A hundred stories of a hundred words from the combined quills of Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.

What’s In A Name?

Rex had been through several homes so he had no great expectations when he was chosen at the pound that this one would be any different. The woman who had stared at him in his run with an intense look and had not seemed that pleased to take him. She wore hard heels that tapped along the floor and didn’t say anything as she put him into the car and drove home.
The man who sat alone in the garden looked very sad, until he saw Rex. Then he smiled.
“Charlie? My Charlie!”
Rex decided he liked his new name.

emsh

Sick as a Human

It was a breathlessly hot day, and the feral dogs were mostly gathered in the shade of an olive grove. Big Denzil watched his mate pick her way between the sleeping forms. He greeted her.
“Do you walk well, mother of my pups?”
“I do,” then she flattened her ears to indicate amusement. “One’s eldest male pup is feeling less well though.”
“Tell on, my beloved.”
“He and Three-Toes found a dead fish down by the cistern. A long dead fish. Three-Toes’ dam warned them.”
“But they knew better?”
“They did. And they were as sick as humans…”

jj

You can snag the book here to enjoy the other ninety-eight…

The veggible garden had fallen silent, and the more optimistic nomes thought the poteen incident might be dying a natural death. Brenda and Granny were less sanguine, and when the moles reported seeing flames and smelling smoke they felt certain some catastrophe was in the immediate offing.
It was coming towards sundown when Brenda felt earth movement through her feet.
“Heads down nomes,” she bellowed and threw herself flat onto the turf.
She was just in time as the ground heaved and distorted before the sound of an explosion rent the air and the greenhouse was consumed by a fireball.

©jj 2022

Roguing Thieves is a previously unpublished Fortune’s Fools story by E.M. Swift-Hook.

So home was now an underground lair on a nameless, tempest ravaged dust world.
And although she knew that all she touched was soaked with the blood of freetraders, Pan found it surprisingly easy to push that away and focus on the work she was expected to do.
The hard part, the really hard part, was sleeping with her betrayer as if nothing had changed between them.
At first someone shadowed her all the time, checking what she had been doing. They were being careful despite accepting her as one of their own. Usually it was Tolin or Daiyu who would at least chat a bit. Sometimes it was the silent Goldie, who Pan was beginning to believe might be mute. Once, about a cycle in, it was even Dekker himself who came to check some upgrade work she had been doing on his ‘girl’ the systems interceptor.
“How you settling in?” he asked, slipping into the copilot seat as she was running the final link interface checks. She glanced at him, those brutalised eyes belying the friendly smile.
“So-so.” It was an honest answer.
“I’d have left you and Tols out there running for us if I could’ve. The work you two had going was awesome. Finest runners ever. But…” He gestured to the ship then lifted a finger and circled it to indicate the underground hanger and the habitation attached to it. “This place needs nursing along. Randja said it needed a lot of babying to keep the old tech up and running.”
Pan finished the last check and set the system live, watching for anything to suggest she might have made a mistake. But the upgrade was installed well within the tolerance of the smart-assist AI to compensate for any clumsiness or oversight on her part.
She sat back in the pilot’s seat and turned it slightly to face in towards Dekker’s chair.
“Then Randja was talking bollocks,” she said. “I think he just didn’t want to be out there in that dangerous galaxy – the one that eventually killed him. He wanted to be safe here while you and the others were out there doing the dirty stuff. Ready to take his cut when the time came. The systems they put in here were built with more back ups and fail safes than you can imagine and constructed to last.”
She had his attention now and his eyes had taken on a feral look. They were so dark she could see herself reflected in them.
“You saying Randja was lying to me?”
She gave that a few moments consideration before replying.
“Being a little creative with the truth maybe. Of course this all needs maintenance, but he had tech mechs doing most of that. You don’t need someone sitting here watching it all the time.”
Dekker grinned.
“That’s good news. We badly need a runner out there and to tell you the truth before you hitched up with him, Tols was flailing around most of the time. The two of you together, though. Sweet.” He leaned forward and ran a hand up Pan’s thigh. “Very sweet.”
He caught the slap with the same hand, well before it reached his face. Pan cursed herself silently as something primitive and ugly stirred in the depths of Dekker’s gaze. He released her wrist as if it burned him and sat back, the grin gone.
“I just lost a bet. Daiyu said you were Tols’ and his alone. Guess she was right after all.” He pushed himself to his feet. “If, as you say, this place could get by without you for half a cycle or so, I think you two lovebirds should spread your wings and hunt us up some trade.”

