#90-minute flash fic challenge

(a response to the ‘three minutes until…’ flash fic challenge over on Absolute Write. I do these weekly, I just don’t always post the results! honestly this one feels kinda flat and contrived I just really like the relationship building at the end.)

“It’s out of my hands,” said Reannon, folding their hands on the desk. “Nothing I can do will stop that monster, now.”

“There’s still three minutes to the announcement. If we could get out there, stop him, say something-!”

“No, Stacy. It’s done. We’ve lost!” One of Reannon’s hands gripped the other, tightly. They watched as Stacy paced the room, flicking the blade of her pocket knife in and out. “Just accept it.”

“I won’t,” Stacy said. “If Crawford manages to get on air, he’s going to pull the trigger on thousands of people. You know what he can do with a microphone, Reann! The country’s on a knife’s edge!”

“All of my official channels have failed. Do you propose to go and physically assault him? His guards will stop you before you get close.” Reannon’s tone dropped into something icy cold. “How will you stop him when you’re rotting in prison, Stacy?”

“I’m not giving up,” Stacy snapped, diverting her course to grab the door and fling it open. “You do what you want!” Once she was through, she flung the door closed. A picture, hung nearby, wobbled and fell to the floor. Reannon stared at the shards of glass, their lips pressed in a thin line.

-

It was devastatingly easy to approach the filming site. Stacy grabbed a toolkit, acted natural, and everyone thought she was just one of the technicians. No one had been warned to look out for a plucky little girl. And she had a nice smile. Crawford himself had told her that.

She didn’t go for him. He would be under guard; it would be difficult to get to him. She went for the equipment instead. A man in a hawaiian shirt turned in his chair to greet her, an easy grin on his face.

“Oh, hey. You here to help fix things up here? We’ve been having so many problems with playback.”

“Yeah, absolutely,” Stacy lied through her smile. “Let me just get in there.” She crouched, crawled in underneath the table with all the equipment. She could try and disable it safely, but there just wasn’t enough time - he’d be on in a minute. Taking out her pocket knife, she got to cutting lines. They sparked, and when the metal blade made contact with the wrong live wire, there was a distant crack and Stacy found herself impacting something.

“Oh my god,” she heard someone say, though the words were tinny and faint. “Oh shit, jesus christ, hold on, I can-”

“Holy shit, Ben, what happened in  here?!”

“I don’t know, this girl came in and I thought she was here to help, like, you said they’d be here in five minutes -”

“You’re fucking lucky the repair crew’s on its way already! Shit, someone get a medic in here for the dead sparky!”

I’m not dead, Stacy wanted to say, I’m just really stupid. But the words wouldn’t come out. The mystery man said more things, and she thought she felt someone touching her, but…

-

And then she opened her eyes again, and she saw white ceilings and white walls. She turned her head, and saw Reannon, reading a book, seated in one of those comfortable chairs they have in the hospital for people who are waiting a long time for people to wake up -

Oh.

The hospital.

“Hey,” she said, and her voice sounded creaky and small to her.

“You’re awake,” said Reannon, and their voice sounded small too, so Stacy decided it must be her ears, because Reann never sounded small or uncertain.

“How’d it..?”

“A brief delay due to technical difficulties. He still got on screen. He made the call. They’re being chased down in the streets, now, and of course the police aren’t helping. He’ll probably press charges against you, too. You’re an idiot.” They said those last words as if it were a personal affront. To them, it probably was.

“Don’t care,” Stacy said, taking a slow and deliberate breath so she wouldn’t hurt her chest so badly. “Did something.”

“Action is not strictly preferable to inaction. There are times when it pays not to play, Stacy. You could have died. Were you not thinking at all?”

“Eh…”

“Of course you weren’t.” Reannon snapped their book shut, and laid it down on their lap. “You weren’t thinking of the people you would leave behind. Of the fight made so much more difficult without you. Of the projects left undone.”

“Not,” Stacy breathed, “that important.”

“You are oblivious.” Stacy knew it was her ears ringing, but she thought their voice almost sounded strained. “As usual, you leave my feelings unconsidered. I have stood with you on this from the beginning! We have… I have…”

Stacy squinted, tried to bring Reannon in focus, because she could swear by the sounds they were making that they were crying, and that was frankly impossible. Reannon didn’t cry.

“… Reann, you okay?”

“Of course not.” Reannon took a sharp breath inwards, rubbed at their eyes behind their glasses. “Forget it all. Just forget I said a word.”

