The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: mistaken identity

  • 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…)

  • What Happened to the Goat

    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…)

  • The Monster Next Door

    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.

    (more…)

  • Alexandra’s Awakening

    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…)

  • Lessone the Firste

    “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…)

  • Fall Interrupted

    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.

    (more…)

  • Picture Perfect

    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…)

  • D.M.(S.R.)

    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…)

  • Swagger and Sway

    I didn’t know I was bagging a sorceress’s groceries. First of all, I didn’t know sorceresses bought groceries. I mean, I guess they had to eat, too. Second, the groceries looked normal. Eggs, celery, cucumbers, mayonnaise, one gossip magazine, and twelve boxes of anise tea. Well mostly normal. But the real reason I didn’t know they were for a sorceress was that the person paying for them was powerfully built bald man in a light grey suit.

    Thing really changed for me when the man’s cellular rang.

    “Madam?” he said into the small flip phone. How old was that thing? But he just said “Yes madam.” Pause “Yes madam.” And then he hung up and looked right at me. I don’t really feel comfortable with being visible, so I hunched.

    “You’re to follow me.” He said. (more…)

  • May Stories at the Confabulator Cafe

    Welcome, friends. Welcome back to the Confabulator Cafe. Or, if you are here for the first time, welcome! Have a seat, sit back, and enjoy some fresh new stories, written just for you.

    This month, the Confabulators were tasked to write about a case of mistaken identity. Each author went about this in different ways, so we hope you will enjoy the diverse range of stories.

    We have an old familiar face who hasn’t been around here in awhile, so welcome back long-time Confabulator Jason Arnett. We’re all excited to have them join us this month.

    Here is the schedule for May. We hope you’ll stop by to read each of these stories!

    Tuesday, May 3: “Swagger and Sway” by Emily Mosher
    Friday, May 6: “D.M.(S.R.)” by Jason Arnett
    Friday, May 13: “Picture Perfect” by Eliza Jaquays
    Tuesday, May 17: “Fall Interrupted” by Rob Conway
    Friday, May 20: “Lessone the Firste” by Aspen Junge
    Tuesday, May 24: “Alexandra’s Awakening” by Anita C. Young
    Friday, May 27: “The Monster Next Door” by Ashley M. Hill

    (and a bonus story: “What Happened to the Goat,” still a case of mistaken identity, but written as a follow-up to “Picture Perfect.”)