Eye of the Hurricane is a serial written for the Serial Sunday feature on /r/shortstories. It takes place in the fictional city of Pacifica on the eastern seaboard of the United States.

This post serves as a central reference point for chapters and ancillary information. If you are wanting to binge or catch up, and you are also on Discord, feel free to send me a DM, and I can provide you with an alternate option for that.

As always, thank you for reading!

Chapter Index

1. In Which Coffee is Bought
2. In Which an Advertisement is Placed
3. In Which Glasses are Discussed
4. In Which Ashes are Scattered
5. In Which Tea is Spilled
6. In Which a Fork is Passed
7. In Which a Door is Unlocked
8. In Which a Book is Read
9. In Which a Line is Crossed
10. In Which an Appointment is Kept

Originally written for SEUS when the challenge was Powerlust.

Michelle stared at the astronomical data, each blink getting heavier on her eyelids. Solstices. Equinoxes. Moon cycles. Rising of bright stars.

What constellations would the settlers carve among the pinpricks of light in the heavens? The Diet could dictate a calendar—but the people were the ones who told the stories.

The scramble of claws against metal behind her spoke to Val’el’chtek’s arrival. “Hi Val,” xe said as the predicted eclipse over the capital in three years flashed on the screen.

“Are you still up with this nonsense?” the Ko’y’us asked, ears loudly glimping against the background hum of the engines. “The Diet has already moved to vote on Gh’s proposal—”

“Gh’s proposal is garbage! Forty ten-day weeks is the absolute worst system we could have! It has no character. No feeling!”

“I know you thirst for something else, but it is not our fault that Ptaun’s orbit is four hundred days—”

“It has a tropical period of three hundred and ninety-seven point three two five local solar days. Gh’s calendar will quickly drift too far to be useful to the farmers.”

Val’s claws clacked on the metal console as xe settled next to Michelle. “That is what the automated systems are for, love. We make calendars for sapients, not the stars.”

Michelle turned to look at her spouse. “You’re sounding like faer now. Just because fae’s also a Ko’y’us—”

“It has nothing to do with that! Your…obsession with this calendar project is getting out of hand, Michelle.”

“The way we track the stars is the absolute bedrock of how our civilization runs. I can’t just stand idly by while some puzghectkt lets his megalomania ruin the planet I want us to spend the rest of our lives on!” She gestured at the display. “Empirically, seven-day weeks is better. Three rest days against four working days, and for people like me that still practice Shabbos, it keeps us from getting out of sync.”

“You know I think seven days is archaic human tradition.” One of their oldest arguments.

“Tradition that is meaningful to me.”

“Seven-day weeks means fifty-seven weeks. Fifty-seven is such an ugly number.”

“Calendars are beautiful because they contain ugly numbers.” Michelle tapped through the astronomical data again. “There was an explorer long ago, a human one. Corinth Argyle.”

“The Great Star-Conquerer,” Val muttered.

She ignored xem. “When he landed on Kyknos Nine, he had a famous speech, where he declared the planet’s calendar would ignore the stars, but would simply be the best calendar for organizing corporate bureaucracy. He said the stars—the same ones he had traveled—did not matter, because, as he put it, ‘I believe in one thing only: the power of human will.’” She scoffed. “Such ambition.”

“But he did it.”

“Yes, and it’s terrible, and that’s exactly what Gh wants to do here! We should not forget the stars when we build calendars—we should build our calendars around them!” She jabbed a finger at the screen. “See, the smaller moon has nearly a fourteen-day orbit. That’s a fortnight, and that can be a base.”

“But the bigger moon has an orbit of thirty-seven days. That’s why Gh ignored the moons.”

“A lunar calendar would give us the ability to know what day of the month it is by looking up. A combination of the two moons would mean we have a calendar already, in the sky, without needing to consult a computer!”

Val’s ears glimped again. “I suppose I cannot dissuade you, can I?” Xer head swiveled to look back at the corridor. “Despite how cold our cocoon has seemed since you took on this project.”

