High Urban Fantasy Jazz

A Call

It was a nothing town in the middle of nowhere South Dakota. Carina, population four hundred and three. There was miles and miles of pasture, and then the town, and then miles and miles of pasture. A selection of houses surrounding an intersection that had a grocery store, a gas station, a diner, and a church. It was absolutely the right place to be. Minnie just had no idea why.

“We drove four hours out of St. Paul and you still don’t know why?” Paulette asked. She closed the passenger door of their purple sedan and turned in circles, taking the little town in. “I don’t see nothing. No fires, nobody screaming. People are just…having their day.”

Minnie frowned as she made her own little circle on the other side of the car. Paulette wasn’t wrong. There wasn’t anything going on here. Cars were driving around like they should, people were going in and out of the grocery store. No one seemed distressed. A few people stole glances at them, as they passed. A town this small, they must recognize strangers on sight. Minnie sighed. She had been so sure.

She put her hand back on the car door and opened her mouth to apologize. Stopped.

“There’s something here,” she said. “I can still feel it. There’s some reason to be here.”

Paulette leaned on the car. “Feel it how?”

“Coming into town, it just felt right to be coming in this direction and wrong in every other direction. Almost like a stomach ache, but entirely in my head. Now that we’re here…I don’t know…it’s like anxiety. My skin is kind of crawling, and my heart is going a little too fast, and I just feel like something is wrong…even though I can see it ain’t.”

Paulette didn’t look convinced. “We were on a job in St. Paul.”

“We might have had a lead on a job in St. Paul,” Minnie said. “And we can go back. I just…can we look around? Please? Maybe if I see there’s nothing going on here, I can leave in peace.”

With a sigh through pursed lips, Paulette shrugged her shoulders. “I guess. We drove all the way out here, and it’s another four hours back. Guess we should eat.”

They walked slowly around the intersection, doing a loop around the church before heading for the gas station. There was nothing weird or off or sinister about the church. It was a brick church. Nondenominational. AA meetings in the basement. The gas station was the same. A few pumps, a little shop.

Paulette stopped in the parking, leaving Minnie to get a few yards ahead before she realized.

“Don’t we know this car?”

To Minnie, it was a blue car with two doors and a Nebraska license plate.

“I ‘unno.”

Paulette walked around, trying to look into the car without looking like she was snooping.

“It’s got to be a common car,” Minnie said.

“It is. But I’m sure I’ve seen this one before. I just…I can’t remember where. You still feeling it?”

Minnie considered. “Yes.”

“Fine. It’s freezing out here. Let’s go to the diner and eat.”

Bev’s Diner was kitty-corner to the gas station. Carina was so small the intersection only had a single flashing light hanging in the middle. Minnie and Paulette walked directly across the intersection toward the little parking lot.

The little full parking lot. A vehicle in every spot, and a few lined along the edges of the grass. Three more parked on the side of the road, and they were sure they’d find more in the back.

“Okay,” Paulette said, pointing, “Now that’s weird.

Once they were inside they squeezed into the little space between the door and the front counter. A frazzled waitress with black hair sticking out in every direction power walked past them carrying a tray covered in food and used her free hand to gesture broadly.

“Just sit wherever you can find.”

It didn’t seem like there was any place to find at all. Every table was taken, mostly by groups bigger than the table was supposed to hold. Three people were squeezed into every booth. Some people were standing. The counter was packed with people shoulder to shoulder, looking more like a bar in a college town on a Friday night than a little diner in a sleepy town in the middle of a Wednesday.

“Paulie! Minnie!”

They searched the crowd for who knew them. Paulette found them first and clapped her hands.

“I knew I knew that car.”

Elmer Roundhouse and Jeremiah Jones were in the far corner of the dining room, and the two women had to work their carefully through the crowd, squeezing through chairs and carrying their purses over their heads to keep from pushing the leather into anyone’s faces. Elmer and Jeremiah had a little table for two, and they stood when Paulette and Minnie got close.

“Hell of a thing, huh?” Elmer asked.

Paulette waved at the room behind her. “What are all these people doing here?”

Elmer snorted. “You felt it, too, right? You must have, otherwise you wouldn’t have come.”

“I did,” Minnie said. “We were out in St. Paul, and I woke up and…”

“Just felt like you needed to come here. Not that you knew where here was,” Jeremiah said, nodding. “We were up in Fargo. Felt the same thing.”

Minnie turned and looked at everybody in the little room again. Must have been close to fifty in a diner only meant to hold twenty. All average looking folks. No one she recognized, anyway. Just chatting with their friends, eating. Maybe looking around a little suspiciously. Maybe not. Minnie could have just been seeing what she felt.

“I don’t think they realize it,” Jeremiah said, watching her. “They’re all just travelers, passing through. When they leave, someone else shows up. You want to hear the strange part?”

Paulette snorted. “We haven’t gotten to the strange part yet?”

“We’ve been talking to some of them,” Elmer said through a grin. “Just a little chit chat, get to know you type stuff. That family in the booth by the door? Husband’s a firefighter. Couple next to them, both are nurses. There’s five separate doctors sitting at the tables, and a couple of detectives at the counter. Oh, and over there, all the way at the other end of the diner, is a couple of hunters. Don’t recognize ‘em, just recognize them for what they are.”

Minnie turned from the room back to Elmer and Jeremiah. “Any idea what is actually happening here?”

“Not quite,” Jeremiah said.

“But we have a guess.”

“Someone in this town is calling for help. And they’re calling so loud, they’re drawing in people for hundreds of miles.”

The Interim: A Body of Thieves

A Body of Thieves

Could this lovely old factory, so full of character and charm, really be the same squat, ugly thing Vinnie had walked into for the first time only weeks before? Back then it had loomed above him, like it might fall over and eat him. Today, covered in sunshine and floating in summer heat, it had become a welcoming gentle place, advertising good things. Gentle clouds drifted by above, and birds swooped around the roof. Yes, they were scrawing seagulls instead of chirping blue birds. Yes, one of them almost shit on him. But Vinnie still took them as a good omen.

It had been three weeks since he had first come here, and two and a half weeks since the first payout. The others had taken their envelopes, glanced inside and flipped through the bills quickly to make sure it was all there, and then had put the envelopes away. Their demeanor had been happy, but professional. Vinnie had tried to follow their lead. When Joey handed him the envelope, and it was fatter and heavier than he had thought possible, he had forced his face to stay neutral. As he had opened the envelope, and found that the bills inside were not twenties as he had expected, but hundreds, he had choked back a strangling sound and played it off as a cough. He had only pretended to count, knowing that if he started dealing with numbers any higher than a thousand he was liable to black out. Whatever the amount was, it was surely more than he had expected.

Vinnie had counted when he’d gotten back to his apartment. He’d screamed so loud his neighbor had banged on the paper-thin walls and his landlord had stomped up the stairs. At least he calmed down once Vinnie gave him rent. He’d been afraid of bringing the money to the bank, and afraid of leaving it in his terrible apartment. If there was another job, he told himself, he was moving somewhere nicer. Not too expensive. Just a place without bars on the windows or jiggly locks or drug deals going down in the lobby. He’d put the rest of the money in a frozen TV dinner box and put it back under the three others he had. And then took one out to eat.

