Not all my stories are centered on the experiences of lycanthropic persons. Sometimes they're self-contained narratives of a moment. Honing in on the emotion of place or the tense, horror of anticipating events.
Below are the smaller stories, born of assignments or just idle writing. The longer tales are on their own subpages and listed as such:
Before noon, we crossed 15th street and I saw the park. My trip to Minneapolis was on its last day and my host and I were wrapping up with a tour of her old stomping grounds. We walked the quiet, downtown skyways as she reminisced about her elementary school, the tiny candy store she would visit after class and the cookie store she could never seem to visit during its open hours. As we passed the counter with its shutters down, she said she could still smell the oatmeal raisin and the molasses cookies baking.
Many years had passed since she could enjoy these sights. Her eyes glossed over recounting the times she and her best friend ditched class, or when she ate lunch with her fifth grade class at the adjoining St. Thomas campus, or the time she stayed in the upper floors of the school and watched the sun set over the city with her friends. I reassured her when she apologized for rambling that I was glad to hear these nostalgic tales of her youth.
The park, she called it Loring, was a hilly, green expanse right in the heart of downtown. Children played and shouted on the large multi-colored playset and swings while noonday joggers ran past. The natural scene set by thick trees was highlighted by the urban skyscraper backdrop. The world was reflected perfectly upon the large pond’s surface. She led the way as we walked across a thin wooden bridge. Enthusiastically, she recalled when she got a fishing hook caught in her thumb. She interrupted herself, reminded of why we came here.
She had promised we would see it first thing tomorrow after we finished touring the Spoonbridge and Cherry last night. It was on the hill ahead of us.
I slowly gazed up the slope, expecting another quaint artifact of her past. Gleaming back at us was a translucent prismatic form. Through its sheer, angular faces, I could see refracted trees and the cityscape; all of it tinged golden amber. Despite being wrapped in the daylight, it radiated a brilliant hue. No larger than myself, it spun slowly. Below it a round, vaguely weathered, silver pedestal rested, but still shone in the noonday sun. No struts or wires seemed connected to or trail from the luminescent crystal; a suspended local beauty.
I exclaimed! I couldn’t find the words for this feeling. This jewel looked like the vibrant eye of a cat; like the hard candy that I sucked on as a child. It hung low enough that I could touch the prism if I stood on the metal base, and I would have wanted nothing more. I turned to my host, eager to know what storied past did this gem play into.
She smiled and pointed further up the hill where an iron-grey, sprinkling sculpture of a dandelion was planted. “There, isn’t it beautiful? I loved this fountain since I was little.”
We were soon leaving the park and that floating crystal.
After a moment she collects her thoughts. She puts down her pen, shuts off the internet, spends the weekend studying, and attends her week of 21 credits that run from the morning to the late evening. Project managing and technical know-how are in her blood, sweat and tears. She makes sure to visit her professors in their workshop offices. She is no longer a stranger to them, and each meeting is punctuated with the expectation they will see each other tomorrow. Graduation is quickly upon her, a year before her peers. She accepts her honors, and the summer internship she kept becomes full-time employment on the assembly line. It is a tough job that she wakes up to in the morning and goes well into the evening and night. She makes time for one co-worker in particular and it’s at their wedding her grey professor congratulates her, saying they are a cute couple. She is promoted thrice, and takes time off for the first time to deliver her one child: a small boy who cries out to the world, like his mother wished she had done.
Ethan closed his reading. Ink and paper books were a chore, rare as they were. He should be honored to handle Arkivitech's only copies. He looked at the sand-weathered cover. Posed in a position Ethan found uncomfortable to imitate, a woman knelt beside a male torso.
Over the course of transcribing the book from its English characters into the Arkivitech script, he learned this woman name was Madeline. The daughter of a wealthy owner of the now-long obsolete oil industry, she became swept up in her infatuation with her father's younger assistance and a ruffian from her childhood. Ethan had stopped just as Madeline and her lover were running away out of the un-pronounceable United State, Texas.
Ethan wanted to run away like Madeline. Run from this cubical and the soft blue glow of the projected Mass Data Entry Service screens. Run far away from the ordered cleanliness of the outpost, down the mountainside that lie beyond Martian-made glass facades and if he could, see this Texas for himself.
Swiping across the holographic keyboard in front of him, it and the accompanying monitor display dissolved away, leaving the window ahead unobstructed. Beyond the glass he could see out to the horizon and the blackened trees below. The forested slopes below thinned out into soft–looking plains as they went on. Lucky for him to have the office that overlooked the mountainous valley. Only he and the technician took their mandatory breaks to gaze out at nature.
He felt an annoying jolt in his forearm. The oblong glossy face of his Workplace Electric Compliance device pulsed red. Going too long without working would beget this gentle reminder. It worked. He tapped in his passcode with his other hand on the WEC. Then, through a few patterned inputs, Ethan sent a request for ten minutes of downtime. The pulse and shock soon stopped and the apparatus shone an approving green.
How long people had been wearing their WECs? It had to have been within the 300 years. Neither Madeline nor her lover was described to wear them. They were free to live the life they chose for themselves. A life without the WEC, without being kept in this sterile facility; without reporting to Arkivitech. Ethan wanted that life. His attention returned to the vista before him, exploring the hillsides and forests, as people probably had so many centuries ago.
He imagined himself walking under the boughs of the trees—Evergreens he was told. The natural air would be chilly, unlike the temperate climate in here. Maybe there would be a breeze. It would be gentle, but enough for Ethan to bundle up in the mountain clothes he had read of. Flannels, jeans, ‘Long Johns’.
As he thought on it, the more he had to do it. Ethan stood up from the rolling chair, and with five minutes left in his break, he rushed to the technician, preparing to plead for her to let him out into the cool wilderness.