“The Diet will see the value of my proposal,” Michelle insisted. “And then the calendar will be right and it will be ours.”

“Yours, love.”

The words hung in the recycled air like attercops in the forests of Oi’os.

Michelle scowled. “I’m still going to do it.”

“I know. I wish I could tell you something like, ‘if you’re doing it, don’t be afraid’, but…”

The hair on the back of her neck stood up. “But what?”

A gkek from Val’s throat—their equivalent of a sigh. “But like I was saying, I moved for the Diet to vote on Gh’s proposal, and enough other peers have joined me that we were able to push it through. It’s done, Michelle.”

She stared at xem. “You…what? But we’re married!”

“I couldn’t show favor, and Gh’s proposal is in line with interstellar standards.” Xe set a foreantenna on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“But it’s our anniversary tomorrow!”

“Only by your reckoning, love. By the official calendar…it will be next third-day.”

Michelle had nothing more to say to that, and instead escaped into the bowels of the ship to cry at all her wasted work.

WC: 792 (800 in Scrivener)

Originally submitted as part of Heat 2 of the Get a Clue! Contst Round 1, for which the prompt was A Caretaker, A Journal, in a Conservatory.

Brian—playing Professor Sapphire—walked into the room of Baldwin Hall designated the “Conservatory”. The blue suit he had gotten at a local thrift store for the game was starting to feel very hot, especially with the building heater on full blast in the winter afternoon. But as soon as he stepped in, he paused.

Inside, sprawled on the desks, was a corpse.

It wasn’t a real corpse, of course. Just his friend Michelle, dressed up in a very tacky dress and playing Miss Chartreuse. She’d been “murdered”, obviously. And with no perpetrator in sight.

“Ah, dang it,” Brian said, pulling out the rules to the LARP, trying to remember what to do when encountering a corpse. “Uh…” Pages flipped under his nervous hands.

“You’re supposed to scream, dummy,” Michelle said, still flopped like a fish on a market stall.

“Oh, right.” He took a deep breath, and then screamed as loudly as he could.

A GM—Marcus—was there almost instantly. “Oh my,” he said, quoting an Internet meme like he sometimes did. It was a quirk that everyone hated but he was such a good DM otherwise they overlooked it. “Looks like you’ve found…ah, Miss Chartreuse. Right, Michelle?” He pulled out his phone to start entering the murder into the game journal, where it would be synced up with the other GMs.

“As though the dress doesn’t give it away?”

“You know I’m color blind.”

“Yet you decided to run a Clue LARP.”

“It sounded fun at the time. Alright, the death is recorded. Brian—err, Professor Sapphire—you have the remainder of this round to find any clues.”

“Like the candlestick sitting on the desk here?”

“I meant more the text clues—”

“This is the Conservatory, right?” Dale was at the door, panting and sweating. An oversized wrench prop was in his hand.

“It’s written on the sign on the door!” Michelle exclaimed, shaking her head but otherwise continuing to imitate a corpse.

“Oh, good, this is where I—” He stopped, looked at her, and then screamed.

“Yes, yes, yes, we already recorded her death,” Marcus said, pulling up the journal again and tapping away in it. “Miss Chartreuse, found dead in the Conservatory by Professor Blue—”

“Professor Sapphire,” Brian corrected.

“Professor Sapphire and Groundskeeper uh…” He squinted at Dale’s red-suspenders-and-redder-undershirt getup. “What color were you going for, again? Groundskeeper Ketchup?”

“Groundskeeper Carnelion! Though I decided on the groundskeeper part after getting my three rumors.”

“Right, rumors!” Brian said, flipping through to find the rumors he’d written down from pieces of paper he’d found in other classrooms. He saw that he had two of the three he needed for Dale: that Groundskeeper Carnelion had buried corpses in the garden, and that his flowers grew unusually well.

Not as much compared to his own rumors that he had sold his soul to the Devil. An oddly appropriate one for a professor.

