Birthday Fictions

At least one of my privacy-obsessed friends and a geographically distant relative are celebrating birthdays today. Birthdays are not the kind of information you just throw on the internet, even on a blog nobody reads, so I'm not telling you their names. The friend knows this is about her, because I regretfully informed her last week that I'm too strapped to buy her anything. It's especially tragic because I always have at least half a dozen gifts in mind that she might genuinely appreciate. So instead, yesterday she got two revised chapters of my second MS (I always celebrate anniversaries with more work, don't you?).
My relative probably thinks I've forgotten, and doesn't read the blog anyway, but I love her very much.

This is my gift for them. I'm writing my first public Fic. in their names, but without their names (if you know what I mean).

Neushade
Unoriginally by Nancy Roche 

It is generally known that words exude ambient magic, and high concentrations of words, such as books, tend to store frightening amounts of kinetic magic. Few people, however (Pratchett excepted), have acknowledged the possibility that with so much magic altogether, such as in a library, what results is not some magical apocalypse, but simply and vastly, and sometimes catastrophically, science.

Maricela Suzanne, affectionately "Mari Sue" (to her great geek chagrin), sat at the last carrel near the atrium window, but hadn't noticed either the gently waving greenery outside, nor the gathering thunderclouds. She had found science. An hour of computer searches had yielded a short stack of possible sources, and another two hours digging through bibliographies (few people know this, but a library's "dark side" DNA is contained in these small organelles) doubled the stack. After a mere half hour of index browsing, Mari Sue had found it. IT. Strangely, though, it was not . . .

She couldn't very well have described, let alone circumlocuted, it. At this point, she was having difficulty feeling the weight of the leather in her hands, or paper between her fingers. She had always dreamed of opening a book and being able to simply "download" the information to her memory as easily as watching television, but IT was not like that at all. She was being indexed. She could feel it. Keywords, tags, flitted behind her eyes, multiplying like firework-flashes into dozens of languages. She could not feel the book, could no longer see the carrel, her stack, the pages as she turned them.

But she heard something. A sound like the recording of a cricket cycled and amplified into a fire alarm, screamed painfully in her ears and she joined the scream, and covered her ears with her hands.

The book drifted closed on the desk, a few whispy pages at a time until only the back cover hovered stubbornly open. The sound ceased, and the scream echoed in her mind, and the ears of other students. They stared, a few scurrying from behind shelves to look at the crazy woman who had finally cracked under grad school pressure. Mari Sue opened her eyes. She pulled her hands from her head and looked around.

"Are you okay?" a very fresh-looking boy asked. Mary Sue looked down at her hands. Her palms were smeared with blood. She looked up at him helplessly, unable to touch the book, her tablet, backpack, or reply in the affirmative. But he seemed to understand.

"I--, I--, uh."

"Should we call a doctor?" another student asked, her cell phone in her hand.

"No, no." Mari Sue asserted. I just. . ." She turned back to the freshman, "Watch my stuff? But don't touch."

"Of course."

"I'll go with you," the girl said. She put her arm around Mari Sue's waist as she stood up, and helped her walk shakily toward the nearest restrooms.

In the mirrors, Mari Sue saw herself a wreck. The blood matted her tight curls, and had dripped over her earrings and onto her shoulders. The red was still fresh on her skin, but on her shirt it had already begun darkening as it dried. She would have been sobbing, but for the shock The fawcett turned on automatically as she placed her hands underneath it, and she nearly flinched. The blood rinsed easily. The girl helping her pulled a handful of paper towels from the wall rack and set them near her on the counter. Mari Sue murmured a thank-you. She pulled out her earrings and rinsed them off, setting them on a paper towel, and then used another to clean her hair and ears, and neck. Surely the shirt was hopeless, now.

"I wish I could take it off."

"Why not? It's just us."

Maricela shook her head, blushing, the wet curls cold as they tapped her face.

"Let's do this. You hide in there and pass me the shirt, and I can rinse it for you, and dry it in the hand-dryer. Does that work?"

Mari Sue nodded. She took a damp paper towel to the larger, handicapped stall and passed the girl her shirt over the door. She felt vulnerable as she stood alone and undressed. She brushed the wet towel behind and under her ears, her shoulders and neck, as the girl scrubbed her shirt with handsoap and then passed it a few times through the dryer.

"Is this okay?" the girl held the shirt for her inspection. Maricela took it with another "thank-you" and pulled it over her head. It was still damp and blotchy, but wearable, at least for the hour it would take to get home and throw it in the machine. She emerged fully dressed, and the girl looked at her face in concern.

"Are you sure you're okay? What happened?"

