Most of what I work on now is for a site called Clever Fiction, I may have mentioned it before, but I am feeling too lazy to go back and look. In any case, you can check out the stories I've written there here.
Recently they had a visual prompt of a bench in the snow. I would link to that post, but their site is having problems. The story I wrote for that prompt is called "Snow Globe", and I quite like it. However the story did not make it up on that site in its entirety. To rectify that I am going to post the whole story here.
Enjoy.
Snow Globe
by Void Munashii (Visual
Prompt)
The cold wind wakes me
like a slap in the face. My eyes jerk open, and all I see is white. I
think I've gone blind at first until I realize that I am in the
middle of a snowy field. I look down at myself to confirm that I can
see, but my eyes are greeted with a white winter coat, but I have
black gloves on, and they stand out in contrast against the whiteness
of everything else.
I take in my
surroundings, trying to remember where I am and how I got here;
trying to remember who I am. I'm sitting on a bench at the edge of a
field like someone waiting at a bus stop. Dense trees surround the
clearing. In the very center of the open space is a cabin with a
trail of smoke rising from a metal pipe in its roof.
Something about that
cabin makes me uneasy, but I don't know why.
I look around me for
any signs of how I got here. There are no tracks in the snow, but
it's also snowing, so if I've been here for any length of time they
may have been covered up. It can't have been by car; there doesn't
appear to be any gap in the trees wide enough to drive through.
Maybe I was hurt, and I
made I this far and passed out? That would explain why I don't know
how I got here, or who I am. I must had suffered a head injury. I
feel around my head for a bump or a sore spot, but I don't find any.
Drugs maybe, maybe I did drugs.
There's a dark blue
backpack on the bench next to me, and I wonder if it will tell me who
or where I am. I brush away the layer of snow that has landed on top
of the bag, and unzip the top. Inside the bag there are three
hardback books: “Pandemic” by Scott Sigler, “The Rise of
Theodore Roosevelt” by Edmund Morris, and “Bruce Aidell's
Complete Book of Pork”. What the hell am I doing with a cookbook?
Digging past the books
I find a package of white socks, a box of salt, a jar of garlic
powder, and a manila envelope. I pull the envelope out, and open it.
Inside there is a single thick piece of paper and a disc, although I
don't know if it's a CD or a DVD. The piece of paper has a man's
picture on it. Something about the man is familiar, but it doesn't
connect to anything specific for me.
I put the items back in
the envelope, and the envelope back in the bag. I dig around some
more and find what looks like a sharpening stone, a container of
antacids, and a box of matches. This doesn't make any sense. If I
were going someplace snowy, why would I pack this assortment of crap?
Maybe I'm stupid. Maybe
I am a drug user.
I zip the backpack
closed, sling it onto my shoulder, and get up from the bench. My feet
crunch in the snow, leaving deep footprints behind me as I head for
the tree line. The trees are tight together, but there should be
plenty enough space between them for a person to fit through.
I make my way to the
tree line and stop. I've hit something. I put my hands out towards
the trees, but something is stopping me from touching them. It feels
like I am touching a glass wall.
I take the gloves off,
stuffing them in my coat pocket, and touch the wall. I feel...
nothing. It's not cold like glass would be, but it's not warm either.
It doesn't feel like anything, but I cannot put my hands through it.
I try pounding my fist against the barrier; it doesn't hurt, and it
doesn't make any sort of noise.
I don't understand
this. The snow seems to be passing through it, and when I blow on it,
the vapour from my breath passes through easily enough, but I can't.
I swing the backpack against it, and it bounces back like it hit
something.
I don't know how to put
it in words. It's like I am pushing against a solid wall while
pushing against nothing. I can feel the presence of a hard, solid
barrier, but I can't feel the surface of it.
There must be a gap or
a break in it. I got in here somehow, right? If I can get in, then I
can get out.
I start moving to my
left, sliding my hand over the smooth yet non-existent surface that
is keeping me from getting into the woods. I slog through the snow
around the edge of the open space, my hand always inches from the
trees, but never quite able to touch them.
