Six Word Stories

[snakesocks]

SIX WORD STORIES
Just like back in the LJ days.

• Write a story in six words.
  
• Based off the sixwordstories/smuttysixwordstories comms that were created based on this story from wired in which they asked authors of all genres to write six word stories.
  
• Each comment should be in it's entirety, exactly six words.
  
• Your comment can contain more than one story. Just number or letter them like tfln.

Comments

[corvidly]

The cool air is a surprising relief, but it's still heavy with the evaporation of swamp water. While its refreshing in its difference from the warm air inside made heavy with its woody scent, it makes Morgan's lungs eager for some hot smoke.

He's slipping a cigarette out of the box when Jimmy pulls out the lighter. He taps the open end on the closed cardboard, and it's just enough time for Jimmy to pause and decide to take his glove off -- something that isn't occurring in Morgan's awareness until he turns around. Cigarette between his lips, he sees a bare hand holding the flaming lighter to his face, illuminating the space between them and, of course, his hand.

Morgan can't help but stare for a moment at the fused forms, a hand with a thumb and two large digits. A natural deformity, he assumes, something genetic. Well, there's no scarring to indicate this was some sort of injury, or a result of surgery.

But he isn't repelled, and doesn't shy away at all. Morgan leans in to introduce the end of his cigarette to the flame before it burns Jimmy, cheeks hallow as he sucks air through the packed tobacco, and from this close, the oracle doesn't bother to keep staring at the hand.

When he pulls back, his eyes are only on Jimmy's. The 'freak show,' he called it. Back in the fifties? Morgan can't imagine what bizarre things people would be saying about a guy with a deformity like that. Hell, writing with your left hand was probably still frowned upon back then.

"I was startin' t' think those gloves were permanently attached," he jests calmly past his cigarette, but brings it away from his lips with a small smile. Jimmy is clearly shy about bringing them out; Morgan doesn't care what he does about his hands, but he certainly isn't going to make this harder for him to commit to. Yeah, his hands are...odd, but only because anything else would be 'odd,' and that doesn't necessitate a crime or anything.

They should be normalized, and Morgan's preferred method of not making something feel foreign is to act like it isn't. What does Morgan do around normal hands? Nothing. He doesn't address them.

So he'll take another long drag from his cigarette and do just that. "Dunno if you know this, but tobacco was considered sacred to the native people of this chunk of land. They would smoke it in special ceremonies and always had a ritual to it. And they would offer it to the spirits of the land that they revered."

Morgan isn't directly Native American, he doesn't smoke cigarettes to summon nature spirits, and he isn't claiming that tobacco was smoked only rarely for grand events. Native people would smoke it almost as regularly as people nowadays do -- but that's still the truth to it, and it's a hell of a good segue.

Another inhale off his cigarette. "You're 'bout to meet one of those spirits."

[jimmydarling]

This reveal is one that Jimmy has waited out so many, many times in his life. At the show, it's part of the act. It's the entire point, really. He's heard so many gasps, sometimes screams from the dramatic in the audience, that you'd think he'd be deaf to it by now. He's used to the way housewives sometimes shrink from it, the way they can giggle with nerves and distance themselves from what they're doing - cheating on their husbands - by knowing that they're sleeping with a guy who's not really part of normal society. His hand is probably the reason he's one of the few successful straight male prostitutes he's ever met. Jimmy knows all of this. It's old by now.

He also knows that some of those housewives don't seem to actually care. Jimmy's had every one of his extended freak family hold his hand at some point, to shake it or to offer support, and all of them were able to look him in the eye and not flinch. He knows exactly what acceptance feels like and how rare it is.

And he sees it, when Morgan is done noticing his hand and just bends forward to light the cigarette hanging from his mouth. Acceptance. Like this is normal.

Jimmy's had that a bare handful of times in his life from 'normal' people. The first time, he'd been seven and in a candy store, and his ma had been insisting, as usual, that he couldn't hand over the money. Like any self-respecting seven year old, Jimmy had been whining for the independence to pay himself, and the woman behind the counter - bless her - had just reached down and plucked the money from his hand. Ma, who had been trying to grab it back from him at the time to hand over herself, had frozen in place, stunned.

Jimmy, who had been insisting with a child's importance but who knew how strangers tended to react to his hands, had blinked up at the old woman. She looked like how Jimmy imagined grandmas did, and she'd smiled at him. And then, when she gave him the change, she'd tucked it into his palm and closed his fingers over it with a smile, and Jimmy had embarrassed himself by crying. He's pretty sure Ma did too, after they left. They hadn't talked about it again.

