Makebelieve

This week’s challenge gave us the setting for the story.  Actually, Wendig was kind enough to give us 3 choices for the setting.  Only one of them would make any sense with the characters I’m using, so it was an easy decision.  It had to take place in an abandoned amusement park.  My inspiration was the old Land of Makebelieve in Upper Jay, NY.  I’ve never been to the area, so I don’t know how accurate this is, but it’s been destroyed by a flood by now anyway.  At the time this story takes place, at least one or two buildings (hopefully including the one I’m describing) were still at least partially standing. This story is more character development than true story.  Hopefully, you’ll still enjoy it.

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“What is this place?” Lenora crawled under the snipped wire fence, following her new-found friends.  Shane reached out a hand to help her stand.

“It’s an old theme park,” he explained.

Kendra suddenly appeared at Lenora’s elbow.  “And when he says ‘theme,’ he means it.  It used to be called Makebelieve.  It was kind of dorky, but totally great for little kids.  It had, like, all these storybook houses and fairytale things all over the place.”  Kendra shrugged.  “Guess it coulda been cute before it got all drowned.”

Lenora frowned.  “Oh don’t worry,” Shane wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her away from Kendra and Ian, who had been trying to steer her towards an algae-covered pond.  “It wasn’t that bad.  Well, it was.  It totally sucked for the owners of the place.  But nobody got hurt or anything.”

“Come on, man,” Ian whined.  “You didn’t even let me tell my ghost story!”

“That’s because your ‘ghost story’ is nothing but a lame attempt to make a campfire horror story to freak people out.”  Willow rolled her eyes.  She stuck her balled-up fists on the hips of her designer jeans, which were now spotted with mud.  “So are we gonna stand here all night and blab or are we going in?”

“In!” Kendra practically flew down the slight path through the weeds and brambles to a dilapidated shack.  The torn and filthy siding may once have been white.  A blue and moldy shudder hung off a window.  Lenora was surprised it was even still attached.  It looked as though one solid breeze would rip it away from the building.  Shadowy tree limbs reached down, pulling the gaping maw of the night’s blackness down over the two little stubs that stuck out of the roof.  Apparently, the blackness had already taken a bite years earlier.  Lenora saw no sign of what had once graced the building.

Ian followed close behind Kendra.  Shane kept his arm casually draped over Lenora and led her between the remains of two posts.  The door had been replaced by a very new-looking piece of thin particle board.  Someone had used blood-red paint to scrawl “X-Men” near the top and “Intruders will be fed to Wolverine!” on the bottom.  Kendra pulled up in front of the door.

“Which one of you guys did this?” she pouted.  “I wanted it to look nice.”

“Who do you think did it?” Willow crossed her arms.  “Seriously, Shane?”

“Yeah, have you ever even picked up a comic book?  Wolverine doesn’t eat people!” Ian shook his head.

Shane shrugged.  “I found it amusing.  If you guys really hate it, we can always pick up another board and paint it up together or something.”

Lenora shocked everyone by suddenly snorting.  “I get to be Wolverine, right?  Well, She-Wolverine, I guess.”

Willow and Shane laughed with her, relieved that she was finally joking.  She had been living with them for nearly four months and during that time she had laughed a grand total of three times.

“You can be whoever you wanna be, Nora,” Shane granted.

The board almost fell from its makeshift hinges as Kendra shoved it open.  Willow went right to a small wood-stove in the middle of the room.  She tossed a couple of wood blocks in the open door and set them on fire.  The glow illuminated a teenager’s dream hide-out.  Comfy furniture, rescued from the trash by the cash-strapped kids, sat scattered all over the small room.  An empty cooler dominated one of the short walls.  A slight mildew smell clung to the whole place, but that somehow added to the charm.  Posters plastered the walls, showcasing the interests of each person who frequented the place.  A tattered area rug partially covered a rusty-red splotch near the wood stove.  Lenora wasn’t sure she wanted to know what it was.

Ian snapped his fingers, pulling Lenora away from her observations.  “I forgot something in the car!”  He slipped out the door.

Shane patted an armchair next to him.  The puffy arms burst at the seams.  Lenora dropped down and sank into the cushions.  She smiled.  Shane started pointing out some of the other amenities of their hang-out.  “We’ve got food stashed in the cabinets under the window.  There’s games over in the corner.  There’s magazines here somewhere,” he stopped himself and frowned.  “But those are mine and Ian’s, so you probably don’t want to see them.”

