Back of the Envelope

The Rest of the Story: You can read all parts on one page by clicking on this link.

So here continues my fanfiction for CRFH. The webcomic has just gotten interesting, by suggesting that Mike, the conniving, evil schemer, is in reality the archangel Michael. It's making my brain hurt. But this story takes place before that little revelation, so I won't talk further about it.

One question that I have to ask is whether it's worthwhile to write a fanfiction. After all, I don't own the characters, so it's not really my story, is it? True, but in some ways, it's a good exercise in writing. By writing for characters other people have defined, you can learn a lot about doing characterization. By keeping to the strictures of the world, you learn a certain amount of discipline that you often need in your own stories.

So, of course, the notification. The characters, world, and events referenced belong to Maritza Campos of College Roomies from Hell!!!. Only the particular events described here are my own.

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Chapter 4

Dave slammed the door behind him. For a moment there, he'd thought those guys wouldn't let him go. He'd almost been ready to use his laservision to get out of there—there was no way he could get past that Mark otherwise. He was huge! Dave's feet scuffed along the hall's carpeting as he trudged towards the elevator. It was the same ugly green color as the carpeting in his building, but he was beginning to wonder if that's where he was. The elevator door was open and some guy with blond hair was getting out. He looked familiar for some reason, but Dave was too distracted to wonder why as he slouched into the elevator.

He'd never been so insulted in his life. He'd been called a wimp, a nerd, a coward, and a freak. He'd even been called a girl—Jay made a point of calling him Petunia every time they met, although next time Dave fully intended to zap him before he got the chance—but no one had ever explained, with such complete and utter seriousness, that he really was a girl and he just thought he was a guy. They were nuts, that's just all there was to it. Only… they had known too much. They had known about the blue mushrooms and being hooked up to that machine after Mike's ill-begotten raid, and about Satan stealing his soul and part of it ending up in Chester, and Roger's werecoyoteness. That was the reason that the part of Dave's mind that wasn't fuming right now was freaking out. Oddly, they hadn't known about Dave's laservision, as they had just stared at him blankly when he told them to get out of his way or he'd zap them. For them to know so much meant that someone must have told them. It had to be a prank, one of Mike's, or worse, maybe one of Waldo's and Steve's. If it was Mike, he was just messing with his head, and Dave would fry some calamari next time he saw him. If it was Waldo and Steve, then they probably wanted something, but they were such idiots that there was no way any logical reasoning would tell him what. They probably thought he had Satan's Fruit Basket or something. What worried Dave a great deal more was the possibility that it was someone else, that it was him. Whatever Mike and Roger said, he didn't believe that he was invulnerable to Satanic attack. He'd gotten help several times now, the miraculous shotgun and the divine dry-cleaning for sure, maybe some others depending on how you counted them, but he didn't think it was all about him. If he'd gotten help, it was because he was a piece in a bigger game, and that didn't do much to comfort him at all. And even if Satan had been, and would continue to be, stopped when he tried the direct approach, that didn't mean he couldn't make Dave suffer. He'd certainly done plenty of that before without God stepping in and putting an end to it. Hey you up there! Why can't you just tell us what's going on? Why all the mystery and subtle interventions? It's not like the other guy's shy about being direct. Dave would have continued, but he realized he was asking God why he wasn't more like Satan, and figured it wasn't a good idea to insult the big guy. The last thing I want to do is get on His bad side too.

The elevator dinged and the door opened. Dave looked around, wondering why he was at the lobby. Some other people he had never seen before got on and he stepped off, realizing that he'd been so lost in his thoughts that he'd forgotten to push a button, so the elevator had just gone to its next call location. Well, at least this gave Dave a chance to make sure he was in the right building. He looked around the lobby. It had to be his apartment building: it had the same ugly green carpet, the same speckled walls, the same lack of anything that might indicate taste. The layout was the same, with double glass doors, the unmanned reception desk—he'd never seen anyone there—and the mailboxes on the left. The numbers on the front door, backwards from this side of the glass, were right, but he went outside anyway and glanced up and down the street. Yes, this was definitely his apartment building. So why did all the people he had seen look like strangers? Oddly familiar strangers, he had to admit, but they were not the people he knew. He headed back to the elevator, got on and pressed the button for his floor.

Arriving there, Dave got off the elevator and headed towards his room, pulling the key out of his pocket. Chester was clinging to his chest, as he often did, and despite the pain from the sharp claws, Dave enjoyed his soul-cat's proximity. It'd be less painful if he was on his shoulder though. Dave used one hand to support Chester, as he dug in deeper when he was supporting himself, while he unlocked the door with the other. It opened easily, confirming that this was indeed his apartment. He heard some motion in front of him, and looked to see the tops of two black-haired heads poking above the back of the couch, obviously engaged in some sort of lip-lock.

"Oh God, you two," Dave said. "Get a room or something. Preferably not mine."

Two faces appeared beneath the tousled hair, staring at him, and they did not belong to Mike and Marsha.

"Who the Hell are you?" they said together.

"I'm Dave; I live here," he said, suddenly uncertain. He had walked into the apartment thinking everything seemed okay, but looking around now, he was noticing all sorts of things which were wrong. First and foremost, it was just too clean. There was no way that Mike could live here. There were no socks on the ceiling fan, no dirty dishes on the table, no pile of dirty laundry wandering about. The kitchen door was open, which in itself was unusual as they had taken to keeping the door closed to keep the mist from poisoning the air in the rest of the apartment. It had been better since Mike and Marsha cleaned the kitchen, but now that she'd moved out it had been gradually returning to its normal state of toxicity. This kitchen looked clean. What's more, besides the cleanliness, the furniture and decorations were a good deal better than anything Dave had ever owned. It looked like someone well-to-do lived here, probably female and well-to-do, to judge from the curtains on the windows and the decorative knickknacks hanging from the walls.

"I don't think so!" the female member of the couple said. "If Dahlia's invited you to move in with us, I'll ship her to Mexico. I warned her about taking in strays."

"Huh?" Dave said. That "ship to Mexico" crack would have done more to get his attention if his eyes hadn't finally located something he recognized. "Look, if this isn't my apartment, what are you doing with that?" he said, pointing to a hand-drawn poster of a blue dragon breathing flames.

"That? That's Dahlia's. Rose gave it to her. Don't tell me she gave it to you?"

"But…" Dave said, at a loss for words.

"Look, Mister," the guy said, "I don't know who you are, but I think Michelle wants you to leave. If you are Dahlia's… friend, then come back with her. Otherwise, leave before we toss you out." He stood up, revealing a long-sleeved blue and white shirt that was only partially tucked in.

The girl stood up with him. Her designer halter-top probably cost more than Dave's entire wardrobe. She looped her arm around her boyfriend's and leaned against him. "Now, now, Marv. No need to get violent… yet. I'm sure—David, was it?—was just leaving."

Violent? It hadn't even occurred to Dave that this Marv was trying to intimidate him. The guy was a little bit bigger than he was, but his laservision could knock aside a car, for God's sake. It had been a long time since he'd been intimidated just because someone was bigger, not unless they were armed, psycho, had a tendency to be possessed, or, as seemed to happen with alarming frequency, at least two out of three. He looked from the couple to the familiar poster. Rose had given it to Dahlia? That was crazy. Roger had given it to him! He looked back at the couple, and for a moment he saw their roles reversed. If Michelle were a guy, a bit taller and with a tentacle instead of a left arm, and if Marv—Marvin, probably—were a girl with wings… Yeah, they did look like Mike and Marsha, and that freaked him out worse than anything else.

"All-all right, I'm leaving," he said, backing slowly through the door.

Once he had shut the door behind him, he wondered where exactly he was planning to go. This was his apartment. It was his building, his room number, the lock matching his key, and his poster inside. It had to be his apartment. But who were Michelle and Marvin? Were they really a reversed gender version of Mike and Marsha? He leaned his forehead against the wall next to the door. He had thought that Mark and Adam were playing a prank on him, a very complex one set up for unknown reasons by somebody who knew most of his secrets. That might have explained them, but it didn't explain what had happened to his apartment. Even if Mike wanted to set up that elaborate of a joke, he could not have gotten their apartment that clean in the time since Dave left for class today. And besides Mike, who else had the resources? Steve and Waldo could never have managed anything like this. So what else was there? He kept coming back to what Mark and Adam had told him. That everything he remembered about his life was a lie, and he was in reality a girl transformed into a guy by Waldo and Steve—only they were really Wendy and Stella, and they had been turned around in his memories along with everyone else.

"No. No way. I'm a guy, and I've been one all my life. Right, Chester?" Chester stared up at him with his large eyes, but didn't say anything. He was worried, Dave could tell, but that could just be the feedback of his own worry. "But how do I know? How do I prove it?"

He turned around and slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, Chester on his lap. Okay, aside from the gender of everyone and their freaking brother—or sister, I suppose—everything else is the same as I remember it. Everything except… The mutations. Neither Michelle nor Marvin had shown any signs of tentacles or wings. "And what about me?" he asked Chester. "Let's say Mark and Adam are right and the two Satanists changed me from a girl to a guy and messed up my memories. That wouldn't give me laservision, would it? Screwed up spell or not, laservision has nothing to do with my gender. That came from the misery journey, which I suppose was a pretty guy-like thing to do, but that's not the same thing. So, if my laservision works, that means the events of the misery journey really happened, every last miserable one of them."

