Prosenoder's Cup 2003

Winner's Circle

Demeter on Ten Most Wanted in 3rd place

And an altogether brilliant showing of 47 brilliant writers.

All writers wishing to receive their very! special! hand-decorated! ribbons should send their postal addresses to arcanamundi at sbcglobal dot net or msg them to me here ASAP as I would like to get everything in the post on Monday or Tuesday. Pretty please do not direct me to EMAR, I will be much more certain of getting everything sent properly if I have a proper email!

Thanks to everyone who participated, this was loads and loads of fun. If you plan to show your horse at greater length in its own pasture, please leave a link here for posterity.

Cheers! ~ The Mistress of the Lists

Please see Equestriana: an e2 proseproduction for background. Writeups are limited by design to 300 words or less.

Do not, however, d/v on the basis of the (highly inaccurate) writeup word counter. C&P to a reliable processor to count if you must. Thank you.
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The expansive sweep of Prosenoder's Down has been carefully watered and tamped in preparation for tonight's race. As twilight deepens in the sky, noders pack up their afternoon picnics and drift toward the striped pavilions next to the race track.

When the trumpet calls them to the stands, they stream out into the evening air, chatting excitedly.

Meanwhile, in the stables...

The riders slip into their silks. And one by one, they move to an empty stall. On the door of each stall is written a name, which they whisper to themselves before entering. Once inside, they shut their eyes, which nevertheless move rapidly behind closed lids, like those of dreamers do. Slowly at first, the smoky shape of words begin to coalesce. Become sleek, muscular, powerful.

The riders swing themselves up onto these mounts, and canter out into the open air, to see how fast and far they can go.

It's time.

Nuclear Debate

"Honey, I swear to you, I am this close to having everyone just die right now!"

Sandy's phone nearly trembled with the force of her husband's voice coming through the line. She had married him to be his lover and his friend, but being his counselor was too much sometimes. Especially now, she thought as she fingered the envelope marked "TEST RESULTS" nervously with one hand and rubbed her swollen belly with the other.

"That's... that's nice, honey. What did they do to you?"

She heard a loud sigh from the other end. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing that we've asked them to, and we don't ask much. Just that the world's countries disarm themselves, but they get off on pointing guns at each other. Do you know how much that irritates us?"

Sandy was not many things, least of all a diplomat. "No, not really. But I got something in the mail today."

"Really? Is it my bonus for saving the world's ass once again?" His job as the head of the World Nuclear Council brought with it immense responsibility, pressure from all sides, and a massive chronic migraine. She could tell one was coming on right now.

"It's about the baby. You might want to sit down."

"How can I sit down? The world's about to destroy itself and I'm its only hope, again. What is it?"

Sandy took a deep breath. "Remember that Mexican weightlifter on the cruise?"

She heard nothing, then a gulp. "I can't take this." Then the loud klaxon of a big red button being pushed and a dial tone. She looked at the receiver, hung it on its hook slowly, gasped in realization, and collapsed against the wall crying, waiting for the sky, the same sky she made love under, to burn with fury.

Halo Homewrecker

"Be on your best behavior. Understand, Kira?"

"Yes, Mommie Precious."

Mother had a boombox to help encourage me during my pageant rehearsals, depending on how I conducted myself on our makeshift stage. Some horrific catwalk chant would blare, but never concealed Mother's tinny screams.

I have one thing to say
CURTSY!
Sashay, chantez.
COOCHIE POP!
Chantez, chantez.
GLEAM!
Chantez chantez chantez!
LINE!

"When I tuhn fifteen I wanna mawwy you!"

It don't matter what you weeeaarr--Show skin!
--million dollah derr-i-ere--BE A SEDUCTRESS!
--what you dooo--APPLY MORE ROUGE!
--'cuz everything looks good on YOO-OU!

Tears well up in my eyes.

"Uh.. *sniff*.. Mommy Scotchgawded my outfit! Wanna take me out to ice cweam?"

"They get Kira the pageant goddess before they get Kira the slut!

Mother's backhand trowels off an inch of foundation.

"Ow!"

Kira Shontélle Adelaide was my name. We spent hours perfecting ways to induce erections in those wrinkly pedophile judges.

