CRACKED: An Anthology of Eggsellent Chicken Stories by J. Posthumus (read after txt) 📕

that moment to malfunction, shutting the airlock with a vicious clunk that nearly removed my foot. Squawking, clucking, shouts, the hiss of equalizing air—All noise was instantly silenced.

“What’s going on?” I gasped.

“The Ca’slaphreans,” Z’layna said in a strange voice. “There’s nothing more offensive to them than a chicken. And the fact that we’re farming them, for meat…”

And she broke down into seesaws of shrill laughter.

“Oh!” I thought about it. I had a chance, one final shot at impressing the girl of my dreams, so much more out of my league than I thought. “So, what do we do? Can we make it up to them somehow?”

“Probably. I don’t think I’ve started another war. But he most definitely will want nothing to do with us now. No wedding-bells for me! So, maybe just dock us again and then we’ll work it out.”

“Sure!” I said, relieved. I’m good at piloting, so all I’d have to do was figure out how to get the controls back into alignment with the docking bay doors and—

The ship swerved violently to the right. It scraped and clunked against something before I could course correct.

“The compressor!” Z’layna shouted.

Too late.

Chicken poop compressed into fertilizer sparked as the equipment jarred loose.

And Segments 1 through 3 exploded in a silent flash of fire and feathers.

Z’layna and I met each other’s glance.

“Make for the nearest wormhole portal,” she whispered.

I nodded.

“Hey!” crackled Marchant through the communicator. “What’d I miss?”

And then we were gone.

So, that is how I became Commander Rigby Jones of a commandeered Ca’slaphrean vessel, ready to take on whatever job needs doing. At my side, my trusty copilot and technician Z’layna. And Steve, the boneless chicken, who happened to drift in along with us.

The End

About the Author

Abigail Falanga may be found in New Mexico, creating magic in many ways—with fabric, food, paper, music, and especially with words! She’s loved fantasy ever since playing out epic adventures of swords, fairies, and monsters with her siblings, and she’s loved sci-fi since her dad’s stories around the dinner table.

“A Time of Mourning and Dancing,” the first book in her dark fantasy series The Floramancy Archives, is available now.

Link: https://abigailfalangaauthor.wordpress.com/

Korion the Unclean

J. A. Campanile

Korion the Unclean J. A. Campanile

“You—you’re a monster!”

The woman’s voice shook as Korion turned to face her, flexing his fist and adjusting the flow of his magic. He never tired of that word. “Monster,” “abomination,” “filth,” the names were music to his ears. Monster was Korion’s personal favorite, though. It was the very first time he’d horrified someone. His mother. She’d called him a monster, bestowed the title upon him. First times always held a special place in your heart.

Korion let his fist open, spreading his fingers out and releasing the man—or what was left of him—from his telekinetic grip. His personal technique, exploding heads, had worked its wonders, leaving a fine mist of brain and blood in the air. This plant worker was good and dead. Now, to end the woman.

He unholstered a gun from his hip, raised the muzzle to her height, and then fired. The fun was over, and he had more important things to spend his magic on.

Korion stepped forward, his black coat billowing around his calves. Once he reached the woman, he raised his heel and brought it swiftly down on her head. The brain had to be destroyed, otherwise this whole thing could blow up in his face. He wasn’t here for the workers. He came for what lay beyond the double doors into the plant’s production floor.

The humans were trivial, not worth his time. Sure, they might have been stronger, faster, smarter, but they were also far more volatile, even as undead. They clung to this pesky notion of “free will” or something.

As Korion flung the doors open and strode inside, he turned over his shoulder and raised his fingers to his lips, letting out a shrill whistle. Flutters of motion followed his call. He turned back to the conveyor belts, now halted, and smiled.

A harsh, throaty chant bubbled up from Korion’s lips, raking the air and screeching up his spine. The chant’s thick, suffocating energy seeped into the air around him, filled his eyes and ears and nose like tar.

Dark magic wasn’t a toy. Archmagi like Korion, they knew this, and took painstaking care to cast with exactness. If you gave your spell even a millimeter of room, if you let your grip up for just a second, you’d lose all control. The raw, formless evil killed anything in its path. Amateur sorcerers, though? They often died in their own stupidity, playing with magic they didn’t understand.

One by one, in the midst of the black energy, bodies raised from the conveyor belt. Confusion garbled from their open throats, and they stumbled blindly on their newly reanimated legs. A few tipped right off the edge and smacked their headless necks on the ground. Korion shook his head. New animations were always idiots.

Although he’d studied his magic religiously, pored over years of unholy texts and made pact after pact with demon after demon, he didn’t fully understand why he could do what he was doing. He was raising bodies, reanimating these things, without their brains. No necromancer could do that, and that was their ultimate downfall—their constructs would think for themselves, and inevitably turn against their master.

These bodies, though? No brain. No free will. Maybe they had the correct number of organs, and maybe that made all the difference. They were stuffed with the livers, kidneys, and hearts of their kind. No brains, though. He didn’t raise a single body with a brain.

“Buck-gawk!”

Well, that wasn’t quite true. As Korion turned to face his trusted lieutenant, Cluck, he was reminded of the half-brain that Cluck possessed. His killers hadn’t butchered him properly, cutting off his head barely at the beak. Cluck, as a result, was smarter than the average construct. He had proven his loyalty over and over, though, so Korion felt no