One for one

One query to an agent, one rejection. Within 24 hours too because communication technology is as fast as they keep telling us it is.

This isn't my brave face, by the way, I'm just not tore up over this one. Ask me again at number 25.

I sent to this agent because the agency was based in California. Faced with dozens of agencies I had to narrow it down somehow or the surfeit of choices would make me lock up. So, going regional was the answer and I found two agencies that were in the golden state and accepting fantasy submissions.

And of the two the one I sent to was the worse fit but had an easy submissions-by-e-mail-only policy that offered the fewest chances for me to find some excuse to not send something.

So after poring over the profiles of the Bay Area agency's people I e-mailed the agent whose bio said she was looking for urban fantasy because she was the only one who didn't strictly forbid people from sending her genre fiction.

She works out of New York.

Sentence 11

This one is from Suzi. The sentence is right up at the front "She wore "the Gear" for the first time, she'd visualized wearing it before but now she felt like an imposter." and those words fought really hard to be dirty, but I beat off the impulse...

Anyway. After reading the resultant story to NoNo she said it reminded her of a sci-fi tale she'd read about a lady in a golden cage that essentially had the same properties as the Gear. Damnit.

The story she described was tragic, mine is pretty much just a mild slice of life. I can't even point out the conflict, really, so it's more like a string of ideas listed out. Fun stuff.

I'd like to thank the internet for keeping an eye on my knowledge of Shakespeare scripts until I needed it.

-Mars

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Fifteen minutes until air. Anna knew she looked "wrapped and ready," as Master Red called it, but she didn't feel right. She wore "the Gear" for the first time, she'd visualized wearing it before but now she felt like an imposter. It was clear to her that the years of training, the constant study and hundreds of student performances were just a sham. She felt like her graduation was a mistake, the Masters gripped by a four year epidemic of mis-marking her transcripts, keeping her in the program undeservedly. And now it would all come to light. As soon as the screens lit up around the nation and she took her first cue everyone would know Anna was a fraud. Laughed at in private, pitied in public, and castigated by every critic who could tap a key pad. Pilloried and humiliated she would live long with her shame, a footnote on how not to do it, an object lesson for every Academy intake class from this point on, for ever and ever…

Anna hung her head, slumped in her chair, letting the whir of the Gear become a wail of despair echoing in her head as she sank into a private blackness of utter failure predestined.

Three breaths. Hold the last one. Count ten.

Letting the air out loudly, buzzing the exhalation around loose lips, Anna sprang up to her feet and started bouncing, shaking her hands and arms wildly. Kevin, leaning over the script in a chair next to hers started at the sudden movement, his arms coming up to protect against Anna's flailing limbs.

"Hey, hey! Damnit!" He rolled the script and whacked her a few times. The paper bludgeon plonking harmlessly off the cables and right elbow cuff of her Gear.

Anna laughed and faked a kick at his knee, causing him to flinch again, the servos on his rig clicking and hissing, which made her laugh harder.

"Oh I see, that's how it is," Kevin grinned and stabbed with his script, tagging her ab plates. "Touch!"

She slapped at his weapon but he disengaged and tapped her again. "Double touch!" He yelled, "you owe me a beer."

"Ok, ok," she held up her hands, the black gloves spidered with thin guys and rods between and surrounding the digits, held them palms out while Kevin relaxed back into his chair, unrolling the pages. When he looked at the lines again - which Anna knew he'd already memorized - she struck, hammering his left bicep with a pair of quick jabs. His Gear absorbed most of the attack, but she had raised her middle knuckle to sneak in a painful poke between the arm cables.

"Hey, ow!" he grabbed his arm, dropping the script.

"Two for flinching."

Kevin rolled his eyes but nodded, unable to argue against hallowed tradition. Anna flopped back into her chair, slouching as much as she could with the Gear cables and sensor cuffs surrounding her. The two of them were alone in the green room, waiting for the earphoned-stage manager to stick her head in and frantically wave them out. It was a known fact that any SM was either vibrating with anxiety so fast they would soon break the light barrier and disappear from this plane or were frustratingly mellow in the face of the chaos that always threatened any theatrical performance.

Anna liked the anxious ones better. Their neurotic energy always made her feel calm by comparison. A stage manager with no evident worries tended to make her feel like she had forgotten something.

Still rubbing his wound, Kevin turned toward her. "In the zone?"

She nodded, "Yup, cleared it away with some self-loathing visualization. The world hates me and I never should have graduated."

"I kept saying that, but did they listen?"

Anna let the Gear servos whine pointedly as she raised a specific finger slowly, not looking at her co-star.

"Meh. That's more impressive in the training rigs." Kevin held his arms out, flexing his hands and twiddling his fingers in complicated patterns. "Man…I knew there'd be a difference but this stuff is awesome."

"The training is rigorous so the practice will be effortless." Anna recited, impersonating Master Red's stentorian delivery. She shoved herself out of the slouch and twisted to face Kevin, "Which is such bullshit, they're just too cheap to upgrade the rigs."

"Oh, I dunno," Kevin stood, talking as he went through a quick kata, legs kicking, arms blocking and punching the air in the ritualized movements, "I think there's something to that. This is so much easier to move in."

"I guess."

Anna watched him complete the form and then did her own. It was clear from the first move that he was right. The Gear was less restricting than the Academy's training rigs, more elegant. The cables were thinner, more supple, moving fluidly with her muscles. The sensor cuffs were nearly flat, almost as flexible as cloth, unlike the bulky metal bands she'd been tortured with since she'd opted (and been judged worthy) for performing arts.

It'd been…what? Ten years since she'd auditioned? Her hands did a series of edge strikes as she reflected on that day. Fresh out of elementary and the administrators had them trotted out in front of one panel after another. Timed math, dramatic reading, obstacle course, animal handling, service agility, sentence parsing imaginary languages, crisis response, tool use, etc., etc.

Officially it was called Future Occupation Assessment and Assignment. Everyone who'd ever gone through it, which by law was in fact everyone, knew it as the Thresher. Three weeks of tests Anna didn't even understand and then half a year before she got her choices.

Military (Operations), Performing Arts (Stage Performance), Military (Piloting), Sports (Team), Restaurant Service (Server), Judicial (Court Actions), or Retail (Corporate Sales).

Like a large percentage of girls at that age Anna had been hoping for Animal Handling (Horse) but even she realized that crying and running to the edge of the stall when confronted with a full grown equine during the Thresher wasn't going to convince anyone she should be around them for the rest of her life.

Her mother - Education (Primary) - was ecstatic that Anna had qualified for Judical (all their friends and neighbors had known about it within a week of the results) but the idea of law didn't appeal to the frenetic child. Too many desks and boring clothes. Her father - Residential Maintenance (Plumbing) plus a respected and rare double specialization in Residential Maintenance (Electrical) - was tickled by the idea of Sports for his daughter and joked with her about being a heavy tackle for his beloved Steelers.

"They'll call you Buck Twenty, the little tackler with the big numbers." He'd tease and Anna would rush him, giggling, crashing into his legs. He'd always go down with an exaggerated "woof!", wrapping her up so they fell in a pile. "Sack! The quarter back goes down!" he'd cry in the announcer-voice.

"Sack! Sack! Sack!" Anna would chant, bouncing on his stomach.

In the green room, Anna sped up her movements, feeling the Gear respond smoothly. There was no hitch or grind as she varied the speed or stopped suddenly. Kevin cocked an eyebrow at her, palms up in front of him.

"See? Top quality. Not bad for a 'Cavalcade of Culture' gig."

She did a pirouette, shuffle stepped and leapt into a four foot high prat-fall that rattled her head cage, then flipped back to standing with an arcing flex of her back and legs.

