitated at the door, about to turn around and lend a hand, when another nurse hurried up to the tall man. “Sir, please calm down. Take a breath and tell me what’s wrong.”

The nurse sighed in relief and continued out the doors. He wasn’t cold-hearted, but it had been a long day and he needed a beer and a shower, possibly at the same time.

Back in the ER, the other nurse, a female, was attempting to calm the extremely agitated tall man. “Sir!” The nurse’s patience was strained. She too, had put in a long day and wanted nothing more than a beer and a shower, possibly at the same time. She shot a filthy look at the back of her rapidly retreating coworker. Then her attention was wrenched back to her panicky patient.

“Nurse, you have to help me!” The tall man, who had very dark brown hair and wild wide eyes, was tugging urgently at the sleeve of her scrubs top. The nurse desperately wished she could skip triage and pawn the tall man off on a doctor, but there was procedure to follow. Anyway, the only doctor she saw was walking rapidly away from her. Figures, she thought, it’s like how there is never a cop around when you need one.

The doctor pushed through the doors of the ER and entered the hospital proper. He knew that he’d be getting a page shortly about the tall, dark-haired man, but he’d be of no use to anyone if he didn’t get some coffee in his system. He fed a dollar into the coffee machine and took the paper cup full of liquid that claimed to be coffee. The doctor suspected that the grounds were cut with compost and antifreeze to keep costs down. He looked into the dark, oily depths, took a deep breath and chugged down the cup in several long swallows. A shudder traveled down his body. “Bleah!” He threw the empty cup in the trash and walked back to the ER just as his pager began to chirp at him.

He was about to push back through the doors when they burst open and the tall, dark-haired man ran out with the nurse in hot pursuit. The doctor attempted to dodge the tall man, but was run down. The air was crushed out of him as the tall man, followed closely by the nurse, landed heavily on his chest. The doctor lay on the floor, struggling for breath. He shoved at the people on top of him.

The tall dark-haired man raised his head and looked the doctor in the eyes. There was a second of confusion and then the tall man was pushing frantically away from the doctor. The nurse, who had managed to regain her feet, was knocked back down as the tall man recoiled from the doctor.

“NONONONONO!” The tall man was screaming, his dark hair standing out in all directions. The doctor made a mental note: get a psych consult. Before anyone could react, the tall man shot off back to the ER and out the door into the evening light.

The doctor and nurse looked at each other and shrugged. The nurse reached down a hand and helped the doctor up. He squeezed her hand gently. “Buy you a coffee?”