There will be more Roguing Thieves next Sunday…

To stab with the sword of a heartless word
To render impotent by making absurd
To drip with the acid of literary scorn
To make enemies rue that they were ever born
To take one’s revenge in innumerable ways
To make villains of heroes in bitter small plays
Those are the weapons at our fingers’ end
Have a care when you pi** off a writer, my friend

©️jj 2022

She sat alone in absolute blackness, just as she had always done. From far away she could hear the music of Carnival, under her cold little feet she could feel the rhythm of the drums, and her nose twitched as the smells of torches, and burnt sugar, and heated humanity, penetrated the narrow blackness of her cell.
She wondered what it might be like to be outside, but that wasn’t what Carnival held for her. 
    She was the sacrifice. The bastard seed whose mother had not survived her birth. They had, they said, taken her in out of the kindness of their hearts. Tonight she was to repay their care.
    They would blindfold her and carry her through the streets to the temple, where the High Priest would put out her eyes. They had offered her poppy juice, but even though she was deathly afraid she had her pride. 
    Heavy footsteps in the corridor warned her that the time had come and she stood and faced the wall with. A voice outside the door bade her make ready and she closed her eyes. From behind her eyelids she became aware of the yellowness of lamplight, and she tried to keep that warmth in her head, even when hands came around her face and tied the blindfold tightly.
    They hustled her out of her own space and took her in a direction she had not been before. Her nose caught the sense of water and something sweet before she was roughly pushed into a room with a cool smooth floor. Soft arms caught her before she fell and female voices cooed soothingly. 
    “Come lady.”
    They bathed her and perfumed her, rubbed oils and unguents into her skin, and combed out her long hair. All the time they were careful to remind her to keep her eyes closed, but at least their hands were gentle. When she was polished to their satisfaction they dressed her in smooth soft draperies and covered her face with a mask. The final touches were soft boots and a fur-lined cloak to beat the cold of the longest night. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt really warm, and the unaccustomed luxury of it almost undid her carefully cultivated serenity.
     The fluttering women led her to a door she was sure was not the one by which she had entered the bathhouse.
    It must have opened immediately, because she sensed space in front of her. Hands reached out to grasp her forearms, but they touched her with more respect than she was used to. This frightened her. It was, she thought, as if they were giving her dignity just in time to snatch it from her. For a moment she wished she had taken the poppy juice, but then her spine stiffened. She would endure.
    They shepherded her down a long flight of shallow steps. The group halted at the bottom and two large hands spanned her waist, lifting her onto she knew not what. She was gently pressed into a seat. Then hands that felt almost apologetic fastened jingling chains to her wrists and ankles. They moved away and she understood where she was. She was outside. There was sky above her head. As she tried to process the irrational fear she felt, whatever she was sitting on rose into the air and began to move. Once her stomach settled, she understood, she was about to be carried at shoulder height out into the mayhem of Carnival.  
    The smell of street food reminded her that she hadn’t been fed for some days. Then music stabbed her ears like a tidal wave of sound. She wanted to laugh, to cry, to dance. But all she could do was sit in a swaying litter knowing that the crowds stared and pointed even though she was blind. The eunuchs bore her onward, and she thought ‘I’m alone here, why not open my eyes’. She peeped through her lashes to discover the gauzy mask actually allowed her to see. To see bright lanterns, multicoloured sparkling lights in the sky, and the upturned faces of many many people. For somebody whose only glimpses of life had been taken at the risk of severest punishment, Carnival should have been terrifying. But it wasn’t, it was exhilarating and the sights and the sounds and the smells sang in her blood. For a while she even forgot her impending doom in the sheer thrill of the night.
    Then it happened. There must have been something spilled on the street, because the left-hand bank of bearers all lost their footing together. The palanquin tilted at a crazy angle before falling into a foetid ditch with its helpless passenger still chained to the seat.
    The next thing she knew was voices.
    “Why didn’t she jump clear?”
    She felt hands at her wrists.
    “She couldn’t. The bastards chained her to the litter.”
    “Why’d they do that? The sacrifice is willing ain’t she?”
    She found her voice, although it sounded strange in her own ears. “Of course I’m willing. Willing to have my eyes ripped out. And whatever else they decide to do with me. Just like I was willing to be kept in a windowless cell all my life.” 
    She didn’t expect to be believed, but something in her voice must have told them she spoke truth because she heard the sound of splintering wood and she was thrown across a brawny shoulder. Then they were off and running, wriggling through the crowds with the ease of long practice. Out through the city gates they sprinted, long before the temple guard managed to fight its way to the crippled palanquin.
    They brought her to the old woman who runs the menagerie that follows Carnival from city to city – who nodded just once.  
    Life as a keeper of big cats may be hard, but every morning she looks at the sunrise and is thankful for her eyes.

