[April] Prompt 1: The Ruse - By, Black-Haired Girl

Writing Prompt 1: The Ruse
Author: Black-Haired Girl
April 20, 2011 8:55 AM

PROMPT

Geneva didn’t like the look of any of the men in the room. It was as if they could all see right through her. Every eye tracked her as she walked through the crowded smoking parlor and up to the bar where, with trembling fingers, she poured herself a drink of brandy.

How did she ever get caught up in a ruse such as this?

Carefully she took a swig. Instantly she regretted it. She tried her best to fight the urge to spit out the foul, burning liquid. Why on earth would men force such a torture upon themselves? If it took swallowing this poison to be a man then she had no desire to keep this up!

Sure, there were benefits to dressing this way. For one thing, she received no catcalls as she walked down the dark alleys to this establishment. If she had been dressed in her usual bonnet and bustle she would have been teased and taunted by the dredges coming home from the docks. This time nobody seemed to notice her. She had slid through the market easily with only minimal pestering by the merchants who normally would have been fervently trying to sell her ribbons and lace. Hardly anyone had tried to bother her at all, except for the occasional young girl who may have bought into her disguise a little too easily.

She had made it here undiscovered. It had been a piece of cake getting into the smoking parlor, an establishment explicitly reserved for only gentlemen. She had never before had seen the inside of such a place. It was completely different from the sunrooms and gardens kept for women to visit company. It was dark and oppressive. Everything was grand and expensive, plush and gilded. The air was musty and heavy with smoke. There were no windows, only large ornate oil lamps and fireplaces scattered throughout the enormous space, giving the dark room a sickly orange glow. Everyone had a drink or a cigar in hand, and all were partaking in gambling or billiards.

Geneva wasn’t impressed and she decided she would rather take the sunny arboretums and clean, fresh linen of a woman’s sitting room any day.

With a tight purse of her lips she forced the liquor and her tension down into the pit of her stomach. She had to focus. She had to remember everything that Thomas had taught her. She slouched her posture, stuck out her flat stomach, widened her stance and pretended to take another swig from her glass. The smell of the brandy made her cringe. As she lifted her glass to her lips she peered over its rim and searched the darkened room, scanning the faces for any sign of Aldon. She knew he had to be here; it was only a matter of time before he showed up.

Aldon MacMeyer. What a nasty pig. Geneva had never approved of him, but when her younger sister Melissa had come home so happy that he had finally proposed she couldn’t bring herself to adamantly protest. Melissa had looked so happy on her wedding day. Little did she knew that Aldon was a cad, and it was no surprise to Geneva that three weeks after their honeymoon he had been seen out on the town with another woman. Her sister had denied it, despite the many accounts given to her of his guilt. She loved him and couldn’t see a single fault in the slob.

It was up to Geneva to prove it to her. She and her friend Sir Walter Thomas had come up with the brilliant idea of this disguise. It would be easy, Thomas had told her. She would just have to go to the parlor, sit in the corner and listen. Aldon was notorious for being loud and outright about his affairs. He wore them like badges of honor. She would get proof from him somehow, whether it be a name of the mistress or the location of their secret meeting spot… whatever it was, she would get it and prove it to Melissa once and for all.

Geneva shuffled away from the bar just as two men approached it to retrieve drinks of their own. She slid quietly to the darkest corner of the room just behind a blackjack table and leaned her back against the wall. She wasn’t sure how long she would have to wait for Aldon to show up, but it wasn’t a problem. She had told her father she would be at the London Philharmonic with Thomas for their performance of the Greatest Works of Mendelssohn, which would certainly last all night.

She had nothing but time. With a satisfied smirk she reached into her pocket and pulled out a cigarette. She fished around in her coat pocket and found a match, striking it carelessly on the doorframe behind her. She lit the tip and gently drew a breath through the cigarette, watching an ember come to life on the tip. With a wave of her hand the match was out and discarded in a nearby ashtray. She took a leisurely puff and smiled brightly. It was the first time she had a smoke inside, let alone in front of anyone. How thrilling it was to practice her most guarded vice out in the open.

Ah, to be a man.

