Tales From An Alternate Reality

Retro-Radicality
Idol Mini| week 5 | 1260 words
Oubaitori (Everything grows and blooms in its own time)

x-x-x-x-x

Our kids were in a Jewish daycare when they were little, which spoiled us for the future. The parents tended to be older, as we were, and the families were so nice. When our oldest entered kindergarten at our neighborhood school, we were all surprised to feel a bit of culture shock.

Most of the other parents were about ten years younger than me. HalfshellHusband is eight years older than I am, but we were both raised by parents who survived the Great Depression. For me, even when I was a school-aged kid myself (in the late 1960s through 1979), my family had a very different set of values from most of the other kids’ families. But the school parents of our daughter’s peers? They grew up in the late 1970s through 1990 or so, all Reagan-era kids whose experiences and attitudes added up to something very much Not Me.

That was how I became the “crank” parent, who disagreed with school methods that other people never gave a second thought.

( Read more... )

If you enjoyed this entry, you can vote for it along with many fine others here!

I Am My Own Robot Army
Idol Mini | week 3 | 783 words
Without You

x-x-x-x-x

I don’t know how we got here.

Okay, I know, but I mean… c’mon. We both said some things. There’s enough regret to go around.

But you’ve always been my best friend. You’re supposed to overlook it when I start mouthing off– or at least forgive me. Not pack up and move out of state! Who does that? And what’s so great about Massachusetts, anyway?

I wish you were here now, Jenny. You’d be able to talk me out of thinking Bobby’s cheating on me, or if not, you’d help me figure out what to do about it.

Instead, I’m hiding behind a tree in Bobby’s front yard by myself, trying to run my dad’s drone close enough to the living room window to see and maybe hear what’s happening inside.

Dad doesn’t know I borrowed the drone. He’d be pissed. I mean, it’s not like I plan to break it or anything. Though it is kind of hard to steer in close quarters. I can’t see much.

If you were here, you’d understand what I’m going through. I just feel like Bobby’s not as invested in our relationship as he used to be. Like, tonight? He said he was busy when I wanted to come over, but there’s a car in the driveway. So I know he’s not just studying. I actually think he might be banging one of the cheerleaders– probably that Mindy Harrison who’s always hanging around his locker. She thinks she’s so subtle, but she’s not fooling anyone.

Oh, hey, I’ve got a decent view through the window now. The lights are on inside, and I can see–

Huh. That looks like Dylan Brenner on the sofa next to Bobby. Now they’re laughing at something, and Dylan’s punching Bobby in the arm.

Whatever. I’ll bet they’re talking about me…

I move the drone a little closer. This thing actually has a microphone on it, though it’s kind of hard to hear anything over the motor. I have no idea what Dad bought it for, and maybe it’s better that way?

“... killing me…,” Bobby says. “#^@*#...the worst.”

“...ight?” Dylan shouts, slamming Bobby with his shoulder.

“...done with this b#@#^^#!”

I knew it! They are talking about me!

I wish I could hear better. Why doesn’t this stupid drone have a “hover” function, so I can lock it in place and not have to keep worrying about banging it into the window?

I know I haven’t been the perfect girlfriend. I have to study sometime! And I can get a little jealous, sure, but I’m working on that, all right?

Wait, someone’s coming up the driveway. Crap!

I recognize the car. It’s Ava Reynolds, who is totally a cheerleader! I mean, she’s also Bobby’s lab partner in AP Bio, but I know that’s not why she’s here. Ugh, I can’t let her see me like this! I probably have leaves and twigs in my hair, plus creeping around Bobby’s front yard all by myself is totally sus.

I move around the tree until I’m on the side that blocks the view from the driveway. But then I hear it:

Thunk!

Oh, no! I forgot about the drone!

I jerk the lever on the remote, and the drone whizzes away from the window and smacks right into a cherry tree. Leaves and fruit bombs fly everywhere, until the drone crashes to the ground and one of the wings snaps off.

God, Dad is going to kill me! And that thing probably cost two years of my allowance. Great, now I’m going to be friendless and poor.

I glance back at the window, and now Dylan is standing there, gaping at me.

“Zoey?”

I look over, and there’s Ava, wrinkling her nose and taking in the dead drone, my dark green hoodie, and the selection of snacks near the base of the tree.

“Are you seriously spying on Bobby right now? God, Zoey, why not just ring the doorbell like a normal person!”

This is the point where I wish the ground would open up and swallow me whole. What was I thinking? And how am I ever going to live this down?

Then, the front door opens. Dylan and Bobby come out, holding video game controllers. Bobby looks at me and then he looks at the drone, and I can tell from the expression on his face that the two of us are totally, one-hundred-percent over.

“You’ll never guess what Zoey was up to,” Ava chirps.

