Crow Tales

The following are micro-fiction pieces originally posted to X in response to Phantom Whispers’ daily prompts.

Prompt: THIEF

He stole everything from me that day on the deck of the Merry Weather—my family, my standing with the other kindred and the queen...my future. He stole that from me as well, the delusion that life can be perfectly bright and free. He replaced all that with what he left—revenge.

Prompt: PIRATES

Upon releasing Gray Beard from prison on the condition he serve as one of Bananaton's privateers, the provincial governor lost a great deal in a gamble with his advisor.

"Of course he returned to looting your ships. His freedom was granted for wealth and power, not justice."

Prompt: SEDATION

"Many a young yokel have come to my cove seeking salvation from the desolation sown by their ancestors. They leave in misery, for the Crown Cap mushroom offers nothing but truth and the despair of dissolution for all but the wisest. That is, the most broken."
—Canti, Lord of Fear

Prompt: SIMULATION THEORY

"What do you mean that you don't care?" The highwayman sighed a stream of vapor, shifted the e-pipe in his lips, then flicked the condenser switch on his Light-Rifle. "Say we really are all electric dreams in a digital library. How does that make you any less at my mercy?"

Prompt: THE DUMB-DOWN EFFECT

“Take a sip. You won’t regret my elixir’s royal effect. One quick swig and what-is will vanish, replaced by what ought-to-be. No need to learn, to fray your wit’s end. Drink, my friend, this bottled wisdom.”
—Doctor Edgar, Wand Smoke

Prompt: SOLIPSISM

The marauder gripped the stolen deathwand tucked behind his back and asked, "So you're saying if something lies outside the scope of your eyes, it didn't happen?"
The Neverlander grunts, "Are you deaf, Skraeling? Yeah!"
"What about her?"
He turns and never sees the shot coming.

Prompt: FREELANCER

They they were looking for a mercenary, someone creative enough to capture a prince without costing a king's ransom.
I dipped my demon-nail pen into a well of the fiend's blood, scratched a spirit's name, then chanted it to life.
"Freelance ghostwriter, at your service."

Prompt: SELD-OVERCOMING

He forgets everything he'd learned thus far. No number of late nights or early mornings training will win him the fight. Only courage can do that, the courage to let go of his fear of shame and embarrassment. Embracing defeat, he passes through it, one step closer to victory.

Prompt: INSOMNIA

He who laments an elusive night's rest has yet to experience tortures in sleep. But we wizards know, for the wisdom by which we wield the mysteries can only be bought with agony and death, again and again, trodden under the hooves of blue lotus induced nightmares.

Prompt: NEW HORIZONS

Mint's eye-lens flared, reflecting the harsh solar radiation unmitigated by cloud cover or atmosphere above. Yet despite the light, only obscurity stared back the Non. Not one of his make had ever scanned these horizons—none, rather, who had ever returned.

Prompt: TRAUMA

His wounds were great, though not so grave as those he gave to the stranger breaking in through his window. Nobody had taught the boy that such crime carried with it consequences, and now the man must suffer consequences as well.
He wonders whether the blood will ever wash out.

Prompt: WAR

"So what? Is war just a game to you, then? Men bleed and die and leave their loved ones behind for what? I suppose you'd say 'fun.'"
"No," he responds, "fun does not begin to cover it."

Prompt: LAZINESS

“Blast my damned publisher! Making me write yet another slew of micro-fictions for the magazine. ‘Why don't you try romance, just to spice things up?’
I'll give her romance, alright, a mag filled with habanero-hot loads of heartbreak!”
Thus he wrote the bestseller, "Tear Jerk".

Prompt: TRANSFORMATION

That last time you seen me, I mighta been a wimp. Damn, I'll say it. I was a hopscotch skipp'n bitch! But it ain't like that no more. I ain't like that, you feel me? Ever since I wand-whipped that bungler Logan like the bitch HE is, I really became Leroy THE KING!

Prompt: LITERACY

There are those who live other lives among the pages. I am not one of those. Amongst the words, I am my own person wearing a thousand-fold skins, wigs, accents, and roles.
I am the Narromancer, true speaker with the narrative word. "With," for I don't just read life, but speak it.

Prompt: OUT-OF-CONTEXT-PROBLEMS

"They say you're the best businessman and negotiator on the whole island! What do you mean not even you can convince her to forgive me?"
"It's like I said, friend. It's just the way with women. But if you still don't get it, try telling me how to make tomorrow a sunny day."

