The Trip, Because of the Fall

“Uh, Autumn, are you sure it’s okay for us to be back here?”

“Yeah! Felicity, I told you, it's fine, it’s cool, my boss is cool. Come on! I want to show you something!”

The two girls moved quickly down the back hallway of the hotel, dodging stacks of chairs, room service carts, and other obstacles.

“I never knew you were into this stuff,” said Lissy. “I mean, if I had, we could have, I dunno, done a movie marathon or something.”

“When?” replied the girl in the hotel uniform. “I’m always here.”

“I guess that’s true,” Lissy muttered.

“It’s fine, we know now, and maybe we can do the movie thing on my next weekend off. In, like, four months. But whatever, come here, look!” They had reached a door, which Autumn cracked open. Lissy could see a large banquet space that was slowly being transformed into booths. “Look, look!” Autumn insisted, pointing to what would soon be a booth on the end of the nearest aisle. “Know who that is?”

It looked to Lissy as though it was a rather good looking guy and a girl who hadn’t quite made up her mind the last time she sat down in front of a hair stylist. Autumn was obviously expecting her to reply, and she felt a little silly saying, “N...o, should I?”

“Seriously?”

Lissy looked at her roommate. “I like Harry Potter stuff. Neither of those people look like actors from the movies, unless you’re gonna tell me that that girl is actually Nymphadora Lupin.”

“Huh?” was Autumn’s reply.

“Yes, that!” Lissy pointed at her roommate’s face. “That’s how I feel when you ask me who those people are. I don’t know.”

Autumn sighed and nodded an apology, just like she had the time she had accidentally left a wet towel on Lissy’s bed. “Okay. Well, you can pretend to be excited with me, then.”

Lissy nodded her forgiveness, just like she had the time she had gotten yelled at by the RA because Autumn had gone to work and forgotten that her stereo was blasting the Pokémon Theme―on repeat―for four hours.

“It’s Kent Jackson,” Autumn said. “He draws Oblivious Girl, and the girl is Hazel Kirke, they write the comic together and she colors it. I would totally get my hair done like hers if they didn’t have a rule against it here.”

“Really?” Lissy eyed the girl’s orange and purple leopard spotted mohawk.

“Yeah, she’s awesome, right?”

Lissy was saved from having to disagree by a man’s voice calling down the hallway, “Autumn, are you down there? You’re supposed to be at the front desk!”

Autumn jumped like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “Uh, yeah, I’ll be right there!” she yelled back. Then she turned to her roommate. “Okay, keep going down the hallway, and the second door on the left will take you out onto the sidewalk where you parked.”

“You’re leaving me here?” Lissy protested.

“It’s not a big deal, just go two doors down and you’ll be fine!”
“I thought you said it was okay for us to be back here!”

“Yeah, it is, just… well, not right now, because I’m supposed to be somewhere else. Two doors down.”

And then she disappeared back the way they had come.

Lissy stood, alone in the service hallway of the hotel, marveling at the seedy underbelly of the Chicago fan convention experience. It wasn’t terribly exciting. Or very well lit. She started down the hall in the direction her roommate had indicated, hoping she would be standing outside within sight of her car in a few minutes, but it took her almost two to reach the first door on the left, and the second one was nowhere to be seen.

She wasn’t afraid of getting lost. She was in a large hotel in one of the biggest cities in the country. If nothing else, she could just start shouting, “I’ve been abandoned in a dark hallway by an Oblivious Girl fan!” until someone found her. If that reference didn’t work, she could always resort to Star Wars: “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.” She smiled at the thought and pulled at the red and gold striped scarf around her neck. The hallway was so full of stuff that she had to turn sideways a couple of times to squeeze past things. “How can they work back here?” she murmured to herself. “I’m surprised I haven’t knocked anything over, or fallen―”

And that’s when it happened.

She tripped.

Great, now I’m going to die, she thought.

Instead, she heard someone yelp, and say, “What the hell?!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she cried as a reflex.

“Whoa, calm down!”

A strong hand above her elbow helped her to her feet, and she looked into the face of her knight in shining armor. He looked like that comic artist, but Lissy was sure it couldn’t be him, since she’d just seen him in the other room. Plus, this guy’s hair was black instead of light brown.

“You’re not… who I thought,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Are you?” she replied, as he rubbed a hand on his shins.

“I’ll be all right. Why did you trip over me?”

“It’s not like I did it on purpose! You’re the one laying on the floor with your legs across the hallway!”

“True enough.”

“What are you doing here, anyway?”

“I’m hiding from Hazel. I’ve already carried about a million boxes in for them today, and I had to sneak away to get some rest.”

