Spirit
So the merry_fates is this community that post discussions and some fawesome short fiction, and sometimes watcher prompts. The latest one was a dictionary definition, so here's my story, which is sort of longer than I expected it to be. *shrug* Hey, it's just *under* 2,000 words. If only just barely.
Anyway, the prompt is here.
Forgive typos or suckage, as I just wrote this and only read it over once. Hope you like.
Author's note: I love the word plaidish. Or plaid-ish. It's plaid, but not quite.
[Definitions included in-text are from dictionary.com
, so copyright to those folk.]
It’s weird, going to the school in summer.
It’s noon, but almost dark out when I reach the school, stuffing my hands in sweatshirt pockets even in the middle of July. It’s going to rain soon. The sky’s been saying it for days of humid hell, but it’s imminent now. I’m surprised I can’t hear thunder in the distance, but maybe that’d be just a little too melodramatic.
I expect to break in, but the lights are on, the doors probably unlocked. It takes me a while to figure out why, but it’s conveniently spelled out on the sign out front. SUMMER SCHOOL. REPORT JULY 12th.
I knew I should’ve gone at night.
The dictionary has thirty definitions for the word “spirit”. I know because I looked once, in the old multi-volume set my grandmother had, the one that was more like an encyclopedia, circa 1930 or so.
I don’t go in the front door, because there’s a camera there, and you’ve got to talk to the intercom before they let you in. I use the door by the band room, the side door people use when they slip out to smoke during school hours.
The band room’s the only thing down the adjoining hallway, and it’s not much more than a dark tunnel with one door on the left. I start down it, hunched in the sweatshirt with the hood pulled over my head.
#30. To carry off mysteriously or secretly (often fol. by away or off): his captors spirited him away.
My high-tops squeak across the floor more than I’d like, a trail of noises following me down the intermittently dark hallway. I readjust the backpack I’m carrying, letting the weight fall between my shoulder blades. The summer school classes only take up one wing of classrooms, so they’re the only ones lit up.
And, unfortunately, they’ve blocked up the rest of the school, like I was afraid they would have.
#28. To animate with fresh ardor or courage; inspirit.
I thread my fingers through the metal, rattling it like chains even though making more noise is probably the stupidest idea. They’ve lowered the rusted metal grate over the next hallway, a grille like the ones that go over closed storefronts in the city. They do the same thing during art shows, locking the kids out of the parts of the school they don’t want them getting into.
Except I need to get to the gym. Which is, naturally, behind the grate.
I’m lucky though, because it’s just a basic padlock on the grate. I grin. The funny thing that government agencies never seem to realize is that all these oh-so-thick and intimidating Master Locks have a fatal flaw.
The keys are universal.
I’ve got one at home, chaining my bike to our fence, and thankfully I slipped the key into my kit. I pop the lock off and raise the grate just enough to slip through, wincing at the loud rattling it makes, but I’m through.
I leave the lock open behind me. Better someone finding the gate closed and the lock open than finding me trying to unlock it from the other side.
#17. The dominant tendency or character of anything: the spirit of the age.
The gym’s close now, and I get there without incident, slipping open the giant doors. It’s eerie in there, open and dark, and my footsteps echo like I’m in a cave.
The row of soda machines on the other side are still plugged in though, so the garish neon colors of the logos shine across the polished wood floor. At night, when you drive past the school, you can see them through the windows, the long floor-to-ceiling ones that tower over to my left.
I squeak across to the middle of the room, moving to stand in the circle in the middle of the basketball court, on top of the painted Lions emblem.
#18. Vigorous sense of membership in a group: college spirit.
I root through my backpack, laying it out on the ground. With the chalk, I draw over the lion’s face, overlapping the regulation court lines. Then I step inside the circle, pulling the bag with me.
The bones are next. I take out the plastic bag, scattering them carefully in a half-circle in front of me. They’re finger bones, I think. A little more than an inch long, thin but thicker at either end.
