May 1, 2016.

 Story-A-Day May.


 Bird Wars

 This morning I saw a sparrow being attacked by a pack of crows. It was an unfair fight. The sparrow kept struggling up, struggling to stand his ground, while the crows kept swooping in to pick and bitch at him, one & two at a time. He didn't really try to defend himself, and I'd say he was as shocked as I was. His posture & movements seemed to say, You can't mean to do this, can you? He was as baffled as I was, I'm sure.

 I'd never seen a skirmish like this between the birds of the neighborhood. Sure, if there was food in the street (a rare happening, as we have regular weekly street cleaners here in my suburban village) there might be a couple of birds that tried to steal it from each other, though never as violently. But there was no dropped food or any other obvious cause for the conflict I witnessed.  It's hard to imagine what could drive a half dozen or more big crows to beat up a little sparrow on a sunny Sunday morning. They were so cruel to him, a robin actually came over to help, strafing the crows as they hit the poor little guy, then taking care to fly away fast after each run.  He was still taking a chance, and he knew it, but he couldn't do much against so many, brave as he was.

 My ragamuffin cat & I watched from the window, horrified and fascinated (it all happened very quickly) and then suddenly the sparrow was down, and not getting up. On his back, eyes closed as far as I could tell, and not moving.  His attackers noticed, too. After a last peck at his silent form, the whole gang of crows took off, while I ran to find a box and a small towel. I intended to try to revive the bird, if possible, or at least keep him safe & warm in his last moments.  I hoped it wouldn't come to that.

 In a minute I had dressed & found what I needed. I hurried out to do what I could, wishing I had been fast enough to rescue the sparrow before he got seriously hurt. It was early, not yet 7am, and I had been barely awake when the birdfight began; I'd only come out to the front window to say Good Morning to the cat before making some coffee. Now I was going to the front lines to tend the wounded, sans my daily caffeine ration.

 Outside it was cool, and quiet, now the combatants had fled the scene. My hands were trembling as I walked across the street to where the sparrow had fallen-- I was not simpatico with birds, generally. I found them interesting, but they found me scary, probably because I spent a lot of time with cats, and had the smell of cat fur on me. Thus I had some trepidation about getting the bird into the box, if it was still alive, but that didn't matter. He needed help, and I was the only witness able to respond.

 When I reached the battleground, I was surprised: the downed sparrow had gone, whether flown away or carried off, I couldn't tell. Not a trace of discord remained, & there was nothing to show what had occurred moments earlier-- not a spot of blood nor a dropped feather. I hunted around to be sure the poor creature hadn't merely crawled under a bush to die, but no; he was gone, the brave robin was gone, and all was now as peaceful as a spring Sunday ought to be. I was relieved, but a touch worried over the circumstance of the sparrow's disappearance, and wishing I had been awake enough to do more. I tried to take comfort from a thought that the bird had only been stunned, then recovered.

  Soon my neighbors would wake and begin their weekend rituals of yard work & dog-walking. The sun would warm up our lawns, and my cat would shift his attention to the back window to watch the usual rabbit action on display there. No one would know about the strange little war I'd been privy to, or my ineffectual attempt to participate. I slipped into my morning routine again without much effort, but as I sipped fresh coffee and watched my cat watching the backyard, I wondered, over & over: what was the war about between the crows & sparrow?

C  5/2016
by MK

Oktober Ski: The Miso Diary

Day 6 of the diet that can't possibly miss--

 I have to pee every five minutes, all day long. Not sleeping for more than two hours at a time and my skin looks like hell. Forget sex. Forget watching a movie. I may have lost some weight just from all the running to the bathroom.

 My supervisor hates me now, for the constant up/down/up/down during her big-ass meeting yesterday morning. I left 5 times to urinate. She spoke to me afterwards and pretended to understand, then told me to see a doctor if "my problem" doesn't change for the better-- immediately. She's not going to let me do that again-- looks like it's adult diapers during the morning training montage.

 More later-- I have to pee again.



