Sniff, then Shampoo the Stairs

Internetainers Rhett & Link are having a week of holiday giveaway contests called Christmasicality. This five day celebration of merriment began yesterday, but I did not take part... mostly because I couldn't figure out how I would go about attaching a toilet cleaner to a candy cane. But today, as I knew they would, they posted a writing prompt: a five sentence story that includes the words "sniff," "stairs," and "shampoo."

I don't care whether I win or not, I had fun writing my story! Only five sentences and I have to include three specific words? It's like they designed the contest just for me!
So, without any further ado, here is my submission to the Tuesday Christmasicality:

Every family has their own weird holiday traditions. Some families decorate their tree together, others bake cookies, and one family I know actually roasts chestnuts over an open fire. But in my family, the holiday festivities don't start until Grandma shows up. She opens the door, takes a huge sniff, and all the children come running. They know that no one will be opening presents until after we shampoo the stairs.

The Raelyn Shield

Very little is known of King Raelyn before he took the throne. What stories are told are mainly of the Prince getting into just enough trouble to easily get out himself, or sometimes, getting into something larger than himself and escaping only with the aid of his Royal Father. However, one thing is certain: when he was twenty seven, the Prince was disowned.

It seems that shortly after his sister’s ninth birthday, the Prince became involved in a situation that proved more than he could handle. Whatever the circumstances, his father became aware of his position and deemed it the final straw. Apparently, he felt that the Prince’s handling (or mishandling) of his plight was proof that he was not fit to rule. In order to prevent his kingdom from falling into the hands of the irresponsible Prince, His Majesty King Gyrard VII stripped his eldest son of his title and exiled him from the kingdom.

The story goes that Raelyn was given one week to say his goodbyes to the court before he was to be escorted to the nearest border. Before his departure he was given many gifts by his family, especially by his aunt, Avilina, who raised him after the death of his mother. His last visit was to the nine year old Princess Emayn, later renowned as a patron of the arts and an artist in her own right, whose favorite activities at the time were riding her pony and the newly-learned skill of tapestry weaving. (It is said that one of her earliest weavings was a copy of the famous “Battle of Thannsteig,” and that Gyrard VII proudly displayed it on the palace walls. Although the original remains in the National Museum, the Grand Duchess’ copy has been lost to time).

Emayn gifted her brother with a small shield, which, it is rumored, he had used as a child and had given to his sister when he had outgrown it. She also gave him a lecture, which some chroniclers have chosen to romanticize, claiming that the Princess professed her love for the Prince and declared that she would miss him very much. It is more likely, however, that the young Emayn chastised her older brother in an “I told you so” fashion. No matter the contents of her speech, Raelyn fell silent afterward, and sat quietly in the back of his sister’s room, watching her weave.

It was at this point that Gyrard VII’s artist in residence, Lady Sefare, entered the room. Sefare was considered the greatest master weaver of the period, and had been instructing Princess Emayn in the art. It is not known why Sefare attempted to kill the Princess. It is possible that she was hired by an enemy of the royal family, but some have speculated that the desire arose from jealousy at the talent of the young Princess, or perhaps it was simply the result of a tutor’s frustration with a notoriously difficult student.

Upon seeing the knife in the hands of his father’s trusted retainer, Prince Raelyn leaped into action. Using the gift given to him by Emayn, Raelyn blocked the weapon, saving his sister’s life. Lady Sefare was quickly defeated with the knife she had planned to use to murder the Princess. Though many retellings place the vengeful blade in the hands of the Prince, there are versions of the tale that report that Emayn was the one to end things.

However it ended, the Prince’s defense of his sister earned the forgiveness of his father and his reinstatement as the crown prince. It is unknown how much of this story is true, but its effects can be seen throughout history: aside from the way King Raelyn handled trouble during his reign and his lasting attachment to the Grand Duchess Emayn, any student of history can find, in each one of his royal portraits, a small dented shield sitting at his feet.