Prompt: THE UNKNOWN

He saw it not, that thing which crawled. Audibly its claws growled across soil and stone, growing ever closer, ever colder, like the thing's blood was drinking the very warmth from his body. But that couldn't be...not truly... Could it?

Prompt: UNCERTAINTY

"Who says God does not play with dice?" asks the outlaw, loading a single round into his cylinder. He spins it, then cowboys the wheel-gun shut as he utters, "There is nothing more divine than a game of chance." He takes aim at the sheriff. "Especially when it's for keeps."

Prompt: IRONY

The arsonist watched another section of city burn, another corner of Endsville returned to Hell. He watched from dusk till dawn, until his stomach rumbled, hungry for breakfast. And that is when he remembered: he left the stove on!

Prompt: OVERPOPULATION

Those human hunters do not understand our way, the way of wolves. We WANT our prey's numbers, as well as our own, to grow beyond the brink. Only then can we cull our herds.
Even now, we celebrate that half of our plentiful pack will starve. Those left will be the worthy hunters.

Prompt: INSTIGATION

"But what did I do?" whimpered the snivel'n Neverlander bitch. I flipped off her hood with the muzzle of my Sinnic Civil-Service. Damn, she was fine! A purebred, no less, or my name ain't the immaculate Huey Deadman.
But I am, so I said, "In the city, softness is a provocation."

Prompt: STEADFAST

The sniper's shot tore through Mint's armor plating in perfect silence; only the bright crimson light and subsequent orange-white glow of what internals remained adjacent the hole spoke of the damage.
Mint pressed on through the vacuum, reserving only the energy for one last saberpulse.

Prompt: CRYPTOZOOLOGY

It's a mistake to call it Mothman. It ain't a man. Ain't no man killed 'nother like that, run'n 'em to their own deaths. Cuz he ain't throw hisself onto that sand bar b'low the bridge. You hear? It ain't called Point Pleasant fur noth'n. We're happy here, but fur that thing.

Prompt: DISILLUSIONMENT

The first time I surrendered to temptation and lent Piànzi a piece of my enlightened soul, he consumed it right in front of me, and like the breath of fire my ambition fueled, I watched my tranquility go up in smoke.
After was only cold, like spent charcoal, the Way obscured.

Prompt: FORGIVENESS

I steadied my hand as best I could manage, but even blue lotus couldn't subdue the tremors.
"It's for revenge," I told myself, and that was true, which is why I couldn't follow through with it. Sacrificing this soul inside me to cast black witchcraft, I couldn't forgive myself, so I forgave him instead.

Prompt: INHERITENCE

When I took the constable job after Grant got eaten, I thought it would be easy. Just don’t get gulled by evil ghosts and dead guys and alchemists. As it turns out, you don’t just inherit power and responsibility. You get the mistakes, too, thinking that you know better.

Prompt: SORCERY VS SCIENCE

Bah! That Bradwr and his mere gremlin machines will never seize this island from me. He does not possess the Eye necessary to grasp the celestial insights like I, Domhnall the Visionary, have!
Had—till that Skræling dastard slashed my philosopher's stone in half.
Still...there is sufficient magic.

Prompt: WE ARE ALONE

Mint gazed unfazed through the lens of the telescopic temple known by the Non as the Eye of God.
Beyond the black veil of a phantom atmosphere was not but fire, stone, and void like a bottomless hole.
It was as he believed: there could be no higher being to become than Human.

Prompt: AMNESIA

The Non stuffed his bulbous head into the anvil socket such that the top stuck up like the dome of a temple, shining brightly beneath the shadow of the auto-hammer. Then the Bright flipped a switch, and the hammer fell, flattening his head, making all thoughts, dreams, and memories therein two-dimensional.

Prompt: CONJURING

I've never seen that kind of summoning spell, evoking the Spirits not by invocation but with rhythm.
Kneeling and hopping and swinging his arms back and forward, he calls forth from his shadow a twice-cursed shade, running—for behind followed what the Skræling call a Demon.

Prompt: PATRIOTISM

The Mulatto’s vision began to swim in the red venom of revenge. He’d heard this argument before and reveled at the chance to answer. “As an American, my antithesis to your deconstructivist position is this: a question, ‘How socially constructed are bullets?’”

Prompt: DECEPTION

He promised them wisdom within, vision of perfection, and freedom from sin. “All you must do is listen, my friends, and resist the temptation of interpretation. That’s it! And you will know right from evil and the difference between them.”
So spake the Prince of Darkness.

