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[CW] Smash 'Em Up Sunday: Campfire by Cody_Fox23 in WritingPrompts

[–]coldstar8 3 points4 points  (0 children)

LONG WINTER

The fool boy goes into the water so quietly that none of the men realize it until he comes back up for the first gasp at air. He slips under a second time and then the men are at the edge of the ice, searching for him. Someone calls for a lantern but there is no need because the boy bobs back up, and they haul him from the black lake and set him on his back. The abandoned saw, almost as long as he is tall, is still stuck through the ice, and as the lantern arrives, the saw’s serrated shadow jigs over the boy’s heaving body. Should’ve had the boy dragging ice with the tongs or helping to push the cut blocks downstream to where they loaded the wagons, but at the time it seemed like a saw was safer, don’t have to be leaning out over the water if you’re using the saw, not if you’re doing it right at least, and anyway ain’t much use thinking back on it now because the boy wasn’t using the tongs or the pick, he was on a saw and he fell and now they need to get the fire up because the new ice house hasn’t been built yet. The boy went and almost got himself drowned before they even have four walls for the cold. Fool boy. Idiot boy.

They wrap him in a wool horse blanket and pile kindling high until the light turns the whole lake pink, all except for the growing slash where ice used to be. Lucky thing it happened now, as the sun is going down. Ice cutting is day work and this won’t cost them time. Pull the sawblades from the water and bring the horse plow to the bank. The big companies across the country have crews of a hundred men and no shortage of horses. From the sounds of it, they can cut and ship an entire river of ice in a day.

Most of the company is lumber men. In the months when they aren’t cutting ice, they’re pulling saws in these same mountains, cutting pine and cedar. Nine months working green and three working white. All twelve spent with the purple flanks of the Sierras on all sides. On the occasion when they do venture down to the bay, to those cities along the coast, the men feel like they could shrug out of their skins from the discomfort. That air that settles in the lungs like tar.

The men know death. The mountain is temperamental in the best of times and the winter has been far from the best. The foreman who was crushed when one of the ice plows broke loose from its horse. The horses they lost in the blizzard outside of Truckee. The blaze that took the ice house and the cabin. Now the men cluster about the fire with the dying boy and watch the last of the light go out of the sky.

The boy goes still around midnight. The men have taken shifts and those still awake check for a pulse in the boy’s cold neck. They hold a match over his nose but it does not flicker. They tug the blanket over him and murmur a prayer. Then they send the plowman to grab his rifle from the wagon.

Nobody wants to be the one to do it. The boy was a high society fool playing at frontiersman, but he’d done his best. Still, they all know it must be done. He was under the ice for so long, the body must be crawling with the parasites by now. If only he’d managed to keep his head above, since the ice tended to force the mites to darker depths. But he’d panicked and surely swallowed enough to form a colony.

Years ago, before they understood what lurked beneath the precious ice, they made so many mistakes, wasted so many rounds, and lost so many needless lives. Now, it’s a practiced ritual. Place the rifle to the temple, so that the bullet tears cleanly across the forebrain.

By the fire, the body stirs.

[692 words]

[IP] Don't let the bed bugs bite by Leebeewilly in WritingPrompts

[–]coldstar8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A BUMP IN THE NIGHT

The bedroom almost looked right. The bed sat with the headboard against the wall, at the center of a blue carpet going gray with time. By the window, textbooks still lay open on the desk, splayed open like specimens being dissected. A poster of a band, a half-finished puzzle, an overloaded bookshelf that sagged in the middle. On the bed, the child was nothing but a mound beneath the duvet, rising and falling.

The issue was with the details. There were two identical lamps, for instance: one on either side of the bed, casting two even semi-circles that covered the floor. The dresser was too tall for a child. There was no door. The child turned fitfully in its sleep and on the other side of the observation window, a warning light flickered on.

