look at me still talking when there's science to do

A lovely, productive month. i approve of it.

fanfic:

new jersey heat a cop AU which i came up with in the spur of the moment and it kind of ran away with me. may well do more with it should the muse decide.

one most immutable more monks!

kanyu amber/kutner fic on the afterlife bus.

body double house/13 porny oneshot. mmm.

eh, maybe dialogue only fic in which wilson is manipulated (or is he? stay tuned for a part two.)

exothermic major character deathfic. but other than that it's pretty good, i have to admit. (hard to talk more about it without giving it away.)

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non-fanfic: (new policy: these stay unlocked for one week after this post and get flocked again. they may not be as popular as my fanfic but they are definitely more saleable and i'm trying to work towards that these days.)

and after short fiction in one hundred words.

fifty words of smut f/f smut in fifty words, duh.

lost in translation m/m smut, original characters.

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poems: (same policy as original works above: these stay unlocked for one week after this post and get flocked again. same reasons.)

farewell, cassandra written for the 'nine things about oracles' project.

graphology about letters and metals and inks and words.

light scattershot through the blinds; shining prison-bar tattooed across lean muscles. the day continues blissfully unaware as she sleeps deeply enough for both of us.

i trace the long lines of her - the blossoming curve of hips waist shoulders, the soft cup of a breast. she turns and the darkened nipple is revealed. i dare to kiss it, my tongue flickering out.

"What time is it?" Her voice is thickened by sleep and a hand with bitten nails tangles its way through her hair. "Time to go?"

The lie falls easily from my mouth. "Not yet, love. Not yet."

At night she sleeps, dreaming nothing. Chest rising and falling, a soft rhythm.

She doesn't know about his boning knife, how its cool caress traces paths along her veins, veers sharp to count her tendons;

Doesn't know about his hands, how his hands twitch and shudder and clench the wooden handle with those cool knots of brass holding it together.

Every night he pulls it away.

Every night.

Every-

Radius, ulna. Left. Graceful arches, curving silverplate-etched grey reflections.

Perfect specimen.

Film tucked away, he turns to work.

Her skin is waxen; hair spills on the concrete slab, glowing amber cold under wire-wrapped fluorescents.

Scalpel point traces pronator teres, palmaris longus; strips them away from imperfect brachialis.

The perfect arm is at home waiting for this treasure.

Someday soon, an ideal woman will rise from frozen shreds and patches.

for newtypeshadow, who requested a ficlet using the prompt 'a feeling of accomplishment'.

Guess what!

Yesterday I made mercury outta toothpaste. Pretty awesome, huh? Even Grandma says it was pretty damn good for my first transmutation - I know that's a swear but I'm just telling, that's what Grandma said - and Grandma doesn't approve of nobody. Least that's what Moms says. Moms says Grandma's a bitter old harridan that doesn't know enough to give up and die already. 'Course she doesn't say that in front of Dad no more ever since Dad said Moms only thought Grandma was a bitter old harridan 'cause Moms is a stone cold bitch with the world's longest running case of PMS in the world, and then they fought. I kinda hate it when they fight. Annie wants 'em to get back married again - Annie's my little sister - but I say no 'cause they don't fight as much now as they did afore the dewash. (That's what Dad calls it that he an' Moms aren't married no more.)

Is 'bitch' a swear? Dad says no 'cause girl dogs are bitches but Moms says yes. What do you think?

Do you know what PMS is? I don't. I don't know what a harridan is either. I guess maybe it's somethin' that happens to you after your husband dies maybe? Grandpa died when I was a baby - he was tryin' to make breathable water, Dad says, an' he made chlorine gas instead an' died right skippy an' his lab had to be fumigated. It was sad. Well, I guess it was sad. I was just a baby.

But yeah, moms is mad 'cause th' mercury is all over her bathroom an' she doesn't got toothpaste no more an' there's mercury all over the bathroom now an' it's in tiny little metal balls all over th' floor an' we gotta declare it a hazmat site. Cool, huh?

I gotta go - Moms said I gotta clean it up my bathroom good before dinner or I don't get no dessert. 'Bye!

For starsong, who gave me the prompt 'scarab beetle'.

My girlfriend woke up yesterday convinced that she was the reincarnation of Cleopatra. She went out and got a scarab beetle tattooed just above the crack of her ass, bought a cat, and started playing the Bangles on repeat over and over again.

(I'm trying to tell her that mid-eighties girl bands don't have a damn thing to do with Ancient Egypt, but she's not listening.)

