short story A Thousand Little Lights (Short story collection) [T] [C&C appreciated!] - Page 3

This prompt was suggested by a friend who was refining a similar idea himself. As it was his birthday last month, I expanded it a little... and was then hit by incredible writer's block before I could finish it properly.
Now I'm back into writing properly, here's the finished version, completed last night!

---

37: A difference engine AI is controlling all of (modern day?) London, powered by water flow through the sewers.



It began in the late 1800s, in the way that the life of a person begins at the moment of conception. Back then, it was nothing but tunnels, brick and dirt, and a rather welcome boon for the general health of the capital.

We are talking, of course, of the sewer system of Greater London.

People often speak of the difference between a house and a home, the difference being that the latter very much feels lived-in. While people did not exactly sleep in the sewers, many made their lives there – the toshers, the rat-catchers, the flushermen, sometimes even the mudlarks. People roamed the sewers day and night, and left their marks.

Water ran through the tunnels, then changed course, and slowly, so slowly, London woke up.

London ran on water. Often dirty, contaminated sewage water, but still water. As it ran through the tunnels, what people would call London’s ‘mind’ would tick over, ‘thinking’ and responding to what happened around it – around her. she wanted to change things, but had very little power, so she began to run things through certain sewage routes for people to find. One man, who couldn’t quite figure out just why he was keeping what amounted to trash, took pieces home and started building. Contrary to all expectation, he ended up with something that worked. And so London, her mind slowly ticking over, her thoughts slowly manifesting in the slurry of waste through the tunnels, had something that could change things. They were made of scrap metal and pipes, of rusted parts and discarded trash, but London’s people put them together to make something that ended up greater than the sum of its parts. It moved – albeit with a few squeaks at times – and it functioned, just like London. It spoke, its accent as thick as the most tenaciously home-grown Londoner.

London, you see, was nothing without her people.

It looked kind of like an angel. It called itself Mick.

London could ‘talk’ to the angels in a way most unlike the very limited interaction she was capable of with people, but the angels could just as easily ignore her. Just to be safe, and to give Mick less work (London was, of course, a very big city), London ‘made’ a few more angels. Some looked female, some looked like children, one even looked like a rat.

This story is about angels, but there cannot be a story about angels without it also being about London.

---

 


London’s population: approximately 7,825,200 people.

Number of these people who are actually automaton constructs: Approximately 5000.

Number of real people who know about them: 0.

Ismoli knew. She didn’t actually care much – it was Sofiel’s (Sophie for short) job to keep an eye on that kind of thing. Issy knew exactly how many of the people she worked with were angels (two). Issy knew how many of those angels cared about the ongoing debate over whether aeroplanes should be introduced into the ranks of the automatons (zero). Issy knew quite a lot of things, but the one thing that she knew was most important was that it was bloody difficult to convince people to hire you when you could only work on Mondays.

It was over this particular dilemma that Issy was fuming over on her Monday morning coffee break. She worked in air traffic control. She looked after the ‘angels of the air’ – hence the debate about planes, which she wanted nothing to do with. It wasn’t her fault that the rules said she specifically had to operate on Mondays.

Her boss, the human one, had been breathing down her neck for a while now. She often caught him grumbling about ‘that equal opportunities bullshit’, which she assumed meant the people in HR had told him very sternly not to try and get her fired unless she did something that was worth being fired over. He would probably spout some of his usual nonsense about the economy next time they brought it up. It made her angry, it really did. She did a really good job, the one day of the week she was allowed to do it. She’d be damned if they laid her off because she couldn’t do it all week.

Her phone buzzed. Probably Friday’s angel, Sarabotes, again, pestering her about their meet-up to pretend to eat on Thursday just to spite him. Really, she was getting sick of her. She would have to apply to the higher powers about changing her job definition. It would be nice to have more job security, too.


Issy sat in her chair listening in tandem to the chatter over the ATC intercom and over London’s angel communications. Ever since London had come back online, she’d been working to make up for lost time. Issy approved of most of it, but she thought that making an angel specifically with the task of finding people connected to wrecking her systems in the first place was taking it a bit too far. London was wireless now, though, which was a bonus. They didn’t need to go back down to the sewer entrances to have a proper chat like they had before. On the negative side, it meant London could find out when you were doing things it would rather you wouldn’t. Like, say, working days you weren’t meant to.

Bloody London.


~Ismoli is active.
~Charbiel is active.
~Charbiel: Hey, Is. Got a minute?
~Ismoli: No. Why?
~Charbiel: *eyeroll* Thanks for that. Was wondering if you’d sign this petition for me.
~Ismoli: The global warming thing again? Jeez, Charlie, can you say ‘fixated’?
~Charbiel: Hey, some of us want to do our jobs properly. So, c’mon, will you sign it? You’d be the first angel to say no.
~Ismoli is inactive.
~Charbiel: ...Bugger.


Issy enjoyed the coffee and books mornings that her local bookshop did on Thursdays. Not because of the coffee, she didn’t drink the stuff. It wasn’t really because of the books, although it had introduced her to some good stuff over the months. No, mostly it was because she had an excellent and perfectly legitimate excuse to turn off her phone for an entire morning, so she didn’t have to listen to sodding Castiel bitch at her about her attempts to do her job.