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The Best Perspective

It’s hard being best friends with a superhero: they’re always ditching you at the last second to save a bus full of schoolchildren, you can’t tag them on instagram because that adorable selfie you took together was while they were in costume, and you may occasionally get kidnapped whenever a supervillain discovers your connection to their nemesis. There are good times, too, like when you get to hear about all of the disasters averted and the lives saved and the thanks given.

One evening I arrived home from band practice to find my best friend (who, in the interest of protecting her identity and mine, I will call “Awesome Girl”) sitting at our kitchen table. She had her mask off, her hair down, and her head in her hands. Her cape drifted listlessly from her shoulders down across the cheap linoleum floor. I propped my bass up against the dishwasher and pulled up a chair to plop down next to her.

Then I waited.

I had learned that “head in her hands” was not necessarily AGC (“Awesome Girl” Code) for “I tried to help someone today and failed.” Some days, she’d sit up and happily tell me that she had put a smile on a senior citizen’s face, or done a ribbon cutting at a pet shelter, or helped to find a lost autistic kid. Some days, she had sad stories to share, but we both knew that she needed me there at the end of the day to refocus, to laugh or cry with, and to remind her why she did what she did.

We sat in silence for twenty minutes, just listening to one another breathe. Though she didn’t know it, I kept glancing at the numbers glowing from the clock above the stove on the other side of the room, which told me it would soon be tomorrow instead of today. I didn’t usually mind sitting up late, but we both had classes the next morning, and homework was due in the literature class we shared; all I had left to do was write up a response to the reading assignment, but I knew she hadn’t even picked up the book yet.

Finally, when the clock read 11:48, “Awesome Girl” let out a huge sigh, sat up, and cast her mask to the other side of the table, where it slipped off the edge and fell onto the floor. Then she looked at me.

“What’s up?” I ventured.

“I just want to be normal,” she moaned. “I want to have a stupid crush, and to eat dinner at 9 PM, and to be in a terrible local band.” She slid an arm across the table and rested her head on it, looking at me sideways. “I want to be you.”

I blinked at her.

I did have a stupid crush on the star of our local semi-pro basketball team (who, in the interest of protecting the identities and gigantic egos of all involved, I will call “Taylor”). I had scarfed down some leftovers before the both of us left that evening (she to patrol, I to practice). And I was the bass player and lead singer of, admittedly, a pretty terrible garage band (which, in the interest of protecting the identities and feelings of my bandmates, I will call “Admittedly Pretty Terrible”). But other than that, we were basically the same person in all the “normal” ways. We were both a year away from graduating college. We both loved pizza. We both wanted to make the world a better place and were both using our own unique abilities to work toward that goal.

I knew that what she really meant was, “I’m tired, and it’s so hard for me to see when I’m making a difference. If I could see the world through your eyes, maybe I wouldn’t feel so down.”

So I said, “Have you not eaten dinner yet? We still have some pizza in the fridge from last night. Want me to heat it up for you?”

She gave me a tired smile, and sat up in her chair. “I’ll get it. You should go to bed.”

“No, that’s okay,” I replied. “You can get started on reading that thing for Lit class and I’ll get you something to eat.”

“I totally forgot about that!” she gasped, and dashed from the room.

When she came back, looking like a normal college student in some yoga pants and an old t-shirt, her too-hot pizza steamed delicious fragrances into the air, and a glass of ice sat next to a can of her favorite strawberry soda. She sighed in delight and sat down to get to work.

It’s hard being best friends with a superhero. The bad times aren’t great. Sometimes she’s a second too late to prevent catastrophe. Sometimes the population of the city she protects turns against her. Sometimes she has to save me from a supervillain. And sometimes, she has a burnout day. But the good times outweigh the bad, and when I can, I do whatever I need to do to help her save the world.

“Hey,” I said as I found a place to shove the pizza box into the fridge. “If you were serious earlier… our drummer quit today. You could fill in at our next gig, until we find someone else.”

“Seriously?” She laughed. “Yeah, all right.”

I turned to leave the room.

“Wait,” she called after me. When I stuck my head back into the kitchen, she said, “You’re awesome.”

“Well,” I replied, “So are you.”

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Cubed

Her Geometry notebook was filled with sketches: trees, rocks, animals, and shapes. At first I thought the shapes were just part of the homework, but there were more there than “find the surface area of the cylinder” could explain. And strangely, there were more cubes than anything else.

