Rachel Bostwick

Friends and Children (prologue)

March 14, 2014 by Rachel Bostwick

Friends and Children,

In the year 2101, humanity fell asleep. Most never woke again and the few that did scrambled to survive as the human infrastructure fell apart. Power grids failed. Food sources dried up overnight. Fire and flood raged unchecked. The remnant of humanity sat by a fire made of their possessions eating beans out of a can and telling sad stories.

Disconnected from safety of our power grids, we had no heat but what we could burn and no food but what we could steal from the dead. Generators helped us play at civilization for a time, but eventually the gasoline stores dried up. Batteries were used up and then tossed away by the hundreds, the thousands. We had no friends left but our solar-powered calculators and our pods. We could comfort ourselves with the music of the old world, but we couldn’t call each other up to say hello.

For the first five years, we looked for a savior, someone who had the knowledge to turn everything back on, but none came. There weren’t enough of us left. So we slogged along, always a little hungry, always a little cold, always a little lonely.

We died in desperation, one at a time, until there were almost none left.

We believed it was the end of the world.

And it was, in a way. But I’m sorry – I won’t bore you with the details. You’ve heard this story already from your parents and from your friends and from your teachers.

You will remember, then, that thirty years later, one small civilization budded in the ruins of New York City. In those days, most of America was wild and largely uninhabited. There were clusters of men near the safest places – the Nova Lenape in Jersey. The Old Order Amish in Pennsylvania and Ohio. They say, that a great peaceful commune once domesticated the mild jungles of San Diego. I have no way to confirm this, but also no reason to doubt it. For the most part, empty suburbs and burnt hulls of cities dotted America’s landscape. We had no power sources and no king. But in New York, there were still people, enough to love and steal and kill. Enough to be classed and ruled. And so a council of seven men presided over the boroughs as judges, decreeing right and wrong. Who was allowed to reside in safety and who had to leave. Who could work in peace and who had to hide in the shadows.

I was born at the same time that the judges convened. My mother and I, we were among those who lived in the shadows.

Today I will tell you the story of a man named Alexander Jackson, though history simply calls him Lux. Lux was the 7th of the judges, a single man among the council. The youngest. The least learned. The roughest of hands. The simplest of speech. He was a working man who sought to rebuild the Bronx with common sense and his own hands. Eventually the justice of the boroughs – and the fate of the world – would depend on him.

But first, he became my father.

And that’s the story I am going to tell you today.

-Summer

S.E.H.
July 4, 2176

Beautiful Herbal Bath Bombs

December 16, 2013 by Rachel Bostwick

Have you ever wanted to make a simple, natural bath care product that makes a fantastic herbal Christmas gift? Yeah, me, too =) My friend Joei came over and taught us how to make Bath Bombs yesterday and I am so excited to share her very simple recipe with you today.

The ingredients are few: The ingredients are linked to a great place on-line where you can buy them, but you can buy all of these things locally, too

Baking Soda
(You CAN buy this on-line but you should buy it locally unless you are going to buy a huge amount and you were going to place an order anyway in which case you can buy it here.)
Citric Acid buy here
Witch Hazel buy here

Essential Oils as desired for scent or for helpful qualities (We used Peppermint, Orange, Lavender, and Lemongrass)
Natural color as desired (We used a green oxide, turmeric for yellow – not too much or it will stain, and paprika for pink)

Also, Joei added Himalayan Pink Salt to add more softness to your water and for gorgeous sparkly color.

First step – gather your ingredients all together before you get started. Citric Acid will be the hardest to find. Joei found hers at a local natural grocery store. If you can’t source it locally, try Mountain Rose. They have it in 1lb and 5lb quantities for very reasonable prices (1lb is more than enough for a nice batch like we made, but 5lbs would be great if you want to make a whole bunch of them and give them to everyone you know.

Second step – mix the dry ingredients. Have a nice big bowl and mix together one part citric acid to two parts baking soda. Mix thoroughly. We did four separate bowls so we could make four different scent recipes.

After the dry ingredients are thoroughly mixed, you can add color and scent. We did four different recipes.