It wasn’t quite what he wanted. He had been promised people like him. People who would understand, who would know. It turned out a large amount of money could be enough to take the sting off isolation. And even if he was still alone, he wasn’t exactly isolated.

Duane had invited him out for drinks with the others that day they got their money. They’d all been out together five times since then. Mostly to bars, but once to a loud dance club with lots of flashing lights. He didn’t remember much of that night and had woken up the next morning in the middle of the fountain in Great Dawn Park wearing swim trunks and floaties. Hannah had taken him for coffee. He and Verna had the same taste in movies. The only one he hadn’t seen since was Maggie.

There was some kind of animosity between the rest of them and her. He’d only asked about her once, that first night after they got their payment. They were sitting at the back of a high roller’s lounge, a corner table all for themselves, drinking and smoking. Duane and Hannah and Verna all had fancy cocktails but Vinnie had gotten a light beer because he wasn’t much of a drinker and when he had seen how much they cost he’d almost pissed himself. He had expected the peer pressure that his middle school teachers had all warned him about but none of them seemed to care.

“Is Spirit – uh, Maggie – is she coming out?”

Duane laughed, billowing out smoke from his cigar, while Hannah scowled at the name.

“She wouldn’t dare be seen with the likes of us.”

“Is she…I don’t know…stuck up? I didn’t get that sense.”

Verna lit a cigarette and shook out the match. “She keeps us at arm’s length. Work friends, not friends friends. Never comes out with us. I get it, but it offends these two.”

“I once invited her out for coffee and she told me she’d rather get hit by a train,” Hannah said, pushing her glasses up. “She wants to keep to herself, fine, she doesn’t have to be a mondo-bitch about it.”

That had been it. Maggie had never been brought up again. He was so used to it just being the four of them that as he first walked into their meeting room he didn’t even notice she wasn’t there until Joey looked up from the front of the table and smiled.

“And there’s our Face. Once we have our Spirit we can begin,” he said.

“This better be a good one, chief,” Duane said, leaning back in his chair. “Not that little kid shit like last time.”

Last time was little kid shit? Vinnie thought. He had to focus on pulling his chair back and sitting down to keep from falling over. He pulled his gloves on tighter. He hated getting gaps above the fingertips. They’d only asked above the gloves once. His go-to lie had always been Reynaud’s. Either someone knew what that was, and bought it, or they didn’t know but it sounded medically-significant enough that they’d stop asking. The irony was he did have Reynaud’s.

“What do you take me for? That last one was a last-minute smash and grab job. The point was to audition our new member here. You’ll get your payout this time, I promise.” Joey looked at the watch on his wrist and grumbled. “Where the hell is she?”

Half a second later the door swung open. Maggie came in, looking just the same as she had the first time they’d met right down to the sunglasses. A twinge of distaste soured Vinnie’s stomach. If his new friends didn’t like her, why should he?

“Thank you for joining us,” Joey said, sounding like a high school teacher. “Take off those sunglasses. I don’t want you falling asleep again.”

Maggie slid into her seat at the other end of the table. With great reluctance, she took the sunglasses off and put them on the table. They all stared at her.

“Where did you get that?” Hannah asked, her voice breathless.

Maggie shook her head. “Get what?”

Duane frowned at her. “The black eye and the fat lip. You doing my job?”

“It’s nothing.” She looked up to find Joey glaring at her from across the table. “It’s nothing. I’m not a Face or a Smile. No one’s supposed to see me, so no one’s going to care.”

They all looked to Joey. Joey stared at Maggie. After some time caught in this tableau, Joey sighed and rubbed his hands together.

“Okay, so. Hope you all packed your bags, because we are doing a good old fashioned train job.”

Previous Next

Honestly, It’s Hot Enough in Florida Without the Sun

It was so bright out by the time Honey busted through the door onto the motel roof she thought he was already dead.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” she muttered to herself, scanning. She had gotten turned around on her way up. Which way was east? The sky in the direction she was facing seemed darker, though even all the way to the horizon it was becoming a light blue. Panting, heart racing, she went around the stairs, hand holding onto the little building for support.

“Ah!” she yelled in relief, doubling over. He was alive, sitting on the edge of the roof. Beyond him, sunrise was threatening but hadn’t actually gone through with it yet. She had minutes.

A wave of nausea hit her and she stayed double over, head near her knees, nails digging into the stucco for support. She dry heaved. Spat. Tried to get the nausea to go down. I don’t have time for this. The second it began to recede she stood up and began across the roof. Honey wanted to run but all of her muscles were fire.

Shaun should have noticed her by now. She hadn’t exactly been quiet. But still he sat on the hip-height wall of the roof, legs dangling over the alley four stories below. He was facing east. Waiting for the sunrise. As she got closer, came around to his side, she saw the look on his face. Tranquil. Or checked out. Honey knew. Still panting, she put a hand on the wall near him to see if he would notice. When he didn’t move – and truly he was like a stone, not a twitch or a flinch – she put a hand on his shoulder.

“Shaun?”

The look on his face shifted a bit, and his shoulder twitched under his hand. He didn’t take his eyes from the east. This cheap motel was right on the water, and directly east of them was just the shimmering white line between ocean and sky. No sun yet, but close enough she could see the exact spot where it would rise above the water.

“Hi, Honey,” he said. His voice was peaceful. Bland. Barely sounded like him at all.

Honey swallowed hard, and glanced down at all the empty air below them. She shifted back, away from the wall a bit, now that he knew she was here. She hadn’t been able to do anything the last time she had seen this. She still wasn’t sure if this idea was even going to work.

“What are you doing up here, Shaun?” she asked. She pronounced her words deliberately, hitting the consonants like a stage actor. She had one chance and not much time.

Shaun smiled. “Waiting for the sunrise. I think it’s soon.”

“It is soon. Very soon. Why are you waiting for the sunrise?”

That got a casual shrug out of him. Still his eyes were glued to the east. That spot on the horizon was getting brighter.

“I haven’t seen it in such a long time. A nice lady named Seraphina told me to. She had purple eyes.”

Witch. I fucking knew it.

Honey’s eyes were going back and forth between the horizon and Shaun.

“Why haven’t you seen it in a long time?”

Shaun didn’t answer, only continued to stare dreamily. She put a hand on his shoulder again, and squeezed.

“Shaun, why haven’t you seen the sunrise in a long time?”

“Because I’m a vampire,” he answered in a matter of fact tone.

“Right,” she said. “And what happens to vampires in the sunlight?”

“They burn and die.” Might as well have been answering questions in science class.

“That’s right, Shaun. So…” She took a deep breath. “What will happen to you if you see the sunrise?”

There were a few seconds where nothing changed. In that few seconds Honey managed to look between Shaun and the horizon about twelve times. On the thirteenth time she looked back to Shaun, she saw that his face was no longer serene and empty and tranquil. He had the beginnings of a frown, and there was a crease between his eyebrows.