It take me a while to find the flask, at the bottom of the backpack, and for a moment I’m worried that it opened somehow. There’s no problem, though, and the polished silver glints in the multicolored light.
#22. Chiefly British. Alcohol.
I sit down, cross-legged, with the line of bones to my back, and I’m facing the empty bleachers, an invisible crowd. I open the flask, shaking it back and forth to spread the holy water in front of me.
The soda machines behind my back get reflected in the pools of water, their logos upside-down and backwards but still identifiable.
I start the chant.
A wind picks up, ruffling my hair. I’m glad I cut it, because it’s not worth it to have your vision blocked at this point. Now I’ve got what’s practically a more layered version of a boy’s haircut, and I can just take the wind as a good omen.
It’s protesting, but it knows it’s time is up.
It gets colder, but I don’t move. Moving now can ruin everything, and I let the cold bite through the thin black knit of my sweatshirt sleeves without shivering.
It clouds over too, white fog thicker than anything in nature rolling in. Any fog I’ve ever seen outside has been gray and polluted, but here it’s always white, like the surface of a pearl.
I don’t need to see to finish, because I know it all by heart.
#15. Temper or disposition: meek in spirit.
The screaming starts. I ignore it, because that’s all you can do, and it tears into my ears, rising and dropping in volume. It runs the line between the best thing I’ve ever heard and making my eardrums bleed, and I start screaming myself, so I can hear the chant over the howls.
Then it’s gone. I keep chanting for a few seconds afterward, like I always do, because I can’t stop as quickly as they can. The fog is gone, the temperature shoots up ten degrees, and it’s silent except for the echoes of my screams.
I stand up carefully, sore like I’d slept all night on the gym floor instead of sitting there for quarter of an hour. I wipe off the chalk with the end of the too-long sleeves, and I recap the flask, putting it back in my bag.
I take longer collecting the bones, studying them carefully. One’s completely black, and I put that in a separate plastic bag. It’s been infected, possessed. I’ve got a place where I keep the vessels.
I’ve turned around to sneak back out when I catch the smell of cigarettes.
#26. Pertaining to something that works by burning alcoholic spirits: a spirit stove.
My heartbeat trips to a stop, and I turn all the way around, looking for a source. I’ve done this too many times before, gotten too confident. Did it get away? A hole in the circle, a missed verse?
Then I see him, standing in the doorway, and my heartbeat restarts. It’s a person.
It takes me another second before I realize that could be even worse.
“Norah Mason, right?” the figure says, and I curse under my breath.
It’s dark in the hallway, but just a bit darker out here, so the figure’s silhouetted. It’s a him, I can tell, but that’s about it. Two inches or so taller than me, and holding a burning cigarette in one hand. The orange-hot tip’s visible about level with his knee, smoking it apparently forgotten, and it trails white smoke into the room. He’s got a hat on, the silhouette of a fedora, white pinstripes visible in the darkness, and it helps shadow his face.
He doesn’t speak, and the acoustics of the room make my voice carry, the muttered curse echoing around the room.
“What are you doing?” he asks, and I try to place the voice and fail. It’s someone who knows my name, but I’m not sure of his. Someone here for summer school, because he’s definitely not a teacher.
“What was that…thing?” he asks, quieter, taking a step into the gym, and I recognize him.
“Jason Ross,” I say, and then I’m momentarily surprised he knew my name. Ross’s got a reputation as sort of a stoner and all I can call to mind is a vague memory of him in the lunchroom at a table by himself, never eating, just sitting there with black-clothed arms crossed over his chest.
He might have even been in my math class. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him speak before.
#20.Chemistry. The essence or active principle of a substance as extracted in liquid form, esp. by distillation.
“What thing?” I ask. I’m not sure if he shakes his head, but I think he does, putting out the cigarette on the bleachers.
