catstark

Detective Cavity

So a story idea came to me. I didn’t realize it would be so sad. Take care of each other, please. Let’s not end up like the people in this story.

The Bridge

Detective Cavity stood on the bridge, staring out at the city. Nearby, the fog horn blew. The lights and fog along the river were obscuring his view, but he loved this time of night. The lights had halos; the colors of the buildings and the noise from the restaurants and bars were muted. He took a breath and allowed the stillness to seep into his bones. This was his favorite place in the city. Unfortunately, this spot was used a lot by suicidal individuals.

His son flitted through his mind. Ten years ago, John Jr jumped from this bridge and ended his life. Detective Cavity didn’t understand then and didn’t understand now why someone would do take their own life. It left behind nothing but pain.

John took another look at the river and reached into his pocket. He took out a toy car. Every year, on the anniversary of John Jr’s death, the Detective came here. Every year, he dropped one of Jr’s small cars into the river. He knew he shouldn’t, as that was polluting the river, but he wanted his son to have his cars. He collected to many. Some were plastic, some were metal. Detective Cavity sometimes thought that the cars might end up in someone else’s hands. Maybe they floated downstream and ended up on the shore. Another child would find it and find joy in it.

He sighed again and caressed the metal car. This one was made of metal. It was an older car, a classic. Detective Cavity didn’t know the make or model, but he liked the fins on this one. John Jr knew all the names of the older cars; knew a lot of the newer cars too.

A tear came to his eye. He never understood why John Jr took his own life. There was no note, and he had been so happy. He was always making sure everyone else was happy, too. Since there was no note, there was an investigation. His death was ruled a suicide. Nothing pointed to foul play.

He wasn’t part of the case. He was too distraught to think. His wife Naomi was the strong one. She took care of everything and made sure their other kids were all right. John wasn’t sure what he would have done without her. He smiled, she was an amazing woman. By the time he returned to work, the case was closed. He read everything over and agreed with the conclusion. The department knew what they were doing.

Something on the car caught the skin on his finger and he looked down at it again.

“Ten years, son. You would have been 26. We all miss you so much. Shane just graduated from college. He wants to be a therapist. Help people so they don’t take their own life. Lisa is in her second year but still doesn’t know what she wants to do. She’ll figure it out. I know she will. Your mom didn’t cry, but I know she was thinking about you. She handed me this car when I told her I was going for a walk. ‘Take this one. It was one of his favorites.’ It’s been hard, Johnny. For all of us. Just wish I knew why you did it.”

He let go of the car and watched as it fell end over end into the water. It made a tiny sound when it hit the water and was gone.

“I guess we’ll never know. I hope you’re resting in peace son. Goodnight.”

Detective Cavity nodded and walked into the night, heading back home to his family.

The end.

____________________________________________

And if you need it:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Call 1-800-273-8255

Available 24 hours everyday

Stifle

via Daily Prompt: Stifle

From The Grey House Book One:

The overpowering stench of werewolf and blood rushed into her nostrils, knocking any calm she encountered. Blindly, she searched for the cool metal doorknob, yanking open the door, hoping the outside world would remove the image from her mind. The blaring sun, now low on the horizon, fought hard to burn the image more fully into her retinas. Stifling a cry, Natalia stumbled across the street to the bus shelter, falling against the glass and sliding into the hard unyielding seat.

Inkling

via Daily Prompt: Inkling

I looked for an instance of the word “inkling” in my trilogy. Couldn’t find one. So I used a thesaurus, found that “hint” is another word for “inkling” and found this paragraph.

She started laughing softly. There was a hint of hysteria to the sound, though. His voice had been so sheepish, so hopeful. Her laughter turned to tears, as the absurdity of it all crashed in upon her. She had just been talking about vampires and Slayers and the craziness of the world to a werewolf, and he was worried about catching an STD. She felt his arms again, reassuring, caring, strong, human. She calmed down and answered.

Daily Prompt: Inscrutable

via Daily Prompt: Inscrutable

An exert from The Grey House Trilogy Book Two: Inside the Grey House:

The large vampire knew he could win this fight if he used his full speed to knock Natalia to the ground. He would have her down and the fight done in seconds, but he wasn’t done yet, and neither was she. The fight was still brewing in her, still simmering in hate. Wanting Natalia to feel as if she had a chance, Vincent thought about his next move, and understood what he could do to make himself look a little less competent. His men would know he was faking, but the human would not. A steady, hard look on his face, Vincent placed his feet under him, leaning forward on his hands like a sprinter at the start of a race. Knowing he could still take many hits, he waited for the fight to continue, watching as Natalia backed up, getting some distance between them. Her inscrutable expression had not change, and she wasn’t standing how he expected her to.

Daily Prompt: Trill

via Daily Prompt: Trill

I don’t think I’m a fan of this word. Nothing is coming to mind, except Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Good show. Let’s try a one sentence short story.

The Trill looked on as people walked by, unaware of the dangers lurking.

Dominant

via Daily Prompt: Dominant

For this prompt, I decided to find the word “dominant” or a variation of the word, in The Grey House, the next book I plan on publishing. I found that I used the word “dominance”. Once. I only checked the first book, but it was quite surprising that I only found one occurrence of the word. I would have thought there were more.