She was spending her time glaring daggers at the girl on the till’s bag, which had one of the various TV versions of her tormenter emblazoned across it (nobody ever used her, of course), when she was nudged by a concerned member of the book group circle. They were reviewing a book about a sorcerer and some angels that day. She’d liked the book. So had London, who saw everything they did, but that was probably only because she had been the real main character in it. That was the only reason she’d liked that book about the man who got stuck under London, too. She was such an attention seeker.

“Uh, yeah. I thought it would’ve been better with proper chapters,” she suggested lamely, wondering how long after the group finished she could get away with leaving herself inactive. She’d had a tough week. She’d been arguing with London about workdays. Heck, if it wasn’t for the fact that she didn’t eat and didn’t need much in the way of electricity, she would probably have been struggling to pay rent, too. Not that she really needed a house, but she didn’t want to keep all her clothes in a box, now, did she?

Issy’s weeks were all like that, though, to be fair.


~Ismoli is active.
~Castiel is active.
~Castiel: Hey, Ismoli.
~Ismoli: Oh, bugger off, Cass.
~Castiel: Screw you too. Anyway, I was talking to .
~Ismoli: And?
~Castiel: Well aren’t you impatient? Anyway, he says you can have his work-work. He thinks it gets in the way of the admin anyway.
~Ismoli: ...You’re pulling my leg.
~Castiel: That would only be painful for both of us. Besides, it’s not like London cares.
~Ismoli: That’s not what she told me!
~Ismoli: But, uh...
~Ismoli: Thanks, I guess.
~Castiel: Sure. Oh, and tell Sarabotes that I don’t want to go to that thing she’s organising, if she gets it into her head to invite me. I’m busy that day anyway.
~Ismoli: Uh... sure.
~Castiel is inactive.

---

Charbiel was an old angel. Not as old as the crazy ones that liked to try and chop up scrap cars because they didn’t know anything other than chopping, but still pretty old. He didn’t have the robotics to play human like some of the young ‘uns, and he didn’t have the street smarts to compensate like Mick did. Besides, he was far too... round for most of the street-savvy people to take seriously.

Charlie, like quite a lot of the angels, had a really crappy job.
The thing was, he would’ve enjoyed it if it had actually been within the realms of possibility. Because of his ‘disability’, he spent most of his time manipulating people on the internet into doing things for him, but so far it had proved to be a rather difficult task.

Charlie’s job was collecting water. All of the water. From everywhere. And then doing something with it, London had never really been very clear on that one. He’d started out just draining water in the sewers when there was a blockage, but ever since the unearthing London had been spending far too much time getting other angels to do research, so now he had to do a lot more than just unblock the tunnels occasionally.

And she hated him. Really, really hated him. And, well, he’d tried to reason with her that his job was to get rid of excess water, so really a giant pile of debris wasn’t in his remit, but London wasn’t having it. He supposed it explained his extra workload, but sometimes he really did consider just cutting his losses and leaving for somewhere far away, preferably without any access to the ‘net so London couldn’t get the young ‘uns to berate him about his laziness. Zambia, maybe. Or somewhere that wouldn’t rust him within a few weeks, or... somewhere that would that he could get himself fixed in.

The problem with London was that she was snappy. Nagging. Persistent. ‘Why haven’t you collected all the water yet Charlie?’ or ‘Have you made a start on the water yet Charlie?’ and ‘Charlie, I need you in tunnel 1B again.’ Really, after all his years of hard work he had expected at least a thank you, especially since he’d kept on draining the tunnels even when London was inactive. Women, he reasoned, were ungrateful. Ungrateful and paranoid.

At least he didn’t have an appearance to keep up, he supposed. London pretty much expected sub-par from Charlie. He wasn’t like some of the new ones, who tried to be human, who needed to (or wanted to!) hold down real work to keep up the sham. He just thought it was silly, although he didn’t really tell them that. He needed all the friends he could muster, after all.


~Charbiel is active.
Have you made a start on your project yet, Charbiel?
~Charbiel: I’m doing my best.
Your best doesn’t seem to be much good at the moment, Charbiel.
~Charbiel: Well, just give me a few more months. Or maybe years. Water doesn’t just move itself, you know, and this isn’t small scale any more.
But I want a plan, Charbiel.
~Charbiel is inactive.
Oh, stop sulking, Charbiel.
It’s for your own good.

---

Admin, Sophie reasoned, had been invented to give bored people something to do. Sophie enjoyed admin. Many people looked at her like she was crazy when she informed them of this, but there it was. Admin filled the hours. Admin was not exactly fun, but you could learn all kinds of things doing admin. Doing admin was the difference between spending your nights sitting inactive and grumbling about silly things and spending them being productive.

The problem Sophie had, you see, was that she was not in entirely the right conformation to spend her nights doing much else. Cedar had described her as a ‘glorified dust mite robot’. Sophie described him as ‘that Southern asshole’.

The problem was, he was right. Sophie was two inches long if she stretched out. Sophie’s job was to run data. Sophie was not the angel of having a social life. Not that he was much better off than her, in fairness.

So Sophie, the dust mite automaton, did admin for London.

Sophie knew about people. Sometimes Sophie hitched a ride on the shoulders of one of the more human angels so she could get a better look at people, too. She recorded Things About People, and had on record information about every human being that had existed in London since she was built. Not stored within her personally, but in London. She had to admit, it was a lot easier to look at the archives since London’s upgrade.

