My parents decided that we would move, I was given no choice. My sole consolation was the library in our new house. A dedicated bookworm, I spent many happy hours within its comforting walls, but I was still desperately homesick.
One day I found the grimoire, hidden within the stacks. I carefully studied the ancient spells written on the fragile pages until I found an incantation that could restore the past. I could go home! Unfortunately, I later realized that the spell could only transport my spirit. My body was left mindless, while I flitted ghost-like through my hometown.
The grimoire had rules against this sort of thing, but Willow took them as recommendations. It had warned her of the risks of raising the dead. That they would never be the same as they had been when they were alive. But her brother, undead behind her, had the same insistent, irritating, and infuriating personality that he had when he was alive.
Abigail dodged her attack and Willow might have done better, might have had more focus, if he wasn’t reciting nonsense from behind her.
This is a slight overdose as well, but it felt wrong to not build up some suspense at the end...
----
The attic was off limits to me. My mother forbade me from going up there as she deemed the ladder heading up there too dangerous for my tiny feet.
My curiosity, however, was too strong.
I waited for a long time, waiting for my mother to go on vacation.
Today, she left for the weekend.
With bated breath, I pulled a string in the study, revealing the ladder to the attic. I climbed up there carefully and encountered a maze of things.
Eventually I found a dull, magenta chest, with a book adorned with the family’s seal sitting on it. A strange aura radiated from it. This must be the family’s grimoire. Dare I open it?
He dark and obscured, misshapen held up the sodden book carelessly.
"Can it be read?"
A well mannered and bred man, not a hair out of place, eyes piercing and suit without blemish in spite of surrounding squalor. Claven Lloyd, currently on a 'spiritual break' from business.
"No"
Before suit could object, inbred mutant continued.
"But you couldn't even with the original"
A smile of immaculate white teeth, a hand grasped tome.
"My reward?"
Another hand, through chest, for though their form differed they were murderous kin.
Elliot pulled the tome from its resting place, a filing cabinet in an unused, unfamiliar workstation. It was a spiral bound operating system manual.
As he thumbed through, he found ferverous notes, suggestions, clues. The answer was here somewhere.
In a few hours, the life force of the room was restored to its once greatness.
Elliot paced in the green glow of the display, the grimoire still open on the desk.
A blinking cursor indicated progress. The time was close now. “Nuclear Launch Initiated” flashed at last. “I did it,” mumbled Elliot. “Our God is a consuming fire” he whispered.
In a wood trunk opened, I find a mustyGrimm’s tale of stone crosses with a depression foot note, one filled with vinegar to contain plague germs. Victims buried below had their tell-tale rosy-red rash in the shape of a ring on the skin. Pockets filled with posies. Ashes to ashes; Hamlet’s last words: “I die Horatio. The rest is silence.”
In “As You like It”; I paraphrase. Touchstone says, Tis five o’clock somewhere…”and after one more, ‘twill be eleven; and so we ripen, and then from hour to hour we rot and thereby hangs a tale’”
Knocking down the wall with a sledgehammer, my father found a nest of snakes inside. Slithering shiny black, huddled against the January chill. He was afraid of snakes, but he took a shovel and lifted them out, because killing a black snake is bad luck, especially in the swamp.
At the bottom, he found a heavy book and handed it to my pregnant mother. It was a grimoire, the cover halfway torn off. She saved it for me, feeling its connection somehow to the baby that wasn’t yet born. And you’ll find that book on my shelf to this day.
The rookie hesitated. Steam wafted from the damp film pooling on his forehead. The Grimoire, fresh from the museum archive, sprawled open with a contemptuous thud. The pages, foxed and cured with age, revealed the arcane text scrawled in a mysterious language long gone from the bounds of the Earth.
"Now read it...aloud!" The CSO wielded his status like a giant mace.
With his shirt soaking tight to the skin, the rookie muttered the invocation, accentuating each hieroglyphic in the appropriate cadence.
A gust of wind sheered the room, ruffling the pages and loose flaps on their uniforms. The space in front of the archive contorted, twisting and whirling until a dark aperture expanded. A forest of eyes glowed beyond the threshold. The rookie sunk beneath the lectern holding the book, but the CSO graced a wicked smirk, stiff and astute as a martinet.
