M of Witches Town @signalstation@witches.town
so long, witches.town
please forward all scrolls, message crows, and visions to: a.weirder.earth/@signalstation
Thanks to everyone for following a year's worth of my witch-themed microfiction. As this instance sinks into the swamp, please note you can find me over at a.weirder.earth/@signalstation where I'll continue to write the sort of nonsense that used to be found right here.
YARD SALE
Just selling a few things that are starting to clutter the ol' hut. Make an offer
The Mask of Trees - Helps you blend in with trees, make friends with trees, seduce a tree's tree-wife.
The Mask of Illusion - Makes you think you can look like anyone, but that's an illusion. You look like an idiot in a mask that's got no eye holes.
A pile of masks - I forget what these do. Probably cursed.
Even more masks - You know what? I thought I had a problem with clutter but I think it's just these masks, reproducing. Rubbing their fake faces together and breeding.
Come get a mask. Cheap.
Dang! They sawed him in half!
One player is "IT" and must touch all other players. Other players, when touched, are to freeze in place until the game is done, or until another player touches them.
The player who is IT may use cloning technology, traps, summon supernatural aid, or use psychological tricks in the pursuit of other players.
A player tagged by a clone of IT or by an otherdimensional shadowsister freezes for 1 minute only. Only a tag by IT results in a complete freeze.
If the bees die off, play is suspended until an alternate agricultural model is employed.
Our algorhythm has detected 2548945 copyrighted visual works or performances. Remembering these works in your new robot consciousness will cost 18,755 US dollars per month. Would you like to keep remembering these works for that price, or would you like for us to alter the memories to contain copyright-free works in their place?
@sydneyfalk@mst3k.interlinked.me The accumulated filth will foam up about their waists and all of them will look up and shout "Save us!" And I'll look down and whisper Afficher plus
If you roll up to the party and everyone's wearing robes and holding knives except you... you just miiiiight be a human sacrifice!
If you're the ONLY one lying on a table, while the walls between this world and some unknown colorless space dissolve together above your bound form... you just miiiiight be a human sacrifice!
If you're looking at the heart that used to be INSIDE your chest a-pumpin' in the hands of a priest you thought could NEVER punch through a human ribcage, well friend...
--- Georph Otherworthy, cult comedian
So glad kids aren't being taught cursive anymore. Half the grimoires one can purchase in the Half-Green Market are nigh-unreadable, thanks to the lazy looped handwriting of mages and aetherpokers, running all their letters together EVEN BEFORE they get ghastslime, candle wax and cat hair on 'em.
Teach every junior candlewick bender and spirit knitter to PRINT, please, thank you, and we'll happily spend fewer days haunted by accidentally-summoned eye-wights because we read some cursive J as a G.
It's Saturday and we all know what that means! Time to get the kids into the carriage, wheel on down to the Shallows where we can visit the Boneless, shaking in their pools, singing their bubbling songs. Take a souvenir bone home with you... they don't need 'em or want 'em anymore! They're mostly salt and water and happiness, the Boneless are! Tickle 'em with sticks! A weekend delight!
Not everybody can serve their community in a soup kitchen. There are only so many ladles to manage.
But they always need help at the stone mansion on the hill, where that scientist got burned up. Got a whole basement full of creatures what shouldn't be alive and what need unstitching. Grab some scissors some weekend and pitch in. They won't even know you're there, they're dumb as hell, the reanimated.
There's always one guy in your cult who has no interest in thinning the membrane between this world and the horrors that can devour souls... he just joined for the networking opportunities.
"You think when Shurrdullep, The One Who Rends gets here, its gonna need a place to live? Because I have some great deals on condos right now at three properties, all within easy walking distance of mass transit, shopping, and schools. Look, I'll just give you my card..."
So weird to be a child of the 80s and grow up with clowns in, like, every sewer in the neighborhood and now it's everywhere, in movies and whatnot.
We'd lose, like, a kid a month down there, but it was just... the dumbest kids. No one you missed during your game of freeze tag, you know?
It's Friday and you know what that means! Our ancestors are waiting for us in the salt marsh, calling us by our childhood nicknames, their limbs replaced with vines (for hugging)! Can't you hear them calling? Unlock these doors! You must let us out! If we can't spend a Friday in the marsh, then who will they sing to next? Who will replace us in their mossy hearts?
Now available! Short fiction from M Van Vleet repurposed from witches.town & now in easy-to-read "all on one page" blog post format!
LOST TIME INCIDENT 67!
Feat.: Gary, the worst cultist; bog witch rankings for 2017; days of the week; general weirdness
http://www.signalstation.com/lost-time-incident-67-unknown-intelligences-love-matching-outfits/
Cost: the ticking away of precious seconds that you'll never get back - CHEAP!
*everybody playing starts screaming and never stops*
The floor is lava. The walls are lava. In your open mouth and down your throat is lava. The rules of this game are: You are this volcano's goddess and everything you touch and speak burns and the game continues until the world cools and the stars blink out. OK, go.
There's always that one guy in your cult who hemmed his robe a little too high and when you should be chanting and focusing on your ceremonial dagger, all you can think about is how you can see Gary's white athletic socks.
Damn it, Gary.
It's Sunday and you know what that means! It's the day of the week where we retire to the village tombs and retrace the chalk likenesses of our enemies we've drawn on the crypt's walls, restoring details that have faded since our last visit, making sure that our beloved village dead know the countenances of our hated rivals so they can visit them all week, stepping out of shadows, whispering hateful things in dreams, clawing at their souls, haunting them until the day our enemies too sink beneath the soil!
It's Saturday and we all know what that means! It's time to draw sigils on our faces with mud, so She Who Devours Beauty will pass over our house and slake her terrible ruby hunger in some other village! Get really creative with masking your good looks! Remember that different muds dry in different colors. Try layering!
The Author and His Shoulder-Mounted Cat Consider Getting to Work But Instead Take a Selfie
2017 "Rising Stars" in the World of Bog Witchcraft
The Cobble Sisters - From the bottom of a well, this trio has drowned so many lost children that schools are closing! Leave some dreamy children who don't make friends easily and like to wander in the swamp for the rest of us, ladies!
The Cold One - Everyone's seeing their breath this year and it's never good news! Hell's never been colder! Brrr!
Ed - Perennial favorite! He's the only one who knows where our hearts are entombed and we'll never rest if he doesn't win, even though you can't keep being a "rising star" by definition, Ed! Please, Ed! Set us free!
we go now to our reporter on the scene, Bixby?
i'm here, Carol, i'm right here in the empty pool where it all happened. night has fallen here and the light from the camera is all i can see anymore and i don't think anyone's coming back here. you can see where they did it. there's no reason for it, Carol, there's no reason for any of it. the sky is black and at any moment i could fall into it, fall into it forever, i'm going to fall as soon as this camera's light goes off and it's back to you in the studio
the soft hum of the teleprompter and the shuffling of paper. stay tuned for updates.