#1 – Unseat the King of Filth
#2 – Disband the Council of 18 Jerks and install a jerk co-op in its place
#3 – Turn around AT LEAST 360 degrees
#4 – Haul the Triumvirate of Bird Poets into the street and pelt them with damp feathers until they admit there’s not even three of them
#5 – Tear down the entire system that says that a year will ever end, so we never have to do this again
Q: What do you call a ceremony that involves candles, robes, a device for measuring the slipperiness of a dimension, and a chicken crossing a road?
A: I don’t know, but it’s happening in my basement and the walls are quivering and a bass note pealed like the cracking of a sky-sized bell!
Q: What do you call a witch wearing a hat?
A: Call them by the name they give you and never by the secret name you were never meant to know.
Q: How many witches fit into a bottle?
A: Seven. … Poorly.
Card Revealed: The 18 of Frogs
Orientation: Reversed
Associated with: Amphibians, travel, sprinkles on ice cream, regulations regarding the comportment of staff on cruise ships, disorder
Interpretation: Things are looking up for you! If you have been living in a pond with many croaking roommates, the universe is moving in a direction where you’ll have that pond to yourself! Pay attention to relatives and their gossip this week and don’t eat any flying insects.
Why don’t YOU try coming up with a secret handshake that works for everyone when your cult members have hands, tentacles, ghost fingers that are out of phase with this dimension, hooks, power gloves, drippy stalactites made of wrist-mounted fluid AND there’s one germaphobe who refuses to shake at all.
Your immune system is fine, Gary!
) Jan – Entered the mirror realm
) Dec – Exited the mirror realm, hair long and white. Started this list with no memory of that other reversed world. Did anyone see me there? Behind them as they combed their hair? What was I doing?
It’s Friday and we all know what that means! It’s time to follow people! Chase them down! Let the breath leave their lungs as they collapse into heaps like jellyfish, exhausted from our pursuit!
Consider the following:
Edith the Forgotten – Last seen by the lake’s shore in a wet dress. Was she swimming? Did she almost drown? Or is it a sign of solidarity with the waves? Follow to find out!
The Fur-Legged Triplets – Last seen under the porch, clutching eggs. Their eggs? Purloined eggs? Have you counted your own egg supply? Follow, follow!
Bobbing, mesmerizing lights in the bog – What are they up to? Let your thoughts fog and FOLLOW!
#ff
According to my scrying pool, today’s agenda was to include “kicking butt and taking names” but all I’ve managed by nightfall is to collect 18 names.
18 of my neighbors now answer to no name, cut free from the bonds of nomenclature. They drift where instinct takes them, responding not at all to their former names, which I have in a sack at the foot of my bed. (Closet’s full.)
But I have not kicked a single butt. What a day. Time to confess my failure to the scrying pool and pay a penance of fresh tears, to maintain the pool’s volume.
Most of magic is storytelling.
That’s why I buried my teeth out in the back garden. Someday the rain is going to bring them up again and when I tell people I can conjure a garden that eats fools, they can see its grinning and hungry mouth.
And I’ll be laughing with my toothless one, a summoner without peer.
All of a sudden all the cups falling out of your hands? All of a sudden all the hair falling out of your head?
Oh boy oh goshum. You’ve got the “I’ve Been Cursed” blues, buddy.
“What can I do?” you might be saying all mumblety as your teeth fall out ’cause of the curse.
It’s easy. Just send me $19.99 and take that extra penny and bury it outside when the fog rolls up. Walk around it 17 times ’til you forget which way the coin was: heads up or down.
I’ll be giving $9.99 to the person who cursed you, plus a look like: “knock it off Jack”.
You’ll be fiddle-fit by mid-month, no problem! Hoozah!
A writing collaboration with AI, generated by the Creative Help tool from the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. I wrote the header and first sentence, then prompted the AI to contribute. From then on, we traded sentences for awhile.