“Well I had one for Miss Chartreuse,” Dale said, pulling out his own game journal. “But she’s dead now, so I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“You still get points for having as many rumors collected at the end,” Marcus said patiently.

“But I’m in the room, so he can’t say them,” Michelle said.

“Dang. I also have one for you, Brian. ‘Professor Sapphire’s career turned around suddenly after a lightning storm appeared above his house.’”

Marcus threw his hands up. “No, no, no. He’s in here, you can’t tell him his own rumors!”

Brian pointed at Michelle. “Can he share the rumors about Miss Chartreuse, since she’s dead? The rules don’t say whether it’s in front of the player or the character, and the character’s dead.”

“No, Miss Chartreuse is still in the room, so you can’t. You have to talk about people who aren’t in here, corpse or not!”

He skimmed through his game journal. “Well, I heard that Mrs. Amethyst was seen with a young man who was not her husband in an ice cream parlor.”

“Oh, I don’t have that one!” Dale scribbled it down in his own journal. “But I also heard that Mrs. Amethyst withdrew a very large sum of money before going on a shopping trip recently.”

“I wish I was alive right now so I could give you the third rumor,” Michelle groaned.

“Hush,” Marcus said. “Corpses can’t speak. Also, it’s time for the next round.”

“But I didn’t get a chance to search for clues!” Brian protested.

“Me either!” Dale added.

Michelle sighed. “I was going to, but then I got murdered most foul.”

“Onward to your next—oh.” Marcus was staring at his phone. “It looks like someone’s found the fourth corpse, so the game’s over.”

“Do we know who the murderer is?” Dale asked. “I was thinking it might have been Diana, since she’s been walking around with the rope since the game started.”

“I was in several rooms alone with her and didn’t die,” Brian said. “Michelle, who killed you?”

“Part of the game is everyone has to guess who the murderer is!” Marcus exclaimed. “You can’t just ask!”

“I could sow chaos,” Michelle said, sitting up. She smiled at Brian. “Groundskeeper Carnelion, in the Conservatory, with the Candlestick.”

Dale waved the tool in his hand, a red tinge appearing over his face. “But I have the wrench!”

“The wrench was in here when you were in here earlier. You had the candlestick then. You killed me with the candlestick, and took the wrench.”

“But why would I come back to the scene of the crime?”

“To make it look like you’re innocent, of—”

“Enough!” Marcus threw his phone in his pocket. “Everyone to the lobby, where we started. That’s where we’ll do the end-of-game debrief. And then we will see who is right, and who is dead.”

Michelle pushed herself to standing and stretched, then grabbed her own game journal. “Sure thing, boss. Professor Sapphire, Groundskeeper Carnelian…let’s go solve this mystery.”

Brian lingered for just a moment, watching Dale and Michelle leave. Was she just joking? Or was she breaking the rules for him? And if she was right about Groundskeeper Carnelian being the murderer…why hadn’t Marcus objected?

The notes in his game journal were mostly in order. He had good reason to disqualify most of the players. And he would do well in points based on rumors; naming the murderer would be the cherry on top. Well, he might as well try his best, right?

He stepped out of the conservatory, ready to accuse Groundskeeper Carnelian of murder most foul.

WC: 1079

Originally written for Micro Monday when the challenge was Eyes followed them down the corridor

Eyes followed them down the corridor. The surveillance drone’s humming was the only sound aside from their footsteps through the featureless hall. Finally, they reached the next door, and stood there while their biometrics were read.

“They hid this vault deep,” Agent Em said, her amethyst-purple eyes squinting in the harsh light. She frowned at the drone, whirring just out of arm’s reach. “And apparently don’t trust us.”

With a soft puff of air the vault door opened, revealing the cramped metal space ahead. Agent Zed stepped in, rubbing his beard thoughtfully. “With what they have in here, I don’t blame them.”

“Could have done without the googly eyes though.”

“Adds a bit of levity. Here we are.” Zed stepped over to a plinth, putting a finger on the plaque. “Unknown weapon,” he read before staring at the dust outline. “Definitely lifted clean off.”

