Writing prompt story

Prompts:

-Central London, 1850s

-Lady Gaga

-Fake Blood

-Pair of broken glasses

The clouds billowed, angry and boding on a chilly day, either from the smokestacks or from impending rain; no one was sure which was which anymore. It lent a darkened lens to the carriage ride across Westminster Bridge, where the detective sat, listening to the clock’s tick of the horse’s hooves. The file resting on her lap, carefully purloined from the new Metropolitan Police for half a schilling, contained nothing more than a cursory inspection of the murder scene: blood, a pair of broken glasses, and just a finger to be found of the body.

The victim was believed to be Archibald Smith, a baker whose shop was placed right off Trafalgar Square. There was no sign of forced entry, and all windows were locked from the inside. There was only one way in or out of the room in which Mr. Smith was murdered, or so the report said; the detective would have to see for herself. She snorted, and her associate, John Radcliffe, broke his waking slumber.

“Something tickling you?” he sat back and pet his mustache.

“Only the continuous incompetencies of what we are supposed to believe is a ‘police force’, Radcliffe,” responded the detective, rolling her eyes at the folder. She held it out to Radcliffe. He took it. “Read the last sentence.”

He pushed up his glasses and sat straight.

“From the positioning of the finger on the floor of the crime scene, it is plain to see that whatever interloper made off with Mr. Smith was in an eastward direction towards Holborn-”

The Detective uttered a sudden cackle.

“Sorry Radcliffe, continue.”

“-as indicated by the positioning of the bifocals nearby, which were assuredly dislodged from Mr. Smith’s face in a struggle.”

Radcliffe pursed his lips and eyed the detective from over his glasses.

“I see your doubts as to the direction of flight, but for speculation based on little evidence, it is not incredulous.”

The detective smirked, conveying the usual sense of knowing far more than Radcliffe could. Radcliffe knew the smirk all too well, and he rolled his eyes.

“What do you know?”

She couldn’t hide behind a humble veneer, no matter how much she tried.

“Patience, Radcliffe. I’m sure the constable will be delighted to hear my take on the matter.”

The carriage rolled to bustling Trafalgar Square, filled with music, laughter, and the day’s toils of those wishing they had a pastry, and pulled in front of the bakery, where a bobby was stationed outside the building.

“That’s five schill, love,” said the driver.

“Thank you Radcliffe,” the detective said, leaving before Radcliffe could protest. He pulled out the money and paid the driver, and left the cab just in time to spot the detective power past the flummoxed officer.

“Wait, ma’am! You can’t-”

Radcliffe tapped the officer on the shoulder.

“She usually does. I think she was born this way,” and he strolled into the white brick building as well. Confection immediately filled Radcliffe up to the brim, and his stomach reminded him that he had to watch the baked goodies. The detective was dipping her finger into several of the treats left out and tasting each, though she took time to inspect the various tools left around the counter.

“Radcliffe, come, these are delectable. Beautiful, though slightly dirty given the time they’ve been out, for, 2 days? Still rich, however.”

“I will refrain, for the time being. Shall we proceed?”

The detective sighed.

“If you insist, Radcliffe, though I am in no hurry.”

They proceeded into the back room and up a set of stairs to the loft. A curious mixture of rancid meat and sugar stung the nostrils, and both the detective and Radcliffe covered their noses before entering the room.

“What the- what in the world is this? Who is this woman?” yelled Constable Twickens, bristling at the sight of two interlopers in his crime scene. The two other officers at his side were too shocked to speak.

“Not woman, Constable. Lady. Lady Gaga.”

Constable Twickens’ eyes went wide, and his beard turned a whiter shade of gray.

“Dear Lady, my apologies! I had no idea-”

“No apology is necessary in my honor, Constable, though I recommend you submit your apology to whomever appointed you as Constable. Excuse me.” She walked past Constable Twickens to the middle of the wood-paneled room. A pool of ruby spread out on the floor; a severed finger, grayed and cut finely from the hand, lay closer to the door, and a pair of bifocals lay even closer. Lady Gaga knelt down and bade Radcliffe to her side. He knelt beside her.

“What do you notice, Radcliffe, as a doctor?”

Radcliffe’s dark, shimmering eyes went from the finger to the blood.

“The blood’s still red.”

