Monday, June 12, 2034

 

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is an unexpected visitor. This week’s story comes from the pen of Phil Yeats. It’s a scene from Cyberocracy, his current work in progress.

In April 2024, Phil published The Body on Karli’s Beach, the third book in his Barrettsport Mysteries, a series of soft-boiled mysteries set in a fictional South Shore, Nova Scotia town. For information about these books, The Road to Environmental Armageddon, his trilogy about the hazards of ignoring human-induced climate change, and his latest, a novella titled Starting Over Again: A Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy visit his website: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/.

Monday, June 12, 2034

by Phil Yeats

At 11 a.m., Ellie O’Brien loitered outside the local office of the Ministry of Personal Welfare, waiting for them to release Len Smith from their clutches. The annoying annual assessments were part of efforts to develop a complacent public dedicated to national goals. They occurred on the day before everyone’s birthday. Tuesday would be his twenty-sixth birthday, so his appointment would be today. A simple call told her he had a morning appointment.

Len was a nice, self-effacing guy. Lean, average height, blond hair, and blue eyes with nothing extreme or weird about his appearance, except for the glasses that were at least five fashion cycles out of date. He wasn’t very sociable, but quick to help strangers. And when called upon by his colleagues, he was ready and willing to lend a helping hand. Afterwards, though, he shunned the celebratory parties.

Several minutes after eleven, he hesitated outside the building, sneezing as he always did when he first encountered bright sunlight. She stepped in front of someone rushing inside and stumbled after the stranger brushed past. The minor collision she’d orchestrated propelled her into Len’s path.

“Ellie,” he said as she steadied herself by grabbing his outstretched arm. “I didn’t know you were in town.”

She stuttered, pretending to be flustered. “B-b-ack for fifteen months, working as a journalist. I’m here getting background for a story. But tomorrow’s the Ides of June, your birthday, isn’t it? That means you were here for your annual grilling…” She let her thought trail off, hoping her machinations hadn’t been too obvious. “Was it too awful?”

He shrugged his shoulders and sighed, his standard reaction to interaction with others. He didn’t avoid others, but he never showed enthusiasm. “Puzzling more than anything. I don’t understand what they’re after.”

“Yeah, can be difficult, but mostly it’s a continuation of the mantra we lived with as undergrads. You know, the benefits of collaboration with your colleagues and the synergies from working together.” She paused. When he said nothing, she turned up the heat. “This is like serendipity. I’ve often thought about you, and here we are, almost crashing into each other. Can we, like, go somewhere for coffee and, you know, catch up on old times?”

He looked at his outdated wristwatch, not a multi-function communicator like others carried. “Yeah, I guess. My shift starts at 12:45. I can manage half an hour for a chat. I’ll get a muffin or something and call it lunch.”

She pointed down the street at a Tim Hortons sign. Minutes later, they queued in the nearby donut shop. She turned to him. “Got your card?”

“Card?” he asked.

“You know, your Togetherness card.”

“What? They only work at the Twenty-Something Clubs.”

“Jesus, Leonard, you really are out of touch with reality. They gave you that card and replenish it every month to encourage you to get together with other young adults. It’s good in many places where people meet. If you present your card, and I show them mine, they deduct the cost of whatever we buy from your credit. I mean, we could use mine, but it’s kind of depleted.”

“I’m aware of all that. It’s part of the government-sponsored mating game, but it doesn’t connect with my life.”

She hesitated, wondering how to shift away from that topic. “Part of their effort to generate collaboration with colleagues.”

He snorted. “You mean part of their fight to reverse the county’s decreasing fertility rate? That’s what this is about, isn’t it? It’s so damned annoying I was about ready to lash out at the sanctimonious assessment officer. I have a job, an important one, in the university hospital’s neonatal unit. We’re making our systems more reliable and improving the survival of premature infants. Outstanding success with preemies as young as twenty-two weeks, and our research suggests we may soon push it lower. We’re world leaders in this work.” He paused, inhaling and exhaling his breath in an obvious effort to control his emotions. “Sorry for venting because I know it’s not your fault, but that’s my contribution to the fertility problem obsessing the government. They shouldn’t hound me with all this juvenile crap about working together. No way, we’re a bunch of happy bees working together for the good of the hive. Everything’s too messed up for their cheerful talk.”

“I didn’t know you were working in the medical field,” she said in another attempt to shift the conversation away from fertility. It was on her mind, but she remembered his aversion to intimate relationships during his university years. She didn’t want to push too hard, at least not yet.

