This was written for National Novel Writing Month. I didn't finish the 50,000 words called for, but this stands up well as a novella and part one of a longer story.
Global Weirding - Part Seven
Jana marked the locations to explore in the A to Z and I stuffed plastic bags and some other bits and pieces into a back pack. All the preparation was done in an uncomfortable silence, and we didn't say anything until we were halfway to the first point on the map. We conferred on the best place to join the footpath and, just for a moment, our arms touched. I stole a glance at Jana, who had gone a light red, and chose not to push the issue.
We found the first junction easily enough. It was what we were supposed to do there that threw us. In the end we settled for the tried and tested method of walking back and forth swinging sticks through the grass. Except this time we didn't find anything. "Is it possible we're wrong? That the pins have nothing to do with our elementals?" Jana asked.
"It's possible. Or someone got there before us. We could go and look at the next one along."
"That's the one where they haven't put a path through it isn't it?"
"Yes. Hopefully no-one's got at that one yet. That way, I think."
It was as we were walking away, beyond the edge of our search area, that something went clink in my back pack. I stopped, walked back a little. Something went clink again. Jana noticed and came back to where I stood, moving the bag back and forth. "What have you found?"
"I'm not sure." I delved into the bag and found the two spikes we had recovered earlier. They were warm. Holding them in my palm I passed them back and forth. As they passed over some invisible line they made the clink sound again. They didn't move, as far as I could tell, but something passed between them and they kept getting warmer.
"You seem to be divining."
I had an idea where the invisible line was, but to find it I started on a zig zag path. Every time the pins clinked I took another couple of steps then turned. Jana, rather wisely, marked the first clink point with her stick. The pins got a little warmer every time, if I didn't find something soon they were going to get too hot to hold. I was also going to run out of cutting, because the embankment rose sharply before me, and in front of that were brambles.
I zigged, took a few steps and heard the pins clink. I took a few more steps, zagged and set off to cross the invisible line. But the pins didn't clink I took a few more steps. Still no clink. I retraced my steps. Nothing. Unzagged and retraced the previous leg. The pins clinked.
"Something?" Jana walked over.
"I think there's something between here and somewhere over there."
"Okay, come back until you're on the line." Half a step and the pins went clink. Jana Checked my position against the marker stick. "Right," she adjusted my orientation a little, "Walk slowly in that direction. Tell me when the pins stop reacting."
One step. Two steps. Three steps. "Now."
"Okay." Jana knelt down and ran her hands through the grass. "Found it!" She tugged the pin from the ground and stood with a big grin on her face. I wanted to kiss her, but, because of our earlier conversation, didn't know if that would be right. I think she felt the same way. She bit her lip and turned away. "What do we do now?"
"Go to the next point, I guess."
"Okay. Hey, there's no thing here."
"Thing?"
"Yeah. You know, like Pebbles or Twiggy."
I surveyed the path. We were a little east of the junction, for whatever reason, and there was nothing to be seen that didn't belong there. "Maybe someone else found it. We have just started searching for these pins ourselves, after all. You keep that one. These two are getting a bit warm as it is, don't know what would happen if they were all together."
"Okay."
Jana was about to set off for our next objective. I reached out and clasped her wrist, but when she turned to see what I wanted I didn't have anything to say. I tried a smile. After a moment she returned it. We stayed like that for a while, then she pulled me to her and hugged me. I stroked her hair and her shoulders and didn't make a move to kiss her. Eventually she broke the clinch and kissed me quickly on the lips.
"This may not be quite right. It's possible we're being manipulated by someone or something. But it feels good and it is fun. And I didn't want you to get the impression this morning that I didn't really like you. Because I do."
I brought her hand up and kissed it. "I'm sorry I got offended. I'm just a bit insecure, you know? Let's go and see what's at the fourth point."
We skirted around the next location, going up and down dead end streets trying to find a way onto the fenced off railway line. Eventually we found an alley that ran along the fence.
"We could try to climb it." Jana suggested.
"Not with rusty barbed wire on the top, thank you. See if there are any holes through it."
We found our hole, eventually. Someone had cut the chain links and taken out a section large enough for an adult to fit through if they crouched. "Quite recently, too," Jana commented, "look, the bare metal hasn't started to corrode yet."
I pushed my backpack through the hole, to guard against brambles, and was careful not to snag any bits of clothing. By the time Jana was through I'd found a path made by previous visitors. "Down there."