“I could call them people, but I think I’d be wrong,” he says, and I try to study his face. I can’t, in the dark, and all I see is the fresh black burn mark he’s left on the wooden bleachers.
“What did you see?” I ask, pushing him. Even I can’t really see them… The Sight’s rare. One in a million rare.
I think he turns his head, tilting it towards the bleachers, and there’s a strange tone to his voice. “There was a crowd in the stands. Sort of pale. Like you could see through them. Weird clothes, like fifties or something. And you’re in the middle of the room, and there was this guy standing in front of you. Tall guy, blond hair, in a varsity jacket, and he was screaming.”
He can really see them. This kid can see through the smoke.
“And he kind of burnt up. Went all red around the edges, like when you set fire to a sheet of paper. And he just sort of crumpled. Poof.”
He looks down at the cigarette in his hand, and then realizes it’s not lit and tosses it away. When he moves, the red-and-white light of the soda machine glints off something, and I realize he’s wearing sunglasses. They’re old-style squarish ones, the kind blind men wear in old movies, and they cover half his face.
I’m surprised he can see anything at all; I’m stumbling in the dark bad enough.
“I’ve got very good night vision,” he says, like he’s reading my mind or something. “Now I’ve got a question for you. What did I see?”
I take a deep breath, thinking about it for half a second as I slid my hands back into my sweatshirt’s pockets, slinging the backpack higher up on my shoulder.
“I don’t know what you think you’re seeing,” I say, pitching my voice sarcastic. “What’d you smoke today?”
#8. An attitude or principle that inspires, animates, or pervades thought, feeling, or action.
He crumples a bit at that, and I feel horrible, but I keep walking, glad it’s dark-but who knows, maybe this kid can see my face anyway. He doesn’t stop me when I slip through the door, and as I pass I see him shift, leaning against the bleachers and putting hands in the pockets of the plaidish blazer he’s wearing, and maybe, maybe he’s smiling.
“Liar,” he whispers as I reach the hallway, and the word seems to echo behind me all the way home.
#5. A supernatural, incorporeal being, esp. one inhabiting a place, object, etc., or having a particular character: evil spirits.
Anyway, the prompt is here.
Forgive typos or suckage, as I just wrote this and only read it over once. Hope you like.
Author's note: I love the word plaidish. Or plaid-ish. It's plaid, but not quite.
[Definitions included in-text are from dictionary.com
, so copyright to those folk.]
It’s weird, going to the school in summer.
It’s noon, but almost dark out when I reach the school, stuffing my hands in sweatshirt pockets even in the middle of July. It’s going to rain soon. The sky’s been saying it for days of humid hell, but it’s imminent now. I’m surprised I can’t hear thunder in the distance, but maybe that’d be just a little too melodramatic.
I expect to break in, but the lights are on, the doors probably unlocked. It takes me a while to figure out why, but it’s conveniently spelled out on the sign out front. SUMMER SCHOOL. REPORT JULY 12th.
I knew I should’ve gone at night.
The dictionary has thirty definitions for the word “spirit”. I know because I looked once, in the old multi-volume set my grandmother had, the one that was more like an encyclopedia, circa 1930 or so.
I don’t go in the front door, because there’s a camera there, and you’ve got to talk to the intercom before they let you in. I use the door by the band room, the side door people use when they slip out to smoke during school hours.
The band room’s the only thing down the adjoining hallway, and it’s not much more than a dark tunnel with one door on the left. I start down it, hunched in the sweatshirt with the hood pulled over my head.
#30. To carry off mysteriously or secretly (often fol. by away or off): his captors spirited him away.
My high-tops squeak across the floor more than I’d like, a trail of noises following me down the intermittently dark hallway. I readjust the backpack I’m carrying, letting the weight fall between my shoulder blades. The summer school classes only take up one wing of classrooms, so they’re the only ones lit up.
And, unfortunately, they’ve blocked up the rest of the school, like I was afraid they would have.