The Recipes

Joei made a straight peppermint oil bath bomb with a pinch of paprika for pink coloring. She added peppermint oil til the scent was clear but not pungent, then mixed it thoroughly. Once the scent and color were mixed in, Joei added the pink salt for dimension. This was an EXCELLENT recipe for Christmas gifts, and Joei used a mini gingerbread silicon pan to shape hers (we’re almost there).

Olivia made a peppermint-orange oil blend. It smelled lovely and sweet, and she used heart-shaped molds. She used a pinch of turmeric and a pinch of paprika for an orange color. Be careful to not be too liberal with turmeric as it can stain if the concentration is too high – Olivia’s fingers were a bit yellow afterwards.

My mother (JenniFaye) made gorgeous yellow bombs with turmeric for color and lemongrass for smell. These smelled HEAVENLY.

And finally, I made mine a lavender-peppermint oil blend. I used a green oxide I had on hand to lightly color them and molded them in Christmas tree molds that Joei brought with her. These were so cute and would make wonderful stocking stuffers. Next time we make them, I’d like to add very finely ground lavender buds to the mix for dimensions. Readers of my blog know that I am a lover of lavender and use it with my children all the time. It is such a useful and gentle oil.

Third Step – once you have thoroughly mixed in any color, scent, and add-ins you want to use with your bombs, it’s time to activate them. The way Joei did this was brilliant and made the recipe so simple. She filled a spray bottle with witch hazel. Witch Hazel is as thin as water so you can use any ordinary spray bottle for this, just label it with a marker like Joei did. Then lightly spray your mixture and begin to knead it. You want the mixture to be like sand that is *just* wet enough to mold – no more. Err on the dry side – you can add more moisture but you can not take any away. It will fizz a tiny bit when you first spray it, just mix that in. Once it is the right consistency, begin to mold it right away – you don’t want it to dry again before you get it into the molds. If you did more than one recipe, as we did, work one bowl at a time.

Fourth Step – Now it’s time to mold. Scoop it up in your fingers and press it firmly into the molds. You don’t need to grease the mold or anything like that because the mixture will dry all the way. I do strongly recommend the nice silicone molds – they turned out so well. We let them dry for an hour before popping them out of the molds to air dry more before bagging them. If you don’t have any silicone baking molds and don’t want to buy any, a plain old muffin tin will work just fine – let them dry a little long and if you need to, slide a butter knife around the round shape – they will slide right out.

To use the bath bombs, drop one large or a few small into your warm bath. They will fizz and sputter and soften your water and all the goodness of the essential oils will go into your bath. Delightful. If you use gentle oils they are nice for children, too. Julius was thrilled to have one in his bath and he is very difficult to coax into taking a bath.

Thank you, Joei, for this fun idea and sharing the great day with us! I hope everyone enjoys her recipe and has a great time making homemade herbal Christmas presents for everyone they love!

The Toilet Dream

December 16, 2013 by Rachel Bostwick

I had the toilet dream again.

It has happened too often to be a fluke – it must be a sign.

Obviously I am pre-ordained to spend a significant portion of my life in the bathroom.

The toilet dream goes like this: in my dream, I am suddenly looking for a toilet. There are various reasons, though usually in the dream, I simply need to use the bathroom.

So I find one, and there is always something significant about it. Sometimes the stall is too small and I can get in but not get out. Sometimes it’s overflowing or especially dirty. Especially large or open with no stalls.

And then I attempt to – ahem – use the toilet. To no satisfaction. Afterward, I need to find another toilet, ad nauseum.

Until the pattern repeats itself enough times that it registers in the conscious part of my brain –

YOU NEED TO USE THE BATHROOM. FOR REAL.

Last night, the dream went like this – I was doing research. On toilets. The first set were in a sprawling public bathroom. Most of them were completely useless. Broken doors, broken bowls, paper hanging out. Stalls too small or too open. The usual. One stall was occupied by David Bowie, who was working on a new tune. One of my companions asked if he found the environment inspiring, and he said that finding inspiration in filth was his specialty. Sadly, I never saw his face.

The second part of the dream consisted of my doing a survey of a ritzy neighborhood. At first I was just finding more of these run down public restrooms. Then I decided to give up on that and look for port-a-potties. I figured there had to be some somewhere – aren’t there always in a fancy neighborhood? As soon asked as answered, and soon I was walking into one. But then it promptly cut in half, vertically, with the side falling down as if on a hinge. Time to give up and wake up.

