64) Mask Man

    Once upon a time in a big city there was a costume shop. They carried the expected Halloween latex masks for children and enterprising young fellows with poor impulse control, abusive personalities, and a penchant for guns. But what they had down stairs was much more interesting. The owner, one Mr. DeLong (widower), would take you down there if you slipped him a twenty.
    What you’d see first is darkness, then of course he’d flick on the lights, but it would still be dim down there past the creaking stairs. As you rounded the corner there’d be DeLong’s pride and joy, his collection of historical masks. Huge wooden masks from native peoples all around the world, horned African masks and Inuit masks with tubes sprouting out of strange places and more. And maybe one of these masks would talk to you, prompt you to pull it down and put it on, just for a laugh. And you would go to pick it up off the wall and then remember where you were and who you weren’t. This is the modern world and there’s no need for such ostentatious masks. No, the masks we wear are simpler. The good husband mask, the goodly wife mask, the concerned lover mask, the attentive student mask. Our modern world is filled with masks, but we wear them on our minds. And you think that maybe these huge unwieldy masks were from a more honest time.
    And DeLong sees your frustration, so close to a newly found desire and restricted by the social contract of good manners. You can’t just pop up and take one off the wall and run with it. There’s no telling how old or valuable they are and you might break it. He laughs and walks up to the closest mask, it’s a little bigger than a soccer ball and covered in beautiful yellow and black feathers. You think it’s from some island nation. He hands it to you with a nod. You take it and its lighter than it looks. It’s soft and smooth, the feathers cover the entire surface. You turn it back and forth. The inside surface is made of some vegetable matter, maybe palm fronds you guess. You think you smell the ocean, but it’s gone before you can verify. And you pull the mask up to your face and line up the eye holes with your own eyes.
    And you wait for some electric knowledge to jolt through your soul, but it’s just an old mask. While holding it up to your face you look around the dimly lit basement at the rest of the masks and Mr. DeLong and you wonder how it would have been for the original wearer, what kind of ritual they performed with this mask. Was it a fertility ritual, coming or age, or a war dance? Or something else you don’t have a word for in your language?
    Enough time has passed for you to sample the mask and you reluctantly take it off your face and hand it back to DeLong. He takes it with a smile and an eyebrow wiggle. He puts it back up on the wall, but in a different spot than where he took it down from, and that makes the back of your hand itchy for some reason.
    Then there’s a phone ringing from upstairs. He motions for you to follow him back up the stairs. You do so and the stairs creak the same way and the light switch clicks off the same way, but you look down into the darkness in a different way then when you went down. You can’t tell if you’re deflated by the reality of the masks, just piles of feathers and wood, or if you’re feeling sour grapes because you know you’ll never go down there again.
    DeLong waves for you to wait, like he’s going to show you more of the basement. But he’s on the phone for a few minutes, talking excitedly in a different language, you can’t tell if its Greek or some Slavic tongue. And you want to stay, but there’s homework to do, or you have a date, or you’re hungry, or you just feel the pulse of the city outside pulling you back out.
    You try to wave to DeLong, but he’s well into his conversation and only when you leave through the door does he turn to you and wave back. You both smile.
    The sun is warm, or it’s raining. Either way it’s a comforting reality and you return to your life.
    You forget about that costume shop for years. For whatever reason you just never go by that block again until one day you’ve graduated or you have an new job or a new girl friend and the name of the street you’re on rings a bell and you wonder if that costume shop is still there. In this neighborhood sometimes dry cleaners are around for forty years while a posh restaurant can barely last a season. The city is capricious.
    The neighborhood hasn’t changed much. A few buildings have a new coat of paint and the cars are totally different. You walk up and down the street a few times until you’re sure you’ve got the right place, you can tell by the thin alley across the street, that memory is somehow the most vivid.
    And of course the costume shop is gone. People don’t wear costumes that much these days. There’s a bakery or a pizza shop or just boarded up windows there now. And you peek through the window and it’s just as advertised, the glare on the windows was hiding nothing.