"I don't think that's in the script…" Kevin said mildly, pretending to search for the stage directions amongst the pages.

In the end it was Anna's guidance counselor who pointed out how rare the Performing Arts (Stage Performance) classification really was.

He showed the family a bar graph, indicating a row of tiny stacks at one end. "That there is your highest research section, all the Research and Development categories and Theoretical science positions. Those are rare for the simple fact that not many brains can handle them. Percentages are low and we have to retest the candidates after four years of intensives. And here," he tapped a bar a bit further to the left. The section it was in had a half dozen stacks with career labels on them, each one only slightly taller than the R&Ds. "That is the Performing Arts (Stage Performance) slot. Few qualify. With pup-tech we just don't need that many actors and actresses to fill all the roles."

"So what you're saying," Anna's father said, canted to one side in his chair and pointing two fingers at the counselor so that his daughter thought he was about to lunge and stab the man with his hand, "is that it's rare because we don't need a lot of them, not because it's hard? My daughter's not a RoC." He brought the fingers straight down on the desk with a thud. It was a gesture of finality that Anna was familiar with.

Anna blanched at her father's use of the Robotics (Custodian) acronym in front of her. Despite the school's best efforts to give dignity to the idea (someone would be suited for and assigned to the task) it was clear that sitting in a manufacturing plant watching mechanized assembly lines for malfunction was not a desirable job. RoC, RoC head, RoC and RoLL - Robotics (Line Lookout) - were dire playground insults. And, though Anna was too young to know it at the time, cause for more than one barroom fight.

The guidance counselor gave a quick glance at the young girl and a disapproving glare at her father, obviously unimpressed by his fingers on his desk. Which made Anna pay close attention. "Sir, some are very much suited to Robotics (Custodian) and the work they do is vital," he glanced down at his hands, clasped in front of him on top of the bar graph he had recently held up for their inspection, the heat leaving his voice, "even if it is not always the most fulfilling." When Anna was at the Academy she had learned of the suicide rates, controversy over the Thresher's ability to accurately place everyone, and wondered how many times the counselor had to inform a student they were a RoC.

The man looked up again, spreading his hands, palm out, toward the family. "That said, no, your daughter is most certainly meant for a different form of employment. My point is that with the pup-tech applications in entertainment a handful of people can take on a greater breadth of roles than previously possible. And so," he tapped the graph on his desk, "fewer are needed."

Spinning his chair around he pulled open a drawer in the bank of filing cabinets behind him. As he spoke his fingers danced along folders, "But each PA (SP) must therefore have the ability to play that greater breadth of roles. An ability beyond what even the greatest performers of the past must have had. From leading lady to extra, Ophelia to handmaiden. Sometimes all in the…ah, here we go," he pulled out a pamphlet and brandished it aloft before sliding the drawer closed and spinning back to face Anna and her parents. "Sometimes all in the same day, the same performance even."

He placed the glossy paper rectangle on the desk in front of them, it's narrow cover showing the twin masks below an illuminated script that Anna could barely make out for all the curves and curls. Squinting and tilting her head she finally made out two words: The Academy.

"What's the count?" Kevin asked.

Sighing, Anna looked at the enormous digital clock above the door. It had two displays showing both the time past in the performance (in bright green numbers) and the time remaining (red). It was common knowledge that Kevin never looked at the count. A superstition he held for no other reason than to have one. He had confided to Anna in second year, one alcohol and Molliere fueled bull-session, that he affected the performance ritual because it seemed expected of an actor.

"Twenty four ten pass, one thirty seven fifty rem."

"Thirty seven? I bet Dashiell's pregnant pauses are about to have twins."

"He was…what? Three intakes ahead of us?"

Kevin nodded, "Yeah, Master Hammet's house. You remember him, right?" He hooked his thumbs under imaginary lapels, willing his face to droop so far that the Gear's head cage rods had to extend full length to keep contact with his jowls. Anna wondered again at her friend's rubber-faced mimicry. His transformations were so complete he could probably play a mob scene with a single body.

His voice took on the airy quality of Hammet's accented tones, "Words can be…poor substitutes…for…silence!" Kevin punctuated each pause with Hammet's trademarked look of artistic intensity. Anna applauded.

"Fabulous, fabulous! I could hear your torment in every moment of dead air." Her grin widened, the cage rods following the movements of her features.

The stage manager poked her head into the green room. Strands of hair had escaped a once severe ponytail and floated at all angles from beneath her headphones. The ubiquitous clipboard - creased and haphazardly folded pages attached to it front and back by the metal clip and several rubber bands - was consulted with a glance far too fast to actually impart information and she waved furiously at the two performers to follow her.

"Five minutes, let's go!"

In comparison, Anna felt herself sink into a deeper state of calm in the woman's presence. She ambled along behind Kevin the short distance to the wings of the relay stage. They stepped onto their blocks and a swarm of technicians descended.

Prop guys - Performing Arts (Property) - handed each of them a rapier and made sure they knew which way to point them, scabbard loops were magnetically attached to their waist cuffs, Kevin getting a main gauche for his off hand. A steel-haired woman from FX - Performing Arts (Effects) - clambered around, attaching squib sensors to Kevin's midsection. The swarm parted after mere seconds of frenetic activity, giving way to the man and woman who strode purposely toward the actors. These new arrivals sported bandoliers and tool belts bristling with small instruments, handles sprayed across their jumpsuits like cactus spines. The tools were badges, denotation of nobility amongst the techs and markers of respect amongst actors. If a performer perpetrated an arrogance against one of this class things tended to go wrong.

Gear techs - Performing Arts (Technical, Relay Gear) - supervisors of the final pup-tech check. Almost in unison they had Anna and Kevin jog in place, windmill each arm slowly, drum their fingers, and run through HASS (happy, angry, sad, surprised). All the while alternating their bug-eyed view between the Gear wrapped performers and a screen at their hip.

"Eh, loose rod," Anna's tech murmured and had her bend over so he could reach into her head cage. He used a thin applicator to reapply adhesive to her upper lip (she clenched her jaw to keep from squinching her nose at the cold sensation). Anna stared at him as he held the rod in place while the glue set. He had a deft touch, the pressure enough for a solid seal but not jabbing her like some ham handed two-back intake slug. His face, smooth and long with deep set eyes behind digital loupe cylinders, was familiar but it took a moment to place it.

"Are you Gerard Yousef?" she struggled not to move her upper lip while asking. It helped that she'd taken a semester of Historical Techniques: Schtick and Burlesque as an elective.

The tech looked up at her, surprised. His pupils were unsettling, enormous black amoebas in the loupes before he flipped them up with a shake of his head. "Yeah. Academy Technical eight intakes ago. Have we met? Were you in my class?"

"Nope, I just got out. But the techs still touch your picture in the wings of main-stage before a show."

Gerard looked away, color rising in his cheeks that Anna judged was embarrassment. "Yeah, well…I wouldn't know about that."

Liar, Anna thought with a mental smile. Aloud she said, "You think that glue's dry yet? I'm on in a few."

The flustered tech took his hand away from her face, eyes unable to meet hers. Careful not to jar the cage even in his discomfiture. "Yeah, um…yeah."

Anna poked at his nose, stopping short but causing him to jerk his head back. Keeping her finger extended she said quietly, "Hey Gerard…" He looked up at her lopsided grin. "Two for flinching." Her fist tapped him on the arm twice.

"I should of put the glue just a bit lower, skeez," he said with a relaxed smile. "Throw a rod, snap a cable." Gerard made the good luck phrase sound like a ritual intonation instead of a throw-away pleasantry. Anna nodded her thanks and stepped from the block to stand beside Kevin.

