ForceUser
Explorer
Hello again. This isn't a gaming story, but rather something I wrote for class. Seeing as how it's illustrative of the only writing I've had time to indulge in lately, I thought I'd throw it out there for the folks who enjoyed my Vietnamese Adventures Story Hour and other works.
Moderators, if non-gaming related fiction isn't welcome at ENWorld, I apologize.
----------------
Aaron Isling lived in a world of grays. Outside his bedroom window, storm clouds shrouded the sky and dumped misty rain on the terraced lawns and sport-utility vehicles of a sleek neighborhood of social climbers. He watched as a yellow-striped cat with a white breast darted across his new dirt lawn toward a neighbor’s carport. It was wet and tawny and thoroughly miserable. Aaron sympathized. He felt thoroughly miserable as well.
“Aaron! Get down here! There’s more to carry up!” Robert, his stepfather, commanded from downstairs. Sighing, Aaron clambered off the box he’d been sitting on and trudged out into the upstairs hallway. He stopped at the head of the stairs and glowered at the scene below.
Robert Bellsly, his mother’s second husband, stood in the doorway to the new four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom home, imperiously directing the movers who carried the family furniture into the house. It was so new that it still carried that peculiar smell of new houses, like stale garlic butter leather. Aaron found it distasteful. What had been wrong with their old house? His old room had smelled like home. His new room smelled like sawdust and paint.
“Aaron!” blustered Robert. He gestured harshly, as though striking the air with his open palm. “I said come here! There’s still dozens of boxes to bring in before you’re done. Now get to it. You can play later.”
“I wasn’t playing,” Aaron began, but his stepfather cut him off.
“Don’t back-talk me! Just do it!”
“But it’s raining,” Aaron protested, unsure of where he was going with this, or why he was going there so vehemently. He knew the work needed to be done.
“Go!” His stepfather declared coldly. He pointed past the head of a struggling moving man who was trying to wedge the family couch through the front door. Aaron knew that further protest was pointless, that he had pushed Robert as far as he could dare. Further argument would elicit punishment. A tiny voice inside urged him on anyway, just to spite his stepfather, but Aaron was an exceptionally rational young man when he had to be. Annoyed for no reason he could articulate, he did as he was told, stepping through the kitchen, into the carport, and out into the hazy rain.
--------------
“Coo-coo-coo!” said Aaron’s mother. “Coo-coo-coo! Who’s a good girl?”
The child in the crib wiggled her toes and gurgled happily. Aaron, standing outside the doorway, looked at the scene in disgust. Downstairs, a ballgame blared from the surround-sound stereo system, and Robert could be heard raging at the referee, who apparently knew nothing about calling plays. Aaron wondered how the referee could hold his job if he was really that bad.
“Aaron,” called his mother over her shoulder, “Run to the fridge and bring a bottle up, would you? Your sister’s hungry.”
“Half-sister,” Aaron corrected dully. He turned away quickly, but felt his mother’s hot stare between his shoulder blades as he bounded down the stairs two at a time. Her chastisement evaded, she called shrilly, “Don’t run on the stairs! I’m not paying for a broken leg!”
From the living room, Robert added thunderously, “Aaron! Stop running in the house!”
Aaron reached the kitchen and rebelliously took two quick steps and slid across the polished tile in his socks. He lost his balance and almost fell, but caught himself on the counter. He was very angry but couldn’t say why. He flung open the refrigerator door, yanked out a bottle of formula and slapped the door shut. The contents of the fridge rattled dangerously inside. He felt vindicated.
“Here,” he said to his mother when he returned.
“Watch that attitude, mister,” she replied. “I’m not telling you again.”
Aaron wasn’t sure if she meant his attitude toward his half-sister or his running indoors, and he wasn’t sure he cared. He looked at the infant in the crib. She stared at him, mystified, as if trying to figure out who he was and how he fit into her small world of bed and mother and playthings. She infuriated him. He waited until his mom turned away, then he crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue at the child. Her face scrunched up, and then she kicked and flailed her tiny fists. When his mother began to comfort her – "Sshh, sshh. There, there.” – he fled to his bedroom. He felt a strange mixture of satisfaction and regret. As he put on his pajamas and climbed into bed he decided that tomorrow he’d be nicer to his half-sister. It wasn’t her fault that his dad had left. His mom had told him that they’d “grown apart,” but Aaron suspected she’d driven him away. And now there was a new stepfather and a new baby and a new house and a new school on the other side of town, and he didn’t know whom to blame.