“Indeed.”

She went to her hands and knees and poked her nose as close to the pool as possible. Constable Twickens recoiled in disgust.

“What in the world are you on about, Lady?”

Lady Gaga dragged her finger through the pool and stood, holding the dripping finger out to Constable Twickens, who appeared ready to forgo meals for a week.

“What in the world!”

“It’s not blood, which you would know, Constable, if you had any notion of logic. In fact, it’s jam.” She shoved the finger in her mouth. “Mm. Strawberry. Convincing, yes, due to the relatively low viscosity. And Radcliffe, how does the severed finger look at its bone?”

Radcliffe pushed up his glasses and leaned towards the finger, holding his nose.

“Smooth cut, very few indentations. Cut directly in the joint between the intermediate phalange and the proximal phalange, from the looks of it. Also, it looks to be several days old, Lady.”

Twickens scoffed and pushed away from Lady Gaga.

“And so what, Lady? There are many knives here-“

“Serrated, yes.”

“-or the suspect could have brought his own!”

Lady Gaga shrugged.

“That’s entirely possible. Not probable, mind you, but possible. But, what is truly disconcerting about your utter lack of awareness at this supposed ‘crime scene’ is the pair of glasses, my dear Constable.” She bent over and picked them up while pulling a magnifying glass from a pocket in her dress. “Not a single scuff or dent indicative of the glasses falling on this-” she stomped her foot, “hard floor. The thin metal wiring should have some sort of indenture, but there is nothing.”

She held out the glasses to him. The Constable crossed his arms over his belly and took a few steps towards her, grunting and fighting himself all the way. He took the glasses and peered at them.

“So what, Lady?” he grumbled. “This isn’t a murder scene?”

“No, Constable, this is not. I believe that Mr. Smith is very much alive, and I intend to find him.”

“So you believe he faked his own death? Why?”

“The fame. Perhaps,” she said, “but I believe there’s much more to this case than meets the eye. Come Radcliffe! The game is afoot.”

Short story: "King"

                In the corner of a galaxy floating about in the universe lived a king, who sat on a planet inhabited entirely by him. There was fauna and flora, though none of it could willingly create fire or build a shelter or commit tax fraud, so for the sake of census and politics we will deem this sole intelligent inhabitant ‘King’. King believed that he once had a name, perhaps even several that would determine the chivalry of his lineage, but those were long since forgotten, since there was never anyone to call him by it. He had become, simply, ‘King’.

                King loved his planet. He had surveyed every last parcel of land, from the green mountains of the southern plains to the red trees of the snowy tundra and the vast, unbounded oceans of liquid carbon dioxide, and he had only ever come across land and sea creatures, but not another single mind equal to his own. Sometimes he wished he could find another, but the desire only came when he viewed something beautiful such as a double-sunset, or a complete lunar alignment, or the refraction of light from the ocean onto the closest moon, which he named Lamita. He knew not from where the name originated, but he liked it.

                Where did his ship come from? That, like his name, he had forgotten- all the controls came naturally to him, and sometimes he had the desire and knew that if he rerouted power from his maneuvering thrusters to the dormant singularity drive that he could easily break free of the planet’s gravity and travel the stars in whatever direction he so desired. But, the desire, much like the waves of the eastern ocean in the quiet days, ebbed. How he loved watching the waves pull back, retreating to reveal the glassy, shimmering ocean floor.

                At first, when King arrived on this planet through no desire to stay, he remained quiet and worked and grunted and spoke to nothing; but, over time, the more he worked to repair the damage to his ship, the more he spoke to the environment, and the more it spoke to him. They weren’t words, per se, but intuitions, drawn in from every action he made, and it was the gentle hand of the environment that guided him to survey the planet once his repairs were complete rather than leave altogether. And he realized that perhaps the planet wouldn’t be a terrible place to remain, at least for a little while longer.

                That little while became, to his species’ perception of time, 193 hyra (80 human years, give or take five and a half months). That perception of time had long since faded, replaced only by the understanding of life and existence: that any metric of time as an understanding of life is flawed, and that there is but a perfect confluence of the past and desires to guide one into a future. That future is illusory, King knew, but he was able to manipulate it perfectly, given his solitude on this strange, beautiful planet he discovered.