©Jane Jago

Benjo was an alley cat who lived in Devil’s Lane
He was the biggest alley cat and quite a frigging pain
The children loved to pet him when they came home from school
But Benjo was just letting them, ‘cos Benjo was no fool.

Benjo was the father of every kitten in the ‘hood
It’s not so much that he was bad, it’s more he was too good
At rooting in the rubbish and hunting out each rat
So all night long there was a din, none slept as he got fat.

And when the people rose each morn with bags below their eyes
They’d see Benjo relaxing having won his nightly prize
And though the grown-ups muttered than the damn cat had to go
The children wouldn’t hear of it for all so loved Benjo.

So no one dared remove the dreaded Benjo from his lair
He’d claws as sharp as scimitars if an adult did appear
And though he made a misery of every sleepless night
Benjo was the biggest cat and never lost a fight.

Until one night the neighbourhood was plunged into such quiet
That all who woke, for once refreshed, the mystery enquired
For Devil’s Lane was catless and no one for sure could say
Where Benjo had vanished to upon that fateful day.

Benjo was an alley cat who lived in Devil’s Lane
Until he left the rats behind and ne’re went there again
Now he is a purry cat on pillows stuffed with foam
For Benjo was a clever cat who found himself a home.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Admirable advice from Madame Pendulica’s mystic moggy!

So today she (that’s Madame Pendulica to you or Dotty Doris to me) was doing this thing where she grabs a handful of polished stones (she calls them crystals) and throws them on a black cloth divided up into the houses of the zodiac and then proceeds to give her client a ‘reading’ based on which of the stones land where (“You have jasper in your first house and that is bringing optimism in your immediate future.”)Please note that he’s not the one to be optimistic, Dotty Doris is – she’s making a wad from this consultation.
Anyway, I digress, she was doing this reading for a client who was trying to decide whether or not to accept a proposal of marriage. We’d been through the background already:
“She’s perfect in every way and we are madly in love. But should I marry her?”
Madame purred in her throat (I swear she takes lessons from me).
“You are wise to seek my guidance and I shall consult the stars through their union with the earth by the power of the crystals.”
Translation; “I can see we have a gullible one here who’ll pay for at least three sessions and keep me in prosecco and the cat in tuna for a week.”
He nodded and looked grave.
“You see I know the economic and legal commitment of marriage is a serious undertaking and if I am besotted I am not going to be able to think things through clearly. So please, tell me, should I marry her?”
Oh ye gods and little fishes, what a complete asshole!
I’d had enough so put my paw in and told him that if I was his girlfriend I’d be telling him to take a hike. If he’s the sort who can’t even know his own heart and mind over whether he should marry then he’s better left on the shelf with that open packet of dried kibble that’s sat there the last six months since I refused to eat it anymore.
Unfortunately, the mad bat went on to convince him that his answer was obscured by the moon being occluded by onyx and his having obsidian falling in Scorpio so he should come back the next week to get clarification.
I really do have to admire her.
And I thought of him almost fondly when I ate my tuna that evening.