"Affirmative, *sniff* Mommy darling, Bludgeoner of Princesses with Subpar Ambition For Their Own Good."

"You'll wear this electrified halo during the Anne Geddes Too Old for Greeting Cards portion. Fuck it up, sip from the juice box."

"Yay! Juice!"

*BZZRG!*

"I HEAR RADIO STATIONS!"

"That juice, you whore."

Mother pulls me to the cosmetics table. I am dashing and gorgeous (on one side of my face).

"What's this?"

Mother holds up a cucumber slice.

"The gift from Mother Earth's Produce Section that keeps the bags away from my beautiful eyes!"

Mother lifts up a roll of duct tape.

"SAY IT FOR MOMMY."

"This... keeps ugly bumps from showing so Kira stays beautiful and Mommy and Kira can live like goddesses and Mommy will finally accept Kayla's tragic 1999 junglegym death."

"I love you, my little princess."

Red. Don't go in the water. Danger. Sharks. Jellyfish. Riptides. Storms. Waves. No lifeguard. Red flag, stay away.

Samuel knew the rules, and he decided to ignore them. For the first and last time in his life, he wanted to control himself. He'd been born in water, and now he wished to die in it.

Birthing pools had been popular when his mother was pregnant. Always one for the unusual, she embraced the trend with only a midwife's assistance. It was an unpleasant experience for her, a long and painful labor, for which she blamed the midwife. Her following three children were born on solid land. So Samuel, fittingly a Pisces, was always her "little water baby".

He'd run with that most of his life. He was the most laid-back of the siblings, a quiet teenager, and a gentle man after college. He "went with the flow" gracefully and nearly never lost his temper nor let things get under his skin.

In fact, he was often too gentle and laid back. His opinions were often formed for him, bored into him like water eats holes in a rock. Samuel rarely thought for himself. His environment tempered him--he failed to master it.

So he made up his mind, firmly and completely, for once. His reasons were typical, money, job, girls. No overwhelming reasons, but reasons, and they were his.

So he waded out to the deserted sandbar, wind and salt stinging his face. Then, covered in gooseflesh, he took a deep breath and plunged out further into the storm, where there was no place to rest again.

In his final moments, Samuel was tossed around to face the shoreline. The last thing he saw as the thrashing waves lovingly embraced him was the storm flag flying.

Evening Attire

The trees hang heavy with magnolia and tulips in this semi-tropical city. In May they have the Spring Cotillion. We're skeptical. This ain't no CBGB's. We prefer a ruder music. Our dancing is artless collision and conflict. We chafe at the prospect of forced etiquette, and "cotillion" just reeks of popularity contests and desire denied. We like to dress up, though.

I wear a white tie ensemble, and my Chuck Taylors. Black and white high-tops are "formal" All Stars, aren't they? Your little black dress with the dyeable bridesmaid shoes dyed black, probably wasn't what they had in mind when they said "evening attire" for a ball, but we're just going for the free booze, right?

The dancing is in the Great Hall, under the chandelier. We hang in the second-floor gallery, drinking champagne with strawberries. On the hardwood a few skilled dancers spin in epicycles, circling the room like Ptolemy's planets in their orbits, with perfect hair and impeccable evening attire.

After several cases of champagne have effervesced in plastic flutes, I acknowledge my place on your dance card. The professor playing the piano, red-faced and sweating profusely, pounds out a Viennese Waltz at a frenetic tempo of 180 beats per minute, faster then you or I can move our feet, though we try. The ever-young, ever-immoral dance hypnotizes us. Our spinning and whirling smears the world beyond us to a flux, with one still point at the center: you.

Imperial Gesture

Damn them all! I'll be a good ruler, but will they care? They see only my age, overlooking my princely accomplishments. I've heard half the court muttering about blocking the succession.

Hemingway II was a drunk; did they care? Staggered down the red carpet right into rehab, and they cheered. Everyone knew Victor was a woman under his cloak, yet they kept mum. Accolades flowed like nectar for weeks after his ascension proclamation of his adoption of an heir from the gutter.

