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gadgetgirl71 · 4 years

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Top Ten Tuesday 2 March 2021

Welcome to this weeks Top Ten Tuesday. Originally created by The Broke & The Bookish, which is now hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week it features a book or literary themed category. This weeks prompt is:

Characters Whose Job I Wish I Had

(maybe not even because the job sounds fun, but maybe the co-workers are cool or the boss is hot?)

Daisy’s Run (The Clockwork Chimera #1)

I’d like to be Daisy I think she is a cool character and she has an interesting job on a spaceship that’s heading back to earth.

Synopsis: Life in deep space could be a drag sometimes, but Daisy supposed things could have been worse. They were still alive, after all, which was always a plus in her book. Now if only she could figure out who, or what, was endangering her return home, things would be just peachy.

It had been one hell of a way to start the day––being rudely snapped from a deep cryo-sleep, and in the middle of a ship-wide crisis to boot––but Daisy was pleased to note that the ship had not decompressed, the crew hadn’t been blasted into space, and, most importantly, they hadn’t simply blown up. At least not yet. So, they had that going for them, but being stuck on a damaged ship in the inky depths of space as it limped toward Earth was not exactly the relaxing trip home she’d imagined.

With the powerful AI supercomputer guiding the craft beginning to show some disconcerting quirks of its own, and its unsettling cyborg assistant nosing into her affairs, Daisy’s unease was rapidly growing. Add to the mix a crew of mechanically-enhanced humans, any one of whom she suspected might not be what they seemed, and Daisy found herself with a sense of pending dread tickling the periphery of her mind.

Something was very much not right––she could feel it in her bones. The tricky part now was going to be figuring out what the threat was, before it could manifest from a mere sinking feeling in her gut into a potentially deadly reality.

Dark Lover (Black Dagger Brotherhood #1)

I think it would be really exciting to be Beth Randall as she eventually becomes the Queen and is surrounded by sexy elite vampire warriors.

Synopsis: The only purebred vampire left on the planet and the leader of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, Wrath has a score to settle with the slayers who killed his parents centuries ago.

But when his most trusted fighter is killed — orphaning a half-breed daughter unaware of her heritage or her fate — Wrath must put down his dagger and usher the beautiful female into another world.

Racked by a restlessness in her body that wasn’t there before, Beth Randall is helpless against the dangerously sexy man who comes to her at night with shadows in his eyes. His tales of the Brotherhood and blood frighten her. Yet his touch ignites a dawning new hunger one that threatens to consume them both…

Dead Witch Walking (The Hollows #1)

I’d like to be Rachel Morgan a witch that apprehends criminal creatures from vampires to werewolves and any other magical creature that breaks the law.

Synopsis: Forty years ago a genetically engineered virus killed half of the world’s human population and exposed creatures of dreams and nightmares that had, until then, lived in secret alongside humanity.

Rachel Morgan is a runner with the Inderland Runner Services, apprehending criminals through out modern-day Cincinnati. She is also a witch.

Used to confronting criminal vampires, dark witches and homicidal werewolves, Rachel’s latest assignments – apprehending cable-stealing magic students and tax-evading leprechauns – have prompted her to break her thirty-year contract with the I.S. and start her own runner agency.

But no one quits the I.S.

Marked for death, Rachel is a dead witch walking unless she can appease her former employers and pay off her contract by exposing the city’s most prominent citizen as a drug lord. But making an enemy of the ambiguous Trent Kalamack proves even more deadly than leaving the I.S.

Dead Witch Walking (The Hollow #1)

I think Ivy Rachel’s friend and colleague would be a really cool person to work with along with Jinks. Who couldn’t love Jinks?

Rachel Morgan is a runner with the Inderland Runner Services, apprehending criminals through out modern-day Cincinnati. She is also a witch.

But no one quits the I.S.

