Never in my life did I want to hit my boss harder than any criminal I encountered. To me, you were not replaceable – far, far from it. People thought you would be useless, a waste of time, a money pit, but you proved them wrong case after case. You became my best friend, helping me on the job with your keen senses and in other coincidental ways like meeting the woman who would become my wife because you needed a custom uniform.
From the first case we solved together where you found evidence no one else wouldn’t have been able to find, I knew we would be together forever. Hell, I honestly figured I would go before you, and you would become someone else’s partner. At least, that was my intention when your eyes flicked to life for the first time.
Then today, for some reason, you burst into the room – without my authorization – triggering the bomb. Was there a bug in your code? Was it a malfunctioning sensor? Or did you know it was a trap and you sacrificed yourself?
There was nothing left of you, so I’ll never know for sure. I wish I could transfer your soul into my next model. Instead, I’ll just pour my heart into it, hoping to get the same results.
Then, for you, I will solve this mystery.
From a Theme Thursday prompt, the challenge was to write a 100-500 word story on the theme of “Loyalty” without using the word. I hope you enjoy my sci-fi angle to the challenge.
While doing her rounds as captain of the spaceship, The Glimmingdrift, Alvas checks in with the docking bay to find an unlogged vehicle consisting of eight reindeer and a red sleigh.
The food hall at The Glimmingdrift buzzed with the morning crowd. Travelers from various planets and workers aboard the space station filled the space, their voices and the sound of cutlery blending together. Alvas waited at the Starlight Brew counter, surrounded by the rich smells of coffee and hibiscus. She breathed in, feeling at ease.
Oola, the barista and owner, moved smoothly behind the counter, her eight tentacles working in perfect rhythm. Three steamed milk, two ground fresh leaves, and the other three handled orders on different screens.
“The usual, Captain?” Oola asked, her purple skin shimmering with a friendly iridescent sheen.
“Yes, please, Oola,” Alvas replied. “Got another busy day ahead.”
Alvas tapped her wrist-style networker to the scanner, and a chime confirmed the shinnies transfer. She set down her space-gray ceramic mug, still using the handmade, crooked-lettered “Best Spaceship Captain Mayor Ever” gift from last year’s party.
Before Oola could pour the tea, a wall of crimson fur bumped into Alvas’s shoulder. The impact almost knocked her over, and her orange tail whipped out to steady herself.
“Out of the way!” a deep, gravelly voice grumbled.
Scourge stood over her, a seven-foot minotaur in a black silk cape that hadn’t been brushed in weeks. His red fur was matted in places, and his eyes looked tired and restless.
Behind him, Tim Crotchet hurried to keep up, his mechanical leg whirring as he navigated the crowd.
The minotaur didn’t acknowledge the Captain. He merely grunted, his gaze fixed on the exit toward the theatre district, Dionysus Circle. “Keep moving, Tim! The Birmingham won’t fill its seats with us standing around.”
Tim cast a quick, apologetic glance back at Alvas. “Sorry, Captain Sunback. He’s just… focused.”
Alvas saw the 10-year-old boy’s shoulders slump as he struggled with the heavy canvas prop-bag. The two vanished into the crowd. Oola poured tea into Alvas’s mug, her tentacles curling in a sign of shared worry.
“He gets worse every time I see him,” Oola whispered. “He used to be the most charming director in the district.”
Alvas took a slow sip of tea, but the warmth didn’t help the cold feeling inside her. She noticed a small, faded scorch mark on her mug. It reminded her of the day three years ago when the original Birmingham Theatre burned. She sighed, feeling the heaviness of the anniversary.
“Today is the third anniversary of the fire at The Birmingham Theatre,” she murmured to Oola.
Oola’s skin dimmed to a somber grayish purple. “Oh, that’s right. Goodness. I still remember seeing the show that turned out to be Bob and Emily’s last. Felt like the whole ship mourned them for weeks.”
“Scourge hasn’t been himself since his partners died,” Alvas said, her voice rough and quiet as her gaze drifted toward the spaceship’s high ceilings. “I still haven’t figured out how the blaze started.”
“Yeah, I feel bad for Tim, losing his parents,” Oola sighed, eyes shifting away. She busied herself with the hot pipes, mumbling a curse under her breath. “Okay, I’d better check my beans. Have a good day, Alvas.”
Alvas raised her mug in thanks. “Yeah, I’d better get back to the Command Center.”
The low, rhythmic thrum of The Glimmingdrift’s ion engines vibrated through the soles of Alvas’s boots as she took the express lift to the station’s bridge.
