Here is some short-short fiction I thought up tonight. Enjoy (or not).
Conversation with a Trickster:
I found myself with Spider again. Or as I would call him (her? another gender? how do you even know with a spirit?), Espike. Maybe not know as a trickster to my ancestors, but some others realized within this humble spinner, there was much cunning.
"Oh hey you!"
"Hey, me? You didn't even realize I was here two days ago-"
"Oh yeah, scurrying across the floor."
"So, you need my help."
"Why? You're about to tell a story."
"Oh, okay. You usually do help with that. But wait..."
"Trust me, I'm telling you to do this for your own good!"
"How do I know you're not tricking me?"
"You feel good, right?"
"Yes, but that could be a trick, too. Why should I trust you?"
"You ARE me."
"Okay, fair point. But how do I know I'm not tricking myself? I've done it before."
That is the hardest part about being a trickster, more often you end up tricking yourself. I can't tell you how many times I've done things backwards, because that's my whole life. But I guess I'm going to tell you a story.
Chattering, a creation story:
We think of chattering like teeth clicking together, an empty gesture. But it's very important, because that's how we started. You may have heard that there is a Creator. Whether or not that's true, it's not important to my story. Maybe there was a first word that brought us into being. Maybe there were many. But...
We could always speak, you know. Everything speaks, but we have learned to speak so well we can't hear anything else speak. Some people still do, but that can be terrifying. Did we speak about speaking? No, the chatter had not begun yet.
One day one of use began to speak about speaking. Another day one of us heard him and started speaking about it too. The words kept reflecting back on each other, like photons collimating into a laser, cutting aside all other speech.
It was all we could think about and when we saw ourselves, we were made of words. This part, that part, this thought, that thought. And so it went. Until eventually we started to forget speech was real. It just was.
And then the wizards became even more powerful. Because they remembered that you could weave words. Sometimes people become caught in words, tangled. Eventually they get sucked dry. Others trip and fall, or are led along. Still others build with their words. And that is how we were created, building ourselves out of words.
Old Man Innie:
Old man Innie had died a long time ago, a rich rich man. But even in town lore he was remembered in an ill light. Though a town founder, an explorer and settler in the region, who had become rich off what he found and what he got others to do, he was in ill-repute. Yes, many grand houses stood on Innie Avenue, though their Victorian splendor had faded and some had been subdivided into apartments. Others had their plots divided and more modern houses built between them. Innie even had a federal building named after him.
So of course his house was historically preserved, Innie House. Little was done to keep it in repair by the city, but Innie's will had a trust that maintained it into perpetuity - even to the point of hiring a law firm to manage that trust and maintain enough income via investing that the maintenance didn't even serve to decrease the year-to-year amount, which kept increasing. Even in death, Innie was immortal and richer than ever.
But even though he had taken more from this town than he had ever given and his house was rumored to be haunted by him (several ghost-hunting shows had visited it and struck out, they didn't even bother airing the episodes, in the end the tax-breaks and city guide hours they had been granted ended up costing the city money and all the locals interviewed were upset that they didn't get to be on TV), he wasn't really a problem for the town. Until they decided (maybe it was the classic sunk-cost mistake, figuring they had spent enough on Innie, they'd keep spending 'til he paid off) to make a big deal of him.
First came the Innie Historian. Yes, they hired a historian devoted to Innie. Oddly, a clause in Innie's will allowed for a historian (and accompanying staff, if necessary) to live in the house. However, it already paid people to maintain the house, so the city decided just to hire a Historian. Who would live there and plan what came next.
The Innie Festival. I didn't go, I was off hotboxing with my best friend in her truck, off in the woods. That was the day we almost got busted. "Innie strikes again," she had said. We both chuckled. As for the festival, it nearly got rained out, but that same stubbornness (much like Innie's stubbornness) kept it from getting canceled. A lot of towns-folk showed up anyway, for three reasons: there's not much to do here, the town had announced they had gotten rights to the unaired footage and hired the local station to splice it together into one long Innie documentary with all their parts kept in, and finally Kent Knuteson (the Innie historian) was to be available to ask questions (and of course listen to rants) about Innie after the movie.