63) Justice Melody

    Justice Melody put her pet sheep on the soft grass floor and let the little fuzz ball run around the office. She pulled up to her terminal and her sheep ran over to the waterfall in the corner of the office and lapped at it enthusiastically.
    Several boring hours went by as Melody worked her morning shift triaging cases: sending them up to higher justices, tossing them out, or adjucating them herself and sending them off for confirmation. Her sheep, Mildred, ate some oats and went to sleep.
    Just like every day at 12:30 Justice Melody’s stomach grumbled. And unlike every other day her phone buzzed. She’d talked to her mother the night before and her father was fine. She wasn’t delinquent on any work related responsibilities. As she fished her terminal out of her purse her mind continued to whirr as to who could be calling. The display said “Chaos” and a happy little buzz surged up the back of her neck. “No way.” She said and laughed.
    She answered the phone, “Hello, Justice Melody.”
    “Hello, uh, this is Chaos David.” the voice on the other line stammered.
    “Are you the guy I saw in the elevator this morning?”
    “Here, give me a second. I have to read this.”
    “Sure, sure.” She said, stifling a giggle.
    “You are hereby detained from your normal course of your day. All of your normal rights and privileges are suspended for the remainder of the day. You are now a secret agent of chaos and as such should meet me for lunch at the Japanese place on Sweden block in concourse seven.”
    “That last bit, I don’t think that’s in the script.” She said, smiling.
    “Say, an hour from now?”
    “Compliance, Chaos David.” She clicked closed her terminal. She turned to her sheep who was dozing horizontally in the corner clapped her hands and said “Mildred!” The sheep popped up and trotted over to her mummy. Melody nuzzled her soft wooled body and Mildred closed her eyes.
    “Mamma’s gotta go away for a little bit. You think you’ll be okay here?”
    Mildred looked up with her soft dewy eyes and bleated in response.
    “Good good little one.” She said and gave Mildred a good scratch on the chin. She took her terminal back out and called the secretary and a couple friends in her department telling them she’d have to be out for the rest of the day and to kindly come in a keep Mildred company ever hour or so. Sure, no problem, they all said.
    With a smile Melody slipped out of her office and back out on to the concourse.

62) Strand Dead

    He stood stock still on the beach again in the pale moonlight. He looked behind himself, whole again and alive. He counted seventeen steps from where he’d started all those years ago, or just minutes ago. He tried not to think about the time it was taking to get to his goal, just fifty feet ahead of him, a loaded gun on a large rock. He looked to his left, nothing but calm waves of ocean all the way to the horizon. He looked to his right, thin scrub brush and palm trees for a few hundred feet and then more bloody ocean.
    He touched his naked chest and lightly traced out the fresh wound of the sigil there, the magic that was causing him all this suffering. He sighed. His stomach growled and he fantasized that maybe he would die of starvation and wouldn’t have to kill himself.
    He resolutely picked up his left leg, waiting for it to cramp or give out, and swung it foreword. Even though he’d killed more than a hundred men in honest combat and burned down a dozen ships, even though he’d ordered five men to take the same sigil on their chests and left them to the same fate as he, he still winced as he put his foot down.
    That now familiar electrical sting cut up from the sole of his left foot. From his bones out his soul gave way to the magic as it transported him away. He turned inside out a hundred times, twisted and turned though space and landed face down in hot gritty sand.
    He brought himself up enough to vomit then fell over on his side gasping. Eventually the heat and the dryness and the hope got to him. Hope that maybe he could find a way to stay longer wherever he was, maybe survive long enough to forget the gun on that lonely beach. Hope that maybe the rules would change for him this time.
    Frank Decheneaux, recently deposed ex-captain of the Black Plough, got to his feet and brushed off his tunic and pantaloons. All he could see was more damned sand in every direction, huge rolling dunes of it. The sun burned down from directly above like a blast furnace and he picked a random direction and began to walk.

