Another month, another piece of Furious Fiction. July’s challenge was 500 words which 1. start with a question, 2. end with a BANG (literally) and 3. contain the words jackpot, jam and jungle.
You can read the winner and shortlisted entries on the AWC Furious Fiction site.
Here’s what I wrote:
“What’s the difference,” I said, “between an eccentric relative and one who’s just garden-variety crazy?”
“Asking for a friend?” Great-aunt Hypatia’s glare scorched me, but she was bound by blood and seal and covenant to answer my questions, however frivolous, so she said, “Aesthetic classifications of the relevant aberrant behaviour are dependent upon observable misalignment within age, wealth and tannin consumption.”
She wasn’t bound to give answers I could understand.
“Huh?”
Her smile widened. She wasn’t bound to answer questions she couldn’t understand.
“Tell me what that means, auntie.”
I pushed aside the jungle-dense drapery of vines and unlocked the door into the smallest of the gardens. She followed, still smiling like an overfed sphinx.
Nor was she bound to answer polite demands.
“What defines eccentricity?”
“One isn’t eccentric–” She made the word a sabre-rattle of syllables. Hypatia was always strongest amongst the plants she’d tended. “–unless one is old and rich and drinks a lot of tea.”
I knelt in front of the monkshood and began to clear the patch of earth I’d marked last autumn with a hawthorn stake. The Morency women had tended these gardens for two hundred years; if most of us were happier making poisons than jam, what of it? There were benefits. Hypatia was no more than a glimmer of light except to one of us.
I dug my strong fingers into the soil, questing down.
“So, Cousin Ransley.” I watched Hypatia’s lip curl. “Is he eccentric or dangerous?”
Fox-fire whirled in the abyss behind my long-dead great-aunt’s cornflower blue eyes as she realised I’d not asked my questions to vex her.
“He styles himself eccentric.” She weighed her words against the truth. “His mother was a Morency who took her luck with her when she left. She won the jackpot and married a millionaire. He’s rich.”
I brushed dirt from the unearthed jam jar and waited.
“He is not old enough, though. And he drinks filter coffee.”
“Not eccentric.” I sighed. “Dangerous?”
“Yes,” Hypatia hissed.
Her gaze followed the delicate brown tracery inside the jar.
“Then I’ll deal with him.”
Cousin Ransley stood beneath the fig tree, frowning at the wall.
“All alone, Illysia?” he said.
I glanced at Hypatia’s feral smile and didn’t answer. He gestured at the vines, set swaying by our exit.
“What’s in there? I’d have a wonderful water view from here without all this.”
“It’s a witch’s garden, Ransley, and safer if it’s walled.”
He threw his head back and laughed at the sky. Hypatia sneered as if she contemplated tearing out his exposed throat with her teeth.
“Witches? Do you know any spells, cousin?”
“Oh, yes. Your mother should have warned you.” I twisted the lid of the jar. “Abracadabra.”
He laughed harder.
“Abracadab.” Another twist. “Abracad.”
He jerked his head. Frowned.
“Abra.”
His mouth opened in a silent scream as I said, “Ab.”
I lifted the lid to let my cousin into the spirit jar and slammed it shut behind him.
BANG.