"We beat them," Anna whispered as a trio of Geared forms appeared in the opposite wings.

"Indra always lags, it's her thing. Especially when she does Romeo." The two of them waved and mouthed obscenities to their co-stars in the opposite wings.

"Get fucked," Kevin breathed, putting appropriate gestures to the almost silent words.

Anna pointed to them and then to her crotch, getting a kiss face and butt shake in return from Indra and a deuce-deuce from Gilbert. Peter wove a complicated sentence in sign language that besmirched several generations of their families and attendant domesticated animals. The five of them grinned wildly, suppressing laughter before forcing the joviality away.

The announcer stepped onto the live stage, visible through the cloudy screen of the relay stage's fourth wall. Anna could just see his back as he addressed the audience. She imagined the scenery holo the bums-on-seaters could see from their point of view. A piazza, narrow buildings crowded around the perimeter. Summer sun beating down with intensity through a blue and cloudless sky.

Bowing, the announcer ran up into his intro, the words piped back to the relay stage. "The cavalcade continues! A scene from times past…"

Anna stopped listening, she'd heard it all in rehearsal, didn't need the details just the cue and knew that she'd pick it up even without paying attention.

Kevin nudged her and tilted his chin to the live stage wings. They were just a few steps away but separated by the fourth wall, perfectly clear in the wings. Costumers were fiddling with the outfits one last time, fluffing a ruff, jaunting the angle of a cap. They fluttered away just as the SM pointed at the actors, making sure to catch their gaze before pointing to Gerard and his cohort.

"Link 'em," she said quietly and the techs tapped a quick sequence on the hip screens. The actors watched as the puppets slowly spun up. The brightly costumed figures tensed, came out of their slouches, the muscles answering the Gear signals as they moved into synchro with Kevin and Anna.

Kevin tapped a rhythm sequence at the neck cuff of the cage, switching the head signals to mirror. The upstage puppet's face turned toward them, the olive skin showing faint wrinkles against long features. The Roman nose was a hawkish beak that dominated the features. From the audience it would look distinctive, from up close it looked cartoonish.

"You're ugly," Anna whispered to Kevin. He smirked, the expression mirrored along the lines of his puppet's mouth. He reached up and tapped out of mirror, the simulacrum's hand moving to it's own neck, and the Italian noble's face turned back upstage.

Anna ran the same sequence and saw a darker, younger face staring back at hers. Kevin snorted at the huge forehead the puppet sported. It gave a complicated impression of dumb, innocent, and loyal that, Anna had to admit, was perfect for the part. Even if it did inspire her cohort to make severe-overbite, monogloid faces at her, aped perfectly by the magnificently nosed puppet linked to his Gear.

"…And so the scene is set…" the announcer exclaimed. Just a few more seconds until their cue.

"They grew that one especially for you," Kevin jibed, "it's a startling likeness."

"I hope you get stabbed in the gut and die slowly while spouting overwrought oaths and curses." Anna replied.

"You peeked!" he said with mock-horror.

"…To fair Verona, and a day that seals the fate of two families."

That was their cue. Kevin stepped first, striding with an upright swagger, hand on the hilt of his rapier as he made for the mock fountain in the center of the relay stage.

The tall, wiry puppet made the same motions, leaned over the fountain on the live stage, bubbling water splashing over the ringed fingers he extended under the lowest fall in perfect time with Kevin's actions.

Anna came after, steps less sure, lethargic and slow. She dropped to her knees next to Kevin and dunked her caged head into the dry well of the ersatz fountain.

Her puppet, sweating and red-faced, did the same. He came up soaked, hair flinging droplets as far as the second row as his large head shook away the cool water.

"Bwwwaaaah!" Anna gasped as though coming up for air, the cage mics altering her voice into that of a baritone male. "I pray thee, good Mercutio, let's retire…"

It satisfied Anna to have the first and last lines. Indra was the lead of the play, but not the scene. Peter got to spill the "king of cats'" rage and hatred over the stage in crashing waves. Gilbert was a nameless flunky but he had a lead in a song and dance later in the program.

Kevin had the meat of the matter, dancing up and down emotional ladders and dying fabulously. His puppet's blood and simple organs spread in gory brushstrokes across the live stage's plastic cobbles.

She'd have liked to do either death, to be sure. Peter underplayed his, clicking off the relays almost as soon as Indra's collapsible rapier withdrew. Leaving his puppet to dead-weight fall and leak silently and motionless.

But for all that Anna was content to have the last words. She grabbed Indra - who did a very good standing amazed - and pushed once, shouting her penultimate lines.

Indra dropped her rapier and the metal hilt got caught in the field of the magnetic scabbard loop. The telescoping blade flipped wildly and crashed to the floor seconds after her puppet's bloodied weapon clanked to the cobbles.

The two women stared at each other for a long moment, the bubbling giggles visible in their eyes. Peter and Kevin, relays inactive but still in place (propped on their elbows) for blocking, pulled faces and waved their hands to try and break Anna and Indra's concentration.

There was a lengthy dramatic pause before the Romeo puppet's lips, perhaps curled in a slight smile but his face otherwise despairing, cried out, "O, I am fortune's fool!"

Recovered, Anna stepped forward, spun Indra around and pushed her staggering into the wings, calling out, "Why dost thou stay?!" before turning back to the bodies littering the Verona piazza. Pools of blood surrounded Tybolt on the live stage, the fountain was smeared with red where Mercutio had cursed houses a final time before sliding into darkness.

"Shit," Anna thought to herself, feeling the weight of the situation close around her and inform the expression that the cage rods picked up with their subtle sensors, "the prince is going to be pissed."

Responding to her corresponding gesture, Benvolio's hand rubbed at the sickly worry and frustration etched across his broad forehead as the lights went down and then out.

Sentence 10

Another entry into the Sentence Project. This one is suggested by dakini_grl. As always I welcome your comments and hope you have new sentences if you'd like to submit one. I'm going slow but hope to get more of these things done in the new year.

Dakini's sentence is bolded in the story.

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Sedra McMahill often had a hard time explaining her job to people. Not that her career was difficult to understand, she just rarely wanted to get into it with folks she hardly knew. And most of her time was spent with folks she hardly knew. Airplanes, insurance company satellite offices, car rental companies, distressed families, and stressed fire department personnel made up the majority of her haunts and contacts. Though the last two groups usually knew exactly why she came around and were guardedly polite, either scared of her decision or resenting her presence.

With the other people whose company she found herself thrust into the "What do you do?" question arose within seconds. A basic, neutral conversation starter for those who enjoyed conversation. Sedra didn't.

She suspected her reticence to gab was a function of her paternal Scottish blood. The McMahill's tended toward the taciturn Scot tradition, despite the influence of her Irish grandmother's more garrulous Fallon blood.

Any gathering with both sides of her family present was always awkward at first, but when enough whiskey was introduced the islanders and the northerners ended up singing together around a battered piano. Sedra often wondered if the need for a rickety upright was another genetic trait of her bloodline. She'd never been to a house within the extended family network that didn't have one along with at least two people - herself one of them - who knew how to bang out ballads without spilling the tumblers that inevitably festooned the top of the Wurlitzer like an inverted chandelier.

Single malt, novelty drinking glasses, or sheet music. Sedra hadn't had to think about what gifts to get her family since puberty.

The gatherings, and her whiskey consumption, were few and far between, so when asked what her job was by others she usually fell back on fireman, despite the gender implications of the title, and worked it into a conversational dead end that would allow her to get back to the in-flight magazine's crossword puzzle.

