Down

Edele Winnie

Edwina almost fell as she ran to catch the elevator. Her yellow heels– a brave choice, bright yellow- were far too high and likely she caught them in a fold in the carpet or something like that. The apartment building was old and frankly pretty much everything about it was worn out, smelly and crappy. She managed not to fall though and changed that forward momentum into a comical hop, step, jump and then bang, she smacked into the elevator doors. They hadn’t been cleaned since Moses had used the elevator but there were still patches of shiny and after she’d regained her feet she checked out her reflection to see if anything had come unglued.

She was tall, really tall with the yellow heels, and wore a tight matching yellow dress. She thought of it as her Tweety Bird ensemble and she’d given herself extra long and full eyelashes to complete the effect. Her pale blonde hair was piled up on top of her head to make her look even taller. Her lips were red, her eyes brown, and the black dot beauty mark on her left cheek completely fake. She smiled. She always looked better when she smiled. Not bad. She was going clubbing, hitting the lounges and night hot spots on the strip where the cool people hung. She did not consider herself cool. She was hot stuff.

The elevator dinged like a stupid toaster oven and she prepared herself in case there was someone inside. Head high, shoulders back, padded bra out and one foot in front of the other because she thought it made her look curvy. The elevator doors slowly parted and sadly there was no one inside. Well, there was a smell, but it was a permanent resident in the elevator- Reminiscent of sweaty gym socks and dead squirrels. It was the kind of smell that makes you take the stairs, but that was impossible for Edwina in the Tweety heels. She dropped her facade and clunked clumsily into the elevator and pressed G for ground floor.

Nothing happened. She pressed the button again and more nothing happened. She was not going to walk down nine flights in her bare feet either, holding her shoes, so she punched at the button panel in frustration. She was a lover and not a good puncher and the elevator continued to do even more nothing. At least the smell was more tolerable with the doors open. Continue reading

The Last Witch (Conclusion)

By Christian Laforet

“I see her!” Marcus shouted into his headset. He relayed his coordinates to his mentor before pushing down on the throttle.

The first hour of searching had resulted in nothing. Marcus did not doubt the King’s sources, but he was starting to wonder at the chances of just two men being able to locate a lone person in such a massive area. He could tell that Nasin’s head was in the same place as his own when the older man suggested they start searching in a grid pattern.

Equipped with a thermal detection unit, Marcus had begun scanning every building he passed in the frozen city. Continue reading

The Last Witch – Part 2

By Christian Laforet

“Who are they?” The tortoise asked, the unmistakable quake of fear audible in the creature’s voice.

Camila stroked the soft, smooth head of her companion. “Witch hunters,” she said.

The two of them watched the hunters as they mounted flight-bikes and took off into the city. Camila continued looking into the enchanted mirror long after her pursuers had disappeared from view. She had several “eyes” stationed around the city, they all fed their sight back to the mirror. It would only be a matter of time before the hunters came into view once more.

“Should we run?” Camila turned away from the mirror to look at her friend. Continue reading

The Last Witch

By Christian Laforet

The whine of repulser engines drifted through the frozen city. Buildings which once defied the horizon were now sad, crooked tombstones with ice and snow clinging to every inch of their exteriors. The endless winter blew whistling through gapping windows, snow-drifts as big as small buildings leaned against the bases of sky scrapers.

As the shuttle descended through the tumult of angry clouds, eddies of white powder swirled along the roof tops of the ruined buildings. The transport was only the second sign of life Toronto had seen in nearly three hundred years.

The craft landed with a soft thump at the edge of the city, the struts had been specially designed to touch down in any condition and so the shuttle only sunk into the thick snow covering the ground a dozen centimeters.

Marcus unbuckled the harness which secured him to the pilot’s seat. Even though the trip from the Kingdom’s capitol, New Concord, had only taken an hour, he felt like he had been cramped into the cockpit of the craft for much longer. Stretching his arms as high above his head as the ceiling inside the cockpit would allow, he made his way into the passenger hold. Continue reading