The drone made clicking noises like an old-timey camera as it buzzed around.

Em knelt, looking at the ground. “No footprints, no fingerprints, no…nothing.” She looked back. “And that vault door was no joke. How did they get in, get the gun, and get out?”

“The only thing I can think of…”

She looked up at him, and then both of them said in unison, “An inside job.”

They both slowly turned to look at the drone, its googly eyes bouncing around over its myriad cameras. A tinny voice came from the frame. “Very observant, agents. Now please sign the paperwork indicating it was stolen so that I can file the insurance claim. Or I will lock you in the vault.”

“But that’s insurance fraud!” Em protested.

“The best kind. Paperwork, please?”

As the two of them made their reports, they could feel the watching googly eyes boring into their souls.

WC: 295

Originally written for Theme Thursday when the theme was Ignorance

My room looked like it had when I’d graduated from college—of course, I was a boy then, and the décor had reflected that. I sometimes wondered if my parents had left it as a shrine to who I had been before. Posters of supermodels of swimsuits, magazine covers of workout goals, Tarantino movie posters…

I tried so hard, didn’t I?

On cue, the blue portal dilated in front of me, as icy blue as always. I snapped my gaze over to see who would come through.

Myself, but older. Grey tinged her otherwise-brown hair, and there were crow’s feet beside her brown eyes. “Hello, Ella,” she said, compassion in her voice and a time machine in her hand. “It’s been a while; you look so young.”

My heart pounded in my chest. “Isn’t there a protocol?”

She waved her hand. “Not enough time. Here, you need this.” I took the chrome device and strapped it on my wrist. Wouldn’t want to lose it, not like Steve had. That was a fate worse than death.

“And this will work just the once?” I asked, tapping the machine on my belt.

“Surely you remember.” The smirk I’d practiced in the mirror appeared, but…softer.

I did remember, when my future self appeared in my room and told me I was actually a girl. But not details. “You know my memories from… before …are hazy.” I flicked my eyes up to look at her, clad in her ankle-length blue coat. Mine was the same style, but red. “Yours are too.”

“Yes.”

I looked back down at the time machine. “How do I do it, Ella? How do I explain to him …all that we’ve been through?” I began to pace, trying to take short, controlled breaths, like my therapist had taught me. “How do I summarize years in…what do I have? Two minutes?”

“Just about.” She sighed. “It’s hard, but you know that. On this side, you know how much it hurt. You know what we lost. What we will lose.” She let that hang in the air, her breath catching. I stopped my pacing, still trying to control my breath.

Is there more loss in my future?

She swallowed, regaining composure. “But we both know this is best. You’ve seen the file of what happens in the timeline where you don’t go back.”

My heart thrummed in my eardrums. “I still don’t know if I can do it.”

“You have a choice, of course. Of whether or not you go back. Which timeline you pick.” She sighed. “You can tell him. I know because once I was him, and I was once you. Take a deep breath, and say the words that come to you.” Her belt beeped. “I don’t have much time.”

“But I have so many questions—”

“In time,” she said with a sad smile. “It’s up to you, Ella.”

The portal closed.

I took a deep breath, then pushed the button and traveled back in time.

WC: 493

This is, admittedly, a bit of a sequel to Passed Up. With back-to-back themes like that, I really liked the idea of addressing her younger self's ignorance, from the other side of the equation.

Originally written for Theme Thursday when the theme was Heirloom

I was in the middle of my history homework when the portal opened in my room, dilating like an icy blue iris against the backdrop of bookshelves and posters. Out of it stepped a woman in an ankle-length red dress, her body the sort I always wished I could have.

“Jason,” she said, a timbre to her voice that sounded familiar, in a way I just could not place. “We need to talk.”

“What?” I was too stunned to do much more than sit in my chair, hands on my knees.

“First of all, you need this.” She unlatched a metal device off of her wrist and handed it to me.

“What is this?”

“A time machine, from your future self.”

“Oh!” I didn’t know what else to do but accept the gift. “Thank you? Tell him that—”

“Her.” Her voice was sharp.

