The Confabulator Cafe

Blog

  • The Sleeping Strategy

    “Well, the sign confirms it,” Bolero said, walking back over to where Nerek was standing. “It’s the old puzzle where one door is certain death, and one door is the treasure. One guard only lies, and one guard only tells the truth. You only get one question.”

    Nerek let out a deep sigh. When he’d accepted the quest to save the fair maiden from eternal slumber, he hadn’t expected it to be so complicated. Find the highest tower, kiss her, and go home. No one mentioned how ruddy difficult it would be to find the place, however. And instead of the plant barrier he’d been promised, he’d been forced to smash open several locked doors like a common thug, slay a fierce dragon without proper equipment… and now this. “Ugh. You’re a bard. Do you remember how this one goes?”

    “You hired me to record your adventures for posterity,” Bolero said, shaking his head. “I can’t get involved. Besides, I don’t remember quite how it goes. Something about asking one what the other would say?”

    “Yeah, that’s all I remember, too,” Nerek admitted, placing his hand on his chin. The two guards stared intently at him, making him feel ill at ease. “You know, it was bad enough that a full-sized adult dragon was able to live here for countless years… how in the heck are these two still alive? What do they eat? When do they sleep?”

    Bolero shrugged. “It’s magic.”

    (more…)

  • The Prince and the Poltergeist

    “Why is it so hard to find an honest-to-goodness exorcist these days?” Humphrey grumbled as Sir Bartholomew, the castle’s persistent poltergeist, upended his bowl of cereal. Humphrey’s dislodged spoon dripped milk onto the counter.

    “The last several that have come through have either completely failed to notice any supernatural activity or have run screaming when Barty actually does something.”

    His mother munched on a piece of toast and nodded as she turned the page of the newspaper. “Frauds, all of them,” she agreed.

    Barty whooshed her newspaper off the table and she sighed. “He knows well enough to hide when we hire exorcists.”

    Barty cackled has he flew down the hall, and Humphrey put his head in his hands. “I’m about to give up. Sell the castle. Find a nice little cottage somewhere. Give up my title. What am I supposed to be a prince of, anyway?”

    His mother patted him on the shoulder. “There, there. Sir Bart has been a legacy in this castle for years. It wouldn’t quite be the same if he were truly gone.” She went from consoling to glaring. “Besides, you may end up living in a little cottage somewhere before long anyway, so enjoy it while you can. It’s only a matter of time before our village-sized kingdom gets sucked up like all the rest.”

    Humphrey groaned and kept his head in his hands. (more…)

  • Skinwalker

    Joyce crept forward while Ian, her Creation, lay in wait. They were too close to the human settlement, but she didn’t have a choice; the prey will go where it wants and they must follow. Though their heightened sense of hearing, smell, and sound made the hunt easier, they had to bring the beast down with a knife alone.

    She kept her eyes on the deer as she moved silently through the undergrowth. A slight brush of wind stirred her pelt and Joyce froze as the elegant beast’s nostrils flared. She held her breath and waited until the deer lowered her head again.

    That was far too close, Joyce thought as she slowly let out her held breath. After several dozen heartbeats Joyce continued on her path until she was directly across from Ian.

    This hunt would determine his future. If he could fell this deer, the honour and privileges of becoming a Clan Protector would be bestowed upon him. In his human life, Ian had been a police officer, and all he had wanted since his turning was to inhabit a similar role as an Architect of Lore. (more…)

  • The Blind Poet’s Dog

    Everyone who is anyone knows Homer and loves Homer and invites Homer to perform at their Royal drunken feasts. But I know that Homer is a pain in the ass.

    Homer is my master, but we cannot simply have a congenial, professional servant/master relationship, oh no. Because Homer says that he is a ‘people person’ and he apparently wants ‘even his manservant’ to feel ‘involved’ in his ‘art.’

    So I must listen to him practice his epic poems over and over again. And I must provide an opinion on the practice because Homer always says, “Your opinion is important to me, Argos!”

    And I always reply, “I have no opinion, Sir.”

    And he most often says, “You know what they say about opinions, Argos.”

    And if he says that, I always reply, “Yes I do, Sir.”

    But he will always go ahead and say, “Opinions, like a certain something else, are something which everyone has!” And then he will laugh. (more…)

  • September Stories at the Confabulator Cafe

    It is often said that all stories have already been told, we’re all just rehashing the same plots over and over with our own unique perspectives.

    So this month at the Cafe, we intentionally did just that. We were challenged to write a retelling of a fairy tale, mythological story, or urban legend. See if you can recognize the original tales these stories came from this month. We hope you enjoy these strange and different retellings of common tales.

    Here’s the schedule this month:

    Thursday, September 3: “The Blind Poet’s Dog” by Emily Mosher
    Thursday, September 10: “Goldilocks and the Three Empty Cryopods” by Dianne Williams
    Monday, September 14: “Skinwalker” by Anita Young
    Thursday, September 17: “The Prince and the Poltergeist” by Sara Lundberg
    Monday, September 21: “The Sleeping Strategy” by Neil Siemers

  • Death World One

    I finally found the exit. We had to double-back from the Interstellar 405 to find the damn thing. The wormhole was not well marked, let me tell you. Earth is out in the middle of nowhere and there are hardly any beacons out there. It was not a great start to our vacation.

