“Two-Minute Tuesdays” are a series of micro-stories written in five ten minutes or less.  Consider them “public practice,” like that guy who shoots free throws in the park.  Prompts are supplied at the bottom in case you want to try your own hand at one of them.

The Enchanter’s Arm (Part 2)

As an enchanter of more-than-usual ability, it was simple for him to build a hand and an arm to hold the pen. He imbued it with more-than-the-usual amount of power, and hardly daring hope he put the arm on the table. Lo and behold, it picked up the pen and began writing!

The enchanter stopped going out. He spent his days and nights in a feverish passion, reading as fast as the magic arm could write, abandoning food and sleep altogether. Sacks of letters from his love arrived at his doorstep, but he shunned them for the magnificent letters produced by the magic pen. His love’s letters soon became curious, then irritated, and finally worried, but he read none of them.

Meanwhile, the enchanter realized that the arm could write faster if it was supported by a shoulder, and the shoulder would be more steady if it was supported by a spine . . .

–

One Autumn morning, the enchanter’s (second) cousin finally arrived in person on his doorstep. She’d heard rumors about his sickness, and feared to find her lover on his deathbed. The servants tried to stop her, but she would not be denied and finally forced her way into his study.

The sight stopped her cold.

A metal statue of her sat at the desk with pen in hand, writing faster than any human could. It was grotesquely exaggerated; where she was bony, the statue was round and full. Where her bosom sagged, the statue was pert and high-breasted. Where her complexion was blotchy, the statue shown golden-pink with simulated health. Only the eye sockets were empty, showing black and bent where the enchanter had tried over and over again to recreate the eyes of his lover. He had been unable to succeed.

On the floor by the desk was the enchanter. He glanced up but did not recognize her, and went back gibbering to the endless stream of parchment that flowed from the statue’s fingers, reading the words before the ink had dried.

But the enchanter’s (second) cousin did give up. Such was her love her him that she took a step toward the statue and tried to remove the pen from its hand. There was a sharp sting as the enchanter attacked her, frail and weak from starvation but strong with the ferocity of the insane. She left.

It is, of course, a mortal sin to create an unlicensed golem in the form of a human. The city mourned the loss of the enchanter with more-than-usual ability, but the fire made for a lively spectacle that night in the town square.

(prompt: Write a fairy tale.)

(Man, and I thought the last one was dark.)