At any rate, here is the paragraph where the word appears. I am not prefacing or explaining any of it. For more, you’ll have to read the book when it comes out, or check out the first chapter here.

Hope you enjoy the paragraph:

It wasn’t hard to find her; she was returning to the house. The scent of blood was all about her. She had probably caught and eaten a rabbit. They were rampant in these mountains, but challenging to catch. He greeted her playfully, allowed her to show her dominance over him then licked her jaw where she had missed a spot of blood. She let him up and instinct almost took over. The buzzing in his head stopped him from running off to find a hare of his own. He stopped and howled at his alpha. She stopped, and cocked her shaggy gray head at her mate, wondering at his game. He concentrated then turned back into a human. Charlie shifted uncomfortably on the rocky ground and waited.

Tardy

via Daily Prompt: Tardy

Today’s word is tardy. Oddly enough, the Daily Prompt was tardy. I have no idea if the person/people in charge were not able to post the word on time, and therefore decided on the word tardy, or if they wanted to use the word tardy and therefore posted it late.

Either way, I’m going to take the opportunity to thank the person/people in charge of choosing & posting the Daily Prompt. They do a good job and help me, and I’m sure a lot of other people, lots.

I don’t have anything more today. Have a great night and remember to always try and create, even if it’s just staring at the screen/easel/musical instrument/camera or whatever your favored medium is.

Candid

via Daily Prompt: Candid

To be candid, this has not prompted anything I want to write about. I thought first to write a review about a book I really hated, but I felt that was a waste of my time. Then I tried a six word story, and though I created one, I totally disagreed with what I wrote. Therefore, check back tomorrow for (hopefully) something more fun.

So why am I even bothering with writing anything? Because that’s what I am striving to do. Have a great night. See you tomorrow.

Daily Prompt: Strategy

via Daily Prompt: Strategy

Sasha looked to the DM with a glint in her eye. She had been waiting for this the entire battle. Her initiative roll had been a 3. It was her worst roll of the night.

The group found themselves in a sticky situation in a castle. The others were doing fairly well and the orcs who had taken the king hostage were practically on the run. Unfortunately, they were taking the king with them.

“All right, Sasha, what does our wizard paladin have in store for us now?” Travis the DM said with a bit of annoyance coming through. Sasha was great at finding loopholes to make her character far more powerful than it should be.

“I told you, I’m not a wizard paladin. I’m an arch druid ninja wizard.”

“Whatever. What are you going to do?”

“So I still have my minion active. It goes on my turn. It’s going to heal Derrick. Using my magic ring, I’m going to bring forth a swarm of giant wasps to help Marlene. Using my action and my bonus action, I’m going to run into the group of orcs, grab the king and use my other magic ring to get him out of their hands.”

Travis stared at her with angry eyes. Her character was way to powerful. “Roll.”

Sasha reached for her dice. “Remember, I have advantage to all rolls because-”

“I remember, Sasha! Just roll!”

Sasha grabbed her two favorite twenty-siders. One was blue with gold numbers, the other green with red numbers. She cupped her hands together and shook for a good long time, staring the DM in the eyes the entire time.

“God damn it, Sasha! Just roll! You’re taking longer to roll than the entire battle took!” Derrick liked Sasha usually, but she was laying it on thick tonight. She acted as if her character was the only one that could win the battle.

Sasha stuck her tongue out at Derrick, gave a couple more shakes of her hand and let the dice fly on the table where everyone could see. With all her advantages, she didn’t need a high roll. When the dice landed, there was brief silence. All the players stood to look at the dice. Sasha’s eyes went wide.

“No. No! NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” She nearly screamed.

Travis erupted into maniacal laughter, as did Derrick and Leroy. Marlene snickered. She would have laughed harder, but didn’t want to upset her big sister.

“Well,” Travis clapped his hands together once, “let’s see. Derrick, the minion accidentally cures your wounds fully, using up all his magic, and disappears. Sasha, you touch your ring to try and summon the wasps, but you twist too hard and break it.”

“What? No, that’s not right! You can’t do that.”

“Sasha, you botched. Not only did you botch, you rolled double ones. There’s nothing you can do at this point but hope the king doesn’t die. Your plan was great, your dice roll wasn’t. Now, even though you don’t summon the wasps, you do run for the orcs and the king. You slip on some blood and run right into an orc and knock yourself out. The orcs grab you as well and head out the door. Top of initiative. Derrick, you’re fully healed, what do you do?”

Sasha stared at her dice, showing a one and a one and tried not to get upset. It was just a game, after all, but it was disappointing. She had a great strategy. If only her dice had cooperated.

Daily Prompt: Horizon

via Daily Prompt: Horizon

The first thing that came to mind when I read this prompt was the song “I Can See Clearly Now” by Johnny Nash. Here is the first stanza:

“I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.”

If you don’t know the song, go listen to it here.

It’s a beautiful song that makes me think of brighter days and brighter horizons. Since I’ve started this Daily Prompt journey, I’ve written more than I have in years. I know most of it is not what I used to write (fiction verses non-fiction) but I’ll take it in the hopes that in between the non-fiction ramblings, stories and poems will emerge more and more.

Here’s to new days, new horizons and new stories. Go listen to the song. It might make your day.