Author: Wendy Richards
Email: wendy@lcfanfic.com
Rated: PG
**********
She had no idea what had just happened. One minute the petite, dark-haired young woman was standing in the middle of the town square ogling – um, *admiring* a particularly nicely-muscled chest; the next she was standing in a cornfield in the middle of nowhere. Dark, shadowy mountains were visible in the distance. And she was surrounded by a number of other young women, all wearing long, flowing robes, and all *much* taller than her.
They all wore identical expressions, too: vaguely threatened, somewhat in awe and considerably angry.
She blinked and slowly examined the circle which penned her in. Then smiled. “Well, hello there, ladies. How nice to meet you! And is there something I can do for y’all?”
“Are you CC Aiken?” one, speaking in an unfamiliar accent, but which could have been English or perhaps Scottish, demanded.
“I sure am.” She smiled again – being friendly was probably her best strategy in this situation. Certainly her best chance of finding out what was going on. “And I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure…?”
“We are the collective Muses of Lois and Clark Fanfiction Writers,” another elegant woman announced; CC felt as if she should curtsey out of sheer respect.
“Oh! Well, I’m sure pleased to meet y’all…”
“Can’t say we return the compliment,” the first Muse growled.
“We wanted to speak to you,” the second said quickly. A western accent, maybe? Utah? Montana? Idaho? “We have some questions to put to you.”
“Well, I’m sure I’ll be happy to help. But would you mind telling me exactly where we are? And how did I get here?”
“In Kansas, of course. Smallville, to be exact.”
“Smallville?” CC looked around her. Hoping desperately for a glimpse of… oh, she didn’t know. Maybe Tom Welling? Better still, Michael Rosenbaum. Heck, she’d settle for the real Clark Kent. “But they grow wheat in Kansas, not corn. And it’s in the middle of the prairies – there are no mountains…”
“Yeah, and Metropolis isn’t even in the same state as Smallville. But that doesn’t stop *some* writers, does it?” English/Scottish Muse grinned sardonically as she spoke.
“As to how you got here,” the second Muse explained, “That’s simple. Through the window, of course.”
“Window?” CC looked around. “What window?”
“There’s always a window. When you need one, that is.”
“Uh… okay.” Shaking her head, CC decided to focus on the most pressing issue. “You said something about some questions…?”
“Oh, stop pussyfooting around!” a third Muse demanded, appearing as if from nowhere. Shorter than the rest – that made CC feel a *lot* better. In fact, almost as short as she was, which was why the Muse had been invisible up to now. Her robe was adorned with letters of the alphabet, though, strangely, CC could only pick out H, I and J, with some half-formed Ks. The Muse had just a faint hint of a Southern drawl, which *should* mean there was some affinity between them. “Let’s get on with it. We all know what we’re here for. Just lay out the charges. Unvarnished, unbuttoned, undone, uncaged, unspooled, unleashed… whatever.”
Obviously not. No affinity there. None whatsoever. “Um… charges?”
“Charges.” The second Muse sighed. “Let the world find out that CC Aiken is hereby charged with the unauthorised abduction and neutralisation of fanfic writers’ muses. While pretending that said muses were merely being taken to a better place, in fact the perpetrator of this massive theft had no intention of sending them back again.”
“But… but I never…”
“Quiet!” Scottish/English Muse ordered.
CC cowered. The expression on that woman’s face made her feel like something the cat had dragged in.
“A second charge relates to the hijacking of reader comments. The evidence is clear – while other writers’ comment folders languished with as few as half a dozen posts or less, Ms Aiken was amassing posts in excess of thirty or even forty.”
Huh? But… Holy cow! Surely… Just because readers post and even debate on one story, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t post on others? Did it? This was ridiculous!
“And further, the aforesaid CC Aiken is charged with denigration of the semi-colon and elevation to an inappropriately high status of the ellipsis. The favouring of dialogue over internal monologue will also be taken into consideration.”
Ellipses? Internal monologue? And the late, great semi-colon? What the heck was going on here?
“CC Aiken is also charged with refusing to post epilogues when they’re written, instead hoarding them so little five-page scenes that are no threat to anybody become, over time, long and outstanding stories which intimidate other authors’ Muses into hiding.”
What? Were these guys serious?
“Let the trial begin. Witnesses for the prosecution!”
One by one, individual Muses stepped forward and related tales of author inspiration being stifled, the will to write being banished, and even comment folders on other stories drying up. As the stories grew longer and more heartfelt – more melodramatic, even – CC sank to the ground and found herself repeating over and over, “Holy cow!”
Finally, as the sky grew dark and the mountains closer, the Muse who seemed to have appointed herself judge called a halt. “Enough! Proceed to the verdict.”
“Wait!” CC jumped to her feet, though next to the gigantic Muses she still felt as if she were sitting. “Don’t I get a chance to defend myself?”
“Defence? You haven’t got any!” the Celtic Muse insisted.
“But… but… I’m a mom!” CC protested, by now spluttering, almost gibbering at the effort of having had to listen to these trumped-up charges for hours, without so much as even a glass of iced tea. “Three little ones depend on me for peanut butter sandwiches! I teach Sunday School! And help nuns cross the street!”
“And you think we should care about that?” A new voice. A strange accent. Green robes. With a pattern of… maybe ficus leaves? Instead of flowing locks, a long, thin ponytail. “Even mass murderers bring their mothers flowers.”
The accent. Very unusual. Yet she’d heard something like it before. Not for a few years, though. It had been on the TV news a lot one time… a little over ten years ago, maybe. Yes! That was it – white South African. Former South African, maybe.
CC shook her head. What did it matter? “I have a right to defend myself. In fact, I have a right to a lawyer. You should have let me call my lawyer before you started all these ridiculous charges.”