“Quality control officer for the neonatal unit’s equipment, so an engineering job, not a medical one. I investigate malfunctioning equipment and improve its reliability.”

“But that didn’t fit into the Ministry’s image of the ideal young adult, did it?”

“I don’t know what they’re thinking. My first visit a year ago was noncommittal. They outlined some programs and their benefits. And since then, the local office’s propaganda has included my experience working in the hospital. But today they were down on me, accusing me of shirking my social responsibilities and threatening me with various repercussions.” He glanced at his watch and swallowed the rest of his coffee in one gulp before she could respond. “I should go. I promised to get into work early if possible, and the stupid meeting with the psychobabble gestapo took longer than I expected.”

She reached out and grabbed his hand. “Could we, you know, have dinner together some evening and gobble up more of your wasted credits?”

“I’m working every evening this week, but I could do Saturday. You can tell me what you’ve been doing for the past three years.”

They exchanged contact information, and he strode away with more spring in his step than he’d shown going to Tim’s. Ellie sat back with a second coffee and his untouched muffin, happy with her progress.

 

***

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/

 

Unexpected

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is an unexpected visitor.

This time, it’s Cathy MacKenzie’s turn. Her writings have been published in approximately four hundred print and online publications. Check out her website (www.writingwicket.wordpress.com) for more information on her works. Cathy can’t quite seem to write anything but poetry these days, so here’s another…

 

Unexpected

by Cathy MacKenzie

Nobody expected you,

Least of all me,

Yet there you stood,

Bag at your knee.

I counted the bedrooms,

I counted the days.

Unexpected, you said.

Your favourite phrase.

I’d never have called,

Too proud, too scared,

But how I’ve missed you,

More than I’d shared.

***

 

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.ca/

 

Back

Welcome to the Spot Writers. This month's prompt is to write about an unexpected visitor. Today's tale comes from Val Muller, who in her day job is a high school teacher in America. This fictionalized account is based on at least two real incidents that reminded her that soke students are challenging in the moment but ultimately make the job a rewarding one. It is an appropriate way to end teacher appreciation week.

 

Back

by Val Muller

 

Just 26 hours from now, they would all be on holiday break. It was the typical student apathy and excitement, as before any break--the same behaviors that made her question teaching. If she could just make it through the rest of the day without incident, she could coast into the last day before break.

The intercom beeped, and she flinched. All day, students had been dismissed by parents pulling them early.

"Ms. Smithson?" the office called.

"Yes?" She looked around the room, wondering which of the few remaining students was being called.

"Are you busy? You have a visitor." A few moments later, a building substitute was there to watch the class. Ms. Smithson cringed. They never sent someone to cover a class.

Unless you were in trouble.

Which, maybe she was.

Did the district do things like that? Did they fire teachers two days before Christmas? She took the fastest route to the office, but she walked slowly. These could be her last few moments of normalcy.

When she entered the main office, she looked around. She had expected to see an administrator standing there with a scowl and crossed arms. But instead, it was just the two ladies from the front desk smiling each other and laughing as they watched her face. And they pointed in the direction of the seats next to the front door. There, a young man was seated. Ms. Smithson did not recognize him at first. He seemed like he might be a student waiting to see the principal, or maybe an older brother waiting to pick up a sibling for an early dismissal. No one on her current roster, anyway.

Then her heart skipped a beat. It was Jason, the Jason she spoke or thought about daily for four years, the Jason so notorious that even her husband still remembered hearing about the boy's antics and attitude. The number of times he'd gone to the main office, the number of times he'd mouthed off, rebelled,  not listened. The time he sent that email.

"Oh," she managed.

Jason stood, smiling, handing her a gift bag. "It's chocolate cookies," he said. "My parents insisted."

"Thank you. It's good to see you." Okay, so chocolate cookies. But why? Did Jason really just come back randomly with cookies for his former teachers?

He seemed to read the question in her eyes. "There were only two people I came to see. You're one of them."

He held up an ID tag. "See what I do now?" It was an employee ID tag for the local, national basketball team. "I'm on the press team. I'm not in charge or anything, but this is how everyone starts. For now I just help with scheduling and set up and basically just doing whatever I'm told, but I can work my way up. They said probably when I graduate next year they'll have something for me."

Had it really been three years? He was about to graduate college. In the back of her mind, she had given him a fifty-fifty chance of that. It's not that she didn't believe in him, but as with so many students, it was just there was so much evidence pushing her to fear the worst.

"Graduating, huh?"