Her orange scales reflected the elevator’s neon violet light, shining like hammered copper. As she rose, the station looked less like a city and more like a floating jewelry box. She stepped out, her thick tail flicking away from the threshold as the metal doors closed with a soft hiss.
Alvas stepped onto the bridge, where the amber warmth of the secondary lamps acted as an optical balm, smoothing the jagged memories of the Birmingham fire. High above, the neon light bar bled a rich plum glow across the pearl-white workstations, turning the command center into a lavender sanctuary. The room breathed with the Captain’s intent, with consoles tilted to meet tufted paws, and holographic displays adjusted their heights to accommodate a dozen different anatomies. Seeing the quadratums and technicians operate in seamless harmony sent a surge of heat through her scales.
Alvas squared her shoulders, bolstered by the sight of a crew that flourished within the sanctuary she had rebuilt from The Glimmingdrift’s seedy past and transformed the station into a tourist destination for those with a love for live theatre and performances.
Alvas squared her shoulders, ready to guide everyone through another day.
Five quadratums worked at the main stations. Their cube-shaped bodies have been compared to bright, oversized fuzzy dice, each with a different color. One moss-green quadratum handled communications, while a red one watched the docking bay. A blue quadratum jumped onto a chair that adjusted to its height. These furry beings worked with fineness, their paws moving quickly over the holographic controls.
Alvas knelt down to meet the red quadratum, Vianola, at eye level and asked, “How’s the morning arrivals treating us?”
“Smoothly, Captain,” Vianola chirped. “The passengers on the Starbringer II just finished disembarking.”
Alvas stood and walked to the reinforced window. Below, the docking bay stretched out like a huge warehouse. Dozens of ships, from shiny chrome couriers to bulky ore-haulers and fancy passenger yachts, rested in their cradles, their engines cooling.
She tapped the black rim of her glasses. A soft chime sounded in her ear, and the lenses lit up as the digital display turned on. Her view zoomed in.
“Vianola,” Alvas murmured. “What is that at Bay 15?”
Vianola’s tufted ears flicked. The crimson quadratum spun its chair, paws blurring across a glass interface. “Scanners are clean, Captain. Bay 15 is reserved for the Solar Flare’s arrival in three hours. Currently, it’s just empty deck space.”
Alvas frowned, her pupils narrowing to thin black slits. Through her glasses, she saw more than just empty deck space. A shiny red sleigh sat there, its runners made from wood so dark it looked like frozen midnight. Eight animals with thin legs and branching antlers stood in two neat rows, their brown, rough fur standing out against the bay’s white tiles.
“Raise your seat, Vianola. Use your eyes, not the sensors.”
The chair hummed, lifting the red cube above the consoles. Vianola gasped. Her fur puffed out until she looked like a startled dandelion. “What is that? It’s not reflecting a single photon on the LIDAR. It’s like a hole in the universe.”
“It’s advanced,” Alvas said, her tail giving a sharp, intrigued lash. “Or it’s something else entirely. Keep a lock on my comms.”
Alvas jogged to the elevator, leaving the bridge for the ship’s busy port of entry. She moved with purpose, her tail helping her balance as she turned past three technicians.
“Morning, Kael. Shift’s looking good on the oxygen scrubbers,” she noted, not breaking her stride.
“Thanks, Captain!” the technician called back, startled she’d noticed his specific task.
At Docking Bay 15, the dock manager, Magnolia, had already arrived. Her serpentine half coiled, snake-hair stirring, she tapped furiously at her tablet, brow furrowed.
“Captain, I was just about to call,” Magnolia said, her voice tinged with confusion. “We’re getting these impossible scanner readings from Bay 15. There was no warp-jump signature, no airlock breach. It’s as if something has appeared out of thin air.”
Magnolia’s brow furrowed as she double-checked her tablet for anomalies.
Alvas felt a shiver of anticipation as she walked carefully toward the bay. Even before she saw the sleigh, the air was thick with mystery. The bay smelled of pine and mountain air, scents better suited to the Jade Ribs mountain range on The Green Planet than on a space station.
“What are these creatures?” Alvas asked.
“We’re reindeer,” one of them spoke.
Alvas stepped back. Magnolia straightened her back, her body lengthening by several inches as she braced herself for a fight.
“They speak,” Alvas whispered, her orange tail curling into a tight, defensive coil.
“They speak,” a smaller reindeer at the back mimicked, its tone a perfect, mocking mirror of Alvas’s voice.
“Identify your commanding officer,” Magnolia commanded, her voice like grinding stone. “Who brought you onto this station?”
The lead reindeer, a stag with a broad chest and moss-covered antlers, shook its head. The silver bells on his harness chimed.
“He goes by many names,” the stag said, a hint of a tease in its dark eyes.
