Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY
IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I
generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls
its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write
down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote,
website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will
simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test
or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes
of them.
H Trope: Demonic Possession, Police Work (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DemonicPossession)
Current Event: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/04/bizarre-law-enforcement-encounters-with-demonic-forces/,
https://carbuzz.com/news/there-s-no-escaping-this-dodge-demon-cop-car,
Adding a Dash Of
Humor: A little lightness never hurt anyone…(It worked for Rebecca Roanhorse’s
novel, TRAIL OF LIGHTNING. I loved this book and eagerly await reading the next
one, STORM OF LOCUSTS, due out this summer!)
Beck Wagamese
stared up at the castle on the crag. Lightning flashed through the sky behind
it. She sighed.
Beside her, Xavier
Zhuk whispered, “What?”
“This is too much
of a cliché,” Beck gestured at the set.
“What is?”
“The setting. The
country –”
“What’s wrong with
being in the Ultra Silvam?” Xavier snorted. Beck knew he was rolling his eyes. “What
is wrong with you?”
“You don’t think
it’s weird,” she said, “that a couple of American demon cops are assigned to
investigate the disappearance of a Midwestern scientist in the Transylvanian Alps
where neo-Nazis have set up quantum energy experiments in the basement of an
ancient castle?” She snorted, adding, “It probably belonged to Baron von Frankenstein.”
He almost laughed,
but that was what he was looking for; he wanted to distract her from the
investigation. There were not only international connections, but there was a substantial
interplanetary investment by the Confederation of Asteroid Duchys – the CAD. He
said, keeping his tone conversational, despite the rain dripping from his
poncho visor, “Frankenstein was Austrian and Dracula was a Romanian lord who
lived in a castle in the Transylvanian Mountains.”
“What’s your
point?” Beck said, adding, “Oh, and we’re both Apparated Demons. It’s like this
a 1930s monster movie waiting to happen.”
He knew what she
was hoping he’d do: make a joke or tell her to shut up. Better yet, if he used
his usual epithet to shut him up, “Go to hell,” that would just feed into her
dark humor. Instead, he said “I love the old movies! My favorite was, ‘I Was A
Teenage Werewolf.” He turned to her, fluttering his nearly invisible, blonde
eyelashes. “Do you think so?”
She shook his head,
muttering, “You’re weird.”
A bolt of
lightning clashed the sky, as the rain abruptly turned to snow. “Great. Now we’ll
be trapped in the Alps during a blizzard. And I forgot…” his words died in his
mouth as the castle began to glow. “What’s going on?” He looked at his partner,
“You’re the one who was majoring in quantum physics before you got possessed.
What are they doing?” She used language very appropriate for a cop, but
inappropriate for a woman he’d never heard use those words. He said, “I take it
you know what’s going on?”
“Opening a gateway,”
she said as she stood, making complicated movements with her hands, sometimes
with fingers crooked, others with fingers rigid. She was muttering as well.
He said, “I didn’t
know you could speak Russian. You should have told me! I have some great jokes…”
A ghostly firearm
apparated into the air above her waiting hands. She looked down at him and
said, “I think we just jumped out of frying pan of police work and into the
fire of Doomsday Weapons.” She lifted her chin, “I suggest you conjure a uranium
238 explosive slug thrower. You can distract the kidnappers with that while I punch
a hole into Heaven with the transdimensional field generator.”
He nodded, stood
up and began the incantations they’d need.
Names:
♀ Hebrew, Ojibwe; ♂ Spain, Russia
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