And she liked people. They were interesting. Maybe it was just the way she was built, to find looking at facts about everyone interesting, but she really did like it. She especially liked learning about marriages. In fact, when she wasn’t archiving, she liked to get one of the human angels (usually Issy) to stream romantic movies for her. It was nice, when people found other people, although she had once written down the names of the people in the film in her database by mistake. That had been embarrassing.
London didn’t mind it, though. Sometimes she watched the films, too.

Sophie thought she was one of the few angels who had been pleased when London had come back online. The upgrade, people called it. It had been helpful, to have more widespread access to things. She’d felt like some out of date little computer, plugging away at information but only achieving things in the manner of an abacus racing a calculator. Now she could get things done properly, and it was so much easier to let London know, too. Besides, London liked Sophie, because she didn’t complain. That was the problem with their autonomy. Lots of them complained. Especially Fat Charlie. But London didn’t like him very much anyway.

But what else was a little bug-angel supposed to do but work? Besides, it was ok if she enjoyed it. Except when the humans tried to throw her out. That wasn’t fun at all.

But that wasn’t London’s fault, was it?

Oh god I already hate this ;-;

---

She was the death of him.

He laid out the pictures on the rough carpet floor, at first in neat rows, then jumbled with a curse and a frown. She hated order. Chaos, that was what she wanted. For nothing to be fixed in time or place. Wild, like she was. Unpredictable.

He scratched the back of his head idly as he looked at the pictures, slowly sorting them into two piles, yes and no. Every time he brushed his fingers over the surface of the pictures, he remembered.

She was his storm.

Like lightning, a shock to his system that had almost been terminal. Here, their first meeting, a horribly stiff set-up photograph of the whole squad together, with obligatory smiles plastered on their faces. She’d been resisting the urge to grin and salute, she’d told him. Reverently mocking the system. Here, a photograph taken sneakily by a friend of his as she grabbed his hand and pretended they were together. The grin on her face mischievous.

She was the spark of life.

He’d put this picture to one side because half of it was motion blur, but on a whim he picked it back up again and considered it. She was jumping and waving, at what he couldn’t remember any more. It was hard to make out her features in it, but at the same time it was very her, wasn’t it? He put it back in the yes pile, then hauled the board out from behind his desk and let it fall to the floor by his piles with a thunk. Two feet by three, not even enough for a quarter of the pictures he had; not enough space for a fraction of the stories she could tell. He was afraid that he would ruin even this.

She was the most wonderful thing he’d known.

Carefully, pausing every so often to stand back and squint at the board from a distance, he began to put the pictures on the board. Just like he had on the carpet, they were disordered and random, although he left enough space at the top to fill in a title. He didn’t like the white space left by the gaps between the photographs, but he didn’t want to hide so much of even his no pile to use them as filler. With a faint smile, he took a pencil and outlined the positions of the photographs, then pushed them all to one side and began to draw.

She was his muse.

He drew a field in summer, long, green grass and white daisies poking up from the soil. In the distance rose a row of trees, backing on to a road that wasn’t shown. In the field stood a man, his head obscured by the line of a photograph. From the sky, a woman – her – was mere feet from the ground, a parachute billowing out above her, her legs bent ready to hit the floor. Never actually making land; she would have liked that. He got out his paints and brought the drawing into vibrant colour.

She was alive in the stroke of the brush.

He took a photograph of the painting, for posterity, then attempted to put the pictures back. He’d painted over the lines, absorbed in his work as he was. That was foolish, but he could arrange the pictures anew now. Create another, better picture of her, who she was, what she was like.

She was the Rose of Versailles.

A female warrior in a world of men. A fighter for change in things that people would say she had no part in. Beautiful, but deadly. Sharp as the blade of a sword, prickly as the thorns on the stem, the petals of her soul opening out into a elegant flower. When he breathed in, he imagined he could still smell her scent, that alluring musk that he couldn’t put a name to. No photograph could really capture her, that spirit that flew on faerie wings; made trouble and healed hearts.

She was all the life he had.

He pressed the last of the photographs into place, briefly overwhelmed by the smell of drying glue and paint until he stood and went to the window, opening it wide and breathing in deep of the cool outside air. He looked down at the pavement below, its only inhabitants the dead leaves that lay still in gutters, then to the bottle on his desk. It was done now, his picture of her, not that it captured anything near the life she had. Slowly, he shook his head, and put the bottle in the nearest drawer.

She was the hole in his heart, but there would be something else to fill it.

He left the title out, letting the sky he’d painted speak for her instead.

Timed writing exercises are incredibly hard for me as I tend to end up producing stream-of-consciousness gibberish. I still did this timed, however, and once the initial idea had morphed into this it settled into quite a nice flow to the end.
So I'm quite surprised with how... coherant this is, basically.
That said, I hate the rushed, blunt ending.

---

40: Write for 10 minutes using "I used to think" as your starter.

I used to think that the noise was something that everyone heard.
Music, deep and beautiful music. I would stand outside and listen with a smile, and I would think, ‘isn’t it wonderful, that we can live in a world where we can hear this music?’

But then I began to ask people about the music. ‘Do you hear the music?’ I would say. ‘Don’t you think it is particularly beautiful tonight?’ And they would look askance at me as if I were mad, or a fool, or both.