It wasn't a lie, exactly, just creative use of tense. Sedra had spent years in a station, heeding calls and saving lives. It was her nose that had shifted her career. A house that didn't smell right after a devastating fire. She mentioned the sharp scent to her chief and the investigator was called in.

When they found the evidence of arson Sedra was booted into investigative training. Though she imagined that getting her out of the station house and replacing her with a man may have been a factor.

Still, investigation was interesting work and she found it was a relief to enter buildings after they had burned for a change.

Blind chance put Evervigil in her path, just one of those things that came together - meeting a rep at a burn site, a couple of cases she testified about for their side - and she was offered an job with the national insurance firm. Second-guessing the municipal investigators when they didn't find indications of the uninsurable act of arson, basically. Turning on her own, is what her supervisor called it, but his heart wasn't in the scolding, knowing he would have snatched up a similar pay increase if they'd offered.

Today she was in Kentucky. Away from home at the distance of two failed airplane conversations, a frustratingly unfinished crossword puzzle, and too many hours in a crappy rental car trying to find this backwoods address.

A red and white truck was waiting for her at the site. If not for the vehicle, the man kicking at the dirt by the edge of the scorched foundation looked like he could have been there by accident. No evidence of his official capacity adorned his figure, his body had obviously once been alarm-ready hard but now showed signs of a desk-job gut. The checkered hunter's cap, a fringe of graying hair sticking out the back, and quilted jacket looking comfortable and casual over jeans that had faded from use instead of fashion. He didn't turn around until Sedra had cut the engine and popped open her door, simultaneously tugging on the trunk release.

"Mornin'," he called to her, wrestling a thick hand from his pants to wave laconically as he approached, dirty work boots crunching along the fall leaves.

Sedra nodded at him, leaned in to pull the trunk lever and then shut her door. "You Hanson?" she asked, shaking his proffered hand once before turning toward the back of the car.

"Yup." He watched as she pulled out her waders and rubber boots from a duffle bag, a bouquet of airport tags flapping along the handle. She stepped into the waterproof overalls and strapped them on, the bib cinching against her breasts. Sedra adjusted them unselfconsciously before remembering her companion. She glanced up to see him nonchalantly, if deliberately, staring to the right.

The gesture pleased her, as did the fact that Hanson hadn't started yapping or bitching as soon as she showed up. With practiced motions Sedra yanked the boots on and reached for the duct tape in her duffle.

"I gotta assume you're McMahill, 'cause the fishing is lousy out here." Hanson said, looking back at her, leaning against the side of her rental car with a slight smile on his face. A nod to indicate her outfit.

Surprising herself, Sedra felt a slight flush of shame cross her cheeks over her brusque manner. It was an unfamiliar feeling. Pushing it from her mind she stuck her hand out again. "Sorry, yes. Sedra."

He shook it once, still smiling, "Mornin'," he repeated.

Watching her tape the top of the boots to the waders, Hanson's forehead creased for a moment before relaxing as he spoke again. "You're flying out tonight." It was more statement than question, confident he'd figured it out.

That was another surprise. Sedra's unconscious book-cover judgment of the man was rapidly reforming. "Yeah. I hate flying covered in soot and grease."

Hanson smiled again. "Just go ahead and assume I've said something funny about smoking sections on airplanes," he drawled, then turned to amble back to his truck.

When Sedra was strapped into her protective gear Hanson had unrolled a blueprint of the house on the hood. The awkwardly large papers showed a single story house with a quarter basement and attic.

The plans were old, the blue leeching away to white, the lines becoming indistinct. The paper crinkled like parchment under their fingers as they each held an edge flat. McMahill swiveled her gaze between the prints and the ruins. Blackened stakes, all that was left of walls, poked up in random directions from the charred rubble.

The front of the house was marked by a collapsed bulk of porch partially covering a thrust of steps leading from the foundation to the ground, making them impassable. Sedra carried the plans over to it, orienting them to her position. She did the same on each of the four sides, staring intently at each stop.

"So," she said to Hanson who had followed her along the circuit, "where did the fire start?"

The man's eyebrows went up, though that was the extent of the surprise on his face. It was a moment before he spoke. "Not to be rude but can't you tell?"

"Yes. But I want to know if you can." The words were impassive but she held his gaze and watched his face redden as she spoke.

"A test for the hillbilly inspector? See if the bumpkin can find his ass without a map?" His drawl almost unnoticeable in the flat tone.

Sedra smiled widely, "Almost. But my bias isn't regional, Hanson, it's occupational." The smile disappeared, "Most municipals just take the two week course and leave it at that. Their investigations involve twenty minutes poking at charcoal and blaming gasoline or electricals depending on if they want an arson charge or not."

Hanson stared for a moment and then nodded, prompting Sedra to add, smiling again, "If it were a bumpkin comment I would've called you Gomer."

The man laughed, a spontaneous burst of surprisingly lilting sounds that reformed his face along younger lines. "OK, sarge." He took the blueprints, rolling them as he approached the side of the foundation, and stepped up into what was left of the living room. Turning he offered a hand to McMahill, hoisting her easily. The clasp lasted a second longer than necessary. She wondered if he had lingered in the handhold or if it was her, the moment ending when he turned to regard what was left of the great room.

Sedra patted her hair once before scowling and forcing herself to abandon the gesture.

Taking a few careful steps Hanson approached the bowed and empty front-doorframe, stopping just past it. "This was a picture window. Big sheet of glass, sheer curtains and heavy drapes. I could see it everyday when I drove to work." He pointed down the road, indicating either where he lived or where he worked.

He put a toe on a pile of debris, "Table with a lamp, right in the middle of the window. Don't think I ever saw it turned off, night or day."

"Old lamp?" McMahill asked, pulling out a camera and aiming at the pile.

"Yup. Big ol' shade. Little crystal things dribbling around the edges. Kind that would end up on some fool's head at a party in a Playboy cartoon."

"When did that stop being funny? Say cheese." The camera clicked and whirred. Hanson arched an eyebrow just before the flash went off, the top of the inverted V disappearing beneath the bill of his hat.

"Round the time Kennedy got shot, I figure. So, ancient lamp means ancient cord, coiled up on itself right about here." He poked his toe at another spot. "Frayed cord, dusty drapes, wooden house, etc., etc."

He turned and spread his arms wide, taking in the destruction around them. "Ta-da." Letting his hands fall he regarded McMahill with a smile. "How's that, yankee?"

She wagged a finger at him, "You took more than a two week course, Pyle, admit it."

"Surprise, surprise, surprise," he drawled in a startlingly accurate Jim Nabors impression.

"I still have to send in the samples," She pulled out a bag and moved to the flash point. "No offense." Hanson stepped aside, watching as she scraped up several bits of house into bags of various sizes. They disappeared into her overalls after she had sealed and marked them.

Straightening, Sedra looked down the length of the foundation. "What's that?" she asked, pointing to the back of the house and a standing section partially hidden behind a collapsed wall.

Hanson followed her gesture with his eyes. "Ah, yes. The mystery door. C'mon." He picked his way along the floor, threading a path through the rubble. "Floor's ok along here, just keep in step."

They wound through ruins that Sedra identified through smell and small visual clues. An unmistakable reek of burned furniture stuffing and upholstery marking the couch's final resting place. The wreck of a bookshelf, fluttering black wings the only remains of the book covers. Cheap plastic panes of a china hutch melted around the delicate fragments of shattered dishes and cups across from a pile of burnt wood with colored puddles in the center.

Sedra waved at the drippings, "Fake fruit or plastic flowers?"

The man stopped and regarded the detritus. He pointed to a smoke stained piece of curved glass, camouflaged at the edge of the table's remains. "I'm guessing fruit in a bowl."