Flatlines (Medicine & Magic #1)

I think Kate has an interesting job being an ER Doctor who sometimes uses a bit of her magic to help people recover. Not that I’d be any good at her job as I can’t stand the sight of blood!

Synopsis: I hide from death trying to save lives, but I can’t hide from my magic forever.

I’ve avoided the magic on the this side of the Veil, staying within the realm of the nonmagical while training as an ER doctor. It’s a way of hiding my dark magic from the mage council. If they discover my type of magic, the chances are good they’ll burn it out of me, and in doing so, destroy my mind.

Everything changes when I make the mistake of saving a sexy knight of the mage council from a magical attack. Not only am I revealed to the council, but when a high-ranking member of the council is poisoned, and no magical treatment is effective, I’m called upon to figure out what happened—and how to save him.

Now I’m caught up in a magical plot beyond my abilities. Survival requires I use the dark magic flowing within me, but can I do it and avoid detection? And can I learn why my magic is so different than others with dark magic?

I’m used to living on the edge of the magical world, but when I’m thrust into the heart of it, I need to use my training to protect me, or I’ll lose everything I’ve worked for.

Flatline is a fast-paced fantasy mystery with a mixture of medicine and magic that will leave you breathless.

Full Moon Rising (Riley Jenson Guardian #1)

To be Riley Jenson a hybrid Vampire/Werewolf and to be able to kick ass while protecting humans from supernatural races would be a great job.

Synopsis: A rare hybrid of vampire and werewolf, Riley Jenson and her twin brother, Rhoan, work for Melbourne’s Directorate of Other Races, an organization created to police the supernatural races–and protect humans from their depredations. While Rhoan is an exalted guardian, a.k.a. assassin, Riley is merely an office worker–until her brother goes missing on one of his missions. The timing couldn’t be worse. More werewolf than vampire, Riley is vulnerable to the moon heat, the weeklong period before the full moon, when her need to mate becomes all-consuming.…

Luckily Riley has two willing partners to satisfy her every need. But she will have to control her urges if she’s going to find her brother….Easier said than done as the city pulses with frenzied desire, and Riley is confronted with a very powerful–and delectably naked–vamp who raises her temperature like never before.

In matters carnal, Riley has met her match. But in matters criminal, she must follow her instincts not only to find her brother but to stop an unholy harvest. For someone is doing some shifty cloning in an attempt to produce the ultimate warrior–by tapping into the genome of nonhumans like Rhoan. Now Riley knows just how dangerous the world is for her kind–and just how much it needs her.

Glinda of Oz

Who wouldn’t want to be like the good witch Glinda, with her kindness, beauty and magic?

Synopsis: Peace, prosperity, and happiness are the rule in the marvelous Land of Oz, but in a faraway corner of this magical domain dwell two tribes–the Flatheads and the Skeezers–who have declared war on each other. Determined to keep her subjects from fighting, the Ruler of Oz, Princess Ozma, along with her dearest friend, Princess Dorothy Gale (formerly of Kansas), embarks on a quest to restore peace.When the Supreme Dictator of the Flatheads refuses to cooperate with Ozma, she and Dorothy seek out Queen Coo-ee-oh of the Skeezers, hoping she will be more reasonable. But the queen imprisons Ozma and Dorothy in her grand city and then traps them by submerging the whole city under water. Now it is up to Glinda the Good to save the day. She assembles all of Ozma’s counsellors–including such beloved Oz friends as the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Cowardly Lion, Patchwork Girl, Shaggy Man, Tik-Tok, and Wizard of Oz–and they set out to rescue their friends. Will the magic powers of Glinda and the Wizard combined be enough to free Ozma and Dorothy? A rousing tale of suspense, magic, and adventure, Glinda of Oz is the fourteenth and final Oz book by L. Frank Baum. It’s a grand conclusion to his chronicles of America’s favorite fairyland. This deluxe gift edition features all twelve of Oz artist John R. Neill’s beautiful color plates, along with his nearly one hundred black-and-white pictures, making it a perfect gift for all Oz fans, new and old.