After waking up and taking care of business, I went back to sleep and dreaming a magical, mysterious scene that would fit right in with the NaNoWriMo story I am currently serializing over at JukePop (Sarah Elizabeth Jones, Time Traveller). And promptly forgot every detail of it. Thank you so much, Sandman.

Love Letter To The Wild Inhabitant of the Dark

December 13, 2013 by Rachel Bostwick

It will all be okay in the end.
I believe in reason and strength.
I believe in fable and fairytale
and I believe in you.

Hey, you, I’m restless tonight and I want to run,
But so many obligations keep me here.
My skin is like a heavy, wet jacket,
I want to shrug it off and streak in the rain.
But there’s a crowd around, so I slink back and refrain.

And the poets of this age, they say the dark is uninhabited.
They sing about the beauty of being alone.
But when I run through the dark, I can feel your arms around me.
I can hear your voice calling me home.

The rain comes down.
It blesses the dirt and the corn.
The wild cats drink it from puddles.
The maple takes it all in and grows exponentially,
Deepening her roots and spreading her arms.
If we all died tomorrow and stopped holding her in check
Her slow, persistent growth would take down all these human structures.
She would rule over them all.
Now to the harlequin beetle, the drop of rain is a looking glass.
She can touch it and behold her beauty, but it never bursts.
And they say that all these things grew in response to the rain,
That they love the rain because it first loved them.
Now I think that they were made to be loved, that the rain is a gift to them,
But I don’t give a shit which came first,
The gift or the giver,
The fact that they have each other is enough for me.

The poets of this age, they don’t believe,
That we have anyone but ourselves to be grateful to.
So they love themselves and do their honest best to love each other, too.
But I believe in someone else,
That I am not alone in the dark.
That even if my mate and my children,
My mother, my father, my hundred siblings,
All the wide family that has gathered me in, deepened my roots like those of the maple,
Even if they all disappeared tomorrow, I would not be alone, trembling in the dark.
I would eat the wild corn that grew up in fields.
There would be tangles instead of aisles, but the fruit would still be good to eat.
I would share my fruit with the wild cats, and they would come to nuzzle against my hand.
The beetle, she would be my muse.
And the rain would be your arms around me.
We’d run naked and free through the velvet dark.

I believe in you.
I believe in every fairy tale there is a reason,
And every fable is a true story of strength.
And it will all be okay in the end.

The Last Firefly

November 26, 2013 by Rachel Bostwick

Haven’t you ever wanted something so badly, that you knew having it would change your life forever? That happened to Grant a few years ago, shortly after Summer and Lina moved underground into the barrio he and his mother live in.

A short from the world of The 7th Judge

It was, as far as anyone knew, the very last firefly.

Summer had shown him a picture of a tiny beetle with a glowing behind in one of her mother’s fairytale books, and he’d been captivated. Since then, half of her art had been populated by swarms of the little lights, and together they wondered what it must have been like to seem the lights dancing around them in the old days. Grant couldn’t read, and Summer’s mother was the only survivor he knew personally who could. That made research tough, but he started by asking question of the old folks.

“Yes, I remember fireflies. No, we called them lightning bugs. We used to drive upstate to see swarms of them hiding in the low hanging branches of the willows. We’d fly through the the velvet dark in bare feet and catch them in our fingers. We let them go right away of course.”

“Firefly? My pa bought me one, but I broke it only a week later. He ‘bout killed me.”

“We smushed them against the pavement to make a glowy goo.”

“If you watched one in your hand, it had a kind of Morse code. It was calling to its friends to come and save it.”

“We caught a million of them in ball jars to make lanterns for the tree house.”

“My neighbor had three of them, and she let me borrow one, on its chain. My uncle caught me with the light on and I had to give it back, but it was worth it.”

All Grant could tell for sure was what he and Summer had learned from the book – they were bugs. And they had lights in their bums. It wasn’t much to go on. It sounded like they had once flocked out in the country, but people must have domesticated them or androidized them or something. He got the best description from Jerky Joe – it was he who had broken his within a week of purchase, but he remembered it in great detail. Jerky Joe was only in his fifties and he always had the best memories of the world before. He described the silver filigree and the swamp green light. He told Grant how he trained it to follow him around in the woods and it helped him light his way home. His face lit up while he was speaking, as if the memory of the firefly was casting its warmth over his countenance even now.

