War Dance of the Weasel

The cadence of the chopper blades broke the silence.  

There should have been sirens, there had been sirens but the mechanical wails that were drowning out the wails of panicked people had long since run down.  Batteries only last so long.  Horror only lasts so long.

And then came the silence, gravid with the weight of the waiting.

The San Fran Shake had shamed the planet's 1906 attempt, opening the ground in great bites, swallowing heritage homes, main roads, valuable art and priceless lives. The bridge supports slept beneath the water now, the metal cables reaching skyward like revealed ribs of a massive carcass.  Only recently had the dust and smoke cleared enough to allow for the air support people could distantly hear.

Taylor had been waiting, directing on the authority of something that was not even human.  In the middle of the madness, the Precinct-patrols were unable to contain the mass panic.  The best she and what able-bodied Donned could do was to assess and organize the willing.  After all, if people were bent on losing their minds, there wasn't much to be done about it except stay out of their way.  

The individuals with the devices on their hands had done their best to conserve power, but three days of heavy usage was too much.  Two days ago, Seattle had told all precinct-patrollers that Taylor was the Region Commander and had essentially left her to it.

Taylor had no idea why.

Unlike the Precinct-patrol personnel, the Donned, Taylor was untrained in any of these things.  Why Seattle had put her under Disaster Response when Taylor wasn't even rostered with the elite group was no small mystery.  But the command structure and the voice that had cut through crackling city speakers had been quite clear: Donned were to clear their actions and receive orders from Taylor Forge.  So either Taylor said something or did something or none of them would be permitted to act.

What had happened here was far, far beyond a single person or even an elite group of people.   So Taylor had spoken with what available personnel there were in a brief meeting through the comms HUD on the hand devices.  These people were trained.  But it was like anyone taking a first aid course; just because you were trained and knew how didn't mean you were prepared to implement that training.

It had been easy for Taylor to give much of the power associated with leadership away.  The woman hadn't wanted it in the first place, certainly hadn't needed it either.  She, like everyone else, was in just as much shock by what had happened.  The ground was supposed to be solid, steady, the thing that never failed you even when childhood dreams and life partners did.

She was just as prone to the nightmares, when she slept at all.

Don't die.

It would not be long now.  The waiting was nearly over.

And then there would be war.  Taylor had no idea what it was, but something had changed.  The moment she had emerged from the remains of her small apartment building, she could almost smell it.  It was more than the smell of smoke that signaled fire eating up worldly possessions, more than the gritty dust clogging her eyes and nose.

The breaking of the silence was just one more thing that whispered to Taylor.  Things had changed.  And so had she.

Color Recognition

I love listening to people talk.  

I've come to find that not everyone thinks the same way.  When I was seven, I explained that I loved my Uncle Justin's voice; it was a smoky blue.  

My mother peered at me with a confused expression and asked in her orange, roughed-up tone, "What on earth does that mean?"  

I didn't know what she didn't understand, so I just blinked back with my own puzzled expression.  I had tried very hard to find the right word to describe the kind of blue.  I had even gone to a big book for it.  It had sounded right.

I'm older now and realise that not everyone can get a sense of colors from hearing people talk.  I don't mention it to people because it'll generally just confuse them, the way it did my poor mother.  Granted, my high school English teachers thought I was extremely clever with poetry.  

This was a stroke of luck because I needed a good grade to escape that prison of an institution.  

I can suppress it to some extent when I have to.  The city can be a riot of tones, colors, shapes.  It's brilliant for inspirational purposes but unfortunately I've never been able to use the knack to actually make music.  I'm not bitter about it; just a bit put out.  Musicians who make it big get fame and fortune.  And probably all of the really good food.

Where was I?  Oh yes.  Listening to people talk and colors.

There's one minor advantage that I have, sensing colors where sound is involved.  The same sounds tend to evoke the same array of colors and . . . well, they aren't images.  I can't call them images.  Dashes, bursts, jagged and gyrating lines. . ?  It all depends on the situation for me.  Find someone else who has the same 'condition' (like what we have is an illness; it's not), you'll be told different colors.  At least, this is from what I've read.  I've never met another person like me, though we're something like four to ten percent of the population, depending on what you read and who you ask.  Somehow, you're far more likely to come across a left-handed person.

Or maybe, like me, people just don't think saying, "That woman's tone is super pink and fritzy" is a very good conversation starter.  I certainly never told the medical officer about it at any point; we get enough pych screening as is, thank you.

But it's those very same qualities - the colors, the movement - that allows me to identify people's voices more accurately.  I don't have to see your mouth moving to know it's you.  I hear you and, after a fashion, I'll still see you.  Just not a you that you know about.

Keep that in mind, kids.  It might be important, later on in my story.

Raspberry Bliss

It was happening again.  That thing.

Taylor heaved a shuddering breath, staring up at the once-plain wall of her apartment.  It had been a splash of deep red, an accent wall to stand against the nearly-white of the rest.  

The rich red is submerged now, slashed viciously with repeated impressions of color that have melted like ice cream on the fourth of July but with a more coherent result.  Well, if the images of smudged skies, broken buildings and zig-zagged bright lines melding into each other could be considered 'coherent.'  Standing as close as she is, the woman can see that it had to have been one of her large, flat brushes she'd been using.  Normally, they were used exclusively for priming canvas; she'd be cleaning those brushes for a week judging by the mess here.

Too bad Taylor didn't remember doing any of this; she lived alone.  It had to be her painting these impromptu murals.  The episodes had been easing off.  There hadn't been any sort of stretch of time she couldn't account for in. . . ages.  Or so she had thought.  Sadly, right here there was some rather colorful evidence that maybe she had been wrong to have some hope.

She likened it to a desk.  It was like having a series of drawers. . . you normally knew what was in the top drawer (because you used it all the time) and the bottom drawer (where you can put the Big Stuff).  People normally can't recall what's in the middle drawer, a kind of unloved-middle-child of a drawer.

And then some bastard comes along and upends all of the drawers and doesn't bother to tell you.  That's what's happened here, except it was no drawer.  It was Taylor's ability to recall.  There wasn't even the luxury of denial here; the paint was thick and congealed beneath the woman's short fingernails, spattered over her shirt, smeared in her short and dark hair.  

It was Taylor who did the deed, no doubt of it.

It was also Taylor who shakes her head in disgust and turns on the ball of a bare foot to go looking for her wall roller and a pail of paint in the color the accent wall was supposed to be.  Raspberry Bliss.

If she ever wanted to give up her current occupation, Taylor had no doubt that she would have a bright future as an interior painter.  The last half year had given her enough practice to learn the ins and outs, such as to forget priming it.  There was no need these days, layers of disturbing paintings buried between shallow graves of her chosen accent color.  Corpses of color, stacked on on top of the other as Taylor had neither the time nor the urge to strip the wall back to its base.

Jeoff had called her fucked up.  Taylor hadn't been able to refute that, generally because of things like this.  Still, people in her section of the Academy were closely monitored mentally and physically and the check-ups hadn't found anything.  Then again, the questionnaires never specifically queried this.

'How often do you wake up and find you've had some sort of impromptu art fest in your living room?  Please circle: Never      Occasionally       Sometimes      Often       Always'

"Is there anything you'd like to tell me about before we finish, Ms. Forge?"

There never is.