Hezakiel was agitated about something again. Volesteus could tell because she was pacing in front of his desk. She had also bent her halo from a circle into something resembling an infinity symbol.
Volesteus sighed and closed his minesweeper window. He’d reached the maximum time limit already and still couldn’t decide which of the last two boxes hid final mine. He hated when they all exploded.
“What’s eating you, Hez?”
“Have you read the news?” (more…)
9:45 AM. Wall Street. A legendary location, where fortunes are made and lost in the blink of an eye, where the fates of millions are up for grabs. Where greed is good, compassion has no place, and if you lose your edge, dozens of others will jump to take your place. Boldness is rewarded and hesitation loses fortunes. Bright computer screens lined every wall, floor to ceiling, numbers and letters flying by faster then I could comprehend, the shouts of buyers and sellers on the floor jumbling together into an indistinguishable roar. By the end of the day, the strong would be rich, the weak would be poor, and we would all get together tomorrow to do it again.
I was not on Wall Street, but the same rules apply whether you are buying shares of companies or shares of lives.
9:50. Numbers and values were inundating the salesfloor. Most of the buyers were jumping on the news that birth rates were up in the Southern Hemisphere. It was a good opportunity to get in on the ground floor for cheap. Other’s were frantic over increased tension in the Middle East, buying speculations and hedging bets, just in case a new oil war broke out. I was ready to jump in on the next wave of action, but was distracted by my phone buzzing in my pocket.
9:53. I received a text, number unknown. Curious, I opened it. It was a simple message. “Earthquake. 10:13 AM. SE Asia. 200,000+ dead.” I looked around, as if the sender of the text would be visible, maybe staring at me trying to catch my eye. Instead, everyone around was occupied in their own little world, utterly oblivious to my new information. I checked the clock. I didn’t hesitate to trust the info. You hear stories sometimes of anonymous tips, and no one knew who or where they were from. Maybe from a higher power? We are money people, the big G word doesn’t come up very often, but I knew at least one guy who thought it was God himself. And who am I to disbelieve? There was no time to disbelieve or question. No time for “why me?”
We had an amazing turnout for our May stories. So many cases of mistaken identity! We’re back with another awesome line-up for June.
We’re turning our attention to something a little more otherworldly this month. We’ve decided to explore the age-old question of what happens after death. Although perhaps not in the metaphysical or religious sense, exactly.
Our prompt was “the business of the afterlife.” This can be anything from the mundane to the magical, but all of these tales touch a bit on what the afterlife might look like.
We’re also pleased to welcome another brand new guest author, Amanda Hadley! We’d also like to welcome back August Baker, another long-time Confabulator who is back with us this month.
We hope you enjoy our stories. Here is the schedule for June:
Thursday, June 2: “Market Crash” by August Baker
Monday, June 6: “The Resurrection” by Emily Mosher
Monday, June 13: “Honour The Dead” by Anita C. Young
Thursday, June 16: “Shop Girl” by Eliza Jaquays
Monday, June 20: “Old Mother Nitala” by Aspen Junge
Thursday, June 23: “My Only Human” by Sara Lundberg
Monday, June 27: “White Collar” by Amanda Hadley
Thursday, June 30: “Working for a Living” by Neil Siemers
Horace looked at his phone with a frown, flipping back through the last few messages.
“Is that a goat? Who the hell steals a goat?” the recipient had sent.
“Time is running out.” he had sent back, going for menacing to get whoever was on the receiving end’s ass in gear.
“Sorry. Wrong number,” had finally come back, and then they must have blocked his number, because it had been thirty minutes and they hadn’t heard anything else from that number.
“Well, that didn’t exactly go as planned.”
“This here is a beautiful goat. How in the world does that person not wanna run out here and save her? Poor thing,” Jasper said, stroking the goat’s silky fur.
Horace grimaced as the kid bit down hard on Jasper’s finger. He supposed they had it coming. They had kidnapped her, after all.
“Maybe it really were a wrong number?” Horace mused. (more…)
I heard a tip about a werewolf but don’t have time to follow up. You want it?
Marlene chewed on her thumbnail as she stared at the text message. In the four minutes since it had arrived she had written out several different replies, and deleted each. “Do you think I’m ready?” sounded too weak. “Hell yeah!” made her sound like an overeager psychopath. She hadn’t found a happy medium between the two, and after another minute Silas sent a second text.
If you’re busy, I can check in with another hunter. You’re the closest in the network by 50 miles.