                Every day, he drank its liquids, consumed its fruits, climbed its peaks and submerged into its oceans, much in the way he did in the days previously, and much as he would do in the future until he could no longer climb the peaks or swim the waters. There was no certainty but the plans he made: view the herds of wild beasts chasing each other, document their movements and their mating rituals; fly around the poles to observe the planet’s magnetic field clashing with solar winds; take his ship deep into the oceans to discover what strange life lives in the most inhospitable environment on the planet; chart out the volcanic activity on the planet and see how the tectonic plates shift; observe the moons when they are within distance of each other to perturb the other. There was much to do.

                And King did much over the next 504 hyra, until he was an old man and had completed every single thing he had ever set out to do. He could no longer climb peaks or swim oceans, and cultivating his food hurt his body. So, on one brilliant day, when he knew the sky would blaze in a double solar eclipse, he activated the singularity drive in his ship and set it to autopilot on a return course to the planet that manufactured his ship. In that ship’s library was every single detailed scan he made, every log he recorded, every spoken conversation he ever had with himself. And on that day, he laid down to watch the most brilliant sight he had ever seen.

                The ship returned to its home 4.6 hyra later to a group of curious engineers and scientists, who then pored through all the ship’s library and logs in what was a ship centuries out of date. The library held a vast collection of pictures, scans, and data invaluable to scientists, but the logs yielded something different: they began simply, with descriptions of survival and repair efforts, but evolved into something unrecognizable. There were mentions of the planet as a person, introductions to trees as if they could speak, and screaming. King screamed, rattled around in his ship, bounced off the walls, tore his skin, and then moments later he’d be fine, bleeding from his ruptures, speaking to his imaginary family and friends, telling them all he missed them, that he longed to see them but there were things he still had to do.

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Recoiling and Remembering

One of the more interesting aspects of getting older, I've found, is finding my memories all the more potent. Perhaps it's because I'm making relatively few new ones given the regular doldrums of office life (and saving up some PTO to make some new memories), but sometimes I can close my eyes and remember something so precisely that it's almost jarring to exist in the present.

For example, if I think back to my time as a soccer player in high school, then my mind wanders back to the smells of a humid, sweaty summer of running and being so damned tired that I'd fall asleep as soon as I went home. And then there were the times where my friends and I, all sticky and exhausted from sweating our asses off, rumbled over to the nearby convenience store to buy a sandwich and a Gatorade, wearing our soccer gear. And I'm there, standing on the brown-tiled floor of the shop, browsing the chips and drinks, waiting for my friends to order their food so we can go eat on the sidewalk outside and generally grumble to each other how little we're getting any action from girls we think are attractive.

And the traffic rolls by and we sit on the cement blocks meant to stop cars from rolling forward too much, our legs sore and our backs hunched, digging into a sandwich whose bun is just a little too sharp for my mouth. My one friend talks about having a thing at his pool, which is always just water polo, and since I can't swim I'm always reticent to go. He also boasts that he's going to invite some girls, but it never happens so it'll never happen. (Note: eventually, some girls did actually come by.)

And more like that. It's always visceral, and I can smell it, taste it, hear it all as if my memories are just another screen playing back familiar video. Sometimes I can be in another place: on the train, buying food, talking to someone, and a thought from the past just creeps in and reminds me of something that I had forgotten for so long, and then I'm far away, years away, and I recall what it is to be younger.

This is a strange feature of getting older, strange and fascinating. On the one hand, these are the memories that created me as I am, and yet, in the past few years where life has been more monotonous and certain things have hardened and focused me in life, these older memories become more salient and grounded, and feel more fundamental to me than anything else. I have started to wonder if, at the ages I'm remembering, I felt something similar; the irony is, I don't remember. Maybe it was the bountiful free time to spend making new memories with friends, but I don't recall having so much time to reflect on my lives past.

So, I've started making an effort to write down my memories, or at least the notable things that happen to me on the day-to-day. Sure, I might not go drive around my town on warm summer nights blasting ACDC, but perhaps making the small things more salient means I'll cherish those more when I'm even older, too.

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Darlings

(No politics at the moment; it's all a bit too much right now.)