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I Heart Being a Flasher! Or, Putting the Ski Back Together

 I just can't stay away till next Autumn-- think I'm gonna have to post a story bi-weekly. Sometimes, they will be edits of Oktober's efforts, as promised. As always, be it cutthroat or kind, your critique on these first drafts (and subsequent drafts) is more than welcome-- it is craved!
 Peace, Mari

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Putting the Sky Back


 Galen isn't the kind you'd expect to bomb a cathedral. He's neatly dressed, for his age; no baggy pants drooping off his backside, and his shirt is ironed, and tucked into the waistband of his jeans. His smile, when you draw it out of him, is real, honest, not a smirk. He doesn't pretend to the apathy, the cool of non-caring, that most teenagers effect nowadays.

 And he's not racist; this is born out by the colorful ring of friends he keeps around him. That's a key detail in the case. The media is calling this a hate crime, racially motivated, just as we'd expect from previous notes.

 He's a good boy. He donates hours weekly to the local food bank, sorting and hauling and running errands for them on his own fuel. He takes his grandmother to church when she's up to it, mows the lawn in summer and shovels all winter. The boy has never been in trouble of any sort, and does well in school-- he's slated to receive several scholarships when he enters college next Fall.

 So: Why was he running down the empty street, minutes before St. Celia's blew up, grinning? Did he suspect that the worshippers inside were a control group? Why did streetcam footage show him climbing up the pole seconds afterwards, just before the same cam was disabled? And how did he know how it was there?

 That's the real question, gentlemen: is one of the subjects aware of the experiment after all this time? If so, we have a problem. We're very near the end, here, and we can't afford to have our results skewed by a random factor. If it is random, and not the beginning of something larger. Yes, Harves?

 I agree, it could be. Galen is intelligent, resourceful, he could have discovered a link to us on his own, although he couldn't have an accurate picture of the breadth of our connections, just a mild inkling at best. It's happened once or twice. But he could be part of an organization-- a grassroots rebellion against the project. There's been no sign till now that the subjects have any communal awareness of their situation, outside of a few small groups known within their society to be lunatics. Galen may be the sign, and we can't afford to ignore it.

 I'm taking recommendations on this, of course, but my inclination is to clamp down, hard. To remove the smaller spyware and put back the atmospheric info net instead. Yes, we did remove it for a reason, Harves-- and the subjects registered it as a natural occurrence. They even took the blame for it's disappearance!

  I believe they created strictures designed to prevent further problems with the 'ozone.'  They may believe that they've succeeded in repairing it, or that it rebuilt itself, or that their scientific data was wrong to begin with, but that's immaterial. By the time they can confirm otheriwse, we'll be finished here. We're in the last stages-- precisely why we need to avoid any further upset. This has been a long haul, and I'm not prepared to write it off as a ruined effort. It's containable if we act quickly.

 That's it. Any contrary suggestions? Good. Let's put the sky, back, then, gentlemen. Thank you for your time. 

Oktober the Third: Parasite

It's funny that when I try to write Sci-Fi too consciously, I stumble allover myself. When I'm not trying, it comes out naturally, surprising me.

Here's a bit that took me most of the day, aside from eating, etc. There's more I want to put in, but those chunks need to simmer awhile yet. Enjoy.

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By Mari Kozlowski
10/3/2011

Shift--

Particles too small to see, too cold not to feel, sliding off him. The rain between the worlds. Cold kept at him, and he ignored it. He could ignore it for longer than it would last. He remembered being caught, the year it froze here. The melting had hurt more than the ice…

   Shift—

A pressure, warming, solid; smile of bright teeth between burgundy lips, opening to him. Petals of roses against his knuckles, soft movement in his hands as he pushed down and in. Roses climbing the side of a brown wall… memory was a blanket, a teddy bear, it kept his mind off the next phase.

      Shift—

Pressure increased. The pull beginning… his teeth sucking back into his jaw, pulled from inside their roots, eyeballs sore as they seemed to float away, his stomach walls flattening against each other— it should stop soon.

A grind of bones straining, muscles stretched, tendons railing as they began to snap…

It should stop soon. It should stop.