Hanson continued on, leading her into the kitchen at the back of the house. The destruction was less complete this far from the lamp in the window. The refrigerator was mostly intact, it's metal door warped from the heat. The sink cocked at a jaunty angle over the collapsed cabinet, a slick in front of evil looking liquid from the burst bottles of cleaning fluids underneath.

And there, by the fridge, stood a door. The paint scorched and bubbled but otherwise unmolested by fire. Three stout boards, browned by flame and temperature, crossed the frame. They were firmly secured with large gauge nails.

"It ain't the back door, must have gone down to the cellar," Hanson nodded his chin at the door and unrolled the faded and crackling floor plan. It wasn't so much the architect's familiar blue lines as a map; the basement door had been nailed shut for what looked like a century or more. The fire damage having aged the wood, giving it the look of an ancient portal.

Sedra ran her hands over the boards, scratching soot away from a nail head as big as her thumb. "Why's it sealed off?"

"Natural question. Whenever I find a free standing door in a house destroyed by fire, shut and nailed closed as though the demons of hell were going to burst through, I tend to ask myself the very same thing." He stepped past McMahill, indicating the area just behind the door. "Look at this."

She moved next to him, craning her neck to see around the thick doorjamb. Directly behind it two steps led down, ending in a jumble of rubble. The staircase was choked with wood, linoleum, and roofing.

"There's gaps and such you can peek in with a flashlight. 'Bout four feet down or so you'll see the water." He pointed and gestured with a twisting motion to indicate the water traveling through the tangle of blockage. "Had to go somewhere once it left the hoses and it brought just about all the loose garbage that could float. I figure most of the wall lathe is down there."

"What's the family say?" Sedra couldn't fight the disappointment in her voice. The sudden denial of an answer made getting one that much more desirable.

Hanson shrugged, taking his cap off and rubbing a hand through a surprisingly full head of hair. The tousled grey and abashed expression gave him a boyish appearance and McMahill reduced her estimate of his age.

"The poor woman who lived here got too much smoke in her. Only people she had was a niece who hadn't been around for 15 years. She hadn't any idea what the old lady wanted to keep down there."

He kicked a piece of something into the pile. "We got theories at the station but it's just B.S.ing. Everything from ape men to vampires. Probably ain't much more than old Christmas decorations and canned peaches." Hanson pursed his lips in though for a moment, "Maybe bags of that vile old-lady candy…"

Groaning at the thought of the hard candies she had been subjected to when visiting her great-grandmother, Sedra took several pictures, the door, the stairs, the boards before letting out an exasperated sigh. "Well, are they going to dig it up?"

"The mystery door got a hold of you, too." Hanson grinned at her. "Tends to do that to a body." He followed her off the edge of the foundation, leaping nimbly to the ground without taking his hands out of his pockets. "Ain't nobody gonna pay to get it dug up unless they want to rebuild. Don't know when that's going to happen. This isn't exactly a seller's market."

Sedra tossed her camera into the trunk and leaned over to pull tape off her boots. "So you got a theory?" She asked, looking up at Hanson who had resumed his spot leaning against the car.

"A few. Wild stuff." He resettled the hat on his head.

"Tell me over dinner?" She straightened to look at him as she asked.

Hanson's eyebrow went up again, "Don't you have to fly out tonight?"

Sedra shrugged, looking back into her trunk at the duffle and the large rolling bag. Tags festooned both handles from a dozen airports, some of their arcane initials doubled or tripled from multiple trips. She knew exactly what was in each bag. It was hard for her to remember what clothes were in the dresser drawers in her apartment. Looking back at Hanson she saw the smile on his face.

"Always another plane in the morning," she said.

Sentence 9

Here's another story based off of a provided sentence. This time it's one suggested by flonkbob and much thanks for both his sentence and the extensive medical research he did to lend authenticity to the story.
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The doctor had left half an hour ago. Hugh could tell that the man hadn't wanted to give a backward glance or any indication that he knew what was coming next. But his head had twitched at the doorway to the bedroom. His graying temple and sharp chin clearly visible in profile, left eye swiveled deep into the outer corner to catch a final look at Hugh sitting in the chair by his father's bed.

Hugh saw it but said nothing and knew that he wouldn't. Not ever. Doctor Mann was a good guy, didn't deserve to get into any trouble, he understood, he got it. But how could he not? Hugh's father had been under Mann's care from the start. Had been his friend since before that, even. Tennis, Hugh suspected, from what he knew about his father. It was almost a vice with his dad, according to Mann and other visitors that had come by in the past four months. Wasn't much else for him, Hugh thought, quickly regretting the uncharitable musing.

But a flash of anger replaced the regret a moment later. He scowled at the withered and still face of his father, lying in state (almost) on his twin bed, hands clasped over his chest, barely moving with each weak rise and fall of breath. What else was there for him, really?

This apartment, white and sterilized by a cleaning lady once a week. Art that spoke of money and taste but hung on spotless white walls that seemed to absorb the passion of the painted canvases. Country club friends paying homage to the stricken out of some patrician sense of duty, none of them, save Mann, visiting more than once. Duty done. A twin bed, white sheets and ivory duvet, fit for one alone. One who doesn't expect or possibly even desire company.

And a son. Twenty years gone and now back by that same sense of duty. Bound to the chair next to the narrow bed. No more paper knots to untangle for accountants and lawyers or phone calls to machine-run insurance companies to make. Nothing left to subsume and swaddle Hugh's mind from the quickly shrinking man in the bedroom. Not even any words left to speak, no more of the histories Hugh had never had a chance to hear before, the tales of a life lived in the years since he had left.

An apology had been in there somewhere. Sketched in negative space by the flow of words and stories his father had spoken before he couldn't anymore. Pauses and looks laced into their conversations of extended family, trips, or young life.

Hugh had clenched his jaw and waited during the significant pauses, stared blankly back at the sad eyes when they came. He wanted to hear it out loud but wouldn't ask. He never asked.

And now, silently, he regarded his dad a moment longer before shifting his gaze to what Doctor Mann had left. Each of the bottles on the end table looked just like they did on TV. Squat and clear, a short, narrow neck with a silver band around the top, a neatly printed label girdling its belly. A membrane at the top that the needle would pierce neatly without allowing any of the liquid out.

"Remember the dosage," Doctor Mann had said earlier. "More than that… could be dangerous." He expertly wound up his stethoscope and stuffed it into his coat pocket. Moments before he had used the iconic tool to confirm that Hugh's father was alive but no longer responsive.

It was just official notice of something they had both known for days. The deteriorating slide had been quick for the old man, as these things go.

Hugh looked up at Doctor Mann from the padded chair he had pulled up against the side of the bed weeks before. "I got it," he said with a nod. Mann held his eyes a second then nodded back. No more was said though there was that final little look as the doctor let himself out of the bedroom.

Hugh rubbed his face and reached for the bottles. With practiced ease he filled several syringes, one after the other. He'd been administering the pain-killer for the past three months. Mann had given him a lesson on a grapefruit, injecting water into it several times before overseeing the first shot. His father had joked that he'd always wanted a doctor in the family, barely registering the injection his son gave him.

Hugh looked at the syringes, each cylinder clean and straight with ruled hash marks up their lengths, numbers counting off the CCs at regular intervals. He picked one up, the pencil sized tube filled to the 10 etched in black next to a long horizontal mark.

"Six for good, 10 for bad, 12 for sleep," he muttered the sentence under his breath, his own mnemonic device for the dosages he'd had to administer. He looked again at his father's face. It was grey and old, older than Dr. Mann though they had lived the same amount of years. The skin of his forehead creased above the tightly closed eyes. As though he was concentrating on staying asleep.