He reached into a pocket and brought out the largest coin he could find. A nickel. Well, I'm definitely as poor as I remember. As he flipped it into the air, everything in sight took on a blue tint as he started building up his energy. His eyes should be glowing right now. At least, he hoped they were. When the coin reached its apex, he released the pressure behind his eyeballs, and the air sizzled as blue light lanced through it to strike the nickel. It worked! The narrow beam scattered in a thousand different directions as it hit the coin, and the nickel itself went flying. Dave heard a crunch as it buried itself in the far wall. He'd put more energy into the blast than he'd meant to.

"Yes! Who's the man? I am!" he yelled, probably a bit too loudly, as the doors on either side of him opened, Mark looking out from one and Michelle from the other. He turned red under their curious and withering stares, respectively.

"Why is he still here?" Michelle asked no one in particular.



"Why is she still there?" Mike asked no one in particular.

The "there" in question was under Dave's bed, where the girl had vanished moments after she had seen Mike's and Marsha's mutations. It wouldn't be the first time that someone had a bad reaction to Mike's tentacle—although Marsha was considerably shaken that her wings had contributed to the girl's reaction—but usually they ran away and that was that. Unfortunately, this girl was deep under Dave's bed, and only an occasional whimpering sob escaped. Mike would have just pulled her out, but a black cat lay curled up on top of the bed. It looked to be asleep, but when Mike had tried to reach under the bed a moment ago, it had been on top of him in an instant, hissing and scratching. After a minute of yelling like an idiot while trying to shake it off, he'd escaped with long scratches covering both his arm and his tentacle.

"Sheesh, even Dave gets over panicking quicker than this," Mike said.

"Come to think of it," Marsha said, her wings fluttering as she knelt on the floor, head near the dusty floor as she tried to get a better look under the bed, "Didn't she kind of look like Dave?"

"A little. And is that cat Chester or not? I thought he liked you." The cat had hissed loudly when Marsha had approached after Mike's aborted attempt, so she refused to get any closer to the bed.

"Could she be Dave's sister?" Marsha asked. "That might explain why Chester's so protective of her."

"Dave doesn't have a sister. A cousin, maybe?"

There was a knock on the apartment door, followed immediately by the sound of the door opening. "What's going on in here?" came Margaret's voice. "I thought I heard yelling." She stopped as she reached the bedroom door and saw Marsha trying to look under the bed. "What are you looking at?"

"Some girl," Marsha said. "She's hiding under Dave's bed for some reason. Do you know who—"

"Hiding? Mike, what did you do?"

"Me? Nothing," Mike said. "We were just minding our own business when she walks in like she owns the place and starts berating us, but the moment she sees our mutations she freaks out. Who is she? She looks sort of like Dave."

"She is Dave," Margaret said.

"Wha?"

Margaret explained, "Waldo and Steve somehow turned Dave into a girl. They messed up his memories too, because now he thinks he's been a girl his whole life."

"Are you sure that's Dave?" Mike asked.

"I saw it happen with my own eyes," Margaret said. "Besides, not only does 'Dahlia' look just like Dave, she remembers the soul-stealing, Waldo and Steve, the blue mushroom trips. The memories are all turned around, and the people are all the wrong sex, but most everything's there."

"But not the mutations," Marsha said.

"And isn't that odd?" Mike replied. "Even if they screwed with his memories, you'd think he'd remember something as big as that. I wonder if that was the intention. I think I'll have a little talk with those two. Where are they now?"

"In their apartment. Roger's keeping an eye on them."

"Good. We'll play good cop/bad cop. I get to be the bad cop."

"I want to be the bad cop," Marsha said. When Mike looked at her, she said, "Hey, it's not often that I get to interrogate people for justice. All of the fun, none of the court orders."

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This has been a 2,722 word excerpt of a 17,473 word short story.

The Rest of the Story: The whole story can be found here.

This is Part III of my CRFH fanfiction. It's also the part where I reveal what's actually going on to the readers, although I keep the characters in the dark for a while. For those familiar with CRFH, the timing of events happens immediately after April's Secret.

As always, all the characters, the world(s), and the events referenced belong to Maritza Campos, copyright 1999-2008. Only the events of this story belong to me.

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Crossing Over
Chapter 3

Dave yawned and blinked his eyes. What had happened? The last thing he remembered he had been lying in the grass, certain he was going to choke to death. Whatever he was lying on now, it was soft and cushioned, and he wasn't choking, although he felt groggy and weak. He tried to look around him, but everything was blurry, like he couldn't bring the world into focus. A face hovered close by, however, one with curly brown hair and blue eyes, and a rough, calloused hand held his own.

"Mar— Marg…" he mumbled, his mouth clumsy and unable to form the name.

"Shh. It's okay. I'm here. You—you're going to be all right."

"What the…?" It wasn't the doubt in the voice that shook him, but the timbre of it. That wasn't Margaret's voice. And the hand holding his was much too big. He pulled his hand free and pushed himself back, bumping his head against the cushioned arm of what he now realized was a couch that he was lying on. A startled meow reproved him, and the weight he hadn't even noticed on his stomach departed as Chester leapt to the floor. By the time he had managed to sit up, his back propped against the couch's arm, he was able to see clearly. The guy kneeling next to the couch was big, with more muscles than Dave had ever dared wish for himself. He had brown hair and blue eyes, but he was definitely not Margaret. He looked concern, unduly so for a stranger. There was another guy behind him, this one tall and wiry with blond hair and a goatee, and he was watching Dave with a wary expression, as if uncertain what Dave would do.

"Calm down, Dahlia," the brown haired guy said. "I know it's strange, but we'll get you back to normal soon, I promise."

"Who the Hell is Dahlia?" Dave said. "And who are you?"

"You—you don't recognize me—us—at all?" he said uncertainly.

"I've never seen you before in my life. Although..." Dave took a closer look at him. Now that he had calmed down a bit, he could see that there was a similarity to Margaret. Not just the hair and the eyes, but the shape of the face, the nose. "You do look enough like Margaret to be her brother. But you can't be; her whole family's dead." A brief spasm crossed the guy's face, but then it relaxed into a look of concern.

"I don't know a Margaret, but my name's Mark."

"And I'm Adam," said the other one. "And you are?"

Mark gave Adam an odd look, one Dave couldn't read. "My name's Dave. And my cat there is Chester. C'mere, Chester." Chester leapt into his arms, eager as always to be with his soul-mate. "What am I doing here? What happened to me? I remember being stung, but if that had been a bee I'd either be in a hospital or dead right now."

Adam smiled. "I'd guess that was a tranquilizer dart or something. We found you in the hands of the Satanists. They were performing some ritual in their apartment."

"Oh, God. What the xhlemphregomfortness were Steve and Waldo up to? Haven't they tried to feed my soul to demons enough times?"

"Uh, yeah," Mark said. "Could you wait here a moment? Adam and I need to talk about something."

"Sure. Thanks for helping me out, by the way. I like my soul where it is."

"Uh huh. Adam, let's go to the kitchen for a moment."

Dave watched them walk away. Something about Adam seemed familiar, although Dave couldn't quite place it. Not just how he looked, but something about how he moved, lightly, and ready to spring in any direction. Kind of like April when she was nervous. Dave shook his head. If they knew Waldo and Steve, then they were probably at the college. In fact, looking around the apartment, the layout was very similar to his own, or the girls'. The furnishing was sparse and functional, as was usual for guys rooming together. It was not quite the environmental disaster area that Dave's apartment tended towards, but then they didn't live with Mike. Still, move a few things around, add some completely unnecessary decorations and frip-frappery, and it would look just like the girls' place. He must be in the same building, then, which was odd, as Dave thought he had met most of the tenants. He didn't really know them all, but he'd seen them around by now. He glanced back at Mark and Adam, who were in an intense but quiet conversation, and wondered what they were talking about.



"Well, his mind is just as screwed up as his body!" Margaret exclaimed once they were out of earshot of "Dahlia."

"Are you sure she's Dave?" April asked. "If she thinks she's been a girl all her life, maybe it's because she has."

"I'd agree if he didn't remember most everything, even if it's all twisted around. Demons stealing his soul, Chester, Waldo and Steve, all the stuff I told him about my family. Only now all those things happened to Dahlia, Chelsea, and Mark. The memories are fake, but accurate."

"Well, what do you want to do about it? We have to tell her, right?"

"What do we say? Hey, Dahlia, you're really a guy named Dave whose been turned into a woman by those Satanists, and in the process your mind got all screwed around too. He's not going to believe that."

"If it's really Dave, weirdness and altered states of reality should be normal for him. Though… he'll probably freak out at first. That's standard Dave reaction to most anything strange and frightening. Of course, once you get him past the freaking out he's good to kick butt up until the point he collapses from pain and exhaustion."

"Even then he doesn't stay down. Once he regains consciousness, he'll get back up and do it again," Margaret said with a fond smile. "Believe it or not, he really is the toughest guy I know."

If you two could just get your act together, you could actually be happy together, April thought, but there was no point in rubbing salt in old wounds. "So we're agreed? We tell her?"

"Him, not her. Are you sure about this? If we screw up his mind worse than it already is…"

"If it is Dave, I don't think that's possible."

"Point. Okay, then…"

"Guys," they heard a voice behind them. "I appreciate the help and all, but I really ought to be going." Dahlia was standing in front of the couch, Chelsea in her arms. She still looked a little wobbly.

"Wait a moment, Dahlia," Margaret said. "We need to talk to you about something important."

"Huh? What is it? 'Cause I'd like to go lie down in my own bed for a while. I feel like my head's about to fall off."

