Category: Writing

They’d had to tie him to the Turning Tree for the whole ritual. The bristlerope had rubbed him to the meat everywhere it had touched him, from the struggle. He’d done it to himself.
How do I know the names of those things?
He was back in the cage
not mine. NOT mine.
now and he knew it was the last time he’d get out until they put him in a sack or he walked
shuffled
out on his own.
Or he could escape. He’d done it once and the burning on his skin wasn’t even as bad as before.
Or you’re getting used to it.
Or he was — no. It was time to go.
But where will you go? What if —
”NO!”
No one in the camp looked at him. He wasn’t even sure if he’d really shouted. He
Steven. Not ‘he’. Steve. Steven. My name is Steven.
Right. Steven.
Steven sat in the cage that wasn’t his and watched the stars, which he still recognized, and repeated his name.

Turned out that Brock was wrong.
The gun worked just fine.
Most people, sitting back on their couches and watching this play out on television, might have wondered why I believed all this from the start. It was a good question; if I’d been writing this as a story, I think my main character would have yelled bullshit right off the bat and spent most of the story being convinced. The problem with that is that sometimes there are things going on that no one knows about.
I saw a goblin shambling along the bottom of a ravine with an old and rusted sword across his back like the yoke of a wagon. I didn’t bother mentioning it to my mother; I just assumed I’d imagined it.
Except I hadn’t. Not really. My life had gone on without a hitch, certainly; I wrote my stories and did the right things, but there was always a small dark spot in the back of my mind that watched the ravines and kept an eye on the shadows of alleys that led to the back of old houses — a part of me that never really believed I’d made it up.
When the goblins boiled out of the thickets around us, that small dark spot in my mind stood up and said ‘fucking KNEW it!’
And the gun worked just fine.
On the other hand, I wasn’t all that great for the first little bit. There’s a hell of a long distance between target practice, hunting for food, hunting for sport, and finally shooting at something that could talk back to you, even if it was running straight at you with a weird little bow-legged gait and swinging a sword straight at your head.
The first one would have killed me, I think, except that Brock was there; he had his axe out (‘of course he has an axe, every dwarf would use an axe if they could I guess’ came the errant thought) and it was a great beautiful thing of which I’d only seen the polished grip, poking over his shoulder — then there was a cresent flash and like that the goblin-thing was very still on the ground. Brock clapped me on the shoulder and grinned.
”Dirt-eaters,” he drawled, and I noticed for the first time that his eyes were bright, clear blue.
I had to shoot the next one in a hurry, so I didn’t have time to say anything about it right then.

They let the thing that used to be Ted Shafer out of his cage the next morning. The clouds weren’t a complete shroud over the camp, but it didn’t really help the light; the sky was the wrong color to begin with.
There weren’t any helpers to clear away muck and detritus from the body — it wasn’t necessary anyway — the last batch of muck (Steven understood that the meant the third batch), was left on until it was absorbed almost completely. The camp then waited to see if the captive lived or died. In Steve’s opinion, Shafer had been unlucky. There weren’t even any needles left to remove.
The tall creature stood before the Shafer creature in the center of the gathering and spoke in its gurgling hiss “You have lived.”
The Shafer-thing wobbled its head.
”You are part of us now. We are part of you. I am Churkk. You are Zef.”
The thing paused, cocking its head as though listening to a distance sound, then nodded. “Zef.” It swayed slightly, and several of the creatures came forward to help it to a hut.
The thing called Churkk turned towards Steven’s cage. “It is the third day.” It gurgle/growled, and its smile returned.
This time, Steven fought.

”What’d you say?”
Brock was suddenly standing at my elbow. Somehow, the smell of him didn’t seem overpowering anymore.
It’s not. Here, it fits in. It doesn’t clash.
I shook my head, partly to clear it. “Nothing. I’m tired. It’s been a long trip.”
He looked at me for a few more seconds. “How’s the pain?”
I started, suddenly sure I’d lost the needle, and felt for it just below my right collarbone. Still there. Still there? I frowned. “There isn’t any pain.” I looked at him. “Not that I mind, but you said the pain would still be there.”
Brock looked at me, then glanced over his shoulder as Bhuto emerged from the gray-green scrub brush where he’d gone scouting and nodded. “I was wrong.”
I started to ask what else he might have be wrong about, but the look on his face (probably the cloud cover) made me think better of it.