“Tell me, Shaun. Tell me right now. What happens to you when the sun comes up?”

“I…I…I don’t know.”

“Nah-ah. That’s bullshit. You do know. And you’re going to say it out loud.”

The frown increased, and the line between his eyebrows gained a friend. He looked like he was trying to wake up. The sun looked like it was inches away.

“I’ll…I will…if the sun comes up I will…”

Shaun shook his head, his hands clutching his temples like he’d just developed a headache. Maybe he had. He looked up at Honey sideways through squinting eyes, looking at her for the first time.

“Honey? Where did you come from?”

Except there wasn’t any time left to answer. There wasn’t any time left at all. The first sliver of deadly yellow light had come up over the blue. It was shining in her eyes, blinding her. Crawling down her face as it rose higher. Shaun was sitting. He was a little below her, and the sun had not reached him yet. But it would soon. And not minutes soon. Seconds.

There wasn’t enough time to explain. There wasn’t enough time for anything.

Except one thing.

“Just try to remember we’re friends,” Honey said.

Shaun got half a second to look even more confused than he already was. Honey put her hands on his back and used all of her strength to push. If he hadn’t been confused and weak it never would have worked. He would have stopped her, or held on. But he was both of those things, so away he went, sliding off the little wall and down into the alley. The dark alley, shaded by the equally cheap motel next door. Honey watched him go down, missing the sun by inches, legs and arms flailing. Honey thought it was sort of funny until he hit the pavement and his head popped like a cherry tomato.

She stared at his unmoving body for a few seconds, breath held. The heat had grown immeasurably and she was starting to sweat.

After ten full seconds, his body was still there and not a pile of dust.

“Well, thank God for that,” she said, and headed back for the stairs.

It’s Always Nice to Make New Friends

A Room in a Mountain

The airlock door hissed and began opening, startling him awake. He winced, waiting for the shooting pains to wrack him. Instead of pain, it was just itchy. Maybe a little ticklish. Experimenting with moving his arm, he breathed a sigh of relief. He had begun to believe he’d never be able to move freely again.

The door finished its process and swung open on what had to be some well-oiled hinges. The door probably weighed half a ton, literally, yet opened by itself, smooth as butter. He expected a nurse in another cutely patterned hazmat suit. Instead, he got a tall woman in a dark gray suit. She stood just inside the doorway, studying him. For the first time he felt naked in his blue-checked cloth gown. Everything about her was stern, from the sharp cut of her short black hair to the way she held her chin. Her hands were in her pockets and she leaned back on one heel as she looked at him, black eyes looking straight into his without a hint of embarrassment.

“Well, now I feel underdressed,” he said. “You should have told me you were coming, I would have put on something nice. Wait. You’re not wearing a hazmat suit.”

She gave him a single nod. “Our doctors indicate you’re clear.”

“Clear?”

“No foreign diseases. And you’ve been fully vaccinated for our native ones.”

“That’s what all those jabs were?” he asked, rubbing his arm. Every time a nurse had come in they’d stuck him with another needle.

The woman didn’t move save for raising a single eyebrow. “You didn’t ask?”

“Every time I moved, even to talk, my nerves would light up like the fourth of July. It’s only really worn off this morning.”

She had frowned a little at fourth of July. Just a slight downturn at either end of her lips. But he’d noticed it.

“I apologize for that. The trap was not meant for you.”

His mouth fell open. “I thought it was part of the hole in the sky. You did that to me?”

“Again, we weren’t expecting you.”

They stared at each other for a few seconds. She stood in the same position, barely moving. He wondered if it would be more awkward to begin pulling his blanket over him.

“Don’t you have any questions?” she asked finally.

He threw up his hands. “Lady, I am so in the weeds here, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“Then you won’t mind if I ask some questions first,” she said, moving to the chair between his bed and the airlock door.

“You’re welcome to ask, but I don’t know what I can even tell you.” He wanted very badly to ball his hands into fists and fought it.

The woman sat and adjusted her suit. “What’s your name?”

“I don’t know.”

She glared at him like it was a joke, and he held up his hands.

“I really don’t. I mean, I don’t remember.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Sitting in a bed.”

“I mean, why did you come here?”

“I don’t remember.”

“We were expecting someone else. Where is he? Where is Damon?”

Now he did let his hands clasp into fists, as he sighed with exasperation. “Do you want me to start making shit up? Is that what you want? I could probably tell you a story. But if you want real answers, you’re looking in the wrong place.”

The first sign of emotion played on her face – wide eyes, crinkled brow, and her own short sigh.

“Well, what do you remember?”

“I remember falling from a hole in the sky. That’s the first thing I remember. I don’t remember why I was up there, or why I was falling from it. I remember pain, and lots of it. Let’s see…I remember the fourth of July, I guess. I remember the United States and Kansas, although I don’t remember a city the size of a mountain in the middle of it. Um…I remember what I look like. At least, I’m not surprised when I see my reflection. Oh, I don’t remember how I know this, but I can tell just looking at you you’re a g-man.”

“G-man?” she asked.

“Yeah. You work for the government, right? Some federal bureau or another.”

“How do you know that?”

He wordlessly shrugged. He really didn’t know how he knew. But it felt right. Everything about her – the way she dressed, her demeanor, the way she held her face, even the watch on her wrist – all of it screamed federal agent to him. And he had no idea why.

“Can I ask a question, now?”

The woman held her hands open in front of her.

“What’s your name? I don’t know mine, I may as well know somebody’s.”

A hint of a smile, and then it was gone. “You can call me Agent Park.”

He smirked, leaning back on the bed. “FBI?”

“No. FBG.” He looked back at her, and her eyebrow raised again. “Federal Bureau of Gateways. This isn’t your world, Mr. Whoever You Are. Maybe it’s so similar you haven’t noticed, or maybe it’s so different you’ve already figured it out. You fell through an interversal gateway, and landed into a trap that was not set for you.”

None of it should have been surprising. He’d known something was wrong the second he looked out the window and saw nothing but various shades of blue. Still, hearing it said to his face, as plainly as the traffic report, made his vision tunnel and a buzzing rise in his ears. When he was sure he wasn’t going to pass out, he swallowed.

“Like I said, Agent Park. I don’t remember a city the size of a mountain in the middle of Kansas.”

There is No Miracle Scheduled For Tonight: A Biddies and Broken Hearts Story

The Biddies and Broken Hearts

Wendy flipped through the book. She remembered the pop-science books from when there had been bookstores. Always at the front of the store, on one of the tables people browsed through to kill time but never picked up from. Always colorful with a cutesy title. The books would be hardcover and big, but when you picked them up they seemed to be light as a soul, and the print inside would be huge. Summer or airport reading designed to make you look smarter to strangers.

June’s book was almost that. It was a hard cover, and the dust jacket was a light blue, kind of eye catching. But there weren’t any brightly-colored graphics. And the thing was heavy like a Buick. The print inside was small, and cramped, and as she flipped through she kept finding words she had never seen before. And the title…

“Bad title,” she muttered, turning the book over in her hands.

Birdie shook head. “That’s what everyone keeps saying.”

