Tag: speculative

  • On Forage

    This piece is based on the flash fiction prompt posted yesterday and follows my personal guidelines as described in this post.

    Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

    Genre: Speculative fiction

    Subgenre: Biopunk / Post-Apocalyptic

    Seattle, South of Pioneer Square Station ruins; 73 years after The Fall

    Kit Keyes could just see the daylight at the end of the tunnel from where she stood on the rusted, flaking remains of light rail tracks. There was not much sun to set the the end of the tunnel alight, as the perpetual twilight of the monsoons filtered out most of it before it even had a chance to get to the ground. It was pervasive gloom that came with the winter months around November and sometimes lasted until as late as May. She half-disbelieved the elders when they said that it had not always been this way; she had known nothing but the winter monsoons for her twenty years of age.

    She watched for shadows in that twilight. Patrols regularly cleared out the tunnels of the dwindling population of raiders and ne’er-do-well types that tested the clan’s defenses on a perennial basis north of The Square, only to discover the defenses had only hardened since their last attempt. A few hundred meter south, on the other hand — that section had never been properly secured. Something about that open mouth bothered her this morning. She could not put her finger on what, something that bothered her more than the empty space itself.

    It just so happened that south of the Square was some of the best fungus forage on the Line.

    (more…)

  • On the drift

    They never mention it in books, of course. The travel guides, I mean. They never tell you just how far you can, on average, walk in a pair of shoes before they start to fall apart. Of course, not all shoes are built the same and there’s going to be some variability in how well they will wear, but I’ve found you can maybe walk five hundred miles on fairly even asphalt in a pair of sneakers before you might want to keep your eyes open for your next pair. Boots meant for hiking? Maybe twice that, but you had better not rely on there being any tread to give you traction that last two hundred miles, give or take. Still, boots are my go-to, though they tend to weigh you down more at the end of the day than something more athletic.

    Of course, you’re rarely given the choice of boots or sneakers while on the drift. More often than not, you have to accept what you come across and, obviously, the mileage on a worn pair of footwear is significantly lowered.

    But beggars can’t be choosers, as my gran would say.

    (more…)

  • Winter

    red poppy flower field
    Photo by Elina Sazonova on Pexels.com

    “I told yer ma, that’s a season — tain’t no name for a girl,” her father used to tell her when she was young, before he had choked on all that ash that started falling from the skies and died. He was never one to wear a mask, and refused to cover his face after the Ashfalls began. The particulates, buried deep under the earth until recent years, made quick work of his cigarette-ravaged lungs.

    “I n’ver did know why she gone did that, but she made me promise to name y’that after you was born.”

    “Maybe it was because my hair was white as snow?” she would always suggest, knowing the answer even as she said it. It was a game they played, this conversation of theirs.

    (more…)

  • Poppy

    red poppy flower field
    Photo by Elina Sazonova on Pexels.com

    How do I write a story? I forget. Perhaps one goes a little like this:

    There once was a little girl, and she liked red and so she wore red. Except that her mum called it crimson and her da preferred scarlet. But the fae said it was more poppy, and so that stuck because her mum thought it a more cheery thing than those other blood colors.

    The girl said nothing at all and not because she did not have a mind of her own, but because someone had stolen her voice before she was born and she had no head for writing, though she knew plenty of words like “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, “snicker-snack” and “albatross” (a word she dreamed of shouting from the top of the radio tower that rose over the place she was born). But writing those words? Oh, well, that just was not something she could do.

    (more…)

  • Scarlet

    Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

    Of the rubble they wandered, she and the one she called Puck; she dressed in crimson and ash while Puck was dressed in Puck, a shadow somewhere between chrome scuffed and tetris blocks that might have been mustard yellow, if not for the scorching and scratch. Azur, too, if you looked atop his aluminum pate from above or when not aloft — a rarity given the nuclear pellet fueling his eternal flight.

    Stones rattled for reasons only stones know, and fell to the scree near her feet with wonton abandon. If Puck did not have encyclopedic reference to the circuitric contrary, it might have thought the stones were rushing down from the remnants of highrises to worship the angel at their base. Puck certainly did, but that was his nature. The girl was its goddess and its life and, even if they had been programmed otherwise, it would still choose this life of servitude under her wing. Call it love, for even machines may become such things as the capacity for love.

    Puck tensed at the howl of greymalkin prowling distant, yet close enough to warrant caution. She dressed of vermillion tensed not at all, which was her nature, such as was her trust given to Puck. It was for Puck to worry while she wandered and his servos did whine at the unexpected danger lurking the shadows beyond. How far was far enough? it wondered. Almost immediately, it responded, Never enough, but was loath to leave his charge for the time required to chase the great cats off.

    So Puck did the only sensible thing and flew closer to her and did what all things must eventually consider as their final option when danger lurks nearby: hope.

    And so, Puck hoped while the greymalkin cast out more mewls and cries, suggesting the hunt had begun.

    Puck sighed relief when the sounds moved away from their location, and it embraced the momentary calm, as short-lived as it was like to be.