Exchange Fic #19
This too, was written by a pinch-hitter because the original Mystery Author could not participate. Yay for pinch-hitters!
But sadly, this is the last fic in the labyfic exchange, and there will be no more. Everyone should now have their gift fics posted, and if you haven't seen yours, then please check back through the community postings or contact me.
The game of Guess Who begins Monday night. ;)
DM
Remember, the actual identity of the writer will remain secret until all the submissions are in and posted.
****
Title: Incursion
Intended recipient: noxiaa
Author: aliasheist
Prompt: ‘The clock winked’ as the first sentence
Rating: PG-13
Plot Summary: There was a reason magic didn’t belong in the world Above.
The clock winked.
Sarah stopped on her way down the hall and dropped her laundry basket to backtrack her steps. Surely enough, the clock face had developed a pair of eyes, and was struggling to blink them open and closed. Where the clock hands fastened in the center, a personable button nose was beginning to form. If it followed the progression of all the other clocks she’d had to get rid of in the last few months, a mouth was next, and it would give her no end of grief in henpecking.
More concerning was that the bold dashes marking the hours and minutes had grown closer together, making space at the top for another hour. “Wonderful,” she groused, and returned to her laundry. The washing machine lid refused to open, and Sarah sighed, opening the cabinet above to remove a heavy hammer.
“We’ve discussed this,” she threatened, and the lid popped open.
“But you keep buying the cheap detergent,” the machine whined.
The dryer sneezed. “I’m allergic to your dryer sheets. Am I getting hives?”
Sarah rolled her eyes and tossed her sheets into the wash. “When you can find a way to help with the bills, I’ll buy you all the top dollar detergent you could ever want.” She slammed the lid shut and considered going to the Laundromat, but remembered the last time that one of the machines had whimpered about someone’s particularly malodorous socks, and that had been the end to that.
Downstairs, the garbage disposal cleared its throat loudly, and began singing opera in a grating baritone. The microwave switched on with a hum and soprano beeps, and the food processor whirred to life in the cabinet to sing tenor. It was an unlikely love triangle, and Sarah considered yet again the possibility of finding a new psychiatrist.
Not that it would help. Her last psychiatrist, incredulous at the description of her home life, recommended that she visit a particular institution. In response, his tie had come angrily to life in an attempt to strangle him, rasping “GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!” until the poor man ripped it off and ran screaming from his office.
There was a reason magic didn’t belong in the world Above.
For the longest time, Sarah had managed to ignore it. In high school, her homework finished itself in her locker between classes, and her pens never ran out of ink. In college, she attended just as many post-midnight cram sessions as the next desperate scholarship-funded student, but she always woke up fully rested a full five minutes before her alarm.
It took time stopping, completely, at twelve noon in a busy restaurant and resuming precisely one hour later for Sarah to understand her charmed life was exactly that. Fortunately, no one save the irritated wait staff seemed to notice that the clock hands weren’t moving. Sarah took away her thoughts on that disquieting day and tried not to say anything, but whatever force was at work wouldn’t be ignored for long.
Further intrusions into her life revealed it was a localized phenomenon. The fichus plant in the corner only shared office gossip with her when she came in on a daily basis, taking its time in getting back its leafy whisper when she spent days or weeks out on assignment. When the water cooler began refusing service to her anal-retentive boss, she thought it best to leave her job and freelance from home.
The dryer coughed, and Sarah grimaced as the door flew open and vomited a wide array of misshapen and ill-matching socks. “Ugh!” The dryer cried. “I’m sorry, that was just so disgusting I couldn’t keep it down.”
Sarah pursed her lips and gathered the socks in another basket. When she was halfway down the stairs, she called out, “Mr. Coffee, please.”
“Oh yeeeeeah baby, I hear you,” her coffeemaker replied. “Dark, sensual delights coming up in three.” She never ceased to be amazed at the array of personalities that had emerged from her appliances. Her coffeemaker continued to labor under the delusion that it was Barry White, and therefore the sexiest machine in the house.
She dropped the laundry basket on the coffee table and prodded around to see if they’d remembered to return her lucky underwear in this batch. No luck.