"Where do you live, Dahlia?" April asked.

"I live in this building. At least, I think this is the same building. I'm on the floor just above Wendy and Stella."

"Okay, I'm just going to be direct…" Margaret began.

"No you aren't. Let me handle this, Margaret," April said.

"Okay, but if you don't get to the point quick, I'll do it for you."

"Ooookay. Dahlia, have you ever seen a blue mushroom?"

"Oh God, I hate those things. Don't tell me you've had a blue mushroom trip, too."

"Yes, we have. And you know how sometimes in those hallucinations, things can be completely weird, but it seems like it's exactly the way it's supposed to be? But really, it's that your brain can't remember the way things are supposed to be, so you just accept the hallucination"

"Uh-huh. What are you getting at?" Dahlia asked.

"Well, we think maybe you're experiencing something like that right now."

"You're saying this is a hallucination?" she said. "You're kidding. Where's the superhero outfits? Where's Hell? This is just too ordinary for an hallucination."

"Yeah, we're not saying this is an hallucination. What we're thinking is that you actually do know who we are, you just aren't remembering us correctly."

"Huh?"

"This Mark guy you mentioned. He's a real gun nut, really good with martial arts, very reluctant to let people get close to him?"

"Yeah. Do you know him?"

"Sort of. This is Margaret. She's a real gun nut, great martial artist, doesn't let people get close to her. Do you see where this is going?"

Dahlia frowned prettily. "No, not really. Are they related?"

"No, Dahlia, they're the same person."

"That's crazy," Dahlia said, hugging Chelsea so close she mewed. "You're not making any sense. You're saying, you're saying… what? That this is a blue mushroom trip and Margaret's really Mark, he just looks like a woman?"

"No, you idiot," Margaret said, interrupting. "I am a woman. You're the one…"

"Hold on, Margaret," April said, putting a hand on her arm. "No, it's more like when we were hooked up to the machine, where we thought we'd been friends with the kids from the Sci-Fi club for months."

"Hey, how did you know about that?" Dahlia said, wide-eyed.

"I was there. So were you. Well, sort of. The point is that our memories had been altered, we were remembering things differently than how they had happened. We think the same thing is happening to you here. This Mark you're remembering is really Margaret, you're just remembering her as a guy. When, in fact, she's a girl and she's always been one."

"That can't be. Mark and I had… we…" Dahlia was blushing bright red. "If he was really a girl, then that'd mean I was a lesbian, and I'm not. Mark can't be a girl."

"You're not a lesbian, Dahlia," Margaret growled. "Because up to an hour ago, you weren't a girl."

"Wha??"

"Subtle as always, Margaret," April said with a sigh. "What we're saying is that you're actually a guy named Dave, and Waldo and Steve—the Satanists you were calling Wendy and Stella—turned you into a girl and somehow mixed up your memories to boot."

"That has got to be the craziest thing I've ever heard," Dahlia said. "And I live with Rose. I am a girl and I've been one all my life. You're making this up. Did Michelle put you up to this? It'd be just like her."

"Yes, it's crazy," Margaret said. "But is it crazier than what we get mixed up in daily? Crazier than getting your soul stolen by Satan and ending up sharing it with a cat? Crazier than living with a werecoyote? Crazier than being a mutant freak with laservision?"

"Mutant freak?! I may have lived through some strange stuff, but I'm not a freak! Laservision? You really are crazy! If I had laservision I'd have blasted down that door by now." Dahlia said, angry, but she seemed scared too. "With or without it, I'm leaving. Don't try to stop me, or Mark will wring your necks."

"Okay, go," April said. "Your apartment is next door. Look around and then tell us that everything's like you remember it."

"I won't be telling you anything, because I won't be seeing you again. Good-bye, ladies," she said. She crossed the kitchen floor, skirting wide of both girls, whipped open the door and went out, slamming it shut behind her.

"Well, we flubbed that pretty bad," April said.

Margaret shrugged. "There wasn't any gentle way to do it. Once he realizes we're telling the truth, he'll be back."

---

This is a 1,943 word excerpt of a 17,474 word story.

For reasons probably having a lot to do with the Japanese manga Ranma 1/2, transgender stories (where one of the characters literally changes sex) are all the rage in webcomics these days. Aside from the numerous webcomics with it as a premise, a lot of otherwise normal webcomics have TG stories (It's Walky!, The Order of the Stick!, even Sluggy in a print story). College Roomies from Hell is not one of them: instead, CRFH has a TG universe, an alternate reality where all of the cast members are the opposite sex. This has only appeared in the daily comic once, but the cartoonist initially created, and fleshed out, this universe in the forums. This story is based on a cross over between the normal CRFH universe and the TG one, but for the first couple of chapters I teased my readers with the possibility that this was in fact a TG story. Aside from being a good gimmick for getting webcomic readers to read my story, it kept them from what this story is really all about. Which I'll tell you as soon as we get to that part, somewhere around July.

The Rest of the Story: The whole story can be found here.

The problem with writing a fanfiction is that it doesn't make a lot of sense unless the readers have the context to understand it. Mine is even worse, since you really have to be aware of things in the forum community, not just in CRFH. Still, I like the story. And if you want the quick rundown of events, you can try here, where I talk a bit about the comic.

As before, all the characters, the world(s), and the events referenced belong to Maritza Campos, copyright 1999-2008. Only the events of this story belong to me.

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Crossing Over

Chapter 2

"Change him back. Now!" Margaret shoved her pistol up under Steve's jaw, forcing his head back.

"I don't know how!" Steve panted, his eyes crossed in an attempt to look at the gun. "That isn't what was supposed to happen!"

"Well, what was supposed to happen?"

"It was a B-b-banishment spell. You know, to send him to another plane of existence."

"Why the Hell would you want to do that?"

"It was the Boss's idea, to get Dave out of the way. He figured simple Banishment was something he wouldn't be protected against."

Margaret stared at him. Finding out Dave was protected spooked her almost as much as thinking he was a target. She still wasn't sure how much she believed of it all. Even the miracles could be some sort of infernal trick, but she was beginning to believe that Satan might be… frightened by something about Dave. That just made it more important to keep him from getting mixed up in what Satan was doing to her.

"Well," said Roger. "If they messed up the spell, then maybe they could reverse it if they just repeat what they did."

"Roger, I don't think casting the same messed-up spell twice is going to fix the problem," Margaret replied.

"You're right. Maybe they should do it backwards."

"Look, gun nut, our spell was fine before the cat and the coyote messed with it," Steve said. "That's what screwed it up. Even if we did exactly the same thing, the result of a miscast is random. We'd never be able to repeat it."

Margaret looked at Waldo, who was still standing with his hands up despite the fact that no one was paying attention to him. She had even let her aim drift so the gun wasn't lined up on him any longer. She quickly brought it back on target. Both of them were idiots and cowards, but Waldo was more of both. "Waldo, what do you think?"

"It's all his fault. I just did what he said."

"Okay, you two are going to come up with a solution," Margaret said. "If you don't have something in twenty-four hours, I'm going to have to hurt you."

"We can't do it at gun-point, you know," Steve said. "Why don't you leave us alone to work on it?"

"Why? So you can flee to another country?"

"I'm serious. We can't work with you here."

"Yeah," Waldo chimed in. "You're one scary chick. You make us nervous."

"Okay, I'll leave, but Roger's staying."

"What?" all three of them said at once.

"You can't leave us with him. He'll melt our brains," Steve said, while Waldo said, "He's so nuts he makes you look unnutty."

"Roger will keep an eye on you, and he'll go all werecoyote on you if you give him half a reason. Right, Roger?" Margaret said.

"Mmmmokay," said Roger. "But if they turn me into a girl I'm moving in with you."

"Fine, whatever. I'm taking Dave out of here."

"Wait!" Steve said. "You can't take her—him—away. We'll never be able to reverse the spell if we can't, um… study her, I mean him."

"Yeah, right," Margaret said as she holstered her pistols. She leaned down and rolled the still unconscious Dave onto his stomach, then placed her hands beneath his abdomen as she pulled him onto his knees. She wasn't sure what disturbed her more, the breasts, the long hair in her face, or simply the fact that Dave was much lighter than he should have been. Still, it wasn't going to be easy to manhandle him all the way up to the apartment. His head lolled as Margaret lifted him to his feet, then got in front to drape him across her shoulders in a fireman's carry. She straightened, then glared at Steve and Waldo. "Roger, if they give you any trouble, eat them."

"Ick. They smell like brimstone. I don't even want to think about what they taste like."

"Hey, you can't eat us! If you do, who's going to fix this?" Steve said.

"Yeah," added Waldo, just as eloquent as ever.

"You're right," Margaret replied. "But if Roger starts with your toes, there should still be enough of you left to do the job."

"Ugh. Margaret, I do not want to eat their smelly feet. Now an ear, that wouldn't be so bad."

"Okay, okay," Steve said. "We get the idea."

Margaret got Dave out the door, and headed to the elevator. Chester followed, mewing constantly. Something sounded off about it, but Margaret didn't have time to worry about that as she stabbed the up button on the elevator. The elevator was already on the way from the ground floor, and it arrived almost immediately. Margaret was just wondering how she was going to explain this if there was someone inside when the door opened and Margaret found herself face-to-face with April.

"Whoa," she said. "Margaret, what are you doing carrying that girl around? Who is she?"

"This girl is Dave," she said as she set him down on the elevator's floor, his back against the wall.