“Oh.” Lissy felt slightly awkward, standing with some stranger alone in a deserted hallway. Maybe she would put one of her Gryffindor socks in with Autumn’s laundry when she got back to the dorm. “Well, I... think they rent rooms here. It’s a hotel.”

“Yeah, but…” he began, then shook his head. “Never mind. Sorry I tripped you.”

“It’s fine. I’m sorry I tripped.” She glanced along the wall on her left. “You wouldn’t by chance happen to have seen a door on this side of the hallway, would you?”

“Sure, there’s one on the other side of that rack of wine glasses. Why?”

“It’s how I make good my escape,” she informed him. She shifted the glassware, which luckily was on a rolling cart. “Wow, I never would have seen it if I hadn’t tripped over you. Pretty lucky, huh?”

“I’ve never heard of someone luckily tripping over an innocent bystander,” he said with a grin.

“That’s me,” she replied. “Lucky Lissy!”

Just then, a door on the right side of the hallway opened to reveal an irate girl with a leopard mohawk. “Jack, are you slacking off again?!”

Jack sighed. “Yes, I am,” he admitted.

“Well, get back in here, I’m too short and I need your help hanging stuff.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jack said resignedly. He glanced at Lissy. “Good luck,” he told her.

“Same to you,” she said, and opened the door, looking back to see him following Hazel Kirke back onto the floor.

She stepped outside, and there was her car, right in front of her. She sighed. At least Autumn had been right about that. It wasn’t even the first day of the CON and already she was having adventures. This was going to be an interesting weekend.

alloftheprompts.tumblr.com

Writing Prompt: From Car Mountain to Krypton

Writing Prompt #688

My brother and his best friend Greg were always in the basement. It didn’t matter how nice it was outside, whether the rest of the neighborhood kids were having a water fight or happily building a ramp to launch our bikes dangerously into the air. One year they even skipped a Fourth of July parade and picnic. It wasn’t like they were playing video games or trying to summon a demon or grounded and forced to do laundry all day.

They were “scientists.”

The basement was their laboratory. I called it that too, but only so I could draw out the “bore” part to let them know just how lame I thought they were.

Our mom didn’t think they were silly even though she did try to encourage them to go outside sometimes. She always smiled happily whenever they trooped out of the basement on one of their treks through Car Mountain. It wasn’t hard to see where my brother got the bug for tinkering: our father kept a growing collection of junk cars on one side of our garage that he promised he was going to get running and sell. It pleased my mother when my brother and Greg hauled off pieces of the cars and took them into the basement, because, she said, at least those cars were getting some use, because my father was never going to do anything with them, no matter how many New Year’s Resolutions he made.

One of my chores, besides folding the laundry and clearing the dinner table, was making sure my brother and Greg were going to eat lunch. The first phase was yelling down the stairs, “HEY, ARE YOU GUYS GOING TO EAT??” The next step was tromping down the stairs and saying, “Mom wants to know if you guys are going to come upstairs and have lunch.” The third step was my mother giving in (even though she said every day that there was no way she’d let them eat downstairs again) and sending me back to the laboratory with two sandwiches and back again later to get the empty plate.

It wasn’t often that I asked what they were doing, since they usually gave me stupid sci-fi answers. “Building a hyperdrive” and “trying to pull a Crazy Ivan” and “reversing the polarity” were all things I believed they thought they were doing, but I never believed they could actually do them.

So the morning I wandered down after my usual shout about lunch and found my brother standing in front of a small platform lit from below with what looked like several headlights from various Ford Fiestas, no Greg in sight, I frowned and gave in. “What are you guys doing down here, anyway?” I sighed.

“Uh…” my brother looked slightly nervous. “We built a teleporter. And… I sort of teleported Greg to Krypton. We wanted to know if humans from earth would have the same kind of powers on Krypton as Superman has on earth, because of the different suns, you know, so we started late last night and now Greg is there. I think. I’m not sure how he’s going to get back, but I’m sure I can just push the same buttons I used to send him, only in reverse. I don’t wanna bring him back too soon in case he’s having a good time flying or something.”

I looked behind the washing machine for Greg. He wasn’t there.

“Yeah. Flying,” I said, backing slowly toward the stairs.

“Bringing him back shouldn’t be a problem. So… if anyone asks, tell them we’re fine.”

“Right.”

My mom was getting lunch ready when I came back upstairs. “Are the boys having fun?” she asked, as she always did when I came back. She didn’t expect they were coming upstairs to eat, so she wasn’t even waiting for me to report and instead was already making sandwiches for me to take down to them.