Stacy tried to reach out, only to find that there were all manner of medical clips on her fingers. She huffed, dropping her hand back on the bed, and said nothing for a long moment.

In the end, she just said: “Sorry.”

“You don’t even know what you’re apologising for.” Reannon’s tone was formal again, with an edge of sharpness. “The apology owed is mine. You are injured. I should not force you to consider these things while you recover. As I said, please just forget it. There will be time enough to berate you.”

They stood, and Stacy looked over to them, alarm written on her face and in her words. “Don’t go.”

“All right,” they said, immediately, and sat again. “But I shan’t be much conversation. You should rest.”

And even though she had so much to think about - Crawford’s speech, Reannon’s revelation, her own precarious legal future - Stacy found it was easy to close her eyes and sleep again.

                    (I. The Faeries live in a world not unlike our own, beside us, below us, always.)

Samantha and I lived in the middle of nowhere. Literally, there was a general store and a hairdresser and a post office and a bar in town, and, like, that was basically it? No fucking clue how the hairdresser kept in business when all her customers were farmers. So, like, there was shit all to do, so we made our own fun, yeah? Between our families we had, like, ten acres of land, and most of it’s crops, but there was a forest bordering our west side, so we went and dicked around in there a lot.

                    (II. When the Faeries look upon this world, there is no stopping their magic.)

So, Samantha was running ahead of me, red hair to the wind. She always was quicker, and with me on my period, it just wasn’t a fair matchup at all. “Hey, wait - wait up! Why do you always have to get so far ahead?”

“You will /not/ believe what I’ve found in here,” Samantha called back, not slowing down even a little. “You’ve just gotta come and see!”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Sam, just give me a minute!”

                    (III. But there are rules which even the Fae obey.)

I eventually caught up to her, knelt at the base of a tree which looked like it was alive back when the King of England was still the ruler of basically everything. There was a great hollow inside, even big enough for someone like me to fit.

“Go on, go inside,” Samantha said, grinning from ear to ear.

“Why the fuck do I want to crawl inside some moldy old tree?”

“Just do it!”

“Ugh, okay, fine,” I got to my knees, crawled inside. The air smelt rancid, and I’m pretty sure I felt a spider crawling on my arm. Sam tossed a torch in after me, and I flicked it on.

                    (IV. Desperate men, for instance, may beseech the Faeries with a gift of blood.)

There were patterns drawn on the inside of the tree. I shone the light up the hollow trunk - they went up, and up, and up, further than I could have reached even if I was able to stand up properly.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“You’re telling me,” Sam replied.

“And you’re sure your skinny arse didn’t scrawl these in yourself?”

“I am /way/ too short to do that.” And she was right, as much as I wanted to pin this on her. “So, like -”

                    (V. But to attract the attention of the Fae, for most, is tantamount to death.)

She must have said something, but her words, suddenly, sounded like they were underwater. Distantly, I heard the strings of an orchestra.

“-lieve me if I’d told you,” Samantha fades back in, after a moment. I lean against the back of the trunk, bringing a hand up to run through my hair.

“Shut up a second,” I say, sounding so unsettled that Sam actually does. “Didn’t you hear that?”

“Hear what? You’re crazy, Jen. There’s nothing–”

She faded out again, and this time my sight clouded, too. “Sam? Sam!” I cried out, trying to feel the entrance and pull myself out. There was something in the wood, or something, like – like maybe a mushroom had sent out spores and it was making me crazy? That sounded right. I had to get out of there.

I found the lip of the trunk, and tugged myself out, tumbling to the ground. The strings in the background were getting clearer, louder. A hallucination? It had to be. It didn’t sound like any of the symphonies my mother liked to put on while she was doing her work. There was just something wrong to them, like someone had heard violin music and tried to mimic it without truly understanding what a violin was, or how music worked at all.

Noise. That’s the word. It was all just noise. Pretty noise, but not music at all.

“Sam,” I said, my voice trembling more than I’d like, “I’m really freaking out here, and I just - I need some help, like, please, I’m not fucking kidding here.”

At first I thought my vision wasn’t getting better at all, but I realised that it was resolving - I was just looking into a bright-arse light. There were greens and browns, blurry hints of the forest, and no sign of Samantha at all.

“Hello, Jenny,” said the light, scratchy-voiced and lilting. “We have heard your plea. We are listening.”

                    (VI. Be clear, be concise, and pray to your Gods when they cannot hear you.)