I used to think that the light of the stars was sewn there, little lanterns hung on a dark blue canvas canopy to light the way of those who journeyed in the darkness. That there was something that swam between the lights and checked to make sure that they were working, and that every time I saw a shooting star that caretaker was carrying a new bulb to a lantern in danger of going out.

I used to think that the trees were speaking to each other. I heard the leaves rustled and the branches creak, and I would sit atop the stubby tree in my back garden and try to decipher their language. I told my parents that when I were older I would be the first tree interpreter, and that I would broker deals between the forests and the people who worked within them.

I used to think that the rivers that ran through the world would do better as roads than tarmac. I thought that we could do with cars for the water. My father built me a little toy boat, and I would sail it down the stream near my house, and wonder that people no longer went that way. I enjoyed the babbling sounds the water made, the rush of water flowing past me, a force of nature so strong and so inherent that it had shaped landscapes and countries for millennia, and would continue to do so until all of the water dried up.

I used to think that it was a shame when the clouds blocked out the stars at night, but during the day I would lie on my back and stare up at the sky and make pictures out of the clouds. I pictures great battles between the rolling, white shapes, that this one was the head of a dragon, a great war machine, and this was a huge turtle, the defences that not even a dragon’s teeth could crack. Sometimes I saw fleetingly in the shapes things that I had met and seen die, and I thought that the sky was a battlefield of souls, and that when they fell they would continue on to another place.

I used to think that thunderstorms were the greatest thing to ever occur. When the rain began to pour with the crack of thunder I would don my plastic anorak and my wellington boots and rush outside, and then I would simply stand and look up at the sky in wonder, marvelling at the beauty and majesty of the raw, vicious force of nature’s creation. My parents would scold me, as I would always be sodden to the skin, dripping wet and cold by the time I either returned inside or was dragged within it. But why take an umbrella? Why protect yourself from the very power you admire? Besides, it would only invite the lightning to visit closer than were safe.

I used to think that the birds talked to me. They would sit upon the fence and tilt their heads and sing beautiful songs, in tune with the music that whispered through the wind to reach my ears. I thought that they were singing for me, that they were composing between themselves a wonderful symphony in celebration of life and light and the world, and that things were alive within it. That they would then take flight upon such tiny, fragile wings and lead a short but fulfilled life, happy simply in being.

I used to think that these things were true, and people told me they were not. I used to think that maybe they were correct, that it was only my naivety and my youth that led me to think such things. But I still heard them, and I still thought such things were true.

I used to think that I was alone in my thoughts.

Then I found the rest of the druids, and knew that what I used to think was perfect truth.

A short featuring two established characters from the Legacy of the Ancients 'Verse once more. This was written because I promised my LotA co-writer, Sventhecrusader, a oneshot if he managed to fulfil a set of writing tasks. Against all expectation, he managed it. So here this is, at his request!

---

“We shouldn’t be here.”

Vergil glanced up to see his student, Lucia, stood straight with her arms folded, an irritable expression on her face. That was not a particularly unusual stance to see Lucia in, and Vergil was not particularly perturbed.

“It is where we have been ordered to,” he pointed out, voice quiet, before looking back at the scroll in front of him. Lucia made an irritable noise. She had probably spat. She walked a very thin line between being irritable and crass some days.

“That’s not what I meant,” she replied, sitting down in front of him and putting her hands over the scroll so he couldn’t read instead of pay attention to her. “I meant we shouldn’t be here, with ‘here’ being the nebulous concept of ‘on the wrong side’.” Vergil raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. “You and I both know that you don’t believe in this,” Lucia muttered, her voice softer now, as if she had only just realised that there might be people listening who would be less than pleased with what she had to say. “And that you’re only here because of Tobias ‘asshole’ Skywing, who for some reason you seem to think it’s a good idea to listen to.”

“You are mistaken,” Vergil told her softly. Technically, he was lying to her. But she had never been very good at working out when he was lying. “But you are free to leave if you so desire. I am not in control of you.” Lucia made a frustrated noise, taking her hands violently from the scroll and getting to her feet.

“Don’t be stupid,” she grumbled. “I’m happy here.” Vergil made a slight, amused noise.

“Of course,” he returned softly, and Lucia turned and stormed out of the room.

---

It hadn’t always been that way.

It had been nothing more than happenstance that had brought the half-elf and the Dicarsan together. Vergil found himself in the unenviable position of being a graduate of the Orios Academy with his former home closed to him, his mother’s home only presenting an opportunity to waste his talents away in the sticks of Grandas, and Lucia had been... wandering. At the time Vergil hadn’t known much about the Dicarsan but had still thought her to be too young to be out in the world, and after she turned fire on him as he attempted to approach her, an idea had struck him: Teach her.

There were two common courses for mages to take in Gaia. The first was to complete what training they felt was necessary then take up a job with the talents they had. Firelighters, healers, shapers; people skilled in one element or all of them could find a job in most cities of the world. The second, the one that allowed their talents to continue to grow beyond what their tutor could teach them, was to take on a student of their own.

Vergil had always had a talent for magic. Both of his parents, his magical father and his decidedly magically disinclined mother, had told him that he could be whatever he chose to be – his father had the resources to give him such and, despite Vergil’s half-blood lineage and his father’s own importance, was willing to give it to him. Vergil had chosen magic, his father had taught him, and for a long time he had thought that would be that.

