official website of Erin M. Klitzke, historian and author of Awakenings and Epsilon: Broken Stars
Welcome to 365 Days of Writing Prompts – image edition!
A few years ago, I did 365 Days of Prompts, but those prompts ran the gamut—some were first lines, some were plot, setting, and character, some were musical—and some were photos.
This year, 365 days of photos as starters for your writing adventures.
Hope you enjoy the ride.
He settled into a seat at the back of the classroom, taking a quick sip of his coffee before flipping his sketchbook to a page that wasn’t filled with doodles of this and that—some for things he intended to make, others just observations. There were already at least a half-dozen sketches of her in that sketchbook.
What if she really is real?
Nick exhaled a silent sigh. What if, indeed. The odds of actually being able to find her were astronomical, even if he had known her last name. He just couldn’t seem to remember enough details to really get to who she really was. At least, that was what he’d been telling himself all summer.
In truth, it really was fear that kept him from searching—though he wasn’t sure if he was afraid that he’d find out she was real or if she really was a dream. He wasn’t sure which would be worse, really.
Stop lying to yourself. You know which is worse.
He took another sip of coffee as his professor arrived, a stack of syllabi in one arm. Just looking at the bean-pole of a man with thinning black hair and the male equivalent of resting bitch face gave Nick a sense of instant dislike and he sank back in his chair, clutching his cup a little tighter.
It’s going to be a bloody long semester.
While Dr. Ronstein started handing out the syllabus for the class and saying something about his teaching assistant being unavoidably detained that morning, Nick started to doodle in his sketchbook, almost unconsciously. He paused to glance over the syllabus when a copy found its way to him, frowning slightly as he flipped through the schedule of the class.
Heavy reading, light assignments. That’s a small favor, I guess.
His attention wandered again and he sat, half-listening to Ronstein as he went over the syllabus in greater detail. His hand and the pencil in it seemed to move of their own accord even as he cultivated the appearance of paying rapt attention to his professor. In truth, he only gleaned the most important parts, his thoughts elsewhere—on the self-appointed projects he wanted to start, on trying to piece together more scraps of the last few dreams even as they continued to fade from his memory, on the other three classes he’d have to make it through over the next few days before he could safely say that he’d been to all of his classes and had an idea of what to expect—and what he could skip and learn on his own.
It wasn’t until class was nearly over that he caught sight of the girl watching him. He only saw her doing it from the corner of his eye and he frowned briefly, trying not to stare back at her. She wasn’t really looking at him, though—she was looking at his sketchpad, and what he’d drawn there.
“That’s all I have for you today,” Ronstein said, and the words jarred Nick, drawing his attention back to the front of the classroom. “Please read the first three chapters of the Daley text for next time and be prepared to discuss what he had to say about urban settings in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.”
Nick flipped his sketchbook closed and stood up, starting to tuck it and his pencil into his bag. Discreetly, he glanced in the direction of the girl again, hoping for a better look while she wasn’t paying attention.
There’s something familiar about her.
It wasn’t like she was the girl from his dream—far from it. This girl was dark-haired and gray-eyed and of a slightly more broad build than the elfin red-head that he dreamed of every night. Still, there was something damnably familiar about her that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
At least not yet.
He shouldered his bag and turned away before she could notice him staring. There would be time enough to figure out why she was familiar over the coming days and weeks, he was sure of that much—assuming she stayed in the class, anyway. The first couple of weeks were always full of drops and new adds as people realized classes weren’t for them and changed their schedule around one last time before they were locked in for the rest of the semester.
What bothered him more than not being able to figure out why she was familiar was how intently she’d been staring at his sketch of Roiya, the girl from his dreams.
Maybe she’s just into messy sketches, he thought as he gulped down the last of his coffee and pitched the cup on his way out of the classroom. That’s got to be it. Hell. Watching me draw was probably more interesting than whatever Ronstein was saying. I know I sure as hell feel that way.
The sun was higher, now, and even more intense as he stepped out of the building and into midday sunshine of an August Tuesday. Still, a shiver shot down his spine. The familiarity bothered him in a way that was more unsettling than it should have been—like it was on the very edge of his memory but was something he couldn’t quite wrap his fingers around.
At least not yet.
