Revision Round-up 2

Hiya! If this is your first time here, welcome! Every weekday (or at least most of them, hopefully), I do short fiction using character and setting prompts, as a way of varying my writing and getting practice. On the weekend, I edit the stories I did over the week, and that's what this post is!

I've got three stories for you this time. I missed Tuesday 'cause I had to work, and I missed Friday 'cause I truly just didn't feel like it. But the stuff I did write this week is pretty cool, I think.

So, here you go, all three stories, revised, starting with Monday's:

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Quarter million people in the wild city, and this one had had the poor graces to die by the dumpster behind Molson’s Pub, squarely within Ridge’s juris-damn-diction. The corpse lay sprawled out like a beach vacationer with too little regard for skin cancer. The driving rain had washed away any idea of a sunny day, along with her blood and exposed grey matter. Water ran down her ashen face, dripped off the petals of the single red rose she clutched, soaked her pink miniskirted waitress uniform. It was bad weather to die in.

Ridge Garrison let out a blue-smoke sigh. The exhaust from his cigarette pooled under the shelter of his umbrella, a swirling pall of heavy air surrounding his head as if the smoke, too, knew it was a bad night to be outdoors. Copper hair spilled out from under his gunmetal gray pork pie hat, collecting into a sodden braid that laid against his long raincoat and draped to halfway down his five-foot-three-inch frame.

“Thanks for calling, Dan,” he said in his ten-year-old’s voice, flicking the coffin nail into the gutter from thumb and forefinger. Like he’d need to worry about the things killing him. “What’ve we got?”

Standing over the body was a pudgy officer in a dark rain poncho, badge pinned ludicrously to the nylon. The downpour ran in sheets off the ridge of his hat, the blocky silver numbers 7 3 2 hanging onto the uniform cap like survivors in a shipwreck.

“Looked like bad luck at first, Ridge,” said the man, Officer Dan Carlson. “Neighbors’ve been re-tarring their roof, one of the cans must’ve blown down in the storm at just the wrong moment.”

Carlson pointed, and Ridge followed. A metal paint can lay a few feet away, dented, its label split and threatening to sail away in the runoff. Ridge stepped over and stooped, using the eraser end of his pencil to flip the label back up. Bratton’s wet patch roof cement. Ridge grunted.

“Freak accident. Why’d you drag my ass out of bed?”

“She was carrying this,” Carlson said, and tossed something small and dark in Ridge’s direction.

Ridge didn’t look up to catch it. The flutter of the object, the sound of displaced rain, the rain’s reflected shadow of the tiny interruption in the light of the streetlamp at the mouth of the alley. These were enough to tell Ridge’s hand where to go. He seized the wallet case out of the air and turned to regard it in his hand.

It was a thin, not quite flat, black leather bifold. Bit of heft to it, like it held a brass medallion. Or badge. He had one just like it in his coat pocket right now.

“Don’t recognize her,” he said, studying the shield and statement of authority in the bottom flap, the picture, coat-of-arms and the three big blue letters in the top. “She might be downtown gang that I haven’t met before.” Un-fucking-likely, he thought. The badge identified her as Special Agent Paulette Winters. He knew Winters. This wasn’t her.

“Whatever,” said Carlson, turning back toward the mouth of the alley where his squad car waited, overheads painting the glistening sidewalks and sodden bricks red and blue. “If she’s a fed, she’s your problem. If she’s pretending to be one, same deal. You didn’t see me.”

Ridge grunted, Carlson already gone from his awareness like a bad dream. What the hell was he supposed to do with a nasty head wound laying dead in an alley? This was the sort of thing real agents investigated, not immortal freak kids like him. Staring into the dead woman’s eyes, he suddenly felt small, the shadow of the terrified child he had once been clamoring into his mind.

He had lain just like that, once.

Bleeding, screaming, dying on the marble floor of the downtown FBI lobby.

A ten-year-old on the morning of his Change, forty years ago.

He shoved the memory aside and forced himself to evaluate the scene, but his gaze was interrupted by Vanessa’s lithe form, striding toward him from deeper down the alley. How she’d gotten there, he had no idea. He hadn’t heard her.