They were in the kitchen of the Doblin Biddy. Wendy was sitting at one end of the large table. Nico and John were sitting in the middle. Even June was sitting, down the other end. Birdie was the only one up. Pacing back and forth, picking at her clothes and hair. In all the time since Wendy had been in the Biddies she’d never seen the woman this agitated.

Wendy flipped to the back and found what she was looking for on the inside flap.

“‘Benjamin Hooper, Jr, is a physics professor and researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s had papers published in…’ I haven’t even heard of half these journals. ‘He lives in Austin with his two dogs, Gizmo and Billy, and spends most of his weekends making the ‘nerd rounds:’ Warhammer, Smash Brothers tournaments, and conventions.’ There’s a picture in here with him in some sort of costume.”

“It’s Link,” Nico said. They all looked at him at the same time – except for June, who was studying the water glass in front of him – and he ducked his head and ran a hand over his short hair. “From the Zelda video games?”

She closed the book and pushed it back toward Birdie. During this entire conversation – ever since she had heard Birdie bellowing her name from outside the house, actually – she had slowly been counting. A tactic she had used since she was a kid to calm herself down. She had an idea where this conversation was going. And she didn’t like it. She had already blown past four hundred.

“He was a physicist. A genius, from the looks of it,” Birdie said, glaring at the book like it stole her lunch money. “And now…now he’s…”

“Not?” John offered.

“There has to be something we can do,” Birdie said.

Nico shrugged. “What? Go back in time and keep him from being brain damaged? No offense, June.”

To Wendy’s surprise, June actually looked up when Nico said his name. In fact, he seemed to realize the conversation was about him, and began following who was talking.

“It’s old damage,” Wendy said. “Years old, I’d guess, from the way his head looks.”

“But look at him. He looks so much better since he found the book. We can help. You can help him! There has to be something you can do.”

There it was. She had made it to four hundred and ninety-six.

“Me?” Wendy asked, keeping her voice level. “Why me?”

“Because you’re our doctor!”

Wendy stood up slowly, pushing the chair behind her back and making it squeak against the floor. She did nothing to keep the sound from happening. The three men sitting down, even June, seemed to understand that something was happening, and kept quiet about it. Birdie was still glaring.

“As I have said before. A lot. I am not a doctor.”

Birdie threw her hands out, and yelled, “You have a medical degree!”

“I have a nursing degree. It’s not the same thing. This is precisely why I’ve always hated everybody calling me ‘doc.’”

John crossed his arms over his belly. “You said it was because it made you feel like a fraud.”

She shot him a glare that made him lean back. “And it does, but that was never the real issue. This was. I knew something like this was always going to happen. Birdie, you look at me. I was an ER nurse for fifteen years. I never did anything different, that’s how much I liked it. I never worked neurology. I never worked rehab or physical therapy. Even if I had, I’m still a nurse! I wouldn’t have been diagnosing or ordering treatments! I wouldn’t have gone to school for literal years to study the brain! Now I can play doctor for basic shit all live-long day. I’ll patch up wounds and dole out antibiotics and you can call me Doc Wendy and I’ll grit my teeth and bear it. I can even read through the books I have and make some educated guesses. But if you think I can pull all the education of a neurologist out of my ass and fix June, you are crazy.”

She didn’t raise her voice once, but she had commanded the attention of the entire room. Even June was looking right at her, mildly concerned. She may not be a doctor, but she was an ER nurse, damn it, and that meant she knew how to get a bunch of agitated people to shut the hell up.

Birdie took a long, deep breath, with enough hitches that Wendy knew she was trying to keep from crying. Birdie was a tough woman. But Wendy was, too, and she knew that sometimes tears just found you, no matter how thick your skin had become.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sitting down next to June. “You’re right, it’s too much to ask. This just…threw me.”

Wendy took her seat. “I accept your apology. And I get it, okay? I’ve been looking through the few books I had. Nico said you guys managed to clear out that book store, so maybe there will be something in there, although I doubt it. I’ll try to figure something out, Birds. But I just need you to not expect miracles. And to understand that when it comes to this stuff, the only thing my training helps with is understanding some of the words a little better.”

She looked at the other two, especially John, to make sure they understood. Nico was nodding away like a little kid. John only looked at her and nodded once, putting a hand on his cheek. Everyone needed to know she wasn’t a miracle worker.

Everyone.

Previous Next

The Doom Movie Bitches Want (I’m Bitches)

Peter and I recently watched the 2005 movie Doom. We had heard it was bad. We guessed it would be that kind of ‘fun bad’ where the script is terrible but laughable and there would be awful CGI. Cheesefest – that’s what we thought we were tuning in to.

It wasn’t a cheesefest. It wasn’t ‘fun bad.’ It was ‘bad bad.’ According to Peter, it’s more based off Doom 3 than the others in the series, which he says is more of a slow burn horror? But I’ve never heard of Doom 3. I’ve heard of the Doom series at large, so everything I know about Doom is basically:

Just pick any spot and watch for a few seconds, you’ll get the gist.

This movie is not that. They tried to make the demons a mystery. They’re not even demons! THEY MADE HELL A METAPHOR! This is not a good movie. In fact, even with only a very basic understanding of the video games, I think I could make a better movie. Tell me what you think:

DOOM: ALL’S HELL

INT. FUTURISTIC SCIENCE LAB

We pan over a huge futuristic science lab to show off all these totally rad pieces of science. There’s microscopes and beakers strewn about. Everything is computer screens and glass and white panels and there’s blue lights everywhere. The back wall of the lab is a huge window. Beyond the window: Mars, the red sand contrasting with the blue lights inside. An official Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC) calendar is tacked to the wall, telling us it’s December 2149. Lots of people in lab coats are jogging around the big room, getting into place. We stop on SCIENTIST ONE and SCIENTIST TWO, who don’t get names because they’re about to get their faces ripped off. The far end of the giant room is a big mechanical iris.

SCIENTIST ONE

(tapping on a Microsoft Surface that doesn’t look any different from current Surfaces even though it’s 130 years in the future)

That’s the last of the calculations. If this gateway to Earth is successful, we could solve so many problems!

SCIENTIST TWO

Yes! Problem solving, the one and only thing this company is after! I’m so glad we’ve gotten so close to making our dream come true. After all, I’m only three days away from retirement.

SCIENTIST ONE

And I can’t wait to finish this project and go home to my very pregnant wife, who is due with our first daughter any day! Are you ready to flip the switch?

SCIENTIST TWO

(tear in his eye) It would be an honor.

SCIENTIST ONE taps a few more times so everyone knows he has a Surface. SCIENTIST TWO goes to the comically large switch sticking out of the ground. When SCIENTIST ONE gives him the thumbs up, SCIENTISTS TWO pushes it to the ON setting. The big mechanical iris starts making lots of chirps and whirring and general SCIENCE NOISES. Everyone in lab coats has stopped what they’re doing to watch. Slowly, the iris begins opening.

SCIENTIST TWO

Where did they build the other end of the gate? It sure is hot.

SCIENTIST ONE

Arizona, I think?