[April] Prompt 1: Necromancer Prologue - By, Sophie

Writing Prompt 1 - Necromancer Prologue

Author: Sophie
April 19, 2011 10:59 AM

PROMPT

There was the cloying sent of mid-summer flowers, melting bee’s wax and sweat throughout the ballroom. It laid like something sweet and thick along the back of his mouth. Anthony Callan breathed in deeply and held the stink of life in his lungs before pushing it out forcefully. Leaning back against the wall behind him, one hand disappeared into his breast pocket. Out came the slim, delicately engraved silver case that had arrived on the most recent ship from France. From it came a finely rolled cigarette. Personally, Anthony would have preferred to have that imported as well, but it simply was not done. No respectable man smoked anything other than Virginia tobacco, and one certain did not living in the heart of tobacco country. Slipping his case back into his pocket with one hand, Anthony fished out a the small box of white phosphorus matches he had procured the night before while enjoying distinctly more base entertainments than those to be found in Harris Hall. The blasted things were notoriously difficult to light. With a careful flick of his wrist, Anthony managed not only to get it to catch but carefully made sure the resulting sparks flew away from his person. He knew better than to risk a phosphorus burn. Holding each half deftly, he brought them together just long enough to catch before swiftly flicking the flame out.

Breathing in deeply, he had to admit that the light, acidic tang of the local crop was easier on the lungs. He ignored the pointed look the Mrs. Landers sent his way. Her husband’s lands were barely a fourth of the size of his father’s and had failed to put out a decent crop in decades. If she thought for a moment that her disapproval meant anything more to him than the buzzing a fly she was clearly suffering from self delusions of grandeur. The only person who could take him to task for smoking in front of a lady was the Master of Harris Hall, and Anthony had had that small minded brute of a man jumping at his every beck and call for months now. Mr. Harris might be over a decade Anthony’s senior, but the fool was also far too eager to believe every superstition and wives’ tale. It had not taken much to convince the other man that Anthony held sway over the very spirits that still haunted the dark forests just beyond civilization’s fields. The other man had been so ready to believe that Anthony had not even had to actually deliver any proof, merely the promise of it. That alone had been enough to cowl a man like Mr. Harris. He would not dare say a word of censure to Anthony’s face, not even if Anthony had set fire to all of the man’s fields and certainly not over something as paltry as a cigarette. The poor Mrs. Landers would just have to swallow it.

With a scowl, Anthony let his eyes sweep once more over the crowd of people gathered there that night. Harris Hall, while well fitted by the current Mr. Harris’s ancestors, was still a relatively small estate, and it only held the likewise relatively small genteel of the surrounding lands. Most were little more than farmers themselves, and even more were still struggling to recover from the War Between the States. Unfortunately, the Callan estate was situated in the middle of all this littleness. That meant that for most of Anthony’s life he had seen these same limited people over and over again on night such as this one. He had already pulled just about as much as he could out of each and every one of them. None of them were of particular use to him at the moment. Most of them probably would faint dead away at the very notion of the kinds of things Anthony thought useful.

Anthony needed new blood.

And not just to relieve his boredom, which was almost as oppressive as the heat. More than that, he needed new blood if he was ever going to take his projects any further than simple curses conjurer’s tricks. He was tired of petty things like befuddling the stableman and causing all of the neighbor’s milk to spoil. Certainly, he had made great success in all these things, working the way he was from only a few vague books that talked more about the wickedness of such things than how to actually perform them. Even tormenting the local priest was no longer the entertainment it once had been. The old man barely spoke a word these days that was not a fervent pray, convinced as he was that the very demons of the earth rose up to torment him every night. The illusion of which would continue to haunt the rotting old man until someone found the dead and mutilated corpse of a fawn nailed down inside the crawl space beneath the chapel. One of his better pieces of work, especially since he had to device a way to obscure the stench of decaying flesh to be able to leave it for so long. Petty things, all of it. He had gone as far as he could with dried herbs and animal flesh.

He needed something more.

But where to get such a thing? Certainly he had access to many more or less willing bodies. His own father kept several employed and there were always more to be had. But a work of art was only as good as one’s materials. At this level in his craft it simply would not do to work with something so crass. He needed something better. Something unique.

Watching the mass of people who slowly shuffling about the floor as witless as any other beasts, Anthony Callan’s eyes narrowed.