After the town broke even, they decided they were headed in the write direction and kept it up. That meant give Kent a year's contract and strongly hinting they would renew it as long as the money kept rolling in. Kent, being an academic, wasn't that versed in money-making schemes, but the success of the Innie Fest had emboldened him and he readily agreed. His first idea was another festival (stick with what works, right?). While Innie wasn't known to be a big fan of music, he did like plays, especially tragedies.
So the Sobfest (officially know as The Innie Theatre Festival, to distinguish it from the Innie Festival that started it and the Innie Food & Beer Festival that was also in the works), was planned. Running and entire day, it had three plays: two Shakespeare tearjerkers (who knows which, I'm not a fan) and something modern called 'Gallie' which I got a bit part in. Which is how I got sucked into this whole thing. Weirdly, maybe after having to sit through all that Bardic Bore, the audience was refreshed. It was a weird play, semi-abstract, I guess post-modern?
After Sobfest is when they struck. Yes, the town council, innovators of Inniedom, struck. They wanted to hire Innie reenactors to live and work in Innie House. Kent would of course play Innie himself, while they got me a job as a scullery maid. Finally, a paying job.
Weirdly it worked out for the city at first. It worked out for me, even though I explained I refused to haul coal because it was environmentally unfriendly. Kent actually baked me on that, saying, "She's right, Innie would want this place preserved, but if he lived here he'd want that modernized. He actually used to complain of the smell of coal burning. How about some kind of electric heating?" Both the town council and the lawyers bought it. And so after some final renovations, tours began.
I spent my day pretending to be a scullery maid, while mostly explaining what a scullery maid in my time would have done. Kent put on a smug and sour expression and went to work as old man Innie. I was impressed with his craft (what actors call acting talent). While it sucked to have him screaming at me, tourists ate it up. More and more started coming.
It was when they started asking where the town of "Innie" was that problems really began. The revenue from Innie-related events meant they had to figure out a way to keep people from getting lost. So they put up signs on the highways. The the complaints came. Reading off one, Sue the town treasurer said, "My family really enjoyed our visit to Innie House. We will be sure to visit again and get our friends to! My only concern is, my son was disappointed that your town isn't named after your founder." Actually, the town was named after the founder, since Innie got here years after the town was founded.
But there were hundreds of comment cards from the town's visitor bureau and Innie house and even a few from local restaurants (my best friend said it often came up at tables she waited and a few waitresses who vocally disagreed with people got bad tips and comment cards, she just changed the topic to asking about Innie House and mentioning I worked there. They would mention it to me when they visited the place yet again and she would get great tips). So they brought it to a vote and changed the Town's name to Innie.
By this time, Kent was more than a historian and reenactor, he was the acting director of the Innie Historical Preservation Society. He of course sponsored a festival to celebrate the change of town name. The town got some of the money, but the IHP Society got most of it. The attendance was so great (even with the horrible Innie biographical play that Kent wrote) that Kent started buying up the neighboring houses. Remodeling them, he got the town (or state, I don't recall) to make the whole neighborhood a historical district. The newer houses were actually demolished first, though... so it was like a snapshot of Innie-time.
That festival was weird. Innie went viral for a bit, there were so many pics of me in with the hashtag #Innie or #InniePlay that my bestie was making fun of me for weeks. Not that I looked bad. And I got to play a brew-misstress, who owned the first brewery in our town, the one that Innie bought out and eventually sold to a larger distributor. Which brings me to the last festival - the Innie Beer & Food Festival.
Given the previous Innie hype, this was the biggest yet. The city had sponsored it and they expected to make even more than what the IHPS had made with the name festival. And they did. Until the hashtags #InnieSucks and #InnieVirus started. #InnieOrOuttie took on a whole new meaning. Turns out that somehow both ALL the food and ALL the beer were contaminated. I don't drink and I'm vegan, so I didn't eat any of the tripe-based concessions, but from what I heard it was pretty bad food poisoning. And of course the city got sued. So hard.