Oswald pored over the giant dusty book of black arts. He tried to cram as much of the dark magic into his head as possible. Secret techniques to change one thing into another. To confuse men or hide things. Methods to turn caged evil trolls into free flying songbirds. Incantations known only to this exclusive secret guild, kept away from mere mortals for whom the practice was prohibited. He hoped to join this evil sect.
“Fuck it,” he said, “This is as much as I’m gonna remember.” He set the book down and headed in to take the bar exam.
Drusilla proofread her grimoire for the umpteenth time, then pressed send. Off it went to the prestigious witching journal, The Cauldron. She had just about worked the warts off her fingers writing the damned thing. Thrown her whole black heart into it. The email reply came Halloween week.
“We regret to pass on your book of charms and incantations. Thank you for giving us the chance to read it. We hope you will consider us again.”
Dru resolved to publish it herself on Spellstack. And she had a good idea at whom she would point her subscribers to use it.
My parents decided that we would move, I was given no choice. My sole consolation was the library in our new house. A dedicated bookworm, I spent many happy hours within its comforting walls, but I was still desperately homesick.
One day I found the grimoire, hidden within the stacks. I carefully studied the ancient spells written on the fragile pages until I found an incantation that could restore the past. I could go home! Unfortunately, I later realized that the spell could only transport my spirit. My body was left mindless, while I flitted ghost-like through my hometown.
PROMPT: GRIMOIRE
100 WORDS
The grimoire had rules against this sort of thing, but Willow took them as recommendations. It had warned her of the risks of raising the dead. That they would never be the same as they had been when they were alive. But her brother, undead behind her, had the same insistent, irritating, and infuriating personality that he had when he was alive.
Abigail dodged her attack and Willow might have done better, might have had more focus, if he wasn’t reciting nonsense from behind her.
“I’m sorry, is this distracting?” He asked.
“Shut up, Dimitri.”
“Good, now, let me continue-”
I heard about the grimoire.
I heard it. I fell down a hole and never saw the light again.
All these rocks and stalagmites and stalactites and I can't think anymore. My language is gone.
I remember my mother. I was only a year old. And then she was gone.
I only have a hundred words and I don't even need that.
Don't even need that anymore.
I am the last Neanderthal. I am happy here, in my cave.
I will dream. I will. The end of my family.
The end of my days.
I will...
Yeah, It will, I know, be written down. It will be written...
I compiled the last few microdosing fictions: https://open.substack.com/pub/rgarron/p/various-microfictions-for-the-fiction-6e9?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=336zru
This is a slight overdose as well, but it felt wrong to not build up some suspense at the end...
----
The attic was off limits to me. My mother forbade me from going up there as she deemed the ladder heading up there too dangerous for my tiny feet.
My curiosity, however, was too strong.
I waited for a long time, waiting for my mother to go on vacation.
Today, she left for the weekend.
With bated breath, I pulled a string in the study, revealing the ladder to the attic. I climbed up there carefully and encountered a maze of things.
Eventually I found a dull, magenta chest, with a book adorned with the family’s seal sitting on it. A strange aura radiated from it. This must be the family’s grimoire. Dare I open it?
Microdosing – 100mg of a Grimoire
===
I looked at the beautiful pastry. My aunty beamed proudly, seated across. We met up at a coffee shop.
‘How’s life?’ She asked, sipping her tea.
‘It’s as normal as it could get.’
Sweet strawberry cuts and fragrant vanilla cream greeted me.
‘I’m waiting for a job interview. I practice online writings. I am busier than before.’
Aunty nodded, watching me devouring her homemade pastry.
Next came a bland taste, followed by sourness and slight bitterness.
‘Aunty, what is this?’
I forced my last bite down with a big gulp of coffee.
‘Expectation. I found it in your grandma’s grimoire.’
DEATH VALLEY - 100mg of a Grimoire
“Come quickly squire!”
Tobias stood atop a hill, gazing down into a dark valley.
“Good lord Sire, its dreadful!”
The 120 ft long beast trudged through the small village.
It whipped its tail knocking down trees and houses.
The townspeople scattered throughout the lamp lit streets, only to be engulfed by a flame stronger than a thousand lamps combined.
“What shall we do Sire?”
“I will bravely head down this valley, stand before the beast and deliver a reckoning”
“How will you do that Sire?”
“Squire…pass me the grimoire.”
“The what, Sire?”
“The book, Jon, pass me the damn book”.
