Category: Stichomancy Prompts

While I Did Not Recognize the Person Shaking Me Awake

  • by jenwhen two famous people fight
  • nourishes from the inside
  • the extraordinary nature of his luggage
  • where the mercury often freezes in the thermometer
  • an extending spyglass

Tune in next time part 423      Click Here for Earlier Installments

While I did not recognize the person shaking me awake, her accent was Contrarian through and through. “Ah! You are awake!” she said. “But your eyes, they are bouncing all around. They are like when two famous people fight. Ha ha!”

That was far from the first time someone had said that about my eyes. I’d heard it a lot growing up. It’s the sort of warm childhood memory that nourishes from the inside. I smiled involuntarily.

As I gathered my senses, I realized that I was no longer in the laboratory atop the peak on Disco Island. The buzz of propellers and the view of clouds out the window told me I was once again aboard a zeppelin, but not my wife’s. This was a more rugged airship, lacking such fineries as grand pianos and wet bars.

I sat up, pleased to find that I was no longer bound. I wore my general uniform, complete with hat. Beside me was a heap of rucksacks and duffle bags made entirely of wolf pelts.

My interlocutor called over her shoulder toward the cockpit, “The general’s awake now and marveling at the extraordinary nature of his luggage.” Turning back to address me, she said, “We shall dock in the Paradoxica Mountains in five days, assuming an avalanche hasn’t taken out the fortress.”

The wolf pelts made more sense now. The Paradoxica region was the sort of place where the mercury often freezes in the thermometer. Not usually the sort of place I would choose to spend my time, but it might be nice to get a break from all the crazy machinations surrounding my family. The cold wouldn’t be too big of a deal for me. I was born at the North Pole after all.

A five-day zeppelin journey also sounded quite relaxing. At the very least there was a highly limited number of people on board who might be on a quest for the exotic compound allegedly found in my semen. I stood and stretched, then picked up an extending spyglass and went to a window.

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“Hold Up There Jem”

  • by Kentproven he could take an ass-whipping
  • bitter cold assailed me.
  • a rush of fluid suddenly filling the back of my throat
  • fought it out with carsickness
  • “Hey. Hey. Hey!”

Tune in next time part 422      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Hold up there, Jem. It’s not time for that yet.” Jemma and Jemima both looked to him for clarification — was it not yet time to release me, or not yet time to wave hand-drawn mime erotica in my face?

“Our brother Jason here has proven he could take an ass-whipping on multiple occasions. Ain’t that the truth?” Jim put on thick insulated gloves as he spoke, then lifted a steel canister off one of the lab benches. He set it in my lap in place of Clyde, then opened the lid. Fog surged over the lip and flowed like lava down the sides. As the chill vapor reached my legs, bitter cold assailed me.

“Don’t hurt Jason!” Jemma cried. She tried to move the canister but without the mitts she couldn’t pick it up.

Jim chuckled. “Oh, I ain’t gonna hurt anybody, least of all Jason.” He popped the lid back on the canister and stooped before me to collect it. He stared me in the eye. “Ain’t that right?” Once the cryogenic hazard was cleared away, he instructed Jem and Jem to do more cobra yoga. “But this time, it’s all for our brother.”

Jemma and Jemima looked sad, but they obeyed and began their contorting, sinuous dance. I wondered why this ploy gave Jim such a wicked grin, but only for a moment. At point-blank range, with no mimes to absorb any of it, a double dose of cobra yoga was overwhelming. In seconds I was queasy, and then more than queasy, a rush of fluid suddenly filling the back of my throat. The girls were relentless, slipping into a trance as I fought it out with carsickness raised to the power of mystical snake venom. The nausea progressed to a kind of hyper-vertigo, and from there to a red-out.

“Hey. Hey. Hey!”

The hand shaking me awake was attached to a stranger.

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If the Mime My Brother was Wrestling With had Any Hope of Escape

  • by jenbetter take cover
  • “Should I put my shoes back on?”
  • mere pinpricks
  • orgies are poorly designed experiments
  • use it in a rap song

Tune in next time part 421      Click Here for Earlier Installments

If the mime my brother was wrestling with had any hope of escape, she’d better take covert action, but mimes in general aren’t that well-trained tactically. This one was no exception. She soon took a needle to the neck and slumped in Jim’s arms.