The rain seemed to bend around her in deference to her beauty, the smooth silk of her black hair, the warmth of her wine-stained lips. The fur that lined her wide-necked coat was dry and puffed. Her side-slitted dress perfectly emphasized long, glorious legs that strode on glittering, jewel-crusted pumps with the confidence of a runway model. The pitted pavement of the alley did nothing to slow her assured glide. Even her cigarette, a uniformly white stick on a short-stemmed holder, was dry, smoldering between the fingers of her left hand.

“Yours, darling?”, she asked with a subtle smile.

“Funny,” he said. “Jane Doe with a head wound. Wrong place at the wrong time, except she was carrying this.” He flashed her the found badge.

Vanessa raised an eyebrow. “One of you?”

He shook his head. She leaned closer, studying the federal ID.

“Winters. Wasn’t she getting close to some big break?”

“You think this could be related?”, asked Ridge. “Witness she was protecting or something?”

Vanessa shrugged, the motion poetic between her slim, mink-adorned shoulders. “What do I care? Do you need to feed?” She reached out, tracing a finger up the arm of Ridge’s coat as she slunk behind him. He did his best to ignore her, but her next words came hot on the back of his neck, and he couldn’t suppress a tiny shudder. “You’re still a little short to be playing a grown-up, darling. Shall I take an inch from her?”

Her hand slithered in front of his face, one slender digit extended, fingernail warping and elongating, scalpel-sharp and cruel. He shook his head. “Not today, Nessa. If she’s connected to an ongoing case, there’ll be too much scrutiny. Even you aren’t that good.”

He heard her pout, felt her draw away from him. When she faded out of the alley again, he knew he was alone, and he sighed. He was hungry, and he wouldn’t mind stealing a little more adulthood from some unfortunate tramp.

But not this unfortunate tramp.

He lit a cigarette, turning toward the mouth of the alley. There was a pay phone a couple storefronts down, where he could call this in. He walked, raincoat flaring around his shins, umbrella letting off rain around his shoulders in big, constant drips, smoke curling around his head to dissipate into another bad night’s air.

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I’ll keep the introduction brief. My name is James Jones (don’t ever call me Jim) and I am a damn good butler. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I have been given awards. Families consider it a privilege to obtain my services for a period of months at a time. And if the other household staff don’t like me, far be it from me to coddle them. I’m there to manage them, not befriend them.

The first time I became truly afraid for my future, I had been at the top of my game for twenty-two years. I’d found myself in the employ of a Mrs. Withers, the widow of a computer company of some sort. Her husband was living, of course, but he spent all of two days a month in the house. His constant absense was a fact of a lonely life for Mrs. Withers. Still, she knew when he liked his tea, how hot, and with how many sugar lumps placed forty-five degrees clockwise from the top of the saucer, and that meant I knew it, as well.

The duties in Mrs. Withers’ home were largely unsurprising. She took breakfast at 9, lunch at 12:30, and dinner at 7. Her bridge club met Fridays, book club on Wednesdays, and household shopping was done on Tuesdays. She set a household budget of $35,000 per month for supplies, groceries, staff, maintenance, property taxes, and other necessities, which I managed for her. Someone like Mrs. Withers doesn’t pay attention to the brands of her restroom tissue, only the comfort of it, and with careful comparative research, I was able to identify cheaper versions of the exact same products all over the house—paper towels, sponges, laundry soap, chlorine tablets, that sort of thing. I had created quite a surplus in the household kitty, and she wasn’t above calling me a “household miracle worker”.

All was going swimmingly, until Mr. Withers’ visit in early April of that year. He frequently brought a guest when he came home— usually some starry-eyed young employee of the tech firm, eager to show Mr. Withers he was ready to do anything to further his career. I didn’t ask questions, it wasn’t my place. One could see the sadness in Mrs. Withers’ eyes, though, as she hosted these young men for dinners and gave them tours of the kind of house that they all thought they would inevitably end up in one day.

Few of them, I understand, made it more than a year in the company.

When I heard Mr. Withers would be coming home on this particular spring evening, I set two of the maids to preparing the poolhouse, as normal. Mr. Withers’ guests typically stayed there. The Withers’ poolhouse was, after all, quite a bit larger than many poolhouses, and its bedroom wasn’t often in use otherwise.

