I had a great title for this, but then found that it was already used about a thousand times for other things online.

So, like I mentioned, this story is now, currently untitled. Any suggestions will be taken with the utmost deference and reviewed against some very fierce criteria. In other words, help me. Oh, and I hope you enjoy the story. It's not finished yet. Look for the final first draft sometime in the next week or two.

P.S. If anybody who reads this speaks French, particular Quebec French, feel free to correct the one line of it I attempted with the help of the internet.


Untitled Thingamajig

Katherine lay in her sleeping bag on the ground. She had a tent, but when the weather was good she preferred sleeping under the stars. That’s a lie really. She didn’t give a damn about sleeping under the stars, and anyway the stars were still above her when she was in the tent now weren’t they. She really cared about being awake in the open where she could see the sky and the stars and the universe. Tonight, she stared at the sky trying to pick out the constellations. The constellations, in Katherine’s opinion, were the most ambitious of all human endeavors. The ancients had looked at the sky and on the infinite black and the unknown worlds they had imposed order. In constellations the human race had conquered space centuries before they had even suspected there was such a thing.

Draco was by far her favorite human imposition on the black, but she could never find it without help. She could see the two Dippers, the Northern Cross and Cassiopeia, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t find the Dragon. It was her white stag, and she felt whenever she spied it her own universe was suddenly ordered. Entropy reversed its steady crawl and she was master…mistress…mastress of her destiny. She was alone tonight, and although she tried her best, destiny remained out of reach.

She stared at the sky until it became difficult to keep her eyes open.  She was still awake enough to know she was dreaming when she started talking with the Dragon. It swooped out of the stars, silver and shiny and tremendous. It descended gracefully, gliding on currents of air until it came to rest beside her. How did it do that without wings? They stared at each other for a moment, then the Dragon settled itself down beside her on the ground staring at the sky. In a deep, rumbling voice it began to point out the constellations she had missed. It talked like a mountain would have talked, if mountains had voices, and of course Katherine knew mountains had no voices, but this was a dream and in dreams mountains can have voices and sentences can be as long as conjunctions remain.

In her dream the Dragon pointed to Hercules, the heroic Greek and it told Katherine of his glorious trials, but of course the Dragon knew the real Hercules had been a scrawny little kid, with just a touch of crazy and an overactive imagination. He had written all the stories himself, and after his death historians believed them to be..if not true, at least mythical. It pointed out the Bears. When Katherine informed it she had found the Dippers just fine on her own, it merely shook its great head and told her there was more in those stars than cooking utensils.

Katherine worked up her courage as it pointed to Bootes and Lyra and Cygnus and told her secrets that stories never would, and just as she was about to ask it why it always hid from her the great Dragon leapt into the sky and hung just above her suspended for a moment in terrific anger. Then it opened its mouth.

In an instant it was screaming a terrible, long, soulless wail like a train screeching to a halt. Then the fire burst from its mouth, hot and molten and liquid—No. Not a liquid like lava or magma, which really is the same substance. It enveloped her like the hot stink you feel when you walk by the exhaust of a double-decker bus—No. It wasn’t gaseous either. …plasmic? Is that a word? Technically she knew fire was a plasma, which is not a liquid or a gas but something between. Properties of both. It covered her completely, yet was easily permeable. It overpowered her, yet she moved through it like a hot wind. It was horrific and painful, yet washed over her without leaving a mark. It lasted a lifetime, or at least a dreamtime, and every second the heat and light and noise increased until it filled her so completely she didn’t even hear herself screaming. Nothing. Suddenly, there was nothing.

Everything was black when Katherine opened her eyes. No light. No noise. Her skin still retained the essence of the heat the way a good sunburn will, but she could feel it leaking out of her. Soon she was shivering violently, her teeth playing a lively, skeletal tune. She went into the tent and grabbed her warmest coat and hat and gloves. When she emerged she tried to build a fire. Something about that struck her as odd. Unnecessary. She had gathered a small pile of wood next to the pit so she wouldn’t have to hunt it in the morning, and she had her newspaper and lighter and a box of matches in her ruck, which she kept next to her sleeping bag in case she wanted the jerky or toilet paper in the night. As she stumbled around the campsite though, she couldn’t locate a damn thing.

She found plenty of things with her head, or her big toe, or shins. The first thing she found was her truck. The metal rang out in time with her head. She tried to find the door handle, but after pawing around a bit, she determined to light the fire without assistance from her headlights. The next thing she tripped over was her ruck, which sent her headfirst into the wood pile. When she reached out to stop her fall her left hand found the remains of her fire and kicked up a good deal of ash into her face.

After the appropriate amount of swearing, Katherine sat down to breathe and get her bearings. In. Out. In. Out. Now she could hear wind in the trees, which sounded like the ocean and she breathed in time to it. In . . . Out . . . . In . . . Out . . . . In . . Wait. Where is the moon? She didn’t need to be stumbling around blind, it was a full moon that night. But where was it? When she looked up, she didn’t see a thing. Just black. But what about her fire? She couldn’t have slept more than twenty minutes. There should still be a large quantity of brightly glowing coals, but when she had fallen in the fire pit they felt like they had just come out of the freezer.