What did they expect from Buttrick the First? Puerility, and they'd see it regardless what I did. The Empire was awash in bread; why not add a circus?

I swore the royal tailor to secrecy. I could see his inner protest — Lengthen the arms, let out the waist, these I can do, but… — but discretion prevented it reaching his tongue.

Despite the traditional noon, I directed a nighttime coronation, under the full moon. Flouting the aristocracy more, I did not enter the amphitheatre with them but arose from the field, smiling to one and all as the crowd parted around me and I made my way up the steps.

Just short of the throne, I pivoted to face my people and bowed with my well-practiced flourish, my cloak coming to rest around my neck and shoulders, the roar of the crowd drowning out the shocked gasps from the peerage assembled behind me.

September Secret

"I don't want to tell you", softly - but firmly - she said.

"But now I know there's something to know."

"That was my first mistake. I'm not going to make a second. It's better this way."

"But... but that means I'll always wonder, always know there's something there keeping us apart"

"There always has been. You never worried about it before. What's changed?"

"It's different now. Don't you see that?"

"Not for me."

"So you knew from the beginning. Don't you realise you've misled me, hurt me?"

"If I told you, you'd understand why I mustn't tell you. Trust me."

"I want to, but you've abused my trust by not telling me."

"I don't want things to change now, there's no reason. Just...      leave it."

"I can't. If you won't tell me, we are less than we were. I can't reconnect with you without this."

"You can force me, you know. I'm only human. Try hard enough, phrase it in the right way, and I'll tell you. What we have means more to me than not telling you. But...

"But?"

"But you too will have destroyed something. You will have pulled a sacred chord to find out, and the chords can't handle the strain; they break. You'll get what you want to know, but you won't rebuild our bond, you'll destroy it. Especially as when you find out, you'll agree I shouldn't have told you."

"But where do we go from here?"

"Nowhere. You won't be satisfied unless I tell you, and neither of us will ever forgive ourselves if I do."

Silence, and I listened to the clock, counting the dull ticks until I got to ninety-nine.

"I'll let myself out", I said, and walked away into the autumn night.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was late at night, the day before the big announcement - time travel, finally, we'd made it, beaten the other side to it, too. I was minding the equipment. Had a few drinks. Started thinking about that old question "if you could go back in time and kill Hitler, would you?" And there I was, with a working time machine. Who would know? So I did it. Went back to 1939, snuck into his bedroom, beat the fucker's brains out as he slept. Job done.

Of course, you can't just mess with history like that. There are repercussions, butterfly effects - a frog farts in Australia, a house collapses in Arizona. Everything got messed up. One look at the newspaper told me that. I had to fix it. But I couldn't just go back and stop myself killing Hitler - the machine couldn't allow two of me in the same place at once. I had to put history right. Went to the dermatology lab, changed my face, broke into a costume store, rushed back to 1939, invaded Poland. As Hitler. I had to stay, of course, right up to 1945. Had to do some bad, bad things. You've read the history books. Broke my heart, nearly drove me mad. But I did it. Came back seconds after I left. The perfect crime.

That fixed some stuff, but not everything. See, I'd made other stops on the way back from killing Hitler that first time. Took out some other "undesirables", as they say. That all had to be fixed. Manson, Bundy, Stalin - fifty six in a row, all murderers, serial killers, psychos. I had to do all their crimes, disguised as them, to fix everything.

It was a long night.

Crazy Ensign

Tar eyes locked on the chalk at early past noon. She floated him a pass but he knew better. It was love across the board. She was a closer on the bit and he was driving. Dame with knobby knees and skirt up to there so's he could see all the way to Phillipino China. See-through frilly filly skirt with a flowered print. Walking away was a plus in this salty charade. He'd find her tonight when he got out of these casual whites. They'd run then, they would.

Carousel winding down as his brunette baby bay popped a perfect bubble dismounting that harlequin playhorse. She'd changed dresses but not her underwear. Nine months shipbound with nothing but men had made his nose a device preternatural. Cotton candy overtures and freshly pressed dress blues had her on the boardwalk by nine. Walking beside. Hands dangling close, thinking of double slip knots and worse.

