Dog Noir 6

I knew he was following me from the moment I left The Yard. He one tried to keep a respectful distance, but I sniffed him out before we'd gone ten steps. Much as I'd've liked to lose him or confront him, I had business that couldn't wait.

He was still there when I paused and, subtle as you please, dropped my package. It was a condensed list of everything important I'd gotten my nose into over the last day, and I left it where the right people would see it. Getting together in person wasn't possible, especially with this yahoo on my tail.

He'd been waiting for that. Before I could blink, he was on my deposit like fleas on... well. Clearly, he knew what he was getting into: He used a bag so he wouldn't contaminate the evidence.

At that point the table turned. He headed back to The Yard, I followed. I almost got the sense that he wanted me behind him, like he was gloating. I'm still not sure what he wanted, especially since he dropped my package right in the trash. Maybe he's trying to show me he's in charge around here.

We'll see about that.

The Second Best Time Is Now

Grant fired a burst down the corridor and pulled back around the corner for cover. So far, he was holding the rival military firm back. He sent another burst around the corner, and answering fire spanged off the metal corridor around him.

Reloading, his hand brushed the standard-issue grenade on his belt. That would surprise the invaders for sure. Timed right, it would figuratively and literally cripple them, letting Grant's firm mop up with ease. Figuratively. The literal mopping would, hopefully, fall to someone else.

But it had to be the right time. He fired again to keep them back. They had to be bunched up for the best effect. They were too spread out in this corridor, and he'd rather save the grenade for when it could have a real impact. Heh, impact. He fired another burst. He had a good spot here... but if they brought more pressure or flanked him, he might need the grenade for his tactical retreat. Better to hold onto it. Could be more useful later.

A metallic clatter dragged his eyeline to the floor, where a live grenade spun to a stop. Boy, they were going to feel stupid if they needed that—

The Gleaming Pin

Before a mirror, his voice resounded, he held forth, he was concise, assertive, and insightful. In the company of one other, he murmured, he hesitated, he was doubtful, unsure, reluctant to assert. In the company of two, he whispered, he stammered, he was withdrawn, self-sabotaging. More, and he vanished, he shrank to nothing, he was silent. With everyone around him, he was alone.

"What I will do," said his friend, "is force you to speak, make you involuntarily visible in such a great crowd you could not otherwise imagine it." She brandished a gleaming pin. "I will pierce you with this, you will cry out, and you will be seen and heard. You will not be nothing." He was reluctant, but agreed.

One by one, people joined them, and inch by inch, decibel by decibel, he diminished. Conversations sprouted and grew over him like an aggressive ivy robbing him of sustaining sunlight, and he wilted. The gathering grew into a social event, the social event bloomed into a party, and joy flowed between all who had come.

By then, nothing of him remained. When his friend again noticed the pin, she wondered why she had brought it to a party.

The One You Can't Say

Sam was reading off the names from the lunches kids' parents had sent with them to camp. "Janine! There you go. Bari! Here. Ssss—" She coughed, then swallowed. "Um, Alan, could you come here?"

Alan paused his own lunch call and walked over. "What?""

"This. I don't think I can read this." She held up a brown paper bag with a name on it in Sharpie: Slut Johnson. 

Alan's eyes nearly bulged out of his head. "I don't think I could read that either."

"Can I have my lunch, please?" The twelve-year-old girl stood, patient and calm.

"Are you..." Sam's eyes drifted back to the paper bag.

"Yeah, I'm the one you can't say. You can just call me S."

Sam hesitated until the girl reached out for her lunch, and Sam handed it over. Her mouth moved trying to find words. "Why..." She drew the word out, uncertain how or what to ask.

"My mom's reeeeeeeal messed up," the girl said. "Don't worry, I'll get her back by putting her in a home when she's old." The girl took her lunch and ran off to eat with her friends.

Sam turned to Alan. "She's pretty well-adjusted, all things considered."

Journey from Iridia

Alise appeared in the dusty, moonlit attic with no particular fanfare, just a gasp, a book falling open to the floor, and a stumble as though she had just halted a headlong dash.

She was in shock, as was apparent to the zero spectators. Once she found her breath, she fell to her knees and, with a wordless wail, scrabbled back to the book. It lay open to a blank page. With a growing moan, she flipped through it at increasing speed, heedless of rips and tears, finding only blank paper. On the last page, she collapsed. All sign of the magical world of Iridia had vanished. She had no way back.

Alise tried to live a normal life. She reached out to the family she'd thought she'd never see again, she looked for a job. But each time she saw a book—not just any book, but a tome of weight and substance like that she'd traveled through—it arrested her. Her throat caught, her mouth dried, the book seized her thoughts until she opened it and found no Iridia within.

She never found it. They eventually found her in the local library, half-buried in a pile of books, weeping uncontrollably.

The Same Distance, the Same Direction

Howard looked at it again. "There's still a train in our living room."

Hugh shrugged without taking his eyes off the steam engine. "Rail accident?"

Howard looked down to where the train entered their home. "There's no rail near here." He could see two things at once in the same space: Their living room wall, intact and artfully decorated, and at least ten train cars trailing into the distance, at a concrete platform that occupied the same space as their teak floor. Or occupied different space, just the same distance away from them, and in the same direction.

"Is it... going to leave?" Hugh still stared.

"I mean, probably? It has a schedule to keep." Pause. "I kind of want to see what's on it."

"I.... It's a ghost train, or something, you can't just get on. You'll go to Hell, or... or somewhere else we don't believe in!"

"Or steam-powered Narnia."

"I absolutely forbid it." Hugh had pulled his eyes from the train for the first time and was staring at Howard.

"Forbid it?" Howard smiled a challenge at Hugh.

"Prohibit, veto, deny, countermand, negatively edict, I don't know, yes! Don't get on that train!"

Howard looked at the car ahead of him and over to where the engine belched steam in and not in their kitchen. He could almost hear a distant whistle.

"This doesn't just happen to people, Hughie," he said. "If this train leaves and I never know why, I will hate myself every day for not getting on."

"I would hate you every day for leaving."

"Then you're just gonna have to come with me." Howard hopped onto the metal lattice steps up into the train car and held a hand back to Hugh.

Hugh looked him deep in the eyes, fear plain on his face. "Dammit, if this doesn't take us to a magical adventure where neither of us gets hurt, I am going to be very angry."

"That's fair," Howard said. The train pulled away, and they waved goodbye to both the platform and their house, which had somehow—and briefly—occupied the same space.

Never an Honest Trade

"It's obvious that Bugs never intended this to be an honest trade," Brown said.

"What's wrong with it?" sneered Bugs Meany, holding tight to the video game system he'd gotten out of the deal. The reason he'd brought it loomed behind him: Sally Kimball, the only person who could force Bugs to play fair.

"Yeah, what is wrong with it?" Wayne DeLiza asked, clutching nearly as tightly the British officer's sword he'd received in the trade. Even though he'd come to Brown and Kimball with a gut feeling he'd been conned, he clearly wanted the sword to be genuine.

"It's the inscription, see?" Brown pointed at the words on the scabbard: "William Rhode, 19th Light Dragoons, 1818."

"Yeah?" snarled Bugs. "What's wrong with it? It's proof it's a real antique!"

"The 19th Light Dragoons were a British regiment all right, but not in 1818. They were reestablished as the 19th Lancers in 1816. Bugs, I'm afraid your fake missed the mark, even if only by a bare two years."

Fury on his face, Bugs stalked off, leaving the game system with Wayne.

"I can't thank you enough," said Wayne.

"All in a day's work," said Sally, "for Historical Minutiae Brown!"