“I gots yer coffee, lady!”
And then there was that.
“Just in case you don’t remember having this discussion before,” she raised her voice for the benefit of the unseen visitor, “I don’t need my clothes stolen to be blackmailed to do the laundry.”
A scuffling sounded on the kitchen floor, and a tiny brown goblin with unusually well-groomed fuchsia hair rounded the corner with its arms upraised, steaming coffee mug cradled in its hands. “Keep yer pantsies on. ‘is Majesty stopped me afore I come.” Sarah wanted to say something cutting about His Majesty, but she just couldn’t bring herself to upset something so cute, even if it was grubby and sounded like a Dickensian orphan.
“‘E reminded my ‘ow you likes yer creams and…” The little goblin’s face shriveled inwards like a raisin in its confusion. “Aps tamers?”
“Close enough, Dibble,” Sarah said, and took the mug. The coffee was perfect, as usual. As much as a semi-regular goblin barista was something one could call ‘usual.’ As it was, it had become as pedestrian an event as balancing her checkbook, and more regular than paying her taxes.
Dibble squealed in excitement and clapped his little hands. “You likies!” His beady gaze drifted to her laundry basket, and promptly bounced in to roll on the sock pile. “An’ socks! They smell like forests and cheeses. Groob’s’a gonna loves you forever!”
“That’s very nice. Do you have anything for me?”
“Oh yah, I gots yer lady pantsaloons.” Dibble fumbled around beneath him, possibly in what Sarah hoped was a pocket, and produced a pair of pink flamingo panties.
At one time, her sensibilities would have been mortified by a goblin pawing through her unmentionables. She got over it when she started entering hostage negotiations, trading the impossibly appearing socks back for whatever item of underwear had gone missing.
“Thank you, Dibble, very much. Now when you get back, tell Jareth I want to talk to him, okay? It’s very important.”
“Okies, lady.” And as if he’d never been, the goblin, the socks and the basket vanished. Sarah wasn’t concerned about the basket; it always came back, usually with some sort of gift. The last time around, it had come back with a jug of what she learned was the finest high-proof grain alcohol the goblins were making in the city.
Sarah leaned back into the couch with her coffee and prepared to relax when all the sound ceased for the span of a second, as if the house were taking its breath. And all the clocks began to chime.
One, two, three…
Sarah groaned, and pulled herself off the couch. She usually preferred to be standing for these.
Four, five, six, seven…
Quickly, she drained the last of the coffee in her mug and dropped it off in the kitchen sink. The coffeemaker cowered in the corner and she gave it a loving tap before returning to the living room.
Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve…
The sound pulled taut in the air, and Sarah waited.
Thirteen.
“Sarah, Sarah. You never call, you never write...”
Sarah crossed her arms in response and, she admitted this was a bit over the top, slowly tapped her foot. “Jareth.”
He smiled broadly, a predatory grin that never let Sarah forget that he wasn’t as harmless as she liked to think he was. “A fellow might get the impression you don’t love him anymore, my dear.”
“Am I going to have to sic the rocking chair on you again?”
“Pish tosh.” With a mere backwards glance, said offending piece of furniture vanished and was replaced with a sumptuous armchair, the comforts of which Jareth proceeded to avail himself. “What was it that you needed to discuss?”
Smug bastard.
“Stop acting like an obtuse sophomore, Jareth. This whole situation is ridiculous. If the walls could talk…”
“That could be arranged. Do I smell coffee?”
“NO.” Sarah fought the urge to dig her fingers into her hair and pull. “It’s the socks, the talking appliances, the fact that I can’t have company over anymore, because how do you explain that there are two extra hours in a day in this house? It gets old after a while, Jareth.”
He seemed unconvinced. “I see. You’re bored. I suppose I could make love to you again. You’d certainly perk up.”
“Oh no, no no no. I slept with you once and you got all possessive and pissy. The last time I brought a boyfriend home, he got lost on the way to the bathroom!” This was true. And he’d gotten so lost that it took her three days to find him, in an oubliette that turned up down a ladder and through a hedge maze. Which miraculously appeared in the back of her coat closet.