He nodded. Then he pointed to the gift bag. "You think that's your Christmas gift, but it's not. That's just what my family gave you. Are you ready for your gift?"

Ms. Smithson tensed. What could he mean? But already she was nodding.

Jason paused for dramatic effect, then stood up straight, looking her right in the eye. "You were right," he said. "I mean every damn time, you were right. Use good grammar. Proofread my work myself. Take pride in my work. Be polite. Walk away when my anger is going to make decisions for me. Respect those above me. All thise things I gave you a hard time about, all those things I said I would refuse to do, all that headache I probably put you through, in college I learned that you were right real quick."

Ms. Smithson paused, taking it all in. Everyone always said teachers really appreciated things like handwritten notes as opposed to anything else. She never understood that, students thanking teachers for merely doing their jobs. But now, she soared in the clouds. All those years of wondering if maybe just for one day he could be absent, wondering if maybe just for today he would cooperate, all those years of not giving up, of fighting the good fight with that small flame of hope that might kindle into something.

She looked up to see the fire in his eyes.

"Thank you."

 

The Spot Writers—Our Members:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.ca/

 

The Most Haunted Summer Ever

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to continue with last month’s prompt (a story told through a camera, any type of camera in any circumstance). This next story will be what happens AFTER what is told through the camera. 

This week’s contribution comes from Chiara De Giorgi. Chiara is an Italian author and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. She writes fiction, with a focus on children’s literature and science fiction.

  

Created with LeChat

The Most Haunted Summer Ever

by Chiara De Giorgi

 

After acquiring the Gift of Sight, Elsa befriends the Squatters, a community of ghosts living in the abandoned house in her village, Willow. One day, they ask for her help in investigating the murder of Alistair, the ghostly brother of one of their own, Wilhelmina. She promises to help them but isn’t sure how to proceed, so she enlists the Stranger, a shapeshifter, and Lydia, a teenage girl who attends Elsa’s after-school creative writing class and shows her some strange photos taken at night that, apparently, depict vampires. That’s how Elsa discovers that Lydia can see ghosts and supernatural creatures.

 

~Entry 2~

Introducing Lydia to the Stranger was an experience in itself.

Lydia and I arrived at the library and a gargoyle enthusiastically greeted us from his perch. I froze. I had never realized the gargoyles were “creatures” too. Turns out they are, and they can be called Bert. Before I could process this new information, a cascade of water spilled from the gargoyle’s perch, pooling on the pavement before rising into the shape of a girl Lydia’s age. The Stranger.

Lydia gasped. Then smiled. Then giggled. Just what I needed: an unpredictable shapeshifter and a teenager with a crush.

I looked around frantically. No one on the (thankfully!) almost deserted street seemed to have noticed anything. Just another normal evening in Willow.

“Uh,” I said. “Hi.”

We sat down at the library café, where I struggled to make them listen to me: the Stranger was too busy doing funny stuff to make Lydia laugh, and Lydia… well, she laughed. After I scolded the Stranger for stirring her tea with a finger morphed into a silver spoon, snake-like strands of her hair slithered onto her shoulders, sticking out their tongues at me and winking at Lydia.

“Girls, please!” I said. “We have a murder to discuss.”

Lydia blinked, still staring at the Stranger’s hair. “Go ahead.”

“A ghost murder,” I reminded them. Yes: Alistair, explorer and would-be writer, as well as Wilhelmina’s brother, has been found catatonic in the Interplace, the spirit world’s version of a neutral meeting ground. Not dead dead (too late for that), just stuck. Enough to send the whole Squatters gang into a panic.

After some frantic research, I’d learned the only way to reduce a ghost to that state was to trap their essence in an object. Now we had to figure out who had done it, and why. That would hopefully lead us to the cursed object, so we could free him.

“Suspects,” the Stranger said. “We need suspects.”

“Anonymous,” I said after a while. “For all his act of being the Squatters’ leader, he’s been avoiding me since it happened, being all secretive and uninterested, while everyone else is panicking.”

“Madame LeClaire,” the Stranger suggested.

“Who?” Lydia and I asked in unison.

“The new lady in town. She owns the antique shop next to the ice parlor. I’ve seen the artifacts she sells: some are clearly linked to magic stuff.”

Being a journalist, I would have dismissed the magic stuff in a heartbeat until not too long ago, but the past twelve months or so have taught me differently.

Lydia nodded at the Stranger’s suggestion, then cleared her voice and added her own suspect to the list.