Sighing quietly, Nick turned and headed for the dining commons, hoping that he’d find Thad there. They hadn’t done much discussion of their class schedules in the last weeks before the semester’s start except to know that at least some of their class times would overlap and that Thad would be lingering on campus whenever his father was teaching. The freshman had opted to live at home, though what calculus had led to that decision, Nick wasn’t sure. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t have lived on campus—the dorms weren’t full and enrollment was down slightly. It would have been easy to get a slot if he’d wanted one. Instead, Thad was apparently content to live at home with his parents and his younger sister, in a house that was an easy bike or bus ride to campus. It bothered Nick a little, but not enough to ask why. At least not yet.
There were a lot of things that seemed to be falling into that category these days.
Not yet.
He shivered again despite the sunshine and the heat, shifting his backpack and starting to walk a little faster. Maybe things had always been this way and he was only just now starting to notice. Maybe it was something else. He wasn’t sure.
He fit his earbuds into his ears as he passed the arboretum, starting some music on his phone. He crossed the bridge through the shade of trees, trying to let the music soothe suddenly ragged nerves and trying to ignore the other students that thronged around him, crowded the bridge and the sidewalks on that sunny second day of the semester. The press of people bothered him, but he knew by the following week the crowds would die away until midterms, and then after that they’d die away again until the week before finals. He just had to grin and bear it for a little while.
He almost laughed. If that didn’t seem like an allegory for life, he wasn’t sure what did.
The dining commons were as crowded as he worried they might be, but he pushed that aside, scanning the faces in the crowd for the familiar one he sought. He didn’t see Thad immediately, but that didn’t mean that his friend wasn’t among the students already settled at tables, possibly somewhere tucked into a corner and out of sight.
Steeling himself, he headed for the food court, intending to snag a sandwich or some Chinese food—depending on which line was shorter. A quick survey of the activity in the area made the decision for him and he settled into he line in front of the stir-fry counter, then cranked the volume up on his music.
His throat tightened slightly as the words filled his ears, the swell of the notes, their ebb and flow. Somehow, it reminded him of her, of Roiya. The ghost of her face filled his mind’s eye the way it filled the pages of his sketchbook, crowding out everything else. He wondered, if she really was real, did she do that when she entered a room? Was she suddenly the center of every gaze? Or did she slide in quietly, like a dagger through a chink in armor, not there until you tried to move and then suddenly—
A hand tapped his shoulder and he jumped, every muscle suddenly taut, coiled like a spring, ready for a fight. He sucked in two breaths, blinking rapidly as his vision cleared enough for him to realize that it was Thad, that Thad had tapped him on the shoulder and scared the wits right out of him. Nick yanked out his earbuds.
“Are you okay?” Thad asked, his grin melting into an expression of concern—the furrowed brow, the slackened jaw, the strange look in his eye. “Did I scare you?”
“Yes,” Nick growled, turning off his music and shoving his phone and headphones back into his pocket. He checked his tone and started again. “I was distracted. That’s all.”
Thad nodded. “Thought you might be. Physics sucked. How was Ronstein?”
“There’s going to be a TA but he wasn’t here today,” Nick said. “Something about being unavoidably detained.”
“That is some choice of words.” Thad shook his head. “Well, better for you if he’s got a TA. That means you’ll get grades back faster and lectures will probably be more interesting.”
“Here’s to hoping because right now I’m definitely not finding that class very stimulating at all.”
“Let’s be real, here,” Thad said as they slowly advanced in the stir fry line. “Would you be finding any sort of class very stimulating right now?”
Nick sighed. “Probably not.”
“There you go.” Thad nodded firmly. “I’ve got a gap for a few hours. You?”
“Same.”
“Want to walk after lunch?”
Nick nodded. “Yeah, I think so. Something happened during class that’s bugging me and I want your read on it.”
“My read? The lowly freshman?”
Nick snorted, turning away to order his food. Thad ordered his just after, and then the two headed out into the dining area to find a secluded table, juggling bowls and drinks as they went. Thad nudged his elbow after a few minutes of fruitless searching and pointed to a table in a corner near some windows, overlooking some of the wooded areas that peppered their campus. There were still two people sitting at the table.
“We can go sit over there,” Thad said.
“It doesn’t look like they’re ready to leave yet.”
“Trust me,” Thad said. He didn’t wait for Nick to answer, just started heading for that table in the corner. Nick blinked for a second, then followed. Sure enough, as Thad drew within about ten feet of the table, the pair that had been sitting there stood up, gathering their things. They were gone before he and Thad reached the table. Nick just shook his head.
“How the hell did you know?” he asked.
Thad shrugged. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to, Nick.” He settled down in the chair, his back to one of the building’s support beams. “So what happened during your class that’s got you rattled?”
“What?”