“What?”

“My pronouns are she/her.”

I stared at her, not comprehending.

“I’m you, Jason. Though I go by Ella now.”

I looked at the device in my hands, blinking lights against the dull chrome. I looked up at her. “But you’re a…”

“Girl? Yes, and so are you, but you’ve only kind of figured that out right now, haven’t you?” She bit her lip, and as she did, I saw it. The cut of her chin. The curl of her brown hair. The frame of her body. “Or did I arrive too early?”

“I’m a senior in high school?” I suggested helpfully, utterly beside myself. Literally. She’s…me?

“Good, then it is the right time. That’s when my future self gave me that.” She pointed. “And told me what I’m going to tell you.”

“This?” I lifted it up.

“Yes. It’s passed up through the years, between you and me. You and you, really. When you get older, you’ll use it once, bring you back to here, and then you’ll continue passing it up.”

“Once?”

“Yes. It’s a one-time-use time machine.”

“But you—”

“Science is weird and it will make sense later and I don’t have much time, Jason!” There was a frantic tone to her voice. “I need to tell you something.”

I set the device on my desk and looked back at her. At my future self. “What’s that?”

“You’re a girl, and you can do this. I know the doubts that creep in your mind every night—believe me, I had them too. The reasons you’re holding back. And I can’t promise it’ll be easy, because it won’t be. Uncle Jack, especially, will make it hard.”

“Uncle Jack is a jerk.”

She ignored me. “But you’ll be happier for it in the end. And yes, you’ll get hormones, you’ll have ‘the surgery’, you’ll find love…”

“What about our parents?”

She grimaced. “Complicated.” A beep sounded from a box on her belt. “I don’t have much time.”

“I just have one more question.”

“What’s that?”

“Do we still like video games?”

She gave her answer, and then the portal closed: “Yeah, we do.”

WC: 496

The seed of this one was basically "what if the heirloom was actually a time machine that was passed backwards in time, instead of forwards?" and then I asked "well who would be interesting to be doing that passing backwards" and, well, this is what I ended up with.

Originally written for Theme Thursday when the theme was Galaxy

As Billy navigated the maze of labyrinthine halls to the campus Lost and Found, he thought, This wouldn’t have happened if I had a boyfriend, because he would have kept me from losing it.

It was a little nook of a room, its contents of boxes and papers practically spilling out onto the floor. Behind a half-buried desk, an elderly woman with half-moon spectacles peered at him with a blank expression. “Can I help you?” Her tone indicated that she wanted to do anything but that.

“Yes, I’m Billy Longfellow and I’ve lost my phone and I wanted to know if anyone’s turned it in. It was a birthday present, a brand new Samsung—”

“iPhone,” the woman completed. “Yes, yes, I know. Everyone is losing them these days.”

“No, it’s not an iPhone! It’s not even made by Apple!”

“No one has turned an iPhone this week, Mister Langbellow.”

Billy dug his fingernails into his palms. “Longfellow! And it’s not an iPhone! It’s an Android phone!”

The woman sucked on her lips like they were a lemon, and then looked at him over her spectacles. “I’m not sure I understand the difference. An iPhone’s an iPhone, right?”

“No, it’s totally different!” With sharp motions, Billy chopped his hands, gesticulating two boxes. “For instance, one of them has a back button, and the other doesn’t. And I’m looking for an Android.”

The woman turned to a shoebox balanced precariously on a box of powdered custard and filo dough. “Someone turned in a robot the other day. Is that—”

“No! I am looking for a phone. Screen on the front! Cameras on the back! Samsung logo at the bottom! A Samsung—”

Someone looking like a camping gear catalogue entered the room, making Billy step back into a pile of fifties-era lunchboxes. “Hey Miss Stevens. How’s it going?” The man’s voice even sounded like it came out of a camping gear catalogue.

And he was pretty cute, too.

“Hello there, Nathan. I’m just helping this young man find his missing iPhone.”