Mr. Withers’s driver had informed me that he would be arriving at fifteen minutes past six, and so I had the household staff lined up along the driveway at ten past, the last cool breezes of the dying winter ruffling braids and skirts and coattails alike. I tolerated the staff’s nervous chatter, until the subject turned to a rather crude conjecture about this month’s guests. I silenced the salacious speculation, and a minute later, Mr. Withers’ car could be seen in the distance of the driveway.

It is, one should be assured, a mark of distinction that the fence and gates that surround one’s property should not be visible from the immediate perimeter of the home. Thus, when the black towncar appeared, it did so not while turning in from the street, but while winding its way out of the carefully cultivated forest that surrounded the driveway beyond the front yard, about one hundred and thirty-seven yards from the edge of the house.

The car prowled up the long drive, a big cat approaching its pride with equal parts arrogance (well-earned, of course) and laziness. It shone in the early afternoon sun, all black and chrome and window tint, sleek and predatory. The crunch of gravel under the tires became louder as it approached the final curve, and the driver—Nathan, I believe—afforded us a wave as he brought the car around to parallel with with front door.

I stepped forward, hands clasped behind my back, positioning myself to open the rear passenger’s side door. Martha Nuñez took her position next to me, ready to take whatever items Mr. Withers or his guest may not wish to carry into the home themselves. At a fractional second of eye contact with Martha, I leaned forward, grasped the door handle, and pulled it open.

Staring back at me from the back seat was not Mr. Withers, though he, too, was in the car, adjacent to the figure which I now describe; neither was it a starry-eyed twenty-something in a cheap suit, gawking at his first true mansion. Instead, what met my gaze as I opened the door was a perfectly round face of white plastic, with all the distinctive features of a human face and none of the characteristics that bring such a thing to life.

It had lips, which were permanently molded into a mild smile, a mirror of my own face in front of my clients. It had a nose, a smallish one that did not subtly flare in and out with the breathing of a natural being. Its eyes had whites and pupils and retina, and they did move, tracking movement and focusing on points in the distance as any human’s eyes would. Its eyelids, however, remained stationary. It did not blink at the sudden sunlight piercing the darkened interior of the car.

Below its chin was a high, white collar, from which protruded a black bow tie so perfectly tied that I thought at first it was the pre-tied kind they sell to mediocre groomsmen at middle-class weddings. It was not. The lines of its knot were perfect, moreso than even I could have managed, yet I could see no evidence of glue or pins used in the folding of the strip of cloth.

It stepped out of the car, and I could see the rest of the perfectly pressed black tuxedo that it wore. Its shirt bore no ruffles, and it wore no cummerbund, the same as the male members of Mr. Winters’ household staff, and its coat featured the same long tails as mine. It stepped to the side and offered me a pale plastic hand. Dumbfounded, I shook.

“Ah, James, good,” said Mr. Winters as he followed the monstrosity from the Towncar. “This is DEV-1-N. You will brief him on your household duties.”

“You may call me Devin,” said the Thing in the Butler’s Coat. “I am a household miracle worker.”

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Amanda crashed through an aluminum table, her back slamming against the concrete floor of the rooftop lounge. Her head whipped back with the impact, and only by instinct and training had she managed to place a hand under it during the fall. She felt her knuckles crack under the force of her skull’s momentum, and kicked her feet up, throwing her weight behind her to turn the impact into a backwards roll. Stupid to make her neck the fulcrum for her body’s rotation, but letting her back absorb the full impact of the fall would be equally dangerous.

She flipped over her own head, sailing backwards, arms wide and her feet extended behind her to absorb the next impact. When it came, it came at an angle she did not expect, but she let her knee bend with it, absorbing as much kinetic energy as it could. She came to a halt, left foot on the concrete ground, right foot on the waist-high brick wall that separated the rooftop from the twelve-story fall to the alley below. Maggots plopped to the ground around her as she dropped to one knee, palms on the ground in front of her, breathing hard.