Thad canted his head to one side, a brow arching. “You said something happened in class. What was it? I’m pretty damn sure it’s not something Ronstein said.”
Nick choked on a laugh. “No. No, it wasn’t. Something else. There was this girl.”
“Not dreamgirl,” Thad guessed.
“No,” Nick said, spearing some snow peas and chicken with his fork. “Someone I’m pretty sure I’ve never met before, but she was watching me.”
“Like, you specifically? With some kind of purpose? Or just staring off into space because Ronstein is just that boring and her gaze just happened to end up landing on you for an extended period of time?”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said quietly. He shoveled a forkful of food into his mouth, using the time it took to chew and swallow to buy himself time to decide exactly how he was going to phrase what he was about to say. “She wasn’t really even looking that closely at me. You know me, I was doodling in my sketchbook while Ronstein was droning on about the syllabus and what we can expect in the class. I wasn’t even really paying attention to what I was doodling, either.”
“What were you doodling?”
“Her,” Nick said, feeling his cheeks warm for a second. “The girl from the dreams. I was drawing her. I’ve been doing it for weeks.”
“Really,” Thad said. There was no judgement in his tone, only a vague sort of curiosity—as if he was at least mildly intrigued, or as if he thought that meant something more than it probably really did. Since he’d met the other teenager, Nick had gotten the impression that Thad read into a lot of things. Granted, he hadn’t seen evidence that it was necessarily a bad thing but again, there was that feeling of not yet.
Nick squirmed slightly. “Yeah. It’s not a big deal.”
“Are you sure?” Thad shook his head. “I mean, if you can remember her clearly enough to keep—”
“Half the time I’m not even paying attention to doing it,” Nick said. “I just do it. I could be thinking about drawing something else and then all of a sudden it’s ten minutes later and I’ve drawn her again.”
“You’ve never shown me.”
“Of course I have,” Nick said even as his stomach dropped. He had, hadn’t he?
“Nope, we’ve just talked about the dreams. You never told me that you kept doodling her in your sketchbook. You’ve never shown me anything in your sketchbook.”
Nick felt dizzy. “I could have sworn—”
“You haven’t,” Thad said. His brows knit again. “Are you okay? You look—I don’t know. Weird. Like you’re about to bolt.”
Nick shook himself. “What? No. No, sorry. I just—I could have sworn I had.” He dug the sketchpad out of his backpack and held it out to his friend. “Here. I just—I don’t know what to think about all of it, Thad. The girl in my class wasn’t looking at me, she was looking at what I was drawing. I couldn’t tell what she thought of it or why she was looking and she bailed out fast after class. What the hell does that mean?”
“Maybe she was embarrassed to have been caught staring,” Thad said, taking the sketchpad. He leaned back in his chair, taking a last sip of his drink before he flipped the sketchbook open, beginning to thumb through the pages. “That kind of thing…happens…”
His voice trailed away and some of the blood drained from his face. Nick leaned forward slightly.
“Thad? Are you okay?”
Thad’s jaw hung slack for a few seconds. He swallowed hard, then turned the sketchbook around, pointing to one of the doodles there. “Is this her? The girl you’ve been dreaming about?”
She was smiling in the sketch, her hair hanging loose around her face, curling in wavy ringlets, her gaze soft but somehow intense at the same time. It was one of the newer sketches, one he’d done only a few days before. His mouth dried up and his throat tightened as he nodded.
“Yeah,” Nick said. “I did that one last week. On Saturday, while I was watching TV.”
Thad carefully set down the sketchbook and dug his phone out of his pocket. He tapped a few things, clearly searching for something, and Nick felt his stomach get more and more unsettled as he did.
What the hell is going on?
Then Thad leaned across the table, a picture filling the screen of his phone—a red-haired girl grinning at the camera, her hand outstretched as if admonishing whoever was taking it. It looked like she was at the beach with someone, the sunlight painting gold highlights into flame-red hair.
His stomach dropped.
“Is this her?” Thad asked, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Nick, is this her?”
“Where did you get that?” Nick asked, his voice choked, almost inaudible. He slowly reached for the phone and Thad relinquished it, leaning even further forward toward him.
“Is it?”
Nick nodded, his heart pounding fast—too fast. “Thad, where did you get this?”
“From her. You idiot, you never told me her name.”
“I only knew her first name. I never—I could never remember the last name.”
“We need to talk,” Thad said. “Pack up your shit. Let’s go.”
Nick startled. “Wait, what?”
“Come on,” Thad said. “We’ll use my dad’s office. We’re not talking about this here.”