“Like Father Christmas,” another reindeer shouted with a sparkle.
“Or Saint Nicholas,” another said.
“Or Kris Kringle,” another added.
“But for the sake of your manifest,” the lead stag said, “you can call him Santa Claus.”
“Santa Claus?” Alvas repeated. The name felt odd as she said it.
Magnolia’s snake-hair hissed, the tiny heads swaying as if trying to pick a scent. “I’ve heard stories about Santa Claus, Captain. He’s an Earth deity who would monitor the moral behavior of the youth and reward the ‘good’ ones with toys.” She flicked a tongue out. “I know some humans who still leave him dairy and baked goods as an offering around this time of year, but he’s just a folklore figure.”
Alvas adjusted her glasses. “A folk hero with stealth tech and the ability to travel between distant worlds? That sounds unlikely, even for us.”
“He’s no myth,” the lead stag said, his voice echoing like a cathedral bell. “Here’s here at the request of a child who wrote him a letter. This child didn’t ask for toys or shinnies. He asked Santa to help his guardian find his heart again after they both lost everyone in a fire.”
Alvas’s brow furrowed. “Wait… Are you talking about Tim and Scourge?”
The stag lowered his head slightly, conveying a sense of solemnity.
“I am,” the reindeer said, his eyes dark and mournful. “Tim Crotchet wrote to Santa, pleading, ‘Please, Santa, bring back the uncle who used to make me laugh. Bring back his smile.’”
Magnolia stepped forward, her serpentine lower half coiling into a thoughtful spiral. Her snake-hair retreated into a tight, quiet knot. “I remember when the Crotchets were the stars of that stage. Scourge wasn’t just their business partner. Those three were inseparable.”
“I still hear the screams from that night,” Alvas whispered, the flames of the old Birmingham Theatre replaying in her mind. “This was my first year in command. I built Dionysus Circle out of the literal ashes of that fire, yet the mystery of the blaze still pricks at my conscience.”
“Scourge pulled the boy from the wreckage,” the stag said, his dark eyes reflecting the bay’s white lights. “But the man who emerged from the smoke was a stranger. He left his spirit behind with his friends.”
“He’s been distant ever since,” Alvas said. “I’ve seen him go from a creative artist to someone closed off, and I never knew the reason.”
“Tim just wants his ‘Uncle Scourge’ back,” another reindeer added.
“Okay, so what does this Santa look like?” Alvas asked, her skepticism clashing with the weight of the stag’s words. “If he wants to help, then you can count me in, too.”
One of the reindeer at the back stepped forward, her silver bells jingling. “He’s no illusion. He’s a human who wears red from head to toe.”
“With a fluffy white trim, that doesn’t make him look slim,” another added with a mischievous spark in his eyes.
“With a little round belly that shakes like a bowl of jelly,” a third finished with a rhythmic giggle.
Magnolia rubbed her temples, her snakes hanging down in frustration. “So now we’re searching for a chubby, well-dressed legend who shakes when he laughs. My security numbers are going to be a mess.”
“Magnolia, keep an eye on the sleigh,” Alvas said, already turning toward the exit. “I’m going to Dionysus Circle. If this Santa is real, and he’s here to perform open-heart surgery on Scourge’s personality, he’s going to need help.”
The Daily Art Desk travel guide once famously noted, “Visiting The Glimmingdrift without catching a show at Dionysus Circle is like attending a cosmic supernova without sunglasses: technically possible, but you’ll spend the rest of your life regretting your mistake.”
Twelve independent performance venues formed this sprawling district, the largest and most popular sector of the space station. Travelers from various planets were queuing to see the next show, huddled in groups discussing the performance they had just watched, or trying to get an autograph.
Ignoring the buskers, dancers, prompters, and hordes of visitors, the urgency of her mission pushed her through the crowds.
She scanned the sea of faces, searching for a human clad in crimson. The station’s security scanners failed to register anyone matching that description. If the reindeer and sleigh remained ghosts to the sensors, the pilot likely shared the same stealth properties. Alvas shifted her focus, tasking the system to locate Scourge instead. The minotaur had last been flagged in the center courtyard, aggressively promoting his newest tragedy.
Alvas carved a path through the throng gathered around the director. Scourge commanded the space, a seven-foot-tall mountain of bright red fur stuffed into a velvet three-piece suit. A silky black cape draped over his broad shoulders, twitching as he gestured from atop a mini-stage.
“The next performance of A Disastrous Carol commences in precisely one hour!” Scourge bellowed, his voice a deep, theatrical rumble. “There’s only a handful of seats remaining! Get your tickets at The Birmingham Theatre!”
