KEY MUMMY
Wrapped in a shroud, weighted down with keys, this figure was sent like an astronaut into the afterlife with the expectation that they’d be able to throw the doors wide open.
They’re back. Clanging. Still on the old mission? Was a new mission waiting behind a locked door?
Possessions:
3 Extraplanar Navigation
2 Lockpick
1 Strength
1 Dust
Had a Dream Once of Butter…
Butter? No. Ha! You Thought This Was… ? No.
The Cruel Trick That Resembles Butter
Don’t’cha Wish Butter Was Affordable?
Butter-Adjacent
But_er
An Empty Case That Smells of Butter
An episode of HOUSE HUNTERS where they invent the flint spear and find it penetrates the houses’ furry hides more readily than sharpened wood.
An episode of HOUSE HUNTERS where one of the hunters becomes entangled with their house prey and the two tumble into a tar pit, irretrievably. The hunters mourn. The houses forgive.
An episode of HOUSE HUNTERS where no houses are seen. Belts are tightened. A storm approaches.
lost time incident 85
The noon hour approaches here in the House of the Lost Time Incident, the hour before which nothing of consequence can or should happen. I’ve had breakfast, the requisite coffee, and my personal laptop (freshly back from the shop) is mostly behaving. Mostly.
Threw open the back room’s window and lined the window sill with peanuts as invitations and within a moment of sitting down, a local California scrub jay, a neighbor, popped by the window sill to poke through the peanuts to select the best one before leaving again.
With any luck, a good sign. An invitation accepted so quickly and readily can’t help but bode well for the afternoon’s plans, which are: more typing.
I’ve got a scenario I’m writing for this role-playing game competition that requires me to outline a descent into destruction in some haunted woods. The destruction path is sketched out. The challenge ahead is managing to write up a good reason why anyone playing the game would want to march their imaginary alter ego into said woods and into said destruction.
Might also much about with a tiny game jam idea about the perils of outer space.
But first, I figured I should warm up the fingers here because you folks haven’t heard from me in a while. Hello! You’re hearing from me.
Skin Dry as Actual Hell? You Need These Hydrating Face Washes
1) Neptune’s Fish Slap Ichor
2) Fishscales & Sugarsnaps Moisturizing Bug Juice
3) A lemon and a half dollar, applied vigorously, then rolling in a compost heap
4) Buggeroo’s Face Melty (In A Good Way) Face Melt
5) Mrs. Falcon’s Skincare Trust Fall
Top New First Aid Techniques Q3 2019
1) The Wiggle Finger
2) Blood Loop-the-Loop (aka the “bloop-the-bloop”)
3) Bandages on Bandages on Bandages
4) Technology-Assisted De-Inflation
5) The Health Pit
healthy debate
Is it a spell book that smells like it was written in blood, not ink? Yes.
Does its cover feature what seems to be an actual face instead of a nice illustration, or the expected title & author’s name? Again, yes.
But to the question “Shouldn’t we put it back where we found it instead of reading from it during a thunderstorm in this abandoned farmhouse surrounded by farm equipment such as pickaxes and pitchforks, far from home, our cellphones dead?”
Well. I object to that question’s framing.
ending theme song
Well, what do you think? Better than the average email in your inbox? Worth sticking it out? Great!
What’s that? You’d like an entire e-book of micro-fiction from the author of this newsletter? Oh boy, that’s all tall ord— WAIT A MINUTE, that’s a thing you can totally have: https://gumroad.com/l/witchestown
The book is pay-what-you-want because who knows how much words formed out of electricity should be priced at. The entire universe is winding down and these are big questions for one writer to answer, so I’m not going to do it. Someone grabbed a free copy just the other day and we’re all still here. People have paid money for it and we’re all still here.
Anyway. Hope you’re doing well. When things get to be too much, just remind yourself that we’re pinned between two eternities in time and the present moment is the only real moment. Memory is ephemeral and the future is guesswork. You’re here now. You read a nice newsletter. It’s not so bad, is it?
—Michael Van Vleet
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It was the style, at the time, to grow a beard to a length where you could grip it with your toes. And we walked about, hunched over, our toes tugging at our chin and jowls, if we hadn’t yet reached a length that would allow us to walk upright, unwilling to postpone the pleasure.
1) Neptune’s Fish Slap Ichor
2) Fishscales & Sugarsnaps Moisturizing Bug Juice
3) A lemon and a half dollar, applied vigorously, then rolling in a compost heap
4) Buggeroo’s Face Melty (In A Good Way) Face Melt
5) Mrs. Falcon’s Skincare Trust Fall
When your journalist friend says “Oh, by the way, there’s a dangerous frog cult in this town, so watch what you say,” it’s perfectly natural to laugh. But when they have notes, and photographs, and stories they can’t publish about ruined lives… lives ruined in the dripping catacombs beneath the public library, the same ones high schoolers dare each other to enter, no matter how many of their older siblings warn them off with tales of lost classmates no one will talk about or acknowledge… well then. Then you just have to listen. And wonder how much of the croaking you hear on warm nights with your window open is benign… and how much of it may be plotting.
Elliot was the kind of criminal to put on 18 different latex masks for a midnight burglary. Every surveillance camera sees a different Elliot.
“Almost passing out is part of the thrill,” he said. “At first you can’t breathe but as you discard a face in each room you enter, it gets easier.”
1) The Wiggle Finger
2) Blood Loop-the-Loop (aka the “bloop-the-bloop”)
3) Bandages on Bandages on Bandages
4) Technology-Assisted De-Inflation
5) The Health Pit
tired: Making AIs self-destruct by telling them “This statement is a lie.”
wired: Making an AI vent me into space because I asked them to prioritize the task of creating a portmanteau for “manager” and “manger” so I had a word for where managers would eat from if they lived in barns and didn’t have hands.