Maybe…no. But what if…not that either. There simply wasn’t an explanation. As she sat thinking and breathing, a cold feeling crept up her spine. What if it was something terrible? What if she really had been burned by a dragon? Or a bomb? What if she was dead? She didn’t feel dead. But then, she had never been dead before. Maybe this is what dead felt like. It was dark and cold and slightly frightening, so yeah, actually this is exactly what dead feels like. It was slightly uncomfortable, but she was grateful it wasn’t too hot. She sat for a time thinking about being dead. I suppose that makes me a ghost. What does a ghost do? It haunts, I guess. I mean, I’m not going anywhere else. I wonder if there is a God. She’d never put much stock in the idea of a supremely powerful being who cared at all if she fucked her life up or not, but if there’s an afterlife then maybe there’s a God too. For now, it didn’t seem like He? She? It? like God was coming to get her, so she might as well utilize her time to get a little payback. First off, she could go to Quebec and look up a couple old friends. First Brad and then—

She started to cry. What was she doing? Barely an hour dead and she was already on the warpath. She really was a horrible person. And now she was DEAD! She wouldn’t ever be able to change. She couldn’t be kind or benevolent—speaking of changing, she was going to spend eternity covered in dust and ash and soot and..FLANNEL! If there was a God, she hated him. How could He take her now while she was sleeping!? In the WOODS! It wasn’t fair at all. And now she was crying and her entire afterlife would be spent with crylines in the soot on her face, and now she just wanted to cry more.

The light came from her truck. Not from her truck, but that was the direction. It blinded her at first, but after a moment her eyes…nope..no…it blinded her. After another moment a figure appeared in the light. It looked a small, dark person. Not a pygmy, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was dark because the light shone from behind it. It moved slowly toward Katherine until it stood just a few feet in front of her, but she still couldn’t make out any features.

“Mon Dieu! La rondelle ne roule pas pour vous! Êtes-vous d'accord?”

It was a man’s voice, evidently a Frenchman, and also probably an asshole. Katherine normally liked the Frenchies, but she wasn’t in any kind of a mood for liking anything right now.

“Fuck off Frenchy.”

Not extremely tactful, she knew, but still it got the little man moving. He rushed back into the light which promptly shut off. Just as Katherine was hoping the afterlife wasn’t entirely populated with French midgets the light came back on just as bright and just as blinding, but this time it was a deal more bothersome. Also different this time, the figure in the light was a normal sized man and when he spoke, he spoke English.

“Soarry, eh. Let me help you up there. We didn’t mean to be such hosers. We didn’t see anybody out here. We just parked to look at the GPS readings and figure out how far we were from the capital.”

He spoke with an exaggerated Canadian accent, as if the only thing he knew about Canada he had learned from Strange Brew. Katherine was still annoyed, but at least she could understand this one. After a minute of silence, she realized he had asked her a question.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I said soarry about Rhonda, he didn’t mean to frighten you. Would you care for a donut?”

“Why would I want a donut?”

“Just being polite. Could we at least give you a ride somewhere, seeing as we squashed your…uh…um…thrach, no no no, uh…ttttrrook….”

“My truck?”

“Yes, soarry, aboat that. Some of the diphthongs are difficult for me and then my whole language system just collapses.”

“Nevermind about that. What did you mean about squashing my truck?”

“I’m afraid we landed on it, see. It didn’t stand a chance, I’m afraid, not with our reinforced plating. Like I 

said, we didn’t think anybody was here, and we didn’t see your Tttttrrrrock until we were on top of it.”

“Truck.”

“Eh?”

“Sound it out with me. T”

“T”

“Rrr”

“Rrr”

“Uh”

“Uh“

“Kah”

“Kah”

“Now say it fast. Truck.”

“Thrack.”

“Holy shit, are you stupid or something?”

“No, I’m actually very clever. I have approximately 347 of your IQ points, but I’m afraid this specific diphthong collapses my language system.”

“Fuck your language system. Where are you going to take me? Heaven?”

“Sure. Is that where you need to go?”

“Sure beats the alternative. Alright. Off to heaven!”

Katherine got up out of the dirt. As she stood, she could make out the features of the man a little better. He was big, bigger than she had thought. Probably over 200 centimeters. And bald. In the light his skin looked a bit gray, and his eyes looked a little too big. Probably been dead a little too long, but at least he was giving her a ride. As she got closer to the light source, she realized it was a vehicle of some kind. It reminded her of the flying saucers from classic science fiction stories, except it had wings and something jutted out of the top at an angle, with a rectangular box sitting on top of that. Altogether, it was the strangest thing she’d ever seen. She hoped nobody would be looking out of the pearly gates when she arrived. As long as it was only Peter she’d be fine. He was old, so to him this thing probably didn’t seem any stranger than a Scion box car.

Inside the odd looking vehicle everything glowed with a soft blue light. There were hallways and rooms and what looked like soundboards and buttons and blinking lights. The only sounds were of soft feet scurrying along hallways and something whirring, like a distant turbine.