The embankment was steep, I proceeded down it by swinging from tree trunk to tree trunk, grasping each one tight as I judged my next move. Jana seemed to have a lighter step, judging by the noises from behind me, but I didn't look around to see how she was doing. I reached the bottom eventually and gladly stepped onto flat ground. And into several inches of deep mud.
I was wearing my usual army surplus boots, Jana was in trainers. I turned, stepped up the bank and stopped her just in time to save her footwear. "That looks disgusting."
"It felt quite icky too. Let's head that way, it looks drier."
The bottom of the cutting had given way to woodland. Hard to think that one day trains had steamed through here. I wondered how long ago it had been abandoned. Just how many years before nature reclaimed the world from humans.
"Hey. I think there's a camp over there." Jana pointed at a shape on the other side of the mud puddle.
"Back that way then."
As we neared the construction the pins in my back pack started clinking again. They were going geiger counter crazy by the time we reached it. It looked like a tiny stone hut, open on one side, with slanted plastic sheet as the roof. The occupant of such a building would have to be about a foot tall. Directly in front of the building was another of the pins. I pulled it out of the ground and handed it to Jana. "Now we have two each. If we can find the fifth we'll see what happens when they're all together."
We both crouched to look into the mini hut. "Where do you think the owner is?" Jana asked.
"Don't know. Maybe they've gone hunting or something."
Jana looked around. "Let's go over there." she suggested. She took my hand and led me to a stand of trees. Leaning against one of them she asked, "Are you feeling horny?"
The front of my pants answered that for her, so my stuttered "Yes." was redundant. She handed me a condom and started unbuttoning her baggy khakis. She stepped out of them, then pulled down her knickers and stuffed them into a pocket. "I er, thought you weren't so sure about this?"
"I'm not. And I am. How can something that feels so good be bad? You don't want to do it?"
"Of course I do. I just wanted to be certain you were certain." I dropped my trousers and rolled the sheath on. She giggled as I shuffled toward her.
Jana stood on tip toe as I approached. I stooped and tried to aim. We weren't quite at the right levels. In the end I grasped her thighs and pushed her up the tree trunk. With her trainers swinging in the air she reached down and helped guide me in. I let her slide down the trunk and onto me. "Oh yes." she sighed.
With her legs clasped behind my back and most of her weight taken by the tree I began thrusting. "That's good." she announced. "Now. This is a real forest. Last night wasn't a real forest."
"I'd say this is more of a copse." I kissed her on the end of her nose.
"Don't go spoiling the mood." She reached over her head and grabbed a branch and started pulling herself up and dropping down. I stopped moving and let her do the work for a while. I don't know how much noise we were making, but they could probably hear us up in the alley. We didn't care.
Me with my pants around my ankles, her with her top and trainers still on, her trousers draped carefully over a branch. It should all have felt faintly ridiculous, but neither of us took the time to let that register. Her hair fell across her face, making her look even more wanton. She couldn't keep up the pace, so I took over thrusting again.
She draped her arms around my shoulder and leaned her head forward to whisper incoherent encouragement in my ear. I needed it, because my thighs were beginning to ache, without her spurring me on I might not have been able to keep up the thrusting. She kissed my neck, grabbed handfuls of my shirt and went that special kind of quiet that meant she was coming. A few more thrusts and I pinned her against the tree as I came.
Her legs uncrossed and slid down my side until she was, shakily, supporting herself again. I dipped and pulled out of her. She gasped, a mix of pleasure and loss. "I'm just going to stand here like this for a while." she admitted, "I'll let the tree hold me up." I brushed the hair from her face and kissed her.
I pulled the condom off and tied it. I didn't want to litter, but I wasn't looking forward to carrying it home. After a couple of false starts I pulled my trousers back up. In one of the pockets was a wad of paper towel. I wrapped the condom in the paper and gingerly put it into the pocket. When I looked up Jana was pulling her combats back on, not bothering with her knickers.
“Done, are you?” asked a little voice. Jana froze with just one leg in her trousers. I looked around. "Over here. By the hut." He was, indeed, less than a foot tall. A gnome, but somewhat more battered than the jolly red faced chaps found in kitsch or ironic gardens. I moved to the side, putting myself in his line of sight to Jana. He tamped tobacco into his pipe and put it into his mouth. "Look, laddie, I know she's the hottest thing ye've ever had, but to me she's just another tall'n. Six times too tall, far too soft on the outside and full on the inside." He tapped his chest, getting the hollow tink of pottery. He hadn't lit the pipe, I doubt he had any matches. "It's okay lads. You can come out now."
