Lareine's SAW Thread 2018
9 posts in this topic.
-
Welcome to the jungle.
-
-
-
Week Two:
Prompts/challenges: none.
~BUG, PART 1: 1065.Spoiler
That could not possibly be his real name.
“Bug,” Katy repeated when Rose gave her a patented Carpenter Look™. “Well—I mean, his name isn’t Bug, but that’s what everyone calls him. Even his mom.”
Rose leaned back in the passenger seat of Katy’s 4x4. They were headed to the far side of town, approximately one-point-eight miles from the near side, for a back-to-school party. All the seniors at John Bogan High School were invited, give or take a few. Katy had snatched Rose up and given her a photocopied invitation at the end of senior orientation.
“He’s always throwing parties.” Katy popped her chewing gum and swerved onto a dirt road. The gravel crunched under her truck’s tires. “Whenever his mom’s out of town. They used to be super poor, like government housing poor, but then she got this traveling job and all of a sudden they’ve got like, this mansion and stuff. No one knows what she does for a living. Mr. White doesn’t even know, and he’s her brother.”
“I didn’t meet him today, did I?” Rose ran through all the boys she’d seen at orientation, but they all had common names. Connor, Brandon, Cody. She couldn’t remember a Bug.
“Mr. White? He’s the soccer coach at the middle school—oh, Bug?” Katy asked when Rose shook her head. “No, he graduated last year. He says he’s taking some time off from school, got a job at the Home Depot in Madsborough and everything. He’s a really cool guy, I think you’ll dig him.”
A glowing endorsement from a girl Rose had known for less than twelve hours.
“Just—” Katy checked her rear-view mirror like a ghost was coming after them. “Don’t ask him about his dad, okay?”
---
The White House—what a name—was a mansion in the middle of a sugarcane field. It was ten minutes out of town and it loomed out of the farmland like a haunted house. It was painted a soft off-white, a kind of dream plantation home built by someone who didn’t realize what hellholes plantations were, with a little balcony over the front door and everything.
Katy parked behind ten other cars. “You can leave your stuff here,” she told Rose. “No one ever tries anything. I mean, there’s only like a hundred people it could be anyway. They’d get found out immediately.”
Rose nodded, but she still tucked her phone and wallet into her dress pockets. Everything else was replaceable, but phones and driver’s licenses were expensive to lose. She followed Katy up the cobbled path to the front of the house.
“Hey, Wick!” A boy leaned out over the balcony railing and waved. “What’s up, who’s this?”
“Nothing much, what’s up with you? This—Rose, this is Bug. Her name’s Primrose!” Katy called up to the balcony. She grabbed Rose’s hand and waved back with it.
Rose snatched her hand away and rubbed at her wrist. She couldn’t help but feel a little violated.
A soft thud hit the grass next to them. Rose looked up ready to scream, call 911, sure he had fallen over the railing and landed on his head. Instead, she was fixed in place by nearly-translucent blue eyes as he—Bug, what a name—smiled at her. “What’s up, Primrose? Come on in, help yourself, the usual.” He grabbed Rose by the same hand and led her up to the porch. Everyone in this town was so touchy-feely. “Two rules, pretty simple. Clean up your own mess and don’t screw up my mom’s stuff. Soda and beer’s in the fridge, liquor’s in the cabinet. Katy invited you? How long have you been in Colville?”
Rose’s mouth dried. “Uh… About two weeks. We just moved here.”
“You’re going to John Bogan? Hell of a place.” He grinned and swung the door open. Loud, pulsing music poured out onto the front lawn. “Well? Come on in, everything’s free.”
---
Bug threw a party almost every weekend from August to December. Rose knew, because she was at all of them—at first, just hanging on Katy’s arm, but once her car got fixed up, she was more often than not one of the first people to show up. She’d hang out on the balcony with Bug and drink a beer or two before the sun set. He smiled at her—and the way he smiled at her made her stomach twist up and her face flush. She avoided looking him in the eye as much as possible.
“Primrose,” he asked one night at the end of November, “what the hell is someone like you doing in a place like Colville?”
Rose shrugged. She missed the cold autumn air in Massachusetts, the snow on the ground, everything. Nothing ever changed in Florida. It was stuck in a perpetual loop of summer. “My parents wanted a change of pace. They just retired—I’m adopted,” she said by way of explaining. “They’re my bio-dad’s parents, but he died when I was a kid, so they adopted me.”
