Fiction Fragment Friday

I am a Science Fiction Writer. I find that when I sit down to write it is almost also something that falls under that genre because that is where my passion it. Most of the media I consume is Science Fiction or Super Hero so it is only natural that would be what I produce as well. I never really got into Fantasy and it has really only been since discovering first Anne Rice and then Jim Butcher that I started reading Urban Fantasy. I of course read the Hobbit in junior high, and read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Silmarillion around the time the movies came out. Really though my first introduction to most tropes of the fantasy and magical genre came from Dungeons and Dragons within the past ten years or so.

I have written magic before this story, but it has always been short works like this and generally is also Urban Fantasy and not full fantasy. I need that grounding in the modern world I think. Maybe someday I will try to write pure fantasy, but it is not very likely. I love science and I think you can tell the passion in the writing. This weeks fiction fragment story however is an urban fantasy. I had an idea and I wanted to play with it a bit. This could be expanded to a full short story with a longer battle and more nuance. I think though I have just gotten this story out of my system by writing it and the most I might do is editing and cleanup. It might be worth a second draft.

  My car swerved through traffic on the highway going over a hundred miles an hour.  I could feel the spell collapsing and knew that there were only minutes left.  I cursed at the cars around me, but my anger was really focused on myself.  If more attention had been paid to the calender I would have realized that tonight was when the barriers between dimensions were the weakest.  Instead high priced dinners, shows, and various entertainment had been allowed to be a distraction from the work that needed to be done.  As I pulled into the my driveway I could feel the final layers of the spell shattering.  In seconds the doorway between dimensions would be open. 

  My basement was a scene of chaos.  Wind whipped around the room tossing books, papers, and boxes through the air.  I ducked as a large lamp flew directly at my head and shattered at the wall behind me.  The hole in reality before me was blindingly bright with energy crackling off of it.  Papers were burning and I was grateful that the gas pipes had not yet broken.  I was not as lucky when it came to the water pipes.  Water poured out into the basement covering the floor and being drawn into the swirling energy.

  I started chanting and felt my power flowing through me and out into the chaos.  I tried pushing back against the maelstrom, but found that it was like pushing against a hurricane.  My approach was not going to work.  A figure started to form inside the dimensional rip and was getting closer to crossing over.  There was so much energy in the air that it was hard to breathe.

  The flowing energy gave me an idea.  I was being pushed back by the force because I was trying to fight it.  I was like a wall that was being hit by a wrecking ball.  As my hands moved through the motions my chants shifted.  Instead of pushing back I become a conduit for the energy.  My body was wracked with pain as the power flowed into me.  I tried to push the power back out as quickly as it came in but it was just too much.  I imagined a needle and thread sewing up the rip in reality.  Pulling the breach closed.  It was delicate work and I dropped to me knees struggling to stay conscious as I took in more power than I was pushing back out. 

  There in the center of the rip a face came into focus and pushed into this reality.  The face grimaced in pain and I realized that even though he might be more powerful than me he was weak from breaking the barrier spells and pushing through reality.  Even struggling in pain there was no way I could mistake the face.  It was the one that I saw every morning in the mirror and it was angry.

  He grunted and screamed out in anger.  “You can’t keep me out forever.”

     “Maybe not, but your not getting through today.  This is my life now and I’m not going back.”  I took all the extra energy and focused it on him releasing it in one giant burst.  He was hurled back into the hellish dimension I had trapped him in six month before.  Pushing through the pain I finished sewing up the breach before he could regain his momentum.  I layered barrier after barrier over the breach.  They were not particularly complex or as strong as they would need to be but it was all I could manage before exhaustion overtook me.  I lay on the ground panting knowing that I had weeks of work ahead of me.  It was worth it.  I had fought my way out of a hell dimension to steal this mans life and after seeing the pleasures this world had to offer I would do anything to keep it.  I had to be more careful though because I knew how strong the motivation of escaping my former world could be.