“I don’t—”
“I know that you don’t understand,” Thad said. “That’s why we need to talk. Come on. My dad’s office. Now.”
It’s that time of year again, which means everyone here gets a chapter by chapter update of the NaNo project in progress. This year, it’s Come What May, an UNSETIC yarn that begins in 2028–much later than most of my current projects. It deals with a younger batch of (current and future) UNSETIC agents who end up falling into a situation that they didn’t anticipate–or that most of them didn’t anticipate. Of course, the younger batch can always fall back on mentors and family to help as the situation they’ve found themselves in turns out to be much, much bigger than any of them might have feared.
With that tease, it’s on to the first chapter. Enjoy.
“Find me.”
Nicholas Caden startled awake, her voice still echoing in his ears, the scent of her still filling his nose. It felt so real—still felt so real.
His phone was buzzing. He groped for it, half wondering who could be calling and what the hell time of morning it was for someone to be calling in the first place. The last trailing edges of the dream cleared as his fingers wrapped around the phone and silenced it. Blearily, he stared at the screen.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “How can it be that late already?”
He hadn’t intended to sleep through his first alarm. Then again, he hadn’t intended to be so deeply imbedded in yet another dream of her to need his alarm to wake him in the first place. He tossed the phone onto his dresser and lay starting at the ceiling for a few seconds.
How is it actually morning?
If he was honest, he half expected it to be much nearer to winter than to the end of summer. The dreams just felt so real—every morning, he’d woken up surprised that this was his real life, not the adventures he’d been having every time he closed his eyes.
And it had been every time. Every single time he’d gone to sleep, another dream had come, usually picking up almost right from where he’d left off with the last one. This one—this last one—that had felt different somehow. Like it was an ending.
“Find me.”
Her voice still echoed, even as the rest of the dream faded. It was half a command but more a plea.
“Find me.”
Nick shivered and rolled out of bed, scrubbing his hand roughly over his face. He checked the time again.
I need to take a shower. I need to get dressed. I need to get my shit together. Class in an hour. His stomach growled. I need coffee and a bagel or something.
He blew out a frustrated breath and hit the shower. He’d have to be efficient about all of this if he was going to make it over to the student union in time to grab something to eat before class. That, after all, was the ultimate goal this morning. He’d need the coffee to sharpen up enough to make it through the day. A late night coupled with yet another intense dream wasn’t the best recipe for a good first day of classes for his sophomore year.
The hot water helped him wake up and worked the worst of the kinks out of muscles that were unaccountably sore. It wasn’t as if he’d done any actual heavy lifting the past few days, at least not in real life. As far as he was concerned, the ache was psychosomatic, an echo from the dreams that felt too real.
“Find me.”
“Find you,” he muttered as he leaned against the tiled walls of his shower. “I don’t even know if you’re real.”
The words tasted like ashes on his tongue.
Even if she was real, though, he had no idea where to start looking.
Nick lingered longer in the shower than he’d intended, just as he’d slept later than he intended. Barely—just barely—he managed to dress himself and grab his bag with just enough time to hit the student union for a cup of coffee and something resembling sustenance before his first class of the day. The late summer sunshine beat down on him, a breeze ruffling hair that was not quite brown and not quite blonde, caught somewhere between the two shades without being terribly remarkable. The breeze was the only thing that made the brightness of the sun bearable. Even though it was August, it still felt a little too warm.
Of course, last night I was dreaming of December, so I guess that would make sense, wouldn’t it? He barely managed to suppress a sigh. Stop dwelling. Focus. You’ve got shit to do today.
Three classes and probably a meeting with Dr. Bridger, who he’d spent the summer assisting with a research project. There were pretty strong odds that he’d keep on helping with the project as it moved on to the next phase, but it wasn’t something he just wanted to assume. If he didn’t catch up with him today, then it would be the next day—sometime that week, to be certain.
He jogged up the steps to the student union, glancing at his phone. Twenty minutes until his class.
Should be enough time, right?
Nick ducked inside into the blessedly cooler building. The fifteen degree drop in temperature coupled with the shade of the building’s interior was a welcome relief after the trek from his single at the north end of campus. Voices echoed off the high ceilings as he headed across the tiled atrium toward the small coffee shop at the other end, though it wasn’t the same kind of cacophony that it would be a few hours later—he avoided the place between noon and five when he could. There was just too much noise at that point.
There wasn’t much of a line at one end of the counter by the registers, but a shrill voice grated on his nerves as a blonde girl in too-tall wedges waved a paper cup of something in front of one of the baristas, obviously unhappy with her drink. Nick winced as he drew closer, checking the time again and glancing at the line, trying to gauge if he’d have enough time to get coffee and food even with the sideshow.