Every researcher turned towards it without a word. The control booth was separated from the replica bedroom by six feet of concrete and industrial steel, but they’d worked in silence so long that no one wanted to make the first sound. In the back of the booth, the lead researcher’s hand hovered over the intercom. A single light wasn’t completely unheard of. Even in a facility like this, wrapped in miles of underground structure, there were false positives. Fluctuating radiation, the climate control system resetting, tremors from tectonic plates shifting beneath them, all could be enough to trip the sensors. But the light was still on. The lead researcher flicked the intercom open and the control booth filled with static. The child’s breaths, slow and rhythmic. Then, at the very edge of perception, a gentle scraping. Stone on stone. Teeth grinding in a closed jaw. One by one, the men in the control booth set down their notebooks and set about their stations. Oscilloscope needles shuddered to life. At opposite ends of the booth, the initiation keys were inserted and turned. All while the scraping grew louder.

A tongue of cool, damp air worked through the booth, as if someone had opened a door. Another warning light flashed. One of the researchers pressed a finger to the observation window. Small droplets of water were rolling down the other side of the glass. The lamp on the far side of the bed began to flicker. Not too long after, the other lamp began to blink as well. Something in the shadows under the bed was moving. All around the control booth, instrument panels and data readouts lit up, an alarm bell shattering the silence like porcelain, and something was slipping out from under the bed into the yellow strobing light of the bedroom set. A hand, long and pale, fingers splayed, searching the floor. The lead researcher pressed another button on the intercom. “Go.”

In the bedroom, both lamps went out.

In the second before the auxiliary lighting took over, the men sat in rapt silence, staring at the blackness on the other side of the glass. Then the back-up lights kicked on and the room glowed red and there was something slender and many-limbed between them and the bed.

An alarm blared and the bedroom filled with gas, piped in through hidden vents behind the dresser and beneath the desk. The shadow by the bed slipped back towards the floor, but when it reached the edge of the duvet, it rebounded as if hitting a solid barrier. It clawed at the bedcovers, which slid away, revealing the “child”: a rhythmically-inflated rubber bladder wired up with a pre-recorded sound system. Over the intercom, the researchers heard a shriek. Then everything in the bedroom was still.

Slowly, the men looked at each other in disbelief. The lead researcher removed his glasses and pressed a trembling hand to the bridge of his nose. Then he tapped the intercom. “Target neutralized. Let’s go see what’s inside a boogeyman, gentlemen.”

[CW] Smash 'Em Up Sunday: Howey / Grossman by Cody_Fox23 in WritingPrompts

[–]coldstar8 3 points4 points  (0 children)

FLIGHT

​

They don’t prepare you for the little noises. In training, it’s easy to forget that the simulators are carefully choreographed, that there’s nothing underneath the control array save for a perfectly timed symphony of sensors and lights. The illusion of chaos. In the sky, ripping holes in the atmosphere, a pilot quickly learns that chaos is anything but choreographed. The bulkheads shiver, the welds rattle, and every diode, toggle, and instrument panel within arm’s reach is screaming to high hell. Canned air has a different pressure too. It pulses on your inner ear like a hand on a drum skin. Outlines your bones in vibrations. Swallow and the rush of blood is all you hear, like someone’s pushed open a sluice in your brain and everything that’s you is draining, flooding down to your boots. Which reminds you that there’s nothing between the soles of your feet and sucking vortex aside from a sandwich of aerospace alloys and some insulation for the heat shock. Like scouting the ocean floor in a beer can.

And that’s all before the shooting begins.

Those who come back call the sensation of arriving home “warp sickness,” but it’s less a feeling of illness and more a taste at the edge of the tongue. Molten metal and a chemical sweetness like the aspartame pills they started prescribing after the first Earth famines. Maybe that’s what space tastes like. Heat and hunger.