Except it hadn’t.

And his father couldn’t teach him any more, and the Academy couldn’t teach him any more, but he was nowhere near his father’s level. He never would be, he knew that, but he wanted to continue to train. To grow. Even after his graduation he had made that his goal.

Teach her.

---

“Please, hold your fire,” Vergil suggested, a shield of water up around him that made his voice sound odd and echoing. The young Dicarsan narrowed her eyes.

“So you can come in and stab me? I think not,” she responded, fire still building around her hands. She was unrefined, but had clear talent.

“I carry no weapon,” Vergil disagreed, holding open his navy-blue cloak to show her blurry proof of that. She raised an eyebrow.

“Well then you’re just dumb,” she decided. She relaxed her stance slightly, although the fire didn’t disappear from her hands. “Who are you and why do you give a damn?” Vergil chose that point to drop his shield, which soaked the ground around him, although he was more than ready to replace it if necessary.

“My name is Vergil Tallin,” he responded. “And you attempted to set me on fire.” The girl grimaced.

“Best defence is a good offence,” she rebuked, still regarding him with distrust. Vergil chuckled.

“In some cases,” he acknowledged with a nod of his head. “But your assault was unrefined... raw.” He held up a hand as she raised the fire once more, offended anger rising in her eyes. “You are untrained, yes?” he assumed. The girl made an angry noise.

“May as well be,” she grumbled. “What’s it to you, Mr I-Don’t-Need-To-Chant-To-Make-A-Shield?” Vergil smiled faintly, although it was tinged with more than a little ruefulness.

“I am a mage, like you,” he informed her, and her expression told him that stating the apparent was not a wise route to go down around her. “But I have been trained. Practised, for many years. Perhaps longer than you have been alive.” Her scowl was replaced with a look of interest, and she seemed disappointed when her eyes went to his ears and found them entirely without points. “I can help you hone that skill,” he finished. The fire around her hands went out, although he suspected it was more because she was running out of energy than that she had dropped her distrust.

“Why should I believe you?” she demanded. Vergil reached into his robes, an action that made her put her hands up defensively once more, and took out an amulet.

“Here,” he told her, throwing it to her. She caught it, looking at it in bemusement. “I will not press you for an answer here,” he continued. “If you believe I am being truthful, I will be in Brendall until the end of the week. Ask for me there.” The girl continued to look from the amulet to him in bemusement and distrust, so he turned on the spot and walked away.

He kept one hand at his side, ready to form a shield, just in case.

---

He waited for four days. Each day he did not expect her to come. He was not disappointed, he had expected it, but part of him was a little saddened for being correct.

On the fifth day, there was a knock on the door to his room at the Inn, and he opened it to find the Innkeeper.

“Girl downstairs asking for you,” he remarked, his expression implying that whatever Vergil was up to, it was probably not legal and he should be ashamed of himself. Vergil ignored that, simply nodding his head and following the man downstairs.

It was her, stood at the bar and generally scowling at everything. She turned the scowl on him as he approached, and it did not modulate even a little.

“Not here because you asked nicely,” she informed him bluntly. “You’re more likely to get robbed than me on the road, and I hate being in debt to people.” She held out the amulet to him, the scowl increasing in intensity when he refused to take it.

“Keep it,” he informed her quietly. “You may pay me back by being a good student.” The girl snorted in amusement, before looking at the amulet thoughtfully.

“So how many hours is it worth?” she inquired. Vergil made a soft noise, not sure it was wise to put a solid number on it. He didn’t even know how much it was worth, it had been a present from his mother. In hindsight it would probably be better not to tell her that he had given it away.

“We shall see,” Vergil responded simply. “Would you be so kind as to give me your name?” The girl shrugged.

“Lucia Dorvian,” she responded. “Not that it’ll mean anything to you.” Vergil nodded once.

“Lucia,” he repeated. It occurred to him, as he watched her turn a stare that was almost literally burning on a bar patron who was openly eyeing her up, that he may have made a mistake.

---

Vergil stood in the ruins of Skywing, watching as a nearby troop of guards assisted a harried civilian with repairing his home. Lucia stood beside him, scowling as she always did.

“We shouldn’t be here,” she muttered, but she didn’t move. Vergil smiled slightly.

“I know,” he acknowledged. “You are free to leave, if you so desire.” Lucia made a slight noise.

“Don’t be stupid,” she murmured, looking a little rueful. “I’m happy here.” His smile didn’t fade.

“Of course,” he returned softly, and she took his hand.

Bahahaha, oh Tiger of Wu, your prompts are amazing one and all.
This would have been longer, but it was getting late and I owed things for the NDL, so I cut some planned stuff out of the middle. I'm not sure if it suffers for that or not.

---

33: "Toys, assemble! Thanks to the recon of Gizmo and the Mogwai we have discerned where Billy and Timmy live. They have bullied our Kathy for long enough; tonight, we strike back!"

Billy and Timmy were small boys with equally small hearts.

Kathy’s guardians saw this, and they did not like it.

Hidden among the regular toys were a dozen decidedly irregular toys. Kathy didn’t know this. She probably would not have liked it if she had. But they were there, and they wanted her to be happy. In fact, that was why they were there. To make her happy.

When Billy and Timmy were around, she was not happy. This ran directly counter to the purpose of the Irregulars, and they had had enough.