Bug nodded solemnly while she spoke. He looked like he was contemplating one of the great mysteries of life. He hadn’t had a haircut since they first met; she’d watched his hair grow out until it brushed his chin. It looked like crow feathers in the fading sunlight. The smile had faded from his face as he cast his gaze out over the empty yard. No one else was there yet. After a long silence, he asked, “You miss your dad?”
“I don’t remember him.” A cool breeze blew in from over the cane field. Rose zipped up her light jacket. It was getting late, but the yard—pocked with tire tracks and dead grass where kids parked every week—was still empty.
“And your mom?”
“No clue.”
Bug huffed. He didn’t seem satisfied with that answer. He propped his feet up on the balcony railing. “Did Wick tell you about my family?”
Rose shook her head. “She just said…”
“Not to ask me. Right. Everyone does.” -
Week Three:
Prompts/challenges: none.
~BUG, PART 2: 1030.Spoiler
He lit a cigarette and took a long drag as the cool November air curled around them. “My dad’s an ass and my mom’s given up on me. Not much to tell, really. Your story’s more interesting.”
“What do you mean? Your mom’s working all the time, isn’t she?”
“Working! As if. She goes out of the country with money her sugar daddy gives her.” Bug barked a hoarse laugh. He kicked his feet up on the balcony and stared out at the sunset. “She hates me. She wishes she never had me. Life would’ve been so much easier on her if I wasn’t alive.” The words dripped out of his mouth, thick with venom.
Rose hesitated. How could she comfort someone so deeply wounded? She wasn’t even sure she could take care of herself yet. “I’m sure your mom—”
“Loves me? Maybe. I don’t know any more.” He inhaled deeply and sighed it out with all his anger. “I don’t want to talk about this right now. Listen, you want to go to the beach?”
“Now?” She hadn’t even brought a swimsuit. “It’s almost nine.”
“When else?”
- - -
The next few weeks were spent going out to the beach until the wee hours of the morning. Bug didn’t drink at the beach—he didn’t drink normally, he explained to Rose, except when he was hosting parties, and that’s because everyone else was drinking. But he had a mortal fear of becoming an alcoholic.
“That’s why my dad left.” He hung his legs off one of the eroded stone pillars at the shore. Waves crashed against it ten feet below him, while Rose was still mustering up the courage to take a dip in the tidal pools. She wasn’t a fan of deep water, let alone deep water at night when she couldn’t see what was brushing up against her feet. “Went to Vegas, gambled all his money away—spent my goddamn college fund. He thought he’d make it big, but he never came back after that.”
Rose edged around the pool and sat next to him on the rocks. The moon shone down on the shoreline, drawing a path out from the sand to the horizon. She couldn’t help but feel some fey land waited for her on the other side. “How old were you?”
“Six. Maybe seven. My mom started putting money in for college when I was born. She worked her ass off to get me through middle school.”
“And then…”
Bug scowled. His hair was shaved off into a harsh buzz cut—it didn’t look natural on him. It was late December by the time he invited Rose over to the house again, and only because his mom had gone out on a date in Miami. “She met that douchebag.”
“Why do you hate him so much?” Rose asked. “I mean, if you guys are technically rich now…”
He slammed a fist down on the rock. “He took my mother away! First I lost my father, then my mother—and no one will believe me. Oh, aren’t you so lucky?” he mocked. “Yeah, so lucky to be abandoned by everyone I ever cared about. The only reason people care about me now is because I have a big house.”
Rose opened her mouth, but thought twice and shut it again.
- - -
Rose didn’t meet Mrs. White until after winter was long-gone. Bug invited her over for a small spring break celebration—to prove to the witch I have friends, he said when she asked. No beer, no liquor, just soda, pizza, and video games until 4 in the morning.
Bug’s mom seemed friendly enough, but there was something odd about her. She didn’t look anyone in the eye when she talked to them. She was way too overdressed for a spring break party. And she disappeared shortly after midnight, saying she’d be back in twenty minutes with more pizza.
It was 10 A. M. when Rose woke to shouting.
“I can’t believe you!” Something broke against a wall. Glass. Ceramic.