“Seriously, could you please not?”
Nick blinked, looking up from his phone at the familiar voice. A slow smile started to blossom as he watched Thad Bridger step out of his place in the line to order to get a better line of sight on the entitled sorority girl who’d picked that exact moment to cause problems.
“Excuse me?” the girl said, turning from the exasperated barista.
“I honestly doubt that all of your histrionics are necessary,” Thad said. “I am so terribly sorry that your soy mochaccino, sugar free no whip decaf is not up to your usual standards of foaminess and temperature, but I am sure that somehow, you will deal. Yelling at her isn’t going to change the fact that you’re about to make a dozen people late to the first day of class and I really don’t think you want to end up with that kind of reputation this early in the semester. Now please, toddle off before someone gets the bright idea to spit in the next drink you order here because you decided that today you were going to be an entitled bitch.”
“What—” the girl stopped, her eyes widening for a second, then narrowing as she focused on Thad. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“A really pissed off freshman who hasn’t had coffee yet this morning. Now go on, shoo. Take your disgusting concoction and go. No one wants to deal with this today. Go. Go on. Go.”
The girl’s gaze swept over the rest of the line before she looked at the barista, who stood with her arms crossed and eyes narrowed, clearly in complete agreement with Thad. The sorority girl glared at Thad, harrumphed, then spun away, marching in the direction Nick had come from. He sidestepped, glancing back over his shoulder to watch her for a second as he headed over to join Thad in line.
He shook his head. “That was impressive.”
Thad snorted, crossing his arms. “Impressive would have been stopping it before it started. I just didn’t want anyone to end up wearing that drink. How’re you this morning?”
“Tired,” Nick admitted. “Distracted.”
“Distracted?” Thad arched a brow over one hazel eye. His voice dropped low and he leaned closer. “Are you still having those dreams?”
Nick nodded. Thad was the only person who had an inkling of the sheer volume of the dreams, though he suspected that Thad’s father knew more than he was admitting. “The last one felt different, though.”
Thad frowned, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Different how?”
Nick shook his head and gestured toward the counter, where a girl waited to take Thad’s order. Thad mumbled a curse under his breath and scrubbed a hand over his face.
“Red-eye with a shot of simple syrup, please. A large.” Thad handed the girl his card to pay for the drink, glancing at Nick. “You want anything?”
“I’ve got it,” Nick said. “Go on, I’ll meet you at the other end.”
“Don’t think you’re dodging,” Thad said as he stepped away from the counter to make room for Nick.
“I’m not,” Nick said. He handed the girl his card, ordering a large black coffee and a bagel before heading down to the pickup counter where Thad waited, leaning against the black granite of the counter.
“So this one was different,” Thad prompted, his voice still quiet, as Nick joined him.
Nick shrugged. “Yeah. That’s the only way to describe it that feels right.”
“Different how, though? I mean, from what you’ve described before they’re not exactly normal dreams in the first place. You said they felt too real for that but what the hell else could they be, right?”
“Right.” Nick turned his back to the counter as he leaned there, staring up at some stained glass sculptures hanging from the atrium’s roof. They cast a rainbow of light against the walls above their heads and Nick felt his throat tighten strangely for a second. He swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat. “It almost felt like an ending.”
“The dream last night?”
He nodded.
Thad’s brow furrowed. “How?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It just did. And then—” Nick stopped, hesitating a moment. “This is going to sound crazy.”
“Probably less crazy than you think. Shoot.”
Nick shook his head, his voice barely more than a whisper. “She said something right before I woke up and I can’t get it out of my head. It didn’t—it didn’t fit with the rest of the dream, Thad.”
“What was it?”
“She asked me to find her.”
Thad’s brow furrowed even more deeply and he studied Nick for a few seconds. Something flickered through his eyes and then was gone, as if it had never really been there in a first place. “So, let me get this straight,” he said slowly. “Some dreamgirl redhead that you’re not even sure is real gave you a message in a dream asking you to find her.”
Nick grimaced, brows knitting and nose wrinkling. “It sounds ridiculous when you put it that way.”
“It sounds pretty ridiculous any way you say it, Nick.” Thad sighed, shoulders slumping slightly as he turned to take his drink from the barista that set it on the counter behind him. “Which is why I wish I didn’t believe it.”
Nick stared at him. “I’m not even sure that I believe it.”