She keeps sorting through all of her stuff, tyring to figure out what to put in her tomb.

(I'm trying to tell her she's only twenty-seven and isn't likely to die yet, but she's not listening.)

So I just sit here and roll my eyes and try to be noncommittal whenever she asks me some crazy-ass question about whether or not she'll need this or that pair of earrings in the afterlife, or whether or not Coach bags will still be in fashion. How the hell should I know? The things are ass-ugly anyway, I want to say, but I don't.

The cat's shredding up my leg with its tiny claws. I pick it up by the scruff of the neck to give it a good scolding and get bitched out: cats are gods, she said. You can't be mean to them.

I don't care, I reply. The little brat was letting blood, for fuck's sake. I put the cat aside and it goes to attack one of my sneakers.

She starts looking online for a place to order a sarcophagus, and I sigh.

It'll pass. It was better than last week where she thought she was Eva Braun. Those human-skin lampshades and the white power music were just creepy.

I have absolutely no idea where this came from, seriously.

"News!" Jaye threw open the door without knocking like she always did. "Col - "

Columba pulled herself from sleep with a groan. Outside, she could hear the papery rattle and flutter of hundreds of wings. "Oh God, not again."

There were footsteps on the stairs, and the sound of peeping; her little sister tripped into the doorway and stopped short with her thumb in her mouth, like she'd just remembered she wasn't allowed to rush inside. "Col-lee, the black ones are back."

"I know, Henny, I know." She wrapped a silver-cream throw around her shoulders and staggered to the window, feet heavy with sleep; one of her doves landed on her shoulder and buried its head into the thick nest of her braids. She opened the curtains and leaned out.

The lawn was a sea of black-violet ravens. Light rippled across their feathers and was caught there. A leather-jacketed young man sat with his arms around his knees in the center of the group - unkindness of ravens, a pedantic little part of her mind corrected - and looked up at her with his dark, brilliant eyes.

She sighed. "Corbin, it's not going to work. It was just a one night stand! I just - we're not compatible."

"You don't know that." he replied with a slight smile.

"I'm just another shiny toy to you!"

"You don't know that."

The dove cooed, fluttering its wings next to her ear.

"You have to admit he is dreamy." Jaye murmured from her spot on Col's bed.

Columba rolled her eyes at her sister. "Look - I - I need to think about this, at least."

"I'll wait."

She closed the window again and sighed: outside, a thousand ravens and their boy settled in for the long haul.

They said it couldn't be done.

Obviously "they" underestimated the resources of a clinically insane organic chemist.

One of the benefits of being clinically insane, he thought, was that you tended to ignore limits that other people set on you.

All it really took was a tub full of tree sap, a lot of dry ice, and a thimbleful of anesthetic in a delicate blue vein.

Through the window he watches her face - yellowed by her embalming, but still calm, peaceful, beautiful.

Eternal.

The television behind him squawks terror about a missing girl. He turns it off and watches his experiment - his greatest triumph, he thinks - evolve into a marvelous trinket ensconced in amber glass.

I promised people who sponsored me for Write-O-Rama that they'd get their very own piece of fiction that fell out of my brain. This fell out of my brain, and the_new_perfect probably knows why, and why you shouldn't mess with the banana. Love you, chica! Hope you like.

There was an old Woody Allen movie I remember seeing once upon a time, where the main character (played by Woody Allen, of course, and basically him - a neurotic Jewish New Yorker, like all of his characters) wakes up in the future and encounters giant food - the solution to world hunger. Towering carrots, enormous tomatoes: giant heads of lettuce, their leaves fresh green tarpaulins that hold off the rain.

I remember at the time I thought it was funny.

If I knew then what I do now I would have started digging my shelter that afternoon.

*

Like the lead scandals of the late 'oughts, it came from China. Maybe they'd seen the same movie, I don't know: I can't really imagine a group of impassive government officials taking inspiration from a skinny, balding nerd with enough neuroses to float a battleship, but stranger things had happened. All I know was they'd started irradiating the fruit, pumping it full of hormones and god knows what else. And the experiment was a success. It grew.

And grew.

The new, improved food was self-seeding: parent and child in one. It split off buds, threw sticky spores in clouds through the skies. The white masks, first seen during the SARS and bird flu epidemics, made a reappearance - not because of illness, this time, but because no one wanted to breathe in fruit spores. But other than that, things were good. China was self-sustaining. They were even exporting food. There was talk of repealing the one-child law. Things were good.

