rowyn | Entries tagged with everyday monsters

[This is from a prompt by argonel. I drew the King of Cups, the Five of Cups (reversed), and the Nine of Cups (reversed) for it (photo of the cards at the bottom of the post). I had some trouble deciding what to write, until I remembered Crow-Woman, who to me is a very Five-of-Cups-reversed character. This ended up a lot more like a sequel to the previous stories than I'd intended. The first is here, and the second here.]

Crow-Woman moved like a tree walking, in long, slow, rusty strides, as if her muscles did not exactly remember what they were supposed to do. She was twelve feet tall, with a head like a crow's and great dark wings obscured by molted grey down. Her body was human in shape, save for her scaled lower legs and taloned feet. Dead vines and brambles dangled from her torso, shedding bits of leaves and falling away as she walked down Highway 50 in the light of pre-dawn. She held a digital camera in her left hand, its strap around her broad wrist. Though clumsy, her progress was patient and inexorable.

It was dawn when she reached the town of Renwood.The few people up and about stopped to watch her progress, staring and whispering to one another. One old man out walking his dog stopped to wave at her, and scold his dog as it strained at the leash to reach her. Crow-Woman returned the wave with her empty right hand, and continued on her way.

At length, she reached a small strip of shops, including a camera sales and repair store. She bent to try the door: locked. Her crow's head cocked and turned, one grey eye studying the posted hours. The store opened at ten. Crow-Woman turned and stood before the shop window to wait. Her eye fell on the wisps of grey fluff her wings had shed in her wake. Her head rotated to inspect the disarray forty-two years of unpreened molts had made of the feathers on her wings. One wing curled before her, and her beak dipped to preen it.

The sun was high in the summer sky and Crow-Woman was mostly done with the right wing when a car pulled in and parked at the back of the lot. A middle-aged man with dark skin and graying hair got out and stared at her. "Crow-Woman?"

She dropped her wing. "Yes."

He seemed surprised that she answered. "What are you doing here?" he asked, walking gingerly to the door of the camera store, his eyes on the monster.

"I wish to have a camera fixed." She raised the camera in her right hand.

The shopkeeper blinked a few times, digging out keys from his pocket. "... really? You have a camera?"

"It is not my camera."

He unlocked the door. "Oh. Uh. I didn't think you ever left that one spot in the nature preserve, along Highway 50."

"I have left it now. Will you fix this camera?"

"Um. Bring it in, I'll have a look." A bell tied to the door jingled as the man opened the door and stepped inside.

Crow-Woman turned her head sideways and eyed the entrance. She dropped to her knees and one hand to crawl through, wings folded close to her back. At the front counter, she set the camera down and sat back on her heels. Her bird's head was scarcely lower than the human's. An orange tabby cat was at the man's feet, ignoring her and meowing impatiently at him. "Uh, just a minute." He went into the back room. Two more cats followed him, darting suspicious looks at the monster. After he put down fresh food and cat milk for them, he returned to the front. "Right. Camera."

The glass of the LCD display on the back was spiderwebbed with cracks. He tsked and powered it on. It lit, screen distorted. He clicked a few pictures, then powered it down and fiddled with it. "Looks like it's just the display. I can replace that for you, be about $80."

Her crow's eye looked at him.

"... you don't have money, do you?"

"I do not. May I barter for it?"

"Huh." He leaned back. "You know, back when I was young, I took some pictures of you. Where you used to stand."

"Yes. Near sunset, every week for a year, from the start of one summer to the next, thirty-one years ago."

The middle-aged man swallowed. "You remember."

"You said your name was Quentin Longfellow. The worst thing you had ever done was break your brother's arm when you pushed him out of your treehouse." The blank birdlike stare did not waver. "I do not forget."

"Did you mind?"

"No."

"I remember I asked if it was all right, but you never said. Yes or no. Just asked what the worst thing I'd ever done was."

"Yes."

Quentin swallowed again. "Are you going back there, to your spot? After the camera's fixed."

"No. I am done with that."

"What are you going to do now?" the human asked, curiously.

Crow-Woman considered that question. "I do not know."

"Well." He looked down at the broken LCD screen on the camera. "How's this. If you'll do some shoots with me -- you know, you let me take more pictures of you -- at different spots, not at the preserve -- I'll fix your camera for you. Say ... three shoots. Hour or two each."

"It is not my camera," Crow-Woman said. "But that is acceptable. Will you fix it now?"