“Yes. That one was particularly well done.”
“The one before that was eaten by the couch. It was two years ago and he’s still billing me for the therapy. I just want it to end.”
Jareth rose suddenly from his improvised throne and loomed over her from across the room. “Obviously you weren’t paying attention the last time I explained this. It doesn’t end until your ‘kingdom’ is as great as mine. What magic remains in this world is doing everything it can to keep you from perjuring yourself.”
“Bull crap, Jareth. I think you think this is hysterical.”
“You think I enjoy magic seeping out of my Labyrinth to feed your entire starved world? You will destroy us both, and all because you are too stubborn to concede defeat.”
Sarah cut off her retort at his raised voice. Once, when they were on slightly better terms, he had explained that he far preferred to express himself through a regal, respectful volume, for his subjects had to behave if they wanted to hear him. To yell was to surrender to weakness, and one in his position could not bow to such emotion. It was a point of contention between them.
“Jareth…” Sarah tried to find words that weren’t just a repeat of the same ones she’d used over and over before. “I won. I did what I had to do. Everything that happened after that was not my fault. And even if I’d known, I would have still done the same thing.”
He gave her a wounded look. “And now? Your precious brother is almost grown. This is not about him anymore. Just come home and the worlds will return to their natural states.”
“I am home,” Sarah said. “I’m at home here.”
“My darling, I can’t get enough of your love babe,” Mr. Coffee crooned. The microwave beeped applause and the garbage disposal swore in expressive German. Upstairs, there was a boom, and a wet sloshing sound.
“Oh, oh god. I’d help clean that up if I had arms!”
Jareth quirked a brow, but said nothing.
“All right, fine, you have a point,” Sarah conceded. “But I don’t want to have to leave my entire life behind. And you need to cut back on the human trafficking. At least try to grow a conscience?”
“Children aren’t people, silly girl.”
“I’m thirty-one.”
“I’m three thousand and thirty-one. You’re still a silly girl. And besides, I am doing a service for all, removing children from homes in which they will not be appreciated.”
“You turn them into goblins! Foul, burpy, farting, illiterate goblins! Could you consider making it easier for desperate teenaged mothers to get their babies back?”
Jareth made a thoughtful expression, and Sarah shook her head disapprovingly. “Seducing the under aged is wrong, no matter where you’re from. We have discussed this, several times, and there will be no more of that either.”
He winced. “But… I have needs. There are so many irresponsible silly girls that it’s a crime not to find sport at their expense.”
“We all have to make sacrifices, Jareth. Meet me halfway.”
Jareth dropped back into the armchair and drummed his fingers on the arm. “I suppose if you slept in the castle you could keep the house. I could see what I can do about remedying your little problem.”
Sarah started at the unladylike snort that emerged from her person, but she graciously let him continue.
“I fail to see why you would want to work when I could arrange for you to live like a queen, but if you persuade me on a semi-regular basis I could perhaps look into magic-proofing the workplace of your choice.”
That wasn’t an entirely unappealing innuendo. It had been quite a while since she’d had a boyfriend, after all, and Jareth was certainly useful in bed. “Anything else, Your Majesty?”
“I want Mr. Coffee and the dryer. Can you meet these terms?”
“Stop stealing my underwear and it’s a deal.”
Jareth hesitated. “Only if you give up wearing those horrid orange flannel pajamas to bed.”
“Done.”
“Ah. Splendid.” He stood again and gestured her to his side. “This could take a while, so we had best start immediately. If you could only be persuaded to stop aging…”
Sarah rolled her eyes and took her time in crossing the room. “You’re a right bastard sometimes, Jareth. Way to make a lady feel like sleeping with you.”
“You’re getting older. It is fact. Fortunately for you you’ve kept your figure, or your shrewish attitude would hold no appeal whatsoever.”
“Jareth. Shut up.”
She muffled his probably insulting reply by pressing her hand to his mouth, and they vanished from the living room. In their place, a laundry basket appeared, filled to the brim with bog flowers. They were beautiful, yes, but smelled vaguely of ripe horse droppings, and oozed a sticky nectar more adhesive than superglue.
For a moment, all was silence.