The Billionaire Needs a Bodyguard

Well to start of Lex (Alexandra) has a really cool name! But to be a kick ass private undercover security consultant protecting a sexy billionaire must be an interesting and challenging job.

Synopsis: Alexandra “Lex” Granger is a private security consultant who has to go undercover to protect billionaire businessman Michael Thornton, pretending to be an escort. Michael does not think he needs a bodyguard, despite the death threats he has received from protesters against his takeover of a Danish company, but he does need protection against the predatory wife of the Danish ambassador. Lex knows that this assignment is dangerous, made more so because her client does not even know that he is being protected.

She doesn’t know that he thinks she is a con-artist a gold-digger who takes rich men for everything that she can get. As sparks fly, and the attraction between the two go stronger, they face a deadly danger from an unknown assailant. Lex and Mike embark on a turbulent affair in the beautiful city of Copenhagen, with Mike realising that there is much more to the sexy seductress, her bewildering vulnerability evoking unfettered passion and feelings that he has never experienced before. Lex realises that she has committed the ultimate folly, that of falling in love with a man who despises her. Will she overcome the dangers to Michael to her breaking heart?

The Black Widow Agency (Case #1)

Another one with a cool name Alexandria who is a cyber geek and can uncover anyone’s secrets. I’d love to be able to do that job.

Synopsis: The misfit ladies at the Black Widow Agency aim to bring justice to wronged women like themselves using a lethal blend of technology, surveillance, and women’s intuition.

Katie, the ex-cop, appears sexy, strong and tough as nails, but is battling her own demons from the past. Alexandria, the mysterious cyber geek, can uncover just about anyone’s secrets, but has her own. Margot can cook up a storm in the kitchen, or cook up trouble with her lethal tongue. Jane crunches numbers and avoids confrontation whenever possible, but can’t avoid the incessant hot flashes that plague her.

This raucously funny group of women search for justice, but often find trouble instead.

Join them for their first adventure as they come to the aid of a woman who got set up by her ex, causing her to lose custody of her child.

Watch the ladies serve up justice Black Widow-style!

Wrong Number Right Guy (The Bourbon Street Boys #1)

Being May Wexler who ends up working with the sexy Bourbon street boys has my dream job. Who wouldn’t like to be able to surrounded with eye candy as well as being protected by them. Yes Please!!

Synopsis: When a mysterious text message summons May Wexler to a biker bar in downtown New Orleans, she knows something is very wrong. Her sister has sent out an SOS, but when May gets there, she’s nowhere to be found and May is the one in trouble—she’s wearing pink espadrilles, she’s got a Chihuahua in her purse, and she’s in the middle of a shootout.

After tall, muscular Ozzie comes to her rescue, May has no choice but to follow him to safety. At the headquarters of his private security firm, the Bourbon Street Boys, she finds a refuge for the night—and the offer of a job. But it’s not long before a gun-toting stalker isn’t the only complication in May’s life: the more time she spends with Ozzie, the less she can deny that they’ve got some serious chemistry. A wrong number got her into this mess…Will it also get her the right guy?

Until next week.

#JustForFun, #Top Ten Tuesday, #TopTenTuesday, #TTT

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jam2289 · 5 years

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Ideas from the Last Few Months - Part 2 of ?

Here we go again. I just might complete the list in this post.

What if I included an entire public domain book inside of my book? I could do a frame story. A parent reading a book to a child maybe. Maybe a teacher or author reading a book to a group of students. Discussion of the book would be included. The book within the book could be fiction or non-fiction. Ooh, I like this idea. The bedtime story frame would work. Also, R. L. Stine, the horror book author, likes to do readings of his books at libraries for kids, so there's precedent for it.