“I know,” Thad said, handing him his bagel, then his coffee cup. “Have you tried Googling her?”
“Huh?”
Thad rolled his eyes as they headed around the edge of the counter so Nick could add cream and sugar to his coffee. Thad leaned against this counter, too, sipping his drink and watching him. “Have you tried searching for her online?”
“I don’t even know her last name.”
“But you have some kind of name,” Thad said. “I mean, it’s not like you couldn’t at least try, right? What’s the worst that could happen? You figure out that she really is real and really is out there and you guys connect and start dating and fall in love and get married and have like a dozen kids or something and live happily ever after.”
Nick stood there, stone still, an empty packet of sugar clutched between his fingers, upended over his open cup of coffee. He stared at Thad for a few seconds, his heart starting to pound a little faster. That’s not the worst that could happen. “You’re ridiculous,” he managed to say, his voice somehow even.
Thad snorted. “I am not the one who’s been plagued by dreams all summer long that feel way too real to be just dreams.”
“What the hell else could they be?” Nick stirred the cream and sugar in, then fit the lid back onto his cup, waving for Thad to start walking—if they didn’t get moving, they’d both be late to class. “People don’t just dream of that kind of thing and have it actually be real, Thad. Not in real life.”
Thad shrugged and started walking, leaving Nick to fall into step beside him. “You never know. Stranger things and all that.”
Nick’s stomach twisted. Does he know something? It was an unsettling thought—almost more unsettling than the thought that maybe, just maybe, the dreams could be more than just some kind of fantasy. He knew full well that sometimes, just sometimes, that sort of thing happened, though usually it didn’t happen to guys like him unless there were major consequences involved.
At least, that’s what his uncle had told him over the years of training, of exploring his craft and what he could do with the gift he’d inherited from his late father—a man he’d barely had the chance to know. His Uncle Arthur had raised him alone but had taught him more than anyone ever could. Of course, there had been other things that his uncle had tried to drill into him, and for the most part had been successful.
Never let anyone know what you can do. It only leads to trouble. Keep it a secret. That’s what will keep you alive. Keep it a secret and bury it deep because no one—no one—needs to know what kind of power you have at your command.
He’d never had much reason to doubt his uncle’s wisdom in that regard and wasn’t entirely sure he ever would.
“I guess,” he said, then shook his head. “I’ll think about it. I just—I don’t know, Thad. Maybe I am afraid she’s somehow real. What the hell would it mean if she was?”
“No idea,” Thad said. “But I’m sure you’d figure it out.” He pointed toward the science building. “I’ve got to get to physics and something tells me that you’re not headed in that direction.”
“No,” Nick admitted. “I’ve got to head for sociology. Ronstein, urban soc.”
Thad winced. “Good luck with that. He’s dry as hell and his research interests are even more dull. A little too oldschool for my tastes.”
“And your dad’s?” Nick asked with a wry grin.
Thad grinned back, tapping one finger against his nose. “Pray he’s got a TA, bro. Otherwise, you’re in for a snoozefest. Catch you later?”
“Sure,” Nick said as they parted company. “I’ll hunt you down.”
Thad flashed a thumbs-up and started to jog toward the science building. Nick watched him for a few seconds, then pivoted on his heel, heading for one of the other buildings and his sociology class. He hadn’t been looking forward to this particular general education credit already, and now with Thad’s description of the professor, he was even less enthusiastic about it than before.
Can’t do anything about it now. He blew out a quiet breath and shook his head at himself. He’d just have to grin and bear it.
Somehow.
This little short was written for a story class–it only seems fair to share it.
Enjoy!
——-
The old oak door thudded shut behind him as he took the stairs, sneakers echoing on the stone. The chill of early morning kissed tanned skin as he left the shadow of the old church, the scent of incense and wood oil clinging to his clothes. Father Mason hadn’t asked for his help, but he’d gotten it all the same. He suspected that the priest was used him showing up at all hours—especially when he couldn’t sleep.
The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon, glinting off stained glass. He ducked around the corner of the sprawling stone church with its slate roof and wide walkways, past Father Mason’s garden outside his residence out back, jogging to the parking lot. His car stood alone but for Mason’s battered Jeep, one that had seen a dozen years and thousands of miles. It reminded him of his sister’s, though hers was newer. Both had seen the wear of years, showing it in scuffed running boards and scored paint near the wheel wells and bumpers. His own car was much newer, less worn. Non-descript with unscratched silver paint, it was the kind of car you saw and forgot almost as soon as it had gone by, registering only as silver car or fleet vehicle. Perhaps it would have been in another life.
