When I was in high school, I was the part-time henchperson of a Mad Scientist.
I’m not exaggerating about “Mad Scientist”. “Riley” (Name changed for his family’s privacy) was a former Medical Doctor, as well as an artist, microbiologist, pilot (as in, designed and flew his own experimental aircraft), magician, computer programmer and musical composer, and had an outbuilding attached to his house where he kept things like his hand-made 3D printer, electron microscope and drone-dirigible assembly devices.
Riley had ALS and was eventually wheelchair-bound, so by 2006 I was being called in on the odd school night or weekend to go out around FoCo and the surrounding mountains. “I need a younger set of legs and someone with no fear of heights” He’d say. Being that I was a very boring child that had no interest in sex or drugs and always called when I was going to be late, and that Riley was a trusted family friend, My parents trusted me to go out at like 9PM and come home at 2AM on a Tuesday.
…To do things like scale locked fire escapes and climb around on rooftops that we DEFINITELY did not have permission to be on to do things like install speakers and bluetooth broadcasting devices at strategic points around Old Town so that if you download the right app onto your phone (I’ve got it backed up somewhere, I’ll post it when I find it) , you can walk around town and be exposed to the ghostly, extremely shady side of FoCo history for his 2007 Halloween project.
We did get caught by the cops but I was 17, short and white as goddamn mayonnaise so when the cops asked me what I was doing “It’s for a community art project!” actually worked.
My favorite Mad Science Project was in 2009, Gallus rostromegalus.
I was home from college for summer, and Riley had been messing around with Rotational Physics and had managed to make Giant (24’ x 18’) extremely realistic Chicken eggs, weighted and everything so that if you picked one up, it would feel like there was a heavy yolk wobbling around inside. They’re amusing all on their own, but after leaving them in the slash pile from spring cleaning, Riley realized they had POTENTIAL.
So we went around getting permission from a few businesses and the art museum, and I spent a few nights making plausible enormous chicken feathers in Riley’s lab out of grass, acrylic glaze and some other odds and ends laying around, and filling up the back of my mom’s van with as much of the backyard slash pile as fit in there, then drove out in the middle of the night to set up giant nests for the eggs, strewn with feathers and surrounded by Traffic cones and orange construction mesh and signs from the entirely fictitious “Department Of Fish And Wildfowl, Specious Relocation Division”
(an incomplete nest on the steps of Fort Collins Museum of Art)
(signage, responsibly warning people to stay away in case of giant chickens)
Riley even made QR codes that linked back to an obviously false Wiki- if you scrolled to the bottom, the page was covered in feathers and after five minutes it would start to make chicken noises.
People. Went. INSANE.
Crowds turned up to take selfies with the nests and Riley tracked down literally dozens of tagged photos captioned “IS THIS REAL????”.
Someone wrote a very worried and not terribly facetious-sounding letter to the editor concerned that Giant Chickens were roaming around FoCo, something that big could hurt someone! There was an entirely-serious-sounding counter-letter that we Humans have clearly invaded this majestic creature’s natural habitat, where are they SUPPOSED to make their nests, huh?
Multiple people called the police to report having seen the elusive Gallus rostromegalus up in the hills or skulking around downtown. Reports claimed it was anywhere form five to twelve feet tall, with dramatic plumage and an eerie, yodeling sort of call.
A few nights after installing each nest, we went back, collected the eggs, and left broken ‘eggshells’ and extra down feather around each of the nests. One of the nests was put up at the local Garden Center and I remember one of the assistant managers coming outside just after we finished the ‘hatching’ and shrieking “OH GOD I THOUGHT THOSE WERE FAKE THEY’LL GET TO THE TOMATOES SOMEONE CALL THE POLICE!” That woman would later become my manager when I worked there for a summer, though she never made the connection between me and The Chickens.
Riley passed away in 2015 after a good and well-lived life, and was kind enough to leave me The Eggs in his will.
It was a truly splendid bit of ruckus, and I miss him terribly, and I very much treasure the memories. And the Eggs, which I am absolutely going to inflict on some unsuspecting neighbors at some point, in his honor.
(If you’ve enjoyed this story, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi or Paypal so I can support myself telling stories, thank you!)
