A Partnership Worth Gold

Another one of Chuck Wendig’s flash fiction challenges! For this one, I had to choose a character from the “Fantasy Character Concept” generator. I kind of cheated, since I used four instead, but I saw them together and the idea popped into my head. These are my characters:

A young and impressionable swineherd is doomed to wander the world.

A irresponsible warlord is afraid of being recognized by an old acquaintance.

A desperate barmaid is searching for a legendary weapon.

A blind miner is seeking the City of Gold.

---

“Watch out, Bartho-” Melinda called out, just as the 94-year-old man walked straight into the side of the barn. “-lemew.”

“What is this?” the man asked, feeling the rough texture of the wood.

“I thought you said you would be fine.” the young maiden said to Bartholomew, disregarding his question. “You told me you wouldn’t need help getting around.”

“Well, I don’t! I knew something was there, I just didn’t know what it was!” the man huffed indignantly.

“Sure,” the other man, Micheal, said. “And pigs can fly.”

The trio was headed North-Melinda and Bartholomew had the same destination in mind, and Micheal had accompanied them, after crossing paths with Melinda as she was leaving her small village to embark on this journey. The old man hadn’t been with her, then, but Melinda had come across him, and they had discovered that they were both searching for the same place-the City of Gold.

Melinda, being the kind soul that she was, had convinced the old man to join their company, knowing he wouldn’t be able to make it very far on his own. Meanwhile, Micheal had silently cursed the man for showing up at such an inopportune moment-you see, the man was an old miner, of whom Micheal had crossed paths with many a time in the past. Micheal had been attempting to take control of yet another empire, and none of their encounters had ended well, seeing as Bartholomew happened to be a strong-willed resident of the victim country. And, now that Bartholomew could no longer see, all Micheal had to do was slightly alter his voice so it wouldn’t be recognized.

And so here they stood, in the middle of the Embreaic farmlands, with nowhere to go but north.

Melinda felt a sharp jab, and a gasp of surprise escaped her lips. She whirled around just as Micheal did, to see a small boy in peasant’s clothing. “Who are you?” the boy asked.

Melinda quickly gathered herself. “Oh! I’m Melinda, this is Micheal, and he is Bartholomew.” she sad, pointed to each member of the group, respectively. She gave a small curtsy, and Micheal bowed. Bartholomew stuck a hand out towards the boy.

Both Melinda and Micheal had never seen such an odd sentiment; back in their home countries, there had been signs such as a hand over the heart, or a hand held flat in front of the face, but never something such as what they were seeing.

The peasant boy took the man’s hand in his own, and pumped it up and down vigorously.

“You have quite the handshake, boy,” the older man laughed.

“I’m sorry,” Melinda asked the boy gently. “But we don’t know your name yet.”

“I’m Pholo.” he replied proudly.

“Well then, Pholo. Where are your parents?”

His gaze drifted to the ground. “I don’t have any.” he mumbled sheepishly.

“Oh, dear, I’m sorry.”

“‘S’not your fault.”

A new worry made itself present in Melinda’s mind. “If you don’t have any parents, where have you been staying?” she asked, frowning.

“I usually just sleep with the pigs. But I lost the pigs.”

Melinda’s maternal side immediately won out over her instinct for survival. They would have to find more food than usual to feed their ever-growing group, and it would be harder for their trio-now a quartet-to go unnoticed when they had to stay out of sight, but she couldn’t just shove the boy away. Where else could he go?

“Pholo, would you like to come with us? We’re going someplace special.” she asked him, crouching down to be closer to his height.

“Really?” the boy said, looking up from examining a nonexistent string on his shirt.

“Really and truly.”

“Well, I don’t think the pigs are coming back. And I don’t have any friends here. So sure.”

“Okay,” she said, taking his hand and rising from her crouch. “Which way, Bartholomew?”

The San Antonio Murders

Written for Chuck Wendig’s “Flash Fiction Challenge” on 5-13-13.

I somehow managed to generate numbers 17 and 6, meaning I had to combine the subgenres of “Detective” and “Southern Gothic”. Not quite procuring my imminent doom, but making me wonder how I managed to write this without any help from a sugar-high. Oh, wait, is that a brownie I’m eating?

---

Darric Bircham glared angrily at his shoes, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat to protect his fingers from the icy morning chill. A brother, a sister. Another family, torn apart. And at the hands of a murderer, no less.

No, he thought, not a murderer. The murderer.

The same murderer who had been lurking throughout the state the past few weeks, killing innocent people.