#28. To animate with fresh ardor or courage; inspirit.
I thread my fingers through the metal, rattling it like chains even though making more noise is probably the stupidest idea. They’ve lowered the rusted metal grate over the next hallway, a grille like the ones that go over closed storefronts in the city. They do the same thing during art shows, locking the kids out of the parts of the school they don’t want them getting into.
Except I need to get to the gym. Which is, naturally, behind the grate.
I’m lucky though, because it’s just a basic padlock on the grate. I grin. The funny thing that government agencies never seem to realize is that all these oh-so-thick and intimidating Master Locks have a fatal flaw.
The keys are universal.
I’ve got one at home, chaining my bike to our fence, and thankfully I slipped the key into my kit. I pop the lock off and raise the grate just enough to slip through, wincing at the loud rattling it makes, but I’m through.
I leave the lock open behind me. Better someone finding the gate closed and the lock open than finding me trying to unlock it from the other side.
#17. The dominant tendency or character of anything: the spirit of the age.
The gym’s close now, and I get there without incident, slipping open the giant doors. It’s eerie in there, open and dark, and my footsteps echo like I’m in a cave.
The row of soda machines on the other side are still plugged in though, so the garish neon colors of the logos shine across the polished wood floor. At night, when you drive past the school, you can see them through the windows, the long floor-to-ceiling ones that tower over to my left.
I squeak across to the middle of the room, moving to stand in the circle in the middle of the basketball court, on top of the painted Lions emblem.
#18. Vigorous sense of membership in a group: college spirit.
I root through my backpack, laying it out on the ground. With the chalk, I draw over the lion’s face, overlapping the regulation court lines. Then I step inside the circle, pulling the bag with me.
The bones are next. I take out the plastic bag, scattering them carefully in a half-circle in front of me. They’re finger bones, I think. A little more than an inch long, thin but thicker at either end.
It take me a while to find the flask, at the bottom of the backpack, and for a moment I’m worried that it opened somehow. There’s no problem, though, and the polished silver glints in the multicolored light.
#22. Chiefly British. Alcohol.
I sit down, cross-legged, with the line of bones to my back, and I’m facing the empty bleachers, an invisible crowd. I open the flask, shaking it back and forth to spread the holy water in front of me.
The soda machines behind my back get reflected in the pools of water, their logos upside-down and backwards but still identifiable.
I start the chant.
A wind picks up, ruffling my hair. I’m glad I cut it, because it’s not worth it to have your vision blocked at this point. Now I’ve got what’s practically a more layered version of a boy’s haircut, and I can just take the wind as a good omen.
It’s protesting, but it knows it’s time is up.
It gets colder, but I don’t move. Moving now can ruin everything, and I let the cold bite through the thin black knit of my sweatshirt sleeves without shivering.
It clouds over too, white fog thicker than anything in nature rolling in. Any fog I’ve ever seen outside has been gray and polluted, but here it’s always white, like the surface of a pearl.
I don’t need to see to finish, because I know it all by heart.
#15. Temper or disposition: meek in spirit.
The screaming starts. I ignore it, because that’s all you can do, and it tears into my ears, rising and dropping in volume. It runs the line between the best thing I’ve ever heard and making my eardrums bleed, and I start screaming myself, so I can hear the chant over the howls.
Then it’s gone. I keep chanting for a few seconds afterward, like I always do, because I can’t stop as quickly as they can. The fog is gone, the temperature shoots up ten degrees, and it’s silent except for the echoes of my screams.
I stand up carefully, sore like I’d slept all night on the gym floor instead of sitting there for quarter of an hour. I wipe off the chalk with the end of the too-long sleeves, and I recap the flask, putting it back in my bag.
I take longer collecting the bones, studying them carefully. One’s completely black, and I put that in a separate plastic bag. It’s been infected, possessed. I’ve got a place where I keep the vessels.
I’ve turned around to sneak back out when I catch the smell of cigarettes.
