Compiled microfictions from the 39th week of 2021. Follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram for daily micros and more!
Copyright © by Jason H. Abbott, All Rights Reserved.
“Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?” She takes a long drag off her cigarette. “Yes, all his steps are sinister,” the succubus answers. “Two left feet.” He eyed his child. “Time travel?” “It’s limited: My future consciousness displaced to my body in the past,” she says. “But the events you want to stop, happened before your birth.” “I can’t save the future, Dad. I’ve built a displacer here so you can.” His suit is impeccable, the physique under it attractive. His head is a skull. “You’re not dead?” his date asks. “Nah, just everything except my bones is transparent.” She wets a napkin and uses it to remove the makeup covering her skull face. “Surprise! ” “It’s good!” Thoth said. “It is?” “Trim a few words, and it’ll be great!” “It’s a spell?” “It’s poetry.” “But I want to be a wizard, not a writer! ” The ibis-headed god laughs. “You are already what you seek: All words are magic. All writers, magicians.” “Please help me,” Amy asked, approaching cautiously. “I need a ride.” The unicorn bowed its horn to the US Army corporal. “Dark Lords of Chaos invading Des Moines or not,” she said, climbing on, “at least I’m fulfilling my childhood dream trying to stop them!” “No wonder we’re dead in space!” Jarr said, discovering more jellyfish-like globs. “They’re infesting the hull damage!” Annya stopped his EVA boot from crushing one. “No!” It floated away, leaving a respliced power cable. “They’re making repairs!” I enter the supervillain’s kitchen. Stood nose to the floor is a 1950 A-bomb. Oppenheimer raises a fist. “Nuke, I am your father!” It beeps the Imperial March. “Do do do do-de do, do-de do!” It pours coffee. “If you have a theme,” he says, “you must own it.”
Aethereal Engineer 
I love the writer/magician one. Wonderful stories, Jason. :-)
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Thank you, Diana! :-) I’m happy with how the writer/magician one came out, and that you gravitated to it. I’ve studied a lot of Egyptian mythology and Thoth holds layered meanings for me.
This post was a successful test that marks a change for the blog: I’m dropping the daily micros here in favor of these weekly compilations. The dailies will continue elsewhere where they’re popular, but on WordPress something changed about 3 months ago and their views dropped to a third of what they were. I suspect an algorithm change with how content is distributed as it was sudden and not at all gradual.
This compilation post has had more views in 2 days than any of my one-shot micros posted here in the last 90. I’ll take that as a clear sign that it’s time to change tactics on the blog.
I’m also going to try to get back to posting weekly personal updates again. It got very, very hard after the death of my father to keep up with that.
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I’m so sorry to hear about the death of your dad, Jason. My condolences, and of course that would initiate a realignment of how you spend your time and energy. I’ve had to continually revise my blogging structure too, paring it down to posting and visiting blogs once a week or I’d have no time to do anything else. I enjoyed the compilation a lot. I’m glad that’s working better for you. :-D
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