"You have girlfriends over there?" The maiden asked it without flattening out, so he was harnessed. He eased but felt the bit. His skittish nature made him say, "Hell, yeah!" with the bravado of conquesting heroes the planet over, living and dead. Not a one of those yellow girls went without their salary for the night, but they all got together in that split second of harmonious disjunction, as if conjured up by some ancient spirit of love wasted, and caused his front runner to nose breathe audibly. No blinkers were hiding this blunder.

She was crowding him, but it was a disqualification right then and there. He was distanced but he didn't find out for another two hours and twenty bucks for dinner.

I lost him in the forest because of Autumn Glitter - when the leaves are amber and red and the golden light of the late evening sun sparkles through the trees. I was dazzled by it and lost him.

As I was looking for him, the path forked. Which way did he go? I read somewhere that you're more likely to take the right path if you're right handed - but maybe he knew that too.

"Greetings," said a fairy, who had suddenly appeared. He was about two feet tall, with a sharp silver beard and large, iridescent wings.

Must have been that kind of forest. I shrugged.

"Hello, have you seen someone pass this way?" I asked.

"Yes!" he cried.

"Well, did you see which way he went?"

"Yes!" He was smiling at me now. I took this to mean that he was a Good Fairy.

"Well, which way did he go?"

"I will tell you which way he went - but be warned, my answer may be a lie: he took the left path."

"It may be a lie? So in other words it's still either left or right?"

The fairy said nothing.

"That's not helpful at all! How can I get you to give me a straight answer?"

"My answer remains the same. Unless... you have a golden horseshoe, worn once on the hoof of a unicorn."

I smiled, and put my hand into my pocket. The fairy's eyes widened and his face grew eager. Presumably the horseshoe was as important to him as the little thief I was chasing for stealing my merchandise.

I fixed my eyes onto his shiny wings.

"I don't," I replied. "But... I do have a pair of pliers and a blowtorch."

Turned out, I didn't need the golden horseshoe after all.

Royal Spy

Ellery read the note.

Our royal spy has been compromised.
Is there no honor among thieves?

He handed it back to the Duchess. "When did you last hear from Charles?"

"Monday. Something's happened, Ellery!"

"Calm down. Where's his appointment book?"

He flipped to the last entry:

2:15 Lunch with Queen
3:30 Business meeting
4:20 Meet with K--

"Lunch with Her Highness. Interesting."

"I thought perhaps --"

Ellery raised an eyebrow.

"Nothing. I'm worried!" He opened the directory. Three Ks: Matthew Keating, Brewster Kingsbury, Steve Kissinger.

"The Duke vanishes, and you suspect one of us?"

"Precisely. His last contact likely knows his whereabouts. Which one of you did he meet?"

Silence.

"Fine. How did you know the Duke?"

Kingsbury, a military man, spoke. "We attended university together. I've done some business with him since then, socialized a bit."

Next was Keating, a shrewdish man. "I am his accountant. I only see him twice a year."

Finally Kissinger, the American. "I used to work for the Duke."

"Used to?"

"Quit to join a law firm in Portsmouth. Haven't seen the man since I left."

Ellery pulled out the incriminating note.

"One of you wrote this. The Duke was meeting with someone to discuss payment. Some spying business. Didn't bring enough, I guess. Untraceable, only the culprit left a telltale clue. British convention spells 'honor' h-o-n-o-u-r. The note spells it the American way. Grab him, sergeant!"

Kissinger pled innocent all the way to the paddywagon.

"Good work, Inspector; you're fast on your feet."

"Thanks."

As Ellery got in his car, he checked his trunk again: money and body, safely packed. Double crossing bastard. C'est la vie. That honor thing was genius ...

"Inspector Queen? The Duchess is on the phone."

"Tell her I'm on my way."

Now to get rid of that appointment book ...

Forbidden Apple

"Evening Mark."

Mark's boss Mr. Roberts stood in the locker room, dressed in the Pleasanton SecureCo uniform, ready to leave. "The cleaners have left, so it's just you and the ghosts now."

Mark had been doing the dark o'clock shift at this computer company in Cupertino for the past two years, a job he thorougly enjoyed. Although he didn't know much about computers, he loved playing the video games on them that his cousin Keith supplied him with.