Hugh twiddled the syringe between his thumb and forefinger, frowning. He'd seen how the shots had eased his dad's face, but Hugh hated going into this blind. He needed to know and made the decision quickly, acting on it immediately.

Pushing back his own sleeve he jabbed his inner elbow with the needle. The whisper thin steel bit dully, the small pain thudding as he pressed the plunger down to the "6" mark. Pulling the hypodermic away he folded his arm up, sealing off the tiny hole.

"Four for Hugh," he said with a laugh that spoke of fear and disbelief.

Wondering and waiting, the drug crept up on him sooner than he'd thought it would. Muzzy and calm, he realized that the effect of the morphine and the afterglow of orgasm were pretty much the same thing. And he couldn't see anything wrong with that.

"What a way to go," he said out loud without meaning to. Hugh replaced the syringe on the end table with a bit of difficulty, warmth replacing strength in his limbs. Leaning back, he flexed his fingers, savored the feeling and spoke out loud again. "I can do this," slightly surprised, muddy determination in the words.

Torpid and slow, he watched his father from the chair. It may have been the drug but he couldn't recall why they'd stopped talking. No single thing that he could point to and say, that was it, the straw that broke it all to pieces. All he could come up with was a deep and wide sense of anger, layered thickly over disappointment.

"You started it," he accused the lightly breathing man in the bed but there was no heat in it. Struggling to dig through memory, Hugh tried to recall the day he realized he had stopped speaking to his dad. It was raining and he had been left alone again. There was no one he had wanted to tell. Sitting in the dark, bare apartment walls where her stupid posters had been, ticking down names of friends who wouldn't care enough or would care too much for him to bear. And family…? The name at the bottom of the list jolting him as he tried to remember when they'd last spoken. The memory slipped away as Hugh nodded in his chair, head lolling then snapping up.

"Shit," he mumbled at the indistinct figure of his father, "I'm sorry." And Hugh, aided by the morphine and every moment of the past four months, fell asleep in his chair.

Sentence 8

Here is a story based around a sentence suggested by my lovely wife nonosays. It's complete, so no cliffhnager this time. I've bolded the sentence in the story. Plus I've added a little commentary at the end in the comments.

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It wasn't an unusual tree. For Los Angeles, anyway. A stubby palm, as palms go, the top of its crown just barely taller than the roof of the two story craftsman house that suffered the tree to live in its backyard. Perhaps it was necessary, being in L.A., to have the tree right there on the property. A symbol, proof that the house was at the foot of the Hollywood hills, even if it was only one street up from the flat ribbon of Franklin Ave. The road the house faced was only a gentle slope that presaged the steep and winding curves in the more affluent areas above. The squat palm a link to its soaring, slender cousins on the boulevards that everyone has heard of.

The tree had taken root on the west side, very close to the south west corner, and grown unhindered until the trunk almost completely blocked the side-by-side windows in the second smallest bedroom. The boy living in the room didn't mind. First he had known no other way, the tree having been there for as long as he could remember and, in fact, longer than he had been alive. Second he had figured out that the setting sun, it's sometimes blistering heat and blinding light, was dampened considerably by the plant. And finally, he had windows on the south side, giving him a view of Los Angeles unrivaled by any other in the house so the lack of a view of his own backyard was a small thing.

He hardly ever thought about the palm, truth be told. It was a fixture, like the doorframe. Even with his high bed under the west windows it was rare that he gave it more than a cursory glance. In his 13th year there was a sudden burst of intense interest in the trunk. But it lasted only until the lapped, saw-toothed edges of the trunk proved completely unsuitable for climbing to effect an undetected escape into the night to do whatever his parents would forbid him to do at 13. It was only four feet from his sill (he measured) but the edges, each one the truncated end of a branch that had fallen away as the tree grew, wouldn't allow for an unscathed descent. Instead he learned where the wooden stairs creaked and became adept at climbing them silently. The palm once again shuffled into the background of his mind as teenage exploits took precedence.

It was perhaps a year later that the palm tree spoke to him for the first time.

The weather was hot and the old craftsman had no air-conditioning. A feature he complained about, secretly certain that his parents refused to upgrade out of spite rather than finances. He understood quite clearly about heat rising, the climb up the stairs to the second floor the only object lesson in that phenomenon anyone would ever need, and threw open all his windows on these sultry summer nights in an attempt to flush out the interior air with the slightly cooler atmosphere of the greater L.A. basin. It never helped as much as he hoped, adding frustration to his physical discomfort, but doing something seemed better than stewing.

And on that night, the one he'd remember for the rest of his life, he was laying on his sheet, windows open and eyes closed. His lids were shut with conscious nonchalance as though the act of keeping them closed would be a baited trap to lure sleep through the thick air and into his body.

The voice was dry and rasped at the beginning, smoothing and cooling as it worked through the words that sounded above him.

"I need the rain, but I like it better when the air is hot. Though I sleep better when it's wet. Do you like the rain?"

Opening his eyes, the boy saw a girl's face looming over him. The image and surprise made his breath catch in his chest. Her skin was crossed in overlapping lines like deep, neat scars marking a herringbone pattern over her features. Her color reminded him of fancy mustard, the kind his father coveted and he hated, a dusty beige with flecks of brown like freckles. A weak chin rested in scaly hands, the knuckles like gauntlet joints, the backs scarred in the same pattern as her face. The girl's hair grayish green in the low light, each strand finger-thick and stiff. She lacked lashes and brows, giving her an innocent and open look despite the other alien attributes.

The boy tried to breath and he tried to yell, the opposing reflexes compromising on a gasping cough as he scrambled out from under her view and flipped up onto his knees, facing her.

She followed him with her eyes but made no other move. Her elbows rested on his windowsill, her body stretched out like a plank across the open air, toes tucked into a lapped edge of the palm tree. There was no strain on her face, no indication of the effort it took to hold herself so.

"Ah," he said at a conversational volume. It was supposed to be a scream but lungs and brain hadn't sorted themselves out from the initial shock. "Ah, ah, ahhhhhh," he continued.

The girl's eyes opened wider and her mouth turned down in a sympathetic pout.

"I see I've already worried you," she whispered, "but that wasn't my intention."

Her hands gripped the sill and she folded the rest of her body forward, bringing her feet under herself slowly and ending in a crouch on his window. It was a feral pose, a creature collected in on itself for a pounce, and it registered as such somewhere far back in his mind.

Closer to the front, however, he was 14. And, it could not be denied, she was naked.

The curves of her body were not pronounced but they were evident. The swell of hips and tapered waist. Rounded breasts and feminine legs. The angular scars, he noticed, covered her frame, the color of her skin unlike any he had seen on the very colorful streets of Los Angeles. Darker in between the lines, grading to a light gold the nearer it got to the scars. She moved with a lithe grace though he couldn't see any muscles under the skin, limbs smooth and straight. Her short hair fanning out from the center of her head like a hat brim, green, he realized now.

He felt a tug somewhere within himself, a pin being pulled and releasing a new feeling. His eyes widened and moistened, the breath in his lungs deepened, each draw seemed to fill him full of a tingling liquid that suffused his skin and sparked between his fingers.

It was a frozen moment. And in it he learned why his mother had books of paintings, why she dragged him to museums to look at images of haystacks and dead people. His father's obsession with restored houses and deco posters. With a clarity he wouldn't have been able to explain just then it became obvious why his parents always pointed out mountain views during long car rides that he'd rather have skipped. Why they would stop to look at the still quiet forms of trees that didn't do anything and, to his mind, didn't serve any purpose.