Rose bolted upright and fell off the couch onto the floor. The TV was still buzzing with the menu music for the last game they’d played.
“All the things I do for you and you treat me like this?!” The words slurred together.
Heavy footsteps crossed the hall, and Rose heard Bug’s voice in a deep murmur, but couldn’t make out what he said. The living room door creaked open, and Bug nearly pulled his mother through to the overstuffed recliner in front of the TV.
“Sit down, Mom,” he was saying. He had genuine fear and concern in his eyes.
With her makeup rubbed off, Mrs. White had puffy, small eyes and a deep crease between her eyebrows. A dark bruise spread over her jaw—black against her porcelain-white skin. She looked like a broken doll. “I don’t wanna—you can’t—why, Bug?”
“It wasn’t me, Mom. It wasn’t me.” He pulled a blanket off the floor and set it on her lap. “Deep breath, Mom. Coffee?” He glanced at Rose and nodded towards the door.
Rose obeyed—she didn’t know why, exactly. Maybe she just didn’t want to see Bug’s mother so vulnerable and childlike, the way she sipped at the cup of coffee that Bug had already waiting and warm by the recliner, or the methodical way that he started wiping away the rest of her makeup. She sat at the kitchen island and waited for him to come back out; her car keys were still sitting on the coffee table.
And her phone was dead. Great. She sighed and invited herself to a glass of ice water.
“So that’s it,” Bug said when he came out half an hour later. “Now you know why I hate that douchebag. For real.”
Rose set her glass in the sink and shook her head. “You should just tell people. It would get him investigated, whoever he is—”
“I can’t, Rose.” His voice cracked with stress. “This is my life now. This is how I live. I’m not smart enough to go to college, I’m not hard-working enough to get a real job—I work part-time, you know how BS my pay is right now? I can’t afford, we can’t afford…we’d have to sell the house.”
An underlying statement filled the room: No one would care about me.
Rose shook her head. “I’ll help.” -
-
Week Six: Frog Rain, part 1
Spoiler
July Crawford hated camping. She especially hated camping in the summer, when the air was hot and sticky with humidity, and the mosquitoes left her studded with welts and the fear of malaria, and everything could go wrong in a single moment, and her sisters wouldn’t shut up. She sat on a rock next to the camp site and watched her dad struggle with the tent poles while Junie and Gussie kept arguing over who got the aux cord on the drive back to town for groceries.
“No fair, Gus! You got it for the recital—”
“Because it was your recital! Dad brought you early! You got it then.”
“But it was my turn!”
“It was your recital.” Their mom set a heavy cooler down by the picnic table. Her arms were piled high with everything from the back of the truck; she had the uncanny ability of being able to carry everything she wanted. She unreeled the cord to the electric burner she brought everywhere and plugged it into the little electric outlet by the water spigot. “Come on, girls. Help me get lunch started.”
July waited as her sisters hopped up to help. She felt sluggish and damp, like she was drowning in the humidity. She stood from the rock and tried to shake her clothes loose, but they stuck fast to her sweaty skin.
Junie was already boiling a pot of water for the instant noodles. Gussie helped their mom unpack the dry stuff—hot dog buns, chips, snacks they’d brought with on the drive. The only thing they would have to go back for was perishables like meat and veggies.
“July.” Her mom snapped her fingers in front of July’s face. “You and Gus watch the soup. I’m going to take June with me back to town. That way,” she said with a pointed look at all three of them, “there’s absolutely no arguing over silly things like aux cords. We’re camping, for goodness’ sake. We’ll be back in an hour.”
Camp Telwyth was fifteen miles from Kate’s Dry Goods, the last store outside of Dannon, which was as one-horse as a one-horse town could get. They were a forty-minute drive from the nearest hospital, and an hour’s walk from a phone signal.
July’s hand curled around the emergency phone in her pocket, and she hoped she wouldn’t have to use it. Last year, Dad had an asthma attack while they were up late watching the Perseids. (Later, in the ER, he protested, “I didn’t even know I had asthma.”) She was the only one allowed to keep the satellite phone while they were camping, expressly because she would wake up screaming in the middle of the night if she didn’t have contact with the outside world.
Gussie stirred the instant noodles with a sigh on her lips. “I hope it rains,” she said, staring up at the darkening sky.