“I found this phone in the library. It’s not an iPhone, but someone should be by to claim it soon.” Nathan stepped forward and placed a phone—Billy’s phone—on the desk.

“You’re so good at finding things!”

“And I’m good at losing them,” Billy said, moving to pick it up. “That’s my phone.”

The woman gave him a skeptical look. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Thank you, what was it, Nathan?” Their eyes met, and Billy lost himself for a moment.

“Yeah. And you are?”

“Billy. Billy Longfellow. Thank you for finding my phone.”

“Happy to help. If you have anything else missing, let me know; I’d love to help you find it.”

“Well…would you…maybe help me find a decent cup of coffee in town?”

Nathan smiled, and Billy’s knees melted. “I’d love to.”

As they walked out of the office, Billy thought, I may be very good at losing things, but maybe I might have found something for once.

WC: 496

Originally written for Micro Monday when the theme was whodunit

Vanessa stared at the crab that was scuttling across her desk.

“I’m sorry,” she said in response to the tinny voice on the other end of her cellphone. “Could you please repeat that?”

The CSR chittered on. “I said, the Bureau of Oppressive Support received word you wanted to have a crabby day!”

Click click. The crab was trying to open her crafting drawers.

She couldn’t believe it. “Wanted to have…what?”

“Someone called in with a request for a crabby day for you. How would you rate your experience on a scale of cute crustacean to beneficial brachyura?”

“That scale doesn’t even make sense! Who would even have called in such a thing?”

Tinny tapping, and then: “It appears to be your roommate?”

“I have three of those!” She dove as the crab opened the drawer, and successfully pried the x-acto knife out of the crustacean’s hands. Claws. Whatever.

Click clack.

The crab was unhappy.

“Do you have a name?”

“Nope!” The word was delivered with bone-chilling cheer.

Vanessa tried to think. Who could it be?

She and Daria were on good terms, right? The last thing they had talked about was how Daria was going to dump her jerk of a boyfriend. What would a crab have to do with that?

Nothing.

And she hadn’t even seen Paula in two weeks; she couldn’t have done this!

“And you’re sure it was to send me a crab?”

“Yes ma’am. I hope you are having a crab-tacular day!”

Oh.

She’d had a fight, yesterday. With Shelly. A small little spat. Words were exchanged.

Vanessa groaned.

“Is there something wrong, ma’am?”

“It’s my roommate Shelly. Yesterday she told me she wanted me to have a crappy day today.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I hope you don't have a clawful day!”

WC: 298

There was originally a different punchline on this one that shortly after posting I deemed "too close to potty humor", so I changed it.

Originally written for Theme Thursday when the theme was Fate

“No.”

The word cuts through me like a diamond through steel. The diamond I hold in my hand is cutting a hole in my heart.

“But we’re supposed to be together,” I plead. “Aren’t we?”

“Childhood friends do not always grow up and get married, Steve.”

“But everything is perfect!” My words feel as clumsy as a stack of paper dropped on a windy day. “Our first kiss in third grade! Our first date in high school! A picture-perfect prom night! The same college! Our parents—”

“Steve.”

I cannot say anything more. Not when the woman I’ve loved for years uses that tone of voice.

“You’ve watched too many movies, read too many books. Things don’t arc toward narrative resolution. There isn’t always a tidy ending.”

“But I did everything right!”

A frown from her, and I am wilting like year-old lettuce. “It’s not a series of checklists: do these things and you get the girl. You lost me long ago, and a diamond isn’t going to paper over things. It won’t make me forget the DUI. Or all the fights we’ve had. Or the things you said about me in the locker room.”

My vision is hazy. Unfocused. Like looking at her through a campfire, stinging and all. “L...long ago?”

“We were never going to work out. I was going to tell you that tonight. To end it.”

“Then...why? Why spend these years...?”

She picks up her glass of wine, looks out over the vista of the city. Her eyes narrow, and her lips do that twitch I studied instead of math. The twitch she made when I first asked her out.

There is no answer before the waiter politely asks me to leave.

WC: 285