“Probably not,” Lenora agreed.  “So we just kinda hang out here?  We drove half-an-hour to hang out?”

“Why not?” Kendra popped an Oreo in her mouth.  “There’s nobody telling us what to do here. We can use our powers without getting in trouble.  There’s no pressure to do anything if we don’t want to.  And besides…” the door snapped open again with Ian’s return and Kendra nodded towards him, “we can have this as much as we want.”

Ian held a bag of ice, a six-pack of Guiness, and a bottle of Tequila.  Willow relieved him of the liquor and left him to dump the ice into the cooler.

“Won’t we get in trouble?” Lenora asked.

“Never have yet,” Shane grabbed a warm beer.  “Don’t worry.  We’re not stupid.  We’ll sleep it all off before we head back home in the morning.”

Lenora accepted a glass of ice from Willow.  It couldn’t hurt.  Not if we’re careful.  It’ll make me feel better anyway.  Amber-colored tequila slopped into the glass, filling in all the cracks in the ice.

As soon as everyone had their drinks, Willow raised hers in a toast.  “To our newest friend!  May we be all the stronger for her presence!”

Lenora’s throat burned with the first of many swallows.  Each came easier than the last.  By the end of the night, she didn’t even care about the rationalizations anymore.  Her world extended only to her friends.  Did anyone else even matter anymore?

Beckon – Tom Pawlik

I feel like a label needs to be attached to this book — WARNING: THIS BOOK MAY CAUSE INSOMNIA.  Seriously, I had a couple of sleepless nights whilst reading Beckon.  It didn’t help that I was sleeping in an unfamiliar bed in a cabin in the mountains of Virginia at the time.  Perhaps my reaction is atypical.  Whatever you do, don’t let my warning keep you from this book.  It’s well worth an extra cup or two of coffee in the morning.

The sleepy little town of Beckon draws people to it for many reasons.  Most are brought, one way or another, by the mysterious Thomas Vale.  Few ever leave.

What begins as a trek to validate his father’s work takes a turn for the terrifying when Jack and his companions get trapped in the fascinating, but deadly world beneath the mountains in Wyoming.  As they try to navigate the seemingly untouched ecosystem, they soon realize that becoming lost is the least of their worries.  A desperate struggle to survive shoves them into the not-so-welcoming arms of a previously-unknown people group.

Elina uses her police officer training to track a white van to Beckon.  The same van was seen the day her cousin disappeared.  Someone promised jobs to the occupants of the van, but it never made its way to Las Vegas as they said it would.  Instead, it always came to Beckon.  And the people in the van never made it home.  It doesn’t take long for Elina’s interest to catch the attention of Thomas Vale.

Miriam Wilcox is losing her mind.  Her husband, George, cannot bear to sit idly by and watch his beloved wife succumb to an incurable disease.  He jumps at the opportunity to take her to Beckon when Vale contacts him with a business proposition and a cure.

What would you be willing to do to live disease-free, forever?  Could you make a deal with the devil to save your loved ones?  After all, as Thomas Vale argues, the history of mankind is violent, filled with people killing other people in an effort to keep their families and lands safe.  But what makes one life more valuable than another?

The Fire of the Gods

First things first: I have to apologize for not posting for a week.  I went to an AMAZING retreat with some of the ladies from my church.  I had to leave my house at like 5 AM on Thursday.  I had absolutely no desire to wake up extra early just to put something up here.  Next time I go away, I’ll set some stuff up to automatically post or something.

Back to today’s story —
This week’s flash fiction prompt was a title.  Obviously, the title had to be “The Fire of the Gods.”  Yes, some of the characters are being set up to be incredibly disturbing.  That’s intentional.  Don’t worry; I’m not losing my mind.  It kind of hurts to write that kind of character, especially since they could go either way.  I’m kind of thinking these might become main villains at some point in time.  Anyway…Here you go.  Enjoy.

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“What will they do if they catch us?” Kendra tucked a lock of stray mousey-brown hair behind her ear and leaned against a tree to catch her breath.

“Don’t stop, Kendra!  I don’t really want to find out,” Ian grabbed her hand and dragged her along behind him.  He pulled her on a zigzag path through the trees.  The sun was going down.  The night would bring him the advantage if they could just keep running a little while longer.