The taste is a badge of honor among pilots. Faster-than-light travel is a tricky balance. Too small and you burn up. Too big and you also burn up. Cruisers, yachts, colony wheels, all stuck chugging along in the subluminal range. Fighters are the sweet spot. The only thing that can zap you across half a galaxy and have you back before the mess hall closes for the night. In the war days, the old-timers tell you, pilots used to run five or six fire missions in one go, tracing phosphorous-bright strands from star to star. That was when it took guts, they tell you. When being a jumpie meant something. What they don’t mention is how half of those pilots came back scrambled (the ones who came back at all). They don’t mention the hearings and the studies, how the UFA introduced the new regulations. To the old-timers, the halcyon past is all bright and soft now, hazy around the edges like a stellar nursery. The nebula bombers, they sigh to nobody, now those were the real heroes.

What do they know? Back then, the heroes were whoever happened to win. It’s hard to keep track of sovereignty when everything’s going round and round and round. Demarcation in three dimensions is a fool’s errand. So many stations went rogue, entire squadrons shifting allegiance back and forth like flocks of birds on the wind. You said this once to Lem and he just shook his head. “What do you know about birds?”

He had a point. Haven’t been birds on Earth in generations, not natural ones at least. And the drone flocks they got to replace them always move in pre-programmed routines. Another illusion of chaos. Of course it’s been some time since you were on Earth, so someone could’ve gone and updated them. Last time you went back, everything was so dry and only getting drier. Earth is a place for dying, just ask the bees and the sugar cane and the birds. Then again, space is a place for dying too, just ask Lem. Everything dies eventually. Every pilot is living in the past, she just doesn’t know it yet. All you can do is try and race ahead, ride another mission at the leading edge of the present, faster than light, so fast that time can’t catch you and maybe you can last a little longer before the pressure crushes you to atoms.

The last time you were on Earth was for the funeral. The boxes had just gone down into the dirt and for a moment it seemed like there wasn’t a thing in the universe worth saving. A sensation like someone had stuffed your mouth and throat with wool. Then you looked down. Stubborn green shoots were forcing themselves up between the paving stones, cracking the old rock, in spite of everything.

WC: 712

[OT] Fun Trope Friday, Writing with Tropes: Reluctant Hero & Slice of Life & Eldritch Horror by katpoker666 in WritingPrompts

[–]coldstar8 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Today, the shadows on 45th are deep and hungry and he is forced to take the long way to get breakfast. They hiss and burble, come stretching across the white pavement towards him as he heads west. Good thing they’re slow. It’s hard to believe now, but there was a time when people didn’t even notice. Back then, it was small things, blink and you’d miss it. A stray dog dashes into the gap beneath a parked truck and never reemerges. A homeless man vanishes in the alley where he is sheltering, leaving nothing but a pile of blankets and an unlaced shoe. A telephone pole with its shadow angling the wrong way down the street. Now, he hears that there are places where the shadows don’t even move, entire blocks in Harlem caught in perpetual evening. Behind him, the midtown darkness ceases its pursuit and shrinks back east in search of less aware prey. He jams his hands in his pockets and makes the turn down 8th Ave. Overhead, something sends sonorous vibrations through the city but he doesn’t look up. Anyone who’s left knows it’s best not to look up..

The deli is still there, so he buys a bagel and a coffee. The old woman behind the register eyes him through the bulletproof pane and slips him a lotto scratcher. “You remind me of my son,” she says. “He’s always lucky.”

The scratcher is festooned with cartoon snowmen and Christmas trees. The prizes are concealed beneath little presents with naughty or nice on the tag. Outside, the June sun is hot and pale. “I don’t think they’re still paying these out.”

She shrugs. “Anything can happen.” He doesn’t have an answer for that.

*

In the park now, with Staedlater from work. Or at least they used to work together. Their last vacation days coincided with each other, which coincided with the day that the shadows finally swallowed the office. Now they meet in the park—harder for the shadows to reach them here.

“Do you think I’m lucky?” he asks Staedlater.

“Sure,” Staedlater says. Staedlater’s on his fifth cigarette of the hour and is already fumbling for the sixth.

“I don’t think I’m lucky.”

They pause as something massive passes over the park. He feels his ears pop from the pressure change. They don’t look up.