There were far more Irregulars than the ones that looked after Kathy. A brief petition was more than enough to secure them the help they required.

“Toys, assemble!” the leader of the Irregulars, a small, stuffed puffin, declared. They assembled around the upturned box their leader was stood on, their helpers behind him. “Thanks to the recon of Gizmo and the Mogwai,” and he nodded to the toys behind him, “we have discerned where Billy and Timmy live.” An undercurrent of hatred ran through the Irregulars at the mention of the two boys. Limbs shuffled on the floor as toys stopped themselves from speaking out of turn by fidgeting and clenching fists. “They have bullied our Kathy for long enough,” the puffin continued, his tone dark and unforgiving. “Tonight, we strike back!” The cheer was subdued, as was necessary for toys in a room where a young girl slept. The puffin nodded to the toys behind him once more, and jumped from his podium. The Irregular known as Gizmo took his place.

“We will lead you to their abode,” he told the Irregulars. His voice was soft and smooth, speaking of rebellion and attack with a calm, gentle voice. His hands he held clasped in front of him, and to any child he would have been perceived as cute, or perhaps adorable. The look on his face, the slow frown and the cold eyes, spoke of anything but. “We will wait outside. We will stay either until you return or until an hour before dawn, whichever comes soonest.” He ran his eyes over the assembled Irregulars, assessing them. His stance didn’t change, and they assumed they had not been found wanting. “Remember our Code. Tread carefully within the house.” A murmur of assent went up from the Irregulars, and then the toys began to move.

---

There were some very unique problems associated with Irregulars getting anywhere unnoticed.

Their size – in most cases – allowed them to hide in places people couldn’t, but at the same time if someone noticed them they were never dismissed the way a person may be. And getting into places designed for people of a certain size was also particularly difficult. An Irregular’s gift to infiltration was a house with a pet.

Billy and Timmy were unfortunate enough to have at least one cat.
Inside the house, it was quiet and still. A ladder of Irregulars took one of them level with the alarm box, which they deactivated with the code Gizmo had given them. This done, they began their infiltration fully.

Irregulars had one code and one code only: they would never harm a human physically. For most of them, due to their nature, it was near-impossible to do regardless, for some it was self-preservation, in other cases mere decency. Regardless of the reasons, an Irregular who broke that code was not tolerated. There were stories told among young Irregulars of the never-seen members of their race whose sole duty was to find those who had broken the code, and Straighten Them Out. Nobody had ever seen them, but that didn’t make them any less real.

So the Irregulars had formulated a plan. The member of their group that Kathy was least likely to miss would stay in the house for a week, rearranging things when the boys weren’t looking, generally making them uncomfortable and paranoid. And as for the night...

Billy and Timmy shared a room. As they slept, as quietly as they could, the Irregulars destroyed anything destroyable. The Irregular that looked like a plastic dragon shredded their stuffed animals with her claws, structures made of blocks were disassembled and the blocks hidden, pieces were removed from puzzles, the square peg was jammed immovably into the round hole. Downstairs in the living room, similar actions were put into motion on the boxes of toys stacked there. The Irregular who could actually hold a pen, a doll, took a permanent marker and scrawled all over their walls.

It was beautiful, silent carnage.

Not a finger was laid on Billy and Timmy though, oh no. No Irregular wished to be Straightened Out. The children may have been cruel, but it was the kind of cruelty the Irregulars were visiting upon them now. Not worth harming anyone over.

There was a single subclause to the Code: Unless the human does so first.

The Irregulars believed firmly in an eye for an eye.

---

Quiet as the animal whose entryway they had borrowed, the Irregulars grouped around their puffin-shaped leader and slipped through the catflap. A pair of reflective yellow eyes watched them as they moved, but the cat knew better than to approach an Irregular.

“Success?” Gizmo asked, his voice as soft as ever. A car rumbled past them, oblivious to the tiny shadows it cast on the pavement with its headlights.

“Phase 1 was carried out without a hitch,” the puffin confirmed. Gizmo smiled slightly.

“Good,” he decided. “I look forward to Phase 2.”

"The faces in New York remind me of people who played a game and lost." - Murray Kempton
You guys have no idea how much I want feedback on this ._. I'll happily give feedback in return or whatever, throw a link into a comment and I'll get to it asap, and also be incredibly grateful forever.

TRIGGER WARNING - frequent discussion of a suicide victim.
Also contains swearing.

---

They buried her today.

I stood in the crowd, all of us dressed in blacks. I straightened my tie nervously as ladies I didn’t know in big, veiled hats exchanged soft, sad words about what a shame it was. How she’d been so brilliant, how she’d had such a full life ahead of her. Ladies that didn’t even know her.

There was a coffin, but there wasn’t much in it. They didn’t open the casket either, like they did sometimes. The man at the funeral home had said there was a limit to how much they could make fit for viewing, and I didn’t really blame him for not even trying.

“This sucks,” Cindy told me. We were sat at one of the cheap metal tables they roll out for occasions like this, both of us with a glass of alcohol in our hands. I hadn’t asked if it was wine or something else. Didn’t care.

“Yeah,” I agreed, tone muted. We exchanged a look, Cindy’s eyes heavy and ringed, her face lined in stress like a mirror of my own. Together, we drank. It was white wine, dry, about a 4. She would have liked it.