The crowd cheered as the director left his platform. Behind the big minotaur, a small boy hurried to keep up. Tim Crotchet’s mechanical leg made a strained, steady sound as he handed out flyers. Scourge didn’t look back, just gave an order and made his way back to his theatre.
Alvas moved to follow, but a sudden collision with a soft, velvet-clad mass halted her progress.
“Excuse me,” Alvas began, her orange tail twitching in surprise. She looked up, and her breath hitched. “Wait. You’re Santa Claus?”
“Ho, ho, ho!” The laughter bubbled from deep within the man’s chest, causing his belly to tremble like a bowl of jelly. “Indeed, I am, Alvas.”
The captain blinked. “How do you know my name?”
“I keep a very thorough list of everyone, especially those with hearts as gold as yours.”
“But I—”
“You’re here to assist in helping young Tim, aren’t you?” Santa asked, his eyes twinkling with a kindness that felt ancient.
“The reindeer told me about the letter,” Alvas replied, finding her footing. “They said you’re here to help Scourge and Tim, but what can you do, and how do you even know all of this?”
Santa chuckled and reached for his red cap. He took it off and put his hand inside. Somehow, his arm went much deeper than the hat should allow, reminding Alvas of her own gear with its roomy pockets. He pulled out a glowing crystal orb.
“The truth resides within this glass,” Santa said, offering the sphere.
Alvas grasped the crystal. Warmth seeped into her palms as a soft hum resonated through her scales. As she peered into the depths, a sequence of light and sound flooded her vision.
The glass revealed a younger, laughing Scourge—his crimson fur vibrant and his eyes bright—sharing a meal with Bob and Emily Crotchet. The trio looked inseparable, their faces lit by the glow of a shared dream. A younger Tim came running, jumping on Scourge’s lap. They all shared a laugh.
Then came the fire. The vision showed the terrifying chaos of the stage accident at The Birmingham during Alvas’s first year in command. A specialized “stellar-flare” prop meant to simulate a supernova suffered a freak containment breach. The ionized gas didn’t just burn. The substance reacted with the stage’s localized gravity field, creating a hungry, blue-hot inferno that defied standard physics.
Alvas watched the tragedy unfold with agonizing clarity, finally seeing why the ship’s safety systems had failed. The automated suppression sensors had been placed in “Performance Bypass Mode,” a standard theatrical setting designed to prevent the fire-foam from ruining expensive shows during the use of stage fog. By the time the central computer recognized the ionized signature as a lethal threat and overrode the bypass, the blue flames had already devoured the structural supports.
Scourge didn’t hesitate. The minotaur dove into the heart of the blue heat, his silk cape igniting as he shielded a wailing Tim. He emerged as a charred, broken version of himself, the boy clutched to his chest, just as the ceiling of the Birmingham collapsed into a mountain of slag.
The montage shifted through a somber funeral and the slow, painful years that followed. Alvas watched Scourge’s kindness wither. He transformed into a bitter, distant shell of a man who looked at Tim not as a nephew to love, but as a living reminder of the friends he couldn’t pull from the disaster.
The crystal faded. Alvas stood in the busy street of Dionysus Circle, her chest aching. She felt empty inside, letting her tail slouch on the floor.
“Oh my,” she whispered, her voice thick with the weight of the vision.
Santa tucked the orb back into the impossible depths of his hat. “Will you help me?”
“Yes,” Alvas said, her resolve hardening. “But Scourge is… I don’t know where to begin or what to say to him to make any of this right or better.”
Santa rubbed his snowy beard in thought. “A writer’s dilemma, then. If words fail, perhaps we should show him. How are your acting skills?”
Scourge’s director’s suite was more like a graveyard for costumes than a living space. Outfits and props filled most of the room, stuffed into drawers and spilling from cabinets in a mess that would frustrate any organizer. Tim had spent three years trying to make sense of the system, but it never got easier. Scourge, though, always seemed able to pull out the exact piece he needed, as if he could force the mess to obey him.
Tim huddled on a makeshift chair composed of discarded velvet capes while Scourge reclined in a plush leather seat, focused entirely on a “lucky” pre-show sandwich. Without looking, Scourge tore off the dry crusts and flicked the scraps toward the corner. Tim caught the bread before the floor could claim the morsels, devouring the dry edges with a practiced, hollow hunger.
Three gentle knocks vibrated against the heavy oak door. Scourge didn’t move, merely waving a massive, fur-covered hand toward the entrance. Tim complied, limping on his whirring mechanical leg to pull the door open.
The lush, red-velvet hallway stood empty. No patrons, no stagehands, no ghosts.
“Who stands there?” Scourge barked, his voice dripping with theatrical annoyance.