“They’re pretending to be Superman,” I told her.

“That sounds nice,” she replied, and handed me the plate of ham and cheese, helping me balance two tall cups of chocolate milk on the edge.

Greg was "back from Krypton,” or had reappeared from a better hiding place than behind the washing machine as I returned and set their lunch on the dryer.

“It was awesome!” Greg was saying, I knew, for my benefit. I rolled my eyes at them and turned to go back upstairs.

“Dude, it is so my turn now!” my brother cried, leaping up onto the platform. Greg pushed a sequence of buttons on what looked like an old model airplane controller, and there was a flash of light.

I blinked.

My brother was gone.

I screamed.

“Is everyone okay?” my mother sang down the stairs.

I turned my shocked eyes on Greg, who winked at me as he grabbed one of the glasses of chocolate milk.

“I, uh… thought I saw a cockroach, Mom,” I called back. “The boys are… they’re fine.”

Chewbacca for Legislature, 2014

This weekend, I sat down in a chair in my parents' living room and grabbed a bit of newspaper off the side table. My mother is one of the remaining hundred or so people in the world who still subscribes. (Or, in the words of Liz Lemon, "Suck it, I do read the paper!")

The section in question happened to be a very interesting Voter's Guide 2014, in which candidates for today's primary had been invited to contribute. I immersed myself in it, and soon was arguing aloud with the answers some had given. 

"You didn't fully answer the question, sweetcheeks," I said to the picture of the distinguished gentleman hoping to serve our great state. My husband, the only other person in the room, knows my strange ways and so ignored me, dividing his attention between his phone and The Empire Strikes Back, which my father had placed in the DVD player as a special Mother's Day treat.

My brother then entered the room with a plateful of pizza and attempted a spirited impression of Captain Solo's furry sidekick. At the same moment, I finished reading a candidate's answer, one which I disagreed with. "No," I said loudly to the newspaper, as I shook my head. "No."

Glancing at me, my brother tried again, this time actually saying something in Wookie (I don't speak it, though, so I'm not sure what it was). My husband took pity on him and informed him that I was arguing with my reading material. My brother laughed and said he knew, but figured he should give the impression another shot anyway.

I took the Voter's Guide home when the movie was over, to argue one-sidedly with the candidates and decide which to vote for. I suppose it could be said that I should have been doing my own research into the people I hope to trust to run the government, but I would answer that a candidate who doesn't have enough time to answer five questions for the Lincoln Journal Star may have trouble prioritizing their time when in office. (Seriously? It's five questions about stuff you already talk about all the time.)

Don't forget to vote today, Nebraska. I don't know about you, but the thing that will be making me giggle when I head over to vote tonight (aside from the memory of my brother's excellent Chewbacca impersonation) is the fact that I may have referred to a future governor of Nebraska as "sweetcheeks."

Was Your Daughter Switched at Birth?

The best part about giving birth is that first moment when they set the baby in your arms. You get to look down at your child, and marvel at the miracle of life. It’s only a moment, and then the nurses take your child away to bathe it, measure its weight, height, and head circumference, and you get a few minutes to rest. They bring your baby back later, wrapped in an adorable blanket, and you get more of a chance to bond with your child, to admire its features and point out which of them looks most like you. Most mothers have at least one moment that they stare hard at their child, just to make sure that the baby in their arms is really the one they brought in with them in the first place. For some mothers, this question gets considered later, when the child is a little older.


For those mothers, I have compiled this helpful how-to.

How to Tell if Your Daughter Has Been Accidentally Switched at Birth With an Inhabitant of the Forest Moon of Endor:

That's no baby.

1. She’s a cuddly little teddy bear
2. She sings a little tune whenever she’s working or playing
3. She growls at and is wary of strangers
4. She is unnerved by small changes in your appearance
5. She brandishes a primitive spear when alarmed
6. She is a feisty and determined fighter
7. She worships a primitive god that resembles an annoying protocol droid


Any one of the above could be a reason to suspect that your daughter was accidentally switched at birth with an inhabitant of the Forest Moon of Endor. Unfortunately, these reasons are usually not enough for most lawyers to file a suit against the hospital where your daughter/Ewok was born. In most cases, families have learned to love and accept their Ewok as part of their family, and they are often easy to teach and learn new things quickly. They may still have a tendency to aid rebel forces or to attack intruders, especially if they arrive in an All Terrain Scout Transport.


Keep following this blog for many other helpful how-tos, including “How to Raise Your Wookie Right” (hint: you can’t always let it win!) and “How to Battle Traffic on Coruscant.”