DARPA has developed a psychopath hat. When you put it on it sends electrical signals through your brain and turns you into a temporary psychopath. It's based on the work of Chi and Snyder on brain stimulation. I heard about it from psychologist John Vervaeke. It's made for soldiers, obviously. It just sounds like something Philip K. Dick would write about in a dystopic science fiction story, but it's real.

Could I make happy tragedies and nice horror stories? It almost seems like it might be possible.

Eugenics is scary, and it always comes back around. Abortions after birth. It's a discussion in society right now. What about eugenics laws that require babies with deformities to be terminated? Wouldn't the organs be worth a lot of money? So, corruption would work its way in there. But, the most demand would be for older organs. So, why not grow the little humans until their organs can be harvested at the right age. Human organ farms.

There are twin girls in China that have been genetically modified using CRISPR to make enhanced brains. And... it seems to be working, reports state that they are mentally superior in a number of ways, including IQ and resistance to dementia. Well, to those that have, more shall be given, and to those who have not, everything will be taken away. It seems like a caste system might develop where the people that can afford it get genetically modified, and then they're just better. Maybe there's a genetic modification scholarship program?

Magic is a fun concept. Many stories explore the idea of magic dying. But, what about the birth of magic? Where did it come from in the first place?

The earth is changing, the earth is always changing. The last ten thousand years or so have been as stable as the earth has ever been. That means that in the future it will be both warmer than it is now and colder than it is now at various points. Narratives could be written exploring both options. Spoiler alert: global cooling is far worse for humans, (global warming might even be good).

Fiction is a form of play. Play is used to explore behavioral patterns in a reality that is both more real than ours, because only the important parts are included, and is safe. I could use a narrative structure to work out how the building of Theoconceptualism might work out.

The movie "Cast Away" starring Tom Hanks is a good story. You could do the same thing in space. Lol, I just realized that this is the exact same idea as the book and movie "The Martian".

Dividing lines are powerful. There are great pictures along the borders of countries that have different approaches to the environment where one side is a grassland or forest and the other side is desolate.

Also, thresholds are powerful. I wrote a tiny story in 20 minutes in a writing group one time about a boy walking through a door and not coming back. A month later a woman told me she was still thinking about that story.

What if heaven and hell were just different places with different rules? What if where you went was self-selected? You can't do anything in heaven that is against the rules even when you want to. Your body is essentially a slave. That sounds like a mental hell. Unless, of course, you never want to break the rules, then it's bliss. Maybe hell isn't just about punishment either. Maybe it's based on the idea that everyone deserves a second chance. Maybe there are individual rights in hell. Maybe that's the point, you have to learn to respect universal individual rights. Maybe the technique of restorative justice is used to make amends for errors in life. Maybe there's a three strike rule and people are then sent to purgatory for punishment.

There are a number of collections of stories that are framed within an overarching story: "The Tale of Tales", "The Canterbury Tales", "The Decameron", and "Arabian Nights". What if I did stories in seven sections, one for each night of the week? Four stories or so to a month, fifty-two stories for the year. I could release these stories in the week, month, and year units. I like it.

I was talking to one of my students one day, Liming. We were reading a book that talked about volcanoes. A crazy discussion led to me inventing lava people as children of the earth. It's basically an alien story, but instead of strangers from outer space, they are strangers from inner earth. The archetype of the stranger is important. Maybe they do something to keep the earth's crust stable, or to create gravity, or to create a stable magnetic field. Maybe the surface people destabilized something, so the lava people invade. Maybe the earth was made as a spaceship, or time capsule, or a safety zone from a previous intergalactic war. Adam and Eve as escaped, or exiled, lava people? At one time there was a spaceship earth movement led by Buckminster Fuller.

What if children that are born at night are different than children born during the day? What if it's just from the light? Maybe people choose up sides.

Antibiotics haven't been around that long, the last handful of decades or so. The diseases are now adapting to them and there are new strains of things like tuberculosis that can't be killed. It's just like the old days, you get it and you cough up your lungs unto death. Just carry this to a logical conclusion; massive human die off.

