An irregularly updated fiction sample

Every now and again, this page will host something I'm sharing with you, in a pixel-stained technopeasant sort of way. Don't worry if you don't get that, it's a nerd thing.

I knocked. No answer.

“Maintenance,” I called out, knocking again. Most everyone in the building would know my voice. We had a staff of two: me and my father. He owned it and ran it. I did what I could when I could fit it in with schoolwork.

I double-checked the note Dad had left me. Apartment 3. I knew it had to be this one. Practicality told me it was Mrs. Baum. Any time there was a complaint, it was her. Something told me it was sort of problem my father always sent me to handle. I could feel something odd, and that was always my chore list. My father was dozing in front of the game shows, like he did almost every night. Most of the time, I’d wait until he was ready to help, but there was a lot I had to do tonight. He didn’t seem to remember I wasn’t the little kid that had all day to wait for him. Then again, since we’d moved here after my mom passed away, it hadn’t really been easy for either of us. It was his hometown, but he’d gone through a lot to raise me on his own.

I put the sad thoughts out of my head and I knocked again. I finally heard shuffling steps on the other side. Mrs. Baum opened the door a tiny crack, glaring at me.

“Where’s your father?” she asked in a voice that was about 80% menthol cigarette.

“He sent me,” I replied. My bland brown eyes met her angry dark eyes and I just waited. Not quite staring her down, but not moving. That was also from experience. Since Mr. Baum went to Grand Cayman with his secretary, Mrs. Baum had been looking for other opponents to fight.

“Come in,” she gave in, knowing I wasn’t going to argue. My father did it for the same reason she did; to pass time. “It’s the range,” she said, although Dad had already left that for me in a note.

I was carrying his tool box, a great metal thing that rattled with each step. It was heavy to carry, but it came in very handy. Just on walking in, I could feel something change in the apartment. Cold iron can be very useful even before the latches are undone.

“The pilot lights fine, but it’s out whenever I want to use it,” she said, pouring a big mug of coffee and waving it at me.

“No thanks,” I said. “I have to be up early for a test tomorrow.”

“You’re getting fat for a boy of 16. You should work and not sit around all day. Still doing that school thing, huh?” she slurped coffee as she said it, lighting another cigarette although we’d been clear on the smoking policy.

There wasn’t anything she said that wasn’t bait for some sort of disagreement. I ignored the rapid-fire verbal assault and peered at the aging white appliance. “How long have you noticed the problem?”

“Noticed? It doesn’t work. What’s to notice? About two days.”

I didn’t remember anything odd two days ago. I was hoping for a simple cause and effect that got me started on my Spanish paper. A week ago my sister had been over to visit Dad. Yesterday my cousin Simeon had delivered something. There wasn’t much doubt in my mind that the issue was something from their side of things and not a loose fitting or a draft blowing out the fire, though. Something in my bones just told me. Nothing they’d brought with them, but the sort of weirdness that hung around Mom’s side of my family. I could tell just from the way the air smelled.

I pulled open the top of the range, staring into the well-cleaned metal tray. I felt the slight buzz of energy and made sure Mrs. Baum couldn’t see me. My eyes would have blinked yellow for a moment, like miniature suns. The first burst of power was always hard to control.

“You still majoring in English? That’s useless,” she griped. I looked at her, after I felt the yellow burst of energy fading. I wanted to respond, probably buoyed by the boost of power. Then I saw the evil look on her face, just waiting for someone to argue. She wasn’t an old woman by any means. Maybe even younger than Dad. The brief spark of the spurned woman and the widower rolled in my head, filling me with raw terror.

Something chirped. She was saying something about how it was good I had a rich father, unlike her poor son, but the specific rant was lost on me. It wasn’t true, either, but she probably knew that. I tuned her noise out. I wasn’t listening to her, but to the places where the ley lines ran. She hadn’t heard that chirp, judging by the way she kept her lips moving at me. I turned away in case my eyes changed again. Something liked the little spark of fear I’d felt in my belly. Something liked to make her mad, so it could feel the anger. So it could feed on the anger.

The ley lines were thick, crossing through the apartment building in numerous places. They circled the earth like rivers of raw magical energy. Most people would never know they were there, though. The building itself was a battery, absorbing some of the power and storing it for the right people to use it. My mother had built the place as a sanctuary in case the civil war she predicted actually happened. It was her retreat from the lands of Faerie, in case the war came close to home. She hadn’t lived long enough to escape to safety.

I studied the ley lines and how they ebbed and flowed through the room, like water. There was one area of the apartment that wasn’t right. There wasn’t a lot of iron in the building, by design, but where there was it was a dead spot. They ley lines swirled around the iron, or avoided it. Otherwise there was the motion and hum of living things, like swimmers in the sea of power. And one moving spot that crackled with something like black lightning, in the walls behind Mrs. Baum’s kitchen.

“Scott, don’t you listen to a thing I say?” Mrs. Baum was asking, sloshing her coffee a bit as the pointed with the cup.

