Cold Business Acumen

Every so often, someone thinks they have a totally fresh and unique idea.

Hey, they realise, instead of taking days to travel around Mount Girere with my cargo to sell at the river markets, why don’t I just cross the mountain? Sure it’ll be cold, but I’ll save a few days and get my money much sooner!

So they come to me, and buy what they think they’ll need, and if they are smart, what I tell them they’ll need, and they go off.

And they never come back.

But I get my stuff back after a day or so…

Casting Sugar

Half a cup of angel blood…

“… and then I told her, you can’t trust Elf gold, it always vanishes in the morning…”

Five dried juniper berries picked at full moon…

“… and so I just had to buy all five of them, and the price wasn’t that bad…”

A dash of quickgold…

“… and so anyway, if you could just start converting the backyard tomorrow…”

Bat wing, engraved with my darkest desire…

“… Bodar? Are you even listening to me?”

And then turn and toss mixture at wife.

“AHHH! What the… You… This…

What is your wish, My Master?”

Blood Money

The only sound the followed was a single coin dropping to the hard wood floor and then rolling for a moment, before falling heads up.

Her face ran through a variety of emotions, most of them negative, before settling on pained shock. The question was as obvious as it was unsaid.

I licked my lips, trying to find a way to explain myself and my actions that she would understand. Eventually, I settled on the truth.

“My memory is as long as his pockets are deep.”

I gathered up her silver before I handed over her body for my gold.

A Second Out Of Space

I couldn’t understand why my time machine didn’t work. I knew I had cracked the equation, even if power generation was only enough for a second leap ahead. But instead of my test subjects skipping a second, they just vanished and never returned.

Then I realised. I was moving them a second ahead in time, but their position was locked. And thus, with the speed at which the planet, system, galaxy and universe all move, they must have been popping back thousands of miles into space.

Still, research is good now I have the discrete item disposal money flowing in…

A Long Delayed Reply

The message was sent, eventually. She had spent days aching over the wording, needing to make sure it was perfect, then weeks agonizing over if she should send it at all, and then the seconds after it was sent regretting it and trying desperately to get it back.

The days that passed saw her confidence rise and fall, every day was a new emotion, a new thought.

When it became weeks, confidence became fear. When it was months, resignation set in.

It was years later when the reply came.

It was a rejection, but she’d forgotten about it by then.

Tequila Tong, Time Traveller (03/12/2019)

She was on her fifteenth beer.

“And another thing, why the whole slut shaming thing? I don’t get it! If it wasn’t for our slutty human nature that meant we outnumbered them, we’d have lost to the Neanderthals! And then there’s whatshername, Empress Theodora! Complete, total slut, but was instrumental in Eastern Roman history, and was a lot of fun, I might add! Or Helena Hand-Basket, total slut, burlesque dancer, and leader of the successful human resistance to the Bollian Invasion!”

I finally spoke up.

“What’s a Bollian?”

She stared at me.

“Dammit!” she said, before vanishing into thin air.

Other Versions: “Five Times” As Performed By George Sirois

Here is “Five Times”, as read by George Sirois, you can check out more of his work at http://www.georgesirois.com/

You can read the original version here!