You could do a frame story around lucid dreaming. Well, that's kind of the idea that Lewis Carroll used. Meh, I'm not too enthusiastic about that one.

Doctor Frankenstein could've created many monsters, especially if he was using modern genetic modification. Maybe that's where dragons, and griffins, and chimeras all came from.

I think it's funny that you can spell right and wrong as Wright and Rong. It seems like those should be characters in something.

There's a Linkin Park song that talks about the moon not owing a debt to the sun for the light that the sun gives and the moon reflects. What if the sun did call in the debt?

- - - - - - -

I watch how the moon

sits in the sky in the dark night

Shining with the light from the sun

And the sun doesn't give light to the moon assuming

The moon's going to owe it one

- - - - - - -

Werewolves become activated in the moonlight. What about the opposite? A monster that becomes activated in the sunlight, or is only deactivated in the moonlight.

I still have a ton of ideas on this list. Maybe I'll finish it in the next article.

________________________________________________

You can find more of what I'm doing at http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

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skookumfiles · 7 years

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Case 117: Ole’ Yeller

S.C.U.C.M (Skookum) files: Case 117- Ole Yeller It was a pretty standard infestation case of a nest of werewolves in a liberal town, on a University campus, woven into the on and off campus life. The risk management assessors of interdimensional insurance had been monitoring the situation and noticed the disappearance rate and pack size had begun to proceed at an increasing pace. At the next full moon, there would be an easily predicted mathematically significant event known as a rising. The pack would consume a large number of pedestrians and turn an even greater number. Policy holder risk was becoming too great, as was the visibility of both Social Justice Warriors and Werewolves on this particular earth. Every mundane agency uses contractors for roof leaks, termites, and the occasional oddball problem of Africanized honey bees. Interdimensional insurance was no different. You can’t beat someone at what they do for a living, so you pay the people who specialize in the problem to make it go away discreetly so the neighbors aren’t alarmed. So it is with werewolves that the contracts were nearly exclusively handled across dimensions by a group of enthusiastic individuals under the umbrella of an S-corporation known as Social Justice Complications and Unintentional Consequences Management. Skookum, as they were known in the insurance business breakrooms, were capable of handling a broad range of lycanthropes, aquatic leviathan, genetically mutated horrors, and your occasional chimera. They were particularly good at sniffing out the clever ones who embedded in the social justice communities where people made any number of excuses that allowed the proverbial, and literal, wolf into the henhouse. Their handling of the great werebear incident on Earth 2312 was legendary in the halls of numerous branches of the agency, mostly because the underwriters were ready to write off the whole planet as a loss- and that would have been a significant ding to their reputation of good customer service. Some even had Skookum coffee mugs and calendars at their desk. It was rare to find an agent without a Skookum pen or pencil that they protected jealously, especially one with Georgia’s name on it. That’s the secret to risk abatement: value. Underpromise and over deliver. If you can maintain assets, discretion, and a thorough routing of the problem, you’re a top shelf contractor who understands customer service to the agency, and by extension the ethic of customer service the agency extends to customers. The case #117 is a classic example of how the agency now refers to making a problem Skookem when it seems impossibly out of hand for the average or beginner who is more suited to groundhogs, vampire voles, or the troublesome Gleendoric parasites of Earth 220. ______________________________

The meeting was going over time, but the rapt attention that most were paying to PeaceLilly was signaling that the meeting of the social justice and equality league (Not every acronym has to form an English word, you Anglo-normative ethnocentric paraquat- PeaceLilly). Peace Lilly had begun by talking about the peace garden project they were due to be working on that weekend, even though the neighborhood they’d be driving to in her biodiesel powered Mercedes wagon needed clean needles and a grocery store more than a garden. When she got going she passed the garden project by in short order and launched into a speech about diversity and how they all needed to check their privilege when in a neighborhood populated by POC (people of color) and to remember that gender bias was stronger in those poorer and darker cultures. That led into another 10 minutes of speaking about how if someone hit on them that they should feel ok with hooking up because people would never be able to experience the culture of University life when so poor and hopeless. Knowing what it’s like to have sex with a college student could be valuable to the residents and spur them toward higher education.