Ailuros the Mystic’s Mog predicts she will be offering more advice sometime in the future!

Big Brenda was asleep in the afternoon sun, when she felt a polite tap on the sole of her boot. Opening her eyes, she saw the honeysuckle fairy accompanied by a whole cloud of beez.
“What’s the trouble Honeysuckle?”
“It’s that Chiggers ma’am. Keeps trying to steal hunny.”
Brenda rubbed a hand over the stubble on her chin, making a dry scraping sound.
“All right. Tell the beez I’ll have a word.”
Picking up her knobkerrie she strode over to the greenhouse.
“People what don’t want me to come down there and break their toy, better leave the beez alone.”

©jj 2022

…for a moment the silence was blissful. Then the screaming started…
Writing team Leo and Mike Johnson have their day disturbed when a body turns up near their house.

The girls thanked the WPC, then the oldest girl spoke up again.
‘You really want to know about the thing floating in the river don’t you?’
‘They do’ Leo said steadily ‘but they aren’t allowed to ask you any questions without a responsible adult present.’
‘Ain’t you lot responsible?’ a petite brunette grinned.
‘In this case responsible has a quite specific meaning. It’s either a parent or a social worker. Somebody who will be looking out for your welfare.’
‘Oh. Right. But we could tell you anyway. Without questions.’ ‘You could.’
The girls looked at each other speculatively; the one who seemed to be the de facto leader of the group nodded sharply. ‘You need to understand that we haven’t been having a very nice time, not the least of which has been no proper washing. Anyway, we decided to take some shampoo into the river and see if we could wash our hair. Environmentally unsound, but we really were stinky. So we’d all washed and were swimming around naked, feeling much better. Of course, Molloy appeared at the side of the pool and started berating us as sinners etcetera, etcetera. I wanted to smack her one, but the others persuaded me to just swim away. We all swam to the dam, where we knew the silly bitch wouldn’t come, being unable to swim. She started crying and carrying on, and we did some diving to really piss her off. Then Mags got her foot caught in something. It could’ve been serious but we noticed she wasn’t coming up fast enough and two of us grabbed her. We were towing her back to the beach because she was coughing and spluttering a bit. That was when Molloy started screaming hysterically. To start with we didn’t take a lot of notice, being more concerned with Mags. When we all got onto the beach, the silly bitch was still pointing and screaming, so we looked. And there was something floating. Something bloated and dead. Mags was very sick. And after that there was just a lot of screaming happening. Until Mr Leo turned up and smacked Molloy’s face. Which was very satisfying.’
The WPC who had been busily scribbling grinned.
‘I don’t think I need to write the last bit down.’
One of the girls who hadn’t yet spoken piped up. ‘Was that dead thing a person?’
‘Probably. Unless the local sheep have taken to wearing denim.’
‘Just don’t think about it’ Mike was bracing. ‘It’s none of your never mind. You consider what you are going to say to your father so he takes you away from that bloody school.’
She had just finished speaking when a perfunctory tap on the door heralded the entrance of a bulky mannish-looking woman with an incipient moustache. Mike raised an eyebrow.
‘Yes?’ she kept her voice neutral with an effort.
‘Come along girls. Time to leave.’
The oldest WPC looked up. ‘No. You can go, but the children stay until their parents come for them. That’s the rules.’
The woman tried to stare the WPC down, but had no success.
‘Very well’ she said’ on your head be it. I will leave them in the hands of the ungodly.’
Mike opened her mouth, but Ro reappeared and forestalled her. She grasped the interloper by her collar.
‘You. Out.’
She forcibly ejected the woman from the kitchen and frogmarched her to the back gate. A grinning policeman opened that gate and Ro all but threw her out. She returned to the house smiling somewhat grimly. ‘Bitch’ she said before striding off waving a duster.

From Shall we gather at the river? a hard hitting murder mystery thriller by Jane Jago which is available for 0.99.

Because life happens…

It isn’t as if we can know
The future and where things will go
To always be stellar
Take sunscreen and umbrella
And then you can go with the flow

E.M. Swift-Hook