“Merde,” the coffee table said, and crab-scuttled away.
But sadly, this is the last fic in the labyfic exchange, and there will be no more. Everyone should now have their gift fics posted, and if you haven't seen yours, then please check back through the community postings or contact me.
The game of Guess Who begins Monday night. ;)
DM
Remember, the actual identity of the writer will remain secret until all the submissions are in and posted.
****
Title: Incursion
Intended recipient: noxiaa
Author: aliasheist
Prompt: ‘The clock winked’ as the first sentence
Rating: PG-13
Plot Summary: There was a reason magic didn’t belong in the world Above.
The clock winked.
Sarah stopped on her way down the hall and dropped her laundry basket to backtrack her steps. Surely enough, the clock face had developed a pair of eyes, and was struggling to blink them open and closed. Where the clock hands fastened in the center, a personable button nose was beginning to form. If it followed the progression of all the other clocks she’d had to get rid of in the last few months, a mouth was next, and it would give her no end of grief in henpecking.
More concerning was that the bold dashes marking the hours and minutes had grown closer together, making space at the top for another hour. “Wonderful,” she groused, and returned to her laundry. The washing machine lid refused to open, and Sarah sighed, opening the cabinet above to remove a heavy hammer.
“We’ve discussed this,” she threatened, and the lid popped open.
“But you keep buying the cheap detergent,” the machine whined.
The dryer sneezed. “I’m allergic to your dryer sheets. Am I getting hives?”
Sarah rolled her eyes and tossed her sheets into the wash. “When you can find a way to help with the bills, I’ll buy you all the top dollar detergent you could ever want.” She slammed the lid shut and considered going to the Laundromat, but remembered the last time that one of the machines had whimpered about someone’s particularly malodorous socks, and that had been the end to that.
Downstairs, the garbage disposal cleared its throat loudly, and began singing opera in a grating baritone. The microwave switched on with a hum and soprano beeps, and the food processor whirred to life in the cabinet to sing tenor. It was an unlikely love triangle, and Sarah considered yet again the possibility of finding a new psychiatrist.
Not that it would help. Her last psychiatrist, incredulous at the description of her home life, recommended that she visit a particular institution. In response, his tie had come angrily to life in an attempt to strangle him, rasping “GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!” until the poor man ripped it off and ran screaming from his office.
There was a reason magic didn’t belong in the world Above.
For the longest time, Sarah had managed to ignore it. In high school, her homework finished itself in her locker between classes, and her pens never ran out of ink. In college, she attended just as many post-midnight cram sessions as the next desperate scholarship-funded student, but she always woke up fully rested a full five minutes before her alarm.
It took time stopping, completely, at twelve noon in a busy restaurant and resuming precisely one hour later for Sarah to understand her charmed life was exactly that. Fortunately, no one save the irritated wait staff seemed to notice that the clock hands weren’t moving. Sarah took away her thoughts on that disquieting day and tried not to say anything, but whatever force was at work wouldn’t be ignored for long.
Further intrusions into her life revealed it was a localized phenomenon. The fichus plant in the corner only shared office gossip with her when she came in on a daily basis, taking its time in getting back its leafy whisper when she spent days or weeks out on assignment. When the water cooler began refusing service to her anal-retentive boss, she thought it best to leave her job and freelance from home.
The dryer coughed, and Sarah grimaced as the door flew open and vomited a wide array of misshapen and ill-matching socks. “Ugh!” The dryer cried. “I’m sorry, that was just so disgusting I couldn’t keep it down.”
Sarah pursed her lips and gathered the socks in another basket. When she was halfway down the stairs, she called out, “Mr. Coffee, please.”
“Oh yeeeeeah baby, I hear you,” her coffeemaker replied. “Dark, sensual delights coming up in three.” She never ceased to be amazed at the array of personalities that had emerged from her appliances. Her coffeemaker continued to labor under the delusion that it was Barry White, and therefore the sexiest machine in the house.
She dropped the laundry basket on the coffee table and prodded around to see if they’d remembered to return her lucky underwear in this batch. No luck.
“I gots yer coffee, lady!”
And then there was that.