"You're kidding. I know he's into some weird stuff, but cross-dressing? I mean, again?" She knelt down for a closer look. "Okay, you're definitely kidding. There's no way this is Dave in a dress." She actually poked the left breast.

"Hey, stop that!" Margaret slapped her hand away. The elevator had reached their floor and the door opened. "Help me get him to our apartment and I'll explain."

They lifted Dave between them, one on either side, and carried him to the apartment. Holding him upright, it was clear that he was now shorter than either of them, and his feet hovered a couple of inches off the ground. By the time they lay him on the couch, Margaret had finished telling April what had happened.

"Wow, I had no idea that Steve and Waldo could do something like that," April said.

"I believe it," Margaret said. "They couldn't do it in a thousand years if they actually wanted to, but by accident? It's a wonder they haven't turned themselves into frogs by now."

"Nah, they'd turn us into frogs instead," April replied. "Every time anybody gets mutated or cursed or possessed, it's always one of us. Those two may be idiots, but somehow they ended up with the good luck while we ended up with the bad."

"Wow, you're cheery," Margaret said.

"Actually I am," she replied, with a brighter smile than Margaret had seen her wear in a long time. "Yes, it's weird, but we're still alive, and meanwhile things are certainly interesting."

"Okay, I think you've gone nuts. Are you sure you're okay?"

"It's just… I've been thinking. For the longest time I thought I was a freak. I didn't think I fit in where I grew up, and then I tried the real world, only to realize that I couldn't fit in here either. I thought that I was incomplete, not made for one place or the other. Then a friend reminded me that as weird as my life had been, it wasn't any weirder than what you guys go through on a daily basis. I'm really not an outsider here, but I came very close to making myself one by letting my anger with Mike get in the way of my friendship with the rest of you. And… I'm sorry."

"Apology accepted and I'm glad for you and all that, but can we focus on Dave here?"

April rolled her eyes. "Okay, okay. Well, aside from being a she, he seems okay. Chester seems to be taking this calmly." The cat had curled itself on Dave's abdomen and closed his eyes. "Uh, do you think it's just cosmetic changes, or do you think it's, you know, complete?" April was blushing a deep red by the time she finished.

"I haven't checked and I'm not going to," Margaret said, her face beginning to grow warm as well. "We can ask him when he wakes up."

"Wait a second," April said. "You said Chester ran into the circle as well?"

"Yes. Why?"

"I was just thinking that something seemed different about him." She reached down and picked up Chester, holding him up with a hand beneath each foreleg and looking at his exposed stomach. Margaret wondered what she was doing. Chester just stared at April curiously until she put him down on Dave's stomach again. "Well, that answers that."

"What answers what?"

"Think, Margaret! Chester ran into the circle as well. He seems different. That's because he is now a she too. And having had a close look at her, I think I can now say that the change is complete, at least for everything on the outside."

"Oh. Oh! I didn't even think to check. You don't think…"

"Shhh. I think she's waking up."

Margaret looked at Dave. His jaw was open in a yawn and his eyes were fluttering open, so she knelt down beside the couch and took his hand. It was small and soft and she almost dropped it in consternation, but she held on for his sake.

---

This has been a 1,531 word excerpt of a 17,474 word story.

This is going to be a little bit of a peculiar story for me. It's a fanfiction for College Roomies from Hell!!!. Now I don't usually write fanfiction: I prefer to work in my own world. However, every once in a while I'm inspired by the possibilities I see in someone else's characters. And for once, I decided that if the author wasn't going to explore those possibilities, I would.

The problem with working in someone else's world is that it doesn't make sense to people who aren't familiar with the comic. Even those who are will probably miss some of what I refer to if they don't read the forums. So the question, then, is why am I posting the story here? Well, the first reason is because I think it turned out fairly nicely. The second is that, because of a forum upgrade, the version that I posted there has apparently disappeared. And since I want to preserve this story, I decided to post it on my blog.

So, first the legal stuff. All the characters, the world(s), and the events referenced belong to Maritza Campos, copyright 1999-2008. Only the events of this story belong to me.

---

Crossing Over

Chapter 1

When Dover dismissed the class, Dave was the first one out the door. Not that long ago he would have lingered, waiting to see which way Margaret would go, perhaps following her if a good enough excuse came to mind. Not this time. He wasn't avoiding her, not exactly, but it seemed that they'd said all there was to say, and he was just tired of trying to convince her. She would listen patiently and nod in the right places, but nothing ever seemed to get through. She just had no faith, and what was worse, she had no hope. Dave didn't know how much faith he himself had. For a guy who'd seen as many miracles as he had, he still wasn't sure what he believed about God and the Devil, what rules they were supposed to follow, or whether he could trust either of them to do so, but hope was the one thing he held onto no matter how hard the world tried to snatch it from his fingers.

Dave took a right and headed for the back of the building, past the classrooms being renovated to the rear stairwell. Inside was a little used back door, which he went through, intending to take an out-of-the-way route back to the apartment. It was longer this way, but he could be reasonably certain that he wouldn't run into Margaret or anyone else he knew. In fact, once he reached the grassy alley where the biology and physics buildings stood back-to-back, there wasn't anyone at all. The sun was blocked by the Ryan S. Majison Building, where all the physics students were spending their afternoon in labs, leaving the alley cool and shadowed. A few dandelions nodded tiredly as Dave walked past. By the time he got home, she would either be in her apartment or perhaps in the library, and he wouldn't need to talk to her unless she came looking for him, a thought that made him nervous rather than excited these days. His feet left a trail in the tall grass which no one bothered to keep trimmed.

"Yow!" Something had just stung the back of his neck. What if it's a bee?! Trying to quell the rising panic, he slapped at it. That was a mistake, and he winced as the stinger went deeper. His fingers fumbled with the oddly still insect, which seemed about the right size for a very large bee. "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod," he said as brought it before his eyes, trying to focus his blurry sight on its feathery red-and-black body. If it was a bee, it was a giant mutant one. He needed to find help before he choked to death. He started to run, but he only made it a few lurching steps before he fell, his face planted in the soft grass and his nose in the dirt. He tried to push himself back up, but his arms were weak and useless. Darkness filled his eyes.



Roger shifted Fluffy to his other arm as he opened the front door to the apartment building. He hadn't had a chance to take Fluffy for a walk this morning before class, and it was getting antsy. Fluffy wasn't the only one who had needed a walk. Chester had been freaking out over something, and he'd darted out the apartment door the moment Roger opened it upon arriving home. Roger hadn't even seen which way he'd gone. Well, Dave would find him when he got home. Hopefully, Chester wouldn't be caught by Satan again, or worse, the hot dog man. There were in fact a few things worse than having your soul torn out, and the hot dog man knew them all. Roger whistled as he headed down the street, Fluffy cradled in his arm. The tune died out once he recognized it as something his mother used to sing. He still hadn't told his father and sister that she was dead. Margaret had actually volunteered to come with him when he did, which was just the sort of honorable and stupid thing she would do. His family didn't know that his mother used to hunt humans, and they certainly didn't need to meet the prey who had fought back. Roger's animal instinct considered Margaret part of his pack, but he still had to be careful to keep his anger control when he was around her. He had no desire to test how good Lily's self-control was by introducing her to the complete stranger who had killed her mother.

Roger tried to move his mind to other things, such as his alphabetized popcorn collection. He had just found one that looked exactly like Mike, or would have if he'd had a more normal sized nose and longer hair. He'd show it to him, only Mike'd probably eat it.

"H'astur, this is heavy!" The voice came from the alley by the apartment. It sounded like that idiot, Steve.

"Well, we'll lose the weight soon. Heheheh." And that would be Waldo, the idiot-in-training.

Roger looked down the alley as he passed, but all he saw was the rear door swinging shut. Whatever they were doing, they were certainly up to no good, but that pretty much accounted for their every waking moment. "We'll just have to watch out for them, won't we, Fluffy? That and make sure they don't get a hold of Satan's Fruit Basket. That would be bad."

Roger continued on his walk, but between thoughts of his mother and of Waldo and Steve, he'd lost interest in enjoying the admiring stares he received whenever he carried Fluffy around, so he returned home after only half-an-hour. Dave still wasn't home, nor was Chester. Mike was gone too, but he was probably with Marsha, so Roger wasn't worried about him. But he was beginning to worry about Chester. The way he ran off could be nothing, or it could indicate that Dave was in trouble. Well, if anyone knew where Dave was… Roger screwed up his courage and went across the hall to knock on the girls' door.

Margaret answered right away. When she saw him, she tried a smile that failed miserably. "What do you need, Roger?" she said. Every time she spoke to him he heard the implied I'm sorry I killed your mother.

Roger tried not to grit his teeth. He hadn't fully forgiven her, even though he was determined not to hold it against her, but what he really wanted to do was wipe that look of pity from her face. Instead, he said as neutrally as possible, "Have you seen Dave? I'm worried about Chester."

"No, I haven't seen him since Calculus. I was looking for him too. Why, what's wrong with Chester?" All things considered, Margaret had taken the news of Dave's soul-cat pretty well, but that might have been the drugs at the time. She had taken to avoiding Chester since then.

"I have no idea, but he ran off like a bat out of Heaven. I think Dave might be in trouble."

"Don't you mean a bat out of Hell?"

"No, Hell's dark and warm. I'm pretty sure bats like it. Heaven's all bright and airy, so--"

"All right, I believe you. Let me get my .45s," she said.