“No one, Uncle Scourge,” Tim whispered, clicking the latch shut.
As soon as the door locked, the room exploded into chaos. Every drawer opened at once, and a swirl of polyester, silk, and old wool filled the air. Scourge yelled as his lucky sandwich was caught in the mess, while Tim stood frozen by the door. The air grew cold. The clothes spun faster, then dropped to the floor, revealing Alvas dressed in a bright green robe with a wreath of pinecones and lights on her head.
“I am the Ghost of Christmas,” Alvas proclaimed, packed with a magical punch that vibrated through the floorboards.
“Wait… How… Who?” Scourge stammered, his hands trembling as he retreated into his chair.
Tim smiled. He knew.
“I know the man you once were,” Ghost Alvas thundered, the drawers rattled with her message.
A pile of clothes rose, transforming into a miniature stage. Fabric puppets acted out a scene from three years ago, showing a younger Scourge diving into the flames, pulling a tiny, soot-covered Tim to safety.
“You’ve spent years being distant from the boy, Scourge, thinking that if you kept your heart away, you wouldn’t get hurt again,” Alvas whispered. “You’ve been saving every shiny to send him away, calling your plan a ‘better life,’ but all he ever wanted was his uncle to be there. Remember the bedtime story about wizards you used to tell him? That was his favorite. It’s the laughter from those stories that he really misses.”
Scourge dropped to his knees, his massive frame shaking. “I thought… I thought I was a curse. I thought if I sent him far enough away from my failures, he’d be safe.”
“What happened back then was a freak accident,” Alvas said.
“No!” Scourge shouted. “It was my fault.”
“It was no one’s fault,” Alvas said with a hushed, forgiving tone. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t the Captain’s fault. It was no one’s fault…”
“But—”
Scourge tried to speak, but Alvas raised her hand. The clothes started to swirl around the room again, softer this time, like ghosts dancing around.
“Tim, tell him what your heart desires,” Alvas said, pointing to the boy.
“I-I want my Uncle Scourge back,” Tim said, bursting into tears. “I missed how you would tell me stories before bed. I missed how you snuck me treats. I missed you.”
Upon speaking his truth, the clothes in the room collapsed into a harmless heap, including the outfit Ghost Alvas wore as she disappeared, too.
Scourge remained on the floor for a long moment before looking up at Tim. The bitterness in the minotaur’s eyes had vanished, replaced by a raw, watery clarity. He reached out a massive hand, not to flick away, but to beckon the boy forward.
“Tim,” Scourge croaked. “I’ve been saving everything I earned to get you off this station, to the best performing arts school on The Green Planet. I thought I was doing you a favor by being a ghost myself.” He paused for a beat. “I was wrong.”
Tim didn’t wait. He threw his arms around the minotaur’s thick neck, burying his face in the crimson fur. “I don’t want to be somewhere else, Uncle. I just want you to include me again. I want to help and learn from you.”
Scourge squeezed back, his broad shoulders heaving. “As you wish.”
He let go of Tim and looked him in the eyes. “For now on, no more tragedies. Only comedies going forward!”
Out in the hallway, Alvas emerged from a twirl of snow as she stood before Santa.
Her orange tail moved in a slow, happy rhythm. “I’m not sure how we managed that miracle.”
“Just some Christmas magic,” Santa said with a wink as his belly shook in jelly-like fashion. “I believe our work here is done.”
Alvas looked at the man in red. “Not sure how I’m going to log what happened today.”
She pondered for a moment, touched by the magical unfolding of events.
Santa chuckled. “Some things aren’t meant for logs, Captain.”
As the air around Santa began to sparkle with a fine, silver frost, the man vanished in a blink.
Alvas’s networker on her wrist vibrated, and a 3D hologram of Magnolia popped up.
“Captain! The reindeer! They just… they’re gone!”
“Don’t worry, Magnolia,” Alvas said, a smile warming her scales. “Everything is fine.”
“But how did he do it?” Magnolia’s voice crackled with confusion. “No fuel, no engines, no flight plan!”
Alvas looked one last time at the spot where the man in red had stood.
A notification from Vianola chimed. She tapped ‘Answer,’ putting both of them on the screen.
“Captain, I just got a report about an invasive, illegal plant on board,” Vianola reported.
Alvas chuckled. “Never a dull moment.”
A Rescue Request to Santa was inspired by the following writing prompt: “As captain of the city-sized space shuttle, you get a notification that a ship has just entered your landing bay, but when you go to check, all you find are 9 reindeer attached to a sleigh.”