How bout: urban magic but in a way where magicians mix shit in a cheap pot on a stove or microwave it to make potions like how college students try to make ramen taste good
and it’s… fine. The prince is great! They’re in love, he’s very sweet and passionate, writing her poems and songs, giving her anything she wants. The time she spends with her husband is great.
but cinderella is not royalty, her family was noble but she never spent time in those circles. She’s used to being busy, she’s used to cooking and cleaning and mending. There are hours, days, where she has nothing to do.
time passes. cinderella learns the fancy lady type of needlework. Learns to ride horses. Reads a lot.
as is normal for royalty at the time, they travel and are hosted by nobles or stay at castles owned by the king. But even that variety begins to become routine. The prince is distracted, there’s a lot of young women living and working on their route. Daughters of nobles. Younger and prettier with soft hands that have never done a day’s work.
cinderella needs something to spend her time on, and there’s a part of her thinking a couple-only trip might get her husband’s attention again, so she suggests making an old castle that’s fallen into disrepair their “project.” It was built in the time when castles were made to be defensible, so it’s quite sturdy, but it’s overgrown and secluded. The prince doesn’t know why his family stopped living there either. A hundred years ago it was their summer home.
so they go. And they work. And for a while it’s great! But when they leave for winter cinderella’s husband forgets her once again. cinderella resolves to make the best of her life and stop worrying about a man who has gotten what he wanted from her.
summer comes again and this time cinderella goes alone to the old castle (minus staff, of course, but cinderella manages to narrow it down to only repair workers and one maid). She can cook and clean and mend again, but this time it’s her own choice. She is happy.
this summer they make more progress on repairs. The workers say that most of it can be salvaged, except one tower that’s been completely overgrown with vines and briars. It will have to come down, eventually, but for now it can be safely ignored.
cinderella has more free time now. The old castle has a surprisingly untouched library, though time and moisture have damaged many of the books. Behind a collection of greek poetry cinderella finds an old diary. Very old, in fact, at least a hundred years. It’s rude to read a diary, of course, but whoever wrote this is long dead, and cinderella is bored, so…
from the description of activities the author looks to have been nobility. Maybe even a princess. She’s sensitive and sweet and smarter than she seems to realize. If circumstances had been different cinderella wishes they could have been friends…
after the summer ends cinderella returns to her husband. He’s spending a lot of time with a young musician and cinderella can’t even work up the energy to care. She does some research about the castle and the family she’s married into, finds out the name of the princess who wrote the diary.
aurora. Cursed and forgotten. She died young, they say, in a plague that also took out the castle staff and her own parents. Luckily they avoided a succession crisis, but not so lucky for the dead.
time passes. cinderella goes to the old castle again and again, even out of season. Soon enough all that remains to be done is the old tower, and the builders say they should tear it down and fill the gaps before it gets cold.
one night cinderella is restless. The princess from the diary had been fond of that tower, and cinderella is far more attached to a dead woman than she ought to be. She gets out of bed, reads by candlelight, and finally goes to walk the empty halls.
she finds herself going to the tower. Pushing past the vines that don’t seem so troublesome really. They almost part before her. The stairs are perfectly intact, the door at the top is already cracked open. As if she should have done this years ago, cinderella steps into aurora’s bedroom.
she’s as beautiful as the stories say. And sitting under her hands, crossed across her stomach as it rises and falls, is a book of greek poetry.
years later, people will tell the story of cinderella as a cautionary one. Don’t seek above your station. Don’t marry for prestige. After all, a girl who grew up as a servant once married the crown prince, and disappeared after only three years. She ran away, they say, she couldn’t handle the lifestyle.
two old women who run a bookshop together agree with the lesson. Marrying for the wrong reasons never ends well. It’s best to wait for someone you have things in common with, shared interests.
or, failing that, the more linguistic of the two says, wait a decade or ten for someone to fall in love with you from your diary.
her partner laughs and hits her with the socks she is mending.
Okay, here is the thing. Kara is always this big ball of energy, right, and sometimes, she just needs to burn it off. Of course, these days, most of that takes the form of her Supergirl Shenanigans, but think about this. Kara, in college, discovers Parkour. At first, she’s super conservative with it, but the longer she does it, the bolder she gets, until she just becomes kind of legendary among the local Parkour groups for being completely freaking fearless. But Kara gets really uncomfortable about all the praise, because honestly, she can’t get hurt, so she’s not taking any risks, but it makes her feel free in a way very few things do before she becomes Supergirl.
And it kind of grows from there, until Kara has tried all sorts of Extreme sports. Mountain Biking, Wind Surfing, Kite Boarding, Base Jumping, Parasailing, skateboarding.
Now, imagine one day, Cat decides to check up on her former assistant, and does a google search, only to find dozens, if not hundreds of youtube videos of Kara doing absolutely ridiculously difficult and dangerous stunts, and she’s just sitting there, shaking her head, and wondering what it would take to get all the videos removed from YouTube.
“YOU told me to dive, Cat!”
“METAPHORICALLY, you idiot. Not off a literal cliff!”
21. “You knocked on my door at 1 in the morning, to cuddle?”