SCIENTIST TWO

And sandy. And it smells like sulfur and dick.

SCIENTIST ONE

I already said Arizona! Wait, is that…metal music?

It is, indeed, metal music, increasing in volume as the iris nears being fully complete. It is not Arizona on the other end of the gateway – IT’S HELL. The gateway isn’t even fully open when big ugly demons start spewing forth. Everyone starts running, but it’s too late! SCIENTIST ONE gets skewered through the eyeballs and then whipped around in circles over a demon’s head like a lasso. SCIENTIST TWO tries running but stops just shy of the camera. Blood trickles from his mouth as there are screams in the background. Then his head splits in two from behind, splashing the camera in blood, which drips to spell out our title: DOOM: ALL’S HELL.

INT. SPACE MARINE HEADQUARTERS

It’s empty, save for one man sitting behind the front desk. Behind him is another giant window showcasing Mars. All of the other space marines are on a mission to Phobos, but this space marine, DOMINIC GEYSER, punched his superior in his eyeball for shit-talking his dog, so he gets to sit in time out and think about what he’s done. The phone on the desk starts ringing.

DOMINIC GEYSER

Space Marine Headquarters, Dominic Geyser, Space Marine, speaking…you’ve accidentally opened a portal to hell and now all the hell demons are spilling out and consuming you? But I’m the only space marine here! I punched my superior in his eyeball for shit-talking my dog! Hello? Hello? Stop screaming, I can’t understand you.

From the phone: faint screaming and metal music.

DOMINIC GEYSER

This can’t be happening!

(he looks out the window to the UAC headquarters across the valley with binoculars. All the windows are covered in blood and he spies a demon eating a spine whole)

This is happening! Time for Dom Geyser to redeem himself!

INT. ARMORY

Extended scene where DOMINIC GEYSER arms himself to the teeth, strapping big, recognizable guns over his bigger muscles. Lots of flexing, strapping things down. Real erotic tension. Finally, and I mean after at least five minutes, he does the slow-motion walk out of the armory. He gets into a space marine truck, one of those ugly-ass things Tesla made, and begins to drive it around the valley.

INT. SPACE MARINE TRUCK, SPONSORED BY TESLA

As Mars whizzes by outside, the onscreen HUD lights up. DOMINIC GEYSER is getting a call from his commanding officer. With a squint, he answers it.

COMMANDER PUNCHROCK

What in the God Damned-flim-flammed-shit-shat-motherfucking Green Acres boot up my ass are you doing, soldier? I told you to man the front desk!

DOMINIC GEYSER

Sir, there was a distress call from UAC! They’ve opened a gateway to hell and now demons are clawing their way through everyone!

COMMANDER PUNCHROCK

I don’t care if all of the English Royalty, dead and alive, showed up at the UAC and started chewing everyone’s ears and dicks off, you report it in before you make a move! I order you to go back to headquarters at once and wait for further instructions.

DOMINIC GEYSER

Can’t do it, sir. These people need help now.

COMMANDER PUNCHROCK

Jesus pinch of salt and a little bit of fucking lemon Christ, how do you not know how to take orders by now? You’re as dumb as your ugly, stupid dog.

DOMINIC GEYSER punches out the communication and puts the pedal to the metal. He punches the roof of the Tesla Space Marine Truck repeatedly, to show he’s very manly and has mad biceps but also to show how much he loves his dog. He’s sweating. The metal music gets louder and louder, overtaking the generic crap we’ll get for cheap. And then-

INT. UAC

DOMINIC GEYSER busts through the airlocks of the UAC. Red lights are flashing and alarms are blaring, but you can barely hear them over the BRAIN MELTING INDUSTRIAL METAL MUSIC THAT IS PLAYING AT FULL VOLUME. It basically doesn’t stop for the rest of the movie. The demons start to notice him. For the next twenty-seven minutes this movie is just straight-up demon violence. The music is loud and the CGI is terrible. DOMINIC GEYSER doesn’t have a goal beyond ‘kill as many demons as he can until the rest of the Space Marines show up,’ but there doesn’t seem to be an end to the demons. Finally, he finds a small office with an intact door to hole up in for a few minutes to catch his breath.

INT. SMALL OFFICE

DOMINIC GEYSER is sitting on the edge of the desk, staring at the door. He’s covered in sweat and blood and somehow less clothes than he started with, so we can see more of his muscles. A sound from behind him makes him jump, and then something is running at him. He catches himself in time – it’s a woman! She’s got a letter opener, but he takes it easily.

DOMINIC GEYSER

Hold on there, little lady who I have never met before and is definitely not my sister because what is that adding to this story, exactly? I’m here to help! I can’t believe you’re okay.

DR. SALLY MELONS

Thank God you’re here, they opened a gateway to hell!

DOMINIC GEYSER

Yeah, I, uh, I figured that part out. Who are you?

DR. SALLY MELONS

I’m Dr. Melons. Sally. The demons keep coming! I missed the gateway opening because I forgot my camera and I came here to get it. When I heard the first explosion I hid in the closet.

DOMINIC GEYSER

Wait, if you’ve been hiding all this time, how did you know they opened a portal to hell?

DR. SALLY MELONS

The metal music.

They both nod, listening to the metal music faintly through the door.

DOMINIC GEYSER

The other space marines are coming, but they were on Phobos so it could take hours, maybe days, and I’m already almost half out of my ammunition!

DR. SALLY MELONS

We might not have to wait. I think I can close the gateway, I just need to get close enough.

DOMINIC GEYSER

(straps a strip of cloth around his forehead and cocks one of his guns for no reason)

Well, then, allow me the honor of…escorting you.

When ready, they open the door. Metal music floods their ears, and they start charging down the hall. Another twenty-four minutes of demon fighting, except this time DOMINIC GEYSER also has to make sure DR. SALLY MELONS stays with him, doesn’t get shot or eaten, doesn’t go too fast or too slow, etc. Finally, after twenty-four excruciating minutes, they reach the portal. The metal music is loudest here.

INT. GATEWAY ROOM

DOMINIC GEYSER

(screaming to be heard over music)

Can you close it?

DR. SALLY MELONS

(also screaming)

I can…but I won’t!

DOMINIC GEYSER

What are you doing? We have to stop hell!

DR. SALLY MELONS

No! This is what the UAC has always wanted – to open hell, and send it to earth!

DOMINIC GEYSER

But…why?

DR. SALLY MELONS

What?

DOMINIC GEYSER

Why?

DR. SALLY MELONS

What? I can’t hear you over the music!

DOMINIC GEYSER

WHY DOES THE UAC WANT TO BRING HELL TO EARTH?

DR. SALLY MELONS

Oh! Because-

But DOMINIC GEYSER has gotten closer and closer this whole time, and stabs her in the heart with her own letter opener! A ridiculous amount of blood plumes everywhere.

DOMINIC GEYSER

Trick question, bitch! I don’t care!

DR. SALLY MELONS falls to the ground, dead. There doesn’t seem to be a way to close the portal, very obvious from the Surface’s easy-to-read interface. Suddenly, DOMINIC GEYSER realizes what he has to do – if the gateway won’t shut on this side, he’ll have to shut it from the other side.