She never talked much in Geometry. She just sketched, and I just watched her sketch. That explained my terrible grade, and why I got a detention during a test when I zoned out while watching her doodle one of the cubes on the edge of her paper.

The detention wasn’t that bad. It gave me a chance to focus on studying, for a change, and I was able to mostly ignore the lecture I got about keeping my eyes on my own paper. As I left detention that evening, I was in the middle of resolving to forget about her, and that cube from her sketches, to pay attention in class… and maybe to sit on the other side of the room so I wouldn’t be distracted by her.

But she was standing across the hall leaning against some lockers when I closed the door of the Geometry classroom.

I tried to pretend like I hadn’t seen her. I shifted my shoulders under the weight of my backpack and turned to walk to the front doors.

“You weren’t cheating off me,” she accused.

I stopped. “So?”

She glared. “So you either have a crush on me―” I opened my mouth to protest, but she continued: “or you want to know about this.” The history textbook she had been holding close had a brown paper bag cover which was covered in her doodles. When she flipped it over, I could see that on the back she’d drawn a larger version of the cube that decorated nearly every page in her Geometry notebook. She’d added detail to the inside of this one, though; there were lines criss-crossing it, as though the surface of the cube was the underside of a leaf, or a city seen from miles overhead, or the inside of a thunderstorm.

“Maybe I just think you’re a good artist,” I replied.

She gave me a look of disbelief as she shoved her history book into her backpack, then tossed the bag over her shoulder. “Come on,” she commanded.

I followed her.

To anyone else, it may have looked as though we were friends walking home from school together, but that wasn’t the case. We were both walking, it was true, and we were both headed for the same destination, but the walk was anything but friendly. Neither of us spoke. I didn’t know where we were going, and that kept me half a step behind her the whole way. Plus, there were the looks she kept giving me: like she was grudgingly letting me in on a well-protected secret, while at the same time, she would happily thrash me if I didn’t go with her.

Several times I nearly asked her where we were going and what we would see when we got there, but somehow I knew she wouldn't answer. She led me down the hill from the school and out of the neighborhood, across the railroad tracks and down another hill, then into the trees. I started to wonder if she was really going to show me something to do with her sketches or if this was elaborate revenge for looking at her Geometry test.

I was so focused on wondering where we were going and why that when she finally stopped, I was surprised, and I didn’t even see it until she pointed it out.

It was a quiet, thickly clouded afternoon. Light found its way to the earth anyway, where it illuminated the ivy climbing up the trees, revealed the different kinds of flowers that carpeted the ground, and reflected off of the gigantic cube sticking up out of the earth.

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Art by Andrei Pintea

She spoke first, because I couldn’t. “I figure it’s probably a terraforming cube that didn’t quite finish dissolving,” she informed me. Then she stared at me, challenging me with a gaze to contradict her theory.

Eventually, when I replied, all I said was, “What?”

“A terraforming cube,” she repeated. Sighing as though she was explaining for the sixth time, she shook her head and explained for the first time. “It’s obvious. Every living thing on this planet must be a transplant from somewhere else. Our ancestors dropped these cubes from orbit; probably there used to be cubes like this all over the place, but they disappeared when they did what they were designed for and made the place okay for humans and animals to live. Oh, and they probably killed the dinosaurs.”

I stared at her, trying to ignore the huge, weird cube sitting out in the middle of the trees. Could there be hidden cameras waiting to catch my reaction for some kind of hilarious video? Was this a game she was playing, and she wanted me to play along? Had I stepped into an alternate universe when I left detention?

I couldn’t leave the cube out of the equation. It was huge. It was weird. It was there.

“You watch too much science fiction,” I told her. “It’s probably just a rock. Left over from a building project or something.”

“Like the Great Pyramid?” she asked skeptically, her eyebrow raised. I could tell that she must have considered my idea already. “Yeah, because there are so many ancient wonders of the world around here.”

I looked at the cube and pitched the next thing to come to me: “It’s… an art project! Some students from the college put it here.”

