#quikfic 88

“You should be hard at work on Valentine’s Day,” the bartender said. “Give me a Manhattan and hold the shop talk,” Cupid groused.

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There are some other stories about Cupid in the archives, here and here. Also, note that this is #quikfic 88: 88 is amateur radio shorthand for “love and kisses.” It’s a nice coincidence today.

Fiction: Expectations

Artemis looked around the tight canyons of the great city. She was there for a change of pace. There were kinds of hunting here, although not the traditional sort she had always patronized.

She watched as a bus pulled up to its stop and several passengers exited. One man captured her attention, and she watched as he trudged down the sidewalk.

Artemis, goddess of the hunt, knew the terrible look of prey resigned to its fate, and that was the look on this man’s face. He was conventionally handsome and of average height. He wore a dull gray suit and a black tie. Only the despairing look in his eyes distinguished him from the crowd.

“Athena,” she called in her mind. “Do you have a moment?”

The other goddess appeared next to Artemis.

“Look at that man,” Artemis said, pointing down the street. “What has happened to him?”

Athena used her powers of knowledge and wisdom and divined the man’s history. She saw images…

Continue reading “Fiction: Expectations”

Fiction: Jeune Fille se Defendant

The arrow nearly struck Paige, but some carefully honed instinct warned her just in time to duck. The missile hit a building’s façade and disintegrated harmlessly.

She whirled to find her assailant and found him crouching by a Postal Service collection box.

“You chubby little shit!” she yelled, heedless of her fellow pedestrians who were beginning to watch her with some interest. “I should kick your ass all the way to Poughkeepsie.”

“No, you should let me do my job and make you happy.”

“Happy? When the hell have you ever made anyone happy? You’re making me miserable!”

Then Paige remembered – again – that she was the only one around who could see Cupid. As far as her fellow New Yorkers were concerned, she was having a one-sided screaming match with a mailbox. For most of them, this rated no more than a three on the weirdness scale, but it was the only street theater they had at the moment so they watched. Continue reading “Fiction: Jeune Fille se Defendant”