When his mother came by to tuck him in, he pretended to be asleep. She walked in briskly, folded the corners of his sheets under the mattress with several sharp motions, and left without kissing him goodnight. When she turned off the light and closed the door, Aaron felt lost, as though she was shutting him away for good.
--------------
Aaron awoke sharply. He came instantly, vividly awake with total clarity. He opened his eyes and stared intensely at the wall across his bedroom. The Crab Nebula poster, eerie under the orange halogen light from the street lamp out front, stared back at him. His heart beat rapidly, and he lay tense and unmoving under the sheets, as though frozen in an ancient glacier. He realized that he was frightened and afraid to move, but he didn’t know why. He breathed quietly and listened to the stillness of the house. He found it to be unnatural.
His old house had groaned when the wind blew or the cold settled in, the pipes in the walls had cracked their knuckles like old men when winter blew down, and the floorboards had creaked musical notes when you walked across them, every room in a different key. But this house, this new house, was silent like a tomb. They’d visited several times while it had been under construction, and he’d seen that the pipes weren’t made of iron, but of plastic and copper. The floors were carpet or tile over concrete, not hardwood. And the windows, double paned, hardly rattled at all when the wind blew. His old house had a personality, like an amusing relative that had taken up permanent residence, but this new house was dead. It had the personality of a zombie.
From the next room over, Aaron heard a bump. It was a muffled, shuffling sort of sound with a rasping conclusion. Inexplicably, he flinched in terror. Thoughts swarmed in his head. That was the baby’s room. Was his mother feeding or changing her, as she often did in the middle of the night? Had she fallen out of the crib? Maybe she had somehow climbed the safety rail and was lying on the floor right now, hurt. But why wasn’t she crying? Maybe she couldn’t. He lay there long moments, hoping that his mother and Robert had heard it too. Maybe they’d get up and go see what was the matter.
They didn’t. He thought about yelling, but he decided against it, imagining the trouble he’d get into if it turned out to be nothing. It probably was, after all, nothing.
But then why was he so scared?
The noise thumped again from behind the wall, like someone was moving around a large object. He shivered. How could they not hear it? He realized that he’d been holding his breath, so he exhaled quietly, and was amazed to discover his breath frost away from his mouth visibly in the dim orange light. He shivered then, and realized that it was freezing in his room. He looked at the calendar on the wall next to the door. He could read it in the dim light. It said June.
He blinked and carefully rubbed his eyes, moving his body as little as possible. He realized that he’d begun to shiver, and if he wasn’t careful his teeth would begin to rattle and it would give him away and whatever it was that was in his sister’s room would come for him and that would be the end.
What was going on? He wondered desperately. Why am I thinking there’s something in the baby’s room? It could be nothing. It could be Robert moving furniture around. But in the middle of the night? On a Wednesday, when he worked in the morning? Maybe it was a burglar. But why, then, was it so cold? It felt frigid as November in Aaron’s room.
The bump slithered across the wall again, long and insidious. Unconsciously, Aaron whimpered. The noise stopped immediately.
Oh, no, he thought. He dared not breathe. Seconds stretched into eternity, and he waited. He felt a burning sensation in the back of his throat, and black dots swam before his eyes. He’d have to take a breath soon.
The noise started up again, and he sucked in air carefully, parceling it out like a diver returning to the surface from the ocean floor. Something was very, very wrong. Mom and Robert hadn’t awakened. The baby wasn’t crying. And something was in the house, not fifteen feet away on the other side of a thin wall.
