Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Health Inspection at the 'Crimson Bullock' Factory

Inspector Sapor turned and glanced at the muffled figure of the Witchfinder. The man held up his dual wands, checking for magical auras. "Clean," he said, his voice a robotic buzz through his mask.

Sapor frowned and stroked his mustaches. "All is... in order, Mister Rapqi. But we'll keep our eye on you. No normal herbal brew has had the... stimulating effects your 'soft drink' claims."

"Of course, sir," said Rapqi. And thank the gods they didn't think to check the bottlecaps, he thought, more sweat trickling down his brow than could be explained by the heat of the brewery.

2 comments:

Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little said...

I found my way back here from your kind comment on my story at Ideomancer. As you probably guessed, I love the short-short form, and the prospect of a new 100-word "flitterfic" every day, especially about such wonderfully bizarre situations, is too tempting not to make me a repeat visitor!

(Also, "It literally gives you wings" made me LOL at cat-startling volume.)

Scattercat said...

Glad to hear it! I have made (or attempted to make) a habit of speaking up when I read something I like. I know how much I enjoy hearing that sort of thing, so I figure it can't hurt.

Ideomancer has so far rejected about half of the stories I've written, despite the fact that, like Clarkesworld, I don't think I've ever read a story there I disliked. I described it once as being like having a crush on the cheerleader.

Anyway, welcome all. Feel free to follow or RSS or what-have-you, and everything here is free for the taking and remixing etc. We strive for variety here, so a little creepy, a little funny, a little vague portentous symbolism, the periodic style experiment which generally fails miserably, and so on in that vein.

(And if you like the short form and don't listen to the Drabblecast, they've picked up a couple of my drabbles already and are generally good for quick ~2K-word fun times. Plus, Norm's like the best host ever (even if he does sometimes more than double the length of the story with his diversions.))