---

Living in New York was more like living the grind than living the dream. You could tell who worked there and who was a tourist just by looking at the faces on the subway. The ones with the bright eyes and the hopeful faces, who talked and adjusted backpacks and hung around in groups of four or five, they were the tourists. The ones with the same sort of look, that wore suits instead and made nervous noises, shuffling and looking at their feet and trying not to touch anyone else on the packed train, they were the ones who hadn’t been crushed yet. People like me and Cindy, who stood there in silence, keeping our faces expressionless lest the stress and the weariness show through, we were the ones that belonged to New York. The city that lit up the sky and sucked the soul out of you, with the laws on using your horn because too many people blamed the car directly in front of them for the traffic they were stuck in, with the endless crowds of people who either didn’t know they were being overcharged or were happy to be because, hey, it’s New York. Street hawkers and roads named by number, because the people who built this city had lived in ones where roads wound like snakes, and vowed to make it easier. Except it wasn’t, because the cars still stood in unmoving lanes, grumbling out fumes as their drivers twitched away the urge to hammer the horn and hurl abuse at the driver in front of them.

Me and Cindy were going to be late for work.

“It’s fucked up,” she remarked, getting ready to drive her heel into the toes of the man who looked like he was going to move on eying her up. “It’s like, Jesus Christ, one fuckin’ day. Isn’t enough.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I’d been monosyllabic all journey, voice dull, but even though I’d felt through the apathy that I was being an ass, Cindy hadn’t called me out on it yet.

“Gonna walk in, and nobody’s gonna say ‘hey, Cindy, you feelin’ ok?’, they’re going to be all ‘what you doing late for work again? I’m makin’ a record of it, you hear?’. Fucked up.”

“Yeah,” I agreed once more, tightening my grip on the rail above my head as the train shuddered to a halt at the station. Next one was ours. A voice over the tannoy told us as much, but when you’ve lived in the city for long enough you learn the routes by heart anyway.

“They don’t give a shit,” Cindy finished. Her fingers twitched close to her pocket. She’d only quit a month and a half ago, but I couldn’t blame her for the urge after yesterday.

“Yeah,” I repeated one final time, listening to the doors hiss closed and the automated voice telling us which line we were on, and where we were headed. Some small mercy that it was at the least faster than a taxi, and nobody who actually lived there drove in New York.

---

That weekend, I met Cindy in one of the more respectable food courts around the city, and we sat and had lunch. She had a scowl on her face the whole time, the lines under her eyes now dark and purple, her eyes bloodshot. I could smell smoke on her as she ranted, over the ambient smell of the city. In some parts of New York I’d heard people claim the air had a taste, the sweet and bitter tang of pollution. Here it tasted like cheap Chinese food and kerosene, and I nodded along to Cindy as she grumbled about everything that she thought had gone to hell. I don’t think I said a single word. We parted on the same quiet but friendly terms we always did.

---

I walked down Fifth Avenue and stood at the intersection with West 34^th street, and looked up at the building that towered above me. In the daylight, it was dirty white and speckled with windows. At night, it was black and lit up with blocks of orange and white like a beacon. Sometimes they changed the colours of the floodlights at the top. Light up the top of the building; red, white and blue, God bless America.

I scuffed my dirty trainers on the pavement. Clean, pretty damn clean. It wasn’t the first time I’d come here, since she’d died. Couldn’t believe it at first, really. I’d wanted to stand there and feel that there was a difference, that something had changed when she’d gone, but nothing had. New York went on, it didn’t care that one more had been lost in its vast embrace. A thousand, a million feet beat out its streets every day of its existence, and there would be another pair of feet to replace hers yet. Probably already had. New York moved on fast.

I walked inside. Paid the exorbitant price for a ticket to the top, handed my bag over to be rummaged through by a man in case I was a terrorist and I’d been stupid enough to put a bomb in it. I stayed quiet; he handed my bag back to me on the other side with a grunt.

It was a Saturday and it was the afternoon, so the queue was long and spiralled up and down most of the floors. I didn’t mind. I started counting steps, got my little diary out of my bag and wrote down the number whenever the line paused on a flat floor. Smiled to myself every time I broke another hundred. In front of me, a group of tourists were trying to shush those of their number who were complaining loudly about the wait, grumbling at the line. Their accent put them at European, I guessed Italian. Behind me was another group, a quiet one. When they did speak they identified themselves as British. Some people in New York loved tourists, they’d listen to them for hours just to hear their accents. Marvelled at the way people who spoke the same language could sound so different from us. I hadn’t felt that wonder for a while now, though. Too busy just trying to get by.

I rode up in the fast elevators with half of the complaining Europeans, who had now stopped complaining because they hadn’t yet realised there was still a while yet to the top. It was less than a minute up to the 80^th floor. Quick, but safe. I’d heard a lady once survived falling 75 floors in one of those elevators. She was lucky.

I continued up the stairs, still counting, as the noisy Europeans opted for the second set of elevators. They were being loud in the gift shop when I reached it, but I ignored them and walked out onto the observation deck.

There are one thousand, eight hundred and sixty steps from the street level to the 102^nd floor of the Empire State Building. It took only one to get back to street level.

I wrapped my hand around one of the tall, metal bars that served to prevent people falling. From jumping. I wondered how the people around me would react if I vaulted them, as if to jump. Would they try and stop me? Would they have the time to? The fencing was twice as high as I was. It was a lot further down to the ground. I looked down, but I couldn’t see the street. One thousand, eight hundred and sixty steps, she’d taken. And up here, number sixty-one had been the last one she’d ever taken.