Christ, talk about memory lane. Jimmy stops pressing on the lighter a few seconds too late, shoves it back in his pocket. He considers his gloves, but a glance up and down the alley tells him they're safe for now.

He presses his bottom lip with his teeth, briefly, and then takes off the other glove. Both go into his back pocket. "Only permanently attached when I'm in questionable company." He answers, and he isn't joking at all. He sounds awed, which he is. Jimmy's gloves are always on in public, unless he's trying to make a point. They're never off because he's comfortable. That's never been a step in this dance.

So let's make this clear: this is a huge endorsement for you, Morgan. Jimmy isn't gonna forget the way you just breezed right on past his hands.

But he also isn't going to linger too long. He picks up, gratefully, on Morgan's willingness to keep the conversation moving. "Listen, I've known some dedicated smokers before, but no one's ever tried to convince me that Marlboro was tryin' to create a spiritual experience." Jimmy chuckles, mouth opening around a smile. "Are you gonna sing to summon it? Should I get a drum beat going?"

[corvidly]

Morgan could be irritated by the humor, perhaps on a bad day, but that natural defensiveness doesn't strike tonight. The jab about cigarettes is kind of too good to let ruin his mood. "Can't a guy make an entrance for a supernatural entity?" He asks, chuckling around the filter of his cigarette.

Circling overhead, the Raven remains mostly unseen in this post-twilight sky. A quietude seems to descend on the streets surrounding the block, perhaps a lull in the lively bustle and traffic that is typical for this area. It makes the rustling of feathers and the scratchy squawk from above much more audible in the alley.

The bird, a black silhouette in the contrast to the fluorescent lamps erected at each side of the block, glides up the length of the alley with wings fully extended. Its call is almost purring, a mechanically rhythmic sound. The creature kicks out its talons and grasps onto the shoulder of Morgan's denim jacket; a keen eye might have observed what could have been perceived as stylistic distressing there on the sleeve and shoulder, but might more truly be an indication of a frequent roosting spot for the bird.

This bird, that appears to be quite simply a normal corvid, pauses and ticks its head to the side, opposite of Morgan, to level a seemingly intentful eye at Jimmy. It coos roughly and flaps its wings awkwardly against Morgan, as if insisting something.

"I'll be a moment," Morgan assures Jimmy as the turns away. He puts a few paces between him and the other guy as he approaches a lidded dumpster, to lean his shoulder toward it for his aviary friend. It hops onto the plastic surface, claws scratching and tapping as it steps across it, before turning to face Morgan directly.

Morgan doesn't often have to speak to the Raven; more typically they communicate in abstract thoughts from their mind to the other. Concepts, intentions, flashes of insight, like twins joined at the brain.

But Morgan needs something clear and quick, and the Raven already seems disrupted by Jimmy's presence.

'A displacement of a life line, across time, misplaced...A mischievous force.'

"So I've noticed," Morgan murmurs, holding his cigarette idly in his fingers. "He found me, lucky that."

The Raven tilts its head, dazed. It doesn't still understand the concept of 'luck.' 'It must be kept safe.' The bird caws once again, as if to emphasize the urgency. 'Must return. Life in its absence is unbalancing.' The bird means Jimmy; the Raven doesn't deal in gendered pronouns, isn't aware of such concepts of material form and flesh and reproductive properties.

"Yeah, you got any bright ideas?" Morgan scoffs and drags on his cigarette.

The Raven sits quiet for a moment, considering.

"Yeah, me either. What caused this t' happen?"

'Mysterious. Dark. Unseen. In its nature. Not a practitioner of the spirits... Unknown.'

"Some cousin of yours?" Morgan asks flippantly, because he's not liking what he's hearing. His brow wrinkles in the middle, and suddenly this cigarette is no longer helping, and it's tasting stale in his mouth.

'This one...Jimmy...must be kept. I will seek the disruption to its source.'

"So'll I. Can I look into his life line, or will that like, cause some sort of rift in reality?" He's still being flippant, but his question is serious.

'You cannot tell that one its fate.' Morgan rolls his eyes; yeah, he knows that. 'Its life is diverted. There will be no longterm forthcoming. But you may use your gifts as you see fit.'

The Raven focuses an eye on Morgan, standing eerily still. 'Your spirit is restless.'