It didn’t. His tongue pulled out a thousand feet long. The pressure in his skull made him see red. It should stop soon, should have by now. His knees were undone, his arms groaned from their sockets.

Stop! His throat crunched, it cracked as he cried, breaking training. An involuntary response, a mistake. Don’t push! He gathered his mind as it crushed in on itself, grasping for the packaged calm he’d prepared for any emergency… it should stop, it would stop.

Shift--  

Drop. Cooler air. He was out.  

 
When he woke, he was almost immobilized on a bed, with a flat pillow underneath. It didn’t worry him, yet. It could be the effect of drugs; it could be lag from the long, difficult shift. Give it time to wear off. He let himself fall back to sleep.
 
Warmth surrounded him, large and soft, and dark. Must be night. Time to begin, to find where and how he’d landed. He hoped his eyes would adjust soon.

The scents were diffused— he couldn’t place them. Bitter saltiness, moist copper, a sweet edge of musk, the lush swampy touch of vanilla. They formed a single, rich aroma he couldn’t name but that wasn’t unfamiliar; a smell from far back. From life before the shifts. It wrapped around him like the blurred dark and stilled his fear. It should have been alarming, having his senses blunted so, the swathe of deep smells; but instead he was comforted. And grateful.

After a while, the urgent feeling crept back, but slowly. He could have lain there resting for ages longer but there was a job to do, wounds or no.

He tried to clench and unclench his hands. It helped hurt shifters make a controlled assessment of possible damage. He tried again, with more effort. Something was wrong— he felt small scratches against his face, but couldn’t feel his hands at all. As if there was no connection. With his feet, he tried again. And again. Nothing.

His scream in the last phase of the shift must have caused resistance. Just what they were always warned against. What the months of simulations were designed to prevent. A shifter’s panic could only make a tough shift worse, and he’d made that happen for himself. Now he’d pay.  

Time was a cold, treacherous place, a place of thorns and sinkholes. Those who dare to shift through it must learn to let themselves be carried on the currents, or be dashed on the spikes that reach for them, pulled into the waiting pockets.

The reasons for shifting are infinite. The way to shift safely is singular—  utter surrender of mind and body, an absence of any reaction. You cannot push past Time; you can only be sucked through it, whatever direction you start from.

There are myriad approaches to accomplish the surrender, different schools using different means. Shifters learn to insulate themselves through meditation or calming techniques, through various mental disciplines, physical training, and sometimes a finely calculated dosage of helpful drugs.

All methods used seek to achieve the same goal of mental, physical, emotional acceptance, for to resist is to break the stability of the shift. And then you are Time’s parasite, apt to be flushed out through the nearest available crack.

He’d been hurt bad, maybe paralyzed. If he could move, he had no apparent control over it. There was no pain, but a feeling of heaviness, weakness. As if his muscles had lost their firmed state and become so much gel. He tried once more to raise a limb, any limb, feeling panic creep in. The Last Contingency demanded an action: one specific twitch of one specific muscle unaffected by the shift under most circumstances. It was the safety catch, and he’d never needed to use it, never wanted to. Knowing that it might be inaccessible tangled up his mind, and he strove to contain the fear scattering over him. Relax, relax, relax, he willed.

And pain raced through his body, arcing up from his stomach and out. Hunger, a hunger that gripped with iron fingers, and he cried out, unable to stop. The sound was high, piercing. He was brushed by some flailing hand, automatically reached to slap it away and found it was his own. Murmured sounds sifted over him, along with the calming scent he couldn’t remember, and a strong arm curved under his head, lifting. The soft warmth of it soothed him, even amid the rage of his hunger.

And he knew.

The shift had stabilized by pocketing him in his own timeline. Vision still blurred, the weakness, all added up clear as air. No way but through, now.  

A movement near his mouth distracted his attention, a large dark mass pushing at him. Compelling him. He struggled to restrain the impulse ignited by the scent, the feel, the hunger— the impulse to go towards it. There was something to do first, and he strained his whole will to it, desperate, then felt the twinge as the hidden capsule broke and spread, swift as blood flows, erasing his awareness in layers.

The final thing he knew before The Last Contingency took effect was open-mouthed wonder at the beauty of total surrender.

