Loyalty--TCE 32

Well damned if I didn't have a *moment* and forget to save early when I began writing this week's TCE story. As you can guess, that pretty much ensured my computer would lock up, which it did, and so I lost the original version of this story, and now that I've rewritten/finished it, it doesn't quite...match...what I was aiming for earlier, and the ending is off as well. Oh well; I'm sure you can see where I was heading.

 I didn't stick super close to the prompt on this one, but I tried! (The first version was better; too bad I don't have a photographic memory.)

Here was the prompt: "Any moment now, he's going to press the button. Are the cameras rolling?"

And now, the story:

Loyalty

The large manila envelope for that month’s school board meeting sat on the desk in front of Jim, no thicker or thinner than usual. He’d covered the meeting in person; now Mr. Ira Stravinsky sat before him on the other side of the metal desk. Jim liked metal desks. They were clean-lined, cool to the touch. Mr. Stravinsky looked like the kind of man who liked metal desks too. Functional. Stravinsky kept laying his hands in different places on his thighs. Jim leaned back in his chair, took a deep drag on his cigarette, thought better, and offered Stravinksy one.

The man nodded, took a cigarette, lit it. Inhaled deeply.

“So, Ira—can I call you Ira? Great. ” Jim said. “Any of it true?”

“Any of what true, Mr. Samson?”

“Please, call me Jim. What I meant was, are any of the allegations true?”

“What allegations, Mr.—Jim?”

Jim frowned around his smoke.

“Why, the allegations that led to your firing?”

“I…I don’t think I understand. There were no allegations” Now Mr. Stravinsky frowned.

The Long Sun

So I'm terribly behind in the creative department this week..raraahhh! I'm not quite sure how it happened, but yet again I started writing one story for The Chrysalis Experiment, then part of the way through, scrapped it and began another. *sigh* The week fifteen prompt was "And neither have I wings to fly."

I apologize if any of this comes across as stereotypical or offensive; most of the capture narratives from this era are horribly, horribly one-sided, and so I did what I could and tried to make it as unoffensive (but, oh, storytelling-like) as possible.

Enough blabbering! Here you go; TCE story, week fifteen, fairly unedited as of yet. 


The Long Sun

The white man sat quiet between Grass Fire and Little Bison. The three of them stared into the fire, but the white man hung his head. He smelled like dead men and fire water.  Next to his guard he looked very small and weak.  But the day had been a good one, and celebrations would last long into the night, for it was a full moon and we had great victory in battle this day. The fire bounced shadows off the dancers against the mighty trees surrounding us.

Grass Fire and Little Bison were small among the Ni-u-ko’n-ska. Each stood as tall as the head of a horse, but no taller. Yet they were very great warriors. Their eyes shone dark against their skin, all the hair plucked from their faces far back so that the dark, thin crest of hair, edged with porcupine, showed their ferocity. Our people have long been two things; very fierce in battle, and very tall. Since these two were not very tall, they were very, very fierce in battle.

The little white man, much earlier in the day, showed himself vicious in battle and vicious in capture, injuring many of our best men, killing four without fire. It was a great honor to be guarded by Grass Fire and Little Bison, but he did not look to care.  He did not look to care for anything.

“In the morning the waters will rise,”  I said to Grass Fire and Little Bison as I walked over to them. “Too much rain this season. We can unbind him and let him roam; he will not get far until the time of harvest when the waters go home.”

“This man has treachery in his heart, Big Wind, and fire in his blood,” Grass Fire said. “He may bring bad fortune to us all if we loose him.” The silent of the two, Little Bison merely nodded his head once.

“That may come,” I agreed. “But Chief said it must be so. Loose him, but pick a runner to follow him, so he does not come to harm or bring any. He is ours until harvest.”

Hero Noir--TCE Prompt Fourteen

Well, I officially do not like this story one iota. Not one iota. Lol. I've spent days trying to get it right, but am just going to treat it as a flop and post it, as is. Spoiler Alert: Contains mild swearing and sexual connotations. 

The Chrysalis Experiment's prompt fourteen was "Come to me to feel my protection. Countdown to my revelation."

Hero Noir

I was born to a woman who came from the mighty Mississippi, on the flat crest of green land sticking out of the river just west of Memphis where the hawks like to hunt, the seventh of a line of brothers. When I was a youngun I got in heaps of trouble, right and left. Time was, I was always chasing one thing and killing another.  Snakes, wild hogs, deer.  Nothing in life was too fast for me. Nothing could stay live if I wanted it dead. 

My daddy said that if I lived I might come to be an even better man than him. He was a hard working railroad man; had hands so wide, wide and sun-browned like the river, that they cracked across the stretched and tired knuckles and when he sweat the water brought forth from his flesh looked like mud.  He worked at the railroad till the day he died, I heard tell.  Mamma was a good woman too, but off; difficult.  She tried, I can say that. Sang in the choir on Sundays and later, taught piano to the rich folks who drove out from the city. For a while there everybody said she taught the best gospel west of the Mississippi. Her sweet warbles slipped out the open door in the steamy summers, full of both the dust of the earth and the thick humid air blown over from the river, so well mixed together that that air would be heavy with a sweet goodness as tangible as molasses.  Course, she left not long after I was about knee-high.  Said she was thirsty, and that nothing Daddy could give her could quench that thirst. At the time I thought she’d been making to say something about God, and so I run outside to avoid a talking-to. Later I figured out she meant the river.  But I don’t hold it against her none.  Because pretty soon I left too. One day I was there, and the next I was gone. And that was such a long time ago. Long time.

Before the wars.

“I know why you left,” she said to me, leaning back from the table so to hide her face in shadows. “It is the same story you hear, from all over.” Her English sounded better than mine, but that accent.  That French accent.  Europe. Europe, again.  Because one Great War wasn’t enough.  “In times such as these, you are no different than the next man. There is nothing left that is original; we have seen it all and heard it all.”

“We?”   

“Oui.  All of us.” The way she moved her hand through the air I could tell she didn’t have nothing on the girls back home. But still. There were things to be done. Men to kill.One in particular. I just wasn't sure I wanted to kill no more.

“Well, I reckon you ain’t seen nothin’ compared to what I seen.”  It come out as a spat.  “Them naked Jews kissed my boots at Auschwitz when we marched in.” I didn't tell her any other details, like of the men I'd seen. The men, the men in the trenches, this war and that. “And I  guarantee you I’m different from any man you’ve ever knowed.” The first time round I’d barely been tall as a corn stalk, had lied about my age to get in and go to war.  Those heaps of men laying atop one another in the mud, country after country … that whole first year I throwed up every night outside the barracks. By now they just look like ants.  Little, crawling, muddy ants.  Soldier ants, ready to die.  “Ready to die,” I felt my mouth say.