61) A Walk

    He walks out of his apartment complex and heads down the dirty streets looking for a place to sit and enjoy what’s left of the day. After years of pills and therapy he’s found that a simple sit in the park is the cheapest cure.
    First he walks down Grant street with more apartments and the occasional convenience store. Then a right on Cesar Chavez and it’s the freeway ramp off on the right and gas stations every other block up to Mission Street. All the towering signs look like the strangest parodies of trees.
    He hears the sounds of childrens laughter, playing rough and rattling chains on monkey bars. That’s St. Cynthia’s boy’s school a block over. He keeps walking and their shouts of joy fade into the noise from the street.
    All of a sudden an elderly woman pushing a walker appears from out from an alley. She’s short and hunched over in a greasy overcoat. She smells like off cheese and has thing greasy grey hair. He jumps out of the way and she gives him a ward against the evil eye and spits at his feet.
    “Hey, what’s your problem?” He says.
    She mumbles curses in a guttural language. He puts up his hands and backs off. “Look lady, I don’t know what’s wrong with you. But you can have it.”
    She gazes up at him with her piercing red rimmed eyes.
    He can’t meet her eyes but instead has to stare below them at her flapping lips, six teeth, a salt and pepper mustache, porous nose all red and veiny. He finally breaks his attention away and turns around to go to the park.
    The old woman is still yelling at him. He double times it down the street and her voice fades in the distance. He rounds the corner of Cesar Chavez and Gogh St and there is his salvation, his neighborhood park, anemic with one slide and two swings and a single bench. A single occupied bench. A single bench occupied what that horrible old lady in it.
    He puts his head down and keeps moving the park. The old woman starts screaming at him again. He runs away down Gogh. He glances back and she’s gotten up from the bench and is slowly following him on her walker, its tennis balls scraping away at the cement.

60) Strange Flame

    Michael sits in his apartment and grows a strange fire from his palms. The flames are blue and crinkle like cellophane when he blows on them. He can keep the fire going fine and it can get bigger when he uses both hands, really big. He likes to hold it in his left hand and pass objects through it with his other hand. Nothing gets burnt, it’s not actually combusting. Everything comes back with a light dusting of dark blue powder on it.
    Michael thinks about his one bedroom apartment shithole, rent three months overdue. It’s a huge complex and nobody’s come to bug him about the money yet. It might be that the landlord is away or dead, but it still makes him nervous. Too nervous to get a job because what if he was evicted and couldn’t get another place close enough to work?
    Even though he’s sure he could impress a girl with it he’s afraid to show anyone his fire. He knows what happens to mutants, he sees it in the news everyday, beautiful women with angel wings on the tv are handcuffed and led into big black vans. Super strong men with purple skin and horns are taken down with tazers every day. Normal business man by day, crusader by night, tossed in the paddy wagon the next morning. Michael doesn’t think those people did anything beside being different. Except the big strong ones have to be careful not to hurt anyone or break buildings.
    Michael gets sad thinking about all the other people with more obvious differences getting thrown into jail here and being put in front of a firing squad elsewhere. The scientists tell everyone they’re still human even with their hard shells or bent backwards spines, or too many limbs. We’re all still human, he thinks to himself.
    He calms himself down, not wanting to make too much of a mess. The blue powder stains if its on a surface too long and he hates cleaning off the ceiling. He pulls back the fire entirely and wipes his hands on his naked chest and gets out of bed. He puts on his clothes, with keys and wallet still in them. He leaves his apartment and goes for a walk.