There aren't any
breaks. How can there not be a way through? I've gone far enough
around the clearing now to be in front of the cabin, and still
haven't found any way through.
“You may as well give
up, son!” a voice comes to be on the wind.
I turn away from my
invisible wall to see an old man sitting on the cabin's porch. He's
wearing a red and black coat, a furry cap, and is smoking a pipe. He
looks harmless, but something in me cringes all the same.
“You can't get out,”
he calls to me, “Not like that anyhows.”
I swallow down my fear
and call to the old man.
“Where am I?”
“What?” The old man
yells back.
“Where am I? How did
I get here?”
“You're gonna hafta
come closer, son. My hearing's not what it was!”
He seems harmless
enough; old certainly. I dismiss my unease as just a reaction to my
situation. It seems like he might have some answers anyway.
I trudge across the
snow, and step up onto the cabin's covered porch; the boards creak
under my weight. I can see the old man better now, and he looks even
older than I first thought; eighty at least. He's sitting in an old
rocking chair. There's a table next to him with a metal ashtray and a
hardback book; the dustcover has been removed so I can't see the
title.
“You been checking
that wall for a while now?” the old man asks, “I was tempted to
let ya go all the way around if you didn't look over at me yourself,
but I was thinking on goin' inside, and I didn't want to leave you
out here.”
“Umm... thanks,” I
say, running my hands through my hair to brush out the snow before it
all melts.
“I once saw this one
girl go all the way around twice before she finally decided to come
talk to me. I find that as I grow older I lack the patience to let
you kids do that though,” the old man shakily rises from the chair,
“Lets head inside. It's nice and warm in there.”
The old man walks past
me, and opens the cabin's door, a plain brown thing with four small
windows set into it that creaks loudly as he forces the hinges to
move. He enters the cabin and leaves the door open behind him, “Hurry
up 'fore you let all the cold in,” he says as he strips off his
coat.
The door takes a bit of
pushing to get it to close, but it seals the cold out nicely. The
inside of the cabin is quite warm thanks to the big stove near the
center of it, and the heat makes my cheeks and ear burn from being in
the cold outside. There is a large steaming pot on top of the stove.
“Get outta that wet
coat before you drip all over my floor!” The old man orders, “You
can hang it on the hooks there.
There are four hooks on
the wall next to the door. The old man's coat is on one, and a blue
coat of a similar style to my own is next to it. I hang my coat on
one of the empty hooks, drop my backpack on the floor under it, and
look around.
Three of the walls of
the large room are hidden behind bookshelves, broken only by the
windows and door. There is an easy chair and a shabby sofa with a
coffee table facing the stove on one side and a small round kitchen
table with three chairs on the other.
At the back of the room
are a pair of doors. A bathroom probably, and maybe a bedroom or
closet; I don't see a bed in here. Next to the doors is a sink, some
cabinets, and a fridge that looks like it was old when the old man
was young.
“Where am I?” I
ask.
“Get right to the
point, don't ya?” the man asks, stirring the steaming pot with a
long handled spoon, “You haven't even introduced yourself yet,
boy.”
“I'm sorry, but I
don't know who I am.”
The old man laughs like
it's the funniest thing he's ever heard, “No, of course you don't.
No one who comes here does,” he puts the spoon down on a plate on
the kitchen table and walks over to me. He leans in close to my ear,
“Tell ya the truth, I don't know who I am either,” and he cackles
again.
“Do you know where
here is?” I ask.
“I call it the snow
globe; snows here all the time,” the man says, “Been here a long
time, I think. I bet you're hungry; there's a little stew left there
if you want some. There're bowls by the sink.”
I realize that I am
hungry. I see a dish strainer next to the sink with a pair of brown
bowls and some utensils sitting in it. I take a bowl and a spoon, and
go over to the stew pot, “Thank you,” I say to the old man as I
spoon some of the meat and broth into the bowl.
“I'm happy to share,”
the old man says, “Take a seat and enjoy.”