Morgan nearly glares at the bird, lips slack against the filter of his cigarette that is too perched between two fingers. It's a delayed reaction before the ashy end of the stick glows to life with red and orange. "Tell me when you find something good."

The bird simply sits, for a few more long seconds, and flaps its wings preemptively. Morgan turns away and chucks the cigarette to the wet pavement, the sighing of wings from above filling his ears as the creature departs.

[jimmydarling]

"I'm not gonna stop you." Is said innocently enough. Jimmy's curious about what's happening, but he's always had a knee jerk response to shady spirit stories - he tends to poke light fun at them, keep the weight of it from dragging down the troupe too much. Some superstitions are mostly like the more benign Bible verse - harmless enough, nice guidelines for keeping on the good and righteous in your life. But sometimes they're like...well, more like the ways that the Bible can be used to back up violence or prejudice - they do more harm than good.

He isn't expecting a normal-looking raven to swoop down the alley way, but then, Mordrake had looked pretty regular. Aside from the dead-guy clothes and that sickly green glow to everything around him, of course.

Maybe it's instinct, but Jimmy feels a pull to follow the lead of the ambient traffic and chatter of the streets in that moment - he falls silent. The raven looks at him, and the stare carries the weight of a human's gaze. When Morgan tells him he's gonna be a minute - presumably, to do some kind of esoteric ritual with this bird - Jimmy's eyes stay wide but he just nods, like this is something he gives permission to cut off conversations for all the time.

Morgan had said he was going to check for more information about this, right? Does he mean just fact-checking Jimmy in general? Because Jimmy wouldn't blame him if it's still a bit much to request that a complete stranger believe that you, an uninteresting man from the '50s, just got hauled through to the future and are currently broke and in need of financial and spiritual assistance. It sounds more than a little suspicious.

So Jimmy will happily leave him to it. In fact, Jimmy will go ahead and take another bite of that burger he's been hanging onto since they stepped out of the bar. The razor edge of his hunger is dulled, but he still feels almost nauseously ravenous, which is why Jimmy has a mouthful of food when a foreign voice is suddenly in his head.

He doesn't spit it out - god, he'd probably let himself choke to death on a tomato slice before he purposefully lost any of this food to the ground - but Jimmy freezes mid-chew. He has no frame of reference for this, except the sound of thoughts in his own head. And unless he's reading a paper to himself, it really doesn't seem so structured most of the time, anyway. Like most people, Jimmy's thoughts are just a mass of intentions and half-formed words and questions and observations. This feels like someone took his own internal voice and pressed it into their own megaphone. It doesn't sound like a different voice, but it doesn't really sound like his own, either. It's...startling.

But not quite frightening. Still, Jimmy mechanically chews through the rest of that bite and then just stands there, eyes wide, staring at the bird clearly not speaking while Morgan manages to answer everything that Jimmy hears in his own head. It must be...the raven. The 'supernatural entity', as Morgan had called it.

Jimmy takes a halting, jerky step forward when the raven takes off. "Was-- was it-- did he-- is it a-- a he or a she? Was that-- it was in my head." Jimmy's pulling up even with Morgan, staring first at him and then back up, to where the raven has disappeared against the darkening sky. "Is it just leaving?" Has Jimmy missed something? He feels like he's missed something.

[corvidly]

Morgan anticipates a couple of things when he introduces someone to his familiar: confusion, alarm, even suspicion. Those first two are quite prevalent in Jimmy when he approaches him, but for a person he expects comes without any experience in the supernatural, it's no news to him.

Until Jimmy is stammering just a little more urgently than would be expected, and follows that up with 'it was in my head'. It's enough to give Morgan a significant pause, eyes narrowing inquisitively at the other man. "You mean you heard it communicating with me?"

It's the assumption, since it had no direct contact with Jimmy during the discussion. Jimmy has demonstrated that the strangest thing about him aside from the accidental time travel is his hands... But only those who have been touched by an agent of the otherworldly can hear the Raven. Morgan's brows are about to knit together in suspicion until he realizes that it must make perfect sense. Jimmy was touched, even in some inadvertent way, by some entity: whatever it was that sent him sixty years in the future.

And Morgan's face immediately spreads into calmly neutral. "Good, then I don't have t' get you caught up." He then eyes the mostly-rated hamburger in Jimmy's hands and can't resist a smile that leaks across his face.