“Just in case you don’t remember having this discussion before,” she raised her voice for the benefit of the unseen visitor, “I don’t need my clothes stolen to be blackmailed to do the laundry.”
A scuffling sounded on the kitchen floor, and a tiny brown goblin with unusually well-groomed fuchsia hair rounded the corner with its arms upraised, steaming coffee mug cradled in its hands. “Keep yer pantsies on. ‘is Majesty stopped me afore I come.” Sarah wanted to say something cutting about His Majesty, but she just couldn’t bring herself to upset something so cute, even if it was grubby and sounded like a Dickensian orphan.
“‘E reminded my ‘ow you likes yer creams and…” The little goblin’s face shriveled inwards like a raisin in its confusion. “Aps tamers?”
“Close enough, Dibble,” Sarah said, and took the mug. The coffee was perfect, as usual. As much as a semi-regular goblin barista was something one could call ‘usual.’ As it was, it had become as pedestrian an event as balancing her checkbook, and more regular than paying her taxes.
Dibble squealed in excitement and clapped his little hands. “You likies!” His beady gaze drifted to her laundry basket, and promptly bounced in to roll on the sock pile. “An’ socks! They smell like forests and cheeses. Groob’s’a gonna loves you forever!”
“That’s very nice. Do you have anything for me?”
“Oh yah, I gots yer lady pantsaloons.” Dibble fumbled around beneath him, possibly in what Sarah hoped was a pocket, and produced a pair of pink flamingo panties.
At one time, her sensibilities would have been mortified by a goblin pawing through her unmentionables. She got over it when she started entering hostage negotiations, trading the impossibly appearing socks back for whatever item of underwear had gone missing.
“Thank you, Dibble, very much. Now when you get back, tell Jareth I want to talk to him, okay? It’s very important.”
“Okies, lady.” And as if he’d never been, the goblin, the socks and the basket vanished. Sarah wasn’t concerned about the basket; it always came back, usually with some sort of gift. The last time around, it had come back with a jug of what she learned was the finest high-proof grain alcohol the goblins were making in the city.
Sarah leaned back into the couch with her coffee and prepared to relax when all the sound ceased for the span of a second, as if the house were taking its breath. And all the clocks began to chime.
One, two, three…
Sarah groaned, and pulled herself off the couch. She usually preferred to be standing for these.
Four, five, six, seven…
Quickly, she drained the last of the coffee in her mug and dropped it off in the kitchen sink. The coffeemaker cowered in the corner and she gave it a loving tap before returning to the living room.
Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve…
The sound pulled taut in the air, and Sarah waited.
Thirteen.
“Sarah, Sarah. You never call, you never write...”
Sarah crossed her arms in response and, she admitted this was a bit over the top, slowly tapped her foot. “Jareth.”
He smiled broadly, a predatory grin that never let Sarah forget that he wasn’t as harmless as she liked to think he was. “A fellow might get the impression you don’t love him anymore, my dear.”
“Am I going to have to sic the rocking chair on you again?”
“Pish tosh.” With a mere backwards glance, said offending piece of furniture vanished and was replaced with a sumptuous armchair, the comforts of which Jareth proceeded to avail himself. “What was it that you needed to discuss?”
Smug bastard.
“Stop acting like an obtuse sophomore, Jareth. This whole situation is ridiculous. If the walls could talk…”
“That could be arranged. Do I smell coffee?”
“NO.” Sarah fought the urge to dig her fingers into her hair and pull. “It’s the socks, the talking appliances, the fact that I can’t have company over anymore, because how do you explain that there are two extra hours in a day in this house? It gets old after a while, Jareth.”
He seemed unconvinced. “I see. You’re bored. I suppose I could make love to you again. You’d certainly perk up.”
“Oh no, no no no. I slept with you once and you got all possessive and pissy. The last time I brought a boyfriend home, he got lost on the way to the bathroom!” This was true. And he’d gotten so lost that it took her three days to find him, in an oubliette that turned up down a ladder and through a hedge maze. Which miraculously appeared in the back of her coat closet.
“Yes. That one was particularly well done.”