"I wanted to talk before you go." The girl said. She stared at him a moment then became interested in his pillow, a rough hand poking at it cautiously, then sinking into the soft material with a grin.

"Go?" he asked, unsure she had heard him over the sound of his heart.

She slapped the pillow once more and looked back at him. "Don't you have to go soon?" Her stiff lips parted to show jagged saw-blade teeth as she spoke.

"Go where?"

"Leaving the nest, right? Don't you do that?" She stood and stretched, arching her back to avoid the bottom of the window frame. Stepping onto the bed she left a dusty foot print on the sheet before stepping down to the floor of his room. Bending at the waist, almost folding in half, she touched the hardwood floor. Her fingers stroked the grain.

Suddenly worried he scrambled from the bed, standing by the door to his room as he gestured to the floor. "I…uh, I didn't do that." He stammered.

As though she hadn't heard, the girl straightened and stamped her foot on the boards. He could feel the surprisingly heavy thud travel up his legs.

"Oakish," she snapped with a frown, "hate 'em. Oh, I'm so old, so smooth and pretty with all my leaves." She stamped again and gave a dry and rustling snort. "Well now you're a floor, stupid twig."

He felt her anger melt as she glanced at his book shelves. Unsure how she'd feel about paper he grabbed through his brain for the question she had just asked.

"Leave the nest? Uh…you mean move out? I won't be leaving for a while. I've gotta finish school, maybe when I go to college…" he was babbling.

She regarded him again. "Soon though, you'll have to go."

"Well," he was still struck by her, watching her sway from foot to foot as she stood there, "well, not for five years. That's a long time."

It was odd to hear her laugh. "Five years?" she asked incredulously. She clapped her hands and hopped in amusement. "You don't talk to many trees, do you?"

He didn't figure that was worth answering.

"In five years," she continued, her tone softening, "…how do I put this?...I may remember something funny I wanted to tell you tonight. And in another fifty I might figure I should check and see if you're there to tell it to."

She reached out a hand and rested it on his arm. Her skin was cooler than his, rough and itchy. He could feel loose, fibrous strands like small threads where her fingers were worn from use. The touch was evidence that she was there, solidifying her presence.

He hadn't even begun to consciously question the encounter, the reality of it all. Then the contact made him realize that some part of him had been reeling, unsure and off-balance. He noticed it only for a moment, her fingers stroking down his arm soothing away the doubt.

"Do you see? You have to go soon."

Numbed and slightly embarrassed, he nodded.

She smiled at him, gave him a motherly pat and twirled once around. "I just wanted to say hello before you went. I hardly ever get to talk to anyone."

With that she bounded up onto his bed and launched out the window, her body stretched to it's full length as she leapt onto the palm. The smooth arms and legs wrapped around the trunk in a hug before she started to hike herself up.

The boy went quickly to the window, stumbling onto the bed, his face hitting the pillow before he leaned out to look up at her.

"Wait, wait!" he shouted, then looked behind himself quickly, as though his parents were going to burst through the door at the noise.

She stopped her ascent and looked down at him, saying nothing.

And he didn't know what to say. There was so much he wanted to ask.

Or was there? What was there to ask? He thought furiously for a few seconds, the girl staring with her wide eyes and a patient calm. No questions came that didn't sound dense. His mother had read him myths, he knew what the girl was. And beyond that, what was there?

One question, but it revealed something. And at 14 it was hard to ask. Haltingly, he spoke.

"Will you be watching me?" his lips pursed tight, fearing the need was too evident in his voice, that laughter or worse would follow.

The girl smiled, but without any meanness in her eyes. "Of course, stupid. I'm right here." She gestured to the four foot gap between the palm and his window. With grace and speed she turned back to the trunk and scurried up into the branches at the top, disappearing from his sight.

The boy stared for a moment longer, then pulled his head back in the window of his room.


"Oh, hey," her voice dragged him quickly back out, craning to see her face, hanging upside down from the fronds. "Don't get caught talking to a tree too often, ok? It didn't work out so well for the last one."

He laughed at that and with a final nod she drew back up into the foliage and out of sight.

Sentence 7

The starter sentence I used this time was: "When the bartender asked me which ship would possibly have let me aboard, I could only reply, 'What makes you think I can read?'" from one of tshuma's friends.

Which, to be honest, I found irritating at first because it just doesn't make a lot of sense. But in the end it was very satisfying to have worked it in (I bolded it in the story). So take a look if you like and suggest another starter sentence if you want.

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I paused outside the inn, adjusting my sword belt in an attempt to stop the edge from chafing my hip. As my fingers worried under and around the stiff leather I looked up at the sign. A cracking egg of considerable size was painted on the dark wood, the ovoid overlaying a blue anchor. The colors were mostly bright, though the edges looked dull and worn, as though the last touch-up artist had worked from the middle out and given up.

Confusingly, elaborate scripted words underneath the picture declared the inn to be the "Slap and Tickle" which had unsavory connotations of illicit coupling that made my unworldly heart race. But the icons above the lettering seemed correct and the captain had been insistent that I was to meet him at the inn on this street, a stone's throw from the wharf and even closer than that to the sights, sounds, and smells that accompanied it. No other inns were on the dirty street so I loosened the uncomfortable belt and pushed into the gloomy common room.

The first sight made me reconsider the wisdom of my recent actions and commitments. A score of men sat in various states of repose and drunkenness. Their countenances showed wear and weathering, carefully cultivated from years on English ships. Their clothes seemed part of them, a smooth fur molded to their bodies by sweat and salt water. Not completely filthy, mind you, but…connected to the wearers. Folds and creases that followed the line of their limbs perfectly through incessant use. I doubted any of them had been out of their trousers more than once a fortnight for as long as they had possessed them.

For a moment I froze, looking about (gawping, really). My neck tightened and a very strong urge to back out of the door clamped onto my legs. In that moment I was certain that the seamen in the inn would attack me, beat me, and toss me out onto the street for trespassing on their ground.

Luckily my mind took a firm hold and made me look around with clearer eyes. Aside from a casual glance when I first entered, no one was paying me any mind. Smoking pipes and dice and conversation had their attention.

With new confidence in my disguise, the sword belt and sailor's garb borrowed from the captain for the very purpose of walking the wharfs unmolested, I strode to a high, long table set to one side. It clearly served as a bar, the man behind it pulling ale from casks against the wall for those that wanted them.

I leaned a forearm against the table, aping a man who, by the look of his rheumy eyes, had been there for some time. The tender stared at me but made no move toward my position, idly rubbing a spot on his chest and worrying his teeth with his tongue.

Annoyed I rapped the table with my knuckles. "Hey there, my man, I would speak with you."

His eyebrows (a considerable portion of his low forehead) went up in what I can only describe as a mocking arch. Despite the look he stepped over to me.

"I'm meeting a ship's captain here to…ship aboard," that didn't sound quite right but I kept on, "draw me an ale while I wait, that's a good man."

Still itching at his shirt the publican seemed not to have heard me. "Good day, yer lordship," He leaned in, his face smiling not unkindly as he spoke, "are you certain a posh fella like you is in the right tavern? Did you read the sign closely?"

I had thought my disguise was adequate, but the man obviously wasn't fooled. So startled was I by his insight that when the bartender asked me which ship would possibly have let me aboard, I could only reply, "What makes you think I can read?"

His smile broadened and he leaned back, hooking both thumbs into a wide belt at his bulging waist. It was then that I noticed the pair of knives, both on his right, that hung at his side.

"I am glad you asked, your lordship. My craft goes unappreciated by most of these sots and sailors and it's a treat to share it with a man of learnin'." He seemed truly pleased, baffling me further.