The perpetrator called it a public service, the murders. Killing only people who had only a certain amount of time left to live-and getting quite carried away in the process. “The sickness,” they called him. The name was accurate, if you could consider the homicidal maniac to be some sick, twisted form of whatever ailment was already killing his victims. Lung cancer, leukemia, brain tumors. He wasn’t picky.

And, being assigned to the job as chief investigator, the homicides now felt personal to Darric. It could have been that he had spoken to a few of the victims-this was before they had actually become victims, of course-in an attempt to pin down a pattern to the murders-to chisel away that last layer of doubt. It wasn’t an outstanding fact that he had only spoken with each of the possible targets briefly-he had still spoken to them, and he had still known something of their personalites.

Although, it could also be the fact that he was frustrated to no end with the case, finding no pattern in the murders aside from a gap of at least twenty-four hours between each one.

So now Darric stood at the edge of Medina Lake, in the cool, crisp air of dawn, at an impasse both in his mind and with the case. There seemed to be a barrier within his thoughts, holding some small amount of knowledge from conscious perception. There was no telling how strong that barrier was, or how long it would last. Only time would tell.

“Truth or dare?” a smooth voice asked from beside him, a thick Texan accent hanging heavily in the air. He sighed wearily, and a consoling arm slipped itself silently around his waist.

“If you want me to say dare, I hope you weren’t planning on asking me to solve this case any time soon.” Darric replied, his own accent complementing Lara’s.

“You’ll get it soon, love. You just need to keep thinking.”

He wound one arm around Lara’s waist, a soft smile finding its way onto his lips. “I’m hope you’re right, Mrs. Bircham.”

“Oh, I’m afraid you’ve got my name wrong, kind sir. I happen to be Miss Cantrell-unless that’s an offer?” she said, smirking up at him.

“Maybe it is.”

His cell phone began ringing at that very moment, effectively ruining the affectionate, teasing mood that had been created by the arrival of Lara Cantrell. Reluctantly, he reached into the pocket of his khakis to answer the inconveniently-timed call.

“Bircham.”

“There’s been another one.” the voice on the other end replied. He identified it as Keith Abelardo, police chief of San Antonio.

“So soon? The last homicide was just last night.”

“Apparently he couldn’t wait that long. It’s on Talley Road, southern portion.”

“I’ll be there.”

He quickly stuffed the device back into his pocket.

“I’m sorry, love. Duty calls.” he told Lara, kissing her forehead.

“Will I see you tonight?” she asked quietly, already knowing the answer.

“I don’t know.”

---

“Time?”

“She was found about half an hour ago. I called you as soon as the call came in.”

Rose Herraez;43-year-old leukemia patient. Went in for chemotherapy once every two weeks. No known family in the area-or anywhere, for that matter. From the bruises on her neck, cause of death seemed to be strangulation.

“Strangulation?” Darric asked Keith. “He usually takes a much messier approach.”

“My guess is that he’s an amateur-he’s probably still trying to find his modus operandi.”

This was not a pleasant reflection for Darric, who immediately fought to push the thought from his mind, and instead began to analyze the situation at hand.

“Since the gap between this murder and the one last night is shorter than normal, this could be the start of a new pattern. The time between this homicide and the last was approximately twelve hours. Does that mean we should expect another, twelve hours from now? Or is this just a temporary flux in his schedule?”

The police deputy entered the room, spotted Darric and Keith, and walked to them. He handed Darric a small piece of paper, explaining, “This was found on the victim’s bed-another note from the killer.”

Darric skimmed the note, vowing to examine it more closely at a later time. The words were pasted on, a messy collage of words and letters clipped from magazines-quite stereotypical, Darric thought-as they had all been. As his eyes flicked across the paper, something caught his eye-the words seemed to be carefully chosen and placed, the sentences sounding quite convoluted at times. Some words, that could very well have fit on the above line, were placed at the beginning of a new one, and the format was almost poetic, seemingly random spaces placed between words or lines.

Darric read the first letter of the top line, quietly murmuring to himself.

“Darric? Did you find something?” Keith asked, attempting to read the note over Darric’s shoulder, and acquiring every pair of eyes in the room. Darric continued to read down, glancing at the first letter of each line before moving on to the next.

“Adobe Creek.” he whispered. He straightened up, turning to look at Keith, then meeting the hopeful gazes of everyone else in the room.

“Gentlemen,” Darric said, grinning. A glimmer of hope-the last element to be released from Pandora’s box-flickered in his eyes. “I believe we have a clue.”