Jem and Jem introduced some new steps to their writhing cobra yoga, circling around the herd of mimes and bunching them together like livestock. Working in unison like lithe corgis, they danced the group into the supply closet and slammed the door behind them.

“Finally,” said Jemma.

“Should I put my shoes back on?” asked Jemima.

“No need,”Jim drawled. “This is a pretty good place to hide out for a while.”

“Anyone want to untie me?” I asked. In truth my tape bonds were loose enough that I could escape if necessary, but I wanted to see how my siblings would treat me now that the mime threat had been neutralized. Were their consciences more than mere pinpricks?

Clyde was still in my lap, still “woofing” at me. Jim scooped him up and put him in a cage that had probably once held an army of lab rats. Jemma got a scalpel from a dissecting tray and began sawing through all the tape around my wrists. At least she was on my side.

Jemima, still barefoot, was reading the lab notes splayed on the worktop. She snorted. “Mime orgies are poorly designed experiments. No scientific rigor! Look at this.” She waved the disturbingly detailed sketches in my face. “What do you think Jason? Can you use it in a rap song?”

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“Jim, How Will We Defend This Place”

  • by Kentrelied more on firepower than martial arts
  • Rock and wiggle. Rock, then wiggle.
  • a contact high
  • taken a few too many painkillers
  • small mouth with crooked teeth

Tune in next time part 420      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Jim, how will we defend this place if the fire eaters attack?” I didn’t bother lisping, because Jim didn’t seem to care whether it was me or Jason taped to the chair. In fact, he hardly seemed to care that I was speaking, all his attention focused on Violet or Harriet Donut. “They’ll send the Draconis Corps, Jim!” The guild’s most fearsome warriors, like ninjas who relied more on firepower than martial arts — the power of literal fire spewing from their faces.

If Jim’s motive truly was to protect our sister, then he should have been treating me as an ally instead of a prisoner of war. Watching him try to argue with a mime, I concluded that if anyone was going to keep Domino from marrying Jem, it was going to have to be me. But I couldn’t do that if I was stuck in this chair, so I focused on working my way free. Rock and wiggle. Rock, then wiggle. Gradually the tape loosened.

Meanwhile, Jim and Violet or Harriet Donut spun through a silent pasodoble as he tried to jab her in the neck with a syringe. Jem and Jem sustained their cobra yoga, effectively neutralizing the rest of the mimes in the chamber. The weirdness of the scene before me made me wonder if I was getting a contact high, like I’d had a blood transfusion from someone who’d taken a few too many painkillers.

The sight of Clyde the mime-dog in my lap only deepened my distrust of my own senses, as he “barked” soundlessly, working his small mouth with crooked teeth bearing the message he had been conditioned not to voice.

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Even With Clyde in My Lap

  • by jenfully aware of the ten sets of eyes
  • His Grace petitioned the Count
  • Now he was bleeding
  • too smart for that school
  • I’d suggest no more than a thousand

Tune in next time part 419      Click Here for Earlier Installments

Even with Clyde in my lap, and Jim waving his camera around, I was fully aware of the ten sets of eyes — mime eyes — that were trained on my dancing sisters. I might still have a hope of escaping as long as Jem and Jem’s hypnotic cobra yoga held them entranced.

I had to make Jim see reason. “Our family has standards, Jim.”

“I don’t give a fuck about your standards, brother,” Jim snarled. “The fire eaters want to claim Jem, and I won’t have it! This is the only way to save her.”

“What’s the Lord Carnevale have to do with any of that?” I asked.

Jim sneered his first words. “His Grace petitioned the Count Flambé, leader of the largest fire eater guild, for Jem’s hand. Their marriage would seal a pact between those heartburn motherfuckers and the masked carnivalistos.”

I shuddered at the thought.

“So,” Jim continued, “I’m showing Lord Domino that we play hardball. If he doesn’t back off, something ugly will happen to Clyde.”

The little dog in my lap bared his teeth again, exposing the “woof” painted thereon.

The bicycling mime reentered the laboratory. Now he was bleeding from one nostril, and he had the Donut sister riding on his imaginary handlebars.