“The one before that was eaten by the couch. It was two years ago and he’s still billing me for the therapy. I just want it to end.”
Jareth rose suddenly from his improvised throne and loomed over her from across the room. “Obviously you weren’t paying attention the last time I explained this. It doesn’t end until your ‘kingdom’ is as great as mine. What magic remains in this world is doing everything it can to keep you from perjuring yourself.”
“Bull crap, Jareth. I think you think this is hysterical.”
“You think I enjoy magic seeping out of my Labyrinth to feed your entire starved world? You will destroy us both, and all because you are too stubborn to concede defeat.”
Sarah cut off her retort at his raised voice. Once, when they were on slightly better terms, he had explained that he far preferred to express himself through a regal, respectful volume, for his subjects had to behave if they wanted to hear him. To yell was to surrender to weakness, and one in his position could not bow to such emotion. It was a point of contention between them.
“Jareth…” Sarah tried to find words that weren’t just a repeat of the same ones she’d used over and over before. “I won. I did what I had to do. Everything that happened after that was not my fault. And even if I’d known, I would have still done the same thing.”
He gave her a wounded look. “And now? Your precious brother is almost grown. This is not about him anymore. Just come home and the worlds will return to their natural states.”
“I am home,” Sarah said. “I’m at home here.”
“My darling, I can’t get enough of your love babe,” Mr. Coffee crooned. The microwave beeped applause and the garbage disposal swore in expressive German. Upstairs, there was a boom, and a wet sloshing sound.
“Oh, oh god. I’d help clean that up if I had arms!”
Jareth quirked a brow, but said nothing.
“All right, fine, you have a point,” Sarah conceded. “But I don’t want to have to leave my entire life behind. And you need to cut back on the human trafficking. At least try to grow a conscience?”
“Children aren’t people, silly girl.”
“I’m thirty-one.”
“I’m three thousand and thirty-one. You’re still a silly girl. And besides, I am doing a service for all, removing children from homes in which they will not be appreciated.”
“You turn them into goblins! Foul, burpy, farting, illiterate goblins! Could you consider making it easier for desperate teenaged mothers to get their babies back?”
Jareth made a thoughtful expression, and Sarah shook her head disapprovingly. “Seducing the under aged is wrong, no matter where you’re from. We have discussed this, several times, and there will be no more of that either.”
He winced. “But… I have needs. There are so many irresponsible silly girls that it’s a crime not to find sport at their expense.”
“We all have to make sacrifices, Jareth. Meet me halfway.”
Jareth dropped back into the armchair and drummed his fingers on the arm. “I suppose if you slept in the castle you could keep the house. I could see what I can do about remedying your little problem.”
Sarah started at the unladylike snort that emerged from her person, but she graciously let him continue.
“I fail to see why you would want to work when I could arrange for you to live like a queen, but if you persuade me on a semi-regular basis I could perhaps look into magic-proofing the workplace of your choice.”
That wasn’t an entirely unappealing innuendo. It had been quite a while since she’d had a boyfriend, after all, and Jareth was certainly useful in bed. “Anything else, Your Majesty?”
“I want Mr. Coffee and the dryer. Can you meet these terms?”
“Stop stealing my underwear and it’s a deal.”
Jareth hesitated. “Only if you give up wearing those horrid orange flannel pajamas to bed.”
“Done.”
“Ah. Splendid.” He stood again and gestured her to his side. “This could take a while, so we had best start immediately. If you could only be persuaded to stop aging…”
Sarah rolled her eyes and took her time in crossing the room. “You’re a right bastard sometimes, Jareth. Way to make a lady feel like sleeping with you.”
“You’re getting older. It is fact. Fortunately for you you’ve kept your figure, or your shrewish attitude would hold no appeal whatsoever.”
“Jareth. Shut up.”
She muffled his probably insulting reply by pressing her hand to his mouth, and they vanished from the living room. In their place, a laundry basket appeared, filled to the brim with bog flowers. They were beautiful, yes, but smelled vaguely of ripe horse droppings, and oozed a sticky nectar more adhesive than superglue.
For a moment, all was silence.
“Merde,” the coffee table said, and crab-scuttled away.