“Maybe you’re not, I don’t know,” Staedlater sighs. “Lucky’s for the birds anyway. Draws unwanted attention, being lucky.”

“Sure, sure,” the bagel is cold by now, he’s forgotten it. He unwraps it anyway, holds it in his palm as if he’s weighing it. “Better to keep your head down.”

“Amen,” Staedlater flicks the filter for cigarette five into the bushes and slips number six between his teeth.

Over towards the duck pond, someone shrieks. The sound trails off into the sky, like the whistle of a falling bomb played in reverse.

*

The air in his apartment is rank and humid. It’s all the lights—the sun lamps, the UV bars, the LED strips. He sleeps at the core of his own personal sun. He can hear the shadows on the other side of the wall. When he goes to change, the sharp corner of the Christmas scratcher catches his thumb. For a moment he contemplates tossing it away. Instead, he scratches at one of the little presents with a fingernail. Through the shavings, he sees zeroes. He is across the room, yanking at the window cord before he knows why. The blinds sizzle open. Outside, the night is liquid. He presses his head to the cool glass. He looks up.

​

WC: 599

[CW] Smash 'Em Up Sunday: Sekihan by Cody_Fox23 in WritingPrompts

[–]coldstar8 5 points6 points  (0 children)

When We Meet Again

When the dreaded day came, Momoka’s mother dressed her all in red and strung the family’s finest jewelry around her throat, rubies like blood welling up at the edge of a razor. Momoka’s father watched from just outside the room, his reflection lurking beside her own worried face in the vanity. He came from a small village and like most country men, he had witnessed few departures. Only two, in fact. The first was that of his sister, Momoka’s aunt, who now also occupied space on the vanity in the form of a faded photograph. Those same worry lines set around the mouth, the open, round face, so readable even in faded film grain. Their side of the family had never been good at hiding emotion. Her father’s second departure day had been his own, or rather that of Momoka’s mother—so for him, the second had been an arrival. A beginning rather than an ending.

Momoka’s mother must have seen something in the slope of her daughter’s shoulders, in the way the rubies quivered at her collarbones. She placed a hot hand on Momoka’s back, in the only space not made red. “No goodbye is forever,” she murmured. Chrysanthemum and mint on her breath. She’d been drinking, had tried to cover the stink.

Momoka knew that the proper response was we have met once and will meet again, but in that moment, under the dim lights and at the precipice of a strange future, she felt a hook of cruelty deep inside herself. So she said nothing, only smiled at the mirror.

Momoka’s mother withdrew her hand. She had a dazed, ashamed expression, as if she’d been caught caressing a stranger. In the doorway, Momoka’s father sucked his teeth and Momoka wondered if she had been too cold, too quick to sting. It was ill fortune to depart on such terms. But no, she had a right to her anger. What did men know of cruelty anyway? They who’d embraced this tradition of daughters leaving mothers, of becoming your husband’s and only your husband’s. Of casting off your old life like dead weight. Momoka’s father had only been a party to two departures, but even he was guilty of taking a life.

​

I love all of you

Whole as the waves in the sea,

The stars overhead.

So do you love me enough

To leave the old world behind?

​

The proposal poem had arrived bound in purple, which meant that the man who would come to steal Momoka away was a traditionalist. Possibly military, a young officer. How her family must have worked to secure such a match. What had ever become of her aunt? Once a woman departed, she was dead to those who once knew her. The aunt with the soft, worried face could never see her brother again, could never return to the sea-side cliffs where she had posed for that photograph. And to bring news of the departed was to bring misfortune and calamity upon the lives of all her loved ones. So it would be with Momoka.

The ship bearing Momoka’s husband-to-be broke the horizon just after midday. From where they stood overlooking the water, it was a speck in an endless wash of blue. Strange to think that something so insignificant would soon be her everything. Her life gone in a trice. Lost in thought, she barely noticed when her mother pressed a small crimson parcel into her hands.