While Margaret got her weapons from her gun closet, Roger came just inside the door. If they were going to look for Dave, maybe he should bring Fluffy, but he didn't want to risk something happening to it. Besides, if they could find Chester, they'd find Dave quickly enough. Finding Chester would be easy if Roger went were, but he was avoiding that these days. Even more than before. Roger wasn't completely certain, but he thought he was more vulnerable when were. They had enough problems without tempting Satanic possession.

"You want something, Rog?" Margaret called from the closet. "The shotgun, maybe?"

"No, I'm fine," Roger said. "Let's go."

Margaret had tucked her guns underneath her leather jacket, where she had specially designed holsters to keep them inconspicuous. She and Roger went out the door and nearly stepped on Chester, who had returned while they weren't looking. He mewed at them, then headed toward the stairs, where he paused to look back at them.

"What is it, boy? Is Davey trapped in a well?" Roger asked.

"Roger…" Margaret growled.

"What? Chester's at least as smart as Lassie."

"Chester's at least as smart as Dave, but do you really think he wants us to follow him?"

"Well, duh! Let's see where he wants us to go."

Chester stopped at the door to the stairway, where he waited patiently until they opened the door. Then he darted down a flight and stopped at the door at that level, mewing for them to hurry. At least that's what Roger assumed he wanted. He trotted down the stairs, Margaret right behind, and pulled the door open quickly enough that Chester had to dodge in order to avoid being hit in the nose with it. After an angry snort—a sound Roger was pretty sure that normal cats couldn't make—he shot down the hallway, Margaret and Roger close behind. Chester stopped at a familiar door, back arched and hissing. Roger felt his stomach flip. He might have to go werecoyote after all.

"Why am I not surprised?" Margaret asked as she stared at Steve's and Waldo's door. "The only question is whether we break down the door, or knock first, then break it down."

Roger said, reaching for the doorknob. "Well, I guess we should check…" The knob turned easily. "…first. Never mind." Roger pushed the door open.

The light from the hallway stretched across the darkened dining area to the living room, falling upon a pentagram. Within, Dave lay spread-eagle, unconscious and unmoving. Black candles were arranged around him at odd intervals, some lit and some unlit. The lit ones were the only source of light, as heavy black garbage bags were blocking the windows. Two figures in dark robes stood on either side of the pentagram, both staring at the door.

"You idiot!" Steve yelled. "I told you to lock the door."

"You never said that," Waldo replied. "You only told me to shut it."

"It was implied!"

"It's not my fault I'm not psychic. Who's the one who said they wouldn't miss him for a couple of hours? It looks like you're no psychochic either."

"All right, you two morons," Margaret said, drawing her guns and aiming one at each of them. "Both of you shut up and freeze. We're taking Dave and we're going now."

"You're too late," Steve said. "We're done."

Roger had been watching Dave, and he realized that the area inside the pentagram was getting darker. The candles that he had thought were unlit were actually giving off a smoky black substance which was filling the pentagram, hiding Dave in the mist.

Margaret saw this as well. "What's going on? Roger, stop it!"

"I'm really not sure how," Roger said, slowly approaching the pentagram. Now he really wished he had brought Fluffy. He had no idea what was happening or how to stop it, but he knew better than to interrupt a spell in progress; the results could be disastrous both for Dave and everyone in the vicinity. Chester had no such compunctions, though, and he ran into the pentagram, knocking over one of the candles lit with actual fire. It rolled into the pentagram, and both Chester and candle disappeared inside the black mist.

"Roger!" Margaret said, keeping her guns trained on the two Satanists who had started this.

Well, now that Chester had already begun it, it couldn't hurt to finish the job. Roger began grabbing candles, lit with both fire and darkness, and tossing them aside. One of them hit Steve in the nose.

"Ouch! Are you crazy?" Steve shouted. "You could cause the spell to blow up!"

"Yes, you and that cat are going to cause a cat-astrophe," Waldo said.

With all the candles gone, the darkness began to clear, revealing the figures hidden by it. When Margaret saw what was there, she strode across the room and placed one of her pistols under Steve's chin, all the while keeping the other one trained on Waldo. "What the Hell did you do!" she said through gritted teeth.

"That wasn't supposed to happen! I swear!" Steve said.

"Aboobsolutely not!" agreed Waldo.

Lying in the pentagram spread-eagled was a girl. Where Dave had been wearing jeans and a light blue shirt, she wore a short denim skirt and a light blue sweater, both exactly the same shade as what Dave had worn. Worse, she looked like Dave—the same hair color, the same general shape to the face. But the hair was too long, with two small braids at the shoulders, and the rest of the body was obviously female. Chester sat near her head, licking her face, but she didn't respond.

"Oh boy," Roger said. "Well, maybe not."

---

This is the first 2,171 words of a 17.472 word story.

I decided to write something short for the Storyblogging Carnival. This is what I came up with. Sometimes I worry about myself.

---

I’ve told this story so many times, that you’d think I’d have it memorized. To the EMTs, to the police, to the lawyer, to the judge, to the shrinks. Over and over again, and each time it’s just as new and different as it was before. It never comes out the same way twice, never makes sense. The other lawyer said it was proof that I was lying, although the shrinks say it’s proof that I’m suffering from some sort of trauma. Well, maybe. It was traumatic, all right, but that doesn’t make it any less real. The reason my story doesn’t make sense is that the events didn’t make sense, and every time they ask me questions which are supposed to make it make sense, it comes out different. And the only thing that is the same each time is that Chuck is dead and the thing that killed him left something inside of me. Something. I don’t know what it is, just that the thing touched my chest and I could feel that something climbing into me. I still feel it. The doctors tell me that there’s nothing there, but they’re wrong. Not only is it there, but it’s moving. It’s alive. They won’t let me have anything sharp anymore, but I can’t get to it with my fingernails. I just have a raw and bloody patch in the middle of my chest. The shrinks have been trying to convince me that I killed Chuck, and that the thing I saw is just my imagination. Or a “manifestation of the violence inside me.” I’d much rather just be a murderer than have to live with this thing inside of me. Well, I won’t have to worry about that for much longer. The thing inside has started to migrate towards my head. I think that once it gets there, I won’t be worried about anything at all.

---

This has been a 318 word story.

This is more a concept for a story than an actual story, but I really liked the idea when it struck me. So here's the intro.

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As everyone knows, the world is always in danger. Anyone who watches television can tell you that mad scientists, evil overlords, alien invaders, and ancient monstrosities attempt to destroy it every other week. This is why heroes are necessary in the first place, but there are times when even they fail. Sometimes the plucky comic relief isn’t plucky enough, the wise old mentor isn’t that wise, the cryptic clues are too cryptic, or the ragtag band of heroes just can’t manage to overcome their differences. For whatever reason, the naïve farmboys, the cynical loners, and the beautiful princesses, even with the help of their bumbling sidekicks, just don’t have the wit, the courage, and the power needed to save the world. Considering that the odds are always against them, it’s inevitable that probability will eventually catch up. In that case, the world is indeed destroyed. Six thousand, seven hundred, and twelve times at last count.

There’s a proper time for the end of the world, and woe on those who let it happen ahead of schedule. Fortunately, in the Department of World Saving in the Bureau of Heroism, there’s the Office of Second Chances. When things go wrong and the world ends prematurely, it’s up to them to fix it. As soon as they’re done assigning blame.

---

It seems like it could make a fun story to me. The problem is that when I started writing, it came out as people in an office talking, which, let's face it, isn't all that interesting unless you can do really snappy dialogue. While I can sometimes do good dialogue, what I ended up with just wasn't up to the task. One world-weary bureaucrat bemoaning the paperwork involved to another just didn't make a great story, even if the topic of conversation was surreal.

I realized today what I actually did need to make it work: a character who doesn't fit in this office environment. I need to tell this story from the perspective of the failed hero, who has sacrificed and fought to save the world only to watch it end, and suddenly finds himself being interviewed by a bored paper-pusher asking him to file his claim and checking to see if his hero insurance covers the end of the world. That, I think, would work. And it lets me write some action scenes.

This has been the first 226 words of a continuing story rated G.

The Rest of the Story: The rest of The History of the Domini can be found here.

This is the fourth part of Randall Aurelius's unpublished draft of The History of the Domini.

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The History of the Domini
by Randall Aurelius

Part V: The Imprisonment

By this time, the forces arrayed against one another were, if not exactly even, more closely matched than ever before. While the Malwer were more powerful in magic, the Shades and the Amaranthine wizards were, between them, more numerous. And while the Orcs and goblins outnumbered the Amaranthine and Human armies, the leadership of the First Legion made them a more effective fighting force than their numbers suggested. Thus, the balance between the two sides teetered precariously for a number of years, and eventually, the Humans and their Amaranthine allies gained the upper hand. The Orcs were scattered, and the Malwer forced to retreat. They gathered in their capital city, and the Human and Amaranthine forces gathered around it. They knew the powerful magic which the Malwer yielded, and likewise knew that an attempt to take the city would cost countless lives. So instead, they decided to leave the Malwer where they were. For the second and final time in our history, the Shades and the Amaranthine combined their magics, and they wove a barrier to completely enclose the Malwer city. By the time the Malwer realized what we were doing and struck back, they were too late. The prison was complete, and the Malwer were trapped inside their city.

Not all the Malwer were caught in this trap. Some were outside the city at the time, some managed to flee before the trap could close. The Shades and the Amaranthine spent years tracking down those who had escaped. While that was being done, the armies which had been gathered against the Malwer dispersed. Humans began to build their own towns and cities. And when the last of the Malwer had been captured, the Shades themselves began to go their separate ways, while the Amaranthine retreated to live in isolation from the Humans.