Prompt: PRESERVATION OF KNOWLEDGE

Words imbedded in electricity were too fragile to trust, as were those stored in echoes, mouth-to-ear. Even of ink was he skeptical. He'd seen too often whole written sentences twisted or skipped. The only way to pass on his knowledge was to embody it, in himself and his son.

Prompt: BETRAYAL

“D’you really think they’re innocent as that?” asked the second mate.
The Captain replied, “Aye. I’d trust my wife with my life if it came to it—as I do with my first mate on the regular.
“Then I've some sour news for you, Cap'n...” uttered the second his murderous lies.

Prompt: CLONE

I write these notes so none will replicate my mistake. Cloning technology works, yes. We've worked out the kinks—the increased risk of cancer; and we've even jumped the higher hurdle, the artificial womb. But we did not account for all the variables, Something is missing, something without which men are but monsters.

Prompt: POWER

In the Legends of Gerard the Giant Slayer, it says the power of the mad stone drove Ogier to tyranny, genocide, and the transmogrifying his soldiers into flesh-feasting dogs.
That's wrong. The lapis was merely a means. Its power did not corrupt his soul; it merely revealed it.

Prompt: FRUSTRATION

I'm shocked to find any non else so close to the Wrath. The Flat-Heads, I’m sure you asked, should’ve told you that no non’s circuits can survive the storms. That’s true as it is my reason for leaving—which one can't do with non of shallow seeing. True! I’m mad as they make me.

Prompt: COSMIC VOID

“Are you sure you want to know?” asked the fortuneteller. “What I see in my crystal, I assure you it’s not what you wanted.”
The astrologer nodded, undaunted. “I must know the stars I serve.”
“That's just it; there are no stars! They are but tricks of light in the firmament!”

Prompt: Future Predictions

Chuang asked his fellow scholar, Kong, “What does the sage's wisdom say of the future?”
“Much & more,” Kong replied, already feeling his temper rise. “More than a coursing river! More than your little cup could ever hold!”
Chuang laughed. “Of course! But mine is empty. Yours...”

Prompt: SURVIVAL

Mint’s eye shuttered, struggling to focus on damage done to his chassis in the dim, smog-smothered sun. After seconds of staring through error codes, the non realized that there was no damage. His arm was just gone.
Seeing this, Mint rose from the rubble and continued on.

Prompt: SUPERHEROES

They call me Redemption, or they would if they ever knew somebody was turning back time to give them second chances.
If only I could give it to each person more than once, then maybe I could save everyone. But it's two strikes and you're out. Better make this one count.

Prompt: OMEN

“Come on, kid. For old time’s sake.”
“Fine,” I give in and eat the mushroom. My vision blooms, and I commune with the Spirits how I used to as Canti’s seer. “Hear me, Thou Spirit Amgine! Fill me with thy mercurial wisdom! Reveal to us the fate of the Lord of Black Flame!”

Prompt: ESCAPE

Scrawny as he was, the Bastard barely stuffed himself into the dumbwaiter. But up it went, right to the Big Boss's private room.
Out of the fire & into the coke den. He only hoped his lover's over-protective father was out cold by then. He didn't except to find him stone dead.

Prompt: DEATHMETAL

He’d done it, what the flat-heads said was impossible. He traversed the Wrath, delved into the womb of the dead Mother. And now, with the schematics safely saved inside his electron-cloud brain case, he played an iron ballad for her, Rusted Matron.

Prompt: UNREQUITTED LOVE

Rach down at the Rath says that if I down enough Juni-B, I’ll forget all about Morven and that Neverlander broad, whose name I never did get. But bitch, that's a fuck’n lie! She just wants my money. But I wish it was that quick. Jus’ tip a dozen cups an’ vomit lovesick.

Prompt: CYBERPUNK

“Why don't ya get a regular chass, huh? Like that lass there, instead of be’n so...indecent, show’n  your machine parts?”
Wake's eye blinked; her cyborg lens did not, nor did her chest rise as she sighed. “She believes she'll be a girl forever. I want to remember that I'm not.”

Prompt: STELLAR EMPIRES

Each new frontier seemed more like the old. Faster than light travel brought the return of couriers, hard currency, then piracy in the ungovernable reaches of deepest space.
As they board the first interdimensional vessel, they wonder what ancients they unwittingly resurrect.

Prompt: NIGHT TERRORS

I'm not sure which scares me more, watching the sun plunge behind the hilltops or the horror that rises as I fall asleep.
Dreams are real, at least for me. They take place in our world, in my hometown, even. I've visited myself sleeping, once. Never more, not since the monsters.