“Shut up, Ava!” I yell, even though it’s obvious I deserve it.

I’ve never felt so alone, or so stupid, and there’s nothing I can do to change it.

Oh, Jenny. I wish you were here…


–/–

If you enjoyed this story, you can vote for it along with many other fine entries here.

The Big Bad
Idol Mini | week 1 | 1043 words
Someone who will love you in all your damaged glory

x-x-x-x-x

The wolf was trouble, and everyone knew it.

The pigs and goats and sheep were all terrified of him, and traded rumors constantly. “Nothing but splinters, was what I heard,” Barnyard Betty would say, and the old ram would follow with, “And they were never heard from again.”

The wolf was both a threat and a mystery, and also frankly the most exciting thing to happen to the Village in a long time.

( Read more... )


If you enjoyed this story, you can vote for it along with many other fine entries here. Check them out-- there is a lot of great stuff!

History Mystery
idol minor+ | week 2 | 368 words
Roopkund

x-x-x-x-x

“So, way, high up in the Himalayan mountains, there’s this lake,” Max was saying. “And it’s full of, like, dead people and stuff, but no one knows how they got there. I mean, it could be that aliens left them –”

“They didn’t,” Zack said.

“—or they all got some kind of killer disease—”

“No.” Zack punched a key on his laptop and squinted at the display.

“—or maybe poison gas came up from the ground and—”

“No.” Zack said.

“Stop saying ‘no’ to everything!” Max said. “You don’t know how it happened. Nobody does.”

“I know it wasn’t aliens,” Zack snorted. “That’s just dumb.”

“Not everyone thinks aliens are fake, you know. There’s all kinds of stuff about them—”

“On the internet, yeah, yeah, whatever... But you’d better not put it in your paper, not if you want a decent grade on it.”

“Fine,” Max said grudgingly.

He printed out a copy of his work and started going over it with a highlighter pen, marking all the parts that needed changing. “Since you know so much,” Max said, “what’s your theory on how all those dead people wound up in that lake? I mean, it’s not like they were all traveling along a trade route or a busy roadway. Why are there so many of them down there?”

Zack shrugged and typed for a few seconds. “I think it was probably weather-related,” he finally said. “People traveling on the hills above the lake got surprised by extreme cold or sudden snow storms, and they froze to death. And then snowmelt and gravity did the rest.”

“Huh.” Max sat back and stopped highlighting. “I could see that happening.”

“Exactly!” Zach said.

“Okay, so what are you doing your paper on, then?” Max asked. “What’s your Unsolved Mystery from History?”

“The Great Pyramids of Egypt,” Zach said.

“What? Nooooo! You can’t write about the pyramids—everyone’ll pick them.”

“Because they’re awesome,” Zach said. “Obviously.”

“Okay, fine. So, you’re focusing on the big stones then, and how the Egyptians were able to move them?”

“Yeah,” Zack nodded.

“And your theory is?”

Zack spread his arms open wide. “That was definitely aliens.”

“Hey!” Max said.


---/---

In The Garden
idol survivor | daily-fic challenge, day 17 #2 | 2130 words

x-x-x-x-x

It's Sunday and I have two Idol stories to write, and yet I found myself in the garden this afternoon. There is so much to do, inside the house and out, with whole weekends of chores and projects that have already been deferred many times over for weather or for writing. At this point, it would help just to get some of them done.

But the only one I was really prepared to do something about this weekend was the garden.

The beautiful spring day was a reminder that there is a limited amount of time to clean things up and do some replanting. Once the weather turns hotter, any new plants are likely to die, and the ground becomes so hard that trying to remove weeds is like trying to chip concrete. Last year, we missed out on replanting altogether. Nurseries were closed due to COVID, and by the time they reopened, it was too hot for new plants. We have a dead rose-tree that needs replacing, because HalfshellHusband (HSH) stumbled over it and killed it a couple of years ago. Then there are the trouble spots, two along the front walkway, two next to the house, and the remaining two are in semi-open areas in the middle of the lawn. All of those spots are revolving doors, where plants go in and then die a year or two later—or their neighbors die instead. Too sunny, too wet, too… cursed? It's always something.

Except for the areas near the house, the other spots were shaded by really large trees when we moved in, and they have been nothing but trouble since we had to remove those trees twelve years ago. It's the Sacramento heat and sun that does it—few plants can tolerate being out in the open. But because those areas were previously landscaped, it's hard not to want to revive them. I would be more prone to let them go than HSH, because the yard is already over-planted compared to the amount of time I have to spend on it. But so far, he hasn't liked the idea of letting more of it transition to becoming lawn.

The previous owner apparently hated mowing the lawn, and probably invested heavily in landscaping (OVER-landscaping) because he knew he'd be selling the house at some point. But the lot is a third of an acre, and there are just too many areas of open dirt (weed magnets) and too many plants that need pruning, deadheading, or other cleanup.