“I’m sorry, I was thinking about the problem,” I told her. I didn’t look right at her. My eyes were too bright. I kept my head down. She’d think I was embarrassed, perhaps. I could see the way the darkness rolled around her, though, even without looking at her straight on. She was a providing a huge buffet of emotion for the thing in the wall.

“Quit thinking and start working,” she snapped back.

Someone else I might have left and come back during the day, when they were at work. She didn’t work. She didn’t shop. She didn’t do much. Not to mention I had a very long essay test in the morning and couldn’t carve out time for a lengthy fix even if the place was vacant. This had to be fast. I thought of how my sister Sheryl would have whipped up an answer in a minute, or my cousin Simeon would never have let anything bad happen when he was around. Too bad this place was stuck with me.

“Let me check this fitting again,” I said, bending over the stove.

I’m not very good with ley line tricks. I left home too young, in the middle of a war, when no one was concerned with making sure I learned what my siblings knew. They were powerful Fae nobles, embroiled in the war to defend the throne. I was a fat little kid that got in the way. One benefit of the neglect, though, was that I hadn’t learned to block the dark stuff. I could see the little fuzzy critter in the wall, staring right back at me with red-rimmed eyes. It could see me, too. It stared back with those bright eyes, looking far smarter than I’d expected. It hunched, ready to run when I came for it.

I didn’t move physically. I shifted some raw power. I imagined a cat carrier, like the one my father kept upstairs. It hissed as shimmering walls started to form around the hairy body.

It struck back. I felt it in my head. Not a physical blow. Fear. Somehow I could smell dead bodies. I could feel maggots, crawling near me, as big as snakes.

I choked on the bile, coughing. Mrs. Baum jumped up, but I waved at her. She needed to stay away.

It scrambled back, straining the weakened trap. I doubled the wall at the back, then it rushed toward the newly weakened front. It was fast. The smells grew worse and dark images danced at the sides of my vision. It chattered something. Maybe animal noises. Maybe a curse of some sort. Things were coming for me, to do terrible things to me. I felt a sweat break out on my head and my intestines bubbled and clenched.

Unfortunately for the little pest, I’d already lived through things a lot worse than the vague fears it could make me feel. It squeaked as the box tightened around it, but nothing else happened. The fears started to fade, although it kept glaring at me from behind the drywall. It was still trying, but I had shields in place now.

“Got it,” I said, shaking the burner’s mechanical bits a little so they clunked and hummed with vibration. Like I’d done something to the stove. “I think it should be fine now.”

“Without even opening the toolbox? I doubt it,” she said.

I gave her a little smile and no other answer. I kept my head low, picking up the tool box as I stepped past her. My eyes weren’t bright, because all of the power was holding the little gremlin in place. It was fighting back, though, which meant a lot of concentrating. Both holding it still and keeping the fear back. And keeping the fear from Mrs. Baum as it lashed out, trying to escape. “Well, let us know,” I said, heading to the door.

“You bet I will. Your dad will hear first thing if I have problems with this, kid,” she barked, banging the door shut behind me. So much for gratitude.

I pulled the cage closer, reeling it in like a prize catch on a line. It passed through the walls and ducts, traveling in a place that was between worlds.

The gremlin, if that’s what it was, didn’t look like the movie creatures. It was as long as my forearm and just about as thick. It was squat and furry, with red eyes and teeth that were designed for preying. It was something like a weasel with a blunt nose and tiny little mouse ears. It gave a little howl as I pulled the cage into my hand. It became much more solid as I touched it. The dark sparks lashed out as it struggled, but I was holding it very tight. It chattered and squeaked, but it couldn’t touch me now.

“Here’s a cage,” my father said, holding out his pet carrier. I started a little, but dropped the squirming thing into the plastic box he was holding. The thing thumped around, throwing itself at the sides as he looked into the wire door. “Nothing I recognize. You?”

“I thought you’d be asleep,” I said. “You scared me.”

He smiled. He was a bigger version of me. Same ruddy face, same rounded features and stumpy build. “I heard the clank of my tools leaving. I figured you’d let me know if you couldn’t handle it.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I said. Maybe he did trust me a little more than I thought. “So what do we do with it?”

“I’d say D-Con, but Simeon tells me he wants all of the things we catch returned.”

“That’s weird,” I said. “Is something going on…back there?”

“You can call it ‘home’, Scotty.”

“My home is here.”

“Stubborn like your mom,” he smiled. “Yeah, stuff is going on. Nothing for us to worry about, though. You know why?”

“Because we have each other?” I asked, grimacing a little. It was the sort of thing he said a lot.

“Of course. But also because we have to worry about those rats moving over from the vacant lot, first. And the roaches in apartment 1. And those burnt out lightbulbs in those fixtures we just put in. And…,” he said, pausing to smile.

I laughed. He laughed. The faerie creature threw itself against the steel wire, recoiling in a burst of smoke and burnt flesh smell. For the moment, all was right in the world.