"The elevators are still being fixed. You'll have to climb the stairwell on your two o'clock check."
"Sure. Good night sir."

Then he was alone.

Mark wasted no time. He took the round on the first floor and locked himself into the "Release Lab" where all the coolest computers were. "Thank you Keith" he whispered while slipping the new golden disc into one of the silvery laptops.

"Drag this icon somewhere to install Soldier of Fortune III", the computer said, and Mark did. For three hours he was John Mullins, ass-kicking good guy working for The Man.

"Oh, poor man. A security guard fell into one of the elevator shafts last night. He was lucky to survive." Louise replied.

Mr. Jobs had no time for lucky security guards, because today was the day the new PowerBook G7s were being shipped off to production. He was going to be very busy.

Steve was worried. Reviewers could make or break his entire company. He'd spent too much time worrying about litigation lately. The G7s were the final ace up his sleeve.

"They love it Mr. Jobs, especially the game bundle."
"What game bundle?"
"Soldier of Fortune III. Whoever came up with that in marketing is in for a nice fat christmas bonus."

With Anticipation

With anticipation, Simon boarded flight 2332, New York to Paris, and not for the first time, but for the tenth. By now he knew the pattern, the routine that the flight crew followed. He was as prepared as was possible for such a mission. An hour after takeoff, at an altitude of 32,000 feet, flight attendant Nancy Sommers asked Simon, "Something to drink, Sir?"

"Certainly, the usual."

Ms. Sommers winked, and carried on.

Two and a half hours into the flight, over a darkened Atlantic Ocean, Simon rose from his seat on the aisle, opened the overhead bin and removed his backpack. Ten rows from the rear galley, Simon headed for the lavatory. As he passed through the now empty galley, he pulled the curtain in front of the exit door, so as to create a space for concealment. Once in the restroom, he checked the contents of his pack, assuring himself that no damage had been done. Looking in the mirror, straightening his tie, he could practically see his heart pounding through his shirt, but this was no time for second guessing decisions already made.

Two hours forty eight minutes into a flight across an all encompassing sea, Simon cracked open the lavatory door, and while attendants were busy serving meals, he slid behind the previously drawn curtain. Except for the buffeting of the plane by the currents of the wind, time seemed frozen.

She was back now, Ms. Sommers, right on schedule. It was now or never. Before the other attendants arrived; Simon quickly dropped to the floor, rolled under the curtain and while a startled Nancy Sommers almost screamed, with precision packed in profound practice, Simon unzipped his pack, balanced himself on one knee, removed the roses and pleaded, Darling, marry me?

DOMERIDER

Louise meticulously avoided doctors. Her avoidance was strictly sexual, of course. Being a psychologist at a NY recruiting agency regularly involved job dealings with doctors. At bedtime she was choosier, though.

As a Jewish girl, Louise by definition had a Jewish mother. But hers was the proverbial one. "Take care of your looks and marry a doctor," Louise had heard throughout her childhood. "No need for pretty girls to go to college." Louise had to work herself through college, soon suffused with sexual aversion towards eligible doctors.

Hereafter she would blithely bed virile victims from all walks of life - from A-rtisans to Z-ookeepers. But never ever had a doctor crossed her busy bedroom threshold.

"Except for now," she said in a troubled tone to Astri, a slightly bimboish-looking creature in its late twenties. They had been brooding for some time at the Waldorf Astoria bar, sipping green tea. "To get turned on by a doctor! With my background."

Following some pensive scrotum-scratching, under the strictly striped satin skirt, Astri baritoned: "Why, useless in bed, or something? Try me, then!"

"I don't know. I'm just going to find out. See you later!" Louise hurriedly picked up her purse, grabbing a cab to his place. As expected, Harry O'Harley, MD, was already waiting by his door, smiling awkwardly in plain erotic anticipation.

It took her fifteen minutes to ascertain that her inchoate turn-on had been out of place. He had left her completely cold.

So she left him even colder in return, instrumentally aided by his brown leather belt. He had been a rather nice-looking doctor, if you disregarded the present bluish tint on his face, she thought, looking appreciatively at the inert body on the bed. But then newly strangled people look that way, she knew.