#26. Pertaining to something that works by burning alcoholic spirits: a spirit stove.
My heartbeat trips to a stop, and I turn all the way around, looking for a source. I’ve done this too many times before, gotten too confident. Did it get away? A hole in the circle, a missed verse?
Then I see him, standing in the doorway, and my heartbeat restarts. It’s a person.
It takes me another second before I realize that could be even worse.
“Norah Mason, right?” the figure says, and I curse under my breath.
It’s dark in the hallway, but just a bit darker out here, so the figure’s silhouetted. It’s a him, I can tell, but that’s about it. Two inches or so taller than me, and holding a burning cigarette in one hand. The orange-hot tip’s visible about level with his knee, smoking it apparently forgotten, and it trails white smoke into the room. He’s got a hat on, the silhouette of a fedora, white pinstripes visible in the darkness, and it helps shadow his face.
He doesn’t speak, and the acoustics of the room make my voice carry, the muttered curse echoing around the room.
“What are you doing?” he asks, and I try to place the voice and fail. It’s someone who knows my name, but I’m not sure of his. Someone here for summer school, because he’s definitely not a teacher.
“What was that…thing?” he asks, quieter, taking a step into the gym, and I recognize him.
“Jason Ross,” I say, and then I’m momentarily surprised he knew my name. Ross’s got a reputation as sort of a stoner and all I can call to mind is a vague memory of him in the lunchroom at a table by himself, never eating, just sitting there with black-clothed arms crossed over his chest.
He might have even been in my math class. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him speak before.
#20.Chemistry. The essence or active principle of a substance as extracted in liquid form, esp. by distillation.
“What thing?” I ask. I’m not sure if he shakes his head, but I think he does, putting out the cigarette on the bleachers.
“I could call them people, but I think I’d be wrong,” he says, and I try to study his face. I can’t, in the dark, and all I see is the fresh black burn mark he’s left on the wooden bleachers.
“What did you see?” I ask, pushing him. Even I can’t really see them… The Sight’s rare. One in a million rare.
I think he turns his head, tilting it towards the bleachers, and there’s a strange tone to his voice. “There was a crowd in the stands. Sort of pale. Like you could see through them. Weird clothes, like fifties or something. And you’re in the middle of the room, and there was this guy standing in front of you. Tall guy, blond hair, in a varsity jacket, and he was screaming.”
He can really see them. This kid can see through the smoke.
“And he kind of burnt up. Went all red around the edges, like when you set fire to a sheet of paper. And he just sort of crumpled. Poof.”
He looks down at the cigarette in his hand, and then realizes it’s not lit and tosses it away. When he moves, the red-and-white light of the soda machine glints off something, and I realize he’s wearing sunglasses. They’re old-style squarish ones, the kind blind men wear in old movies, and they cover half his face.
I’m surprised he can see anything at all; I’m stumbling in the dark bad enough.
“I’ve got very good night vision,” he says, like he’s reading my mind or something. “Now I’ve got a question for you. What did I see?”
I take a deep breath, thinking about it for half a second as I slid my hands back into my sweatshirt’s pockets, slinging the backpack higher up on my shoulder.
“I don’t know what you think you’re seeing,” I say, pitching my voice sarcastic. “What’d you smoke today?”
#8. An attitude or principle that inspires, animates, or pervades thought, feeling, or action.
He crumples a bit at that, and I feel horrible, but I keep walking, glad it’s dark-but who knows, maybe this kid can see my face anyway. He doesn’t stop me when I slip through the door, and as I pass I see him shift, leaning against the bleachers and putting hands in the pockets of the plaidish blazer he’s wearing, and maybe, maybe he’s smiling.
“Liar,” he whispers as I reach the hallway, and the word seems to echo behind me all the way home.
#5. A supernatural, incorporeal being, esp. one inhabiting a place, object, etc., or having a particular character: evil spirits.