“Bartholomew,” she said. “The librarian’s assistant. He hates explorers, I heard him say that one bit him and turned him into a werewolf just because he wanted to know how humans tasted in this area of the world.”

I stared. My ability to take in new, weird stuff was being seriously tested, and not for the first time. At least, I don’t pass out anymore.

The Stranger’s hair turned into a detective’s hat and she tipped it at me. “This is going to be the best. Summer. Ever.” She winked at Lydia, who blushed and giggled again.

Before leaving the library, we agreed on our next step: we’re going to investigate all our suspects, who are a ghost, a werewolf, and a possible evil witch. 

The best summer ever? The most haunted, for sure.

Elsa

 

 

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/
Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com
Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/
Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/

A Golden Opportunity (continuation)

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to continue with last month’s prompt (a story told through a camera, any type of camera in any circumstance). This next story will be what happens AFTER what is told through the camera. This week’s story comes from the pen of Phil Yeats.

In April 2024, Phil published The Body on Karli’s Beach, the third book in his Barrettsport Mysteries, a series of soft-boiled mysteries set in a fictional South Shore, Nova Scotia town. For information about these books, The Road to Environmental Armageddon, his trilogy about the hazards of ignoring human-induced climate change, and his latest, a novella titled Starting Over Again: A Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy visit his website: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/.

  

A Golden Opportunity (continuation)

by Phil Yeats

 

Detective Sargeant Sam Taylor was off chasing down information on Matt MacDonald and Chris Martin. Detective Max Beech began filling in the details of their victim, Percival Smythe Jones, while he waited for reports from the coroner and the crime scene officers.

Max was a successful detective but known as a maverick in the Halifax Police Department because he charged off following his hunches while he waited, sometimes what he considered inordinate lengths of time for those official reports to make their way to his desk.

Today, however, he was behaving himself, searching for information on their victim’s life from his graduation from a small Squamish, BC college to his demise in his upscale condo in Halifax. The two events were a long way apart, in both kilometres and years.

After graduating from college with a science degree, he enrolled in a course at a Vancouver technical college that provided him with certification as a mineral prospector. After that, Max lost his trail until he showed up again several years later, listed as vice president in charge of prospecting at a gold mining start-up whose stock price rocketed ahead before fading into oblivion. Then his trail went dark again.

He had the fancy apartment, a Lamborghini sports car and an almost new Hummer electric SUV. His father denied subsidizing any of Perry’s activities after his second year at college.

“So,” Max said to Sam after a day trolling for data, “where did he get the money?”

“Can’t answer that question, but I learned things from Chris Brown, the geology student living in Australia.”

“Don’t hold me in suspense.”

“First, he has the photos and will send them to us. But more important, he said they were all similar to the one we have. What puzzled Chris was that he knows Perry several shots that zoomed in on the scar on the hillside. He never showed them to us, but after the visit to that viewpoint opposite the landslide, Perry changed. He became less of a pest, sort of off in a world of his own with a sudden interest in geology.”

“That is interesting,” Max said as he searched his computer for information on faculty members in the Dalhousie University Department of Geology. “Which one should we contact?” he said when he found a page with faculty members and their specialities.

“Talk to the head, I guess, see where that leads us. Should give us a contact at the University of British Columbia.”

Max nodded. “That’s your job for tomorrow.”

“It’s early afternoon on the West Coast. I could bypass Dal and go straight to UBC.”

“Fine, give it a shot. I have something to do this evening, something that’s best done alone. We’ll get back together in the morning and compare notes.”

An hour later, Max arrived at an apartment hidden away up an exterior flight of stairs behind a vape shop in a rundown part of the city. He rang the bell and a few seconds later heard a click as a servo motor released the door lock.

Inside, a voice called out from another room behind the apartment’s sparsely furnished main room. The kitchen area in this great room had a counter with a single stool and a few utensils, dishes, pots, and pans. Many were in the sink, unwashed; others were stacked on the counter. The rest of the room contained a single recliner chair with a small side table, tucked away behind the main door.

Another click released the door to the back room, and Max entered a small room cluttered with electronics on shelves and a large desk. A chair on wheels in front of the main computer terminal was its only other furnishing. A baby-faced but bald young man swiveled around. “Hello, Max. What can I do for you?”

Max only knew him by Min, the name he laughingly gave himself when Max saved him from a suicide attempt when he was a teenager. Under Max’s tutelage, and often with Max’s financial support, he finished high school and three years of university. He appeared again four years later, when Max needed the help of a computer wizard to solve a case.

