I'm beginning to remember why I never write OF short stories anymore: they're hard. Seriously. In fanfic, you assume your readers already know all the background info they need, so you just plow ahead with...whatever it is you're doing. In a novel, you obviously can't do that, but if you're attempting some worldbuilding and complicated backstory and such, at least you've got lots of space in which to work it in.

Short stories...not so much. I think fully a third or more of "Bloodbound" ended up being infodump and expository dialog and stuff. Ugh. I have no idea how to get across complicated background info without it being boring--especially since I like fantasy and sci-fi, and...well, those generally require some level of worldbuilding or another, which means explanation and exposition, which is boring for everybody.

Oh, yeah. About that.

I did get the lit paper done Monday night and poked around online to find writing prompts so I could figure out something for the short weekly assignment for the creative writing class. I wrote that between (and okay, a bit during) my first couple classes yesterday. And then I attempted to finish "Bloodbound" when I would normally have had kickboxing (well, and I skipped because my foot's randomly been hurting the past few days), which...well. The fiction workshop runs 5:30-8:15. Annnd...I didn't get over to that building until 7 p.m. And then I still had to make a copy for everyone in the class of my 22-page story which took forever, and then I had to sort it all out so I could staple it which took even longer because it's not a smart copier that collates things, and I thought I could do the sorting and stuff in class except I had to make like 14 of these copies and was trying to do it on the floor in the corner so I had room, and got scolded and told to do it in the hall, and when I was doing that one of the instructors then came out on a break and scolded me more, and I apologized repeatedly and promised it wouldn't happen again and stuff and could barely get him to shut up because come on, I was being hard enough on myself and kept having to tell myself, okay, chill--just because you made a mistake and put this off too long and are hours late and that doesn't make you a bad person, and it's not going to affect your entire semester, and...stuff. Although it probably also doesn't help that all three workshop leaders are CWLA grad students, which means they're maybe two or three years ahead of me in school--four tops--so, you know, they're not real professors, and...well, yeah.

It didn't help that the dude scolding me kept pronouncing my name wrong. Come on, we've been in class a month and a half, I've corrected you before, what does it take for you to just say my name right?

Um. Anyway. The point is, I'm not going to post the rest of "Bloodbound" yet because I'm afraid it kind of sucks and I don't want to re-read it for at least a few more days, but also because it's loooong and I don't want to put it online, and I also don't really want to make people download something again. However I've already done two very short stories as weekly assignments, so instead I will post those.

Assignment: Write a short story in exactly 26 sentences, each sentence beginning with a different letter of the alphabet--in order. Also, you must have one sentence fragment and one (grammatically correct) sentence containing exactly 100 words. (That's my "e" sentence, if anyone cares, even though yes my "w" sentence is actually longer.) Because the "x" sentence is generally the hardest, it's best to start by figuring out what your "x" sentence will be, which of course ends up driving your entire story.
Difficulties: It took me forever to figure something out. Also I actually rather like this story, but seeing as it's so oddly written with those requirements and all, I'm not sure I could publish it anywhere. And I totally skipped over the "k" sentence the first time around and didn't realize until after I'd already turned it in. There's one there now, of course.
Title: X-Day
Story:
A young soldier scrambled for cover against a hail of gunfire. Bullets whined overhead, most of them exploding on contact and flinging rocks, mud, metal high into the air; and Jake pressed against the side of a boulder, his heart thundering.

Could he really do this?

Death prowled the battlefield all around him, death in the clouds of choking smoke, the fire raining down, the tripwires strung between trees and stones all across the valley, the blood soaking into the ground at the top of the rise where his regiment had clustered, the bright white bone that gleamed through blood and torn muscle where half a private’s leg had been blasted away. Everyone had heard the stories—for all that they sounded like urban legends or ancient myths—that their enemies really had come from below the earth, that magic fueled their guns and ships and aeroplanes, magic drawn somehow from the earth itself and the life of everything on and in it; but nobody really believed, even though their enemies never seemed to sustain any lasting injuries, even though the experts couldn’t say how their weapons actually worked—until those clouds of smoke began mushrooming over all the cities and battlefields and leaving behind thousands dead for no physical reason.