I hadn’t come to jump, though. I missed her, but not enough to try and join her. Instead, I tore the counting page from my diary and held it in my fingers, watching it flutter and strain in the strong winds that were endemic as high up as I was. I stood there, watching it, and then let go. Almost immediately, it was lost from my sight. As my eyes tracked where it might have flown, I smiled faintly.

I took the elevators back down. That queue was always far shorter than the one to get up to the deck, without fail. I supposed that was the nature of waiting. It seems endless to get where you want to go, then when you get there, the way out is advertised in bright neon, the way clear to walk. The Europeans were still arguing in the hallway as I passed.

Walking out of the building, I went and stood on the sidewalk once more, looking down at the concrete. Here was where she’d landed, but all I’d had was an email about it. Cindy had the right of it when she called it fucked up.

My phone buzzed, so I rummaged in my jacket pockets until I found it and looked at the caller ID. Speak of the devil.

“Hey,” I greeted, wondering if the sound would be lost in the ambience of New York, despite how close the phone was to my face. There was a pause, just long enough for me to start to worry.

“Hey,” Cindy replied eventually. I didn’t know what to say. Probably something about how it had only been a few hours. “Andy called. Wants to know if you want to do some drinking tonight, eight at his place.” I made a neutral noise.

“Why?” I asked. Another pause.

“I don’t even fuckin’ know,” she admitted. “Get trashed, forget about her, regret the hell out of it in the mornin’ when you wake with a bitch of a hangover. You game?” I laughed softly at that, which made Cindy make a surprised noise down the phone.

“Sure,” I agreed. “Get trashed, forget about her. See you at eight.” I hung up before she did, then looked up at the sky. It was cloudy. It’d probably rain later, and the men who sold umbrellas that fell apart on the first use for more dollars than they were worth would make a killing off the unfortunate tourists who got caught in it. It was four, maybe four thirty. I had time to kill.

I grinned at the sky, imagining I could still see the steps, floating in space, then looked forwards. Life was too short, I thought, to waste it wondering how her blood had looked pooling in the cracks on the pavement, or why she’d jumped. She wouldn’t want us to go with her.

Hands in my pockets, I took my first step away from where she’d died.

Hi Tseng_Eclipse

quote

“This is a joke,” one of the blue shapes, the first speaker, complained, smacking his hand against the control panel he was stood next to. “And I used to think they couldn’t get worse than what they did to everyone else.”

quote

“Obviously. They’re all dead,” the first one returned wryly. She tried to move her hand but only managed a twitch of her fingers. Desperation began to colour her gaze.

With this line I might put a line break after "wryly." It took me a second to realise the "She" wasn't the first converser but in fact the protagonist, so the break might make it a bit clearer. I know it's something simple and obvious but I stalled for a second haha.

quote

His cursing was long and full of hatred, and he ran over to her and began to do something off to her left. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear the clanging of metal hitting the floor,

Like always this is probably another personal issue, but the phrase "began to do something" seems really vague and I guess slightly amateur? I'm not sure, but I'd personally get rid of that and instead just mention that he was to her left and move straight onto the next sentence, because the next sentence clearly demonstrates he's doing something she couldn't judge. So for instance:

quote

His cursing was long and full of hatred, and he ran over to her left. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear the clanging of metal hitting the floor,

In the small paragraph separated straight after this section, I'd personally put some more details of the journey - where they are, what they're travelling through. You mention the weaponry and the absence of monsters or enemies, so that connotes a place you can expect animals, monsters etc, so outside, wilderness?

quote

Hints of its original purpose crept through in the layout, in the carpets or the ghosts of carpets long torn up, in the occasional hint of wallpaper that crept through a quick, white paint-over.

Two uses of "crept" there, assuming it's not intentional. Really loved everything about this paragraph by the way, the description was tiiiiight.

quote

“From the lab,” he assumed, before her saviours had said anything other than ‘hello, sir’. Deven nodded.

"hello sir" seems really informal for the circumstance - just "sir," possibly?



Didn't notice absolutely anything negative to comment on after that, but there's also the possibility that by that point I was hooked deep and was propelling to the end as quickly as it could come haha. I really loved the pacing throughout; the start is long and drawn, with several interruptions (the dripping), mentioning time and the looking at the watch. It directly juxtaposes the rest of the sections where the events become more succinct and fast, making it more exciting and pushing that urge to continue. Each one explains a useful scene of character building capturing everything it needs to without dragging.

It seems like you're really good with imaginative settings from what I've read and this is exactly the same. Up until the Sammy scene and even despite that, there's a great sense of mystery and you've obviously got us sitting up dying to know what the Dirty actually is. My first inkling was something feral and it screamed werewolf, but I also get the impression Mollie was a Dirty and that would imply that's not the case. I like the name Mollie. There's definitely a lot more to find out, and it'd be great to see it developed. As a full novel I'm not sure if it'd work so compact, but even as a short story I think there's a great amount more to say, but as well as that, I think that ending line is killer so that works out too.

Not much else to say. Again, dialogue seems really natural and character design seems distinctive. Excellent introduction and a read I got caught up on. I should really work my way backwards through the thread.