 “He’s latching, Paul! He’s doing it!”

The woman looked down, tearful and relieved. Her husband's hand caressed the small cheek laid against her smooth brown breast.

“Of course he is. Anyone that hungry is going to eat what’s in front of them. My son’s a quick learner. You'll see.”  

Oktober the First: No Entry Fee

Oktober is one of my favorite months, has been for decades. I loved being in college in Oktober (yes, I get to spell it that way; one of my grandfathers was a Hummel, so there!), with the feeling of a crisp mind echoed by the feel of the air and the movement all around me. I loved it so much I kept at it for ten years-- I might go back for more someday, and you can be sure I'll start in the fall semester.

When NaNoWriMo found me a few years back, that cemented the excitement of Oktober-- it's the month before The Month, and anticipation is a sweet liquor. Don't get me started about NaNo-- it saved me, and gave me back good writing habits, not to mention several budding novels, some short stories that budded from those, and a host of songs and musical collaborators from a fantastic sister site, FAWM.

 But I've fallen into bad habits, lately, sort of a rut, and this project is designed to get me geared up for November's NaNo challenge, which I'm using to gear me up for a big push to finish the interminable edit of my first novel, THE FALL, AND FURTHER FALL, OF MIRIAM BRONSKI.

 So what is Oktober Ski?

 Every day in Oktober 2011, I am going to write a piece of short fiction and post it here, first in unedited form (well, spell-checked and hopefully typo free, but otherwise as is) and then later, as time allows, brushed off and polished a bit. There may be notes on the process. Fine critique will be welcome. (hint, hint)

 For the sake of having some guideline to rail against, each story will be between 50 and 5,000 words. A range from flash fiction to short enough fiction. After some pondering, I decided not to use a random generator for writing prompts-- I want to feel the fear of not knowing what I'll write about each morning. If needed, I'll find inspiration by opening a book and pulling out a starter from there.

 My November tradtition is to get in a thousand words before breakfast, and right now, I couldn't make it. But I'll get there... that's the Oktober part.

 The Ski is a play on my name (Kozlowski) standing in for the obvious song lyric (love that song) along with the name of the MC* of my first novel, referenced above; and also a fond remembrance of my late friend Eric Hallifax, who affectionately called me Ski. Which was better than Polowski, or Polackowski, the nicknames my next door neighbor Jimmy P. used to call me. He was Italian & Irish, and he liked me, and tormented me for years. Eric was born in England and died in Buffalo, poor and alone, of Leukemia. He was a sometime drug addict, vain as hell, and had a kind heart and romantic soul. He liked my songs. 

 Here's today's story: 277 words, about 40 minutes work.  Let me know what you think.

 Peace, Mari


*main character
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No Entry Fee  (first draft)  By Mari Kozlowski, 10/1/2011

 Pale blue, and slithery, the font. Artistic and hard to read against the paler background. You could almost feel how excited the new “editor” was when they made the swaying, uninformative titles. An editor slash producer slash director; stalwart of the no-budget film scene, making the rookie mistakes they hoped would show their genius. The acting would be stilted or overblown, simplistic characters played by relatives of the cameraman or rejects from local theater. Dreamers. They pretended to despise the industry but here they were, begging for a chance to become part of it.

 She started to eject the disc on principle, then let it go, opened her second beer and sat back. It was the last entry in the stack for tonight anyhow— might get a good laugh.

 You were supposed to watch each entry in entirety, but you could never get through the piles in time that way. Her boss didn’t get that, but he got that she weeded out the worst of them and didn’t ask how. He was grateful to have the more painful examples left off his stack, the final 20. Those were usually bad enough.

 This one was typical, at first. Clichéd premise, a lost soul looking for heaven’s secret door— an allegorical quest film, with a bleak lack of set dressing and campy 60’s era costumes that must have come straight from a Salvation Army store. Cheap, all the way down to the few props.

 But not horrible. The acting was better than expected, almost professional. There was an intensity here that the scratchy sound and mundane score couldn’t drown. Candy found herself drawn in. She stopped analyzing and watched.