Funny thing. Giving away his one big secret had probably both saved and condemned him. He’d never known much about his family background, or at least nothing strange about it, but it was hard to ignore the fact that he alone, in the reconnaissance team of fifteen that had tried to scout out the enemy encampment, had breathed the smoke and survived (even if he’d spent the next two days sick in the medic’s tent, unable to keep down anything stronger than a few swallows of water). It only took an hour after that digging of into official records to uncover the truth, or at least a very good guess: generations back, long before these magic-users had come out in force, a man in Jake’s bloodline had married a girl who had come out of nowhere, with no apparent history, who never got sick from ordinary illnesses. Jake took the information to his commander, as soon as he stopped reeling from his discovery and realized he might be suspected of treason if he tried to keep it hidden. Killing a single soldier who might who might represent a threat to the entire human race wouldn’t give many people pause, not after…everything.

Lucky for him they’d decided to make use of him instead of shutting him away somewhere to be studied or imprisoned or executed. Magic didn’t run in his blood strongly enough to let him actually control it or work it into weapons, the way their enemies did; but as far as anyone knew, he was the only soldier in the entire human military force who could get close enough to accomplish anything. Killing a single soldier who might who might represent a threat to the entire human race wouldn’t give many people pause, not after…everything.

Nobody had to tell him that his freedom rested on following every order, no matter how dangerous. Of course, considering how many had died already, how many continued to die from the smoke and the bombs that penetrated every barrier, how many cities had been turned to burning husks—well. People he knew and loved, friends and comrades, had died too; it was only a matter of time before his family and his home went the same way, so he had little trouble obeying, in theory.

Quietly, praying he wouldn’t be seen (trace magic in his blood didn’t prevent him from being captured, after all), he crawled closer to the ring of stones in the center of the valley. Recon hadn’t been so bad, even alone, but it hadn’t been enough and he’d guessed that from the beginning—and then came the new weapons, new human weapons, that left the earth scorched and black, virtually uninhabitable, but the magic died with those patches of scorched earth, died in gouts of flame when Jake managed to lob a grenade into the perfect center of an enemy camp. Someone made the connection: magic really did come from the earth, and each camp made a perfect ring around a conduit from below that gave access to their homes and their magic—and then, at least, it was possible to drive them back, even if the humans still died in the thousands without inflicting much damage.

Then Jake discovered that all the magic stemmed from a single portal in Yellowwood Valley, barely inside enemy-conquered territory, and none of the human weapons could take it out though the valley itself smoked and burned, even the rocks charred black: the red glow in the valley’s heart kept healing and shielding and powering, and everything else came down to this, came down to Jake choking on the smoke and making his slow way alone to destroy that heart if he could.

Unbelievable, really…still a teenager, just a private, and this sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen outside of books where everything had to depend on the protagonist or it wasn’t interesting enough—and here he was, barely able to keep his balance on the trembling ground, covered in dirt and blood (he wasn’t sure whose), the heat of flame and smoke blistering his skin, slowly making his way closer. Veering around a scattering of dagger-sharp shrapnel, he saw it, finally: that ring of stones, bullet-scarred but still standing, the red glow in the middle, unguarded by these human-like enemies who depended on it far too much…who had struck first, but weren’t they his kin too, ages and ages ago?

Wasn’t time to think like that, only time to run, and he did, ran without any more thought as if the blackened valley didn’t exist, ran through the ring of stones and past the people-not-people firing massive guns at the valley’s lip where his comrades battled, ran to the edge of the conduit and fell to his knees, staggered by the heat emanating from this perfect hole in the earth—no time for that either; he whipped out the knife made from melted pieces of those magic-infused bullets, plunged it into the membranous covering that stretched over the conduit, felt the whine and blaze of energy, felt the sudden alarm and fury around him—and dropped in his single fusion grenade, saw it falling, scrambled up and sprinted for the nearest sheltering boulder.

“X-Day,” he whispered.

Yellowwood Valley exploded in scarlet flame behind him, the ground bucking under his feet, and Jake ducked falling debris, running running running, images of fire burned into his retinas and his mind. Zero hour: he’d done it, the war was over, and he had no idea what to think or do or say.

Assignment: Write a short (three-page) story in which the protagonist doesn't get what he or she wants. It still has to end satisfactorily, though, at least for the reader.
Difficulties: I had an even harder time coming up with something here. Figured it could go one of only a few ways: the protag is a bad guy who shouldn't get what he wants, the protag isn't that bad but doesn't want what's best for self/others, the protag makes a free choice to give up what she wants for the greater good or something, or what the protag wants isn't that important in the first place and is irrelevant to the actual plot. I didn't want to write a villain and just couldn't come up with something else. So I poked around online for writing prompts and finally found one--"Write a story in which a ghost serves as your main character"--that gave me a workable idea.
Title: Death's Dream Kingdom (yes, I ripped it from "The Hollow Men," and yes, out of context it sounds really really emo even though it's more or less appropriate for the story. I couldn't think of anything better, okay?)
Story:
Amber’s crying in her room again. She does that a lot, from what I can tell; actually this time wasn’t even that bad, since she only used up a handful of Kleenexes.

