Foggy Nights

The fog rolled in. A bird perched on the boughs of a high oak tree and sang. The shrill notes pierced the cool air; the music settled on the valley floor. All around it was silent. And all the time, the fog rolled in.

The sun set, the last glimmers of light faded from the distant horizon, and High on the tree a bird watched. Where once the golden notes had sunk into the valley. Now: no more. Instead of a gently rolling hill, bearing thickets of shrubs on its verdant back, which gently sloped down to a burbling river, the valley was no more: an ocean stood in its place.

The stars twinkled in the dying light. A chill evening breeze passed by. The bird sat and stared. For, far away, at the other end of the mountain, lay its mate. Hours before, it was only a small valley. Hours before, the pair were joined in the joyous light of day. Hours before they danced in the air, the afternoon sun warm on their wings. Now, it was night. Now the valley was no more, and now they sat, on branches of a tree, and waited.

The moon shimmered on the curtain of fog. Two birds stared out across the sea. A silent breeze rustled the trees, and the damp ground released fragrance into the misty air. In a quiet world, filled with the slumber of life, and the dance of death, these two birds, lovers, lay their heads down to sleep. It was night. Time to rest. For soon, the new day would come.

A Night of Ruins

Alice was pissed.

A burst of flames engulfed a cart as she walked by it. Her steel-toed boots clamored against the cobbles. Cape swing behind her, she marched down the deserted street, and glowered at the world.

Her hair smoldered.

Alice turned down another street, and tossed a ball of fire down the empty halls. The ball exploded against an old stone wall. In a moment the wall was no more. Without a thought the woman walked through the nascent doorway, paying no head to the red-hot stones beneath her feet.

Twenty summers ago, Alice thought, she had grown up here. In these magnificent walls, under sunlit days and moonlit nights. Now there was nothing. Not even him.

Alice spat on the ground. The bastard, he had left her out there. Alone.

Red flame embraced Alice’s hands. She raised them above her head. A wooden door splintered into a thousand pieces. Alice stormed through the smoky rubble and rumbled: “Where is he.”

Twenty men and women were crouched over cots, or laying in them. The sick and dying. A small sliver of the dying light from a yellow-black sky filtered into the room. Alice glowed. The men on the cots ignored her; the others pretend to not notice. She stormed past them into the tunnel beyond.

She would burn down the stone if she had to. She wanted him found.

She found him.

He stared at her. Alice walked towards him. Her body ignited in a skin of flames. The air burned.

“I am sorry,” he said quietly, his voice week.

Alice looked at him. And stopped. The flames that embraced her body seethed.

The world stopped. A minute passed. Alice glowered at him. He stared into her eyes. The flames flickered. She breathed in deeply.

The flames died. He walked towards her. Alice glared at him. Her hair still smoldered.

Slowly his hands wrapped around her body. He hugged her. Alice relaxed. A single tear dripped out of her eye.

Alice was pissed. But right now it did not matter: she was home.

Boston Harbor

Amelia gazed out of her window. The moon’s first crest rose out of Boston harbor. The lights of the city twinkled below, candles and lanterns glowed a pale orange. The stars twinkled above, clear and bright. Nights like these were made for lovers. Made for watching the stars pass by; made for watching the sun rise. They were not made for writing long into the night.

Amelia looked down at her letter. ‘Dearest friend’ the page was titled. Dousing her pen in ink, she started to write. The lamp on her desk flickered, the sky over head darkened, the pen dipped into the ink once more. An owl hooted. The pen stopped. Amelia looked out on the harbor.

A shadow floated across the bay. A British man o’ war. They were the talk of the town these days. The British this, the British that. It hurt each time she heard that name. Britain. That was where heart was. That was where her love was. The ship floated into the bay, its mast and spars crossed the moon like a prison bar. Amelia laid her pen down and sunk her head into her hands. Like a prison bar.

The wind whistled by, she raised her pen once more and smote a few more lines on the page: “I do not know what to say. I want to say too much, but find myself saying too little,” she wrote. “Boston is the same it always has been, yet it feels empty with you gone. “ She paused. The clamor of men drifted up from the streets below. The measured tread of grenadiers.

It was a cold wind. A cold April. A lonely April. She moved her pen again. Outside the ships drifted on with a solemn silence. The pen, now dry, scratched against the page before she looked up. Her heart full; her page still empty. “Empty night” she cursed, dipping her pen into the vial once more.

Far across the bay, by the Old North Church, a belfry there lay. A light was shinning. Amelia watched. Another shone. She thought, waited.
“Across the bay two lights are shinning,” Amelia wrote, “I miss you, yet in my heart we are like those two lights. When one shines, the other follows. When one grows dim, the other quivers. It is a hallow torment to be apart so long. But I our souls our linked: our lives are linked. Like two lights on hung in a belfry tower, our souls shine together.” Her pen paused, her heart full, her face smiled.

Footsteps thundered outside. A man shouted: “The British are coming! The British are coming!” Amelia paid him no head. Her pen scratched one last time, “Always yours, Amelia.” She was done. Her letter was done. With solemn voice she whispered across the bay, to the two lights hanging in the belfry: “I love you.”

Some of the inspiration, and some of the phrases from this story come from Longfellow's poem, Paul Revere's Ride.

Caves and Vampires

It was a dark and stormy night.

The sky was black, the rain hailed down, and in the distance lighting crackled. Sometimes there is no place better to be then in a cave. Jeremiah huddled by the fire, idly scrapping at his bowel of porridge. Laid around the cave, his companions slept on the hard ground. Wind blew through the cave spraying sparks off the open fire: the sky flashed.