Grant had to find one. Had to. He was tired of traipsing through shadowy tunnels, pointing the assist light of his pod into spidery corners, never knowing for sure what was crawling around his feet. He loved exploring, but he hated the dark.

So he started asking around about a little velvet box with a winged lightbulb on the outside. No one had seen one. He bribed a few of the urchins with a pouch of Joe’s jerky and a handful of shinies to start scouting around in some of the apartment buildings. He picked the richest apartment building that had big enough places that kids might’ve lived there once, and he started looking. This particular building hadn’t been cleared yet. The prospect of searching it was gruesome but full of promise. For every bed with a skeleton about the same size as him, his chances of finding a firefly increased.

In the meantime, he was finding good stuff. Great stuff, trade-able stuff. Christmas? Done. Art supplies for Summer, a couple of still-legible books for Mrs. Layce, a beautiful cameo brooch for mom. When he had to sell the brooch to feed the family for a month when mom was laid up with a stomach sickness, it didn’t even phase him.

And then he found it. He hadn’t really believed he would, certainly not in the first building that he tried. And even if he did, he didn’t believe it would still work after sitting in a box (or worse – around the neck of it’s owner) for thirty years. But now he held it in his hands. He loosened it from the clasp and it hovered in the air before him. He took a step away and it followed him. He wanted to dance. He wanted to leap. Instead, he scrambled down eight flights of stairs – the firefly hot on his heels, the black velvet box clutched in his fingers – and flew toward the subway tunnel. He took the stairs two, three at a time. He slowed to a fast walk and the firefly caught up with him. It passed in front of him, about three feet, at eye level. His pod was tucked safely into his pocket. The glow of the firefly was twice as bright as the assist light and he didn’t need to point it. When he made a turn, he simply had to quietly direct it with his voice. It obeyed him better than that mutt he’d taken care of last year. He made it home in half the time. He ran his fingers along the dull stone wall to find the end of the door. He tapped the safety knock – four short taps then a slow slide. He almost didn’t bother, he just wanted to bust in and show his mom what he had found. But he didn’t want to give her a heart attack, so he knocked.

No answer.

He tapped again.

Nothing.

“Mama?”

He pushed the door open, jiggling it slightly to get over the rough patch of carpet. Mom wasn’t in the livingroom. He walked through the archway into the dark bedroom. The firefly followed ahead of him and lit the whole room.

“Grant…” she said. She was laying on her fleece on the ground. She hadn’t covered up with the blanket, and her nightgown was scrunched all around her as though she were tossing and turning. The swampy light of the firefly cast death shadows over the contours of her face.

“Mom, why aren’t you up?”

“I – I get Lina.”

He put the firefly away under his pillow. Mrs. Layce was fetched and herbs were administered, but the fever didn’t go down. There was nothing else for it. Mom needed antibiotics and she needed them fast. They hauled her up to the city hospital. Medicine was administered immediately – no one in the Bronx would ever be turned away due to lack of coin – but she wouldn’t be allowed to leave without paying. Or being sealed into employment. And Mom was so proud of her unbranded arm.

It didn’t take long to find a buyer for the firefly. A rich guy paid him enough coin to get Mom out of the hospital and home with a month’s worth of medicine that would clear the sickness right out of her body. Everything would be fine. There was enough left to buy a sack of colorful beads for Summer and a new pod for himself – one with a better assist light. He bought a better dog, too, one that would chase ahead of him and keep spiders away.

Summer took the beads and gave him the warmest of hugs. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her about the firefly – how he’d been so close to having one for himself. Maybe she would have understood. Maybe she would’ve helped him search another building. There were always more apartment buildings. Some were cleaned out, some were just as full of promise as that one had been. But he just didn’t have the heart. Besides, he had to do a lot more work with Mom recovering. Somebody had to keep food on the table. She fussed at him to get out and have fun more often, but as long as Summer traveled with him, hunting for food was fun enough, anyway. Always had been, always would be.