But while the Malwer were gone, peace was short lived.

The Rest of the Story: The rest of The History of the Domini can be found here.

This is the fourth part of Randall Aurelius's unpublished draft of The History of the Domini.

---

The History of the Domini
by Randall Aurelius

Part IV: The First Legion

The details of the magic involved in the calling of the First Legion are long forgotten. We do know that it was the first of only two times that the disparate magics of the Shades and the Amaranthine were combined. The Circuit involved hundreds of magic-users, and many of them died in the effort. But when it was done, an army had been summoned to our aid.

From where they were summoned is still a mystery. The First Legion neither spoke our language, nor understood what we wanted from them. They were angry at being ripped from their own land, but terrified of the magic we wielded. With great difficulty, we found a way to communicate. From what we were able to learn, they came from a land similar to ours in many ways, but there they had no contact with Orcs or Goblins or Malwer. Instead humans warred upon each other for control of the land and the sea. It is difficult to understand now how strange that was to us then, humans fighting wars against each other. We were far from a peaceful people even then, but we had no understanding of conflict on such a scale. The First Legion did, and we needed that understanding. After a great deal of bargaining, with threats on both sides, we were able to reach an agreement.

The numbers which the First Legion added to humanity’s beleaguered forces were small, but the expertise was considerable. They were among the best trained and most disciplined soldiers in their land, and they shared their training and experience with us, first strengthening our defenses against the Orcs and Goblins, and then leading the assault to drive back the invaders. Unprepared as they were to face competent warriors, the Orcish advance faltered and then collapsed, and their conquests were quickly retaken. Emboldened by our successes, we pursued the Orcs and Goblins as they retreated, and may have succeeded in eliminating both races entirely, had not the Malwer themselves taken the field.

---

This is the latest 336 words of a 2,531 word short story in progress.

It occurred to me that this Storyblogging Carnival is our third anniversary. It's been a long time since I've submitted a story to the Carnival, but I figured for the anniversary edition I ought to include something (especially as we only got one story in our first round of submissions). What I've been working on recently is Water, the "sequel" to Fire. It's not really a sequel, though, only the second part of the book of which Fire is part one. I don't intend to publish Water online, so that leaves me in a bit of a quandary, since I don't have any other stories to share. After some thought, I decided that I could publish a small excerpt from Water. I considered putting up something from the first chapter, but the first chapter's pretty boring. I intend to get rid of it and write something better in its place. So instead I'll give you an excerpt from a chapter near the end, a bit of which I posted before. This particular scene pretty much stands alone, but it works better if you know something about Aulus. He's the clever and paranoid older brother of Victor and Lucia. If you want more than that, I'm afraid you'll have to read Fire, which is freely available on my Writings page. This chapter is the first time I reveal what he's up to, or tell any part of the story from his perspective. It was a bit of a challenge, making his character distinct from all my other characters. From the outside, it's easy--he's the paranoid one. But making him an interesting character, showing how the world makes sense from his perspective, and making him seem at least half-way likable without changing his personality: that was a challenge. Anyway, here it is. First, though, a quick warning. The subject matter deserves an R rating.

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Chapter 17
Artura

Aulus adjusted the rough leather cap on his head. Its somewhat conical shape was rounded off well before it peaked, and proclaimed to the world that he was a freedman. It lied, of course, but while Aulus always sought the truth, he felt no compunction to share it. Right now, he was more concerned with the physical discomfort it caused him than any message it might be sending to the rest of the world. It was hot here, and his sweat damp hair itched even worse than the rest of his body, chafed as it was by the rough wool tunic he wore. Face it, Aulus, you’re just too used to living in comfort, he thought. His stomach growled, reminding him of how little comfort his current job provided. Fortunately, it was evening, and the oppressive heat was slowly fading as Aulus headed home for the night. Occasionally a cool, salt-scented breeze from the north would caress the back of his neck and nearly take the cap off his head.

He scratched at his head underneath the cap, careful not to dislodge it. A freedman not wearing his cap could be arrested for passing himself off as a citizen. Some of the Urban Legionaries were petty enough that they would make the arrest even on the poor freedman who merely dropped his cap, and some citizens were simply looking for an excuse to beat a frail-looking freedman. Aulus detested bullies of both types, and while he usually managed to avoid their notice, there was no point in taking risks.

The long shadows cast by the disappearing sun cast their darkness on his as he navigated the raised stepping stones that gave pedestrians some hope of staying out of the muck covering the paved streets. Buildings loomed several stories high on either side of him, and it was already late enough to leave some of the particularly narrow stretches, where the overhanging buildings nearly hid the sun at high noon, in deep shadow. Aulus wished that Artura had the same system of street lamps as Novaro, but only a few private homes had lamps, and those were only lit in anticipation of the return of the patricrian master and mistress of the house. No one wanted to waste lamplight on those wretched strangers still out as evening set in.

Aulus had to move quickly to the side as one of those wealthy patricians came by. Slaves carrying torches took the lead, followed by a tight knot of burly slaves with clubs around a litter, heavy velvet curtains blocking out the sights and sounds of the street. Not the smells, I bet, Aulus thought. Just then the overpowering perfume which served that purpose swept over him, its sick sweetness causing him to break out in a loud coughing fit. One of the thugs who guarded the litter glared at him, taking a step in his direction. Fortunately, the litter was moving too fas to give him a chance to indulge in a little violence, and he had to hurry after it as the rear torchbearers caught up to him. Aulus barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief when he heard the screaming.

Loud shouting was not uncommon in Artura. Usually they were cries of anger or passion which could be safely ignored. This was more; Aulus could tell by the continuous nature of the cries. From the sound of it, it had been going on for several moments already, when it had been drowned out by the tramping feet of the entourage. The cries were also unmistakably feminine.

Aulus continued walking forward, which unfortunately was in the direction of the screaming woman. He wasn’t here to play hero. He had a job to do, a job which was much more important than some woman being mugged or raped or murdered. If he were in a litter surrounded by armed guards, he’d have them help out, of course. Assuming I even heard it through the curtain. His pace had picked up, and he was heading for the commotion faster than he should. It’s so much easier when you don’t know about these things, he thought. When you can just shrug your shoulders and say, "Well, these things happen in a large city, there’s nothing you can do." He was jogging now, his breath coming faster but hardly winded. If I had come this way ten minutes earlier or later, or if I had come another way. I could go another way now, but I am not going to be frightened off by this. Now his breath was coming in quick bursts, and his steps were flying over the ground. The straps of his sandals bit painfully as his feet scraped and snagged on the raised stepping stones, on loose paving stones, on softer objects he’d rather not think about and wished he didn’t smell. He nearly sprinted past the alley where all the screaming was occurring before he realized he had arrived. His chest heaved, his breath whistling in his chest. His eyes were blurred and in the darkness it was impossible to tell what he was seeing at first.

A large man, dressed in the leather cuirass and kilt of one of the Urban Legionaries, leaned over a woman. The woman wore a tunic that bore no resemblance to a proper dress, well short of her knees and slit open on one side. It was torn open at the breast, although Aulus could tell that had taken very little effort given the depth of the neckline. Her face was painted to a white too pale to approximate skin tone, with lips too red and eyes too dark with makeup. Her hair hung loose, falling well down her back. She was clearly a prostitute, and not an expensive one; she was probably a freedwoman, although they didn’t wear caps to mark themselves as the men did. The soldier was too large for his armor, the straps straining at the bulk, rolls of fat spilling between them. His puffy face leered, eyes fastened on the woman’s bare breast. One of his hands clutched a handful of her hair. Her hands were wrapped around his other arm, whose hand held tightly to her bare breast. It squeezed and she screamed, in pain and outrage and... shame? It couldn’t be: she was a prostitute.

This is none of my business. She was a prostitute. Why was it any of Aulus’s concern if a customer didn’t want to pay, if he was a little rough? The legionary squeezed again and she screamed again; Aulus winced. This wouldn’t be my business if she were a patrician matron about to be raped by her slave. Neither of them had seen him yet, and he didn’t think they would see him unless he wanted them to. For all they know, I’m not even here. She screamed again, countertimed to his squeezing, and the brute laughed, giggled really, uncharacteristically high-pitched for his girth. All I want to do is go home and have dinner. I wish I wasn’t here.

He heard the tramping of feet as another entourage neared the alley, and Aulus turned to look. Torchlight licked down the alley, and the torchbearers came into sight. They were craning their necks, looking for the source of the noise they had heard. Aulus heard a sob behind him. The litter hove into view with its guards. They too watched, some troubled, some leering, some indifferent to anything that wasn’t a direct threat to their charge. It was hard to tell the color of the litter in the torchlight, just that it was a dark color, maybe a deep blue or green. “Help me!” he heard. A hand emerged from the litter, and Aulus let himself feel relief for the first time. Someone else would deal with this. Someone else would help this woman and relieve him of the responsibility. The long, soft hand, its bejeweled fingers scattering the inconstant torchlight, waved preemptorily to the litterbearers, and Aulus knew what would happen even before he heard the sharp, frightened word emerge from behind the curtains, “Hurry!” The litterbearers picked up the pace, and the guards, some disappointed and some relieved, moved with it. Aulus turned back to the tableau before him, which stood unchanged.