Prompt: WASTED LIFE

“No, kid. You don’t want to be like me,” says Canti. Ogier laughs, but his host holds his lipless grimace. “The townies call me a hero now, but there was a time before then when I was just a blind, Crown-dealing, cult-leading troglodyte. Decades wasted. I can't recall how many.”

Prompt: RACKETEERING

“Man, you’re crazy. That ain’t never gonna—Ouch!”
“Take this stash up to North Sinnic, sell it, and gimme half when you get back.”
Connie rubs his red cheek. “Damn Leroy, fine! But what does this—”
I whack him again with the stolen paddle. “I told you, cuz. It’s called a racket.”

Prompt: PLANET MOVING

“Why must the Moon serve the Sun? Because She’s not as bright? But She moves the tides and guides at night.”
The sorcerer pondered his daughter’s query and responded, “Let’s see how we fair ’neath Her sway and not His.”
Thus was Earth sprung free from the Sun’s gravity and flung forever into the icy nether.

Prompt: SISYPHUS

The gods may scoff at me toiling for eternity, but I could never be happier. Immortality is mine, as is purpose. For a Greek man of leisure, my every day is divine: I contemplate and exercise, admiring this body of mine—classically statuesque boulder-shoulders and column thighs!

Prompt: NANOBOTS

The seas, long since boiled off then recondensed into an angry shadow of their former fathoms, were believed to be bereft of animate beings. Not so, Mint discovered. Though the waves seemed desolate, they teemed with microscopic non—the true cause for the ocean’s inhospitality.

Prompt: ATTRITION

The Mulatto racked the slide on the Desert Eagle, chambering a .44 hollow point, out of the magazine and into the barrel. “It’s like that.”
“Like what?” the Bastard asked.
“Life day-in and day-out. It’s how the fat cats want you to live, on the clock, working for them.”
“Yeah? And what can we do about it?”
He thumbed off the safety.

Prompt: OVERCOMING ADVERSITY

It’s been a minute since my last run in with the mad dog marauder. Since then, I been up-jumped to brigadier for clean’n the streets of Clan an’ them new loony abolitionists. I done blasted half the immaculate in this city. Only question now is taking on the mad dog. Am I ready?

Prompt: AUTUMN

The smooth scraping of steel on stone sounded loud as summer cicadas, though the lakeshore was dead in autumn. Doraku drew one last pass before the duel. A breeze breathed over the water; suddenly, the lake teemed alive with leaves. Death descended. The trees stood silent, barren.

Prompt: COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS

“What do you mean IT wants to Speak with US?”
“Not WITH, TO!” The professor gesticulated for emphasized. “What could we have to teach something as virtually infinite as the universe itself?”
“How to design sensible women,” the student scoffed. He later died locked in the asylum.

Prompt: FEAR OF THE FUTURE

“Time? Time is an illusion, my ignorant barbarian,” confessed the wizard.
The warrior retorted, “Bah! I can prove you wrong with my axe!” He cleft the wizard’s head in twain. “Behold, mage, the before and after!”

Prompt: GROUNDHOGSDAY

“Seekest thou immortality?” asked the demon, and you replied, nodding and grinning as do greedy children in a candy shop. Only once you hear the bargain do you stop. “Then it is, for a blessing or curse, tomorrow ever after shall be the next day’s rehearsal!”

Prompt: RENEWAL

The Lord of Black Flame was once Lord of Fear, and those were his titles before he became Warden. And somewhere in there, he turned into my father, too. I suppose it's only natural now that I'm no longer his little girl, Broken, that we become somebody else: Mama and Grand Trog.

Prompt: TARDINESS

The archives told of a malfunctioning Mother who, in Her throes, had fled to the edge of the world.
Only one non had gone to save Her. His tribe was of Hominid model, like Mint's; and he, too, carried their sacred invention and weapon.
But when he found Her, She was only rust.

Prompt: HUNTED

The name's Wolfgang.
No, I told you, I'm Goblin--up your kids. Better get quick with the trigger. I'm bitter without salt. But that won't stop me assaulting, see? A hob doesn't need a head. I just want to eat your heart out.

Prompt: THE GREAT DIVORCE

The Sorcerer scoffed and went back to polishing off his AR platform. It was quite the black beauty, a bit of irony for someone of such hateful persuasion. “Those misanthropes can't leave us alone now. What makes you think a border with them isn't just another line to cross?”