*

I don't know when things turned ugly. Maybe the fruit, unused to the long voyage by container ship, used its time wisely. Maybe it was inevitable no matter what, a case of science gone horribly wrong. All I know was that when the first shipments of the giant fruit reached US shores, fifteen hundred longshoremen ended up dead in the largest massacre this decade. The seaports couldn't cope. The skies were red with blood; the ground was slick with wet pulp.

But they had been engineered to replicate easily. The dying fruits only provided quick fertilizer for their meat-hungry children.

Humanity never had a chance.

*

It's different now. Radio silence has been declared. Every man for himself is the defacto rule of law. There are rumors of settlements in the inlands that take advantage of the natural borders created by the Rockies, but I don't think that's safe enough. I'm trying to get to Alaska. It's cold enough up there that the fruit will hopefully freeze. At least the temperature drop will make them sluggish.

I spend my days in hiding, armed with the biggest knife I can find and my brother's pellet gun. It probably won't do much, in the end, but the weight feels good in my hands. I travel slowly, deliberately, staying away from settlements and from large open spaces. My internal compass always points north. It's the only safe way to go now.

When I sleep (which is as little as possible) I dream of the blind, white safety of snow.

Assignment: write a short parody of a journal. Two in one day. For those of you who don't care about fiction, rest assured this is probably abnormal (I'm trying to finish up my writing class stuff and I liked this one.) For those of you who like this kind of thing, enjoy.

No actual cartons of moo goo gai pan were harmed in the writing of this piece.

3 April, 2:06 A.M. I pen my missive here, on the side of this vegetable crisper, so that future generations may continue my quest, should I be tragically stricken down before my plot comes to fruition - before I achieve total world domination!

Note to self: must find a way out of this box.

Time to evolve legs! If such an inferior being as the fish can do it, I don't see why I can't improve on evolution.

4 April, 12:35 PM. Evolution is bunk. If Darwin's theories held any water whatsoever, I would at least hold a Senate seat by now. Time for plan B.

Note to self: create plan B.

5 April, 4:30 P.M. Attempting to open negotiations with the celery. I have been inspired by those anime reruns the humans are so mesmerized by on that glowing box. I need a mechanical exoskeleton.

5 April, 10:02 P.M. Damned vegetables. All they ever do is lie there. But rest assured, I will not rest until I achieve total world domina- what's this? I have been spotted by one of the humans! The human is picking me up - I just need to overtake hi--

6 April, 10:25 P.M. They think they're so clever, trying to smother me in a plastic bag! But I'll show them! I shall rise again! I've already made contacts with some mercenary coffee grounds - will ....

so ... hot ...
tired ...

With apologies to Tori Amos. At least I think it was Tori Amos. My Tori Amos-fu is weak.

He stood in front of her with hands on his hips, perfect curls falling over his shoulders, and glared. "Girls can't be paladins."

"Why not?" Tania continued lacing the plates of her armor together, humming softly to herself.

"Because ... they just can't."

"Why not?"

"You can't slay a dragon if you're a girl."

"Why not? I did better than you did on the practice dragons."

"You can't fight monsters."

"Can't I?"

"You can't rescue princesses." His irritated sulk turned into a victorious smirk. "Paladins have to rescue princesses. What are you gonna do, rescue princes and ride away and marry them? What kind of stupid thing is that?"

She did not reply, instead slinging the red-lined cape over her shoulders to keep it out of the way while she finished cleaning the chest plate. The boy sniffed and walked away across the training ground.

"Actually, I thought I'd marry the princesses instead." she murmured with a slight smile.

The son of God, in his present incarnation, runs a coffee cart in Southeast Portland just off the Hawthorne Bridge.

I see him every morning - birkenstocks and tie-dyed shirt, half a set of iPod headphones tangled in his beard as he grooves along to classic rock. Sometimes as he makes my morning chai he's singing along - hello, I love you won't you tell me your name - drumming along with John Densmore's beats on the tiny counter. Jesus has an incredible sense of rhythm. Naturally.

The milk frother shuts off and he turns on one heel and presents me with a perfect cup and the same smile he must have given Mary Magdalene all those years ago. "See you tomorrow?"

"Sure." I say. "Have a good day."

"Thanks. I will." He turns to his next customer, the pudgy Chinese guy in the saffron robes. "Dude! Long time no see."

Author's note: the neocons will now proceed to eat me. Ah well.