Wind gusted through the old trees as he fumbled his keys from the pocket of his jeans, carrying with it the scent of roses and the salt of the distant ocean, both almost overwhelmed by the smell of the Potomac. Tim McConaway mumbled a curse as he nearly dropped his keys before he jammed the right one into the lock, twisting it and yanking the door open. Maybe his sister was right. He needed to think about keyless entry.
He threw himself into the driver’s seat, the springs under the upholstery creaking softly. The engine grumbled to life as he jerked the door shut. A second later, his phone landed in its usual spot, in the cupholder next to the gear shift, its screen glowing, the white numbers of the time almost accusing as they stared back at him. Five-forty-three a.m., not quite sunrise. The radio kicked on almost as soon as the car’s engine—not his usual news, but classic rock. The sound of it filled the car, just barely audible above the engine’s growl, the first few notes not quite registering until the singer’s voice, mellow with underlying scrape, came over the speakers.
It was the Pretenders, and the song was “I’ll Stand By You.” Something about the words made his throat tighten as he lifted a hand to wave to Father Mason, who stood on the sidewalk near the corner of the church, watching with a faint smile as he pulled out of the lot. Father Mason nodded to him, hands tucked into the pockets of his black pants, sleeves rolled to his elbows, exposing a tattoo of knotted thorns that coiled its way up his forearm like a living thing. No matter how many times Tim had asked about it, Mason had never fully explained. The priest had always found a way to change the subject, to wonder out loud why an Air Force officer with his record always seemed to have so much to confess.
Some mysteries were meant to be left unsolved.
His phone blipped and he glanced at it as he stopped at a stop sign, illuminated by a single streetlight. Up and down the street, bungalows and ranches stood silent, shadowed sentinels beneath old trees, their porch lights off as the sun slowly rose over the river and the trees. It was his sister, answering the hasty text he’d sent before he’d left the church.
“We’ll catch the first flight out,” his sister’s response read. “Give B my love.”
Another song came to mind, almost without prompting, one that echoed words he could barely remember from a winter night now years passed—angel of mercy, how did you find me. He remembered a tiny office at the bottom of a stairwell at Quantico, tension and anger warring in his heart, souring his stomach, and the sound of the door scraping quietly against the floor. The flash of red hair before she’d glanced back over her shoulder to look at him, hazel eyes seeking something he’d suddenly been afraid she wouldn’t find. But there had been other doors since then, other glances.
Brigid O’Connell had never asked for much, not in all the years they’d worked together. What she had asked, he’d always tried to give. He wasn’t sure he’d always succeeded. Now, she was like family—to him, his sister, his uncle. She didn’t have anyone else.
Not anymore. Not yet.
A few months ago, there had been a graveside promise as he’d knelt in the damp earth, water and mud seeping through his pants at the knees, a bare hand pressed against the freshly carved granite of a headstone. That stone, etched sharply, the edges not yet worn by time, marked the life and death of a man who would never know the twins about to be born this morning. On that rainy day in April—on his own birthday—with rain seeping beneath the collar of his jacket to run down his spine in icy rivulets, Tim had promised to protect the family that Roswell Darbin-Kincaid had started but would never know. It was all he could do for the man his best friend had planned to marry.
The streets were mercifully quiet as he drove the few blocks into the rising sun, his heart slowly inching higher in his chest, trying to climb into his throat to choke him. A kid on a red mountain bike rode along one street, delivering newspapers, the white cord of his headphones briefly catching the light of the morning sun.
As he turned the corner toward a row of converted row houses, he could taste the coffee he’d had at three AM, mixing with bile. His heart was beating too fast, the sound thundering in his ears.
Why him, of all people?
He already knew the answer. A promise made was a promise kept.
There was no one else.
Her building was older than his, weathered clapboard siding and brick. A three-story walk-up, like his, but nicer somehow. It seemed warmer, more like a home, with lacy curtains in the window of one of the lower floor tenant’s apartments and gardens in the shared yard out back. Bay windows rose in a column up one side of the front façade. He glanced toward her second floor window as he pulled up. The sheers were drawn, obscuring any view of the interior. It was early, after all, and they were privacy sheers.
He parked in the street, almost haphazardly, between her car and her neighbor’s truck. A pair of joggers went by, their conversation muffled by the sound of their footsteps—a sound so rhythmic and soothing and damnably normal that it ratcheted his anxiety down a notch or two. He swallowed the bile that crept ever higher, sour and burning, as he got out of the car. He left it running as he went to her building’s door, fumbling again with the keys. Their jangling jarred him back into focus and he took two breaths, great gulping gasps of air. Humidity was settling in. The scent of rain was on the wind.