She rolled her eyes. “They must have aced that class. And then they were super quiet about how awesome they are at doing art, because no one but me ever comes out here.”

I geared up and took a final stab at it. “A meteorite?”

“I watch too much science fiction?” she replied with a disdainful glance. “I’m sure tons of geometrically perfect things fall out of the sky every day.”

We sat down on some rocks and stared at it.

“Fine,” I said after half an hour or so. “It’s a terraforming cube. All life on the planet is alien to it, and this thing and a whole bunch of things like it are why life exists here.”

She nodded, pulled out a notebook, and started sketching. “And now that you know what it is, you’ll be able to concentrate on Geometry. You can stop staring at my notebook.”

“Maybe I just have a crush on you!” I scoffed, offended.

She leaned away from me, obviously disgusted. “Do you?!”

“No!” I snapped. Then I stood up. “Look, have you ever gotten close enough to even see what it’s made of?”

“Of course not!” she shot back. “There’s no way to know why it didn’t finish dissolving, or what it would do if something organic came in contact with it!”

I frowned. “But it’s been out here a while, hasn’t it? So, it gets rained on and stuff? And look,” I said, pointing at the base of the thing. “The grass around it is organic. It’s touching the cube, and nothing’s exploding. If it was going to do something sinister, wouldn’t animals stay away?” I tapped a finger on the notebook she held, where a caribou was coming to life under her pencil. Her model stood about ten feet away from the cube, quietly grazing.

She glared at me, and for the first time that afternoon was without a quick reply.

“Why are you afraid of it?” I asked her.

“Because, it’s…” she floundered. “It’s obvious that it’s not supposed to be here.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone else about it?”

“I told you,” she said, “nobody comes out here but me. If I told somebody else, they could get hurt.”

“But what if it’s got advanced technology in it that could, like, cure cancer? You could be holding back the entire world!”

She jumped up and looked me in the eye. “Or I could be protecting it!”

“Only one way to find out,” I told her, and then I marched stubbornly toward it.

“No, don’t!” she called, obviously worried but just as obviously unwilling to get any closer to the cube.

Her cry didn’t stop me, but it did spook the caribou, who shot a frightened look at us and then loped away.

I kept going until it was near enough to touch. I had expected that the cube would be a bit more mysterious up close. It should have been putting off heat, or pulling heat in. It should have been humming quietly, the sound getting louder as I approached. At the very least, the lines that were etched across it like a vein in a gold mine should have been shifting around, fading or growing brighter depending on the phase of the moon, or where you looked at it, or if it was a Tuesday.

But it wasn’t doing any of that.

And maybe the fact that it wasn’t overtly creepy, or something that would easily have fit into an episode of Star Trek was what made me stop, and to think for the first time that she might be right.

I turned to look back at her and saw that she had ventured a little closer than the rocks where we sat, but not much.

“Please,” she pleaded. “What if something bad happens?”

“What if nothing happens at all?” I called back. “You’re going to feel stupid when I’m standing here touching it and it’s just a rock, and all you’ve been doing is drawing pictures and being afraid for no reason.” I reached out a hand.

She shook her head violently. “Don’t!”

Slowly, I felt my fingers brush the side of the cube.

100 Word Story: Starry Night

[100 word story] is an online literary journal featuring, unsurprisingly, 100 word stories. Every month they post a photo prompt, and encourage visitors to contribute their own 100 word story in the comments; the best story is then featured the next month on the website. I discovered the journal and the prompt last month, and wrote a 100 word story of my own.

It was pretty hard! 100 words is not very many. (In fact, there are exactly 81 words before this one.) I started out by writing a very short story (very short for me, that is, since my short stories usually tend to be anywhere from 800 to 1500 words), then took out unnecessary bits, then shortened the dialogue, then reworked things that didn’t make sense, then added a word or two, and ended up with 100. Finally, I posted my contribution in the comments for last month’s prompt, and proceeded to forget about it completely.