It had been cloudy all day, but they were bright cirrus clouds. July cast her eyes to the horizon to watch for thunderheads. “It better not.”
“Why not?” Her sister pouted. “It would feel so much better. And then we can go swimming in the lake tomorrow!”
A wicked smile flashed across July’s face. “Yeah,” she said, “but isn’t it supposed to rain frogs?”
Gussie went pale. “Frogs? Don’t be stupid,” she stuttered.
“I heard it on the news.” July inched closer to her sister so she could lower her voice. If Dad heard her teasing her baby sister, she’d never hear the end of it. She’s too young to know better, he’d say, but Gussie was twelve now. She could handle it. “There’s a fifty-percent chance of frog rain tonight.”
“No!”
“I didn’t say it, the weatherman did.” July shrugged. “I don’t want it to rain. But if you want frogs hopping all in your sleeping bag…”
Gussie shook her head. Her long braids flew out around her. “Dad!” she called. “Jude’s lying again!”
Dad looked up from his battle with the tent poles. “July Octavia Crawford…”
July tried to look innocent. “Sorry. Here,” she told her sister, “let me stir for a little bit.”
- - -
July woke up to the soft patter of rain. Great. Gussie was right after all. She wriggled out of her sleeping bag and checked the satellite phone. 3:17 A.M.
Her sisters were fast asleep. Junie snored—Gussie didn’t, but she tossed and turned all night like a demon took hold of her. No wonder July had a hard time getting to sleep when she had to share a tent with those two. Their parents had elected to bring two tents this year, probably to get a little privacy from quickly-growing teenagers.
They always kept a heavy-duty flashlight in the tent in case nature called in the middle of the night. July grabbed it from its post in the corner and tugged on her oversized red windbreaker. Change rattled in the pocket. She didn’t need to pee, but the campground office called her name—more specifically, the vending machine in front of it with candy bars for sixty-five cents.
The campground was more or less full of families with small children, so she wasn’t afraid to walk to the main building on her own. If anything happened, she’d just scream.
She unzipped the door to the tent. Night air wrapped around her, chilly and unwelcoming, and she almost went back to sleep. Then her stomach gurgled. The car would be locked—as always—and Mom and Dad had the keys, so off to the vending machines it was.
Mud squelched under her bare feet and squished up between her toes. The rain bucketed down on her head and poured down the back of the windbreaker. July tried in vain to shield herself from the worst of it, but then the wind shifted back in her face and filled her eyes with water. She lowered her head and trudged down the long dirt path to the main building.
Sixty-five cents poorer, she stood under the awning of the office building to eat her candy bar.
Somewhere over the hills, lightning flashed—six Mississippis later, thunder washed over July’s shoulders. She closed her eyes and let herself enjoy the storm. It wasn’t often that there was a real thunderstorm in the summertime; mostly it was just a couple of gray, dreary, drizzly days and a sun-shower here and there.
Back home, the little river between their house and the Hendersons’ would be overflowing. The street would be flooded so deep that her dad’s little car could barely get to the main road, sputtering and whining with every drop of water under the hood. Here, there was nothing but the rain on the awning, the wind in the trees, and—
Croak. A bullfrog, not too far away, bellowed in search of a mate.
July frowned. She didn’t remember bullfrogs being common here. They’d camped at Telwyth for all fifteen years of her life and she couldn’t name a single time she’d heard them, not even on the big lake the camp was named for. -
I will no longer be posting updates in full in my thread, as I intend to edit these stories for purposes of publication -- however, if you really want to read and/or help me out as a beta or an editor, I'd be glad to give y'all a look-see.
Week 11: Hive #1
1814 words at latest count -- excerpt from scene 1:Spoiler
Jo listened to Old Earth music. It was a pleasure—no more guilty than begging scraps of chocolate off the clippers when they landed. A laser-etch station loomed in one corner of her office, ready to burn the digital copies to disk. Her old-fashioned disk player sat on a pair of speakers she’d bought from the Alushi settlement on the flats; they were the smoothest speakers on Sirix-5. It only took a little work to make them fit her player. She leaned back in her chair and let the soft tones of easy-listening wash over her.