Prompt: BIOTECHNOLOGY

“Uncle Gnostius, do you ever regret your arm getting withered off because of getting turned into a wolf-man?”
The alchemist turned engineer turns toward the nearest prisoner-turned-archery target. He aims his wooden machination limb replacement and looses a quarrel. “Not a bit.”

Prompt: HALLOWEEN

“Trick or treat?” the Bastard asked, holding up a candy shop with his Glock poking  through a bullet hole in the billowing, pillow-case ghost he'd used to rob rich snobs every Halloween.
This sleep-sack could haul a great deal of cash, but really the Bastard just wanted candy.

Prompt: SHADOW PUPPETS

“What do you mean my authority ain’t real?” the officer growls now that it’s undoubtable no amount of howling will regain control.
The Gambler flips a coin. “Heads or tails?”
“Are you gonna answer my—”
BLAM!
The cop’s knee cap explodes.
“We’re not scared of shadows, officer.”

Prompt: FORGING NEW PATHS (×2)

(1) “The first step seems the darkest,” says Canti, or maybe it's Ogier, “but once you're plunging into the depths, you realize that was the easy part.”
“What does that have to do with cold water?”
He throws his Lapis into the middle of an iced Black Lake and kicks me in after it.

(2) “Forge a new path?” Despite my previous profession, the turn of phrase tastes fake, like Doctor Edgar's cinnamon date bread. I point with Ashlynn's rebirthday sword toward the Kingmaker slung from the warden's shoulder. “I'd rather cut a new path instead, or maybe blast one.”

Prompt: WINDS OF CHANGE

"The winds of change," starts the Mulatto, "can be the breath in a ship's sail, or they can be like those winds of utter destruction which once blew in futility for Wukong."
"And how did he survive them?" asks the Bastard, seeking any port in a bullet storm.
"He transformed."

Prompt: FORGETFULNESS

I no longer know the difference between pain and memories. Without Crown Cap, they come to me intertwined, the people who died and the ones I killed. Eating the mushrooms means the dissolution of self. I still recall what I did, but it feels a bit like blaming someone else.

Prompt: PENANCE

I’m done wishing I could bring them back again. That’s what killed them in the first place. No. It wasn’t the wishing, it was me. I killed Thomas and Muad and that coal miner—I can’t remember his name. Either way, I’m done. It’s time I move on and save someone who’s still living.

Prompt: GRATUITY

“So then, when the wench came back with a shine in her eye an' a big ass mug of barely wine, I flipped a legit Merrigold minted golden coin into her cleavage and said there's more gratuity than just the tip waiting for her back at my South Sinnic apartment.”

Prompt: COMMUNISM

“I still can’t understand,” Van Edwin vents over the Chaturanga set.
Across from him, Unicorn, a renegade Neverlander elf tries to explain, “That’s ’cause it ain’t human nature. It’s fay to live with noth’n but what’s magic’s in his blood. That’s it! It ain’t real but for magic!”

Prompt: BRINGER OF LIGHT

The warlock blinked, & in his eyes winked the reflection of a sole star shining behind its glass firmament. With his crystal ball, he was in possession of all lost & forbidden knowledge, for residing within was a primordial demon. The warlock sought no wisdom beyond its light.

Prompt: WRITING BLOCK

It is said that a descendent of Cain created the written word for the sake of recording epics of war. It is also said he carved the first quills out of the bones of his victims when stagnation frustrated his art. He killed them with a stone—the first writer’s block.

Prompt: PEACEMAKER

“More madness, Rinzai!” Scholar Kong fumed. “You cannot believe peace is to begot by MORE swords crossing?”
The monk chuckled. “But when two swords are crossed, how can they cut anybody? It’s only the lonely blade who bathes in blood.”

Prompt: FEMCEL WARFARE

The battlefield burned white, black, brown, and calico with the shorn hides of the rival matriarchs’ combatants. Mewling cries choked the sky like smoke, and through this bedeviled air stared one pair of wrinkle ringed-eyes at her opposition’s shriveled lips.

Prompt: ARCANE SECRET

“An arcane secret? Why, boy, every arcane thing is hidden from mortal ken.”
“Then you can tell me one, Uncle?”
The wizard adjusted his half-moon spectacles. Looking over them, he said, “You know our neighbor, Master Lovecraft... Well, the truth is, he’s got the right of it.”

Prompt: CHRISTMAS

The story got it wrong. It wasn’t greed that got the ghosts after him. It was his spiritlessness. Well, such is the world’s sin this Christmas, so I shed my skin and don the cloak of recompense—its pale folds cold, killing those who cling to things instead of friends and relatives.