I thought this prompt would be a fun way to kick off my December short stories. It took me some time to build the world for this spaceship city, but I had fun, and I may come back to this space station to tell more stories here. In my universe, this story takes place after Who Killed the Toymaker Aboard Starbringer?, as The Glimmingdrift was where Detective Psychon was heading to for work. This also places the story at the same time as Script Thief, as the detective is working on his case while Alvas is helping Santa.
Update for December 2025. As I’m revisiting my older works, I spent this holiday season giving this one a significant rewrite. I expanded upon the world aboard the spaceship, introducing Scourge and Tim earlier in the story as I changed their backstory away from Scourge having bought Tim to work as an assistant to Scourge, being his guardian, after Tim’s parents and his best friends died in a tragic accident. I felt this past pack had more punch and made for a better progression arc for everyone. I also realized that in the original version, after Santa scared Scourge into freeing Tim, Scourge went unpunished. Then, to give Alvas more personal motivation and relevance, I connected the theatre fire to her and had Santa use magic to make her the Ghost of Christmas Past, rather than puppeting clothes to be the ghost. Overall, I’m much happier with the story!
I hope you enjoy this fun holiday story. Maybe someone will read it to their kids?
Peyton was warned the lyre would empower her emotions.
“I need to try a different approach!” Peyton shouted in frustration.
The lyre did come with a warning that the musical instrument would empower her emotions. She thought the inventor meant the expression figuratively and not literally. The golden lyre’s ouroboros body of a dragon eating their tail should’ve warned her this was no ordinary instrument. She tried to play a calming song but couldn’t string together any music against the wind’s angry whips.
She retreated inside her tiny rental cabin in the middle of the forest outside Hochatown.
“That’ll teach me to play a song about my breakup on a magical lyre,” Peyton mumbled, trying to make a joke out of her predicament.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and let her mind drift to happy thoughts of cute baby animals and silly memes as she played a peaceful tune. The pounding winds softened against the wooden cabin until the storm came to a complete rest with the song’s conclusion.
Peyton opened her eyes to the sight of the lyre’s inventor standing before her. Peyton cussed, nearly dropping the instrument.
“What did you give me, Modva?” Peyton demand. “Are you like an actual alien or something? I thought you were in a costume when I met you. And how did you even get in here and find me?”
Peyton met Modva outside a small used bookstore earlier that afternoon in town. Peyton assumed Modva was a human in her late 20s, just like herself and that the light purple skin was cosmetic. She didn’t give the inventor’s appearance second thought even though she didn’t know of any book character who wore a long, white lab coat with black spandex leggings and a black sweater. Two hair sticks tied up Modva’s black hair with rubies encapsulated on the ends, complementing her red sneakers.
“First, as previously instructed, I gifted you with the Winds of Emotion Lyre to help you process your feelings,” Modva calmly and factually stated. “Second, you would technically classify me as an alien based on your definition of being born on another planet. Third, I have tracking installed on all of my inventions to follow up with people. Finally, your door was unlocked.”
Peyton stood silent for a moment as she processed what she’d learned. She marched up to the inventor and thrust the lyre in her arms.
“I don’t know what your endgame is, but whatever it is, I don’t want any part of it,” Peyton huffed as she opened the front door.
“All I was hoping was for you to learn that the journey itself was all that mattered,” she explained as she left the cabin on her own accord, putting up no fight to respect Peyton’s wishes.
“I don’t need some dangerous magically lyre for that,” Peyton scoffed before shutting the door.
Modva sighed. “Let’s try this day again.”
Modva stepped off the porch’s steps and walked down a trail to a free-standing wooden white door with a red frame. She pressed down on the black handle and pushed open the door. The door contained another time and place where the sun shined on the small town. The door had a view of Peyton enjoying the view and beers from Beavers Bend Brewery – before Modva gifted her the lyre outside the bookshop.
Modva adjusted her lab coat. “I need to try a different approach.”
This week’s short story introduces Modva, a new end-timer! As touched on in the story, Modva’s journey throughout time and space involves her helping people with fantastical inventions that reshape reality.
The story came about from a writing challenge where authors had a list of words, sentence blocks, defining features, and a word count limit of 800. The Defining Features were, “End the story the way you start it. i.e. use a cyclical structure” and “an ouroboros is present somewhere in the story.” The Sentence Blocks were, “Let’s get it started again” and “The journey itself was all that mattered,” which I used all of them. I used two of the four words from the word list, “Cyclical, Doc, Wind, and Music.”
While driving her through the countryside to visit her parents for the holidays, Jacqui realizes there are no stars in the sky.
