For Sale

Red, painted lips pressed against the infant’s head, and his mother rose and turned from the still child and left the darkened room.  Her quiet voice hummed a lullaby her own mother used to sing to her, and she walked to her own bedroom to get dressed for work.

Her uniform was already clean and laid out.  She checked her purse to make certain it had all she needed, and then began to change.  A kiss on her shoulder told of her husband’s arrival.  She turned to look at him and smiled at him. “Mind helping me change?” Her wink was flirtatious, and he smiled back at her as he zipped her bright red tube top into place over her chest.  It was a struggle against her large breasts.

 

Narcisism Meets Nerd

Always, that lopsided smile on those thick lips, those lazy, happy eyes, and that mess of hair weakened my knees.  Far from the most masculine man, he was certainly a heart-breaker.  If only he wasn’t my son.

He looked nothing like my husband, but his resemblance to his father was also only faint.  Many people said he looked like me.  I always wondered about that.  Did that make me a narcissist instead of an incestual freak?  Not that it mattered.  Even though I hid how I felt, I was not ashamed.

 

An Unhappy Future

A new home. It was so dull, living with a normal family. His foster parents were irritatingly normal, and they could do nothing to enforce their rules. His foster father refused to call him Vinnie, and his foster mother refused to let him skip the piano lessons she required of him. He was good enough, but his teacher refused to let him advance at his own pace, and after a month, he was still doing scales.

The new home was made all the more miserable by a pre-existing basement and an underground lake not far underneath. He had no place to work, and no place to play– especially not with all of the pine trees around, with their long, thick roots. The boy did manage to install a lock on his bedroom door, and that gave him a modicum of the privacy he once had, although it felt like he was always naked. He was told he had to dress normally– leave his goggles and lab coat home when he went anywhere, brush his hair every day, and even more pointless tasks. Humans just didn’t understand.

 

The History of Lake CLASSIFIED

“I don’t think this is such a good idea.” Vincent frowned as he looked around. “The old quarry is so eerie at night.” His voice trailed off, and he flipped his collar up to protect himself from the light rain that ran down the back of his neck.  It felt like tiny shards of ice.  He looked to one side at his best friend, the younger girl called Melanie. “You should run home, Melanie.”

Melanie shook her head and held his hand, as around them, the six adults kept the two moving inside their circle of bodies.

 

Vincent Vance (Part II)

Continued from Vincent Vance.

It was two years after the worst year of his life, and the only time he was happy was during the government-required summer camp that lasted all of one month out of twelve.  He had friends there, and he felt that at camp, people approved of him.  He was often quiet and stayed to himself, but one older girl had broken through part of his barriers, and he often refused to leave her side.

He even left his own mother in the dust to be with the girl called Mellie, and at camp, he insisted that his name was not Vincent, but Vinnie– to match his best friend.

 

Vincent Vance

Everywhere he looked, Vincent saw that normal humans like his father were rare.  Almost everyone was like his mother– a race called demis.  The demis were a race of semi-divinities with lengthened life spans, an element they could get killed by to give them a third form, and a realm, which gave them a second form and that controlled their lives.

Many of the realms were considered “common”, like grief, happiness, love– the emotional spectrum, and a few others, like children and sex.  Some concretes, elements, and ideas as realms were much more rare.  Magic, mad science, fire– just a few of the realms that were under government protection for the sake of keeping the world from losing its so-precious balance.

 

Royal Princess, Penny Princess

“You can’t catch me, Kelban!” Princess Felice called out to her nanny as she darted through the kitchen door and into the yard.  Fast, slippered feet darted through guards and helpers, and wove through a gaggle of idle serving girls.  She burst from the crowd only to stop in her tracks in front of her stern-looking father.

As the man looked down at her, his frown deepened. “And why is the princess dodging her nanny?” His deep, rumbling voice was filled with disappointment rather than anger, and his daughter winced.

“I’m just playing a game of tag, Daddy,” she answered meekly with a curtsy. “Kelban is right behind me, truly.” Felice looked back in time to watch the dark-skinned man crash into a serving girl who was carrying water.

 

Ice Cream

Mom arrived home in a rush.  Dinner was almost ready– only the rice was left.  I made sure nothing was amiss, other than that, because I knew of a portion of her day already.

Her texts were filled with an unhappy, business-like manner when she informed me that Janelle was having a meltdown and screaming.  Charles was only slightly better.  Strangely enough, Junior was the only one who didn’t have any problems.

 

The Flood

It is always best to start a story at its beginning.

Far away, in lands far beyond the sky, during a time before the people began to count days, there was a fierce storm.  The storm was dark and violent, and many people drowned in the great floods.  Their homes were washed away, and only the people who lived very high on the mountains lived after the storm finally left, and the days were counted.

For fifty years, the water did not go away, and memories of the land below the water faded into old stories.  Another fifty years, and the people thought there were only the rocky places they lived, and forgot there were other people anywhere.  They had no boats and the waters were too deep to swim fearlessly through.

 

Agent Hulo (Part III)

Continued from Agent Hulo (Part II).

Valerio’s introduction to his father’s work was sudden and stressful for the boy.  Nobody believed him when he said that Alvares was his father.  Everyone treated him as though he was just a silly child.  They pitied him and coddled him, and he hated it.  With every shred of his youthful energy, he hated it.  Finally, he walked up to a woman with the name ‘Rodrigues‘ on her coat.

“You!  Tell me about why nobody believes I’m really Alvares’s son!” He puffed his cheeks out, ready for her to turn and laugh at him.