"I don't know if I've got the parts. Let me see." Quentin checked his inventory, then disappeared in back. He returned brandishing a small cardboard box. "You're in luck." While she waited, legs folded beneath her and wings cramped to her back in the human-sized store, he removed the broken screen and replaced it. A few times, customers came in to interrupt him. Crow-Woman simply waited until it was done, then left.

It was after dusk when Crow-Woman approached the small house near the nature preserve. She bent almost double to knock on the human-sized door. A minute later, a pale human man answered, and gaped at her.

"This is yours." She handed him the camera.

"Uh ... what?" By reflex, he took it, staring. "But -- how -- where did you find it? I left it in my study -- "

"I took it from your study."

"What? Why?"

"I needed to." She turned and left.

"Hey! Hey, wait!" The man dashed down the steps after her. "You can't just go into people's houses and take their stuff!"

Crow-Woman did not answer. She kept walking.

"There are laws against that, you know! I ought to call the police!" He yelled.

A fair-skinned woman came out of the house, asking, "Honey, what's going -- oh! That's the monster from Highway 50!"

"She took my camera!"

"... the one you're holding?"

"Well, she just brought it back. Hey! Don't you walk away from me!" the man yelled.

Crow-Woman walked away. The woman calmed her husband down, leading him back into the house. From an upstairs window, a little boy watched, wide-eyed.

Three days later, at two hours before sunset, Crow-Woman met Quentin on the shores of a lake for their first photo shoot. She had finished preening both wings by then, and they gleamed black in the late afternoon light. She'd also cleaned off the remnants of the vines and plant life that had grown attached to her during her long vigil, and replaced the tattered remnants of her clothing with a simple toga-like garment.

Quentin was nervous when he saw her. "You, uh, sure look different when you're not, um. Rooted. Can I see what your wings look like outstretched?" She swept them out to either side, pinions spread to maximum extension. The brown-skinned man gave a low whistle, forgetting his nervousness as he started snapping photos. "Can you fly?"

"No. Too disused."

"But you used to?"

"Yes. Perhaps someday they will be strong enough again." She shifted her wings in uneven flaps, flexing the muscles.

Quentin spent the rest of the afternoon taking pictures. He did not so much pose her as ask her to do things -- walk down the lake shore, look over the water, stretch her wings back -- and then photograph her while she did them. "You're a very patient model," he told her, setting up his tripod for some final long-exposure shots while the sun set. "But I guess you would be." She cocked her head, and he added, embarrassed. "Lot of practice just standing there."

"Yes."

"How long were you there?"

"Forty-two years, three months, seven days, and twenty-three hours."

Another low whistle. "Lady, you are overdue for a new hobby."

Crow-Woman considered that. "Yes."

He clicked the next photo and waited a moment. "Figured out what you're going to do next yet?"

The twelve-foot tall monster stood silhouetted against the lake and the setting sun, wings outstretched and raised at her back. She thought about his question, then asked, "What is the best thing you could ever do?"

"What? Uh. I don't know. Save someone's life, I guess. Wait, do you mean 'best' like 'most heroic' or more like, the best occupation I could do?" Quentin smiled wryly. "I guess either way, it's not going to be 'running a camera shop in Renwood'."

"I don't know," Crow-Woman tilted her head. "I think I will make finding out my new hobby."
( Photo of the cards from the drawing behind the cut )

Crow-Woman stands at the side of highway 50, a rural road only two lanes wide that cuts through a swath of dense forest. She has stood here for so long that brambles have grown up to cover her legs, some old enough to have died still tangled around her human-like thighs. Her wings are atrophied from disuse, and her black feathers mottled with grey from past moltings never preened away. She is rooted by remorse, they say. She has been here for forty-two years.

Now she is thinking.

The sun sets on her, as it has more than fifteen thousand times before. The moon rises.

In the dense woods behind her, a child sobs.

Crow-Woman turns her head and cocks it like the bird she is not. Leaves rustle and branches creak and crack in the thick vegetation of the preserve. A young voice whimpers and coughs in accompaniment.

Crow-Woman raises her wings. Grey down cascades from them like falling snow. Like snow, still more yet clings to the black wings. She beats them, a feeble stroke that barely stirs the air around her. She lifts one leg instead. Senescent vines stretch and brambles tear at scaly skin. Dead wood creaks and cracks as she pulls one taloned foot free, and then the other. Trailing vines, she strides into the dense forest. She is twelve feet tall and the undergrowth is thick, but Crow Woman is patient. She pushes aside branches with weathered hands and pecks at them with her long sharp beak. Slowly she moves forward, finding a track and widening it. By the time she finds the child, he has stopped crying.