Min sat silently, brow furrowed, for a minute after Max described his problem. He swivelled to his keyboard and tapped away for several minutes. “Right. This shouldn’t be difficult. Meet you at, say, seven tomorrow for dinner at the trattoria.”

Min was sitting at a table with a glass of red wine in his hand when Max arrived at the restaurant. A waiter arrived with a glass of wine for Max.

“These two are on me. I expect you to pick up the tab for the rest of our meal as payment for a job well done.”

Max nodded. This was their normal arrangement—a small payment for the information Min extracted from the world of computer networks.

“Percival Smythe Jones is a con man, a thorn in the side of his father, a prominent politician. Daddy Dearest spends a lot of time and money keeping young Percy out of the limelight. It started with Percy’s mining venture, the one you mentioned to me. Good old-fashioned gold mining scam. You spike some preliminary drill samples with traces of gold, or alter the results of the sample analyses, generate interest in the market that drives up share prices, then when followup cores come up empty, share prices plummet. Meanwhile, you’ve sold your stake and the top of the market and disappeared.”

“I’d guessed that was the outcome, but there was no fuss from investors or legal ramifications.”

“That’s because Daddy Dearest paid off the disgruntled investors and hushed it up.”

“Doesn’t sound like that gives me a motive for murdering Percy, unless his father did him in.”

Min ignored Max’s suggestion. “Next chapters get more interesting. First, he multiplied his ill-gotten fortune several-fold speculating in bitcoins. Then he started a new venture.”

“Another stock scam?”

Min shook his head. “More diabolical. He started a privately funded investment fund that promised huge gains for investors willing to bend or break rules to find or generate sure bets.”

“Sounds illegal.”

“Very, but also well hidden. And if anything goes wrong, they can’t go to the police. They’d be implicating themselves.”

Min tapped the man-purse slung over his shoulder. “It’s all in here, for your use but not for public consumption.” He smiled. “My methods are not always strictly legal, and you’d be implicated.”

“So you’re giving me a number—”

“—twenty-seven potential perpetrators, plus Daddy Dearest, who could have orchestrated a hit.”

“Useful, but it doesn’t solve my case.”

“True, but don’t despair. After I’ve enjoyed my dinner, the first proper meal I’ve had in weeks, I’ll provide you with a summary of my findings.”

“But not the perpetrator,” Max said.

“Verbally as we leave. You’ll have to prepare your case with admissible evidence before you make a bust.”

 

***

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/

 

Revelation

 Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to continue with last month’s prompt (a story told through a camera, any type of camera in any circumstance). This next story will be what happens AFTER what is told through the camera.

This time, it’s Cathy MacKenzie’s turn. Her writings have been published in almost 400 print and online publications. Check out her website (www.writingwicket.wordpress.com) for further information on her works.

This is a continuation of her previous Spot Writers story.

 

Revelation

by Cathy MacKenzie

 

Jimmy couldn’t keep secrets for long. He just had to tell his father about the mermaid. But he’d had to wait for the right opportunity, when his father was in a good mood and his mother wasn’t around.

Tonight was it! His mother had her book club meeting and would be gone at least two hours.

His father was hunched over the kitchen table, his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose as he scrolled through his tablet.

Jimmy sat across from him, still wearing his heavy winter parka. His dad was Sir El Cheapo when it came to the thermostat.

“Dad?”

“Mmm?”

“I saw something on my way to school last week. Over on Lincoln Street.”

“Yeah? You did? Traffic’s a mess over there. Construction crew leave a hole in the road again?”

“No,” Jimmy said, leaning forward. “A mermaid, Dad. I saw a mermaid in a snowbank.”

Bob’s thumb paused on the screen. Seconds later, he let out a snort. “A mermaid. On Lincoln? Must have been a store mannequin, Jimmy. Or a discarded Christmas display.”

What! Jimmy thought. What was his father insinuating? A mermaid could be found in any snowbank, just not on Lincoln?

“It wasn’t a Christmas decoration. Nor was it a mannequin. It was alive.”

His father still didn’t move, his eyes glued to the screen. Jimmy had caught a glimpse of the screen. His father was checking his stocks. Had he made a ton of dough? Jimmy knew a bit about the stock market.

He waited for a reply that never came and then had to break the silence.

“She was stuck in the snow. It was a huge bank. Her tail was a deep, gorgeous green. With other colours too. It kinda flopped around, like a whale or something.”