Today, I was scrolling through facebook (which, as any writer will tell you, is absolutely essential to the creative process), and brushed past a post that made a reference to Vincent Van Gogh. “Oh, hey,” I thought to myself, “I wonder what happened with that 100 word prompt thing I wrote.” When I went to check, I found that, unsurprisingly, someone else’s story had been featured (and for good reason; it’s awesome), but now, I have the opportunity to feature my story myself.

Photo by Kris Williams

She spun in circles, giggling. Unwilling to make myself vomit, I stood watching at a safe distance, amused. “How will this help with our Art History project?”

“Seeing the world through Van Gogh’s eyes!” she insisted, and flopped down, breathless, onto the grass. I joined her, though less dizzy. The stars shone down, stationary as always. I wondered if they had looked different that night in 1889.

After a moment, she sighed in defeat. “It’s nothing like Starry Night. We’ll have to do something else for our project.”

“I don’t know,” I replied, gazing upward. “I’m pretty sure this helped.”

Elly and the Enchanter

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A hotel lobby doesn’t really seem like the best place to pass your time, but on the first day of a fan convention, it is the best place.
“Pyramid Head!” Elly called, pointing at a guy lugging a huge costume across the room.
“Another one?” asked Lissy. “Why is that even a popular character?”
“You’ve never played Silent Hill?” Lissy shuddered, but Elly grinned. “I thought Gryffindors were supposed to be brave,” she teased.
“Being brave doesn’t mean you go looking for trouble,” Lissy quoted. “Or that you should play horror games just because everyone else does.”
“A Browncoat!” gasped Autumn, looking up from her phone suddenly as though she had fellow-Firefly-fan radar. She looked toward a businesswoman walking across the lobby to the front door.
“You don’t know that,” Lissy protested. “That lady could just have a brown coat. She could just like the color.”
“Well, I guess we’ll see if she hangs out in any Alliance-friendly bars come U-Day,” Autumn replied sagely, returning to her texting.
Elly let out a sigh of enjoyment. “This really is the best. I’m so glad I can go back to the dorm tonight and sleep, instead of having to pack up all my stuff and haul it here, inevitably forget some of it and have to do without. If I forgot my Sonic Screwdriver, I could just go back to my room and get it.
“Pff,” Lissy interjected, “like you’d forget your Sonic Screwdriver.”
Elly tossed her a grin and reached into her back pocket, where she located the tool and waved it at her friend. “The point is, I could go home and get it. I don’t have to deal with the mess and hassle of actually staying at the hotel through all the con craziness.”
“That’s true,” Lissy agreed. “One time I was cosplaying Hermione, and I totally forgot my tie! I just wore a scarf instead, though, so everything was okay.”
“You wore a scarf? What a sacrifice!” Elly laughed, eyeing the Gryffindor colors which permanently adorned Lissy’s neck.
Lissy laughed and rolled her eyes. “Nobody noticed, but I was pretty upset for about fifteen minutes.”
“It’s definitely better being able to get out of the hotel when you need to.”
“Yeah, I totally agree,” Lissy echoed, watching a guy with long red hair (Just like Rupert Grint in Goblet of Fire, she thought) as he struggled with four large suitcases.
“What’s that Shakespeare quote with the ‘protestheth...’” Autumn chimed in, mispronouncing The Bard’s 16th century English.
“‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks’?” Elly provided, with a raised eyebrow.
“It’s not ‘pros...thetic’?” Autumn asked.
“Are you trying to say that you think we actually do want to stay at the hotel this weekend?” Lissy asked, translating for her roommate.
“I didn’t say it,” she replied, then reimmersed herself in her phone.
Elly and Lissy exchanged a look.
“I… kind of do want to,” Lissy admitted.
“Me too,” Elly agreed.
“There probably aren’t many rooms left,” Autumn remarked.
“Go up now and see,” Lissy advised. “We can split the cost, but don’t, like, get a presidential suite or anything.”
Elly laughed, already out of her seat and walking toward the front desk. “You mean you don’t want to throw the most amazing The Doctor Takes Hogwarts crossover party that this hotel has ever seen?” she called back.
“That wouldn’t be hard,” Autumn muttered.
“Do you have any cosplay planned?” Lissy asked her roommate politely. She still hadn’t quite forgiven Autumn for stranding her in a back hallway of the hotel the day before.
“Yeah,” Autumn said. “I’m going to be a plucky space cowboy on a job that has an elaborate plan... that involves me dressing like a hotel employee for most of the day.”
Lissy nodded. “That sounds nice.”