“Hmm.” The judge-Muse looked around. “Should we let her?”
“She has a right to a lawyer.” This Muse was definitely Scottish. And much smaller than any of the others. Smaller than CC herself, even. And… grey. Definitely grey. And with that pointed chin and little twitchy ears, she looked kind of… rat-like.
“Yeah.” A Mid-Western accent this time. One of those non-accent accents. CC wondered how she pronounced `caramel’. “You know, I really think you guys are all over-reacting here.”
“Crap!” the first Scottish Muse muttered.
“Okay,” the Judge said. “Who’s your lawyer?”
“Mayson Drake.” Well, Mayson wasn’t really her lawyer, but CC was sure that the woman would help her out here. At any rate, it looked as if `lawyer’ was the magic word around here.
“Mayson?” another Muse scoffed; CC blinked. A man? A male Muse? Tall. Older than the rest. Bearded. With a – a *bass guitar* slung over his shoulder. “You really think she’d help you? After the Great Cosmic Kitten of Fate and letting her see Clark choose Lois in front of her? Uh-uh. No way. Face it – you’re toast.”
“Um…” Bad move. She should have said MLT. At least ML had no axe to grind. At least, she thought not…
“That’s twenty so far.”
“Twenty?” CC stared at the speaker. This one was definitely Irish.
“Ellipses. She’ll wear them out! She can’t be allowed to continue!”
“You can’t wear out an ellipsis! Or ellipses! It’s not as if there’s a limited quantity…”
“Twenty-one.”
CC rolled her eyes. “Want me to start counting some of your writers’ semi-colons? Or pages without a word of dialogue?”
“Been there, done that,” the Irish Muse drawled.
CC blushed. Oh yeah, she remembered that. But it had been *deserved*! Nine pages. Nine. Pages. And Not. One. Word. Said. By. Anyone. All he did was read a *newspaper*! And think. For. Nine. Pages.
“But anyway,” she insisted, “This is ridiculous! I’ve never intimidated anyone in my life! I mean, holy cow, *look* at me! Do I *look* intimidating? I mean, if I looked like Yvonne, who’s the tallest FoLC I’ve met, or Wendy, who looks totally professorial in that navy blazer…”
“Twenty-two.”
Okay. Just what was she supposed to do here? Promise that she’d never write another story again? But then she’d have hordes of FoLCs after her with axes! And pitchforks!
“I mean, I even post comments on your writers’ stories! I’m a very loyal commenter. Why pick on me?”
“Part 15, 40 comments; part 16, 40 comments; part 18, 55 comments!”
“And Part 17, 24 comments. And that was two, by the way. I’m just saying…”
“Twenty-three.”
“Two what?” the Irish Muse demanded.
“Semi-colons.”
“Oh, geez.”
“And, judging by the way some of you guys are pausing before you speak, I’d guess you’re wearing out your brains with all that thinking you’re doing.” CC drew herself up to her full height and looked the Judge-Muse in the eye. “I have a suggestion, okay?”
“You may speak.”
“How about if I try to cut back on the ellipses? I mean, you have to have noticed that I’ve already done it a lot. And that I’m using more semi-colons. They even told me I was using them correctly! And I’m actually using… holy freakin’ cow, I find it hard to believe, but I’m actually using introspection!”
“She’s right.” The tallest woman CC had ever seen, and who spoke with a faint Arizona accent, spoke up.
“And I’ll even try to master the comma.” CC blinked. Had she really just said that? Did she *want* to leave herself such an obvious hostage to fortune. “I said I’ll try, right? Y’all heard that little `try’, didn’t you?”
“Damn!” the Irish Muse muttered, surprisingly uninterested in the comma promise. “You’re doing all that, and your stories *still* get more comments than everyone else’s put together!”
“Look, we don’t care about that,” Scottish Muse said impatiently. “All we want is to get back to our writers. I don’t care how you do it. Just send us back, all right?”
“I would if I could!” Just how was she expected to do that? Did they think she had personal custody of the window? Or maybe Tempus’s ring?
“It’s simple.” Another Muse stepped forward, this one speaking with a subtle French accent. “Just don’t post another story for a few months. At least. I’m not saying that we don’t love your stories. That’s part of the problem. We do. But as soon as you start posting we go into hiding.”
Really? CC grimaced. Maybe waiting a few months was only fair, after all. And it wasn’t as if she’d have another story ready to post before then, anyway. It was summer, after all. In Georgia. Heat. Humidity. Brains couldn’t properly function then, everyone knew that. Besides, the kids would be out of school very soon. Writing? With kids underfoot, expecting to be entertained? Hah! With her luck, anyway, they’d all come down with stomach flu their first day off.
“Agreed.” She smiled at the assembled Muses.
Then a thought struck her. “Where’s my Muse?”
“Ah.” Several of the Muses wore smug looks. “She’s in protective custody.”
“*What*?”
“Don’t worry, she’s being well looked after.”
“I don’t understand…”
“Let’s say we’re just making sure that you’ll keep your side of the bargain. We’ve just asked a couple of friends of ours to put her up for a few weeks.”
“Who?”
“Oh, I think you know them, too. Mr and Mrs Tempus. Watch out for Mrs Tempus – she’s the really evil one.” And the French Muse grinned.
“But you can’t do that!” CC protested. “I need her! How can I write without her?”
“Oh, I do love irony,” the tall Scottish Muse said.
“And you really don’t need to worry. She’ll be well entertained. Mrs Tempus took a stack of DVDs with her,” the Irish Muse said with a smile.
“Oh? Lois and Clark? Smallville?” CC asked, hope rising again.
“Highlander.”
“Holy freakin’ cow…”
And CC awoke in the town square with visions of Clark leaping around chopping off people’s heads spinning through her brain. “Computer… need to get to a computer…”
THE END