The lights from the car Jacqui rented barely pierced through the Britain countryside. Delays plagued her flight from the states, and she hadn’t planned on driving at midnight. Regret began to set up a room in her mind for not booking a hotel room for the night, but her parents were eager to see her for the holidays visit, and a free bed is a free bed. While she was exhausted, she knew being in the middle of nowhere shouldn’t be as dark as it was that night. She looked up at the sky.
There were no stars.
The sky was pitch black like someone covered it up. Not even the moon was visible.
“This is some crazy Doctor Who level weirdness,” Jacqui commented.
Jacqui was no stranger to the British sci-fi time-traveling series. Her social media account would reveal photos of her cosplaying as characters from the TV show, usually as Martha Jones, as she bore a similar resemblance. However, she never remotely considered an out of this world experience happening to her.
She reached for her phone stationed in the central dashboard to make sure she didn’t take a wrong turn when a voice from the backseat whispered. “Did you realize the stars are gone, too?”
Jacqui slammed on the breaks. She snapped her head to the backseat where a ghostly being with a human skull shrouded in a crystalline, black-draped hoodie. It waved their four skeletal hands hello. Jacqui screamed and reached for the car door handle.
“Oh, the stars are missing, but I’m what freaks you out?” the being snarked.
Jacqui was halfway out of the car when the snakiness of the being’s tone made her mind say, “hold up…” She decided to reply. “Okay, then, who are you, and what are you doing here?”
“My name is Slayer, and after visiting a parade, I decided to visit a time and place on this planet randomly,” they casually explained as they floated through the car and outside. Slayer looked up at the sky. “From what I know about Earth, there should most definitely be stars here.”
Jacqui stepped out of the car and studied the sky alongside the floating, leg-less being in sympathetic concern. “Yeah, there should be stars here.”
“The stars still exist, though,” Slayer added. “I popped off this planet and checked, but in this time, at this place, they are not visible.”
Jacqui reflected on her sci-fi knowledge. “Could there be some sort of device blocking them from our view?”
“That is a possibility,” Slayed reaffirmed in a monotone. With one hand, they reached through their chest and pulled out a black tablet device through their robe. Slayer tapped around on the screen. “I’m showing a device not from this planet nearby.”
Jacqui grabbed her phone and keys from inside the car. “Let’s go check it out then.”
Slayer took the lead, with Jacqui following behind using her phone’s flashlight. They walked up a short hill before stopping in front of a straw scarecrow dressed in jeans and a button-up red flannel shirt.
“This is it,” Slayer softly spoke.
“That’s a scarecrow,” Jacqui quipped.
Using all four of his arms, Slayer stripped off the shirt and straw from the scarecrow’s chest. Inside was a silver metal box with three black switches and a maxed-out gauge.
“What is that?” Jacqui asked.
“I’m not quite sure,” Slayer mumbled as he reached for the switches. “Let’s kill this machine.”
Slayer flicked all three switches down. The gauge spun down, and the stars and moon flickered back to life, illuminating the countryside.
Jacqui cheered. “And let there be light!”
From further up the hill, an exclamation of pain screeched through the night. With the sky back, Jacqui was able to see a destroyed house further up the hill. The ground rumbled, and the cry got closer, revealing a black six-legged spider the size of a pickup truck with the head of a bison. Steam sizzled off its body like the light was burning it. It grabbed the device inside the scarecrow with one of its two harry tentacle arms while knocking Jacqui away with the other. The arm passed through Slayer, who was unfazed by the attack.
The creature flipped the switches, causing the stars to fade out. The beast was nearly invisible with the lack of light, making the device it held appear as if it was floating. The creature hissed and scurried away.
Slayer floated over to Jacqui and helped her up.
“What was that?” Jacqui forced herself not to scream.
“I do not know,” Slayer answered with a hint of excitement. “We should kill it.”
“Or stop it at least. It looks like any sort of light hurts it. You think a car’s headlights will work?”
“It would stand to reason.”
“Then let’s go.”
Jacqui ran down the hill, with Slayer floating beside her. Jacqui jumped in the driver’s seat while Slayer slipped through the back. The car roared to life with the lights on their brightest setting. Slayer directed Jacqui where to drive, using the tablet to track the extraterrestrial device.
A minute later, down a gravel road, the lights illuminated another demolished house. The creature emerged from the wreckage, hissing at the car. It flung a corpse at the vehicle, which Jacqui narrowly avoided. She spun the car back at the creature, aiming the lights at it. The lights melted away its body, and it retreated down the hill.
“It’s working,” Slayer praised.
“Yeah, but it went off the road, and I can’t get to it.”
“I can fix that.”
Slayer pulled out a shimmering purple box the size of a tennis ball from their chest and attached it to the car’s ceiling. Dozens of veins of purple light wires erupted from the box, expanding in every direction throughout the vehicle before sinking inside.