A common bit of advice for writers is "kill your darlings"- don't be afraid to lead a character to his or her end should it fit the narrative, regardless of how much you've developed that character and how much you may like that character. It's a difficult piece of advice to follow, as any writer would attest- death, even of a literary character, isn't easy.
That doesn't include characters who are certain to die, of course, but they typically aren't the protagonist or any of the main characters, and their deaths are usually motivators to the plot. No, this is about killing main characters.
Death is random. One can just as easily get hit by a car or have a brain aneurysm while eating breakfast. Death is easy. Life is hard, death is a walk in the park. Fall down the stairs, dead; inhale carbon monoxide, dead; get attacked by a rabies-infected circus clown, dead. It happens to anyone and everyone, so when you're writing, it should be treated as such, especially if you're writing about battles, or fights, or running away from home.
Into the Wild was the story of a (frankly idiotic) boy who ran away from home and died because of his patent dearth of required knowledge about surviving in the wild. (Spoilers) Piggy's death in Lord of the Flies was a turning point in the story, and was very sudden. Even Dumbledore's death at the hands of Snape was a shock, especially in the way that he died.
Characters shouldn't be pigeonholed into surviving. It's a strange thing to write, believe me, but if your characters are marching off to the largest war the galaxy's ever seen, the chances that they all survive is nil. Serenity demonstrated as much.

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Getting Catcalled... As A Guy

How does that song go? "Til it happens to you, you don't know how I feel." Being a straight white male, I never really imagined that I'd get catcalled by some middle-aged wankface driving by with something as crude as "Hey sexy mama!" (And yes, I checked, there was no one else around me; he was, for whatever reason, calling me a 'sexy mama'. Thankfully, I'm not a single parent.)

At first I was obviously confused, but then I started to think about a girl I had seen on a train back from work a week or so ago. A guy, taking some generous swigs from a bottle of $3 whiskey, kept reaching out and touching her while she stood and he sat. She warned him not to and eventually took an open seat out of his reach. And then, I thought about how, every so often while walking to work, I'll hear a guy say something to a girl passing by, usually some come-on or something equally frivolous.

It just becomes so obvious: it's not flattering; it's threatening.

Something similar happened to me before, but in a much more subdued way. It was the middle of summer and I was carrying what was likely two giant boulders in Shop Rite bags back to my apartment. A large man, about the size of the average football linebacker, walked by and muttered "You's cute." It took me a few moments to process the remark while I hauled the rock of Gibraltar up the stairs to my door, but it still made me feel damned threatened when I settled down.

And girls go through this every single day. It's ludicrous. I'm probably not qualified in the least to talk about this at length, but no one should feel like they might be in danger from a pair of eyes following them, let alone someone voicing their priapic opinion about someone else.

Besides that, who wants to only be valued as a thing to be coveted or an object for pleasure? It's an empty feeling because our physical appearance isn't, largely, our choice. We can't pick and choose our genes (yet) to make us better looking, taller, more athletic, etc. We're stuck with how we look, and to only be judged by that quality lends a superficiality to whatever words a catcaller might decide to use next, because no matter what, the first thing that attracted the person was the sex appeal.

And then there's a matter of intention: it's sex, pure and simple, and this might come as a shock to most people, but 90% of the people you see around you (of your preferred gender) likely wouldn't have sex with you unless you were Idris Elba or Zach Efron or Marion Cotillard or Kerry Washington or anyone in between. So when someone decides to catcall, it's basically the peacock showing his rumpled feathers off to a potential mate: they likely won't be all that impressed, and will probably run away or peck or do whatever it is peacocks do to defend themselves. Or maybe naked mole rats would be a better analogy. Whatever, I'm not a biologist.

The point is, stop it.

A story in short.

Ian was a boy who never saw the sky. His sight was never physically impaired; ophthalmologists would remark that his vision was clear as air. Rather, Ian chose to never see the sky, nor the grass, nor the trees, and yet he could read every single letter he could see within a mile. He never saw his parents, nor his teachers, nor his fellow students; they were there, he acknowledged them, they acknowledged him, but he never saw them. This wasn’t strange to Ian, as it was how he had lived every year of his life. Everything passed in front of him, transitioning from one moment to the next before Ian had time to comprehend it, and then it ended. Nothing was real to Ian, and yet he knew nothing was fake, but he could never immerse himself into what he saw around him. It wasn’t unusual to him, and he thought nothing of it. He was dragged into adulthood while he tried to comprehend the moments of his childhood. The memories were there, and he was in them, and though he recalled that they happened largely without him, they still dug into his chest and nestled next to his heart. The moments of his adult life similarly came and went, and he never saw them. Ian trudged through those moments that ran by, only catching fleeting glimpses of what they were before they were gone. It got worse as he got older; the moments moved faster, and faster, and he trudged slower, and slower, until there were no more moments for him to see. As his breath shortened and his vision dimmed, Ian smiled and coughed out a hoarse chuckle. With his last breath, he finally spoke. “Clear as day.”