A feeling welled up within Aaron then, and though he couldn’t describe it, he clung to it intensely, for it spread warmth and purpose through his limbs. With the utmost care, he peeled back his sheets and sat up. His feet found his slippers and he wriggled into them gratefully. He glanced around the room, and his eyes alighted on a dim bundle tucked in the corner behind his bed. Softly, he tiptoed to the bundle and gripped a nine-iron, part of a set of golf clubs forced upon him by Robert last summer. A successful man’s game, Robert had insisted, and one you’ll learn to play. Aaron thought about the snoring brute in his mother’s bed. For the first time, Aaron was grateful Robert hadn’t let him refuse.
The noise from his sister’s room continued, and now it had a harsher, more urgent quality to it, as though the perpetrator had abandoned being stealthy. Aaron sidestepped across his bedroom, turned the doorknob as gently as he could, and stepped into the hall. He realized that had this been his old house, the creak of floorboards and oil-deprived hinges would have already given him up. He trudged silently on the carpet toward the baby’s room, then stopped. Considering, he hurried as quietly as he could to the hall closet and retrieved a tall blueberry-scented candle. Fumbling urgently in the dark – for the thumps now came more quickly – he located the lighter and flicked it on. A merry tongue of fire licked the candle’s wick, and Aaron stood now and dashed toward his sister’s door.
Candle in one hand and golf club in the other, he burst into the room. The crib was no longer in the corner by the door, instead it now sat adjacent to the window, which was open to the night and blowing a cold wind inside. In the dark under the crib something moved on two legs, a quick pitter-patter of steps, followed by a tiny growl. Aaron flipped the light switch and nothing happened. Distantly he felt this should surprise him, but it didn’t. Instead, the warming flicker of the candle reassured him. Wielding his nine-iron, he half-stepped toward the crib and shouted, “Hey! Get away from there!”
He heard a trio of squeals then, like pigs gargling with soda pop, and two small, dark forms climbed out of the crib and landed wobbly on the plush floor. All three forms, like squat shadows, advanced on him and growled. When they growled, the sound they made cut deeper than a pack of stray dogs he’d once encountered. Instinctively, Aaron thrust the candle forward instead of the golf club. The creatures squealed and covered their faces, and Aaron caught a glimpse of piggish noses, slimy gray skin, filthy black hair and rotted, pointy teeth. Emboldened, he stepped into the room, the candle held in front of him like a talisman. The little monsters scattered then like leaves. One retreated to the window and climbed backward like a spider, its head twisted toward Aaron at an impossible angle. It snarled at him with feral rage and disappeared over the sill. Another dashed between his legs and into the hall beyond. Aaron jumped and yelped; its passage left an oily residue on the inside of his legs that could feel through his cotton pajamas. The third leapt at the baby’s closet where her diapers were stored. The door was ajar, and it bounded inside and slammed it closed behind it. As Aaron stood there in shock, the temperature in the room slowly climbed back to normal, and the light waxed dimly at first, then reflected glaringly off the room’s stark white walls. Cautiously, he approached the closet door and flung it open. The light revealed nothing but hanging baby clothes, stacks of diapers and a folded up stroller. Whatever had happened was over.
He looked at the crib from across the room. Silence. Fear gripped him then, not a fear for his own safety, but fear for the tiny person who had entered his life so abruptly and had been the target of so much of his anger and resentment. Hesitantly, afraid of a thousand awful sights that might await him in the crib, he stepped across the room and peeked inside.
His sister lay swathed in her bedclothes and teddy bear blanket amidst the candy corn sheets and armada of plush animals. She appeared asleep. He reached down and touched her, and felt a startling coldness in her limbs.
“Oh, no,” he said aloud, “No, no. I’m sorry.” Aaron felt like crying then, staggered by his failure. He dropped the nine-iron with a thunk, but then his sister stirred and yawned. Her eyes opened, and she stared around searchingly for a bit before coming to rest her gaze upon Aaron. When she saw him, she opened her mouth and grinned toothlessly.
Later, Aaron’s mother was awoken by a thumping noise from the baby’s room. Concerned that she’d fallen out of her crib and hit her head, she woke her husband, and the two of them dashed out of bed, nightclothes aflutter, across the hall to their younger child’s door.
What they found within amazed and perplexed them. Aaron sat in the rocking chair next to the crib, holding his half-sister gently, and feeding her from a warm bottle by the light of a single scented candle. A golf club stood propped in the corner next to the chair.