The room responded with “right on” and “yes!” shouts to all of these exhortations as she moved on from pity sex to reminding the 2 males in the room that they should be open to hooking up with men or women because they were so privileged that discomfort was something that would bring them closer to the experiences of the women and fluid genders around them. Below them, on the ground floor of the student center for activities and outreach, the doors automatically closed and locked to the outside as the clock struck 5 PM. The dull thud and bright click echoing through the halls, reminded everyone that the official time for the meeting was up, but they would stay as long as they liked, or until some white male came to tell them to leave. “Uh, PeaceLilly, I thought we were going to have food tonight?” asked one scrawny guy who was sitting in the back of the room. “Yes, there will be a meal.” She said, looking irritated that he interrupted her while she was taking a breath between rants. “We have a guest coming and then we’ll start.” As if on cue, a polite knock on the door interrupted the man from asking any more questions. Peace Lilly opened the door and turned with a big grin to the group. “Everyone, meet Ember Moon! She is tonight’s guest here to talk about more social justice topics and what it’s like to be a female in a male dominated field.” Ember stepped into the room. Her patchouli scented patchwork clothing swished as the corduroy sections brushed against each other with her strides to the front of the room. Her big head of mousey dishwater blonde dreds swayed down to her lower back in big fat links of matted and rolled perfection. Her sizeable belly poked from under her dull scissors shortened Joan Jett t-shirt. Everyone in the room kind of held their breath as she dramatically paused before she started. “I kind of like to ground myself in the space. Really connect with the energy of the room. You all smell really great and have such a nice energy. I’m guessing you’re all vegetarians or vegans, right?” She began in a low and husky voice of a woman who had been smoking a lot of weed for a long time. Her sallow face was marked with the lines of either laughter or pain, maybe both. She looked to be between 30 and 50, but who can tell when you abandon personal grooming for a philosophical statement about your personal values? “We’re all plant based consumers, except for Keightlynn and the gentleman in the back- I’m sorry, what’s your name?” PeaceLilly interjected. “Uh, my name is Tommy. My pronouns are cis dominant, but I self identify as a non-gendered being of light having a physical experience.” Jimmy said matter of factly. “I, uh, eat meat as a part of my physical experience.” Peacelilly seemed to soften a bit toward Jimmy after he introduced himself. Maybe he wasn’t just here for a free meal. after all? “So, who is Keightlynn?” Ember inquired. “Just raise your hand. We’re not on a witch hunt here. Just want to know who the carnivore is.” A small but fit young woman in the 2nd row, near the door Peacelilly was standing beside, raised her hand. In a meek voice she declared herself to be “here” wherever that may be in the philosophical landscape. She was dressed in a pair of loose fitting pants, sported some shoulder length black dreds over a black tshirt, and her pale skin had a nice glow to it. She didn’t seem as hollow cheeked and spindly as the rest, even in a seated position. Ember pointed to her with a quick jab of her right hand and said “cool…” as she seemed to make a mental note. Ember began to speak about the need for outreach, and about how the world needs us to go out and find the people willing to listen to the truth and actually hear it. Naturally this was women and POC, but in rare exceptions those outside the spheres of the downtrodden could be reached as well. “White people” she said with a sneer, despite her own caucasian features and skin, were the problem until you could “reverse brainwash” them. Two hours passed and as the sun went down the silvery light of the moon illuminated the sidewalks and vehicles parked outside the building.