DOMINIC GEYSER

(looking directly at the camera)

Well, it’s like they say. All’s hell that ends hell.

DOMINIC GEYSER jumps through the portal, falling into hell like the game’s box art while the music swells and cuts to black.

THE END.

See how much better that is? I think it’s the two twenty minute scenes of nonstop fighting and metal music that’s really going to make this a smash hit. Not sure who should play Dominic Geyser, let me know if someone stands out to you and I’ll be sure to tell my nonexistent Hollywood agent.

Superstition: Pacific City

Pacific City

By the time Peggy got to Dinah’s, the men’s choir from the nearby college had finished their rehearsal and filled the place up. She slipped past tables of young dudes in polo shirts and various stages of figuring out their sexuality poring over the song list to get to the bar. On stage, three women still in business casual were actively destroying “Hold On” by Wilson Phillips. Her favorite seat was open, and she draped her jacket over the back and sat down.

“Oh, Aster,” she said as the bartender walked over. “The exact right person I’ve been looking for all my life.”

Aster made an over-exaggerated pout as they threw a coaster in front of her and started pouring her favorite beer.

“Must have been a pretty shitty day if I’m the light of your fucking life.”

Peggy tried to think about the past few hours at work and her brain said ‘nah,’ giving her nothing but a blank wall for a few seconds before showing her the corgi she had seen earlier on the street.

“You have no idea. I did see a corgi.”

Aster’s eyes lit up as they put the beer in front of Peggy. “Was it wearing a purple tutu?”

“It was.”

“I know that dog, her name is Sally, and she is delightful. Did you want to sing tonight? I can squeeze you in before all the college dorks get started on the Disney songs.”

Beer still up to her lips, Peggy shook her head. “I am too tired for all that. I’m just going to sit right here and drink until you throw me out.”

Aster smiled. “Could have just said a usual Tuesday.”

She didn’t know why she liked watching people singing karaoke so much. Even when they sucked. Especially when they sucked, really. The people who had training, or were just naturally good, like this crowd of twenty-somethings who had taken lessons their whole lives, they went up there and did something that came to them naturally, and Peggy liked that. But seeing someone who never sang? Whose entire life was so far away from any form of creativity the last piece of art they had ever produced was a Mad Libs with their kids on their way to the Grand Canyon? To see that person spontaneously decide they wanted to get on stage in front of strangers and kill their vocal chords trying to imitate Whitney Houston always made her day better.

The first kid from the college choir was halfway through ”Poor Unfortunate Souls” when Aster came back over to top her up.

“Peg, I hate to ask, but I have got to take this trash out. I think someone threw away most of a fish. Can you keep an eye on the bar?”

She shrugged. “The fuck you want me to do?”

“Just keep an eye on the taps. Anyone goes for them just be the intimidating bitch I know you can be. Lori’s on her-” they made a gesture like they were holding a joint, “smoke break, she’ll be back in ten and I cannot take this smell anymore. It’ll take me two minutes.”

“All right, fine,” Peggy said, leaning forward on her bar seat. “Two minutes.”

Aster thanked her again and again as they walked by with a trash bag that did, in fact, smell like someone had thrown away an entire fish. A big one, too. Who the fuck brings a fish into a bar and then throws it away? Someone who thought they liked fish but found out they didn’t like fish in the middle of a karaoke bar, she guessed. Maybe it was just something that smelled like fish, but what smells that much like fish besides fish? It had to be food, right? And if something was going to smell like fish-

“Hey!” she yelled at the guy leaning over the bar. One of the college kids, staring at her like a deer in headlights. “Back off or I’ll break your fingers.”

He held up his hands. “It’s cool, man, it’s cool. Where’s the bartender?”

“They’ll be back…soon…”

Aster said two minutes. It had been five. Aster had never been the kind to get distracted, and they’d never leave her hanging. The alley was out back, it wasn’t like they could have gotten lost either.

“Hi, Peg. Where the fuck is Aster?” Lori asked as she came around and behind the bar.

“That’s what I’m going to find out.”

She’d been coming to Dinah’s for a couple of years now, so no one questioned her when she slipped into the back. Benny and Lilah both gave her head nods as she crossed through the kitchen to the door to the back alley.

Outside the night air was fresh and a little chilly and absolutely reeked. The dumpster was directly across the alley from the door. The bag Aster had been carrying, still smelling of fish so badly she could almost see cartoon wavy lines rising up off it, was sitting in front of the dumpster.

“Aster?”

A muffled sound from down the alley. She was standing underneath the large spotlight pointed at the door and the dumpster, and it was impossible to see anything outside that perfect circle. Wrapping her arms around her against the cold, she walked down the alley until the light faded.

Aster was standing in the middle of the alley. Somebody had their arms around them. Peggy got a little closer.

Correction. Some vampire had her arms around them, her fangs in their neck.

“Shit.”

Peggy had only muttered it under her breath, but the vampire whipped around to look at her like she had yelled it.

“Let them go,” Peggy said.

“Oh, a volunteer for the next course.”

The vampire – a trashy woman with bleached blonde hair and huge roots and ripped bleached jeans – pushed Aster away, hard enough that they hit the wall before they collapsed. And then she was coming right for Peggy.

Peggy waited until she was closer, waited until her reaching arms were just inches from her. She lashed out, grabbing her by her arm and pulling her close to drive the waiting palm of her other hand into her nose. Vampires were strong, and fast, but they weren’t particularly good fighters.

Of course, Peggy didn’t actually have anything on her to finish the job. All she could do was make the situation so annoying the vampire fucked off. The bleached-blonde bloodsucker kept coming after her, trying to use her strength and speed to throw Peggy off balance. Joke was on her, though. She had her own speed, and she hadn’t been thrown off balance since she was a kid. She had to wall run over her a couple of times, and dodge a few hits by jumping on top of the dumpster. Finally, she managed to kick the trashy bitch in the face, breaking her nose. With an exhausted growl, the vampire ran off down the alley.

Panting and aching, Peggy made her way to where Aster was sitting. This was not how she wanted to end her day.

“Are you okay?” she asked, holding her hand out.

Aster only stared at it, and then stared at her.

“What the fuck was any of that?”

Next

A Room in a Mountain

He sat on the side of the bed, looking out the window. His hands were next him, resting gently on the crisp white sheets. Occasionally he would forget, and a muscle would twitch or he’d move his neck quickly to catch a strange sound, and the pain would start all over again. Like pins and needles, when a dead limb came back to life, but worse. Immensely worse. Running from his scalp all the way down to the soles of his feet. If he remembered to stay still, though, he could avoid it. After the agony of sitting up and looking, he’d remained sitting at the side of the bed looking out the window for the last two hours.

At least it was a hell of a view.

A mile and a half up, the nurse had said. Somewhere down below was Kansas. Out the window was nothing but blue and white. Light blue. Dark blue. Gray. Nothing else, besides the occasional bird. Gulls, mostly, floating around the perimeter. Even those were white and gray.