Now they were bankrupt and the tourists had stopped coming. I mean, the town's name was synonymous with a bad time, for crying out loud. Local residents started moving away, not wanting to be associated with that. But Kent, with the help of the lawyers, bailed the town out. Well, sort-of. They bought it. And then they paid off anyone who still lived here to move away. We moved out of state, my best friend moved a town over. I still miss her. Sometimes we get to visit. Like my last time in Innie.
Yeah, I went back. I had gotten a letter from Kent. Well, from the IHPS, but that was just Kent, no other members or board, not even the lawyers. He wanted to hire me to start reenacting again. He even included a check that would more than cover my passage to Innie and back by cab (the only way to get there now), with a contract stating that if I cashed it and did not present record (a stub from the cab driver) that i had visited, the whole amount would be forfeit. Well, out of a job again, I wanted that money. So I went.
And it was just me. And Kent. And Innie. He had had an automated home security system installed since we had all left. Most of the town was demolished, landscapers had even altered the town's features. Innie-time. The house clicked with locks bolting shut. I was trapped. Kent came out to greet me. He looked more Innie-like than ever. He spoke:
"You know, I always hated you. That was why I bought your brewery, to spite you. To see a woman succeed in business was worse than seeing a man, somehow." He was full-Innie, there was no Kent in those eyes. "But Mr. Innie, I'm not her. I'm just an actress, remember?" He glared, then laughed, I was more terrified than ever, "Of course you are you little harlot! But did you know that your great-great-grandmother was that brewmistress. As close as I could get. Now it's your turn to die and mine to live. One last revenge." Laughing again, he went for an axe leaning next to his desk.
I had seen it first. In fact, while he had been talking it was all I could look at. not those horrible gleaming eyes of his. So when he said "die", I dived for it and got it. Finishing his diatribe and turning, "My axe!" Shaking my head involuntarily, "Kent, stop this. It's not funny, stop this." Then he charged, and I jumped, and I swung.
I used to chop wood as a kid. Mostly for the sauna, to have a good sweat and get the evil out. It was all I could think of, but I remembered to reverse the handle and dodge before it hit. Struck with the flat back of the axe, Kent was knocked down and out. Over and through where my left shoulder had been, the axe bounced back and stuck in the desk loosely.
Finally I breathed out and the axe simultaneously dropped from the table, but hung in midair. That's when I saw it, having risen out of Kent's body, Innie. I could hear him laughing as he started moving towards me. But I bolted, there was one way out I knew he'd have forgotten, what with the electric heaters blaring. Into the dining room, into the kitchen, and down the stairs into the cellar. Now we had stored documents, gear, and costumes in it, but early on I had discovered there was an old coal door behind the furnace.
When I got there I saw I really was the last revenge. The city council, my coworkers, the lawyers, even some of the workmen who had maintained the place. Already on the floor, in various states of decay. I looked back. No ghost with an axe. Taking out my lighter I went over to the costumes and grabbed some, piling them on the documents. I could hear the axe, thunking down the stairs to the cellar. I lit them and the thunking stopped. I ran for the coal furnace and climbed up on top of it, glancing back I could see him walking over the bodies, like he was a living man. Prying the door (which had no electronic security or even lock on it, simple being a thin chute) open I started climbing out.
He didn't speak, but I heard the axe drop. I knew by now he couldn't reach me with it. But then came the grasping at my ankle. He was trying to drag me back in. Quickly I pulled my other foot up and braced myself. I could feel the smoke rising up and instinctively I kicked out with my free leg. Though I didn't feel it hit anything, the grip on my other foot loosened and I crawled free. The coal door slammed shut.
Panting, I made my way to the cab, which was still waiting, paid for. "How'd it go, the cabbie asked." Motioning for him to just go, I managed to speak as he drove off, "Not the job for me, terrible boss. He would have had me there for life, too." The cabbie shook his head, "No life for me, I like freedom and the open road." Looking back I could see the flames had spread, "Yeah, me too."
Innie still got his, though. Even though they cleared me via forensic evidence of the murder charges, even of Kent who they had posthumously pinned it on (which corroborated my self-defense plea on that charge), they still got me on arson. Now I'm in federal prison, five-years minimum. My lawyer is appealing, but it doesn't look good.
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