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    Osiris Likes This
    Osiris Likes This
    Osiris Likes This
    Ebook108 pages1 hour

    Osiris Likes This

    By Damon L. Wakes

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    About this ebook

    Have you ever imagined what it would be like to wake up three thousand years late for work? Whether doomsday devices come with instructions? How reptilian alien impostors might really get on in politics? Find answers to these questions and twenty-eight more in the fourth flash fiction anthology from Damon L. Wakes.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDamon L. Wakes
    Release dateOct 10, 2015
    ISBN9781310688522
    Osiris Likes This
    Author

    Damon L. Wakes

    Damon L. Wakes was born in 1991 and began to write a few years later. He holds an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester, and a BA in English Literature from the University of Reading.When he isn’t writing, Damon enjoys weaving chainmail and making jewellery. He produces items made of modern metals such as aluminium, niobium and titanium, but constructed using thousand-year-old techniques.Damon’s other interests are diverse. He has at various times taken up archery, fencing and kayaking, ostensibly as research for books but mostly because it’s something to do.

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      Book preview

      Osiris Likes This - Damon L. Wakes

      Introduction

      What’s this? An introduction to the fourth book in a series that’s already been introduced in the previous three books? This looks like a job for...Captain Redundancy!

      And his sidekick Tautology Boy!

      The dynamic duo struck a dramatic pose atop the Introduction, staring out over the book they were sworn to stare out over.

      From this vantage point, declared Captain Redundancy, I can see our story from here.

      Tautology Boy looked where Captain Redundancy was pointing, and sure enough there was their story: an amusing superhero parody right in the middle of the book. Tautology Boy waved hello.

      Tautology Boy waved back, causing the fabric of reality to explode just a little bit.

      Don’t do that! Captain Redundancy grabbed his wrist. It annoys Private Paradox.

      There was a crackle of electricity and a flash of light as Private Paradox materialised from the distant future. It sure does, he said. But what annoys me more is that you still haven’t actually introduced this book.

      We don’t need to introduce it, explained Tautology Boy, since an introduction would be unnecessary.

      That’s right, agreed Captain Redundancy. "The basic idea of Flash Fiction Month—for which participants write one story a day during the month of July—has already been explained in OCR is Not the Only Font, Red Herring and Bionic Punchline, all of which included an explanation. Our presence here is, naturally, completely redundant."

      Aha! Private Paradox raised a finger. But I submit to you that unless you explain the whole thing again, your presence will merely be pointless, rather than actually redundant.

      Egad! Captain Redundancy stared at Tautology Boy in horror. He’s right! We still have to mention that some stories were written in response to specific challenges, and that those challenges are also described in the book!

      Tautology Boy flailed about in a flailing manner. And that there’s a Statistical Analysis at the end, where statistics are...um, analysed...statistically! And...and...

      They looked at one another.

      Actually, I think that’s it.

      Yeah. That should cover everything. The book’s been introduced, we’re redundant again, job done.

      Excellent! Private Paradox smiled. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to murder the guy who invented time travel.

      The dynamic duo watched him make his way down the Introduction’s fire escape.

      Well, said Captain Redundancy, at least that explains why he’s not in this book.

      1

      The Gilded Swan

      Once upon a time, there lived a king in a marble tower. Around the tower there lay a city, and around the city there lay a wilderness, which the king tended as though it were a garden. No beasts stalked its hills, and no brigands lurked beside its roads, though the king’s domain stretched on for many miles and the members of his watch were few.

      One evening, a sorcerer passing through these wild lands stopped to seek shelter in the tower. In exchange for a meal and a night’s rest, the sorcerer offered the king an enchanted rose: one that would never wither, and would never lose its scent.

      But the king had many roses. Beyond the walls of his city, they sprang from the ground like wheat, and his tower was never without them. It was customary for his subjects to leave roses as gifts, the king explained, but surely a powerful sorcerer—a noble visitor from a foreign land—could afford to leave a more substantial offering?

      A dark look passed over the face of the sorcerer, but still he conceded that the king’s words were true. Bring me milk and honey, and a single pearl, said the sorcerer, and I shall conjure a gift like none that you have seen.

      The king bade his footman to bring these things, and the sorcerer accepted them. Into the cup of milk and honey, he placed the rose, and into its petals he placed the pearl. By magic, the cut flower began to grow, and in mere moments it had swelled to a monstrous size. Something stirred within the folded petals, and out stepped the pearl, now transformed into a graceful white bird with a long neck. As it shook the dew from its back, the king saw how each of its feathers was traced with gold, as though inlaid by the hand of a master craftsman.

      Is this gift suitable? asked the sorcerer.

      The king agreed readily that it was, and showed the sorcerer to a hearty meal and a fine bed.

      At dawn the next morning, when the sorcerer was no more than a vanishing speck on the horizon, the head servant approached the king in a state of great agitation. The gilded swan had laid a golden egg!

      Even having seen the creature’s miraculous creation with his own eyes, the king could hardly believe that this was true: yet true it was. In the swan’s chamber there lay a golden egg of great size and weight. And every day at dawn from then on, the servant found another egg, and another, so that soon the king’s coffers were full to bursting, and the treasury overflowed.

      For many moons this continued, and to the nobles in the tower and the people in the city, it became quite commonplace. But one day, once again, the head servant came to the king almost in a frenzy. The gilded swan had grown a second head!

      This the king thought exceedingly strange, and could scarcely believe it: yet this too was true. The swan now had two heads, each upon a slender neck of white and gold. When the sun was highest in the sky, the right head would spit out a ruby, and when the sun sank below the horizon, the left would spit a sapphire. More miraculous still, the stones fell from the swan’s mouths cut and polished, and with such skill that no jeweller could match.

      As with the golden eggs, which grew so numerous as to be used in place of cobblestones, the gems became no more than a curiosity. Before long the king’s crown, throne, sceptre and even slippers glittered with gleams of blue and red. But then once more the head servant called out for the king. This time his face was pale, and he had no words to describe what the gilded swan had become.

      Trusting well his faithful servant, the king struck the rust from his

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