59) Shadow's Plane

    Well over the middle of the Atlantic ocean I smelled fire, sulfurous and sick. I only had a moment to act before the cabin was filled with chaos. Thankfully the lights were out and almost everyone was still asleep. I mumbled out a spell, well worn and familiar, and slid into the shadow world. My headphones clattered to the seat and continued to blare out the soundtrack to the saccharine drama that was playing on the screen ahead of us. I diffused into the shadows and saw that thankfully none of my neighbors had noticed my disappearance.
    Just as I had squeezed myself in-between two bulkheads someone else must have told a flight attendant about the smell or maybe one of them smelt the fire too because the lights came back on suddenly.
    To say there was chaos in the cabin would be perfect, but still I want to say more. Humans are their best are a capricious lot. There’s a lot of snap decision making that has gone into your million year history. You’ve had a lot of tight fixes running away from predators ten times your size. But nothing has prepared your sad little bodies, soft and delicate and inflexible and flammable, for being trapped shoulder to shoulder in a giant burning metal tube going near the speed of sound over the ocean. There’s just no biological precedent. So you go haywire. Sure there’s a safety protocol and lecture at the beginning of the flight. But who really pays attention to that?
    After a lot of screaming and crying and praying the plane eventually landed just a few miles out from New York. And against my better judgement I returned to my human form and joined the huddled survivors on the inflatable rafts. There were a couple dozen of the large red boats, bulbous and canopied, all of them full with us scared huddling humans.
    Whoever had started the fire had wanted to delay me not kill me. There was a small chance the I was not the target, but being the only magical creature on the flight I thought that chance slim. I could only think of a few parties that would want me to miss the yearly portal to Fey.
    Someone elbowed me and squished me into the back of life raft. I was going to protest when I saw what the others were pulling up and into the raft, a limp and soggy old man. I looked away in shame. I’m not normally too sentimental, but this whole crash was my fault. If I hadn’t spent that extra three months in Paris this wouldn’t have happened. I could have taken a boat or even chartered a jet all to myself to get back to New York.
    I really hoped he hadn’t died, that would make me feel bad and anxious. And its harder to cast spells when you’re anxious.
    Someone was hunched over the old man resuscitating him. As they tried to bring him back to life I tried to go through my enemies to figure out who would have most profited by my delay.

58) Family Time

    “Stop!” She said as she was about to hand me the keys to the time machine.
    “What?” I whined.
    “I want you to know what you’re doing first. Have you gone through all the checks? Have you taken your chrono-suppressors? Are you wearing anything asynchronous? Did you fill up your torch?”
    “Come on, mom, of course I’ve done all the checks. I’m not dumb. I don’t want a ticket. You know I did real well in class. We’re just going up time a few centuries for a walk. It’s no big deal.”
    “Don’t you give me any lip, boy.” She said and pulled the keys back from my outstretched tentacle and my poor four fingers grasped at the air.
    “I’m sorry, Mum. I didn’t mean to mouth off.” I said, truly terrified that I wouldn’t be able to take my first drive in the family time machine.
    “This is a very powerful machine and I want you to respect it, okay?”
    “Okay. Yes, for sure.”
    She gave me that piercing look, searching my face for any of that attitude I’d been trying so hard to iron out, but that keep coming back and rearing its ugly head. I did my best impression of innocence. But she didn’t make a move to give the keys to me.
    I whined, “Mom, I’m coming on. I can feel the suppressors working, we gotta go.”
    She sighed, rolled her eyes, and handed me the keys. The jingled so sweetly. I smiled broadly, but not too broadly. I opened the passenger side door for her and bowed. I could feel her glare through the back of my head. I closed the door, carefully, and got into the driver’s seat.
    I checked the mirrors, the chronometers, the fuel gauge, synched up my panopticon, and turned around to give my mom two enthusiastic tentacles up. She nodded back and smiled a little. She must have gone through the same thing with her parent.
    I really could feel the suppressors working. They keep your internal chrono field from freaking out when you hit the button, but they also make you really relaxed as they disengage all your sense of time. Your body is fooled into thinking it’s tired and has gotten plenty of sleep at the same time. A little messy, but time travel was impossible without it, your body just acted like an anchor and you couldn’t go anywhere.
    I dialed in the 3500’s, a good practice century. I grabbed the handle bars and looked back over my shoulder at mom one last time just to get that nod of approval. She did and I turned back around. I gently pushed forward on the bar and we popped out of time.