Ephemeron, Page 2

basement of the bar she worked for put her out of work. No one thought it strange when she moved on, after that: there was nothing left for her in that town, nothing but soot and sparks and memories. She danced barefoot down the train tracks, free as wildfire, turning muggers away with her burning stare.

  No one heard from Sarah again, nor knew where she had gone; but those who had heard of her said that they could trace the path she took by the buildings she burned as she passed them by.

  Complacency

  He had been alive for seventy years by now, and he thought that he knew himself. He had had plenty of time to explore his mind, to grow accustomed to his little quirks. He could no longer surprise himself with anything he did.

  He thought the murder spree would help; but even that tasted shallow.

  Why Not to Nap

  Challenge #3: build your own challenge!

  (In my case: write a 999-word urban fantasy story featuring a candle, a bored traffic cop, and the discovery of a corpse.)

  Jim was as good as falling asleep when it happened. The cars that sped by weren't, in fact, speeding by: they were following the speed limit exactly, without exception. For the first twenty minutes of it he hadn't been able to believe his eyes. By now, four hours later, he was bored out of his mind.

  “Fifty...” he muttered to himself as he watched them pass. “Fifty... fifty... fifty...”

  He knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that it was the duty of the police to uphold the law; that a law-abiding citizen was a good citizen; that traffic regulations had been put in place for a reason; that, in short, he should be glad of this unprecedented streak of perfectly legal driving; but he couldn't stop himself wishing idly for someone to just give up and speed already.

  “Fifty... fifty... fifty... fifty... forty-nine! Fifty...”

  It was no use. They weren't speeding.

  Jim sighed and stopped watching the numbers. He was seriously considering a nap – obviously his mere presence was sufficient to keep the streets safe – when he saw a dead body sticking out of the open trunk of a passing Porsche.

  It was badly mangled, clearly dead, tied in place with bungee cords, and easy to see, because the driver of the Porsche wasn't speeding.

  Jim hesitated for a moment, torn. On the one hand, this wasn't his jurisdiction: he wasn't supposed to pull anyone over unless they were going faster than fifty or had a taillight out. On the other, it was a dead body.

  He switched on his sirens and lights and swerved into traffic, reminding himself that this was the most interesting thing he had seen all day. Anything would be worth it.

  The Porsche rolled to an easy stop: clearly its occupants were determined to do nothing illegal. Jim parked behind them and walked around to the window, resisting an urge to demolish a taillight and furnish himself with an excuse. A dead body was what had brought him here, and a dead body was what he would investigate.

  The windows were tinted black, but the driver's rolled down, revealing a young man who was clearly a vampire.

  “Young man,” said Jim, puffing himself up in his best copper fashion, “do you have any idea how fast you were going back there?”

  “I was going fifty,” said the vampire.

  “Ah,” said Jim. “Yes. Have you taken a look at your taillights recently?”

  “I just got out of the workshop,” said the vampire. “Everything's been inspected. They're working perfectly.”

  “Headlights?” Jim tried. He was grasping at straws now.

  “Like I said – everything's been inspected.”

  “Er... right, then.”

  The vampire revved his engine and smiled a perfectly-legal smile that utterly failed to display his fangs. “May I go now?”

  “Er... there seems to be a dead body sticking out of your trunk. Would you happen to, er, know what happened to it?”

  The vampire sighed, rolled his eyes – he was wearing sunglasses, like vampires generally did, but Jim could feel the eye-roll – and smiled just as legally as before, but quite a bit less politely. “It's a very tragic story,” he said.

  “Please –” Jim cursed internally. A policeman does not beg. A policeman exudes an aura of confidence and authority. But it was too late for that. “I've got time. Tell me about it.”

  “Well. He was my best friend. We were very, very close.” Again, Jim couldn't see the vampire's wink, but he could feel it. “But, ah – he was into some weird things.”

  “Like necrophilia?” Jim managed not to say. Instead he said: “Like what?”