He couldn’t remember his name. He couldn’t remember who he was, or what he had left behind before he had fallen out of the hole in the sky. He may as well have been a day old, life only starting when he had dropped to the ground and been immediately surrounded by strange men in covered suits. But he was very sure, wherever he had come from, there hadn’t been cities the size of mountains reaching two miles into the air.

Whatever life had been on the other side of the portal had slipped away from him the same way dreams did, and maybe he could have believed that’s all it had been. Except he had been lying in the dirt, twitching violently from the shooting pains that then did not need movement to fire. Then, they had fired constantly, and with such ferocity that he believed he was being electrocuted. But death hadn’t come. The men had. Surrounded him. Wearing something that looked a little like a hazmat suit. Barking things at him, at each other, over speakers. Telling him to stop moving, to flip onto his stomach, like he could do anything besides twitch and scream. Eventually one of them had knocked him out, somehow, and he’d never been more relieved in his life. At least, he thought he hadn’t.

As he had sat these past two hours, looking into the blue wild, he’d tried to remember what had come before. Something. Anything. A name. A place. He recognized the name Kansas. He knew there were no places like Mount Raygen where he had come from. Nothing else concrete had come back to him. Only the tenuous feeling that being here was…right.

His arm twitched. The pains shot through him, rubbing at his nerves with a cheese grater. How could he know what a cheese grater was and not know his own life? He was tired, anyway, and took the opportunity to lay back in the bed. Once the shooting pains had started he might as well do as much as he could before they stopped.

Some of the room was familiar to him. In certain ways, it looked like a hospital room. His bed was in the middle, the kind with the railings on the side and a head that could raise up. There was a screen next to his bed, showing how his heart and his blood pressure were doing. Another screen hung on the wall near the ceiling across from him, and he was sure that was a television. The blanket was thin and seafoam green, the same kind of blanket he had seen in every hospital he had ever been in.

After that, things got weird.

The screens, for one thing. They were flat, maybe only an inch wide, and the picture was grossly sharp. His heart rate and blood pressure were on the screen, but he didn’t know how because he wasn’t hooked up to anything. The door to the room was big, metallic, and shaped like an airlock. There was a wide window into the next room next to it, and he could see that to get into his room the nurses had been going through an airlock. They were wearing suits like the men were, only the suits from the night before had been uniformly gray, while the nurses had all had different patterns. The first nurse he had seen had worn a pink suit with a green flower print on top, and the last one had a suit covered in Dalmatians. Her kids loved Dalmatians, she had said.

Besides the nurses, no one came in his room. They all stayed in the room next door. None of them tried to communicate. They looked at him plenty, always pointing and then looking at something above the window and then jotting things down on a clipboard. But talking to him wasn’t on the schedule today, apparently. That may have been for the best, seeing as he still couldn’t move his jaw without the pain, but it was still, in his opinion, incredibly rude.

He was, he slowly realized, a prisoner. There was no way to open the door from his side. The window didn’t seem to open, and even if it did he was a mile and a half up. So far no one had given him any reason to be wary, but that alone was starting to make him freak out.

He was going to have to do something. Once he could move without all his nerves shredding.

It’s Always Nice to Make New Friends

The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: Nora Protector

The HZD Blanket

Apparently, when you remove naps and National Geographic from the equation, I get these squares done much faster. I’m trying to get at least one done a day during the week, and then as many as I can produce on the weekends. I’m in a much better spot because besides WandaVision, Peter and I are barely watching television. It’s all video games, baybee, and while I stitched up a bunch of granny squares Peter played Shadow of the Tomb Raider and is still playing 2018’s Spider-Man. One thing both games have in common: I am disappointed in the selection of outfits. Spider-Man is a little better, especially since we unlocked the Night Monkey suit, but there was, like, one outfit for Lara that I liked and the rest all looked like Girl Scout projects and I know that’s kind of the point but I also don’t care. He’s also playing Fallout 4, which has piles of great outfits, but Peter plays this weird way where he dresses his characters for the stats and not the aesthetic, so our Lone Survivor is still in her Vault-Tec blues.

Before we move on to the square, let’s take a look at some

Notable Nora

Rost

Rost, like Aloy, is an outcast, and pretty much the only parental figure she’s ever known. It’s clear that he loves her, but as previously mentioned he’s also heavily subscribed to all these Nora rules about being outcast to the point where I’m honestly shocked that he talks to her. I guess sometimes religious dogma only carries you so far. Early on, Aloy has a chance to rejoin the Nora, something they both want, but while Aloy pretty much only wants to it shove it in the faces of everyone in the tribe who ignored her for twenty-ish years, Rost wants it so she can have a decent life and honestly, how dare he.

Sona

Sona is the Nora’s war chief, and despite also being a pretty heavy believer in Nora rules and taboos, by the time she meets Aloy she fully does not care that she was an outcast. Sona only wants to protect her people, and it turns out outcasting a baby isn’t helpful in that regard. Level-headed, intelligent, and willing to take advice from others, Sona would definitely be running the Nora if that didn’t include a whole lot of ‘not killing enemies’ and keep her from her favorite thing: killing enemies.

Varl

Varl is a Nora Brave, and Sona’s son. He’s also our introduction to a continuing theme of Horizon Zero Dawn: everyone is thirsty for Aloy. Everyone? Everyone. Okay, fine, not everyone. But a lot of them. In fact, by the time we meet Varl, Aloy has already been aggressively hit on by someone else (we’ll get to him later) and she’s only been a part of society for roughly an hour at that point.

As an aside, I’m going to be commenting a lot on the NPC’s that hit on Aloy because it really does happen a lot. But one of the things I super appreciate about this game is there is no forced romance. Folks hit on Aloy. Aloy either takes it in stride or flirts back. But that’s as far as anything goes. Her story is too urgent and pressing to shove a first-love story into it, and it makes all the flirting a thousand times funnier.

Anyway, it’s never going to work between Varl and Aloy. Varl is too committed to the Nora tribe and Aloy is too committed to riding out of the Sacred Lands forever, sunglasses on and middle fingers up.

The Outfit

The Nora Protector is my second least favorite outfit, after the Nora Survivor. I didn’t even plan it this way! Happy coincidence. If you’re the type of player who likes to arm themselves with nothing more than a big stick and an insane grin before tossing yourself directly into the middle of the fight, this is the outfit for you, as it is heavy on the melee damage protection.

I don’t like to play like that. I like to sneak around in the hidey-grass and shoot from there. If I get noticed, I run away. I’m not good at brawling, I am worse at dodging, and I don’t have a whole lot of patience. This is a large part of why the next outfit I’ll work on, the Nora Silent Hunter, is my favorite. This is also a large part of why I have no interest in any of the Soulsborne games and played Jedi: Fallen Order on easy. Oh, hey, quick PSA:

It’s okay to play games on easy mode, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a dick you can ignore.

So, I didn’t wear this one much, which is potentially how I initially fucked up the color scheme on the square at first.

The Square

I initially thought this outfit would be an Almond base, with some Forest Heather and Gull. It, uh…it didn’t look right.

I’ve mentioned I’m not very good at any of this before, right?