"Yer sword is on wrong, right handed hilt, hanging at your right hand side. You had a look about you when you walked in that said 'Lord almighty, who are these murderers and which one of them is going to put it to me?' It's in the eyes, mostly, but the hands say the same thing." One thick finger jabbed at my face, though I say with some pride I did not flinch away. "And yer cheeks were red as you stepped acrost my threshold."

I was annoyed at this list, though more through my embarrassment at being found out so easily than from his effrontery. He wasn't talking sense and I feared I had walked into a den of drunkards run by an idiot. The thought that Captain Hawkins had sent me here for sport burned my cheeks an even deeper red. I silently vowed to do…something to him.

And there it was. My failure to come up with even the image of a suitable revenge was a crashing reminder of just how useless I was. Father had been right, no man in me. James' laughter echoed once again through my mind and I deflated.

"Here now," the bartender's voice was tinged with an unexpected concern, though he misinterpreted my slump, "no shame in being a reader, no matter what they may say." He turned to the casks and pulled a pint as he continued, "Do a fair bit meself. Missus don't drag me to the pews if'n I get a few pages of the Book in a week." The drink was set gently in front of me.

I looked at it a moment and felt I had made a friend. The barkeep's trade secret, I suppose, making a man feel welcome. Drink goes a long way in comforting a misery, surely. I drank.

"My cheeks were red?" I asked, considering the unexpectedly pleasant taste of his brew. He smiled again, clapping a hand on the bar.

"Aye, as apples. Dead giveaway that. No posh fella of your age would read 'Slap and Tickle' without looking flushed. Either aghast or excited, don't matter which, it'll get the blood to the face right quick."

"So…this is the Egg and Anchor?"

"Quite so!" He said with obvious pride, thumbs hooking back into his belt as he stood straighter. "That bit o' script is to keep the prudish knobs at bay. My clientele," he pronounced the word slowly, waving at the men stationed around the room, "is a certain type and don't like another certain type snoopin' around."

"Does that work?" It seemed a particularly feeble ploy.

He gave a sly look at the man leaning heavily against the bar next to me, his head nearly touching the table top. Then the tavern-master winked broadly at me as he spoke. "Spotted you didn't I?"

And with that I became much more comfortable. A clever man with a wide capacity for amusing himself I could understand. I was sure that the knives, though surely useful in his rough hands, would not be drawn against me if I minded my manners and didn't break too much of the furniture. And I might be excused a chair or two if the circumstances were entertaining.

I raised the mug to my companion and drank again, relaxing for the first time in what seemed like months. Setting it down after a draught I held my hand out.

"Fletcher, at your service."

He clasped my hand in both of his and shook it once, high and then down hard like he was working a pump handle. "Roberts, and a pleasure, your lordship."

"I'm not much of a lord, Roberts." I unbuckled my sword belt, shifting it to the proper side.

He tapped the side of his nose with a finger, "Right you are, Mr. Fletcher. In-cog-knit-o, aye?" A wink and a laugh at his joke. Or was he joking? I couldn't get a handle on whether he knew just what I was or not. Another barkeep secret, perhaps. Act as if you know all and soon enough you will.

"Now, about your captain. If he sent you here it's a good chance I've met the man."

"Definitely not a 'prudish knob' from what little I know of him." I got the sword straightened out and worked the leather belt snug again. "Captain Gregory Hawkins. D'you know him?"

Roberts' face went blank. The smile smoothed out into a line. His eyes, a moment before twinkling and amused, went flat and dead. Even his body seemed to go quiet and still. The bar keep stood that way for a long second. When he spoke it was a whisper.

"Know him? Aye. That I do, Fletcher."

Sentence 6

Just had a nice little chat with MS Word so here's the sixth sentence story. The suggested sentence is the first line of the piece

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"…And now I wonder--did I really fail, or in some obscure way did I actually succeed?"

I stared at her for a minute to see if she were serious. From the contemplative knit of her brow and the languid way she raised the beer to her pursed lips it became obvious that she meant it.


"No, you definitely failed." I said.

She continued staring out through the barred railing of the balcony, lowering the bottle and handing it to me without glancing over. Her head tilted to one side and her eyebrows went up in what I assumed was supposed to be a philosophically questioning way.

"Did I? Did I…really?"

I grabbed the bottle and tilted it only to find she had finished the last of the beer. I stuck my arm out, between the rail bars, and let the bottle drop. Three stories later it smashed into the concrete below. At four in the morning I was reasonably certain no one was going to be under it. Though I wouldn't have been upset had Randy been walking by just then. Asshole.

"Yes, K, you did, you failed, you really failed. Really." It was brutal, if you didn't know K. But two semesters of her bullshit had made me unwilling to mince words with her anymore. Just being willing to talk to her at all could be taken as a sign of my own masochism. No one else in the residence hall would come near her anymore.

She turned to me, straightened her head and then tilted it again with a small shake. "But…" she began.

"No! No buts!" I held up both hands and waved them back and forth like signal flags. "Failed! Failure. No obscure anything. Very clear failure. Jesus, K!" I ran both hands into my hair and gripped it. "Are you even here? Like, in this world? Do you know the meaning of the terms 'success' and 'failure'?"

I paused just long enough for her to open her mouth, then interrupted. It was a trick I used a lot with K. Not very nice, but it was cathartic and kept me from killing her.

"I mean, shit! Look at it. You set out to complete a four-year degree in two semesters. One quarter of the time! You took more classes then they actually ALLOW anyone to take. How you managed that I'll never know. Some of them overlapped for fuck's sake!" She wasn't looking at me, which just fed my rant.

"What the hell was it all about? Some kind of fucked up attention getting device? Oh, look at me, I'm doing the impossible, aren't I weird! As if being a vegetarian who eats beef jerky or those goddamn shoes didn't already prove that." I pointed to the jester toed high-tops that she wore everywhere. On special occassions she put bells on the tips. She wouldn't tell anyone where she got them, I suspected she made them. "I mean you couldn't have believed you could do it so what was the point?"

I leaned forward and tapped the small pile of paper that was between us, neatly printed letters and numbers were in the light and dark colored horizontal lines that covered the middle of the pages. "You couldn't do the work, you couldn't attend all these classes and so you got F's in at least half of them."

I sat back and held out one hand, palm up. "And as we all know, F…" I stuck out the other hand, palm up, "equals 'Failure'." I bounced my hands up and down to mime a set of scales. "And so your dad is insisting you go home. Back to the small town, right back where you started, accomplishing NOTHING."

K didn't say anything. She looked at the grade sheets on the concrete between us. With a thumb and forefinger she riffled through them. Then, crumpling them up in her fist, flung them over the rail and into the early-morning air. The papers didn't float or catch in a passing zephyr. They stayed crunched together and plummeted to join the shards of beer bottle below us.

Her hair, shaved short on one side and kept long on the other, swayed forward with the movement of her arm. It swung back and forth, revealing her profile and then covering it before settling. I watched the line of her nose, followed it down to her lips and over her small chin.

"Fuck!" I crossed my arms and looked away, through the vertical bars that cut the facing residence hall into strips.

K turned to look at me. "What?"

I stared at the dark windows across the way, "I'm going to miss you." I pulled my arms tighter around my middle. "Goddamnit."

K stood, stepped over to my side of the balcony and sat next to me. Her right side pressed up against me as she scooted in closer and tilted her head again so she could rest it on my shoulder. For a moment I did nothing, not wanting to uncoil from my snit. Then I shifted and put my arm around her.

"Or in some obscure way," I sighed, kicking at her shoe to make the bell jingle, "did I actually succeed?"