She tapped out her reply — Send me the details. I’ll get right on it. — and cringed as she hit send, wondering if it made her sound like she hadn’t been doing anything since finishing her certification for the monster hunting network. She had tucked her license in the hunters’ lockbox she’s been issued. It sat in a pile with along with a will, the notification details for next of kin, her relevant online passwords and account destruction directives, and an exhaustive list of what she wanted done if she were turned to any number of monsters. With all that put together, she had promptly taken zero cases.
The minute Alexandra Underwood walked through the front door she was confronted with the sight of her mother sitting at the dining room table with folded arms. Alex couldn’t help but wonder just how long she had been sitting there, waiting to pounce. She slowly lowered her books to the floor as if by some miracle she could avoid drawing her mother’s fiery attention.
I just need to make it to my room, she thought as she tried to move out of her mother’s line of sight.
“Welcome home, Alexandra.”
“Hi mom,” she tried on an overly cheerful voice. “I was just headed to my room to study.”
“Not before we have a conversation, you aren’t.”
“Look, I know I shouldn’t have messed with that kid, but he’s such a jerk!”
“Alexandra.”
Alex lowered her head and bit her tongue.
“You know that we can’t use our powers among the humans.”
“I know.”
“And you know we definitely can’t use them on humans.”
“Yeah, I know. But-”
“There is no but, Alexandra.”
“So I’m just supposed to put up with the teasing?”
“You are smart, Alex. You don’t have to resort to your powers to deal with a bully like him.”
“Whatever.”
Her mother took a sharp breath in and let it out slowly. “The school called me because the young boy you assaulted is telling everyone who will listen that you made him hear and hit himself repeatedly in the head.” (more…)
“Magick is Intention and Power directed through Focus toward Result— Focus being the Artefact and the Worde.” — Lessone the Firste
**********
“Morning Quinn! How’s the world treating you today?”
“Just fine, Sam. How are you?”
“Dandy. Just dandy. Do you have any phones, cameras, or data storage devices on your person?” Sam recited the script.
“Just my book. Hope that’s OK,” Quinn showed Sam the padded mailer.
“Anything good?”
“The Woad Warrior, Volume 3. It’s one of my favorite comics.”
“Maybe you can lend it to me when you’re done.”
“Will do, Sam.” Quinn collected her envelope and proceeded towards her booth. Glass windows on one side of the hallway looked into the secure documents warehouse, all tall steel cages and forklifts transferring pallets of records boxes from place to place. On the other side were long, narrow corridors lined with closed doors to the scanning booths. Quinn turned down the second hall and used her key card to unlock the fourth door. (more…)
Never start with the weather. It is trite to use the fancy word, but it really is just that. Trite. Never start a story with the weather. So let us ignore the obvious, the fact that as I sit here pathetic and pathetic and still pathetic, something inside me metaphorically dying, the world maybe dying as well.
So, yes. Fall. The trees die, and yes, i know they do not actually die but they sure play the part well. The leaves demand to be raked up, but that is a task for people that worry about such things, not people that pretend to write to justify shutting out all that is out. But sometimes that does not help hide all that is in.
“Feeling better?” I claimed the flu. It is always a good time to claim flu. “It is going around,” someone will always say, no matter when you say it. I should be grateful that they care. I am not.
Meet us at the place where the wheat grows at the hour closest to the sun if you ever want to see her again.
Matilda massaged the bridge of her nose, her eyes squeezed shut. Sure enough, when she opened them again, the text was still there. She tapped a message on the screen.
I’m sorry, who is this? (more…)
Delos and his family sat around the kitchen table. Morning sun glinted off the polished tiles. He didn’t notice that neither his daughter nor his wife had eaten anything. Caroline cried while her mother stared at Delos. Oblivious to their distress, Delos wiped his mouth with the blue linen napkin from his lap.
“Time to go to work,” he said and rose from his chair. The napkin lay next to his clean plate.
He kissed Maureen on the cheek, told her to have a nice day and squeezed Caroline’s shoulder. “Good luck on that math test today.”
Outside, Delos walked three blocks to his bus stop, coincidentally last on the express line downtown. Birds sang along the way and he found himself smiling. It would take him half an hour on the express to get to his building and he would use that time to go over the details of the Cavanaugh deal. Not that it was complicated but he wanted to give his boss his best work. It was a big contract, after all.
“‘Morning, Bob,” Delos said as he boarded and paid his fare. Bob looked over his tablet at Delos without recognition but returned the greeting. Everyone else in the cabin ignored him. (more…)