Torchlight flickered down the alley again, touching rapist and victim, who watched the procession pass. The man seemed to hold his breath, while the woman sobbed almost quietly now. Still, she watched them pass through her tears, and the soldier watched with her. Aulus stood backlit by the procession; he should be clearly visible to them, he was clearly visible, only they still didn’t know he was there. They wouldn’t notice him until he wanted them to. He still had only the vaguest idea how he could so easily slip beneath people’s notice, and it didn’t always work, but when it did, it was like magic. The rear torchbearers were passing now, and for the first time the light shined clearly down the alley, and he could make out the details concealed in shadows. The man’s eyes were clouded, his face slack, his nose and cheeks florid. Clearly he had had plenty to drink, today and a thousand days previous. Tears ran down the woman’s face, tracking through black, white, and red makeup to leave an unholy mess. But underneath the skin was pale and freckled, not the olive of the southerners. The eyes, shining and wet, reflected the torches with their own green fire, and the hair shone with a deep, rich red.

Jaelin? It couldn’t be Jaelin. Jaelin was safely with Grandfather, hundreds of miles south of here. And she still thinks she’s Lucia, at least according to the latest letter. He was moving forward, alone, unarmed, and still unseen. She wouldn’t be here, not dressed like that, not working as a prostitute. Aulus looked around for a weapon: a rock, a large stick, anything that would narrow the soldier’s advantage. His eyes fell to the sword hanging from his enemy’s belt.

Damn, I’m thinking of him as my enemy now. I do not want to get involved in this. He stood beside the man, who, figuring himself free from any interruptions, leaned in toward his victim for an obscene kiss. Aulus reached for the sword, wrapped his hand about it--Please don’t notice me now!--and pulled.

The hand which had been groping the woman’s breast whipped back to seize hold of the sword’s hilt, but since Aulus had already pulled it halfway out of its scabbard, the hand grasped hold of the blade instead. The soldier was looking at Aulus now, seeing him for the first time, his expression equal parts shock and fear, which turned to simple pain as Aulus yanked the sword the rest of the way from its scabbard, slicing the soldier’s hand open in the process. The man was the one who screamed this time, but the woman cried out too as he turned to face Aulus, his left hand, still caught in her hair, jerking her along with him. Aulus had never been a swordsman to match Marcus, or even Gaius, but his older brothers had forced him to participate in enough sparring lessons that he knew how to use a sword. He held the short blade left-handed now, pressing its point against the Urban Legionary’s throat. It was something of a reach, since the man was head and shoulders taller than Aulus, but Aulus could still push the point home. He didn’t dare spare a glance for the woman to see how she was taking this, although it seemed to him that she held very still.

The would-be rapist blinked at him. “Where di’ ya...?” He swayed and blinked a few more times, and Aulus could see the beginnings of anger pushing aside the fear. “A free’man? Whacha thin’ yer doin’ assaultin’ one of the Ur’an Co-cohor’?”

Aulus could smell the alcohol on his breath, so strong that he wasn’t certain what drink had contained it. Probably the sour wine the soldiers drank. This one hadn’t watered his down properly. “I’m stopping a rape.”

“Yer assaultin’ me,” he said. “Dis is assaul’. You coul’ be cru-cruci...fied for dis.”

Idiot. I could have you crucified. That wasn’t strictly true. Citizens, of which august assembly this soldier was indubitably an unworthy member, could not be crucified. Aulus could probably have him executed, but not by crucifixion. Unfortunately, doing so would cost him the disguise he had worked so hard to set up, so it was probably not the wisest idea.

“Are you saying that the smart thing for me would be to kill you now?” Aulus asked. “Because I could do that.” Could I? he asked himself. Maybe, he thought, glancing at the woman.

In retrospect, that was probably a mistake. Aulus never knew whether the thug had caught the bluff in his voice, or he had seen his distraction, or his anger had simply overcome his fear. He batted the sword aside with his already bleeding hand, and before Aulus could bring it back, his left hand, which had somehow managed to free itself from the woman’s hair, grabbed hold of Aulus’s wrist and twisted it. His hand convulsed, and the sword hilt slid from his fingers to clatter against the ground. Aulus kicked it aside before the thug could reach it, right to the woman’s feet. Aulus didn’t see what happened to it then, because the soldier gave him a shove which sent him five feet down the alleyway and onto his back, his cap flying from his head right before it cracked against the paving stone with a force that set his ears ringing. His eyes cleared just in time to see a shapely shadow leap over his face. He turned his head to see the woman running into the street, sword in one hand and the other clutched to her breast, holding the remains of her dress together. Aulus lifted his head to look at the guard, who blinked stupidly after the fleeing woman, a dangerous expression on his face. He took a step in her direction.

Aulus came to his feet as quickly as his painfully spinning head would allow. Maybe the drunk soldier wouldn’t pursue, maybe he couldn’t catch her, maybe she could fend him off with the sword. Aulus could vanish again, slip away. Maybe he had done enough. Maybe... He stepped between the soldier and his quarry. He had no weapon, and he hoped the soldier was unarmed as well. It made little difference: the man was three times his size, and although he was fat and drunk, Aulus had reason to know he was fast. Aulus knew he couldn’t win this fight, and the soldier had good reason to want him dead. Sometimes all you could do was stand in the enemy’s way, take the beating given, and hope that was enough. And hope I survive in the process.

Aulus would have liked to say he gave as good as he got, but that would have been a lie. The man was armored, for Jove’s sake! His last conscious thought, as repeated blows crushed his narrow chest against the wall, was surprisingly plaintive: She wasn’t Jaelin after all.

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This is a 2,549 word excerpt from a 190,000 word novel.

The Rest of the Story: The rest of The History of the Domini can be found here.

This is the third part of Randall Aurelius's unpublished draft of The History of the Domini. Randall did his best to be honest in his portrayal of all involved. Thus he avoided showing the humans or the Shades in too favorable a light. Indeed, that our entire history revolves around those who decided to run rather than fight in the earliest days is something that many Domini do their best to gloss over.

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The History of the Domini
by Randall Aurelius

Part III: The Amaranthine

To humans, a hundred years is three to four generations. Events that happened that far back are no more than legends to people without written histories. To the Malwer, it was just enough time to prepare the means to avenge themselves on their escaped slaves. By that time, the humans who had fled the Malwer had lost all contact with those who remained behind to fight. The communication had slowed to a trickle over the years, stories of a distant war that most of the newly free humans did not believe was worth fighting. When it finally stopped, there was some worry, but a few years passed and the worries ceased.

The free humans were focused on the business of surviving and building farms and communities in the previously uninhabited land rather than on the distant, mostly forgotten threat of the Malwer. The Shades among them were likewise occupied with building their cloistered communities and finding recruits among the other humans. Over time, methods of recruiting were developed to take young men with the ability while minimizing the trauma to him or his community, but in the process the Shades became more and more isolated from the rest of humanity. Some preferred reclusiveness, while others used their power to try to force people to serve them. Occasionally, Shade communities of differing philosophies would clash, but these were mere skirmishes compared to the later wars.

The Malwer would have overwhelmed humanity when they finally came upon them in force, if not for the Amaranthine. The Amaranthine are nearly as great a mystery as the Malwer. They lacked the Malwer’s ability with magic (although there were a few among them, called wizards, who had powerful magical abilities), but they were similarly long-lived, and they knew a great deal about the Malwer, whom they held a bitter grudge against for unknown reasons. They looked nearly human, although with odd coloring and strange characteristics. Many today say they were related to the Kawyr, although they regarded humans with more sympathy than the cold Kawyr ever could. When the Amaranthine first came, warning that the Malwer were coming with a large force of creatures which no one had ever heard of, no one knew what to make of them, including the Shades. Just a few messengers came at first, but soon it became clear that there was a mass migration of the Amaranthine, women and children along with men, fleeing from something. Although many took their warnings seriously, a few saw them as interlopers. The Shades themselves were divided, and many of the communities forbade the Amaranthine from entering areas under their control. There were a few skirmishes, but no widespread conflict, and eventually the Amaranthine settled just outside the human areas. They continued to warn of brutish, violent creatures behind them, but the humans saw no reason to take their warnings seriously, until the Orcs came.

There were, in fact, creatures of two types in the initial invasion: Orcs and Goblins. Orcs are roughly as tall as humans, but more muscular. While most of them are not very intelligent, the commanders of their armies are as smart as we are. There were no warlocks or witches among them at this time. Goblins are smaller, uglier, and stupider. The humans had little chance against the invaders. In the hundred years they had been free, there had been no wars more serious than a skirmish, and no human community had formed anything resembling an army. The Shades fared little better. They too had only skirmished, and they had developed little magic capable of facing armies. While the goblins were less an army than an unruly mob, forced to fight by their Orc masters, the Orcs showed a surprising grasp of tactics and strategy, even though their forces were lacking in discipline. And if what the Amaranthine said was true, the Malwer were the ones truly behind the attack. They had recruited the Orcs to carry out their vengeance on the humans.

Fortunately for the humans, the Amaranthine had been fighting Orcs for years, and they lent their aid against them. It was not enough, though, as the Amaranthine were few in number, and their wizards were even fewer. Humanity was forced to retreat from their attackers, driven towards the sea in a narrowing strip of land as the Orcs laid claim to the countryside. In desperation, the Shades and the wizards pooled their abilities, and performed an act of magic unlike any seen before or since. They called the First Legion.

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This is the latest 755 words of a 2,195 word short story in progress.

The Rest of the Story: The rest of The History of the Domini can be found here.