Standing in line didn’t provide the view that her previous vantage point had. Within the first five minutes, Elly was convinced that she’d missed seeing several of her geeky brethren, and in fact only managed to spot one: a girl who had painted her rolling suitcase to resemble the TARDIS. She didn’t mind the sacrifice, however, and bounced on the balls of her feet, knowing that soon she’d be able to partake of the entire CON experience, with the added bonus of being close enough to go home whenever she needed to.
When the couple in front of her moved forward to speak to the pretty concierge, Elly was first in line. She bounced faster, but she didn’t have long to wait. A person in a DragonBallZ t-shirt grabbed their bag and walked toward the elevators, and the guy behind the counter beckoned her forward.
“I know you might think I’m crazy for asking this,” she gushed out, “But are there any rooms left?”
“I think there are a few,” he replied, tapping at the computer in front of him.
“Are any of them… not the presidential suite?”
He laughed. It was a nice laugh. Elly looked at him. Before, she’d glanced at him like he were a piece of the background, like he was playing Extra #6 in the movie of her life. But when he laughed, it made her want to know what that movie would be like if he were one of the stars.
“It looks like you’re in luck; we’ve got one with two queen beds that I’m reasonably certain no president has ever stayed in.” He looked up and smiled at her. “No Secret Service, foreign dignitaries, or even the president of a neighborhood association, or anything.”
“We’ll take it,” she replied, and waved at her friends to signal her success. Lucky Lissy strikes again! she thought.
He fished out a keycard and began to get her checked her in. “Any big plans while you’re in town?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah! We’re gonna high five some people, stay up way too late every night, and probably marathon a bunch of movies! It’s gonna be awesome!”
He smiled again as he glanced up at her. “Wow, that was a real response. I do this pretend ‘small talk’ thing with pretty much everyone, but you must be the most excited guest I’ve ever had the pleasure of talking to.”
“You’re welcome!”
He laughed.
“Your weekend is probably gonna be pretty awesome too, with CON stuff to keep an eye on.”
“It’ll definitely be interesting,” he agreed. “You’re here for the CON? You didn’t bring much luggage with you.”
“Uh, yeah!” Elly stepped back a little from the counter and pointed at her shirt. “Did you expect something different from the girl in the Union Jack?”
He squinted through his glasses to read her red, white, and blue top, which was emblazoned with the words: “ASK ME ABOUT MY DOCTOR WHO OBSESSION”.
“Doctor Who… that’s the guy with the scarf, right?”
Another poor soul, just waiting to be converted, Elly thought, and nodded. “Yes. For the purposes of our conversation, yes. He’s the guy with the scarf.”
“Is that what you’re going to watch all weekend?”
Elly laughed. “I wouldn’t mind, but my friends probably want something else for a change. I’m not sure what else we’ll have, but at some point we’re definitely watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
“‘There are some who call me… Tim?’”
Elly’s momentarily startled eyes swept across his face and took in his nametag, pinned to the front of his suit jacket, which read: “Timothy Gray, MANAGER”. Then she laughed. And laughed. She got a few weird looks from the other concierge and the people standing in line behind her, but she didn’t care.
“You,” she gasped out when she caught her breath, “are my favorite. You’re totally invited to our The Doctor Takes Hogwarts party. If we decide to have it.”
He looked amused as he gave her credit card back and passed her the keycards for her room. “As long as you don’t mind someone from Middle Earth showing up,” he replied. “I’m more of a Lord of the Rings fan, myself.”
Elly grinned, collecting all of her stuff. “Well, thanks for all your help, and your small talk. I guess I’ll see you around!”
“Sure,” the manager replied with a smile. “Enjoy your stay.”
“I will!” Elly turned to walk away, but felt compelled pass on a warning. On her way past the line of people, she pointed at the manager and informed them, “I wouldn’t try to mess with that guy if I were you; he’s an enchanter.”