I sit at the table and
begin to eat. The meat is kind of grayish, but it smells like beef. I
wonder if I'll get food poisoning from eating meat that has gone off
or something. I take a bite, and it tastes a little sweet; pork
maybe.
“Finally!” the old
man exclaims, “I've been waiting to read this! The first two were
great.”
I turn and see that the
old man is going through my backpack. He's looking at one of the
books; It looks like the “Pandemic” one.
“Excuse me?” I say
once I've swallowed.
“Ah! Salt! Thank
God!” he says like I hadn't spoken, “And some new socks!”
“Excuse me, sir,” I
say, rising from the table, “That's my bag; that's everything I
have... I think.”
The old man looks at
me, “I'm sorry, it's just been awhile, and I've been running out of
some stuff. Like I said, that's the last of the stew there. Some
vegetables woulda been nice this time though. It's not like I can
grow my own here or anythin'”
“So there are other
people here?” I ask, looking at the blue coat hung next to mine.
“Nope, jus' me an'
you right now. I'm sure you'll be passin' on soon though,” the old
man pulls out the manila envelope, “Here we go, lets find out who
you are.”
The man crosses the
room, and stoops down to open a cabinet at the bottom of one of the
bookshelves. He pulls out a laptop computer, and comes over to place
it on the kitchen table.
“I wouldn't keep this
in there, you know, but that's where the plug socket is. What sorta
idiot puts a plug socket in a cabinet?” he asks as he opens the
computer's lid.
While the computer
boots up, the old man slips the photo and the disc out of the
envelope, “Handsome, aren't ya?” he asks, holding up the picture,
“I bet you pulled the ladies, didn't ya? Or did you prefer guys?”
“I don't know.”
“Don't worry about
it. I ain't here to judge ya; they done that already. Now lets see
who you were.”
I don't like the way he
phrased that.
The old man puts the
disc into the computer, and uses the computer's touch pad to access
it.
“Okay, so you were
Anders Anderson,” he laughs at my name, “No wonder you ended up
here with a name like that. I bet you got mocked somethin' fierce in
school. Probably warped you bad.”
“That disc says who I
am?”
“Yup. I wish they
had these things when they put me here, at least then I'd know who I
am and why I'm here.”
“Why am I here?”
“Lets see,” he
reads the screen, “It seems you are a,” he pauses for effect,
“murderer; shot up a shopping mall.”
“No,” I say. The
idea repulses me.
“Yup, but that's
pretty normal. Here, look for yourself, “he turns the laptop
towards me, and the leaves the table, “Murder's what gets most
people sent here. Rape occasionally. Makes we wonder what kind of a
bastard I was.”
“How many people have
been put here?” I ask.
“God, it must be a
few hundred by now. I've got albums fulla your pictures. I expect
they'll be sending on a new album soon. I hope they send some
vegetables too.”
I can't look away from
the computer. There's a mugshot of the man in the photo, of me, and a
mass of text describing how I killed twenty-eight civilians and two
police officers before I was captured.
“So if there have
been hundreds of people like me here, where are they now?”
“They passed on,
don't ya listen?” The old man replies, I can see him out of the
corner of my eye; he's standing by the sink, “You'll be passing on
shortly, and in a week or two they'll send me someone else.”
“You said that
before,” I say, “'Passing on'. Where will I pass on to?”
“You see, I figure
that I must have done something really awful,” he continues without
replying to me, “because they want me to suffer; they want me to
survive; it's why they keep sending folks like you to me. You kids
pass on, while I remain.”
“Pass on to where?”
I say, still looking at the computer. There are links in the
document, and clicking on them opens pictures of dead, bloody bodies.
One of the pictures is of a child clutching a bloodstained stuffed
rabbit; half of the kid's head is missing.
“If I were a stronger
man, a better man, I would just let myself go,” The old man starts
moving towards me, “I tried, but it's so hard. One of these days
I'll go though, and then one of you kids will take over for me. Until
then... well, I just get so hungry.”
Hungry?
I turn in time to see
the old man coming at me, the cleaver in his right hand raised above
his head, ready to split mine.
He moves fast for an
old man; very, very fast.
