Tag: magic

Punisher

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The Mystic Sisters have a good racket going.
One’s a punisher for hire, taking clients down into her dungeon and beating them within an inch of their lives.
A few days later, they see the fortune-teller sister, the one who read bruises instead of palms.
Sometimes, guys go into the dungeon but don’t go to the fortune-teller. Other times, they see the fortune-teller, but they got their bruises elsewhere.
And then, well, one day, the punisher limps into her sister’s house. She’s got two black eyes.
“Save the bullshit and just get me some ice,” she says.

Banana In My Pocket

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There is always a banana in my right jacket pocket.
Every time I reach in there, I feel a banana is in there.
I know this, because when I pull it out, I have a banana in my hand.
And, sure enough, another banana appears in my pocket to replace it.
You’d think this endless supply of bananas would be a godsend, but I don’t like bananas.
You like bananas?
I think this jacket’s about your size.
What have you got in your pocket? A plum? An orange? Strawberries?
Oh, you always have a weasel in your pants?
Never mind.

Middle Stall

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There are three stalls in the bathroom.
After careful observation, I’ve noticed that whenever Stanley uses the left one, he comes out the right one. And whenever he uses the right one, he comes out the left one.
Stanley can’t explain it. It”s just something that happens.
So, I asked him what happens when he uses the middle one.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never used it.”
He stepped into the center stall and closed the door.
A minute went by before I knocked.
“Are you in there, Stanley?” I asked.
He wasn’t.
If you see him, call me?

The Little Muse

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I know a girl who buys notebooks with a watercolor kitten in the corner of each page. She calls the kitten her little muse.
Sometimes, the kitten will take an interest in what she’s writing, romping among the words, chewing on commas, batting the letters around like wadded-up newspaper.
Other times, the kitten curls up on a warm, light sentence for a peaceful nap.
Once, she tore out a page and taped it to another to see if the kittens would play.
They didn’t.
And that’s how I found her body seven hours later, the blood-soaked notebook in her lap.

Delays

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Through the tears, the sky glistens like the clouds are coated with glass dust, spread across a smear of powder blue.
Beyond, stars twinkle in the darkness. You can’t see them during the day, but they’re out there, all around us, a snapshot from tens, hundreds, thousands, and millions of years ago as the light tries to get here as fast as it can.
Once, I heard thunder a year after lightning had struck a tree. I was walking past a tree stump when a loud blast shattered the air.
Better late than never, I always say, but enough’s enough.

The Mad King

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King Rasmussen The Mad
For centuries, that name has haunted us.
If you listen carefully, you can still hear his living corpse shout and scream bloody murder from within his ruined castle.
Trapped inside a warlock’s time-bubble, his dying moment has been preserved for all eternity.
Sure, by law, he is still king. And we must obey his orders.
So that’s why we have hired deaf laborers to seal him up forever. They are filling in the cracks of the castle, and then they will pile dirt on the stone
Maybe we’ll plant some apple trees when it’s all over.

Broken Notes

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Walter’s saxophone was tired of screaming out the same, broken notes every night.
Practice makes perfect, but in Walter’s case, it just made more noise.
And it made Walter’s saxophone utterly miserable.
One day, Walter tried to take the saxophone out of its case, but it had been locked.
He looked all over the place for the key, but he couldn’t find it.
He accused his neighbors of stealing the key, but none of them had taken it.
Walter didn’t want to break the lock, because it might damage the saxophone.
Never mind that the damage had already been done.

Three Moons

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People are freaking out because there’s three moons in the sky.
The third one appeared an hour ago.
The second one appeared a few hours before the third one, but people didn’t realize it because the first moon had just set.
Folks don’t notice those kinds of things, you know.
It was when the third one appeared over the horizon, they noticed the second one up there.
And the original moon one is coming up now.
Or is it a fourth?
Everybody’s wondering about Who? What? Why? How?
Me, I’m just loading up with silver bullets.
Do you hear wolves?

Book By Its Cover

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My master says not to judge a book by its cover, but it doesn’t take an archmage to realize that his spellbook’s a pretty nasty bit of business.
At first glance, you notice the silver needles along the binding dripping with poison while the dragonhide cover trails wisps of smoke, right?
But how many people would notice the howling bog-wraiths trapped as the bar code on the back?
I mean, who puts bar codes on the back of a spellbook? It’s not you’re going to want to list it on Amazon with an ISBN, right?
Archmages can be weird sometimes.

The Drummers

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The ghostly drummers are the spirits of the dead, a parade of the ancestors of this town.
Out of nothing, they appear from an alleyway, their slow steady beat echoes throughout the city.
Uniforms crisp and bright, they march proudly past their modern progeny.
“That is your grandfather,” whispers a mother to her son.
Ba-ba died before he was born, but still, the grandson waves to his grandfather.
The grandfather does not miss a beat, doesn’t look to the waving child.
He just marches on, keeps his place in line, and they all return to the dust of another alleyway.