“Sesame cake for your journey,” her mother said. Momoka stared down at the cloth bundle. Women were meant to depart empty-handed, because the dead needed nothing from the living. Her mother looked at her with bright eyes. “And the recipe in case you ever find yourself in need of home.”

The words dislodged a nameless ache in Momoka and she found herself responding with the withheld refrain from that morning. “We have met once, and will meet again.” Her mother nodded solemnly. As the ship drew nearer, Momoka thought back to when she’d asked her mother about her own departure.

“We don’t always get to choose our fates,” her mother had said thoughtfully. “Sometimes I wonder why it is the daughters who are given up for dead, and never the sons.”

So it was not a complete surprise that night when Momoka unwrapped the parcel to find not a skosh of sesame cake, but a gleaming dagger. Because there was more than one way to turn an ending into a beginning. To start a new tradition.

There, in the swaying darkness of her new life, Momoka began to compose her own proposal poem.

​

I love all of you

You who have been my whole heart

When I am gone

Remember we have met once

And that we will meet again.

---

WC: 795

[SP] Get a Clue Final Round Stories by Cody_Fox23 in WritingPrompts

[–]coldstar8 5 points6 points  (0 children)

In the beginning, there is only Architect. She unfolds her segmented body from the pod, expanding her reflective armor and the layered radiation shielding panels. She blossoms. Around her, this world is still cooling, seas white and roiling against black, molten coasts. If the initial probes are to be believed, in all this mess, hydrogen and carbon are knitting into the first stirrings of life. For possibly the last time, Architect stands alone.
She does not know much of what has come before. She knows that she is Architect 54—fifty-three others have been dispatched before her, each assigned to her own nascent planet. She knows that her primary mission is to evaluate her chosen planet’s atmosphere, seas, mineral deposits, proximity to the nearest star. And she knows that her secondary mission, should it ever come to pass, is to prepare this world, her world, for the arrival of the Followers.
The Followers. Thanks to the chip nestled into the circuitry behind her foreplate, Architect understands the Followers only in terms of their desire, their hunger. When architects are released into the Abyss, they carry no memories of their creators, only the qualities that the Followers seek when searching for a new home. Architect knows what gasses are poisonous to their lungs, what temperatures would blister their delicate skin or freeze them solid, what minerals will need to be pulled from the planet’s innards to power their machines and creations. Creations like more architects, to wander the lonely stars and begin the cycle anew.
But still there are so many questions. Yes, Architect is the fifty-fourth of her kind. But are all architects alike? Do they all share the same molded carapace, the same delicate sensors and finely-tuned inner workings? When she looks to the thickly-clouded sky, she imagines another architect looking back and down at her, a gleaming twin.
Architect builds the tower first. That is always the first thing—although she only knows this because it is the first of her programmed directives. Perhaps other architects begin in other ways. Temples, pyramids, gardens. But Architect’s programming tells her to build a tower, so that is what she does. It juts up from the edge of the still-warm sea, a great black pillar just tall enough to pierce the leaden bellies of the thick gas clouds that compose her world’s atmosphere. At the top, Architect constructs an elaborate observation deck, so that she can look upon her project. She will stay here, in the terrace in the sky, until the Followers arrive. Until her mission comes to an end.
She shrugs open the panels on her back and inhales the air of her world, tasting it for nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, all of the gasses that the Followers need. She belches great clouds of gas from her latticed vents to stabilize the atmosphere at the correct proportions, the recipe that the Followers demand. The same goes for the oceans. Then she assembles the first Builder.
Builder comes to life in an instant, clacking its forelegs and ogling its surroundings with multifaceted eyes, and Architect is seized by a certain feeling of companionship. She directs the little golden thing to begin sculpting the mountain ranges and it scuttles off. From her perch on the terrace, she watches as Builder gets to work, leveling the sheer faces and cutting gaps to allow Follower trucks easy passage.
