Short stories, fantastic tales, spun from a single picture. It’s flash fiction month! Our picture was chosen by the lovely Robin Lythgoe, and this storyline bubbled up, close to home…
And down below, check out the openers from Robin and Trish!
Parker Broaddus
Author of A Hero’s Curse & Nightrage Rising
Gogs
People don’t talk about it, probably because they don’t remember, but being eight is the hardest age. Even harder than being a junker. Or an evaporative farmer, or whatever we are now.
I guess it didn’t start right when I turned eight. So maybe it’s eight and a half. (Turning seven was even awesomer, ’cause that’s when I got my goggles, and my nickname, “Gogs.”) Even so, turning eight was pretty good. Jesse came over, along with all of her brothers and sisters and there were a bunch of other kids and we were all covered in rust running in and out of our rambling old house and around the junk yard carrying as much food as we could sneak out of the kitchen laughing like sky pirates with the moms and dads all standing around talking easy and we could even hear Mr. McNeely from across the rusted steel drain pipe hollering at his dogs or us or something. So all was good.
Somewhere eight started to go south. Then the whole world started to go south. Mom and Dad didn’t know it at first, even though I tried to tell them. They just rolled their collective eyes and said something along the lines of, “Zoe – I mean Gogs – you’re going to love evaporative farming – stop complaining! It’s a bigger house! That’ll be nice, with number five coming right?” Mom would run her hands over her belly and smile. “And it’s just up the street, and has a machine shop we can fix up and plenty of room for you kids to run around and maybe we can even get some real animals.”
I just mumbled back that I liked our robo dog, Naps, (’cause he’s a second hand dog and has to recharge all the time), and who needed real animals anyway. And even though it was a bigger house they weren’t going to give me my own room. I still had to share with my other two sisters. So it didn’t really count as bigger to me. Besides, I wasn’t complaining. I was just questioning why we had to move. I liked the junk yard and the junkers who lived there. And Dad liked his job as a junker – lots of people came to him, looking for scrap, or for trades, or a new build. He negotiated for the other junkers when there were big trades, or section swaps and everybody liked him. So why would we want to do something else?
They couldn’t give me a good answer. Just that we were going to be “farmers.” Like that was the best thing anybody could hope to be. I didn’t know any farmers, but I was skeptical.
I started gathering my weapons and treasures from around our yard so they wouldn’t get left during the move. Then the move itself started. As I expected, I hated it. Everybody handling my stuff, and it getting all disorganized and shoved in boxes. Sure, it looked like it was pretty messy before, but I knew where it was. Kinda. And Mom got tired and snappy and Dad got impatient and focused and worked long hours at his job and then more around the house and with moving everything.
Even though he was tired Dad was excited because he was getting some kind of good deal on the moisture farm, and our junker house had already sold. His eyes would sparkle and he’d grin and say he couldn’t believe how lucky we’d gotten.
The day it was supposed to happen Mom and Dad went into the city. We stayed at the house, with some other junkers watching all four of us – we were playing around, trying not to mess anything up, since the house was sold. Mom and Dad came back pretty fast. Too fast. They couldn’t talk about what happened, but over the next few days and weeks us kids squeezed enough out to understand some big city member of the law guild – the one that was supposed to help them buy the new moisture farm – he did something to make it where Mom and Dad couldn’t get the farm, and then he turned around and called Dad a thief and filed a complaint with the junker’s guild.
Dad couldn’t believe it. Looking back I guess things were still going downhill, even though I didn’t know it. I thought everything was finally back where it needed to be, because we got our house again and moved everything back in and I got my space and nothing was lost or broken. Much. But Dad kept shaking his head and mumbling about how he couldn’t believe it and he kept having the same conversations with Mom over and over. And Mom kept running her hands over her belly, but now it was kind of a defensive, protective thing and she seemed distracted a lot. There were probably more signs, but honestly I didn’t see them because I thought things were back to normal and they were grownups and they’re often distracted and worried and work long hours or are just plain boring. So I didn’t see it coming.