He is crouched against the side of an ash, outside a faerie ring of mushrooms, pale grey in the moonlight. No, not moonlight, for the moon is but a sliver; it's the reflected glow of the light-polluted night sky. The child stares at her, the tracks of tears streaked through the dirt on his blotchy face. Crow-Woman stares back.

In the distance, crickets serenade one another.

Crow-Woman speaks: "Hello."

The boy does not answer.

Crow-Woman asks: "Are you lost?"

The boy watches her in wide-eyed silence.

She considers him in return, her mind sifting through long-disused memories. "Did your parents tell you never to talk to strangers?" When he does not reply, she adds, "I am strange, but you do not need to talk to me. You can nod for yes and shake your head for no, and that is not speaking, is it?"

Slowly, the boy shakes his head a little.

"Well then. Are you lost?"

Another shake.

"You are next to a faerie ring. Are you waiting for the Little People?"

He nods.

"The Little People are not kind to unfamiliar mortals. They will not bring you toys or candy, or take you to a paradise where you will be happy forever. It is not safe for you to be here. Do you know that?"

The boy bites his lower lip, and nods. He wipes a dirty hand across his dirty face, smearing the tear streaks.

"Do your parents know you are here?"

A headshake.

Crow-Woman considers the child for another long moment. "Are you punishing them?"

The boy gives her a confused look, and forgets that he isn't supposed to talk to strangers. "Me? Punishing them? You mean my parents?"

"Yes. Do you plan to let the Little People take you to make your parents regret how they treated you, and that they did not stop you from running away?"

The child shakes his head, vehement. "No! It's not like that at all!"

"Then what is it like?"

The boy falls silent. Crow-Woman waits, patient. Overhead, the sickle moon rises a little higher in the sky. "Are you one of them?" the boy asks at last. "The Little People?"

Crow-Woman lifts her wings and starts to spread them. The trees are too close together; at ten feet they are not even halfway outstretched, and bumping into branches. "Do I look little?"

He shakes his head.

"What is it like?" she asks again.

Crow-Woman waits.

The boy stares at the faerie ring. "He'll never forgive me."

"For what?"

"I broke Dad's camera. I wasn't even supposed to touch it. And now it's broken."

"And he said he would not forgive you?"

The boy shakes his head. "He doesn't know yet. I ... I couldn't. I thought it'd be easier to let the Little People take me."

"To punish you?"

He lifts his head to look at her, his face screwed up. "Are you gonna punish me?"

Crow-Woman kneels. She holds out her hand to the boy. Hesitant, he takes it. "I am done with punishment now. Let us see if your father's camera can be mended."

senescent: ancient; of advanced years.

I started writing this months ago. It didn't want to be finished but I decided to finish it anyway. I don't remember where I got the word from any more

"It's $29.95 a night," the man at the registration desk told her. She fished around in her pockets for her wallet. It wasn't in her jeans. She couldn't remember where she normally kept it; every place felt a little wrong. Maybe she used to carry a purse? A pocket on the inside of her jacket held a bumpy disk on a velvet ribbon. She pulled it out to look at it in bemusement: it was a cameo, white on a black background, set on a worn red choker. The clerk gave a low whistle. "Is that real?"

No, it's an illusion, she didn't say, pulling her billfold from an outer pocket of her jacket. "Real what?"

"Victorian cameo. That looks like an antique."

"I don't know." At the clerk's look, she added, "I got this jacket from a thrift store. I just found this in the pocket," because that was easier than telling the truth.

"Oh. Probably not, then. But you might get it checked out sometime anyway, those're valuable." The clerk frowned as she pulled bills from the wallet. "You're paying with cash?"

"Is that a problem?"

"Well ... there's a $250 room deposit, too. You'll get that back when you check out, if there's nothing wrong with the room."

She shrugged and gave him $280. "Good night."

As she walked away with the key card in one hand, she held up the choker, studying the carved profile with its high-piled curls and soft chin line. It didn't go with the black leather motorcycle jacket at all.

*

A bell tinkled as she stepped inside an antique shop in Columbus. The shop smelled faintly of lemon-scented cleaner. It was cluttered, but every surface was dust free, even the rows of tchochkes and the old books on shelves against one wall. A fortyish man with long hair brushed behind his ears and a trim beard stepped out from a door behind the counter, moving carefully to avoid disturbing any of the crowded oddments. "May I help you?"