This is the second part of Randall Aurelius's unpublished draft of The History of the Domini. Randall's work may seem brief to those familiar with the lengthy works of the Philosophers, but this is a result of his deliberate care rather than a lack thereof. Rumors and legends concerning the early days of the Domini were plentiful when Randall first wrote this history. Randall forswore writing the more unreliable stories, and did his best to only relate what was solidly known or at least reasonably surmised. It is only due to his great care that his work came as close to an accurate recounting as it did.

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The History of the Domini
by Randall Aurelius

Part II: The Exodus

The Shades and the other slaves who had joined them were far from unified. The Shades themselves were divided. Their structure as a loose network of independent cells had protected them from the Malwer’s ferocious hunt, but left them with no hierarchy or leadership. There was fierce infighting, especially between those who had participated in the Malwer-hunting, and those who believed it to be as bad as anything the Malwer had done. Many wanted to fight against the Malwer and free all the humans from their grasp, while others thought that those who had now escaped should flee beyond the reach of their former masters. The mundane humans overwhelmingly wanted to flee.

In the end, the Shades split. About half remained behind to fight, joined by a few humans who hated their Malwer masters worse than the Shades. The remaining quarter led the vast majority of the humans to try to find a land far from the Malwer’s rule. They headed north, to warmer climes.

If the Shades expected the people to be grateful, there were sorely mistaken. Most of the former slaves blamed the Shades for the situation they were in, and they all feared their power. They shunned the Shades, and even the Shades’ own families wanted nothing to do with brothers, sons, and husbands who had been inducted. They were wise to do so, since, while the people were too afraid of the Shades to threaten them directly, they harassed and in some cases even harmed their families. The Shades soon discovered that they had as much need to protect their identities from their fellow humans as from the Malwer. The fear and resentment of the Shades even extended to those with the ability to learn, once it was discovered that there were many untrained humans among the exiles.

The Shades made several decisions during this time that has continued to shape the Order to this day. Only young men were taken to be trained, lest they take fathers and husbands from their families. They were taken in secret, so that there would be no reprisals against their families, and they were required to make a clean break with their old lives, as any contact put their acquaintances at risk. Not all the young men were willing, but they understood that once it was discovered they had the ability, they were outcasts. Finally, women were not taken. There were fewer women than men among the escaped slaves, and the Shades realized that the long-term survival of the independent humans would require children. They also worried that if they recruited women with the ability, they might deplete the number of boys with it in future generations. It should also be remembered that in these ancient days that the egalitarian impulses which are rare outside of the Philosophers even now was practically unheard of. The Shades saw themselves as warriors, and they did not believe that women were suited for their task.

Eventually, the independent humans moved beyond the reach of the Malwer Sovereignty, and settled in a land to the west of it, likely where the Novar Empire is now. Information trickled to them from the Shades and the humans who had remained behind to fight. While these warriors had been wholly unsuccessful in a direct assault, they still managed to cause difficulty for the Malwer, and to assist many among the remaining slaves who wished to escape. Meanwhile, the exodus of slaves had triggered internal turmoil among the Malwer, and the infighting would keep them occupied for years to come.

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This is the latest 597 words of a 1,440 word short story in progress.

This previously unpublished work is an excerpt from an early draft of Randall Aurelius's History of the Domini. Revelations which occurred a few short years later invalidated much of what Aurelius had written, and cast a new light on the rest. This work is more than a historical curiosity, however. It reveals the inner workings of the Ordo Dominorum's self-image at the time, what they understood of their origins and their purpose, even if much of it was vague legend rather than complete fact. Thus, it helps us to understand their motivations and the reasons they behaved the way they did during the recent crisis. It would be wise of us to take that into account before we pass judgement on them.

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The History of the Domini
by Randall Aurelius

Part I: The Malwer

Any history of the Domini must begin with the Malwer. Unfortunately, so little is known about the Malwer that every history of the Domini is, of necessity, incomplete. Nevertheless, I will endeavor to record what is known of our origins, and hope that someday the blanks may be filled.

Who, or what, the Malwer were is the great mystery of our origins. Today, the uninitiated refer to them as demons, but in the days of our enslavement we considered them gods. At a time before humans had any magic, every Malwer was gifted with it. It came to them as naturally as breathing, and they viewed their magic as the proof of their right to rule mankind.

Our tradition calls the first human to discover magic Saul. This is almost certainly not his name, and his identity is as much a mystery as how he discovered magic. Human magic only comes through training: to this date there is no verified case of any human developing this ability spontaneously or through his own meditation. It is as ludicrous as gnats forming spontaneously from dust or frogs from mud (a belief still held by many of the superstitious Novari). Many have speculated that Saul must have been taught, either by a renegade Malwer or, more plausibly, by one of the Amaranthine, although this was centuries before they revealed themselves to the rest of the human race.

Whatever the source of his power, Saul knew that magic might be the key to humanity’s freedom. However, he also knew that he did not have the ability to challenge the Malwer on his own, so he could not risk discovery by the Malwer. Saul was most likely a field slave, with little enough contact with the Malwer to avoid their suspicion. Even so, he proceeded with the greatest of caution. He found others with untrained magical ability and taught them, all the while keeping his identity hidden from his students as much as anyone else, wrapping himself in an encompassing robe every time he met with them. He knew that if any one of them were discovered, the only chance he and the rest of his students would have for survival was anonymity. His students did the same, perhaps hiding their identities even from one another. Eventually, his students grew knowledgeable enough to train students of their own, maintaining the practice of keeping their identities hidden from their own students.

The teaching spread throughout the Malwer lands, and somehow they avoided discovery for several generations, most likely because they confined themselves to teaching fellow field slaves, who had little Malwer supervision, and because they did nothing but teach and learn. While the masters continued to keep the students from discovering their own identities, some cells allowed the students to know each others’ identities. This became the only means for cells to contact one another once age claimed the former master of the current cell leaders. Even so, after a few generations, the secrecy had taken its toll and most cells had no contact with anyone removed by a generation or two. It is not clear whether the teachings were confined to men deliberately at first: it may simply have been that there were more men than women among the field slaves. It is certain that those learning magic were exclusively male by the time they took the next step, perhaps for the same reason that all soldiers are men.

It was unlikely a concerted decision, as it has already been noted that most cells had contact with only a few others. But at some point the cells began acting against the Malwer. Rather than a head-to-head war, a cell would track down and kill an individual Malwer, generally one against they held some particular grudge. Other cells, hearing of the rumors, began to do the same, and soon the Malwer found themselves being hunted and killed by an elusive enemy they could not identify. When they were spotted, by either Malwer or human, hidden in their all-concealing voluminous robes and no doubt further obscured by magical illusion, they appeared as shapeless black shadows. Thus they earned the name Shades.

For a while, the Malwer feared the Shades, and whispered that they were ghosts or demons, but no conspiracy can continue forever, and eventually the Shades were found out. At the realization that the Shades were humans with magic, fear and fury alike swept through the Malwer, and a hunt began to find the Shades and exterminate them. As an extra dead slave here or there did not concern them, they did not burden themselves with proof that a human was indeed a Shade before executing him. This hunt forced the Shades to flee. Many innocent humans fled with them, fearing the Malwer who had turned on them, although many blamed the Shades for bringing this oppression on top of them. For the first time, Shades gathered together in large numbers to fight the Malwer openly, joined by desperate humans. Thus the rebellion had begun.

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This is the first 843 words of a continuing story. There will be more.

I haven't been participating regularly in the Storyblogging Carnival for a long while. Instead, I've been focused on revising The Eyes of the Shadow, previously known as Eyes in the Shadow, which can be found here. It's been growing from novella-length to full novel length, with lots of details which I didn't previously know coming out and being incorportated into the story. The general strand of the story has remained unchanged, but some history, and hints at the all-important question of "Why?" are starting to emerge. So, while I'm on vacation, which in actuality is more of a Writing vacation, giving me time to write out the last few pieces to complete the greatly expanded version of Eyes, I figured I'd share a little of what I've been working on. This submission is the new prologue of The Eyes of the Shadow, and gives a small glimpse at Ryan's messed up childhood.

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Prologue
Coming Home

Ryan took the bus home from Providence Middle School that day, with no after-school activities to keep him late, no science club or math club. He had no other activities that night, either, no karate practice or tutoring clients. He planned to do his homework and then read a book, maybe watch a little television. When the bus let him off at the stop sign, just a few houses down from his place, he headed for home straightaway. The sun was shining, and he enjoyed its warmth on his face, but the gnats which followed ensured he wouldn’t be spending much time outside. Some of the neighborhood kids would probably get a game of softball going, but Ryan wasn’t planning on participating. Aside from karate, which was very much an exercise in self-discipline rather than teamwork and competition, he wasn’t into sports, and while he was friendly with the other kids, he wasn’t really friends with them. They’d all known each other for years, while he’d only been here a few months. He didn’t make friends quickly or easily, and given how frequently his family moved, it had been a long time since he’d had a real friend.

Eleven twenty-six was affixed in large metal numerals right beside the white door at the front of the two story yellow house. Ryan reached into one jean pocket, then checked the other, before finding the loose key. Since it was his one and only key, he didn’t bother with a keychain. He already had the key in hand when he realized that the front door was open.

There was no car in the driveway, and they had yet to clear all the boxes out of the garage, so there could be no car hidden in there. Still, he shoved the key into his pocket as he pushed open the door. “Mom? Dad? I’m home.” There was no response. Not even their dog, a black and white English Springer Spaniel named Dozer, appeared, and he always came running when someone entered the house. Of course, Dozer was usually aimed for the front door, trying to get out. He loved to get outside on his own, and he loved it even more when someone chase