She took stock. Her head felt fine where it had hit, but her left hand was already beginning to swell, the knuckles shredded open and bloody. A dull roar of pain told her grave news about at least one of the fingers there, but still, better a broken hand than a broken skull.

Her face was a buffet of varied pains where Onomdu had struck her. Her cheek throbbed, her lips ached, and the bridge of her nose felt like a screwdriver had been hammered into it by an uncoordinated toddler. She brought a hand to her mouth, testing the wetness she felt there, and when she looked, fresh blood, dark and oozing, covered her fingers.

A few feet away, Constance landed on the roof, shouting Amanda’s name and rushing toward her. Constance’s dark cardigan had been slashed at the shoulder, and she was bleeding as she gathered her wool skirt and knelt before Amanda.

“Whoa, whoa, Amanda, are you okay? Oh, that looks broken,” she said, as she placed a steadying hand on Amanda’s steel mushroom-painted pauldrons and used the other hand to move her chin, inspecting her face.

“Just a little bee sting,” said Amanda, trying to put on a brave face for her teammate.

“Nonsense,” said Constance, taking Amanda’s face in both hands. “Hold still, I read about how to do this in a medical journal.” Constance placed the flat edges of her hands on either side of Amanda’s nose, and Amanda met her gaze, staring at the librarian’s dark green eyes through the thick, round spectacles Constance somehow manage to keep perched on her nose, even during a battle as fierce as this.

“One,” counted Constance. Amanda braced herself, drawing a deep breath, which became a scream as Constance said “two” and wrenched. A sickening grinding of cartilage and bone resounded through Amanda’s skull, and the pain whited out her vision for a moment. When she returned, though, the agony of her broken nose had faded to a dull throb, the stabbing pain no longer radiating around her eye sockets.

“Three,” said Constance. “Pretty as a button. Are you alright?”

Amanda nodded, still catching her breath. She looked up, remembering the battle. In the sky above, Brittany, her lip gloss shining even from over a hundred feet away, aimed a kick at the mouse-headed monstrosity that hovered over downtown Trope City. Onomdu dodged, and Brittany flew past, a blur of pigtails and leopard print, as Aster dove at the enraged God’s back. Aster’s spiderweb skirt flared, showing the tops of her fishnets as she caught Onomdu between her thighs and pummeled it.

Onomdu took the beating with barely an effort. Corrupted maggots streamed from the deadened eyes of the once-peaceful God of artistic bliss, forming a coat over the shoulders of the being’s tuxedo jacket before raining down to burst wetly on the street far below. As Aster squeezed with her thighs, the little white creatures swarmed her legs. Amanda was glad she couldn’t see the detail, could only see a sheen of pale white forming over Aster’s torn black leggings. Could barely hear Aster begin to scream, hear Brittany shout as she came back for another flying kick, knocking Onomdu out from between her teammate’s thighs.

“We’ve gotta get back up there,” Amanda said, standing and smoothing her hands over her ruffled pink dress.

“You’re right, they need us up there. Can you still fly?”

Amanda tested her bouyancy. “Yes. Let’s go save our friends.”

“Wait, I’ve got an idea,” said Constance, showing Amanda a pile of dried leaves before clutching her fist around them. Her hand started to glow green. Amanda reached into her own pocket, pulling out a similar bunch of leaves, fruity and herbal where Constance’s had been dark and robust. She concentrated her Will on her hand, and when it answered with its own strawberry pink glow, she nodded to Constance.

The two women lept into the air, speeding back toward the battle, glowing hands held cocked like pitchers preparing a fastball. Onomdu’s rodent head turned toward them, spreading in a grin, tongue lolling as more maggots spilled from its mouth.

“Prettys,” it said. “Come play.”

As one, Amanda and Constance tensed, preparing to release the magic they had infused into the tea leaves they held, a magic borne of teamwork and connection and sisterhood and all that the corrupting force that had invaded Onomdu’s mind stood against.

“Prepare!”, they shouted in unison, throwing their arms forward and releasing the deliciously-scented blast. “Super double cozy teatime magic beam!”

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There ya go! Three stories, all done. I might try to keep myself to three stories a week, just to guard against burnout and whatnot. We'll see.

Anyway, see ya Monday!