Jim tucked his camera into the pocket of his lab coat and grasped the Donut mime by the wrist. She began to flail about, hurling silent insults at us and at the Academy. The thrust of her nonverbal argument seemed to be that she was too smart for that school, but I distinctly remembered seeing her in its halls.

“Relax Ms Donut,” Jim said, thus perpetuating the mystery of which sister was which. “If you don’t calm down I’ll have to give you an injection.”

“I’d suggest no more than a thousand milliliters, and no less than nine hundred,” said Jemma. “Like most mimes she’s built up quite a tolerance.”

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What Jim’s Camera Couldn’t Capture

  • by Kentpure, undiluted flopsweat
  • a twisted petting zoo
  • I want to think the best of everyone
  • Apart from the masks
  • at his haunted castle

Tune in next time part 418      Click Here for Earlier Installments

What Jim’s camera couldn’t capture was my pure, undiluted flopsweat at the idea that this mime dog’s trainer might be in this very room, a twisted petting zoo where Clyde, the sole exhibit, was perched in my lap. Nobody who knows me would expect that I want to think the best of everyone, but I certainly want to think better of just about everyone than I thought of that mega-mime.

“Jim,” I said in a shaky voice, almost forgetting to lisp, “are you sure you know what you’re doing? Have you really considered all the angles here?”

“There is only one angle, dear brother,” Jim purred. “The right angle. That’s the one I’m workin’. And when Domino sees these pictures, he’ll know I’m not messin’ around.”

Domino, the Lord Carnevale? Apart from the masks, his troopers were just as creepy and overly dramatic as mimes. He trained them at his haunted castle and sent out leaflets now and then threatening to sic them on the unsuspecting populace. Meanwhile, the rumors about his unseemly bond with Clyde were evidently not without some basis.

The knockout gas had almost worn off. “I thought this was about my sem–” I cleared my throat. “My brother’s semen. Why get yet another faction riled up about it? I mean,” I dropped my voice a bit, “it’s bad enough you’re mixed up with the pantomime contingent. What’s happening to this family?”

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Clyde’s Reputation Preceded Him

  • by jenthis is for right now
  • that prisons cannot hold
  • quasi-religion
  • or in this case, the gold medal
  • used a digital camera

Tune in next time part 417      Click Here for Earlier Installments

Clyde’s reputation preceded him. He was, allegedly, a mime-dog. I had always assumed that he was a rumor, that such a creature could not actually exist, and yet here he was in my lap: a silent dog trained by mimes. The wretched thing had letters painted on its teeth, letters that spelled “woof.” My mind was still reeling from the knockout gas and all I could think was, “This is, for right now, my only worry in the world.”

An average mime could not accomplish something like the training of a mime-dog. No, this required the sort of mime that prisons cannot hold, the sort who sees mime as more than a quasi-religion. The mime who trained this dog must have won the grand prize, or in this case, the gold medal in mime-fuckery. But what the hell were my siblings doing with a mime-dog? They clearly were not mimes. Were they using the mimes, or were the mimes using them?

I sure am using the word “mime” a lot, I thought, as Jim moved in front of me and used a digital camera to take what I presume were blackmail photos.

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While All the Mimes Were Hypnotized

  • by Kentwhile intoxicated
  • just a big ol’ velvet trenchcoat
  • and away he went
  • small, hot, damp pillow
  • his tiny painted teeth

Tune in next time part 416      Click Here for Earlier Installments

While all the mimes were hypnotized would have been the perfect time to break free, but no matter how I strained against my bonds I couldn’t tear them. Soon my arms were as rubbery as my tongue. The tape really didn’t look that strong. I concluded that my weakness was from the knockout gas, and that I wouldn’t get far anyway while intoxicated with its residue. The feeling was not at all unpleasant, just a big ol’ velvet trenchcoat draped over my whole body, but my situation was too dire to allow me to enjoy it.

I watched Jem and Jem dancing, hoping that one of them would drop me another coded hint about what was going on here. Movement among the mesmerized mimes drew my eye, and I realized that I recognized one of them. It was Harriet or Violet Donut, and she was sneaking toward the exit.