I focused on weeding and cleanup last weekend and this weekend. Buying a new rose tree requires going to the big nursery five miles from here, and that place saps my will to live. \o? I love the smaller nursery just a mile and-a-half away, but they don't have enough stock or diversity to find a suitable replacement there. The previous rose tree was one of ten, all of them different, so variety is key. I'm putting that trip off until after Idol is over, since I already have more than the maximum amount of stress and time-commitment I want right now anyway. :O

Last Sunday, I cut back the rose bush by the pool, where it crowds the pavement and makes it hard for anyone to get past it. I do this multiple times a year, and that plant frustrates me for a number of reasons. It sends up tall runners, which need pruning, and the branches perpetually die back in random places. There are tons of dead stems underneath it that need removing, but they're hard to get to, and it's a very "stabby" plant. It has soft, pliant branches that specialize in getting caught in your skin, and it's hard to get unstuck. Eventually, I always lose patience with being clawed and scratched by it, and move on to work on something else.

( Read more... )

--/--

I'll try to add on some pictures later, if I get a chance.

A World Within
idol survivor | daily-fic challenge, day 16, #2 | 1370 words

x-x-x-x-x

It's the weekend again, not my favorite time for riding on the bike path because the crowds are nerve-wracking, but it still beats biking in the garage. I check the temperature to gauge the maximum amount of clothing I can wear, then sunblock the remaining exposed skin and head on out.

Down through our neighborhood, checking the cross-streets to make sure no one is about to run a stop sign and hit me. Out to the first of the busy streets, where I go from "warm-up" to full-speed pace, checking the bike lane for glass and watching for cars backing out of driveways or stopping past the stop sign and into the bike lane. I'm always on alert.

Nearing the second busy street, I look over my shoulder to see if anyone is behind me. There's a "yield/merge" corner there where I turn right, and I always worry about cars and trucks cutting that corner and trapping me up against the curb. No one's behind me, so I sail around it and continue on.

I'm approaching the edge of the property that has a decorative pond down below, or as I like to think of it, a "mosquito farm." The water is algae-covered and murky now, but I'm more interested in the pavement. Accidents near that spot are common, and sometimes a spray of broken glass coats the bike lane there and goes on for several more blocks. I think it's because of that merge lane—either side-swiping accidents from someone trying to merge into another vehicle, or nervous drivers being rear-ended when the path is clear but they slam on their brakes when the person behind them doesn't expect it.

The pavement look okay, so I don't have to edge out into traffic—always a relief, since the typical speed there is more than 50mph. I keep going and eventually cross that boulevard in halves, then start down the road that leads to the bike path. Then I go up through the parkway gate to the levee, and down the ramp into another world.

On weekends, I ride downriver. It's less pretty than upriver, but also less crowded, so there's less risk of an accident or near-accident from people doing something stupid. The trail is a bike path, but because it's paved, people often treat it as their personal promenade, so "stupid" includes things like walking or standing on the pavement, riding in the wrong lane, stepping out in front of a bike or pulling onto the path in front of an oncoming bike, or walking a dog and/or its leash in that space. Like I said, nerve-wracking.

But for a downriver ride, I always start by going upriver for a bit and then turning around before I reach the more crowded areas. The place where I enter the bike path rarely has any interesting wildlife—usually it's just rock doves or those suicidal ground squirrels. But three-quarters of a mile up, there's a rise where you get a nice view of the river below. That's the spot where the land along the bank forms a deep upside-down "U" and creates a backwater pool. One year, a swan was in that pool for a good eight months. I assume it escaped from one of the pricier private homes a few miles away, rather than being wild, but who knows? No other swans ever joined it (i.e., it had no flock). After a few weeks, though, a Canadian goose made friends with it, and they hung out together until the swan left. Or was it re-appropriated? I can just imagine someone biking or walking near there, and going, "Wait, is that our Clarence? That little sneak! I paid good money to have him decorate the yard, not go off and do bird things. I'm going to send someone after him."

( Read more... )

In The Attic
idol survivor | daily-fic challenge, day 15 #2

x-x-x-x-x

The ghost in the attic
creaks floorboards,
spins whirlwinds,
rattles the trunks
of mementos
from generations past.

No one has ever seen it.

The evidence is there,
strewn across the floor—
discarded clothes,
spilled photographs,
repacked treasures
from a baby long ago.

Something or someone
is revisiting,
re-imagining,
or even reliving
a life too precious
or unfinished
to ever let it go.

The child beneath the bed
in the room downstairs
knows all of this,
and yet, it does not help.

The ghost is agitated,
restless, relentless.
It sounds so angry.
How those floorboards creak!