I took another look at the outfit, and realized my primary mistake was the Almond. The outfit, overall, is much darker than I had initially thought. The machine plates give it pops of white, but underneath that it’s mostly the dark brown and dark green, with only hints of the light brown and a little blue. So, I rearrange and tried again:

I liked this a lot more. That’s the Merlot Heather, Forest Heather, and Gull. I did get a little bit of the Almond in, and I ended up putting in a couple stripes of blue, because the Nora really do like using blue in their outfits.

As I said last time, I had to fix the square because of course I did. I didn’t even make a square based on the literal instructions this time, because I didn’t want to waste the yarn (and then ended up with a bad square anyway because of my own mistakes, oh, universe, you scamp). Once again, though, it was going to be too wide and not quite tall enough. I am already better at fixing the shape, anyway, so thanks Big Book of Granny Squares! You’re not just a book, you’re a learning experience!

What I like about these two squares is that you get the kind of woven rug and homey look I wanted without difficult stitches. These squares aren’t hard to learn, but the way different stitches are mixed together make them look intricate. The spike stitches in the Nora Survivor square are probably the most ‘exotic’ stitch. The rest of the squares are made of strategic combinations of single, double, half double, and triple stitches.

And then there’s this piece:

Usually when I do a color change I square knot the colors together, tuck them along the fresh edge of the square, and crochet the next few stitches over them. The stitches are thick enough that these tucked edges stay hidden, but for this row of Almond I was alternating double stitches and skips, and the edges were very visible. I tried to darn them into previous rows, but that meant trying to hide the bright Almond and Gull colors inside the dark Forest Heather and Solstice Heather and it just stood out too much. If anyone knows any good ideas besides just cutting them off after the knot let me know. I’m going to try to hide them when I start putting all the squares together, which hopefully works. I hate knotting and then just cutting off the ends, the knots never seem to hold.

So, that’s the Nora Protector square! Let me know what you think, or if you actually know how to crochet and have suggestions for going forward. Next up, I’ll be working on one of my favorite outfits, the Nora Silent Hunter.

Previous Next

Liminal Spaces

“They’re called liminal spaces,” she said. “Places that only exist to pass through.”

“You mean a hallway.”

Out of the corner of Brandon’s eye he could see her shift in the kitchen chair. How someone that tall could always get her legs tucked under her, wherever she sat, Brandon would never understand. Eunice – such an ugly name for such a beautiful woman – brushed her hair from her face and wrapped her hands around her coffee mug. It was nearly ten, he didn’t know how she could be drinking coffee.

“Hallways, sure. But there are bigger places than that.”

Eunice was always finding these curiosities. Things she found curious, anyway. Things that made no sense and didn’t matter, not that Brandon would ever say that out loud. Humor her, that had always been the plan. Eventually she would grow up. Stop trying to talk to him about space ships, witchcraft, or whatever a cryptid was. Things children talked about. Not grown women with a job and a mortgage. Things he had found cute when they were twenty. Irritating pushing thirty.

“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said,” she said.

With a barely reined-in sigh, Brandon paused the basketball game and turned to face her.

“Something about hallways.”

She sighed. “No, liminal spaces.”

Brandon pinched the bridge of his nose. “Baby, can we talk later? I’m sorry, I’ve just had a very long day at work, and all I want to do is unwind and watch the game.”

“I’m not meant to be here, Brandon.”

Ice water flushed through his veins, sinking his heart. They had been drifting, it was true, but he still saw his life with her. After all these years, who else could it be?

Eunice shivered. “This world, I mean. I can feel it. I’ve always felt it. There’s a place I do belong. I can…sense it…somehow, so it’s not far. And I think a liminal space is how I get there.”

Fear resolved into irritation that she had made him feel the fear in the first place. Of course she wasn’t talking about anything grounded in reality. She was talking about her nonsense again.

“We have a hallway,” he said. His finger itched to press play on the game, but he wasn’t sure he was in the clear yet.

She shook her head around a sip of coffee. “It’s not big enough. Not liminal enough. It needs to be a place so temporary, barriers break down. A liminal space in a liminal space.”

Brandon snapped his fingers. “Like Inception?”

He expected her to stick her tongue out, like she usually did. Maybe pick up her coffee mug and finish watching the game with him. She only stared at him, gray eyes flat like stones. Only, it didn’t seem like she was mad at him. It seemed like she hadn’t even heard him.

“Babe?”

“I’m going to bed.”

He knew something was wrong, something he should try to fix. But if she went to bed, he could safely turn the game back on and catch up over commercials. They could talk in the morning. When he wasn’t so tired and she wasn’t so weird.

“I’ll be there soon. Love you.”

Eunice muttered something back. Brandon didn’t hear it over the ref’s whistle.

He’d forgotten the conversation by the next morning, let alone a few months later as they left for their wedding. A destination wedding, Eunice had insisted, all the way down in Mexico. She had planned everything, at least. Invitations. Flowers. Flights. He really wished she’d done a better job at that. So pie in the sky, looking for the perfect day, that she had stuck them with a layover in an airport in the middle of nowhere.

“There’s nothing here,” he said as they got off the plane. The huge plate glass windows showed nothing beyond the runways besides forest. No strip malls. No highways. The biggest city was two hours away. “This place must be layovers and nothing else.”

She smiled at him. At least she was smiling. Really smiling. He’d only popped the question because he’d become sure she would leave him if she didn’t. Guess it was the right move. She’d been all sunshine and roses since they’d left that morning.

“Where’s our next flight?” he asked.

Eunice didn’t even look at the information boards. “Next terminal over. Come on.”

As he suspected, everyone getting off their first flight was looking for their second. The two of them walked down the wide hallway surrounded by a crowd that got thinner and thinner as others peeled off, alone or in groups, to wait for their next flight. No one came to this airport, only passed through.

The crowd led them to a subway train to take them to the next terminal over. Eunice pulled on his arm, away from the train. There was a long hallway that sat parallel to the train line. Brandon couldn’t see a single person in it.

“Let’s walk,” she said.

“But the train’s right here.”

“We’ve got an hour until our next flight boards, and my legs are stiff. Come on.”

Annoyed, but willing to sacrifice, he followed her.

The hallway was well lit, but it didn’t seem like it. Above their heads the fluorescent lights shone like puddles on a highway, one after the one, bright and brighter and not a one out. But the hallway still felt dark. It was a wide hallway, to allow for crowds of people, but it felt confining. Hollow. Everything seemed to reverberate back to him, sounds from the train and people on either end of the hall and cars and planes up above and everything sounded far away and tinny. Pressure in his head. Like he was already flying. He yawned hard.

Pop.

Everything was normal again. The sounds came to him like they should and the lights above were bright enough.

“Babe, did you feel that? Babe?”

Brandon was alone in the hallway.

In the next few days the cops would ask him over and over again what had happened, even though nothing had. They would sympathize with him. They would suspect him. They would release him, no evidence to be had. He would never fully remember the conversation she had tried to have with him, but when a detective casually mentioned Eunice wasn’t the first to go missing from that particular airport he would find himself strangely unsurprised.