It was at supper just a couple of months later that they made the announcement. No discussion. Just, “boom.” Mom and Dad looked at us. Mom had a smile. Dad had kind of a grin, but there was some worry there too. Us kids just looked back. They had picked a farm. But it wasn’t in our area. Not even our district. It would take hours to get there, by rumbler. I guess our reaction was a little subdued, because they felt like they had to talk it up.
“It’s a lot of land,” Dad gushed.
“And it has a real creek – not a runoff or drain,” Mom pointed out.
The rest is kinda hazy. The whole next while was that way. There were hurried goodbyes and the next thing we were on an evaporator farm that hadn’t actually evaporated anything in a long time. Naps loved it when he wasn’t recharging. he could chase real squirrels and stuff. Then he got hit by a moisture tanker on the fourth day we were here. Dad buried him like he would have a real dog.
The house wasn’t bigger. It was smaller. A lot smaller. Then the baby came, all in a rush, like he’d been missing out. Except he wasn’t missing out. Not yet anyway. The weather kept us all inside – the acid rains weren’t as bad as in the junkyard, but they came a lot more frequently, along with winds that would blow you right off your feet. Us kids stared out the window and fought.
I started noticing things about Dad. He didn’t get back into another junker guild, even though he said he would eventually. Instead he kept talking about what was happening in the world, and “conspiracy theories,” and then laughing about it and then saying it was probably all rubbish and nobody would believe any of that stuff. But then he would read some more.
He talked to Mom about getting the farm running and how soon he could expect a profit, but the first guy he tried to hire to look at the evaporator took a bunch of his money and disappeared. That never used to happen to Dad, and he used to hire a bunch of people in the junkers guild. Mom was sweet and said Dad was an “excellent judge of character.” But I wondered. Maybe before.
Then I would hear Dad talking to Mom about other business stuff – deals and “opportunities.” Mom didn’t like that there were “bigger and bigger risks,” and then Dad would start to say something but they would see me standing there and they would both go quiet. I don’t know what that was about, but I saw the look in his eyes – the look that tried to pretend that everything was okay, but deep down there was a haunted look.
Winter seemed to drag on forever. Of course, winters were longer now than they used to be Dad said, like that information made it better.
Then, one day, there was a break in the rain. A ray of soft yellow pushed through the sullen gray. It was subtle. We almost didn’t see it, because we were fighting over who’s turn it was on junkopoly. I had three scrap heaps and a lean-to on all of the plastic and recyclable plots. The house turned a little brighter. I looked up to see if Mom turned on an extra light. It was coming from outside.
Later that week I peered at a new shoot of something green poking up next to the real tree in our back yard. Cat, (one) of my younger sisters, squatted on her heels next to me. “Think it’s poisonous?” She grinned.
I scowled at her and grabbed a piece of gravel and stuck it in my sling shot. “Bet you can’t hit the barn.”
We spent a couple of hours plinking the barn’s good side before we started the fort. We came in that night covered in mud from head to foot. I knew we were going to catch it, but Mom just smiled as Cat told her about our secret fort, (I tried stepping on her foot to keep her from talking but I missed). Dad came down the hall and raised his eyebrows at the mud but didn’t say anything. He looked like he had tried to clean up, but a few minutes ago he must have had even more mud on himself than we did. He took a machine rag out of his back pocket and held out his hand for my goggles. I handed them over. He smelled like something that made me wrinkle my nose. Wet fur maybe? And something less…good. He carefully rubbed the lenses clean and polished the brass buckles. I glanced at his eyes. They were calm. Blue. They twinkled when he saw me staring at him. “You alright Gogs?”
I nodded, slow at first. Yep. I guess I am.
Robin Lythgoe
Author of As the Crow Flies
Insert
Coming soon…
Patricia Reding
Author of Oathtaker
It is Truly Magic
by Patricia Reding
Copyright Patricia Reding 2021
Some say it doesn’t exist.
But they are wrong.
It does. It does.
“It does!” Nellie cried, as though repeating her mantra, whether in her mind, or verbally, would make it so.
She pulled her boots on, then wriggled her toes, testing the fit. “And now . . .
There it is! Up top you read a flash fiction that is close to home for me, but what about you? What tale would you have spun from the picture above? Drop me an email or comment below!