“Jem!” I shouted in warning. My sisters didn’t stop dancing, but the Donut sister made her move, dashing out the door. One of the other mimes snapped out of his trance, holding his head dramatically with both hands and swaying in a full 360 before giving chase. At last he threw one leg over an invisible bicycle, and away he went with an awkward pedaling gait.

Jim strode in through a door on the opposite side of the lab. He wore a long, white coat, and when it gapped I could see that he also still had on Fleur’s bejeweled garb underneath. Safety goggles and thick purple gloves rounded out his mad-scientist look. He was carrying a lumpy object as he walked directly over to me.

“Hey there, brother,” he drawled. And with that he placed the lump on my lap. It felt like a small, hot, damp pillow, but it was moving. “Meet Clyde.”

The creature, Clyde, raised his snout at me and bared his tiny painted teeth.

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In Addition to Rendering You Unconscious

  • by jencobra yoga
  • on her knees before me
  • cheap, orange dress
  • taped to a chair
  • too goddam stinky to be a hallucination

Tune in next time part 415      Click Here for Earlier Installments

In addition to rendering you unconscious, Contrarian knockout gas is a known hallucinogen. When I came to I wasn’t sure whether to believe my eyes. I was surrounded by mimes operating laboratory equipment. They were heating samples over bunsen burners while pretending to make notes, running centrifuges while checking imaginary watches, and mixing compounds while consulting imaginary instructions. As the stench of the chemicals reached me I concluded that it was too goddamn stinky to be a hallucination. Was this the lab where they were testing the substance in my semen?

I wanted to leave the room to escape the noxious fumes, but I was taped to a chair. I strained against my bonds. The mimes noticed that I was awake and sounded their silent alarm.

My sisters Jemma and Jemima hurried into the room wearing matching cheap, orange dresses that looked like uniforms from some greasy fast food restaurant. What the hell were they doing here on Disco Island? And where was Jim? Were these two still under his control?

“Why don’t you guys let me go,” I said, my tongue still rubbery from the gas. “I need to get back to Fleur.”

Jemma got down on her knees before me and looked up into my face. “Your speech is all fucked up, Jason,” she said with an exaggerated wink. “Keep your mouth shut until the gas wears off.” She tapped a quick message on my shinbone as she stood, telling me that she was hiding here to avoid her obligation to the Guild of Fire Eaters.

The mimes had all stopped their laboratory activities and were watching us intently. My sisters began a dance so fluid and sinuous it could only be performed by contortionists. It’s called cobra yoga, and its performance soon had the entire troop of mimes entranced.

But since when were Jem and Jem contortionists?

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Being Cooped Up In Such A Confined Space

  • by Kentwith a purposeful grimace
  • cool it on the hedgehog kissing
  • “It’s stuck on something.”
  • trimmed with black and red
  • tastes like mayonnaise

Tune in next time part 414      Click Here for Earlier Installments

Being cooped up in such a confined space with the Donuts made me nervous, but I wanted to conserve the rest of my knockout gas so there was nothing to be done about it except stare at them with a purposeful grimace to keep them from getting any ideas. The last solid information I had about them was really just a rumor. They allegedly wrote the same cryptic message in everyone’s yearbook upon graduating from the Academy: cool it on the hedgehog kissing. What that code might mean, I couldn’t guess.

Paternosters don’t move very fast, so the journey to the top of the mountain was taking a very long time. Suddenly there was a jolt and a loud squeal, and the machine stopped. There were no controls, no phone, no hatchway. None of the plot contrivances afforded by a conventional elevator.

Violet — or maybe Harriet, I still didn’t know which one was the mime — peered along the edge of the opening in our box. She squinted, and then her mouth moved. Slightly out of sync came her sister’s voice saying, “It’s stuck on something.”

I rolled my eyes. “Stuck on what?” I asked. The sister in the fancy bustier trimmed in black and red satin rolled her eyes right back at me and shrugged. I went over to the edge. “Let me take a look.”

While I squinted through the gap between our box and the rock shaft it traveled in, the mime Donut wriggled against my side. I tried to pretend I didn’t notice. The last thing I needed on a day like this was another seduction. Too late I learned what she was really reaching for, when the squirrel on my right epaulet hissed in my face. And I also learned that the knockout gas Aloysius gave me tastes like mayonnaise.

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