“What did you do?” Jacqui screamed.
“Modified your car to fly,” Slayer calmly explained.
Jacqui could feel the car lift up from the ground. “Woah.”
“Go!”
She slammed on the gas, and the car flew down the hill. In seconds, the creature was in their sights. She pressed forward, shining more light on the beast until it collapsed from its legs melting. The creature dropped its sky blackening device, causing the stars to return upon impact with the ground. Jacqui kept the car still on the creature as it melted away into a massive pool of black goo.
Slayer floated out of the car and inspected the goo. Jacqui joined.
“Is it dead?” she questioned.
“Yes,” Slayer affirmed.
Slayer returned to the car, pulled out the transformation box, returning the vehicle to normal.
“Well, that was an adventure,” Jacqui declared.
“Indeed it was,” Slayer admitted. “You should get to wherever you were going. I imagine they’ll be here soon enough to clean up this mess.”
“Who’s they?”
From above, a blinding white light blasted down on them. Jacqui felt like a criminal caught in the spotlight.
Slayer slipped down through the ground. “It doesn’t matter. You’ll forget all of this soon enough.”
This week’s short story was inspired by the following writing prompt: “It’s midnight, and your headlights barely pierce through the darkness settled on the road in front of you. Shaking away your exhaustion, you begin to panic as you realize you’re lost. As you reach for your phone, a voice from the back seat whispers, “Did you realize the stars are gone, too?”
Story Artwork by Chen Kang at Design Pickle. Get a discount off your first month of Design Pickle via this affiliate link, which full disclosure, I earn a small commission as a discount for me as well.
Discover more stories following Slayer via the character tag.
After finishing a project for her history class to modernize an ancient Greek festival honoring Dionysus, she jokingly makes a toast to him and the god appears.
“Finished at last,” Shelby cheered to herself, alone in her studio apartment.
Shelby stood up from her two-person dining table where her laptop lived. She stretched her body from the extensive writing session. As a final class project, her history professor assigned everyone to write a report about modernizing a forgotten tradition. She chose the Great Dionysia, which she learned about the ancient Greek festival honoring Dionysus from a video game.
To celebrate, she procured a clean wine class from her kitchen cabinet and poured herself a glass of her favorite boxed red wine. Jokingly, she raised her glass in the air.
“To you, Dionysus,” she toasted. “Hope you like my festival idea.”
She took a sip and then sat her glass down on the kitchen counter. The moment she looked up back at her table, she saw a tall, slender man in a gray suit. She shrieked. The man dramatically spun around like a dancer in an elaborate musical number reveal. His brown, curly hair with a pair of locks rested gracefully on his shoulders. In his hair wear a pair of grape leaves.
“I love it!” the man praised.
Shelby grabbed the pepper spray attached to her car keys and sprayed the man in the eyes. The man did not flinch. He casually blinked when the spray stopped.
“Yeah, that doesn’t hurt us,” he politely explained.
“Who are you?” Shelby demand with a tremble.
The man’s face brunched up, offended she didn’t know. “You just wrote a report about me.”
Shelby’s jaw dropped. “Dionysus?”
“Ding!” he smiled.
Dionysus sat in the gray armchair Shelby had stationed next to the table. He waved his hand over the table, swirling to life in a blue-green mist, two bottles of wine in the air that gently landed on the table. He took one, drinking directly from the bottle. Dionysus nodded at Shelby and nudged the other bottle toward her in a peaceful gesture to join him.
“How did you do that?” Shelby asked in a hushed voice.
“You know what,” he started and then paused to think how. “I just kind of made them appear. God of wine, et cetera, et cetera. Would it help if I turned into a fox to prove who I am?”
Shelby nodded. Happy to put on a show, he snapped his fingers, and in a poof of purple smoke, he reappeared as a red fox with the same suit top.
“Ta-Da!” Dionysus announced in a charming tone.
Shelby fainted, falling on the floor. Dionysus sighed and snapped back into the human form.
“I was hoping to talk and make a few suggestions for your festival, so I’ll just edit your document while you take a nap.”
This week’s short story brought to you by wine and this writing prompt: “You’re sat alone, with a glass of wine in hand, and decide to jokingly toast the Greek God Dionysus. You did not expect him to appear before you in human form, create two bottles of wine, and take a seat next to you.”
The game mentioned in the story is Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which has made me fantasize about putting on a modern version of the festival. Hope you enjoyed this fun little story.
Story Artwork by Nona Calingasan at Design Pickle. Get a discount off your first month of Design Pickle via this affiliate link, which full disclosure, I earn a small commission as a discount for me as well.