"Maybe. Can you tell me if this is valuable or not?" The short woman walked to the counter, holding out the choker. "I don't think I want to sell it. I'm just curious."

"Let's see ... mm." He took a jeweler's loupe from a drawer and sat down beside the counter to look at it. She didn't realize he wasn't fully human until a tentacle snuck out from beneath his hair to adjust the loupe. She must have made a noise, because he looked up. "Sorry. I'm not a monster, honest. It's just ... you ever win something and then realize you didn't actually want it?"

She shook her head. "No. I once lost something I didn't actually want, though. I think I understand."

He smiled, and peered at the cameo again. "Ribbon's too worn to be worth anything. Cameo's pretty. It's not gemstone ... sardonyx conch, I think. Nice carving, hand-done. You don't have documentation on it, I suppose?"

"Documentation?"

"A certificate of authenticity, or a history of it, or even a letter or diary that might mention where it came from."

"Why would that matter?"

The proprietor gave her another smile, his brown eyes kind. "It's the provenance of an antique that makes it valuable, ma'am. How old it is, who owned it, who made it -- all the parts of its history. I can tell by looking that this was hand-carved, and hand-carved shell is very rare now, so it's probably over seventy-eighty years old. It's worth something for that, maybe a hundred. But it might be a lot more if I knew where it came from. If you like, I can take it off the ribbon, see if there's a maker's mark on the back. That'd tell me more, might be able to Google up something on it."

She looked at him for a moment, then held out her hand. "No, that's okay. I don't want to sell it, and I don't need to know where it came from. Thank you."

"As you like." He handed it back to her. As she left the shop, she fastened the choker around her neck.

Provenance: Place of origin; derivation. the history of the ownership of an object, especially when documented or authenticated.

Bard gave me this word, too. For some reason I seem to have an easier time coming up with stories on words he gives me than if I go looking for a word on my own.

A small blue motorcycle pulled into the gas station just after dawn. The rider, a short plump woman neither young nor old, dismounted and took off her helmet. She hung it off the handlebar by the chin guard and reached for the pump. The scrolling LCD display beside it read, Please swipe credit or debit card. To pay with cash, see attendant inside. The woman stopped and went into the little convenience store attached.

The little brass bell tied to the door tinkled as she entered, and a bleary-eyed attendant looked up from his coffee. “Out for an early morning ride, huh?”

The woman smiled at him. “I’d like a gallon of gas, please. And a newspaper.” She pointed to the stack still tied with string next to him. He cut the string off and handed one to her.

“Where’re you headed?” he asked as he rang up the purchases.

“Mmm.” She pulled out a wallet, fat with bills but with card slots curiously empty: no credit cards, no pictures, not even a driver’s license. Not the attendant’s problem: she wasn’t buying beer. She handed over a five and leafed through the paper, looking at the help-wanted ads. “What’s the next town east on Highway 50? Winston?”

“No, Winston’s north of here. East is Renwood. Well, Kersville is east, technically. If you count a bunch of farms and a wilderness preserve as a town, which I don’t. Renwood’s twenty miles off but they’ve got, y’know. Shops and stuff.

The woman smiled again. “I know. Renwood sounds nice.” She folded the paper beneath one arm and headed for the door.

“Have a nice ride. Oh, if you’re going up 50, there’s a monster in the preserve, so you know. She’s harmless, though.”

“Monster?”

“Uh huh.” He gestured with one hand high over his head. “Right by the road, rooted by remorse. Hasn’t hurt anyone in decades. Worst thing she’ll do is mope at you and ask you a question if you stop. Figured I’d warn you so’s you wouldn’t freak when you saw her.”

“She asks a question?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, it’s not a riddle. She asks ‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’ Doesn’t matter what you answer, she always says, ‘What I’ve done is worse.’ And then she goes back to moping.”

“Oh. Thanks for the tip.” She waved and went back to her bike.

*

Riding took more concentration than driving a car. The motorcycle had fat knobbly hybrid tires designed for both street and cross-country use, and they didn’t work quite perfectly for either. The bike had a tendency to drift down the slope of the road’s camber if the rider didn’t pay attention. So the woman was staying alert anyway, and the monster was hard to miss.

She was rooted by the side of the road, a crow-headed woman twelve feet high with legs like tree trunks, bark-covered. Molting black wings were thick with shedding grey down at her back. One eye, grey and listless as a lump of ash, tracked the rider’s approach.