Ember moved on from the ideas of simple outreach to talk about “food deserts” and how many people didn’t know how difficult it was for some to obtain food in their communities due to special dietary needs, lack of decent food sources, and the privilege of some to deny others what they needed through stigma. Privilege was a main problem, apparently. The root of all things negative and oppressive were wrapped around the vague idea of privilege, particularly the ideas around food culture and dietary necessity.

A loud knock on the doors downstairs made Peace Lilly excuse herself to “let more guests in.” “So, when are we going to eat?” Tommy, the being of light, interrupted again. “Oh, we’re not going to eat.” Ember continued, glancing out at the silvery light bathing the parking lot. “Well, you’re not.” She walked over to the window and stood in the moonlight. Her skin began to darken and her limbs began to thicken. Her face grew and triangulated as big sharp teeth replaced her peglike human chompers. In just a few seconds she had gained at least a foot in height and was covered in a blonde coat of thick hair. Her patch work clothes had fallen to the floor and her Joan Jett t-shirt was stretched tight across her chest. She ripped it off with a quick slash of her claws. The room full of plant grazers moved quickly to the door, finding it locked. They began beating on the door. Tommy shoved them out of his way and put his shoulder into the steel door, a loud thump issuing into the empty hallways outside. Then a noise of metal sliding across a cheap vinyl floor sounded and the door swung open into the hallway. The mass of crying and frightened smelly people started out the door then scurried back in, like a school of fish moving away from a shark. Two more werewolves stepped into the doorway and blocked egress from the room. Both dark haired and smaller than Ember, but still larger than PeaceLilly who stepped into the room between them. She locked the door behind her. One of them began sniffing the air and followed his nose over to Keightlynn who was still seated in the 2nd row by the door. He let out a little cough, like he smelled something rancid, and looked over at Tommy, then at Ember. Ember nodded toward the mass of people in the corner of the room and the two began to herd them tighter into the corner. Peacelilly held up both hands to the group. “Diversity is one of our most cherished values. And we all must check our privilege of thinking we are the top of the food chain. We all have a chance now to be lupine-Americans, if we wish to engage in a participant observation that will change the way people see eating meat and not supporting their neighbors of all colors.” She looked over at Keightlynn who was still in her chair. The two smaller ones got closer to the group, smelling them and licking their faces with long red hot tongues. Finally, overcome with bloodlust, they jerked one girl out of the crowd, a vegan named Mary Bell who had the muscle tone of a tomato and the fat content of a broccoli stalk. They tore wildly at her body, swallowing entire chunks of her, pushing her long bones into the corner of their mouths to crack them open and eat her marrow. The mass of people in the corner screamed and writhed into an impossibly small wad as blood sprayed on them from Mary Bell’s punctured body, and the sound of her bones and flesh being torn and rent filled the space between high pitched wails. There was another heavy pounding on the door. PeaceLilly opened the door and let one more werewolf in, quickly closing and locking it again. “Everyone is here. Good.” She said, shoving the key in the medicine bag that hung off her neck. “Now, everyone calm down. It’s time to decide if you want to be part of the solution, or part of the problem. Checking your privilege has never been as important as it is right now.” The third smaller werewolf, overcome with bloodlust, jumped on Mary Bell’s head and began gnawing at it, causing the three to engage in a rolling fight with one another as Ember looked on. PeaceLilly then changed and jumped into the fracas, pushing them all away from their meal. She was smaller than Ember and bigger than the 3. She managed them easily despite their numbers. It was then that PeaceLilly, now a dark, large, and panting werewolf, began to walk back to the mass of screaming social justice club members and began savagely eyeing them. Suddenly she was knocked clear across the room and began kicking desks and chairs away from her as she writhed on the floor holding the side of her head. The three smaller ones turned in time to see Keightlynn coming at them. One, two, three, all of their heads were severed from their bodies and gouts of red blood gushed onto the floor as their bodies fell limply and began to turn human again. Keightlynn leapt over 4 desks with a battered bronze blade in one hand and a pair of old brass knuckles in the other. PeaceLilly snarled and started to leap at her and caught another left hand in the face, the silver cast into the knucks burning and caving in part of her head. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth across her hideous teeth and she fell back dazed. Her head struggled to repair itself around the impact of the silver, but it was not nearly quick enough. A moment later and the bronze sword found her neck, her heavy lupine head hitting the floor with a hollow thud as it began to turn human again. The Social Justice club kept screaming, still tightly coiling and writhing. They were a primal frightened mass unable to make a coherent thought.