The heavens thundered in response. Jeremiah starred off into the endless rain. Sighing he placed the bowl on the floor. All around him was no-man’s land. A barren wasteland filled with rocks and mud and swamps and vampires. One must never forget the vampires. Jeremiah chuckled.

The fire dimmed, the last few embers glowing a dim red. Shadows danced on the roof of the cave. Jeremiah laid back watching the flickering lights, listening to the pounding storm, hearing footsteps pound above him. Footsteps pounded above him.

Jeremiah sat up: eyes wide. The rain splashed on the small awning, the wind howled, and one of his companions snored. Jeremiah looked around. His comrades slept peacefully near him, bundled up on their robes on the dirt. After having walked a hundred miles in the desert, they slept.

Jeremiah felt sore. His legs hurt, his back ached, and his feet were numb. His body felt tired, but his mind felt awake. He gazed into the entrance to the cave as the lightning flashed.

A man stood at the entrance of the cave.

Jeremiah blinked, and he was gone. His heart pounded. He crouched.
The embers died. The shadows flickered above. The bodies of his comrades were devoured in the growing gloom. Jeremiah stood there, ready.

The cave went dark: a man laughed.

Strunk and White

I am, for many reasons, greatly indebted to the authors of The Elements of Style. I offer here a toast to them. May their writing instruct another generation to write more clearly.

“Show! Don’t tell!” Mr. White shouted. He wrote the words on the black board. Turning to face the class, he glared. Two hundred freshmen eyed him back. Their eyes were glazed over. One yawned. Another snored.

Mr. White took term paper off of the stack on his desk, and read, “Susan was happy today. The people she met also felt happy, it seemed to her that the world was an interesting place full of fun and very unique adventures.” He dropped the paper into the trash. He spat out, “Jennifer, what is the problem with ‘very unique’?”

The a girl in the middle of the room stared back. The color drained from her face. “Uh…” She stammered.

“Very unique. If something is unique then there is only one of them. Something is either unique or not unique. It can’t be very unique.” Mr. White chided. On the board he scrawled out “Rule 13: Delete useless words!”

Grabbing another paper from the stack he read: “The game was going so well, but Jena was hit by the ball. She got angry and James got hit by the bat that was thrown by Jena.” He paused, tossed the paper into the waste basket with its comrades, and growled, “Stuart, what is the problem with this… this thing?”

Stuart responded with a snore. The yardstick cracked down on his desk. He opened his eyes and yawned.

Stuart looked around the room, a long haired man who was dressed in an half buttoned, un-tucked shirt and baggy pants was lecturing in front of the class. He listened for a few minutes to the lecture, promptly got bored with his teachers command to ‘feel what you write’, and went back to sleep.

Stuart smiled at Mr. White, and chirped back, “Rule 10: Use the active voice.”

Capsize

The mast creaked and the ground shook. The captain shouted “Raise the sails faster you monkey’s cousins!” The Mihra – a ship of twenty guns –was being tossed in the storm like a box of matches. But at least it wasn’t on fire.

The next wave came over the prow; Samuel Gladman felt the rope tremble in his grasp. Shipmates screamed as they lurched over the side, into the water below. The water surged over the deck covering it with a green slime. The waves towered from above. Gladman stumbled forward. Lightning flashed; wind howled; the sail ripped.

The world slowed for a moment as if dazed from the mighty roar of the tearing sail. With the crack of thunder it sounded as if the sky itself had been rend apart. The water stopped surging over hte deck pausing for a moment to drip over the vessel’s side. The ropes stopped sliding, vibrating in the silence. The sky brightened, and bells rang. Gladman thought of his home: to a quiet field by an old stone church where the sun always shone and the bells rang; for a single, crystal-clear moment the world stopped moving.

The boom crashed down onto the cabin deck. The planks broke like twigs beneath its weight. The sails flapped wildly as the spin spun round. A wave struck the side of the boat. Thrown off balance, Gladman held onto his rope for dear life. A man caught his arm and the pair swung out over the see. With their arms locked, they looked at each other. The vessel pitched. The pair’s eyes met. The ship toppled over; the man sank into the depths below.

Mice and Men

Mice in mazes look for cheese. Their noses lead them to their prizes. They look through endless rows of dead ends for the nugget of gold: their dinner.

Adventures in mazes look for treasure. Their brains, brawn, and luck lead them to hidden vaults filled with golden nuggets; at the end of the maze they get paid. At the end of weeks in a soggy dungeon, days eating stale rations, and hours of fleeing from beasts summed from the pits of hell they get paid. Yet sometimes, they don’t.

Plavius stepped out of the trapdoor. He looked down at his once red boots and shook his head. They were never going to get dry. He left wet footprints on the ground as he walked into the abandoned cellar. It was dark except for the small lantern that he carried. On every wall the fine white lines of mortar sparkled with the thin silvery strands of spider’s nests. Spiders. Lots of spiders.

Plavius looked wearily at the hole as a round head came into view. A mass of bones and muscles followed it, covered with an ample amount of skin and hair. Gaius: the brawn of the team. He wore a shirt of chain. The bottom row of links were rusted and on his chest a few holes were punched out of the chain revealing a bloodstained shirt underneath.

“Bloody spiders.” He bemoaned to Plavius and stepped away to allow the last member of the team to enter the cellar.

Triminius looked around, saw the webs and his face drained of color. He sat down at the edge of the trapdoor and breathed deeply. The edges of his tunic were soggy. A small pack was slung over his shoulder. A thin copper tube hung at his belt, maps for the sewers.

Plavius glanced over at him and drily said, “I guess your map didn’t have any of these webs on here either?”

Triminius looked back raised his hands in the air and said: “I thought the map was joking when it said ‘Here be oodles of spiders.’”