There was a rustling and two other small figures came into the clearing. One was a soldier, an Action Man rip off, dressed up like Rambo. It looked around, wary of ambush. The other was a humanoid figure made of empty tin cans. They stood beside the hut, watching us carefully.
Jana had managed to get her trousers on. She'd come over to put her arms around me and watch the three strange figures before you. "They must be, I don't know, Twiggy and Pebbles' relatives."
"Aye, lass, I guess we are. I take it you've given the boys good homes?"
"I have. I think he abuses his bush."
"Hey! I do not abuse my bush. We just don't get on very well."
"And ye have four of the five stakes? Of course ye do, ye pulled the fourth from right afront of me house. Ye'll have to collect the fifth yourselfs, we can't seem to get them out of the ground. Then ye can figure out where we came from."
"You don't know?" This came as something of a disappointment.
"Well. I think I was once in some folks' garden, till I was nicked and pitched up here, where I awoke. But that's just the pottery's memory. I don't know how I come to be some mockery of alive."
"You're not alive? What are you? I mean... I don't know what I mean." Jana had done as good a job as I would have at voicing the confusion.
"Of course I ain't alive lassie. And ye know I can't be, and neither can the rest of the lads. We's physical impossibilities. I, for one, don't like existing when I oughtn't. This life lark's a pain far more often than a pleasure."
"You want to die?" Jana sounded upset.
"Lass, I shouldn't be alive. We could have a big philosophical about it and it warms me empty innards that you'd care, but ye and I both know we should change whatever it is that's got me walking and talking."
"He's right." I admitted.
"I know he's right. I just feel odd about it when it's about killing him."
"Not killing, just returning him and the others to their proper state. You said you wanted the strangeness to stop."
"I guess."
"Let's see what they can tell us."
The three animated things in the wood couldn't tell us much. They had each come alive some time a week and a bit earlier, with vague memories of their inanimate lives and a certainty that their existence was somehow wrong. A little calculation put their arrival around the time that I had found Twiggy and just before Jana had met Pebbles.
The five points of the pentagon were joined by invisible lines, the ones I'd divined with the pins. Somehow the pin in this little bit of woodland was the anchor. The soldier and the tin man had made their way here along the lines. Removed from the proximity of the lines by Jana and me, Twiggy and Pebbles had settled into their new surroundings. The gnome had built his little hut and waited, knowing that one day his brethren, or their representatives, would find their way there.
"What did you do while you were waiting? Do you need to eat?"
"Strictly I don't need the food. But- and lassie ye're not to laugh- I found myself picking up a stick, tying some string to it and sitting by yon puddle fishing."
"Did you catch anything?"
"Ye weren't to laugh."
"I know. Sorry, but I didn't promise not to, you told me not to. It's not the same thing."
"Humans. They're almost as bad as lawyers." the soldier spat.
"So, what do we do now?" I asked.
"Well, and don't ask how I know this," the gnome started, I noticed that tin man hadn't spoken at all and the soldier was nearly silent, "this sort of large scale symbol magic is usually designed to channel energy. Each of the pins catches it and funnels it toward the centre of the symbol. I think this one went horrible wrong when it roused us. The pins weren't proper earthed or something. And that means that some of the energy has probably been redirected, into animating us and affecting you somehow. If only we knew what sort of energy it was. You been having bad luck? Unexplained anger?"
Jana and I looked at each other. I really wanted to rip her clothes off and fuck her there and then. "I think we know what type of energy is being channelled."
"Good. What type?"
"Sex."
"I should have known, the way ye were at it."
"So what do we do now?"
"Get us the last pin, and bring the other two. Then we shall look at short circuiting the energy flow and getting ye back to normal. Don't look so upset, ye can still try to replicate the effects, ye've got an affection what wouldn't be there with pure sex zombies."
"We have?" Jana had been holding my hand all this time. She gave me a smile and squeezed my hand.
"Sometimes you fleshy ones can be so blind. Bring the last pin and the other two of us tomorrow. It is getting too late in the day to do anything effectively today. And I would like a night to contemplate my coming return to non-existence."
"Okay. Until tomorrow."
"Go. You have much to discuss as well. Yer relationship is young and it's about to have a major upheaval."
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
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Technorati tag: Fiction, Fantasy, Weird, Pixel Stained Technopeasant Wretch
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