"I-- I don't know. I'll be. . . be fine." But she felt sick, and a coldness that washed over her whole body and left her weak. She sat down.

"I'm calling 911."

"No. Just . . . something. A thing. Shock."

"Then I'm definitely calling." She reached into her back pocket for her phone.

"No, no, no. It'll pass." Maricela Suzanne forced herself to breathe deeply and slowly. She held her hands still and clenched. "Okay. Better. I need my things."

She kept her earrings wrapped in the paper towel, and shoved them in the pocket of her jeans. She walked slowly, with her helper on her arm. They arrived back at the carrel, and most of the students had gone back to their own napping or Facebook surfing. The freshman rescuer sat with his back to her things, his arms folded like a cartoon bodyguard.

"Thank-you," she repeated, releasing him from his duty.

He stood. "No problem. I mean I hope I did okay. A professor got pushy."

"Which one?"

"I dunno. Smith? Funny accent?"

"I don't know any Professor Smith. . . I mean, not specifically. There must be a hundred on this campus. What did she want?" Mary Sue was relieved that her voice seemed to have returned.

"He wanted your books."

She noted the gender correction. "What? All of them?"

"I think so."

"Then he can put them on hold like everybody else." She shook her head, confused. "Thank-you again. You're awesome. Both of you."

They nodded, still looking concerned as she turned and packed up her school bag, but left her to finish alone. Alone again, she threw it over her shoulders, grateful that they'd hide her damp splotches, piled the books in her arms, and walked to the check-out desk on the third floor. As the work-study student checked them out, passing them over the de-magnetizer, she pushed them carefully, spine-down, into her bag, hesitating only briefly over the leather-bound one, which she tucked in the outside pocket and then zipped it. She pulled the backpack on again, and trudged through the security scanner and glass doors, and into the now-spotty sunshine of the University quod. If she was lucky, her bus would be leaving in five minutes, and she could just catch it.

Halfway there, she started to laugh. Must be the shock, she thought, but it was just too funny.

Safely on the bus, she found her usual seat in the back, in the shadows, and set the backpack next to her. Her hand explored its jumbled recesses until it touched The Index. The bus began it's jouncing circuit, and Mari pulled the book out, seething with anger and confusion. She did not dare open it again, but examined its substance.

The book was black, with gilt writing. It was hard-backed leather, weighty, and the paper edges were dyed a dark maroon. The library had stamped its ownership on the edges, the spine label, and on the back cover. So far, it was an ordinary book, if rather older than most. Furthermore, the title and author were nothing remarkable. It had been written by a well-known scholar from a bygone era, and should have contained only biographical information on an obscure, 18th Century artist. Mari Sue was still not certain it did not.

"That's a very handsome volume: is it yours?"

"Temporarily." Mari looked up at him. The tallish, blond man in the light-colored suit had entered the bus several stops back, and had moved in her direction, speaking to nearly everyobe else, until finally settling himself next to her as if he owned the bus. He crossed a leg towards her and played with the hat in his hand. She was cornered, but not alone.

He smiled very disarmingly. "May I have a look?"

"No. Sorry."

"Just for a few moments?"

"Better not." She tucked it back in her bag and zipped it up, then tucked the bag at her feet, out of reach. It left an empty space between them, and Mari had to concentrate to keep from shifting uncomfortably.

He made no move to stop her, but insisted, "It is rather important. I think that's an edition I've been searching for."

Mari Sue narrowed her eyes. "You wouldn't be. . . Professor Smith?"

"Yes, actually."

"You followed me here from the library?"

"I did, yes. You see how important it is."

"You mean inappropriate."

"I do apologize, but it's necessary." He reached inside his jacket and she heard that horrible buzzing again. Panicking, she swatted the object out of his hand and retreated further into the corner of her seat.

The driver called back to them, something incomprehensible over the roar of the engine. The other riders turned to look. It was still too early in the day for the bus to be crowded, but most benches were occupied.

Maricela ignored them all. "Back off," she nearly whispered.

His smile disappeared, but he obliged, shifting to a further seat. He looked at the other passengers and tried to smile, his hat in his hand. Mari didn't think he looked menacing, but serial killers were often personable. A girl can't risk being stupid just to be kind, these days. She nodded to the bus's other occupants, and watched out the window at the familiar streets. They were still a few blocks away from her stop. What if he followed her? She pulled out her phone and texted his info to her roommate, and then leaned her head back on the dusty glass. Her heart had slowed to near-normal speeds when the boy in front of her in a Beatles haircut and yellow scrubs turned around and smiled. She didn't have time to smile back before she saw the mini aerosol can in his hand, and knew little more than the smell of roses in a fine mist. Death by Air Freshen. . .