His biographer ... reports that he was fond of spider fights: "He looked for some spiders, and made them fight together, or he threw some flies into the cobweb, and was so well-pleased with that battle, that he would sometimes break into laughter." (Gilles Deleuze, Practical Philosophy, 12)

Cherish Destiny

The larger spider sank its fangs into the smaller; the philosopher cackled.
There was no malice in it; death was not a part of what he watched.
It was the fun of something happening.

"Spiders can teach us life," he explained. "Spiders have no hatred, no regret. Victims doesn't blame conquerors; conquerors don't feel guilty. When spiders meet, each faces the same pure, indifferent force of nature that created and always sustained it. The victim will love its killer as forcefully as it loved its life; the killer need think nothing of its task. That's destiny."

I pencilled this in the margins of my teacher's treatise.

There's pathos in that philosopher's science. His destiny was the trash of destiny. Anathematized, stabbed at, slandered, mocked, and finally, ignored – tempting enough to turn away from the world of men. Others have been so provoked, by less. But his theorems and diagrams showed another way. They were full of love, overwhelming all resentment or remorse. This was pitiless logic to reunite the heart with its world. "Amor Dei," he called it, but there wasn't any religion left for him; it had all been burned away by a brilliant passion fuelled by something higher than religion. Where mythic personhood had been, remained the mystery of the absolute. "Amor Dei?" – I knew what it meant: not to cherish god, but to cherish destiny – that by which all things are brought, by which the world's evil makes possible the world's good.

"We, unlike spiders, don't need to kill each other to get by," he added. "But that's no excuse for timidity. Don't deceive yourself about what we are to each other. We are one another's destiny."

I made a final note and snapped my textbook shut.
Grinning, I slammed it down on the spiders.

Ten Most Wanted

Ribbons, skipping-rope, toffee-apple, cuddles, chocolate, bike, kitten, dress, stability, love.

I wanted them all so bad

Ribbons

They flew, bright flags at the ends of braids: red, yellow, blue. My ribbons were supposed to be green, my favourite colour. Then Momma cut my hair. She said I look real cute.

---

Skipping-rope

Momma cut me some clothes-line. It wasn't the same thing at all. I never played with it.

---

Toffee-apple

Standing by the merry-go-round, music ringing in my ears, I saw them -- juicy and sticky all at the same time. My hand tightened round my collection quarter, but Momma'd told me God saw everything.

---

Cuddles

Momma was weeping when I burst through the door, blood running down my leg. She gave me a half-hug, anyway.

---

Chocolate

She tried mixing cocoa and syrup, but it was never rich enough. There'd been no real chocolate since daddy left. I told her I wished I lived with him. She bit her lip to stop it trembling.

---

Bike

Mom handed me pen and paper. "Write to your father. Maybe he'll listen to you," she said, in a taut, tired voice.

---

She wouldn't let me keep even one. I woke up and they were gone - I was sure she'd drowned them. I ignored her for days. Later I discovered she'd found homes for all of them.

---

Dress

I danced in silk, turned ivory with age - grandma's wedding gown, transformed by hours of painstaking needlework, sometime after midnight. Mom said it wasn't near as lovely as me.

---

I sat by her bed, watching her struggle for breath. I wasn't ready to lose her, but she slipped away anyway.

---

She said I'd be fine. Here in your arms, I know she was right. I find a smile, somewhere behind the tears, and kiss her goodbye.

I catch the coin spinning lazily in the air, slap it to my wrist. Mare Tranquillatus shines up in iridium and aluminum.

"Tails."

We take giant leaps, toes touching the corridor floor. You are more nimble than I, your Martian ancestry making you more coordinated in one-quarter G than I. Everything seems a shade too heavy. The architects of this project had good reasons, of course, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Winning the coin toss means we'll watch the launch from the planetside lounge. You were hoping to have your eyes on our destination.

We settle into our couches and play a last game of go, snapping stones down with the sharpness and authority of words in a lover's quarrel. You decimate me, encircle me, erase my liberties.

The lids close gently. Through the transparent plastic I see the ruined Earth below. As the needle descends and fills me with ice, I wonder what I will see when I awaken.