A shotgun blast ripped a branch apart twenty yards from Ian and Kendra.  Kendra shrieked.  Ian shoved her head down just before another blast bored a hole in the trunk behind her.

The gunshot gave Kendra an energy burst.  She outpaced Ian for a second as they sprinted to the next copse of pine trees.  Ian was several feet in front of her when he yelped and disappeared in the semi-darkness of the forest.

“Ian!”  She bit her lip and choked back a cry.  Panic wanted to take over her mind.  She fell to her knees to peer at the dark patch where Ian had vanished.  The panic nearly won when a pale hand shot out of the hole.  Ian’s hand latched around her wrist.

“Shut up!” he hissed, pulling her wrist down so her head was level with the opening of the hole.

“Are you okay?”

“Get down here.  We might be able to hide for a little, figure out what to do.”

Kendra let Ian gently pull her into the hole, which turned out to be the opening of a small cave.  They huddled in the corner of the cave furthest from the small entrance.  Kendra wrapped her arms around her knees and shook.  Ian glared, unblinking, at the entrance and bared his teeth.  If the hunters found them now, before it was fully dark, he wouldn’t be able to take them all down, but he wasn’t going to be caught without a fight.

Feet stamped through the dense patch of trees.  Men shouted overhead.  Someone fell and cursed close to the cave entrance.  Someone else dropped a huge backpack directly on top of the hole.  If they picked it up in a hurry during the night, they just might avoid seeing the cave.

Ian longed to whisper to Kendra, to tell her his plan.  She had to stay put, no matter what.  He was a fighter; she wasn’t.  There was no way she could take on the trained hunters above them.  But he could.  Once the sun went down, he would become one with the night, sneak out of the grave-like cavern, and start slitting throats.

He groaned inwardly.  How had it come to this?  Willow planned the raid perfectly.  They all had their parts to play and had done so without a problem.  Kendra spoke to the computers to get them access to the building.  Ian grabbed one of the boys, Shane grabbed the other boy and one of the girls, Nora grabbed the other girl, and Willow started a massive fire on the other side of the town as a distraction.  They weren’t even going to hurt the kids, not really.  They would take the children’s memories and identities and deposit them in an orphanage half a world away.  The children were just toddlers.  They wouldn’t really miss the memories and the orphanage was a good place, with good, kind caretakers.  The parents were the ones they wanted to punish. They were all partially responsible for Nora’s breakdown.  It had all made sense at the time.

And then things went terribly wrong.  One of the boys wouldn’t stop crying.  Ian had clamped his hand over the kid’s mouth.   He hadn’t realized that the child had a problem that kept him from breathing through his nose.  It wasn’t long before Ian realized that the boy had stopped struggling.

Ian choked back vomit at the memory.  He shook his head.  He would deal with that if they all made it back to the complex.  For the moment, he couldn’t afford to think past this night.  He had to focus.  Besides, he sneered, I’m not getting out of here alive.

Willow observed the men from the perfect cover of the high branches of a pine tree.  Sap soaked her black pants and hoodie, but she didn’t care.  Ian and Kendra had disappeared an hour ago into some little cave in the ground.  She figured the cave was supported by the interwoven roots of all the trees and other plants.  She wasn’t sure how they would manage to get out without being seen.  Ian is probably planning some kind of heroics.  If she knew Ian, he was torturing himself because of what he had done.  By accident!  If the stupid kid hadn’t screamed, it never would’ve happened.  She had to do something.  Nora and Shane had already disappeared.  Whether they had been captured, killed, or managed to get away, she had no idea.  But she did know one thing: she wasn’t losing anyone else.  Not tonight.

The sun hit the tops of the trees.  The whole forest seemed to go up in a blaze.  Willow got an idea.

All of the fires she had ever set had been started with small flames.  She’d been practicing with larger flame balls, but she had never made one on her own, in uncontrolled circumstances.  She would only have one chance at this.  If she failed, Ian’s guilt wouldn’t matter.  Kendra’s fear would dissipate.  And Willow’s own anger would never flare up again.  If she failed, they would all die.  But if she succeeded, they would all survive to fight another day.

She dropped silently onto a pile of rotting pine needles and oak leaves.  She flung her arms out to the sides and called fire from her core to caress her arms up to her elbow.  A few hunters had time to aim their guns before hell-flames erupted from her fingertips and set the whole copse ablaze.