Someone at the clipper station had a sense of humor. All these songs were about the end of the world. -
Tree Problem, 2
1657.Spoiler
She’d never seen someone freeze so quickly. Avie was sure she was about to get kicked out. Maeve jumped out of Hen’s arms and trotted away, footfalls softer than raindrops. Hen’s mouth formed words he didn’t speak, and he closed his eyes for a long second.
Yeah, she was about to die.
Finally, he said, “I prefer the term ‘artisan.’”
“But you’re a witch.” The words flew out of her mouth before she could stop them, and she backpedaled: “I don’t mean it in a bad way. I mean, I’ve never met a witch. You’re kind of like, a legend, you know? I wish I had half the power you do. All I have is cards and rocks.”
“All I have is Maeve.” Hen shrugged. “But we’re not here to talk about the cat.”
Avie snagged a cookie out of the bowl. “Alright. So tell me about this tree.”
- - -
The tree was a beast. Hen was supposed to be fixing it up for a friend—he supposedly had a green thumb, and his friend was no good with plants. The tree was mostly dead when he got it, he explained, and he was just supposed to get it over the transplant shock.
Somewhere between getting the tree and fixing the tree, something had gone terribly wrong.
“It’s feeding off of me,” he complained, mouth full of cookies. “I can’t do anything about it—I’ve tried cutting it off, setting up wards, everything. Any time I try to cast a spell, the tree steals half the magic.”
“And killing it isn’t an option?”
“Felice would have my head!” Hen’s eyes went wide and he shook his head. “Absolutely not. It’s…not a typical tree.”
“Obviously not,” Avie deadpanned.
“Besides the whole…taking over the apartment thing.” Hen gestured at the roots. They were growing so quickly it was actually visible—earlier, they had been two feet from the end of the hall. Now they were a solid three inches closer, creeping forward with the determination only plants knew. It was the kind of tree that would have broken mountains just to grow. “It’s not just any wild fig. It can’t be physically harmed. You can’t cut it with shears or anything like that. Trust me, I tried that, too.”
Avie thought of something, but hesitated. He said he’d tried everything, and it was such a juvenile idea. The words stopped in her throat and replaced themselves with something more acceptable: “Crap. I can’t think of anything else.”
Hen’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re sure?”
“My mom used to keep a ficus,” she admitted. “She hated it. It broke the concrete on our driveway.” Avie used to play in it when she was younger. She always came back inside covered in sticky sap and struggling fig wasps. Her mother would cluck and shove her into the bath before she could touch too much furniture. “She wanted to transplant it somewhere else, but the landscaping guys couldn’t get it out.”
“But…”
Avie shrugged. “I talked to it. I mean, I was a kid, you talk to a lot of things. Everything has its own personality when you’re seven, you know? I don’t know if that had anything to do with it, but—”
“Did it have a name?”
“Capra.” She remembered it starkly, even fifteen years later. “Her name was Capra.”
Hen chewed at his thumbnail, staring off into middle space. He could have been a statue—The Artist as a Young Witch. Finally, he stood and paced across the room to his workbench, rifling through loose papers and small, leather-bound books with frantic hands. “I wonder—here it is—can you read this?” He snagged a book out of the largest stack and tossed it across the room to Avie. “Page 18.”
She caught it in her lap. It was bound in smooth old leather that reminded her of her grandmother’s favorite purse, well-worn and loved over many years. The pages were edged in blotchy, oily fingerprints and corners were bent here, ripped off there. She opened it gingerly and thumbed past pages written in some dead language, counting as she went.
Page 18 was written in English. At least, it looked like English, but when she went to read it out loud, none of the sounds made sense in her mouth. Avie thought about the words and translated, roughly, “‘Some spirits, bound to living things, have more control of magic than others.’ What is this?” She looked up at him, tilting her head to the side.
Hen’s face lit up with glee. “Keep reading!”
Avie bent her head back over the book. “Something about—‘tree nymphs’? Dryads,” she translated with more confidence in her voice. “‘Dryads are most commonly found in the Old World…but some have been transplanted easily to the Americas.’ After that it’s just listing different types of trees. Evergreens, stuff like that.”
“Ficus carica?”
She scanned the list. It was hard reading when she had to actively translate each word from this foreign-but-innate language. “There—fig, wild and domestic.” She pointed at its spot on the list and turned the book towards Hen.
He shook his head. “I can’t read it. You’re the first person I’ve met who can. But this Capra—you’re certain she was from the fig tree?”
“Absolutely.” Avie hesitated. She’d gone from being a second-rate tarot reader to sitting in a witch’s workroom in less than two hours. If this wasn’t the great change the cards went on about, she didn’t know what was. “You think she was a dryad?”
“If she was, then this is, too. I’ve never heard of fig dryads—but I’ve also never met someone who could talk to them.” Hen grinned, sharp white teeth fighting for room in his knife-point smile. “You’re kind of like, a legend, you know?” he teased. “Come on. Let’s go have a chat with this tree.”
- - -
Avie could hear it talking now. It whispered in a language that no one spoke, built of creaks and trembles and veins on leaves. As she walked up to the trunk, the branches bowed around her head and leaves reached for her hair. She toyed with her braids nervously and interrupted the murmurs: “Excuse me?”
Everything went quiet. The cat twisted through her legs, seemingly unaffected by the tree’s presence. She glanced over her shoulder at Hen, who stood with his hand on the doorknob in case anything happened. He shrugged.
“Excuse me,” she tried again, “I’m looking for Capra?” Her words tilted up into a question. It was silly, trying to talk to a tree. Magic didn’t reach this far for anyone but witches.
The tree rustled. Knots in its bark twisted and cracked open into carved flowers. “Capra…” A voice floated down, speaking English but not English. “She lives? Not here, child.”
Avie’s mouth went dry. “Who do I… have the pleasure of speaking with?”
“To whom,” the tree corrected. With pops and cracks, the branches tore loose of the plaster and came down around her. Avie stumbled back—into more branches, already curled into a cocoon that cut her off from the world. “Her name is Carica. And the child’s name is Avalyn. I know these things.”
“Then you know that you’re feeding off of Hen?”
“I feed from that which feeds me.” A sturdy bough reached out to Avie with a sound almost like a chuckle. “That is life. The dead feed the living. The witch feeds me, and he is all but dead, child.”
Avie frowned. “What?”
“I know these things,” the tree repeated. Her voice grew fainter, and the flowers in the bark twisted back into knots. “You will know, too, when you are old. You will learn to see death in all places. It is not only the end, child.”
“Carica—”
“I am tired. Life was twisted to keep me here.” The branches pulled back into themselves. The cocoon unraveled around her and leaves fell, half-wilted, to the ground. The roots shrank back and wrapped in a ball around the base of the tree. “I would like to die, please. Let me join my sister, child.”
Avie glanced at Hen. His yellow eyes glinted in the sunlight—a different color now. His face was flat and devoid of feeling. “Hen—”
He inclined his head forward. “She wants to die. I heard that.”
“And?”
Hen sighed. “Felice will have my head.”
- - -
The tree had shriveled into a lifeless husk of itself. Without Carica to fill its branches with life, the leaves wilted and the bark turned pale. They dug a grave for the tree—Avie, Hen, and the mysterious Felice, who was only slightly perturbed when she got the news.
“Another one!” Felice was a petite girl with delicate golden curls that framed her face and eyes the color of lightning. Avie got the sense that she spent less time and more magic on her appearance every day. She looked out of place with a heavy-duty shovel in her hands. “I’m sorry, Henry. I didn’t realize it would do this.” She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Again!”
“How many is that now?” Hen asked.
“Three.” Felice shook her head, and her hair bounced, like it was supposed to do for princesses in fairy tales. She was very much not a princess—not covered in that many tattoos. “It’s transplant shock, I’m telling you. I thought you’d be able to fix it, with your—” She glanced at Avie and hesitated. “With your talents and all.”
Avie wasn’t sure she wanted to know the original ending of that sentence. He is all but dead, Carica’s voice echoed in her head every time she looked at Hen. Instead, she tried to change the topic: “You’re just looking for a dryad?”
“A fig dryad. I’m trying to document their behavior. It’s for my master’s thesis.” The girl huffed. “I’m halfway tempted to change my focus.”
Avie tossed a handful of fresh dirt on Carica’s grave. Capra lives? “I know where you can find one.”
Sign in to reply to this topic.
Delete this post?
Are you sure you want to delete this post? This cannot be undone.