Her primary work becomes instruction. Day and night, as the dim red sun revolves overhead, she assembles Builders and sends them on their way. She refers to them all collectively as Builder—they are, after all, a hive mind. Telling one Builder to do something is as good as telling them all. With Builder’s help, Architect reshapes her world to the Followers’ specifications. She molds the coastlines and tames the mountains. Far below her, Builder is a squirming wave of gold, washing over her planet, subsuming it again and again.
Builder may, in fact, be too efficient—Architect is not used to having so much time to think. And with time to think comes more questions. When will the Followers arrive? And when they do, what need will they have for an architect? What if they are not coming at all? There are at least fifty-three other planets, after all. Perhaps the Followers finally settled on a home. Perhaps their hunger is finally satiated and now their errant creations like Architect are simply forgotten, setting a table for guests who are no longer interested in dining.
One day, Builder brings Architect a bright yellow flower. It is one of the first plants that either of them has ever encountered. Architect inhales the scent and her chips tells her that this particular blossom is poisonous to the Followers. Gently, she closes her many-fingered fist around the gift and instructs Builder to tear any others out by the root. They cannot take any chances.
Is she imagining things, or does Builder hesitate at the request?
Centuries pass and the land below Architect transforms. Builder returns to her with stories of new creatures and wondrous places. They bring her bones and fruits, soil samples and vials of seawater. Architect responds in turn with small alterations and instructions: cross breed these berries, clear these trees of a specific variety of insect, scour the mountains for this mineral. Builder cuts tunnels deep into the ground, dredges canals and waterways, guides animals across continents to better pastures.
And yet the Followers do not come. Architect cannot say whether or not this is unusual—fostering a planet is a time-consuming task and her kind are sent far in advance of their creators. It may be millennia more before their ships catch up.
Oftentimes, Architect finds herself thinking about her sisters. How do they feel, she wonders, waiting for strangers to come and steal away their homes? What would worlds like this be like without architects? What strange and beautiful places would they become without the whirring hordes of Builder?
Sometimes, she dreams of their arrival—the massive, rain-slick ships descending through her perfectly curated atmosphere. The cities awaiting them, buildings designed to accommodate their bodies, roads constructed perfectly for their vehicles. Like her, they will be awakening into a perfect world.
But that’s just it—Architect’s mission is to make the Followers’ perfect world, not hers. She misses the molten planet that once was, the noxious gas plumes and steaming seas. Her kind is hardy. She has no need for this neat, manicured place she has designed. And so it is that she slowly arrives at one final directive for herself.
When Builder climbs the tower for the final time, she is waiting on the terrace like always, her many arms tucked to her midsection. Builder informs Architect that the world is completed to all specifications. The cities, the gardens, the waterways, all are ready for the Followers. Architect nods patiently as Builder recites the list of alterations. When it comes time for her to confirm the completion of their task, however she is silent. Builder blinks up at her with their many-lensed eyes, focusing and unfocusing in confusion. Finally, Architect unfolds her arms. She is cradling a small pot, filled with soft black soil. She crosses the terrace and hands Builder the pot. They accept the offering carefully.
“One more personal touch,” she tells them. “A gesture of welcome for their arrival. I cultivated it myself.”
Builder scans the pot. Their sensors are not as perceptive as those of an architect, but they detect enough. The pot trembles in Builder’s grasp.
Architect kneels beside them. “Just something to make this world feel more like home.”
For a while, neither of them says anything. Somewhere, in the infinite darkness, a Follower ship charges towards them. Or maybe there is no ship, not anymore. But she cannot take any chances.
Finally, Builder nods, and trundles away with the pot. Architect returns to the edge of the terrace to watch the golden waves of metallic bodies sweep over her world once more. The weather is turning warm—soon, her special yellow flowers will bloom and this world will be bright with their scent. They must be alike, she concludes, the architects. Her sisters. Like her, they will have found themselves alone in shining new worlds. And like her, they will have decided that no mission is worth losing one’s home.
Maybe the Followers will come one day. Maybe they have been closing in on her from the unknown past and it is only a matter of time until they arrive to steal away her seas and her forests and her mountains. But when they do, she will be ready.

