• Fiction,  short fiction

    Short Story: Blue

    This story was a short fiction commission. More info can be found here.


    Christina breathes in the spiced scent of growing herbs as she stares out into the star-streaked space beyond the glass. Her breath, caught by awe, reminds her where she is with startling clarity: leaving home in a metal pocket of air, with only the starry void ahead. Of course she’s been on ships before, but never anything long-haul. Not like this. Prepared for six months of life, the spaceliner she’s found herself residing in is massive—and even, she quickly discovered, fitted with a large communal garden filling a dome that faces out onto space.

    She’s not alone in the garden. A robot, pale blue and asymmetrically almost-humanoid, crouches beside a green tomato plant nearby, an electronic humming floating from its vocalizer. The robot seems to notice her attention, though it doesn’t look up.

  • Fiction,  short fiction

    Revisions

    Written for an assignment, an experiment inspired by the novel Version Control. Somewhat of an homage to the ideas that the novel handles with far more eloquence.


    She knew the world had gone wrong, had flipped upside-down. She could taste it in the air, feel it in the soft vibrations of the car’s engine—like being barely-aware in a dream. It had been like this for months, as if she were perpetually poised with her foot held high, expecting another stair but finding only thin air.

    The first and only time Amelia tried to talk to her mother—the scientist, Dr. Tima—about the feeling was the night before her graduation, half an hour before the dinner party. Her mother, a woman without much love for feelings over fact—the latter of which Amelia lacked—looked up at her distractedly from her notebook.

    “I don’t understand,” said Tima. She rubbed at her temple, her sleepless nights staining her eyelids with dark pigments. She was on a deadline, the machine she’d spent the last decade on still stubbornly refusing to work. It weighed her down. “Are you sick?”

    “I’m not sick.” Amelia picked at her fingernails. “It’s the world that’s sick.”

    “Oh. Global warming, then.”

    “That’s not what I—” She threw her hands up, feeling too much like a teenager. “It’s like when you go to fix your glasses on your face, but you’re not wearing them.”

    “Honey, I don’t wear glasses,” Tima said idly, barely paying attention to her daughter anymore. “Maybe you just need some more sleep.”

    You’re the one who needs sleep, Amelia thought, bitterly, remembering her mother of a year prior, before Astoria died. A mother who didn’t spend her entire life at the lab working on a time machine, a mother who smiled and laughed and took the sisters out for brunch on Sundays.

    Scorned, Amelia muttered, “Astoria would’ve understood.”

    Those three words cut through the air like a knife. Amelia instantly wished she could go back in time to take them back. Face contorted with a pain still too intense to hide, Tima laid down her pen and fixed Amelia with her metal-grey eyes.

    “Amelia,” Tima started, but her daughter was already out of her seat and halfway out of the kitchen. “Honey, come back—”

    “I’m going to finish cleaning the lounge,” Amelia said, her back turned to hide her brimming eyes.

    Not another word was spoken between mother and daughter until the guests arrived, and even then their conversations were terse. While Tima’s co-workers spoke to her about her work, Amelia pretended to listen with rapt attention as if she didn’t resent the machine for Tima’s distance—or for her twin’s death. When her mother’s colleagues shook Amelia’s hand and patted her shoulder, congratulating her on a successful graduation, she hid her bitter anxiety behind a practiced smile. One she had learned in the weeks following the crash.

    Her friends noticed, but they knew better than to ask.

    Only once the house had cleared and she’d buried herself in blankets did she let her mind drift back; a summer day, hair blowing in the motorway wind, excitement from seeing her mother’s work bubbling within her chest. The steering wheel was hot beneath her hands, though she didn’t actually need it, the car drove itself—but it never hurt to be too careful. A phrase Tima had murmured to them since they were young.

    She remembered it all with more clarity than any other moment in her life: the moment the dog bounded out into the road, followed by a child. When the cars before them swerved to avoid the child and Amelia’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel, yanking right.

    After, as she lay half-sedated in a hospital bed, they told her, “It wasn’t your fault.” They: nurses, police, therapists, her own mother. There was nothing you could do, as if that lifted the guilt crushing her lungs.