When they came in, Aaron smiled. “Sshh, he whispered, “she’s almost back to sleep.”
~The End~
Moderators, if non-gaming related fiction isn't welcome at ENWorld, I apologize.
----------------
Aaron Isling lived in a world of grays. Outside his bedroom window, storm clouds shrouded the sky and dumped misty rain on the terraced lawns and sport-utility vehicles of a sleek neighborhood of social climbers. He watched as a yellow-striped cat with a white breast darted across his new dirt lawn toward a neighbor’s carport. It was wet and tawny and thoroughly miserable. Aaron sympathized. He felt thoroughly miserable as well.
“Aaron! Get down here! There’s more to carry up!” Robert, his stepfather, commanded from downstairs. Sighing, Aaron clambered off the box he’d been sitting on and trudged out into the upstairs hallway. He stopped at the head of the stairs and glowered at the scene below.
Robert Bellsly, his mother’s second husband, stood in the doorway to the new four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom home, imperiously directing the movers who carried the family furniture into the house. It was so new that it still carried that peculiar smell of new houses, like stale garlic butter leather. Aaron found it distasteful. What had been wrong with their old house? His old room had smelled like home. His new room smelled like sawdust and paint.
“Aaron!” blustered Robert. He gestured harshly, as though striking the air with his open palm. “I said come here! There’s still dozens of boxes to bring in before you’re done. Now get to it. You can play later.”
“I wasn’t playing,” Aaron began, but his stepfather cut him off.
“Don’t back-talk me! Just do it!”
“But it’s raining,” Aaron protested, unsure of where he was going with this, or why he was going there so vehemently. He knew the work needed to be done.
“Go!” His stepfather declared coldly. He pointed past the head of a struggling moving man who was trying to wedge the family couch through the front door. Aaron knew that further protest was pointless, that he had pushed Robert as far as he could dare. Further argument would elicit punishment. A tiny voice inside urged him on anyway, just to spite his stepfather, but Aaron was an exceptionally rational young man when he had to be. Annoyed for no reason he could articulate, he did as he was told, stepping through the kitchen, into the carport, and out into the hazy rain.
--------------
“Coo-coo-coo!” said Aaron’s mother. “Coo-coo-coo! Who’s a good girl?”
The child in the crib wiggled her toes and gurgled happily. Aaron, standing outside the doorway, looked at the scene in disgust. Downstairs, a ballgame blared from the surround-sound stereo system, and Robert could be heard raging at the referee, who apparently knew nothing about calling plays. Aaron wondered how the referee could hold his job if he was really that bad.
“Aaron,” called his mother over her shoulder, “Run to the fridge and bring a bottle up, would you? Your sister’s hungry.”
“Half-sister,” Aaron corrected dully. He turned away quickly, but felt his mother’s hot stare between his shoulder blades as he bounded down the stairs two at a time. Her chastisement evaded, she called shrilly, “Don’t run on the stairs! I’m not paying for a broken leg!”
From the living room, Robert added thunderously, “Aaron! Stop running in the house!”
Aaron reached the kitchen and rebelliously took two quick steps and slid across the polished tile in his socks. He lost his balance and almost fell, but caught himself on the counter. He was very angry but couldn’t say why. He flung open the refrigerator door, yanked out a bottle of formula and slapped the door shut. The contents of the fridge rattled dangerously inside. He felt vindicated.
“Here,” he said to his mother when he returned.
“Watch that attitude, mister,” she replied. “I’m not telling you again.”
Aaron wasn’t sure if she meant his attitude toward his half-sister or his running indoors, and he wasn’t sure he cared. He looked at the infant in the crib. She stared at him, mystified, as if trying to figure out who he was and how he fit into her small world of bed and mother and playthings. She infuriated him. He waited until his mom turned away, then he crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue at the child. Her face scrunched up, and then she kicked and flailed her tiny fists. When his mother began to comfort her – "Sshh, sshh. There, there.” – he fled to his bedroom. He felt a strange mixture of satisfaction and regret. As he put on his pajamas and climbed into bed he decided that tomorrow he’d be nicer to his half-sister. It wasn’t her fault that his dad had left. His mom had told him that they’d “grown apart,” but Aaron suspected she’d driven him away. And now there was a new stepfather and a new baby and a new house and a new school on the other side of town, and he didn’t know whom to blame.