Some grim horror after the last lot's absurdity.
Grimoire 100mg
"This isn't the original tome"
He dark and obscured, misshapen held up the sodden book carelessly.
"Can it be read?"
A well mannered and bred man, not a hair out of place, eyes piercing and suit without blemish in spite of surrounding squalor. Claven Lloyd, currently on a 'spiritual break' from business.
"No"
Before suit could object, inbred mutant continued.
"But you couldn't even with the original"
A smile of immaculate white teeth, a hand grasped tome.
"My reward?"
Another hand, through chest, for though their form differed they were murderous kin.
With blood, he turned sodden page and read.
100mg of Grimoire
Elliot pulled the tome from its resting place, a filing cabinet in an unused, unfamiliar workstation. It was a spiral bound operating system manual.
As he thumbed through, he found ferverous notes, suggestions, clues. The answer was here somewhere.
In a few hours, the life force of the room was restored to its once greatness.
Elliot paced in the green glow of the display, the grimoire still open on the desk.
A blinking cursor indicated progress. The time was close now. “Nuclear Launch Initiated” flashed at last. “I did it,” mumbled Elliot. “Our God is a consuming fire” he whispered.
In a wood trunk opened, I find a mustyGrimm’s tale of stone crosses with a depression foot note, one filled with vinegar to contain plague germs. Victims buried below had their tell-tale rosy-red rash in the shape of a ring on the skin. Pockets filled with posies. Ashes to ashes; Hamlet’s last words: “I die Horatio. The rest is silence.”
In “As You like It”; I paraphrase. Touchstone says, Tis five o’clock somewhere…”and after one more, ‘twill be eleven; and so we ripen, and then from hour to hour we rot and thereby hangs a tale’”
The EJ Trask origin story (100 words):
Knocking down the wall with a sledgehammer, my father found a nest of snakes inside. Slithering shiny black, huddled against the January chill. He was afraid of snakes, but he took a shovel and lifted them out, because killing a black snake is bad luck, especially in the swamp.
At the bottom, he found a heavy book and handed it to my pregnant mother. It was a grimoire, the cover halfway torn off. She saved it for me, feeling its connection somehow to the baby that wasn’t yet born. And you’ll find that book on my shelf to this day.
Microdosing - 100mg of "Grimoire"
THE BOOK
"The book!" The CSO insisted. "Open the book!"
The rookie hesitated. Steam wafted from the damp film pooling on his forehead. The Grimoire, fresh from the museum archive, sprawled open with a contemptuous thud. The pages, foxed and cured with age, revealed the arcane text scrawled in a mysterious language long gone from the bounds of the Earth.
"Now read it...aloud!" The CSO wielded his status like a giant mace.
With his shirt soaking tight to the skin, the rookie muttered the invocation, accentuating each hieroglyphic in the appropriate cadence.
A gust of wind sheered the room, ruffling the pages and loose flaps on their uniforms. The space in front of the archive contorted, twisting and whirling until a dark aperture expanded. A forest of eyes glowed beyond the threshold. The rookie sunk beneath the lectern holding the book, but the CSO graced a wicked smirk, stiff and astute as a martinet.
"What is thy bidding, my Master!"
The craft prevailed. Awesome! It feels like the beginning of a great book (or series)
Thank you! Hm, that would be a fun series a young witch and her beginnings
Oswald pored over the giant dusty book of black arts. He tried to cram as much of the dark magic into his head as possible. Secret techniques to change one thing into another. To confuse men or hide things. Methods to turn caged evil trolls into free flying songbirds. Incantations known only to this exclusive secret guild, kept away from mere mortals for whom the practice was prohibited. He hoped to join this evil sect.
“Fuck it,” he said, “This is as much as I’m gonna remember.” He set the book down and headed in to take the bar exam.
Legalese!
I love the imagination of the Grimoire's capabilities!
Drusilla proofread her grimoire for the umpteenth time, then pressed send. Off it went to the prestigious witching journal, The Cauldron. She had just about worked the warts off her fingers writing the damned thing. Thrown her whole black heart into it. The email reply came Halloween week.
“We regret to pass on your book of charms and incantations. Thank you for giving us the chance to read it. We hope you will consider us again.”
Dru resolved to publish it herself on Spellstack. And she had a good idea at whom she would point her subscribers to use it.
Yet another good story! Keep 'em coming. :)
Will do :)