"So, you're gonna have t' stick 'round me for your safety. For all I know, someone's got some weird hit on you, but more likely, you're just an innocent bystander that got caught up in somethin' you had no business in."

Morgan scratches at the back of his neck with dull fingertips, considering, even though the true solution is very clear to him. "Since you ain't got a place, you can crash on my couch 'til we get this shit sorted out. I can't promise how long that'll take, but if it really bums you out, I can throw a couple more'a those burgers into the offer." His smile is a little firmer, and even a bit warmer.

[jimmydarling]

Morgan looks almost as spooked about Jimmy hearing the bird as Jimmy feels about having heard it, which is unexpected. Jimmy's eyebrows lower and meet, unfiltered confusion on his face. "What, 'sit supposed to be private?" Did he accidentally eavesdrop? Jimmy's no psychic, though. He's pretty sure he'd have noticed by now if he had a gift. Did the raven want him to hear it, then?

But Morgan's going even further than just looking comfortable again - he's actually perking up a bit. Smiling at him. Jimmy feels at a loss, but unspeakably relieved to not feel like he has to play along and stay in the dark about it. He doesn't feel unwelcome even if he feels like an outsider, and that's appreciated. "Yeah, I heard it say to keep an eye on me. Makes me feel like a kid." Jimmy's lips part, then purse consideringly, and he can't help but ask, "How old is that thing, anyway? Is it a spirit?"

Morgan then levels him with the warmest expression he's had so far, and an offer that Jimmy can hardly believe. There's a flash of what should be rightful suspicion - there's a lot of bad reasons someone might want to invite a stranger to their house - but Morgan has done so much in the way of helping him already that Jimmy's more wondering at the fact that Morgan trusts him enough to invite him over. "You-- you want me. To stay in your home. For free." Jimmy's hands have found his hips, and his entire form is tilting forward, as if this new piece of information is the end of where his disbelief can be suspended to, and he's starting to crumble under the weight of all these impossibilities. Jimmy scoffs, but his face keeps tugging unevenly up into a baffled smile.

"Shit, man. Usually I'd be questioning it, if a normal person was askin' someone like me to follow 'em someplace alone, but I'm just..." Jimmy looks at the space between them, shrugging, clearly at a loss. He laughs, a scattered few syllables of not understanding what's happening. His mouth is still getting pulled up into an involuntary smile, made even wider with his surprise. He feels...oddly warm. People like Morgan don't do this for people like him.

Unless, because of his gifts, Morgan is part of people like him, just the kind that carry their weird inside instead of outside. "I'm-- touched. There's no other word for it." Jimmy's not one to waver from eye contact when it's due, but he looks a little uncomfortable with his own sincerity, like he thinks Morgan deserves to see it but he isn't sure the best way to express it. "'Course I'd love a place to stay. And someone who might know something about time travel lookin' out for me. I'll pay you back any way I can. I mean it."

[corvidly]

Yeah, Morgan gets how an offer like this might come across as suspicious under most circumstances... He's pretty sure he would think the same thing. Luckily it's not so questionable that Jimmy is inspired to turn Morgan down; he laughs softly and his head hangs loosely down off his neck, grinning at the pavement. "Look, promise I'm not up to some elaborate scheme to kidnap you. Which...is exactly what I would be saying if I were, I s'ppose, so that doesn't help any." Oops, maybe he shouldn't have said that...

But Jimmy seems on board, and while this is way more than what Morgan would have expected to bring home with him tonight, any potential anxiety that comes with last minute surprises such as housing a stranger is curbed by the knowledge that Morgan has just secured someone at least halfway important right now. This is Morgan's jurisdiction, so getting ahead of the curve on a supernatural mystery involving the delicate fabric of reality and fate is kind of a bonus. The movement begins with some hesitation, but when Morgan's hand claps onto Jimmy's shoulder, it's with a friendly confidence. "You don't need t' worry about stuff like that right now, we just gotta get you situated first. I'm offerin'."

It's not even a question with Morgan. His mother raised him with integrity, and he himself has had to live off of favors from others in a pinch. It's the ebb and flow of the universe, but Morgan isn't tallying what he owes. This comes completely naturally.

Morgan jerks his head in the direction of the street, and doesn't wait for Jimmy to start moving; the oracle turns and begins an all-too comfortable march up to the end of the block. "Don't worry 'bout this preternatural shit tonight. I'll start fillin' you in tomorrow. If we're unlucky -- and knowing Lady Luck, we will be -- then we'll have plenty of time to get you acquainted."