Arznstigation Days
Y’all may remember I did a favorable but short review for Michael A. Arznen’s horror poetry compilation, The Gorelets Omnibus. Well Michael’s got a neat creative project running on Kickstarter called Fridge of the Damned, and it’s a set of magnets with a selection of wicked words on them so you can make your own creepy poetry efforts. He’s already reached his minimum goal, but he’s got a stretch goal, and if he makes this goal, the kits will include a nice tin to keep all those loose words in.
I’ve already backed the project, but Heidi Ruby Miller of Raw Dog Screaming Press asked if I would post up something like a short story or an excerpt based on one of Michael twisted writing prompts. I looked through the list of “Arznstigations” and found “an everyday item used as a magic wand.” That’s lucky, because I’ve just finished writing a book where a wooden spoon is used twice as a magic wand. It seemed a perfect fit, and obviously I’m happy to help promote Michael’s project. (Especially since I also get to offer a quick preview of one of my own upcoming releases.)
The second scene happens much later and is perhaps a bit too spoilery, so here’s the first use of the spoon as a wand in Sandy Morrison and the Pixie Prohibition:
“I’m sorry,” Sandy said.
“Why are you apologizing?” Todd shook his head. “You don’t need to be sorry for bringing your work home with you. Besides, how much can these things possibly eat?”
Sandy opened her mouth, and then looked down at the table. “Oh, yes, good point.”
“What?”
“Queen Maben says the pixies will still have to go out to harvest their own food. I…hold on.” She stared at the table, so Todd looked at the table to try and sort out which dot was talking. He got nowhere with this hunt before Sandy went on. “Maben says she won’t stay with us long, but she needs at least a month here before she’ll be able to handle the weaving of another hive.”
“She’ll do the whole thing herself?” Todd asked.
Sandy looked down at the table again, and in the following silence, her expression became rapt with fascination. She nodded and looked up at Todd. “It’s one of the differences between queens and drone females, and it’s a result of the queens being submersed in pixie dew for almost a year. They don’t just drink it. They live inside it, like a secondary stage of development. All that exposure to the extra hormones found in female secretions turns on their ovaries and softens their exoskeletons. They absorb more liquid and take on a corpulent form, and that liquid is stored in her abdomen until she needs it for weaving.”
“So—” Todd stopped when Sandy held up her hand.
After a short pause, she said, “Maben says she will need to eat a lot to make a new hive, which will make her swell up. She’ll be more vulnerable then, but she’ll need to leave in secret and scout for a new hive location. With as few drone are left, she won’t have to make a very big hive, but the process will drain her and leave her in hibernation for a few weeks possibly longer. So her drones would still need to stay here even after she’s departed. Maben says that after she wakes up, she’ll return for her people and take them to their new home.”
“So what do pixies look like?”
Sandy opened her mouth, and then closed it, getting to her feet. “I’ll just be right back.”
When she returned, she carried a wooden spoon with the head curled in her hand. Leaning over the coffee table, she drew a circle in the air over and over. Steam gathered in the space under the spoon, and then condensed into a pool of water. The pool shifted, looking like it would drop onto Todd’s lap.
He backed up, dreading a cold splash, but the water remained levitating at an angle, and through the water, a cluster of enlarged black and yellow blurs stood waiting his inspection. “I can’t see a thing.”
“Yes, hold on,” Sandy said through gritted teeth, and then relaxed her jaw. “I have to get the shape of the water right, but this isn’t as easy as it looks to you.”
At last, Todd was brought face to face with his new roommates, and he made a tiny smile. “Those don’t look so bad.”
“Maben, please show him your mandibles,” Sandy said.
The corpulent pixie in the middle of the hive unfolded her false lips and splayed her mandibles out like taloned clutching fingers. Todd sat back and swallowed thickly, having to remind himself that the miniscule queen was not big enough to eat his head.
“Well, that’s…”
“Fascinating?” Sandy offered.
“Okay, that too,” Todd said. He looked at the queen through the pool, now easily able to tall her apart from her servants. For one thing, no one else had antennae like hers. It was like her version of a crown.
He watched her curl her mandibles back into her mouth cavity, and now that the probing talons were hidden, he could admit that there was something fascinating about the way the folded limbs approximated lips.
___
And there you have it. I hope you’ll contribute a few bucks to Fridge of the Damned, and that you’ve enjoyed this first peek at Sandy’s new story. =^)