I hold the coin to my heart, crater side down, H.I.M. Arthur's face staring benignly with me at my destiny.

End Transmission

This message brought to you by the Coalition For The Preservation Of Solar Cultures.

Maple Syrple

Leaving for my nursing shift at the town hospital, I saw new tubing for the sugarbush out beside the barn. Merde alors! Earle had agreed to let the sugarbush recover from two dry seasons. Qu'est-ce qui s'est passé?

I met him at the sugar shack door. He was ready. "Maggie, I don't care if I kill the whole damn bush. Gonna suck 'em dry. We're selling the farm, orchard an' all, when sugar weather's done. Let 'em make that new suburb out here."

"You cannot do that!" I said. This was my family's patrimony, had been for generations. It would have been Jean-Marc's if he had not died on the ice, but he did. That left only me. And Earle.

Earle got angry, like he often did. "It's my land. I'll do what I want."

"This is our farm," I told him. "And these are my trees. I will not agree."

I hadn't talked back to Earle in years. He hit me, much harder than usual. He knocked me down in the mud outside the shack and hit me twice more. "Stupid pepsi bitch!" he shouted. "Think I married you for looks?" Then he went back inside.

Earle never heard me come home that night, with the needle. He took most of a week to die, out there in the shack. I kept saline dripping into him to replace his fluids. He died slowly, just like my trees.

* * *

"And what happened to the blood?" asked the detective. The answer was due back soon from the lab, anyway.

"Earle's Maple Syrple!" I laughed. "Grade A Dark Amber."

The detective shuddered. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number from his notepad. "Monroe? Yeah. Better get moving on that recall...."

This writeup temporarily removed for publication in Cover of Darkness, which should be out May 1, 2007.

Grandpa was so Southern he could make the sink drain swirl backwards. He drank coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon, and gin in the evening. He worshipped God first and the Volunteers second, and considered the Smoky Mountains to be the cultural capital of the world.

"Grandpa," I said, looking at a yellowing photograph on the coffee table, "who are they?"

"The greatest men in the world," he said, with a smile on his old, bald, wrinkled face. "Those were the men who I fought with, way back when I was young." He pointed to a uniformed man at the bottom of the picture. "See? That's me."

"He doesn't look like you."

Grandpa laughed. "Lemme tell you something... they were all very brave, those fellas. This one here," he pointed out, "Jack, when he was hurt, we all carried him through the snow. And then one'a them Germans came running out of the trees, shooting away, and we all ran, and I nearly peed my pants. But Jack, he pulled out his pistol and bagged him right in the knee. Didn't even get on his feet."

I jumped back on the sofa. "Wow!"

"It was a scary place," Grandpa said, "but they were brave men. We saved each other more times than I can remember." He sipped his foul little glass of gin, and then pushed himself to his feet. "Lemme show you something."

He brought a little wooden box down from a shelf full of knickknacks, and opened it.

"A star?"

"A Silver Star," he said. "It's for the bravest of the brave: forgetting yourself to remember others."

The medal was pinned to his jacket as he lay, watching heaven from the safety of his box. It was then that I knew how right he was.

"It's just a shock, you know?"

Mr.Hamilton was looking at the floor as he talked.

"I mean you get up in the morning, drink your coffee, go to work and you come home and then....." his voice trailed off.

I knew not to interrupt. Mr.Hamilton paused for minute, then went on:

"I mean, I come home and there's stuff thrown all over the place and I go in the kitchen and she's ...she's.........there."

I kept writing, but once in a while I looked over at him to give him the impression I was paying attention. We'd been at my desk for half an hour at that point and I was writing up a report on a hit and run accident from the day before. He probably thought I was keeping track of what he was saying, but somebody had already taken his statement. That wasn't my job.

"It's awful, just awful. It's the kind of thing that shouldn't happen to your worst enemy, you know? The worst thing in the world to find somebody like that......."
He made a choking kind of noise and I thought he was going to throw up so I pushed my chair away from my desk and looked for the nearest trashcan.
"No, no, I'm ok...it's just...I'm ok. But, do you think I could have some more coffee?"
Mr.Hamilton raised his two handcuffed wrists toward me with the blood stained styrofoam cup in his right hand.