     

  • Blog,  Fiction,  short fiction,  Writing

    Short fiction commissions

    Do you like words? Do you like words written for you? If so, you’re in luck, because I’m opening up short fiction commissions for the first time! It’s like art, but with words.

    What does this mean? Well, it means that you can pay me to write something for you. Examples of my writing include my two serials, my fanfiction (don’t judge my subject matter!), and a short story I wrote last year.

    What I will write: A lot of stuff. I’m most proficient with science fiction and first person present, but I can adapt to any style/POV/tense with relative ease, and am comfortable in a range of genres. What do you want? Let’s talk, I’m up for experimenting!

    What I won’t write:

    • Explicit sex scenes/explicit physical intimacy
    • Super-explicit violence
    • Hateful content
    • Fandoms I have 0 knowledge in
    • Extended fight scenes (if you want an all-action story, I’m the wrong gal!)
    • A script
    • Ongoing stories (AKA multi-chapter)

    But how much????

    • 1000 words: $30 USD
    • Under 5000 words: $35 USD
    • Under 10,000 words: $50 USD
    • Under 15,000 words: $65 USD
    • Anything over 15,000 words will be charged my hourly writing rate.
    • do write for games, but game writing will generally be charged my hourly rate. This can be up to negotiation depending on what you’re wanting.

    If you’re interested, hit me up at [email protected] with your ideas, or your questions! Patrons on Patreon will get preference for commission slots.

  • Blog,  Fiction,  short fiction

    How To Say Goodbye

    I wrote this short story last year and published it on gumroad with the caveat that I would put it on my blog around six months later. Here it is, for everyone to read, though if you want to support me/have it in epub form, feel free to buy it at itch.io.


    i

    There’s someone new at the swimming hole, the secret place we escape to every summer afternoon when the bell rings. Spring from our seats, dash into sunlight, pile into cars that are more rust than vehicle. It’s a half hour drive through dusty rural roads, and we blast music the entire way. Soon, we know, we’ll be free from this school forever. If only these trips could last as long.

    We figure something is up when we see the new car parked by the hidden hole in the bush, the gateway to the track. Who else knows about our place? Surely nobody. I turn to my best friend, whose forehead is already creasing with bafflement beneath her dark fringe.

    El, upon falling out of the single left door of another car in our entourage, smacks a hand against her face and groans. Someone asks for clarity, El mutters and pushes ahead, sweeping blond hair back. She’s not one to explain when she’s angry, and she sure looks pissed.

    We follow the tangled path down and around through still-blooming gorse until it opens up on a wide, layered plateau of stone and the river beyond. Afternoon sun ripples across the glassy swimming hole, the water clear enough to see the bottom of the opposite shore, but so deep the water nearest our jutting stone platform turns a deep blue-black.

    Standing at the edge of the rock is a guy, his dark hair ruffled from the trek through the bush. He watches us emerge with a wide-eyed humour, and El blows a harsh breath from her nose.

    “Parents wanted to give me a babysitter,” she huffs. “Someone to keep me ‘in line.’ He’s my end-of-school gift. Ugh.”

    He’s a bot. Even without El’s words, we can see it in the way he moves, as if he’s an alien in human skin trying to pass as one of us. Still, he must be a pricey one: dark hair on his arms dances with the summer breeze, emotions flicker across his face almost naturally. One of those companion bots designed to change and grow, updated each year to keep up with their owners.

    There are moments in life where a person meets someone new and their world changes perceptibly. Twine tightens around their heart, drawing them to this person. From the way my lungs fail as our eyes meet, his sparkling with unexplained joy, I know this is one of those moments. It’s unreasonable, right? No person can possibly predict that anyone is destined to be in their lives.

    And yet, I know he is. A bot, bought and given to my friend. Impossible, ridiculous, unbelievable.

    But, my world has already shifted to make space for him to occupy. My heart is tangled up, invisible lines weaving our futures together.

    I take a breath, and even the air tastes different.