The woman slowed as she neared the monster. When she was closer, she could see that the woman wasn’t actually growing out of the ground; rather, brambles and tendrils of wood were growing out of the earth to cover taloned feet and humanoid legs. She rode past slowly. She was the only one on the road, and nothing in else was sight but miles of thick vegetation on untended lands. A hundred yards later, she turned the bike around and came back, stopping a dozen feet away. She took off her helmet. “Good morning.”

The monster had her profile to her, watching with one eye. “No.”

The woman looked up at the clear sky, sunlight streaming down the highway and streaking the road with the long shadows of trees. “It’s morning, anyway. Seems like a good one to me.”

The monster didn’t respond. The woman put the kickstand of her bike down and swung one leg over to lean sideways against the seat. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” the monster asked.

“I don’t know.”

The grey eye blinked slowly. “You don’t know?”

The woman shrugged. “The first thing I remember happened last night. I don’t remember anything from before that. I haven’t done anything very bad since then, so I figure the worst thing I’ve ever done was probably before that.” When the monster didn’t say anything else, the woman asked, “What’s the best thing you could ever do?”

The crow-head turned away from her, one eye to the wilderness and one to the road. The beak clacked. “I never thought about that. It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t be enough to make up for what I’ve done.”

“Is standing here enough?”

“No.”

“Then maybe you should think about it.”

The monster didn’t respond. After a few minutes, the woman put her helmet back on. “Hope you have a good morning, ma’am.” She snapped the visor down, turned the bike around, and rode into the rising sun.

This one has a bunch of meanings, most of which come from the same basic idea

cam·ber: noun: 1. A slightly arched surface verb: 2. To arch or cause to arch slightly. Source: www.thefreedictionary.com

Modern roads are cambered to help with drainage.

They sat at a round stone table incongruously planted in a green meadow, six figures illuminated by the red light of an incarnadine moon. Two of them were mortal, a stout fair-skinned woman of thirty years, and a nervous man with deep brown skin and hair just starting to grey.

The other four were monsters: a ram-headed man with furry legs and a hairy chest left bare by the cloak of feathers draping down his back; a crow with the face of a woman that perched on the table's edge with two taloned feet and used a third to lift her cards; a giant winged snake that pushed its cards to the edge of the table with its tail tip and ducked its head down when it wanted to see what they were; a sphinx with snakes instead of hair: they whispered not-quite-intelligible advice in sibilant voices.

Five of them were playing poker; the sphinx was dealing. In the middle of the table four cards were face up: the king of hearts, the five of spades, the ten of hearts, and two of clubs. The nervous man put down his cards and pushed them away. "Fold."

The crow had already folded; now the winged snake did. The ram-headed man brayed out a laugh. The stout woman spoke in a calm voice. "Call."

The sphinx dealt the river: the ace of hearts. The ram-headed man smiled and thumped his fist against the stone table in triumph. He turned his head to fix the woman with the stare of one brown eye, and stated his wager. "All my knowledge 'gainst all of yours."

The woman lifted her cards by the edge, peeked at them. She looked at the stakes already on the table, pretty glittering things that looked like coins but weren't. She set her cards flush against the table again. "Fold."

The ram-face grinned hugely as he raked in the pot. A confused look stole across the woman's face. Before the dealer could muck the cards, she glanced at her hand and the board one last time. Then she let the sphinx take them from her. "I -- I'm sorry, I forget. What had I wagered so far?"

"All your memories!" The ram laughed again, cruelly. "All of them!"

"I ... I see." She got up from the table.

"You do not have to leave," the woman with the crow body told her. "You have much left that you could wager." The sphinx's hair hissed advice at her: to go, to stay, to consider -- what? She couldn't quite tell.

"No. No, that's all right. I think I'm done. Thank you." She turned to the other mortal before she left. "I don't suppose I told you my name?"

He shook his head. "No ... sorry."

"You could win it back." The ram spun a glittering not-coin between his human-like fingers. "Or try to."

She looked at the coin, and at his face, then shook her head again. "No. I have to go now."

As she walked away across grass tinted red by the unnatural light, she looked down at her empty hands. A curious lightness spread through her. It was an unsettling thing, not to know her own name, or anything at all about the person she was. The person she had been.

But she did not want to get it back. She had seen her hole cards after she lost: the queen and the eight of hearts.

Whoever she had been, she trusted that she'd had a good reason to conduce this ending.

conduce: to lead to or contribute to a particular result.