--/--

Letters From Next Week
idol survivor | daily-fic challenge, day 14 | ~500 words

~*~*~*~*~

Dear Stacy,

     I know how much you love those navy-blue dress pants, but listen up: DO NOT wear them to the Customer
Focus Group meeting on Monday. I mean it. That zipper has had all it can take. It's standing on the ledge, and 
it’s going to jump. You really don’t want to find that out the hard way, trust me on this.

     And don’t park next to the pink Oldsmobile. That doesn’t end well either.

            Yours,
	          Future Stacy



Dear Stacy,

     As tempting as it is to just “wing it” when dinnertime rolls around, you should really make an effort to go 
shopping this weekend and buy some real food. Those leftovers in the fridge will probably look fine, and they
may even taste okay. But food poisoning is no joke.

            Yours,
                  Future Stacy



Dear Stacy,

     Jack will tell you he’s sorry, like he always does, but that is a LIE. He didn’t forget to come over—he was busy 
doing somebody else. That cocktail waitress is just the one you happened to find out about. She wasn’t the first.

     Kick that asshole to the curb. You owe it to yourself.

            Future Stacy



Dear Stacy,

     So, still thinking you’ve figured out how to parallel park? 

     You haven’t.

            No love,
                  Future Stacy



Dear Stacy,

     I’m sorry about Lila. I really am. 

     She might just be going through some stuff right now. Or maybe there were signs and you missed them—
we missed them. I mean, we’ve never really been good at picking up on that kind of thing, have we? I don’t 
know why we’re so clueless about all that stuff. I wish we weren’t, and yeah, it really sucks.

     She might feel better in a few days or a few weeks, but she also might not. I wish I knew.

     And again, I’m sorry. I know it hurts.

            Love,
                  Future Stacy 



Dear Stacy,

     That cute new guy at the rock-climbing gym is married. Just saving you some time.

            Future Stacy



Dear Stacy,

     The weather forecast for Wednesday is an embarrassment to meteorologists everywhere. Bring an umbrella.

     Also, Larry from Accounting is selling raffle tickets for his daughter's school carnival, so maybe avoid the 
break room until later in the week.	

            Future Stacy



Dear Stacy,

     The universe is full of mysteries, and Mom is one of them. Who knows why she does the things she does?

     And by that, I mean showing up at your apartment in the middle of the work week. If I were you, and I am,
I’d pick the place up a little and maybe do some vacuuming. 

     You have until Thursday. 

            Yours,
                  Future Stacy



Dear Stacy,

     This is very important, so pay attention: on Saturday, you will run into a man with blue sunglasses at the corner 
coffee shop. When he asks if you want to know the secrets of time, the correct answer is YES. You'll thank me later.

     Also, maybe rethink the ad proposal for the Burwick account? That really isn't your best work.

            Yours in new adventures,
                  Future Stacy

--/--

The Open Road
idol survivor | daily-fic challenge, day 12 | 1340 words

x-x-x-x-x

If anyone had told me a year ago that I would someday miss biking near my office, I would have thought they were crazy. I had a 27-year history with that whole experience, ranging from danger and discomfort to mere inconvenience, not to mention the simple problem of boredom. But it turns out, boredom can have multiple aspects.

The micro-level boredom was obvious, but the meta-level boredom from losing that office option was not.

Near our house, we have a bike path that runs along the American River for a total of 30 miles. It's amazing—almost entirely shut off from traffic (except for a few access roads), and the main hazards are other cyclists, pedestrians, and randomly suicidal squirrels. It's one of the best features of this area.

Near my office, things are very different. There are regular streets (though many are in a semi-rural setting) and the main hazards are cars, trucks, semis, cars, metal shards, nails, glass, construction-staples, and also, cars.

When I first started working there so many decades ago, more of the surrounding area was rural. There were entire roads (or even just long stretches of them) that had only a couple of stop signs, nothing more. In just ten or fifteen minutes, you could bicycle in one of several directions and reach farming or grazing land. Of course, you had to be alert to the possibility of grazing herds being ON the road, because sometimes they got through the fence.

( Read more... )

Now The Storm
idol survivor | daily-fic challenge, day 10

x-x-x-x-x

The storm unrolls the sky
as I wait beneath this oak,
the hair along my neck
rising and listening—
or just waiting
to be struck down.

Hours ago, it was clear—
a bright, warm Spring day.
Now the air has shifted
(the wind, the sky)
and trouble sprints
to close the distance.

What was I thinking,
going out so freely
and easily, as if the world
could actually be kind?

I should have been
more careful, yes—
more careful, watchful,
always something more.
We gather facts
against the future,
but they never
help us here and now.

We try to hide from lightning,
brave the thunder,
but we forget the stubborn rain
will always find us.


--/--