I used to write.
I suppose that’s not really much of a surprise, but it seemed an important point when I opened my eyes on a place I’d never seen that was theoretically three miles from my parent’s house.
When I’d decided to drive back to my mom and find out what was really going on, I’d had to give absence notice to my current employer, for whom I wrote technical manuals. It wasn’t exciting; it was, in fact, soul-sucking drudgery that made me stare longingly at help-wanted signs in Blockbuster, but the pay was good and I didn’t have to think.
Writing, real writing, involved a lot of thinking — dredging up memories and pains and joys and regrets and putting them onto a page for everyone to see and hopefully not recognize. The old rule is write what you know but really, what else is there?
I’d stopped because I didn’t want to remember what I knew anymore. I hadn’t wanted to for ten years. I’d been alone for all that time. Who wanted to think about that?
Before that, though…
Before that, I used to write and had written about the place I saw in front of me right at that moment. It was a homecoming to a place I’d never been. It had a completely familiar feel to it, and that scared the hell out of me.

I stood on the edge of Vayland, looking down into a ravine. Silver pain pulled at a single point in my body, dredging up memories.
When I was a child in the first house my family ever lived it, my room was next to the living room, thus the television. Whenever I heard the television and no conversation, I would slowly open my door, crouching down next to the floor and slip into the room on my belly. My door was right next to the foot of the couch back then, and sat directly between the couch and the T.V., so if I was quiet, I could crawl up against the foot of the couch and watch T.V. while my Dad lay not 3 feet away on the couch.
Some nights, I would fall asleep while watching. What happened next depended on who found me; regardless, I would always wake up in my bed the next morning, like magic. If my mom had found me, I would get a lecture during breakfast about needing my sleep.
Dad never said anything. I suppose he thought that, between the floor and my bed, I’d gotten enough sleep.
He understood; that much was clear.
When I opened my eyes, we weren’t on the road anymore.

Steven saw what Ted Shafer has become. That was when he realized he had to get out.
The cage really wasn’t all that difficult. There weren’t any locks, only tie-downs, which weren’t a problem if you just ignored the burning of the mud that he couldn’t touch. He’d driven seven loads of winter wheat to town with a temperature of a hundred and four, by god; if he really wanted to, he could get the damned cage open.
Eventually, he proved himself right, although the sweat in his eyes burned almost as badly as his skin.
He slipped past the smallest number of huts possible to get to the edge of the camp, not knowing where he was going except away.
Just past the last hut, it got difficult to walk.
Twenty paces later, the needles started to burn him like over-extended muscles. It felt as though he was trying to pull a truck with chains attached to his body.
”Steven,” came the phlegm voice. He was too focused to jump.
”Where are you going, Steven?” The voice was right in his ear, it seemed.
”The hell… away…” Steve didn’t even know if that was an answer or a command.
”What if there’s no one waiting for you?”
The thought went right to the base of his brain and waited for him to give. He wasn’t going to. He knew if he could just get a few more steps, he’d be free.
But what then?
He’d go home.
What if…
When blunt fingers wrapped around his arms, he was already sitting on his knees, looking up at the sky.

I watched them walk over to me, keeping my expression neutral. I barely twitched when Brock moved upwind of me.
”What next?”
Bhuto gestured. “That is something you will tell us, Sean.”
I didn’t like the sound of that and showed it. “How so?”
”Understand, we are here to help you, but we are also here to help your father, and we could not — can not — do that without you. You are our link to him.”
I looked up at the stars in the midnight sky (one thing I always forget is how many more you can see) and blew out a breath between my teeth while I thought.
Finally, I said, “how do we do this?” I was looking at Bhuto, but he gestured to Brock.
Brock was holding a silver needle.