Now Ember’s eyes widened in fear as Keightlynn stepped toward her. “Ah-ite, ole yeller. End of the line for you.” Keightlynn said in a thick East Tennessee accent. Ember quickly morphed back into her human form. Only very old and very powerful werewolves could do that neat trick at will during a full moon. “That name is ableist and ageist! You don’t understand, but if you’d just listen…” She began. “You have the privilege of eating meat and yet you would begrudge us our goddess given right to…” Keightlynn’s left hand flashed again and the knucks caught a glancing blow on Ember’s chin, though it would have been a knockout if Ole Yeller hadn’t feinted to the right so quickly. Instantly, Ember changed back to her werewolf form and with a deafening snarl leap at Keightlynn. Unfazed, bored even, Keightlynn moved toward her, then to the side, causing Ember to have to recalculate and turn to see where she was going. A left caught Ember on the side of the head changing her northbound leap into an Eastbound rolling tangle of hairy limbs and falling teeth that all piled up against the wall. The Social Justice club continued to shriek and try to shrink to nothing in vain. One young man who came to the University as Jeremiah Simms, and was now simply called Trayvon, put a hand on each side of his head and shrieked “Mamaaaaaaaa!!!” as he scuttled backward against the wall, his eyes wide with terror and confusion. Keightlynn stepped over to Ember who was trying to gather herself to counter the whack to her head that smoked and bled. A quick swing of the bronze blade, mostly with the wrist, not the broad desperate swing you see in movies, and Ember’s head hit the cheap vinyl floor with the same watermelon thud as the others. “Four weeks. It took me four weeks to track you from UCLA to Berkeley to UT and here to South Carolina. Lotta dead kids. Lotta damage. But I knew I was gonna put you down. Wish it was sooner than later, but done is done.” Keightlynn zipped open the fanny pack on her waist and hooked a short tether onto the pommel of her bronze blade. She dropped the whole sword into the depth of the small fanny pack and zipped it up. Then she reached over and touched something on her knucks. An instant later, she only had a thin brass ring on her middle finger. She sent a text on her phone quickly as Trayvon stared at her from across the room and shouted “thank you, Keightlynn! You saved us!” “Mah name ain’t Keightlynn, dipshit.” She said, sending one more text after a beep noted she’d received a response. Suddenly the door opened and the room was filled with people in Tyvek suits and respirators who were putting Mary Bell, Ember, PeaceLilly, and the others in heavy plastic bags. “Well, what is your name?” Trayvon queried loudly as the others were starting to flag from the adrenaline and panic they’d been maintaining. “Georgia, from Tennessee.” She said in a distracted tone, picking up a small but complicated looking hand held radio that one of the cleanup techs handed her. “Hay Stranger, you got your ears on?” “Tom Stranger, here. Are we…” he paused “Skookum?” “Yeah, code name Ole Yeller got herself put down.” Georgia said matter of factly. “We should be Skookum tight and wrapped up in a jiffy.” “I can always count on you.” Stranger said, a chuckle crackling over the radio. “Well, darlin’. Customer service is so very important.” Georgia cooed into the mic, a small smirk spreading across one corner of her mouth. “And you are my fay-vo-rite customer.” She flipped the radio back into the hands of the cleanup tech and walked out the door into the hall as Tom Stranger’s voice crackled something over the airwaves that didn’t sound like insurance business.

#mhi #tom stranger #interdimensonal insurance

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