WIP: Doctor Fantastik Part III

Here’s a modern piece I’m working on right now, “Someday My Prince.” I believe it’s fantasy; I’m about 2000 words in so far, and really not sure whether it’ll stretch another 500 or 5000 words.

When Betty answered the apartment door, the man standing there was one of the most beautiful she’d ever seen. Tall, muscular, aquiline nose, dark hair”¦ he looked like he should be riding a white stallion on the beach in a cologne ad.

“Miss Vincent?” he said.

She faltered in the doorway, looking at him. You never know what to expect in New York, and surely this man wasn’t that out of the ordinary, except for the utterly expensive lines of his suit.

“Miss Vincent?” he repeated.

“I really need to get to work,” she said. “I don’t have time to buy anything.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “I’m Aidan, your Prince.”

She didn’t understand.

He smiled at her. “I’m your Prince. I’ve come.”

She really did need to get to work.

***

Veronica said, “You say he’s a Prince?”

“I think that’s what he said. He wouldn’t go away until I promised to have dinner with him tonight.”

Veronica’s eyebrow lifted. “You could have called the police.”

“He was just so”¦nice,” Betty said.

Veronica’s other eyebrow lifted. “So are you going to tell him?”

“Of course,” Betty said. “Then he’ll know this is some kind of mix-up.”

***

On her daily phone call, her mother said, “You lucky, lucky girl!”

Betty tried to interject something but her mother went on. “I mean, we’re all promised that our prince will come some day, but most of them seem to get lost in transit. I don’t know anyone who’s actually gotten one.”

“Mom,” Betty said. “What do you mean, we’re all promised one? Who does the promising?”

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line. “Well,” her mother finally said, “I guess I don’t really know. The world? God? Yes, that’s probably it. God promises if we’re good, someday our prince will come.”

“I think you’re confusing God and fairy tales,” Betty told her.

This is what I’ve been working on today. It’s a lot closer to being done that it was.

This is how Renee lost her phone and gained an obsession.

She was in the park near work. It was a sunny day, on the edge of cold, the wind carrying autumn with it like an accessory it was trying on before settling for it for good.

She set her phone down on the bench beside her as she unfolded her bento box, levering back metal flaps to reveal still-steaming rice, a quivering piece of tofu.

Movement caught her eye. She pulled her feet away as a creature leaped up onto the bench slats beside her, an elastic band snap’s worth of fear as it grabbed the phone, half as large as the creature itself, and moved to the other end of the bench.

The bento box clattered as it hit the concrete, rice grains spilling across the grey.

She’d thought it an animal at first, but it was actually a small robot, a can-opener that had been greatly and somewhat inexpertly augmented, modified. It had two corkscrew claws, and grasshopper legs made from nutcrackers to augment the tiny wheels on its base that had once let it move to hand as needed in a kitchen. Frayed raffia wrapped its handles, scratchy strands feathering out to weathered fuzz. Its original plastic had been some sort of blue, faded now to match the concrete beneath her sensible shoes.

The bench jerked as the robot leaped again, moving behind the trash barrel, still carrying her phone. She stood, stepping over the spilled rice to try to get to the phone, but the leaves still on the rhododendrons thrashed and stilled, and her phone was gone.

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