She shoves the crumpled Kleenexes in the general direction of her trash can and opens her backpack, dumping her algebra textbook and some papers onto her desk. She’s still sniffling as she clears away a space and starts her homework. I’ve watched her do this before, too. She’ll sweat over it at least a couple hours—she’s determined, anyway, even if she’s struggling, or maybe she’s just stubborn.

She scribbles something on her graph paper, scratches it out, writes again, frowns and rubs her forehead. I move a little closer to look, and the bulb in her desk lamp flickers. She doesn’t notice. She never does—too focused on trying to understand how all these numbers and angles and equations work. People do notice sometimes, I guess, but it doesn’t worry me much; she couldn’t see me even if she did turn to look.

I’m dead, see. Did I mention that?

Probably getting ahead of myself as usual, then.

Well, I’m a ghost. It happens. It’s sort of like being mostly dead—your body’s no good to you anymore, but you hang around on Earth for a while before going to one place or the other. It’s not really a choice at first, staying back—I mean, I knew where I was going, it’s just…I have something to do. Some of us just hang on a little harder than others after we die, I guess.

It was my brother’s fault, is the thing—well, except it really wasn’t, and he’s been blaming himself ever since the accident. Should’ve been paying more attention, should’ve kept his eyes on the road, should’ve looked in his mirrors more often, should’ve seen the truck coming, should’ve gotten us out of the way—shouldn’t have been arguing with me when it happened, which he doesn’t tell anyone, but I know he thinks it because he says it over and over again when he can’t sleep. Which is almost every night. I would say it kills me to see Brad like this, but…well, you know.

Honestly, all I want is to tell him to stop blaming himself. I don’t blame him—I really don’t—and I’m the one that ended up dead, right? And yeah, so we were fighting at the time. Siblings do that. I still love him, and I want him to know that, and…I just want to see him really living again. But he can’t see me or hear me, and I can’t affect physical objects, so I can’t leave any kind of message. About all I can do is wreak a little havoc on the closest piece of modern technology. Funny how that works.

Well, no. I can do one thing. If I find someone soon enough, I can use the body of a living person with my birth date, first name, and blood type (no, I have no idea why it’s that specific, and I don’t know how I found out; it’s just one of those things you know when you become a ghost). That’s why I’m in Amber’s room, watching her, which I’ve been doing the last few days when I’m not hanging around my house worrying about Brad.

Problem is, it’s…pretty permanent. I’d probably get a good long while before her body would start to fail and I’d have to leave for good, but Amber herself—well, the body can’t handle two souls in it at once for more than about a minute. One has to force the other out.

At the moment I’m trying to convince myself that it’s okay to do this. Look, I’ve got a life to get back to. I’m an honors student, I miss my family and friends, and my brother is killing himself. This Amber doesn’t seem to do anything except fight with her homework (it’s winning) and cry alone in her room.

A knock on the door makes me flinch, and the lightbulb flickers again. “Yeah?” Amber says, voice still a little thick.

“It’s David. Can I come in?”

She leans back in her chair and unlocks the door. “If you really want to be around me.”

“Hey.” He shuts the door behind him and leans against it. Brad used to do that when he’d talk to me in my room. “Dad didn’t really mean what he said, you know. He’s just—he’s…been under a lot of stress.”

“Seems like he’s been stressed for a real long time, then,” Amber says. She sighs. “Thanks for trying to distract him, though. You shouldn’t, and he’s right, but…thanks.”

“You’re not stupid, Amber.”

She flings her pencil down on the paper. “I’m failing math and I’m going to lose my scholarship if I don’t pull my grade up. What else would you call me?”

“So you’re not a numbers person. You’re a words person.” David picks up her pencil and leans over the desk, flipping through a few pages in her textbook. “You win contests and fix all my papers and yeah, Dad doesn’t care, but so what?” He pulls out a blank paper and sketches a graph on it. “Here, these problems will go a lot easier if you do it this way…”

He keeps talking, leading Amber through it, but I’m not listening anymore. I’m thinking of all the times Brad did this for me, teaching me things and being there when I really needed him, and I can’t do this. Yeah, I want like nothing else to see my family again, but I can’t take David’s sister from him to do it, not this Amber or anyone else.

Brad will figure it out someday. I can trust him that much.

So I let go, finally, and begin to drift upward, David’s and Amber’s voices following me.

We always have a choice, after all.