Sure, I told him, waving the hands away, but what say we get you a new cup?
He nodded his head yes, lowered his hands, and went back to talking.

Rock of Gibraltar

The ship rolls on white-topped waves. Mist caresses the rocks ahead, like an old lover both comfortable and passionate. I am in love with this place. I will never leave again, and I am glad.

"Ya ready, Cap'n?" Impudent as always. I shouldn't have taken him on, but we were short a man, then... it is irrelevant, now.

"As ever, Mr. Moore. And you? Prepared?"

"'Course." His voice wavers slightly; just enough for me to notice. I suppose he regrets.

The rough sea and the mist call to mind battle, officers in smart blue and the blast of cannons and splintered wood streaking through the air and into the dark water. The sea accepts all sacrifices. I have a sudden urge to run to the prow and throw myself in, to surrender to the crash of the waves and the inevitably shocking collision of body and wooden vessel. The sea has always affected me this way. All my life I have resisted the urge to leap blithely into the wide arms of the deep.

"Nothing pers'nal, Cap'n. Honest if ya hadn' been who ya is, id've never thought a', y'know, this..."

"No hard feelings, Mr. Moore." We are silent together for a few minutes, and he walks away. We are nearly to shore; he is going to guide the ship into port. He is a good navigator. He is a good man. She and the crew are in good hands.

I relax against the mast and enjoy the scenery. The wind has picked up, and it cuts into every exposed slice of my form. I am more content than I have been in what seems like an age. This strait and its rocks and mist and wind are warm blankets to a cold soul.

Tonight, in Gibraltar, I die.

—    Slew City Citadel    —

You can only get to the Slew City Citadel by steam locomotive. The train races through the night, burning, carrying carloads of the hopeful. Showers of sparks flash from the rails and the cinders glow and twist like the luminescent leaves of fall, and they can see you from the ramparts as you approach through the darkness.

From the train, you can see the City only as a towering darkness that expands slowly, eating the stars and the blue-black of the sky, that shrinks the moon to a half, then to a quarter, then to nothing. The Citadel becomes the sky, and the hopeful know they're getting close as they speed through the sprawling mass of dwellings surrounding the massive walls.

Why do we want to get to the Citadel of Slew City? You can hear echoes of the reason in our voices:

"Only He can make it right..."

"He must surely be a reasonable man..."

"...need..."   "...pain..."   "...war..."

"...the Others hate us..."   "...they are not human..."

The train howls into the darker darkness of a tunnel, emerging inside the walls, on elevated tracks beneath which soldiers maneuver, spears and guns and helmets glinting in the moonlight like the faint hope in the eyes of the riders. Ahead you will see new walls, higher than before.

"It is only necessary..."   "...for our own safety..."

The hopeful are going for an audience in the Citadel, the City's inner sanctum. With them, you pass through another set of fortifications as the City folds out beneath you.

"...we seek audience with the Powerful..."

You pull into a station, and with the riders wash off the train into a press of humanity—ten, fifty trains all unloading pilgrims onto the same platform. Through more barriers, checkpoints, you queue...

"...we seek audience with Power..."

Runaway Mary ran into the rain.
She dashed and she darted and never delayed.
The wet and the water got out of the way, and
Runaway Mary still ran.

Runaway Mary ran into the park.
She scampered and scrambled and tore it apart.
Joggers were jacknifed, children were fraught, and
Runaway Mary still ran.

Runaway Mary ran into the heat.
She bolted and barreled on two burning feet.
The desert was sour, the mirages so sweet, and
Runaway Mary still ran.

Runaway Mary ran into the lake.
She glugged and she gurgled but wouldn't abate.
The seaweed was clawing, the waves told her fate, but
Runaway Mary still ran.

Runaway Mary ran into the snow.
She slid and she slided through drift and through blow.
A blizzard took an eye and Frost claimed a toe, but
Runaway Mary still ran.

Runaway Mary ran into the street.

*Why poetry and not prose, you ask? Because dannye told me I should do this and I wrote down the name of my horse and forgot about it and I'm a moron and arcanamundi said to post it anyway.