When his mother came by to tuck him in, he pretended to be asleep. She walked in briskly, folded the corners of his sheets under the mattress with several sharp motions, and left without kissing him goodnight. When she turned off the light and closed the door, Aaron felt lost, as though she was shutting him away for good.
--------------
Aaron awoke sharply. He came instantly, vividly awake with total clarity. He opened his eyes and stared intensely at the wall across his bedroom. The Crab Nebula poster, eerie under the orange halogen light from the street lamp out front, stared back at him. His heart beat rapidly, and he lay tense and unmoving under the sheets, as though frozen in an ancient glacier. He realized that he was frightened and afraid to move, but he didn’t know why. He breathed quietly and listened to the stillness of the house. He found it to be unnatural.
His old house had groaned when the wind blew or the cold settled in, the pipes in the walls had cracked their knuckles like old men when winter blew down, and the floorboards had creaked musical notes when you walked across them, every room in a different key. But this house, this new house, was silent like a tomb. They’d visited several times while it had been under construction, and he’d seen that the pipes weren’t made of iron, but of plastic and copper. The floors were carpet or tile over concrete, not hardwood. And the windows, double paned, hardly rattled at all when the wind blew. His old house had a personality, like an amusing relative that had taken up permanent residence, but this new house was dead. It had the personality of a zombie.
From the next room over, Aaron heard a bump. It was a muffled, shuffling sort of sound with a rasping conclusion. Inexplicably, he flinched in terror. Thoughts swarmed in his head. That was the baby’s room. Was his mother feeding or changing her, as she often did in the middle of the night? Had she fallen out of the crib? Maybe she had somehow climbed the safety rail and was lying on the floor right now, hurt. But why wasn’t she crying? Maybe she couldn’t. He lay there long moments, hoping that his mother and Robert had heard it too. Maybe they’d get up and go see what was the matter.
They didn’t. He thought about yelling, but he decided against it, imagining the trouble he’d get into if it turned out to be nothing. It probably was, after all, nothing.
But then why was he so scared?
The noise thumped again from behind the wall, like someone was moving around a large object. He shivered. How could they not hear it? He realized that he’d been holding his breath, so he exhaled quietly, and was amazed to discover his breath frost away from his mouth visibly in the dim orange light. He shivered then, and realized that it was freezing in his room. He looked at the calendar on the wall next to the door. He could read it in the dim light. It said June.
He blinked and carefully rubbed his eyes, moving his body as little as possible. He realized that he’d begun to shiver, and if he wasn’t careful his teeth would begin to rattle and it would give him away and whatever it was that was in his sister’s room would come for him and that would be the end.
What was going on? He wondered desperately. Why am I thinking there’s something in the baby’s room? It could be nothing. It could be Robert moving furniture around. But in the middle of the night? On a Wednesday, when he worked in the morning? Maybe it was a burglar. But why, then, was it so cold? It felt frigid as November in Aaron’s room.
The bump slithered across the wall again, long and insidious. Unconsciously, Aaron whimpered. The noise stopped immediately.
Oh, no, he thought. He dared not breathe. Seconds stretched into eternity, and he waited. He felt a burning sensation in the back of his throat, and black dots swam before his eyes. He’d have to take a breath soon.
The noise started up again, and he sucked in air carefully, parceling it out like a diver returning to the surface from the ocean floor. Something was very, very wrong. Mom and Robert hadn’t awakened. The baby wasn’t crying. And something was in the house, not fifteen feet away on the other side of a thin wall.
A feeling welled up within Aaron then, and though he couldn’t describe it, he clung to it intensely, for it spread warmth and purpose through his limbs. With the utmost care, he peeled back his sheets and sat up. His feet found his slippers and he wriggled into them gratefully. He glanced around the room, and his eyes alighted on a dim bundle tucked in the corner behind his bed. Softly, he tiptoed to the bundle and gripped a nine-iron, part of a set of golf clubs forced upon him by Robert last summer. A successful man’s game, Robert had insisted, and one you’ll learn to play. Aaron thought about the snoring brute in his mother’s bed. For the first time, Aaron was grateful Robert hadn’t let him refuse.