At Christmastime, Summer presented him with a gift – a loose bundle wrapped in brown paper and secured with twine. He pulled it out and gasped. It was a beautiful wool-lined cloak – the kind you really needed to be treasure-hunting in January in the Bronx. And Summer had decorated it all over with beautiful silver and green beads in the shape of tiny fireflies.

She passed him a little folded piece of paper. He opened it. It was a picture she had drawn of the two of them, walking through some dark tunnel – it could have been any tunnel, really, dark and mysterious. He was wearing the cloak, she was standing beside him holding her pod and pointing the assist light into the darkness. The light was pointed at a box with the lid open just the tiniest bit. You couldn’t see what was in the box – but that was the point, wasn’t it?

He squeezed her hand. “Want to go looking for treasure?”

She smiled.

Follow R. L. Wicke on Twitter	Like R. L. Wicke on Facebook
Follow @RLWicke

If you’d like to learn more about the world of the 7th Judge, please sign up for the newsletter below, and join us on Facebook or Twitter for daily updates!

[mc4wp_form]

Vegas

September 15, 2013 by Rachel Bostwick

Vegas Strip by Samantha Celera

Excerpt from a side story that I am writing occasionally. It’s different from my usual style but I like the way it reads.

Days 61 through 63 Owen spent in Las Vegas. Vegas was supposed to be the place to go for a man with a broken heart. He wore a dark suit and a dark jacket with a red power tie – he thought maybe Jane had mentioned that blue ties were more in fashion today – but he didn’t care, he wanted red. Glancing at himself in the mirror, he knew it was right; he looked the part.

He withdrew enough cash to look like a high roller, not a tourist, and then locked his real credit cards into his suitcase. He was down the first day, then caught up at the tables on day 62. He was making friends as easily as he used to. He told a lot of exaggerated stories about sailing and judging and made people laugh, even when they lost to him. He bought drinks for himself and those around him. People were drawn to his energy.

On day 63 he was joined by a cute blonde in her late twenties with blue eyes and nice ankles. She didn’t seem to want to place many bets of her own, just wanted to stand in his shadow and reflect him, and that felt good. He felt more like a man than he had in two months, stronger than he had since the first heart attack.

When he decided he was going to take a late lunch break, she followed him. Standing in line to eat with him, she tugged on his tie, pulling his face down to her level, grinning up at him and whispered something, not quite explicit, but definitely promising. He felt himself grow rigid and hot at her words and made a joke, something self-deprecating, the kind of joke that from a man in his position, just meant ‘don’t stop.’

She touched his arm and laughed encouragingly, a light, musical laugh, but when she did he saw how empty, endless and blue her eyes were. They were missing the warmth and the brownness and the sweet spirit that he loved. He dismissed himself suddenly, as quickly as he could without hurting her. He took her number on a napkin and did not promise to call.

He fled to his room, tossed the napkin in the hotel trashcan, stuffed everything in his large suitcase, and checked out without bothering to cash out. He hunted for his car in the vast parking garage – it took him an extra fifteen minutes of wandering around between seemingly-identical silver Civics because his brain wouldn’t focus – then floored it across the desert. It took only one rushed hour to get from that lunch line to the open highway. He never bothered eating lunch at all that day; he just drove.

He checked into a sleazy motel in Palmdale, not sure where he really wanted to go next. He ordered pizza, watched a stupid old comedy and fell asleep with the TV still on. That night, the girl was there in his dreams again, crystal blue eyes, loose blonde hair, tugging at his tie, pulling his face down to hers. But then the fever broke. Blue eyes were replaced with warm brown ones and in his dream it was Jane who was loosening his tie and throwing it in the trashcan on top of a crushed napkin, unbuttoning his steel grey shirt, tracing the outline of his scar with her mouth, with her tongue.

He woke at four-thirty the next morning from a deep, violent sleep. He stripped the bed in disgust and balled up the sheets, piling them into the corner to spare the motel staff from having to deal with it.

Later, over black coffee, he pondered where to go. He had a friend with a beach house in Dana Point. Far enough south that he wouldn’t feel the need to run home. A quick phone call and only a few awkward questions later, he had the address, the location of the key, and the welcome to stay for as long as he liked.

At least by the ocean he would be able to breathe again.