A Little Thing

Lecturer Llysa finds a thumb drive after class one day, and wonders what is on it. Written for the Top In Fiction Small and Scary challenge.

‘Such a small thing. Such a little thing.’ This quotelet occurred to a certain Professor Llysa Enish. She fancied herself a Tolkien fan, though her own expertise was in sociology. She had just found, at the end of a Friday afternoon, on one of the desks in the lecture room, a tiny thumb drive. The object could fit entirely on the bitten-down nail and first knuckle of her thumb. She was pretty sure who it belonged to: Stellar de Fondre, the… she wasn't sure.

Stellar was a decidedly bohemian personage, with untamed multi-coloured locks of hair that might once have been brown, who made pertinent points and raised interesting questions during her lectures—and wasn't on her list of students. There was no record of anyone with that name, but at every one of Llysa's lectures, Stellar would be present. Well, it wasn't hers to keep, but with no record—and therefore no way of getting hold of Stellar—she had no way of returning it. She put it in her purse for safekeeping and promptly forgot about it.

A few days later, while searching for a pound coin to free up a shopping trolley, Llysa found the thumb drive. All memories of how it had got in there had long fluttered away on a breeze of busyness, so she carried on shopping until she got home. On the way back, she stopped to drop a coin into a beggar’s hand, and found the thing again. This time she relocated it to her coat pocket, so when she was getting out her front door key, she found it again. She put it on the worktop.

After she had unpacked the shopping and fed both herself and her dogs, Llysa remembered the thumb drive, and since she had to prepare for a lecture the following day, she popped it into a port on her laptop to see what was on it.

An extreme close-up of an ornate brass keyhole faded from a dull yellow screen into view, then zoomed out, making Llysa feel as if she was being pulled backwards, even though she wasn't moving. A plain brass mortice-type key hovered sideways towards the keyhole, displaying its wards before it turned end-on, slid into the hole, and turned. The screen went black. Llysa waited while the screen split into four wide triangles; two intersecting white diagonal lines faded in and grew wider until a small red stylised rose head appeared right in the centre of the screen. It metastasised, each copy rapidly spinning and changing colours; patterns within patterns in neon clashing colours like a demented kaleidoscopic disco.

Meanwhile, the sound of a thousand wailing voices grew from a faint whine to a deafening roar. Each of the voices faded in and out, uttering distinct words and phrases in a range of languages she’d never heard before. A few English, Old Saxon, Latin, Ancient Greek, and Old Norse fragments wove in and out of the cacophony.

Llysa blinked. This was giving her a headache. It was just as well she didn't have epilepsy. She didn't quite realise what was keeping her eyes glued to the screen till she noticed that the patterns were undeniably resolving themselves into words that were showing more clearly and plainly in black-rimmed white letters, imprinting themselves on her heart and soul just as the mad riot of shouting was calming down. The words, spoken and written, slowed down and the screen went white. The words, spoken and written, were in English. Llysa knew what she had to do.

***

At a bus stop near an old church, a middle-aged woman stood waiting for a bus.

Llysa walked towards her with her dogs.

The woman smiled.

Llysa smiled back, and when the woman had turned her back to watch for the bus, Llysa grabbed her by the chin from behind and slid her sharpest knife across her throat. She let her slump, gurgling, to the ground. She promptly turned around and walked on till she had rounded the corner. By the time she got home, she had completely forgotten all about it.

The moment she arrived at her front door and put the key in the lock, she remembered that she had something important to do. She found a thumb drive sitting beside her laptop. “I wonder what that is,” she said aloud, though there were only her dogs to hear her. She popped the thumb drive into the port to see what was on it.

The End.

See the other Big and Beastly / Small and Scary stories.

This story is part of the Stellar de Fondre series. This is the narrative order:

The Eden Gambit

A Little Thing

The Spirit of the Forest

The Enlightenment of Llysa Enish

The Execution of Stellar de Fondre

Control

Next: The Spirit of the Forest, a sequel.