Lucy swung the door open and greeted whoever was on the other side with the muzzle of her sidearm. There was no surprised gasp or mad scramble to get away, which prompted her to really look at who was there.
“You look like a drowned cat.” Lucy didn’t care just how rough she sounded; it was late and she had actually been sleeping well for once.
“We had a fight.” Alex’s voice was small, and she was starting to shiver. “She said we could talk in the morning, but she left and…”
Lucy lowered her gun and let Alex in. “Did you walk here at,” she looked at the stove, “one in the morning in the rain?”
She shrugged. “I needed to blow off steam, and then I was halfway here, and I didn’t want to go back.”
Lucy left her standing there to get a towel. She returned to find Alex still on the mat, staring blankly at the window next to the door. “Get dry. You know where my sweats are.”
Alex murmured a thank you as she took the towel. Lucy headed for the kitchenette and popped a tea pod into her Keurig. She made two steaming mugs and brought them over to the couch. Alex emerged from the bedroom in Lucy’s biggest hoodie and rattiest sweatpants. Lucy held out the mug once Alex was molded into her side. They sipped in silence for a few minutes.
“Do I really drink a lot more than I should?”
Lucy took a slow, deep breath. “Socially, no. When we go out, you don’t drink any more than the rest of us. But after a bad day, or if you don’t want to think about something, you’ll try to make your way through a fifth of whatever’s on hand.”
Alex sniffled. “You know what happened today. Maggie wasn’t mean about it, you know how she is. But I just… I don’t want to process this, I don’t want to remember any of it. But she kept pushing and I started fighting back and we blew up at each other….”
Lucy held her tight. She didn’t apologize for not being there; they respected her need to decompress alone after rough ops. She wasn’t upset Alex was here. If she asked Alex to go home after a while, Alex would do so without complaint. “People fight about drinking. James pointed out my own problem a while ago and that didn’t end well for us, either. But, yes, you should probably limit yourself or find a new way to deal with bad days. Your liver won’t be able to handle this coping mechanism forever.”
“Help me?” Alex’s voice was so soft, so small, so terrified of asking for something, anything.
“I will, in every way I can.” Lucy pressed a kiss to Alex’s temple and felt her relax completely. The road ahead wasn’t going to be easy, but they would get through it. Kara would help, James and Winn would be supportive, and J’onn would find a way to refocus Alex off the field.
The doorbell rang and Lucy felt Alex tense up. She pressed another kiss to Alex’s head and told her to stay still. She opened the door and found Maggie on the verge of tears. Thankfully, this girlfriend was dry.
“I know you want to be left alone but I fucked up and I don’t…”
Lucy opened her arms and Maggie fell into the embrace. She nudged her door closed and held Maggie as sobs were muffled against her shoulder. Lucy knew seeing Maggie in distress would set off Alex’s tears. Her two girls were so sensitive to the other’s moods, Lucy was surprised this was their first big fight that brought them to her.
Maggie pulled back after a minute, catching her breath. Lucy waited for her to wipe at her eyes before tilting her head towards the couch. Maggie’s breath caught when she saw Alex. Lucy didn’t have to worry about defusing anything; Maggie was on the couch and wrapping Alex in a hug a moment later. Lucy made one more mug of tea before rejoining them.
“I can’t believe you walked here in the rain,” Maggie said, soothing the damp hair from Alex’s face.
Lucy snorted. “I can’t believe you both came here at one a.m. for cuddles.” She held up a hand. “I’m not upset, I would rather you came here. But you two can’t argue about who’s going soft anymore.”
There was a tiny grin on Alex’s face. “I guess the smallest one would be the toughest.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “You both know where the blankets are if you’re staying. I’m going back to bed.”
“Thank you, Lucy.”
“G’night, Luce.”
Once her bedroom door was closed, she texted James about linking her to the resources he used for her alcoholism. He wouldn’t ask any questions, and would probably be able to guess why she was asking. Kara could wait until after Lucy had spoken with her girlfriends. Which would happen after she got some more sleep.
Listen tots I know I scream about the Nomad outfit at least five (5) times a day but can we just discuss
THIS SASSY BITCH HAND-SEWING HIS FUCKING CAPE, THIS ACTUAL CANONICAL FASHION ICON, SPEAKING OF CLASSY STEVE YOU FABULOUS GLEAMING ANIMAL, SWEET IMPRACTICAL GEM OF MY HEART, STEVEN GRANT “FORGET-STRIKING-TERROR-INTO-THE-HEARTS-OF-EVILDOERS-ALL-I WANT-IS-TO-LOOK-~FABULOUS~” ROGERS HOW COULD ANYONE NOT ADORE YOU YOU LITERAL FUCKING STAR SPANGLED CAR CRASH
Question of Smoke 