His father finally set the tablet down and rubbed his eyes. “Jimmy, we live in the middle of a concrete grid. The closest thing to a mermaid around here is the frozen slush at the bottom of the harbour. Your mind is just trying to fill in the blanks because the city’s so grey this time of year.”

“You didn’t think it was grey last August,” Jimmy said.

His father went still.

Aha, gotcha! Jimmy thought.

Bob reached for his mug, but his hand hovered over the handle for a second too long before gripping it.

“The night we walked home from the pier,” Jimmy continued. “Remember? Near the shipping containers? You stopped dead in your tracks and stared into that narrow gap between the concrete and the water. You didn’t move for three minutes. You didn’t even blink.”

“I thought I saw a seal,” Bob said, his voice flat. “It happens. They wander into the basin sometimes.”

“Seals don’t have fingers, Dad. And they don’t hum. I heard it too, just for a second. It sounded like... Like a radio station from somewhere far away. Like static.”

Bob looked away, staring at the reflection of the kitchen lights in the window. “Lincoln is a busy street,” he finally said, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. “People don’t look at snowbanks there. They look at their feet or their phones.”

“I looked,” Jimmy said.

Bob turned back to his son. “But you’re a weird kid!” He laughed.

“But I saw the same mermaid last summer when we were at that cottage.”

“You did?”

“Yes, but I never told anyone.”

Suddenly, his father was interested. “Did she recognize you?”

It was Jimmy’s turn to gaze into the distance. “Funnily, I don’t think so. And I forgot to ask. We had a long conversation, though.”

His father laughed. “Best to keep those things to yourself.” He picked up his tablet again but didn’t scroll.

Jimmy waited for something—anything—to happen. He had an inkling his father was going to speak again.

“Was she... Did she look okay?” he finally asked.

“I think she just wanted to be back in the water, where she belonged. Mermaids aren’t supposed to be in snowbanks, you know.”

His father coughed. “Good. Let’s hope it’s an early spring.”

“I think she’s probably gone by now, Dad. It’s been a week. I think we’d know by now if someone else saw her. Wouldn’t that be on the news?” Jimmy wondered why he hadn’t gone back to check.

“Hmm, I suppose so, Jimmy. But, still, let’s keep this to ourselves, okay? I don’t think your mother needs to hear this.”

Jimmy was hesitant. He wasn’t good with secrets. And now he had to keep the same one again? He feared it would burn and burn within him until he blurted it out loud.

 

***

 

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/
Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com
Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com
Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/

 

Someday

 

Welcome to the Spot Writers. This week’s prompt follows the prompt from last month, which was to tell a story through a camera. The prompt for this month: tell what happens after. In the story from last month, the camera showed the early life of a family dog, first injured and then lost after being startled by fireworks.

Someday

by Val Muller

Ella sat I the basement, listening to the base of the sub woofer. She was watching a war film—well, she wasn’t actually watching it. She had chosen it for its loud soundtrack—for Charlie. The loud sounds helped drown out the fireworks of Independence Day. He was old now. Likely he wouldn’t be able to run off so fast anymore, but he could still be scared.

Ever since the summer he ran off during the fireworks, most of the family gave up the holiday. Sure, they did cookouts, but they generally came back home before the big displays. It was bad enough that neighborhood displays stretched out over the week. Only Henry was out with friends, as he usually was. Maybe he had been too young when Charlie ran off. Maybe he didn’t remember the worry and the stress.

Ellen turned back to her sketchbook. In it, she was finishing the cross-hatching on a sketch of Charlie sleeping in his bed, a brilliant display of fireworks in the background of the drawing. But they weren’t ordinary fireworks.

On the next page in her sketchbook, she started her blueprint. It was a grand light display, one that would presumably be lit by drones, each programmed to light in silent precision. No explosives, no smoke, no terrifying sounds, no lost animals. She was only going into her junior year, but she already had her college essay drafted for the school of engineering she hoped to attend. It was an essay about the night Charlie disappeared and her plan to use drone technology to change the standard for holiday illumination displays.

In his bed, Charlie stretched, then curled up again. Ellen smiled sadly. She doubted Charlie would be around next summer; this was likely the last Independence Day she had to hide him from the fireworks, but he would always be in her heart as she pursued her dream. The technology was nascent now, but she would bring it to full fruition. Her name would be in the textbooks one day, a pioneer of electronic pyrotechnics. In fact, she would write her own book one day, likely as part of her dissertation. She would make sure it was published to be released on the 4^th of July. And it would be dedicated to Charlie.

**** 

The Spot Writers—Our Members:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/
Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/
Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com
Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/