  “Like necrophilia.” The vampire smirked. There was a titter from somewhere in the back of the car, behind the black windows; Jim suddenly remembered why his jurisdiction was traffic enforcement, and also why he hated vampires.

  “I meant: how did he die?” he said stiffly, trying to regain his aura of confidence and authority.

  “Well, you know. He – my friend – he had a thing for the occult. Big black candles everywhere.” The vampire smirked again. “The bigger the better, he always said –”

  “Without the innuendo, please.”

  “Of course, Officer.” The vampire's voice dripped with perfectly-legal politeness. “My friend was trying to, er, raise the dead –” – Jim could feel the vampire resisting a wink, which was almost worse than his actually winking, despite the sunglasses – “– with, er, a ritual. Which involved a lot of candles. And he ended up, er, burned. Er, quite badly burned, actually. Burned the life right out of him.”

  “He didn't look burned,” said Jim. “He looked like he'd been mauled by a mob of –” He stopped himself before he could be accused of racism, but of course the vampires knew what he was going to say, and of course the driver looked suitably offended. Jim congratulated himself on offending him without going against policy. He hated vampires.

  “No sense letting all that blood go to waste,” said the vampire with an icy, barely-legal smile.

  Jim clamped down on his reaction. “So how'd he get in the trunk?”

  “We put him there.”

  “Why'd you put him there?” He hated vampires, he really did.

  “We weren't just going to leave him lying around, were we?” There was another titter from the back of the car. Jim ground his teeth. He was beginning to seriously regret pulling the Porsche over.

  “Where were you taking him?”

  “Old Man's Hollow – you know, the place with the occult significance? One of his favorites. We're going to bring him back. All perfectly legal.”

  “He won't have any blood?”

  “He'll regrow it. No problem.”

  “Hang on – bringing someone back like that, isn't there a time limit?”

  “Sure. We need to be there in, oh, about five minutes?” The vampire's smile was now definitely flirting with illegality. “Better not hold us up too much, eh?”

  “Old Man's Hollow – that's half an hour away.” Jim grinned triumphantly: at last this interrogation was paying off. “You're about to start speeding.”

  Fire Burns

  Ever since I was a child I loved the sight of fire. Candles and torches, bonfires and glowing coals: it was all the same to me, all beautiful. For hours I could sit still and silent, watching a lantern, and be no trouble to my mother – until I thought I'd play with the shining flame, and reached for it.

  She slapped my hand away. “Fire burns.”

  I knew the warmth of fire, and I had seen men burned before. The townspeople, sometimes. My father, even, once or twice. Never my mother. But I knew what it meant to be burned, and I could feel that flames were hot, and I was never again tempted to touch one.

  So I never felt the kiss of the fire, much as I loved it. Fire burns.

  I took fever, once, when I was young; and I lay bundled in blankets, never knowing what was real and what I dreamt. My mother sat beside me, and to calm me in my fevered fear she splayed strings of fire between her fingers: flame-shapes, foxes and badgers, bears and boars, all burning brightly in her palm – I
reached for them and they went out. “Fire burns,” she said. “Never touch it.” And I slept and woke and slept and woke, and blackness and dreams turned to clarity, and I never knew what had been real.

  She died before my beard began to grow. We burned her body: flames curled and wrapped around her, bright and beautiful, and took her away.

  Fire burns.

  I love the fire still. It has never burned me. They tell me it might heed me, if my fevered dream was true: they tell me there is fire in my blood, perhaps, and I am safe from all its burning.

  Still I dare not touch it. Fire burns.

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  Challenge #4: write a story featuring the following: something ordinary, with which people interact daily; exclusively characters originating in legends or mythology; a central conflict which is modern in nature; and something shameful, with which most people deal, but which people don't like to talk about.

  Lady of the Æsir said:

  hey

  yo

  hel

  you there

  WolfSister said:

  what up frigg

  Lady of the Æsir said:

  uh not much

  just um

  can I have my son back pls

  you know

  baldr

  everyone loves him and misses him