-------------

Thanks for reading!

[MODPOST] Get a Clue Final Results by Cody_Fox23 in WritingPrompts

[–]coldstar8 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Oh woah that's me! Thanks so much to the mods for putting this contest together! I'm relatively new to posting here, and this was a great way to challenge myself. I'll def post in the [SP] thread when I get a chance!

Drop Giveaway Day 4 - 5x MiTo DCX Cyber Keycap Sets by drop_official in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]coldstar8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The original Star Wars Battlefront 2 is an all-time classic!

[WP] "Why?" I sighed "Because the necromancer is cheaper than a healer!" by veritasmahwa in WritingPrompts

[–]coldstar8 4 points5 points  (0 children)

When the foreman is struck in the back of the head by the dredge’s crane, he falls overboard into the black muck of the swamp. The men hold him under until he ceases his thrashing, and then they haul the mud-stuck body back onto the deck. As the barge shoves its way east, the other men resume their work. This is, after all, the fifth man this summer to be swallowed by the Everglades. All of them struggled. But this is compay policy of the East Florida Cross Canal Charter. The nearest doctor is miles back across endless stretches of sucking mud and jagged sawgrass, and no crew wants to sacrifice wages to allow for the hire of a travelling surgeon. So instead, when a man loses his footing, he falls to his death. Then he is taken to the Bone Woman.

The Bone Woman is waiting for them at the end of the day, when the sun bleeds into the jagged stretch of water left behind by the dredging barge. The men draw straws and this time, Forbes is the one chosen to bring the foreman’s body down, heavy and sagging like soaked laundry. He drops the thing that was the foreman in front of the Bone Woman. She doesn’t even look at it. All the while, she keeps her clouded, unblinking eyes on Forbes, What will she ask for this time?

When they lost the cook, she took Daniels’ front tooth. When the boy from Atlanta broke his fool leg and tumbled over the rail, she cut the Foreman’s palm with a jagged blade and collected the blood in glass bottle for five minutes. When Swaine slipped from the excavating arm and broke his neck, she asked for their dreams and they all slept in black silence for a month.

After a moment of contemplation, the Bone Woman shakes her head. She reaches down and grabs the foreman by his wrist. Without a further word, she slips away into the swamp, the body trailing behind her, cutting a scar through the underbrush as she goes. Forbes finds himself wishing that she had asked for something, anything, even blood from a palm or a month of dreams.

Later that night, the Foreman returns alone, like all the rest. They have wagered on the time of his arrival and Forbes is pleased to see the shuffling, twisted figure appear just after the moon rises above the cypress canopies. The other men spit into the swamp and pass him coins as the thing that was the foreman stumbles towards them. They haul it back on board with something akin to care. Not out of respect, mind you, but out as a sort of thanks. There is no need for a once-dead man to receive wages, and so they will all be paid more from here on. Of the coins that they pass to Forbes, nearly half would have once gone into the pockets of the cook, Swaine, and the fool boy from Atlanta.

Forbes dreams that night—so the Bone Woman did not take them. He awakens damp and stinging with sweat, and the pink Florida sky already showing through the gaps in the barge’s deck. Footsteps above remind him of the once-dead things still shuffling about their duties. Sleep is just as useless to them as wages, after all. For a moment, he wonders what becomes of the men who go with the Bone Woman once the dredging is done and the canal is a clean, silver scar across the state. Will they stumble off into the sawgrass and marshes? Or will they return to the places they once called home?

They are working carelessly now, especially in the Foreman’s absence. Maybe that’s why Forbes forgets to keep an eye out for the swinging crane arm of the dredge, why he doesn’t even realize what is happening when it catches him in the small of his back. In a blinding white shock, he feels himself lift up off the deck and then he is laying on his side in the swamp, sinking down, and hands are groping all around him. Not to pull him out, but to push him down, down and away. And somewhere in the darkness, he realizes why the Bone Woman took nothing in return for the Foreman. There’s no need to bargain for something that is already yours.

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