The noise from his sister’s room continued, and now it had a harsher, more urgent quality to it, as though the perpetrator had abandoned being stealthy. Aaron sidestepped across his bedroom, turned the doorknob as gently as he could, and stepped into the hall. He realized that had this been his old house, the creak of floorboards and oil-deprived hinges would have already given him up. He trudged silently on the carpet toward the baby’s room, then stopped. Considering, he hurried as quietly as he could to the hall closet and retrieved a tall blueberry-scented candle. Fumbling urgently in the dark – for the thumps now came more quickly – he located the lighter and flicked it on. A merry tongue of fire licked the candle’s wick, and Aaron stood now and dashed toward his sister’s door.
Candle in one hand and golf club in the other, he burst into the room. The crib was no longer in the corner by the door, instead it now sat adjacent to the window, which was open to the night and blowing a cold wind inside. In the dark under the crib something moved on two legs, a quick pitter-patter of steps, followed by a tiny growl. Aaron flipped the light switch and nothing happened. Distantly he felt this should surprise him, but it didn’t. Instead, the warming flicker of the candle reassured him. Wielding his nine-iron, he half-stepped toward the crib and shouted, “Hey! Get away from there!”
He heard a trio of squeals then, like pigs gargling with soda pop, and two small, dark forms climbed out of the crib and landed wobbly on the plush floor. All three forms, like squat shadows, advanced on him and growled. When they growled, the sound they made cut deeper than a pack of stray dogs he’d once encountered. Instinctively, Aaron thrust the candle forward instead of the golf club. The creatures squealed and covered their faces, and Aaron caught a glimpse of piggish noses, slimy gray skin, filthy black hair and rotted, pointy teeth. Emboldened, he stepped into the room, the candle held in front of him like a talisman. The little monsters scattered then like leaves. One retreated to the window and climbed backward like a spider, its head twisted toward Aaron at an impossible angle. It snarled at him with feral rage and disappeared over the sill. Another dashed between his legs and into the hall beyond. Aaron jumped and yelped; its passage left an oily residue on the inside of his legs that could feel through his cotton pajamas. The third leapt at the baby’s closet where her diapers were stored. The door was ajar, and it bounded inside and slammed it closed behind it. As Aaron stood there in shock, the temperature in the room slowly climbed back to normal, and the light waxed dimly at first, then reflected glaringly off the room’s stark white walls. Cautiously, he approached the closet door and flung it open. The light revealed nothing but hanging baby clothes, stacks of diapers and a folded up stroller. Whatever had happened was over.
He looked at the crib from across the room. Silence. Fear gripped him then, not a fear for his own safety, but fear for the tiny person who had entered his life so abruptly and had been the target of so much of his anger and resentment. Hesitantly, afraid of a thousand awful sights that might await him in the crib, he stepped across the room and peeked inside.
His sister lay swathed in her bedclothes and teddy bear blanket amidst the candy corn sheets and armada of plush animals. She appeared asleep. He reached down and touched her, and felt a startling coldness in her limbs.
“Oh, no,” he said aloud, “No, no. I’m sorry.” Aaron felt like crying then, staggered by his failure. He dropped the nine-iron with a thunk, but then his sister stirred and yawned. Her eyes opened, and she stared around searchingly for a bit before coming to rest her gaze upon Aaron. When she saw him, she opened her mouth and grinned toothlessly.
Later, Aaron’s mother was awoken by a thumping noise from the baby’s room. Concerned that she’d fallen out of her crib and hit her head, she woke her husband, and the two of them dashed out of bed, nightclothes aflutter, across the hall to their younger child’s door.
What they found within amazed and perplexed them. Aaron sat in the rocking chair next to the crib, holding his half-sister gently, and feeding her from a warm bottle by the light of a single scented candle. A golf club stood propped in the corner next to the chair.
When they came in, Aaron smiled. “Sshh, he whispered, “she’s almost back to sleep.”
~The End~
Last edited:
