The Confabulator Cafe

Category: Confabulation

  • Of Fathers, Ghosts, and Beans

    Lotus had no idea what she was looking at. That is, it was very clear that she was sitting in a giant’s castle, looking at a golden harp with her father’s face carved into one side. She could see where the gold leaf had flaked away on one of his cheeks. The pale wood underneath looked like a tear streak running down his face.

    Behind her, heavy footsteps sounded. Lotus had to make a choice. The harp was too heavy for her to carry. But her father had been a pragmatic man and he’d raised a pragmatic daughter. Lotus slipped away and climbed down the beanstalk to the world of flowers below the world of clouds.

    #

    Plant beans. And do not mourn me. They were the only two commands her father ever gave Lotus and they came only a few days before he died. She was never able to follow either command. Because, as it turns out, in the real world we don’t get to choose who and how we mourn. It just happens, and Lotus found that it happened to her quite a bit.

    (more…)

  • Kate and Tate were Great

    Trying to find the right time to make the announcement felt impossible. Our last concert? What if it ruined the magic for the audience that night? It wouldn’t be fair. Should we say something early so that anyone who’d wanted to make it to one of our shows could try and scrape together a last minute ticket?


    But the show was already sold out and scalpers were already skyrocketing prices, if it was known this was going to be our last concert, we worried that more people would be likely to get taken advantage of.


    And it’s not like we’d known in advance that we were for sure never going to perform again. It had always been a hypothetical one day with encroaching certainty that it would be this tour. But if we announced it, then we couldn’t ever come back from it.


    So we said nothing leading up to the show. We performed that night as if it were the last concert of our tour, not the last one of our lives. And if we cried a little bit more than usual? If we came back for encore after encore long after we usually would have stopped? Well, no one in the band faulted us. And we let the crowd believe it was because we wouldn’t be performing for a while.


    But things had to end and mom was there to remind us it was past our bedtime and shut the show down. We bid the audience a final, tearful goodbye. Our last farewell as Kate and Tate.


    And then the world didn’t hear from us again.

    (more…)

  • Bone Deep (A Witch’s Daughter #3)

    The ebony-black door had been permeating my dreams, its silver bolts, inlay, and door latch glimmering as if winking at me. Dream me stood before it, and I hefted a small key carved from bone in my hand. The blackness of the empty keyhole called to me, and I leaned forward.

    “Come away from that door, child. There’s only black magic that way.”

    My eyes flew opened, and I had to blink away the image of the door from my sight.

    I looked around the tower, but the Hags weren’t paying me any attention. I’d thought one of them had spoken, but if they had, it hadn’t been vocally.

    I wiped drool from my chin as I sat up, struggling off the beanbag chair I’d fallen asleep in. My leg was asleep, though, so I rolled over onto my back, sprawling out on the plush rug that covered the lounge area of the Hags’ tower.

    (more…)

  • Blood and Darkness

    We lay naked, spooning, on her four-poster bed, the silk sheets having been thrown back during our nocturnal activities. I curl my body up, trying to avoid skin contact, but she curls more tightly around me, not letting me get away, this time.

    “It will only hurt for a second, my love.” Her voice is nearly a purr in my ear. I tuck my hair behind my ear to keep it in place, to keep her breath from making it dance, tickling me.

    “I don’t care about the pain.”

    She traces a finger along my side, and I force myself not to flinch.

    “What is it, then?”

    I take a measured breath to avoid sighing. “You know what.” I may not be afraid of pain, but I am afraid of death.

    “Oh, dear heart. You shouldn’t fear that. You are strong enough.”

    Her tone, rather than making me feel better, makes me feel worse, like she’s talking an ignorant child, lying about how bad the day’s rations were going to taste. We always knew.

    “How can you be sure?”

    (more…)

  • The Cutest Dragon

    This is Norman. Norman is a dragon.

    Norman wasn’t like other dragons. Norman wasn’t scary.

    His friends all had horns, or scales, or long, spikey tails. But not Norman. Norman had cute, fluffy feet. And a cute little nose. And big yellow eyes. His spikes were soft and fluffy. Bright spots dotted his belly and long whiskers tickled his face. His tail ended with a big fuzzy pom pom.

    Norman didn’t like being cute.

    He struggled to hide his cuteness, tearing out his fur and baring his sharp teeth. Being cute made it very hard to scare people.

    “You couldn’t kidnap even one princess looking like that,” his friends said.

    “I could if I wanted to,” Norman muttered under his breath.

    “Oh yeah?” his friends said. The other dragons chose the smallest princess they could find. She was a little girl in a froofy dress sitting beside the pond outside of the castle.

    (more…)

  • All the Same

    As soon as my life ended it began anew. I open my eyes to a blur of white-blue light. Only a moment ago I had closed them. My last sight, the faces of my grown children back dropped by beeping machines. How long have I been in stasis? It could have been decades. Or centuries.

    “Caroline?” An electronic voice calls my name. I sit up. Miracle! I hadn’t been able to sit up for months leading up to my death. A smile spreads across my face as I enjoy the vitality thrumming within my body. My sitting-up body!

    “Am I cured then?”

    “It was the agreement. And so you have been awakened.” The voice has no inflection.

    (more…)

  • Career Day

    “Well that escalated quickly,” Pri said.

    She sat on the bare floor across from me in our shitty apartment, mugs in hand. We watched the cheap coffee table between us in rapt attention, where most of a law textbook had grown. Only the last inch was left, still wriggling out of the wood. The wood of the table squealed like nails on a chalkboard as the book worked itself out.

    “Has your career grown in, yet?” I asked her. I didn’t mean it to come out in a whisper. Speaking any louder seemed to make the whole thing real.

    “Not even a hint. I thought only prodigies and shit got their careers in their teens. Is there such a thing as a law prodigy? Oooh, are you going to be a supreme court justice?”

    It started as nothing but a nub in the wood when we noticed it, something we could have polished out tomorrow morning. Maybe something that we should have polished out. The first book of my budding future had grown in before the end of our first cup of coffee. We were planning to go dancing tonight, but Pri had changed into sweats. I was still in my sequined dress, heels discarded by the door.

    The textbook made a little popping sound and a bang as it settled on the table, fully formed and properly inanimate. I couldn’t touch it. I couldn’t stand to look at it but I couldn’t look anywhere else. I thought the grain of the wood beside the book wavered. Maybe it was just a shadow passing over the knot. I couldn’t get two books in one night. No one had two books grow in their first night.

    Pri cocked her head ninety degrees to read the title. “‘Questions and Explanations for Civil Procedure.’ Sounds dull as fuck.”

    I slammed my mug down over the knot in the wood to keep it from shifting again. “We should go out.”

    “You’re not gonna read your book tonight?” Pri asked.

    “I’m not even going to be a lawyer. I can’t afford to be a lawyer,” I said, getting my keys. “C’mon. If you don’t want to change then at least let’s get some food or something.”

    (more…)

  • Lisa West and the Goat

    Lisa West was used to receiving odd messages. Running a 24-hour bakery brought that kind of thing to her. Well, that and her moonlighting career as a spy. Not a detective. She was pretty sure you needed a license for that and she hated the imagery of teenage heroines hunting ghosts. She’d discovered last year that her hometown was crawling with spies, so what was one more joining the profession?

    But lately the messages were getting weirder.

    She’d checked into the motel 15 minutes ago when she found a package on the grimy bedspread in the room. It beeped at her and kept beeping until she tore it open to find out what she had.

    She found a burner phone inside, of the ancient flip phone variety, and tipped it into her hand. It flashed a text message at her.

    “Bring the money to the place where the wheat meets the light at sundown.”

    (more…)

  • Carnival of Farts

    “Oh my god, Alli, I can’t believe you missed tonight, it was the best!”

    Alli’s roommate Becca flung herself down on the couch. Alli didn’t even look up from their laptop. “I was busy.”

    “Busy being boring. That paper isn’t due for like four whole days.”

    Which meant Becca hadn’t touched it yet and would be begging them for their notes in three days. They winced in memory of Becca’s steady whine of just a peek, I only want to see your references from the last paper.

    “I have to turn it in tomorrow since I won’t be in class on Monday.” Excitement thrummed in their veins. It was the Carnival of Farts this weekend. Except it wasn’t a carnival, not exactly. And it wasn’t about flatulence.

    “You never skip!”

    “Religious exemption,” Alli said. They’d booked their plane ticket months ago. It was their first overseas trip and it had taken months of saving every penny from their second job to save for it. But it was worth it. For the first time in their life, they would be surrounded by people with similar beliefs.

    They would be at the Carnival of Farts.

    (more…)

  • Hero Day

    The bells in the towers rang out through the kingdom on the first anniversary of evil vanquished. From behind reinforced palace walls dripping with spikes and arrow slots, the queen heard music drift up from the town.

    “The townspeople celebrate our success,” she said offhandedly as her dresser laid out the day’s finery.

    “Yes ma’am. They celebrate someone’s success.”

    “Whose?” the queen asked, watching her head dresser from the mirror as the woman drew her lips tight. “Whose success do they celebrate, Madge?”

    “They celebrate our hero, today.”

    “Their hero… The many men and women who fought to free this kingdom from evil, you mean?”

    “Yes, ma’am. I’m sure that’s what I mean.”

    But the queen was not an idiot and she did not come to power by ignoring the signs when she was being put off. She went to the dark cabinet in her dressing room, the one where her previous life was locked away. The cabinet was dark wood the color of a forest burned by fire. The brass lock was kept oiled, the filigree dusted. From the outside, it looked like any other fine cabinet in the palace. The musk of old lavender and cedar chips trapped too long assaulted her face as she opened the door. This was her life before. The life she lived in exile. The lessons lived with her even though she was careful not to let them show.

    She slipped into her previous identity more easily than letting down her hair. The guise of a young man sat on her shoulders, his face covered by desert cloth, his boots and gauntlets fine but built for utility rather than artifice. She slipped from the window before there were questions among the staff and joined the crowd into the city proper.

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