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Uncertain Balance

I'm still not sure how to feel after this past election, but I'm not entirely sure it matters. After what was likely the worst presidential campaign in recent history, Donald J. Trump was elected. The man who insulted just about every non-white male variant that exists attained the highest office in the land and now has the power to shape the United States, and subsequently the world, for years, possibly even decades beyond his tenure. The man who thinks that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese; the man whose entire platform was scrapping international trade deals and jailing his opponent, Hillary Clinton; the man who can only describe warzones as "a mess". It's not an easy thing to fathom.
Every single poll decided that he was the underdog by a landslide. Every single person who has ever studied political science knew, knew that it was impossible for a man of his style of campaigning to win. And then, it happened, and all of us ivory tower-types have to reconsider what we thought we knew.
Maybe it's because we all underestimated the power of his anti-establishment, anti-trade deal message; maybe we all underestimated the inherent racism still firmly entrenched into parts of the United States. Maybe some people just really didn't like Hillary Clinton. It doesn't matter now, really. Historians and political scientists will write books and papers aplenty about the statistical impossibility and supicilious stupidity that was the 2016 election, and hopefully in 50 years, people will look back on this point in history with deep, bitter disdain.
But, we're in it now. A lot of people are afraid of what will happen; I'm not, honestly. It's hard to fear the possibility of something. I'm dismayed and disillusioned at the moment. I suppose the fear will kick in once he raises his right hand, but for now, it's still a foggy notion that the election even happened. It's still a waking nightmare.
Though what do I have to fear? I'm a generic straight white guy. You can go around America and find millions of me wasting time or making money or losing money or flipping burgers and picking up hookers. You can even find a copper-coated jabberwocky version preparing to move into the White House.
Except, that's a lie. I do feel fear; fear for my friends, many of whom are the children of immigrants from predominantly non-white countries, and it twists my stomach to think that just because some spray tanned living word jumble became president that many of them would be targeted in hate crimes simply because they aren't white. Hate crimes have surpassed post-9/11 levels, by some metrics, which is a truly scary thought: the worst attack in American history was going to create backlash, as anyone would expect it to; but an election? There is no mandate for discrimination; everyone retains the right to be safe, regardless of who is president.
I read an interesting interview with Trevor Noah, the current host of the Daily Show. He's from South Africa, the posterchild for racism in modernity, and he stated that racism was never excised in the United States like it was in South Africa. With the end of apartheid, a system of governance based entirely on racism, the tumor was cut: it was held up and displayed in all its failure as a system of thought and left to die. That isn't to say that racism doesn't still exist in South Africa, but it was a moment of ablution that let South Africa face its demons.
The United States never truly had that. Schools had to be forced to integrate in the 1970s, and even today there is a noticeable disparity in race in schools. White nationalist groups still exist and are active around the country.
So, what does the future bring? I don't know, honestly. I wrote more than a year ago that Trump would never be president, and here we are. The bare minimum we can do to make a better life for ourselves and others is to speak up if you see someone getting harassed because of how they look, even if no one else does; you'd be surprised how much one person can inspire courage in others.
Chances are that if you're reading this, you agree with most, if not all, of what I've written. And if so, great, I'm glad, let's be friends if we aren't already. If not, write a comment and tell me why I'm an asshole, but at least do so politely, because we're not in clans of gorillas fighting to defend our territory by slinging shit at each other; we have words, and feelings, and advanced reasoning that lets us settle disputes without laying a finger on each other. So if you have a problem with this post, write it out; if you don't like someone, tell them, but don't forget to ask yourself why you feel that way in the first place.

That's all for now,
Das Flüg  

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