Sometimes, Trixie likes to trade bodies with me.
So, I got out the soulstones, handed her one, and swallowed the other.
And then we went to sleep.
The next morning, everything was grey, and I felt strange and awkward.
I tried to feel myself, but I didn’t have Trixie’s hands or body to feel with.
I was in the dog.
She’d covered her soulstone with peanut butter and fed it to the dog!
I’m in the goddamned dog now!
I barked a few times, and that’s when the smell hit me.
A bowl. Filled with anti-freeze.
I… just… can’t… resist!
Tag: magic
Summoning
I went out into the woods with my backpack full of bacon and candles, looking for the perfect spot.
Aha. A clearing.
Perfect.
I set down the heavy backpack, opened it up, and began opening up the packages of bacon.
Arranging the strips in a pentagram, I placed candles at each of the five points.
Then, I took off all of my clothes, I wove the remaining strips of bacon into a loincloth, and pulled it on.
After I lit the candles, I swayed and chanted, hoping to summon something from The Bacon Universe.
Instead, the fire department showed up.
Books
Boring? No!
Libraries can be fun and exciting.
All the ideas and hopes and dreams of generations past are contained in books.
Plus, a few surprises.
If your library is old enough and you can forge academic research credentials, you can get access to some really old books.
This Fifteenth Century French cookbook contains many wonders, but the fact that the author wrote over a Ninth Century demon summoning guide makes it extra-special.
With a little lemon juice and a match, I can…
Someone hisses.
It’s not the librarian… it’s the demon.
I slit my finger… here comes the fun!
The Leader
Sufficiently powerful magic swords can overwhelm their owners and take control of their bodies.
So when the fighter we’d hired with a king’s ransom in the tavern drew the sword we’d lent him and growled “This one will do” in Razorwind’s cold steel voice, we knew we had our party leader back.
“This time, can you save a healing spell for my handler?” the sword asked our cleric. “The money you keep paying and taking back from them can buy a potion or two.”
The cleric whispered “Certainly, sir.” and Razorwind pulled back from his neck.
And we marched on.
Flower Shop
The whole town loves Evelyn’s flower shop.
It’s a nice store, right there on Main Street.
The awning needs a bit of work. And the paint’s faded on the glass on the door.
She keeps saying she’ll touch it up, but she never does.
The flowers are pretty. She grows them herself in greenhouses behind her house, right outside of town.
There, she plants the seeds, keeps the plants fed and watered.
She cuts her finger, sings the magic spell, and rubs the blood on silver shears.
Snip.
Snip.
And we all love her shop just a little bit more.
In The Dead Of Night
The tooth fairies exchange money for teeth.
Then, the sandmen grind them up into dream dust.
Overprotective dogs aren’t a problem with a face full of dream dust, but motion-sensing alarms can be.
Then there’s the sandmen and fairies who think the whole racket is stupid, so they steal jewelry, credit cards, and MacBooks.
Don’t get me started with the bootleg videos of hot celebrities and models sleeping. The Council can barely deal with the Lindbergh baby incident, let alone Internet paparazzi stalker porn. Technology’s like magic to them.
We’ll pay for Lady Gaga’s dentures and a new laptop, okay?
The Fallen Rise Up
Veteran’s Day is for the living soldiers, and they march in parades.
Memorial Day is for the fallen ones, and we go to the cemeteries to put wreaths and flags on their graves.
This wasn’t enough for the witchdoctor, who poured a strange bubbling concoction into the fertilizer bin of the automatic sprinkler system at Arlington National Cemetery.
The timer went off at midnight, by the next morning, our nation’s finest and bravest were roaming the cemetery, shambling around and moaning “BRAAAAAAAAAAAAINS! BRAAAAAAAAAAAAINS!”
Except for Ted Kennedy’s corpse, who had commandeered a maintenance cart, and driven it into the Potomac.
Cinderell-huh?
If Cinderella’s glass slipper fit, why did it fall off?
And when it fell off, why didn’t it turn back into her ragged ordinary slipper when the clock struck midnight?
The horses turned back into mice.
The carriage turned back into a pumpkin.
Her ball gown turned back into the clothes she was wearing the day before.
So why not that slipper?
It’s because of the Fairy Godmother.
Why she didn’t just blast the wicked stepmother and the two sisters with her magic wand and make the prince her undying love slave, well, that’s because she was a manipulative bitch.
A Good Magician
I love doing my magic act for the kids.
After all these years the tux still fits me, although it and my cape, hat, and wand look a bit worse for wear.
And then there’s Pete, my bunny.
How long do they live?
Because I’ve had him for over thirty years.
No trick here: rabbit food, the occasional carrot or radish as a treat, and free reign of the house.
Perhaps he’s magical? Or some kind of government superbunny.
I offer him a carrot. “Are you a secret superbunny, Pete?”
Pete is silent.
A good magician never reveals his tricks.
The Judges Demand
The fear holds me tight.
The judge demands an answer, but I have none.
I take the Swiss Army Tool from my pocket, flick out the sharpest blade, and draw it cross my left palm.
It doesn’t take long for enough blood to well up, and I quickly draw a circle around my feet.
“O Great Ancestors!” I shout. “Guide me through this moment of peril!”
The dust begins to swirl… the lights grow dark… a rumbling from the skies…
“DISQUALIFIED!” shouts the judge.
The dust settles, the lights come back up.
“Next contestant: Zymurgy.”
And they spell it right.