    The kids were in the backseat, hitting each other, pushing, pulling each other’s face tentacles. It had been a long trip to the Sol system. But goddammit, we were going to spend two weeks as a family. No vid screens. No comms devices. Just us and a whole planet full of untouched, pristine nature.

    Landing couldn’t come soon enough. It was either that, or risk injuring one of the kids when I lost my mind from their fighting. Which is to say that I set the ship down in the first piece of wilderness that I could find. We lucked out and the view outside of my window was breathtaking. We’d parked on a beautiful stretch of tangerine desert dotted with plateaus. A greenish-blue waterhole off to one side supported some kind of silvery-grayish-green shrubs all around us. It was absolutely perfect. (more…)

  • Don’t Let Me Drown

    I finally found the exit. Through a barred door with creaky hinges toward the back of my mind, where I mostly don’t go because the cobwebs of unpleasant memories are thick.

    The spiders are long dead, of course. Only their gray, dried carcasses remain, hanging by threads or wound tightly in ancient silk strings strung across dark corridors and pressed into hard-to-reach corners. The spindled legs fold into hollow bodies and beady eyes, once shining with sabotage, are dull now. Those corpses still cast wide shadows, though, and they aren’t any less frightening than before.

    It started with the drugs. I’d had them a long time, a potential prescription treasure chest with my name on it, sitting forgotten in my medicine cabinet. But really, before that, I suppose it started with the feeling that I was drowning on dry land in a stream of my own salty tears, because I was raped. I was drunk, he was drunk, I don’t really remember a whole lot and most people made it clear that I was asking for it. Then, the panic set in. (more…)

  • Control

    I finally found the exit.

    The facility was a labyrinth, a seemingly unending collection of locked doors and twisting corridors. It had been much more difficult to find the reception area than I expected. But then, when I came in, someone from the drug trial had given me the grand tour. I didn’t know I’d have to find my own way out. Alone. In the dark.

    The red EXIT sign above the door was the only light in the room. The power in the building was off, and it had been for … hours, days? It was difficult to tell.

    #

    When I had awakened, the power was out. Without air-conditioning, my room was sweltering hot. I came to on the floor. My bed, dresser, and nightstand were stacked against the door.

    I moved the furniture and pulled the handle of the door. Locked from the outside. But if someone locked me in here, why had I tried to prevent anyone from getting in? I gave up and tried the windows. But, of course, they were barred.

    (more…)

  • Midnight’s Mission

    I finally found the exit, but Stacy wouldn’t fit through.

    “We’ll back track, find another way,” I told her encouragingly.

    She shook her head, disheveled curls bouncing as her head swayed. “No, you know there’s no other way out. We’ve been looking for days.” She slumped against the wall across from the opening I was peeking through. “You have to go on without me.”

    “I can’t do that.” I blinked to hold off tears. “There’s so few of us left.” I glanced behind me where Ricky and Anabell stood, shifting from food to foot, glancing about uncertainly, and blinking in the harsh sunlight.

    She sighed heavily. “I guess I can try again.” She moved up to the opening, put her head out, and took a deep breath of fresh air. “The sun feels good,” she said, closing her eyes to enjoy the warmth.

    I glanced above us and immediately regretted it. We’d been trapped in the Underground City for almost a week after the cave-in. Every tunnel we had found that may have been a way out had ended up blocked or destroyed or only had small, high windows leading to the daylight. Blink, our little firefly friend, had made a quick escape through the first one of those we found. He had promised to look for other ways out, but had yet to return.

    I chose to believe some misfortune had befallen him—perhaps he had gotten lost or was still looking for an exit for us—rather than believe he had abandoned us. (more…)

  • The Glowstone Quest

    “I finally found the exit.” Emaline could barely hear Kenan’s exclamation over the roar of the spell.

    “What did you do?!” Her straining vocal cords said she was yelling, but it barely registered to her ringing ears. She tried to find him in the ever-present darkness, but her night vision had been completely ruined by the fireball too.

    “I cleared a path.”

    “Damn it, Kenan. Casting a fireball in the middle of a dead forest?” The smell of smoke reached her nostrils and she knew that the bright red spots dotting the path in front of her weren’t just from the afterimage of Kenan’s fire burned into her retinas.

    She drew upon the core of her power, which felt a little like a bizarre combination of vomiting and scratching an impossible itch. She released the energy and cooled the humid air to cause condense it into a thick fog and a light drizzle. Soft hisses of extinguishing embers reached her ears, as she leaned heavily against a tree.

    “Sorry.” Her eyes finally adjusted enough to locate the shine off his brown hair reflected in the glow from a nearly bioluminescent mushroom. Kenan bowed his head low and kicked the ground. (more…)