Good, he thought. We need it.
He almost laughed at the incongruity of the thought as he stepped into the foyer.
He took the old wooden stairs two at a time, so quickly they barely had time to creak under his tread. Her door, gray-painted, stood closed, the lacquered two-A reflecting in the dim light of the hall. Reaching for the knob, he glanced away for a second, looking to see if anyone was coming up or down the stairs.
The door opened, and there she stood, red hair bound back into a messy braid, her faintly freckled face pale, jaw set. One arm curled around her distended belly, the silver-gold and sparkle of a ring from the wedding she never got to have catching the light. She wore an old Georgetown zip-up hoodie over a loose, navy blue maxi dress—both gifts from Roswell. Her hazel eyes met his as he turned back from checking the hall. There was relief there.
His heart calmed, if only for a few seconds, and the rising panic started to recede.
“It’s time,” she said, echoing the text message she’d sent twenty minutes before.
“That’s why I’m here.” He reached for the overnight bag that sat at her feet, then wrapped his arm around her shoulders as he straightened. “The car’s still running. Let’s go.”
So now that I’ve managed to somehow survive faire weekend (for those of you who don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, that would be the Grand Valley State University Renaissance Festival, of which I’ve been a member as either a student or alumni or both for 20 years now), I have finally come to the shocking realization that it is, in fact, October.
Not only is it October, it’s basically a week into October and I’m still trying to come to grips with that.
My post-faire world tends to be a lot of re-centering and resetting of my life and activities and planning for the last few months of the year–for midterms, for final exams, for NaNoWriMo, traveling, the holidays, and all those sorts of fun things.
The biggest question looming for me right now beyond general academic questions is what I’m going to end up working on for NaNoWriMo this year, which is usually the October question I’m facing. I’m now a week behind on prep for it, which isn’t the end of the world. I have a feeling I know what I’m going to end up at least trying to work on, but we’ll have to see if anything else creeps into my brain before November 1 hits. As of right now, it’s feeling like I might start a draft of Come What May, one of the UNSETIC Files that focuses on someone in the next generation after characters like Tim and Brigid and Kate and AJ and Jim and all the rest–while still making space for their elders to at least pop in and out of the narrative. But we’ll see on that, because depending on whether I actually manage to finish Lost and Found this month, I might end up trying to muddle my way through a rewrite of Pawns, since that will require a total rewrite based on the events of…well. Other projects. Time, of course, will tell–as it always does.
Stay tuned for more updates as they become available.
Wow. So it took me a lot longer than I intended to actually get this post up, therefore it’s going to end up being August and September goals because holy cannoli, it’s already almost September.
I have no idea where August went. At all.
Starting next week, I’m back to the classwork grind, but that’s not going to stop me from having some very ambitious goals for the rest of August and through September. Cross your fingers, comment, share, and wish me luck.
Breaking everything down by project for now.
UNSETIC Files: Lost and Found
Lost Angel Chronicles: When All’s Said and Done
Epsilon: Shattered
Epsilon: Redeemer
Like I said. Ambitious goaling. But we’ll see what happens, right?
Hope everyone enjoys the last couple weeks of August. As for me, I’m ready for autumn leaves and cooler weather.
Let me tell you what: July was rough for writing. I didn’t get nearly as much accomplished as I’d have liked, but that was probably due in part to being completely overly ambitious in my goals.
Which is okay.
All of it is okay.
What I’m going to do is concentrate on what I was able to figure out:
– I have a lot of ideas that are starting to percolate for the whole UNSETIC Files/Lost Angels universe, not just the major focus projects, but big throughline, whole universe plots and subplots.
– Lost and Found is going to be longer than I originally thought (which is awesome)
– Lost and Found is going to end up setting up a lot of other things in the universe
– There are many connections between the things that are slowly being revealed in Lost and Found and in another recent project, Universe, having to do with the Grey family and stuff that’s happened with them in the past and things that will happen with them in the future (White Rabbit is still in the cards)
– I need to do some more groundwork for Epsilon: Shattered
– It’s okay to skip around in drafts (though I already knew that)
August will hopefully be a bit better for writing, but we’ll see. There’s a lot to do around my place before classes start up again in a few weeks and on top of that, I’m training for a new position at my day job while training two people to do my old job. Sounds like fun, right?
Stay tuned for a goals realignment post in the next few days.