A One-Off Tavern Scene - A Free Story

I don't do story prompts. Well, not usually—as you can see below I do, on occasion, jump on a story prompt if an idea pops into my head and I start to laugh.

Behold! "The Kitten and Yarn Tavern". A scene about... well, hang on. I'll provide some context and then present the vignette.

The writing prompt was "A spider does something unexpected (at least 2000 words)." and as soon as I read this my mind escaped its yard—you know, the one fenced in by astute observation, algorithmic analysis, and occasional good sense—and immediately conjured what you're about to read.

I laughed as I wrote: a delighted chortle at the absurdity, a warm chuckle at the silliness, an uncontrolled giggle at the unexpected direction my mind took. I have a pebble in my shoe that is shaped like Fritz Leiber and sometimes I let it out to run around the office.

And so: The Kitten and Yarn Tavern. May you enjoy it like I do.

(Warnings: Language.)

P.S., My debut novella is out this autumn. Sign up to my newsletter to get it for free the moment it's out. Link after the story.

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The Kitten and Yarn Tavern

In The Kitten and Yarn, that soot-blackened jewel of Port Salonne's thieves' quarter, two shabby figures hunched over greasy cards like carrion birds over a fresh corpse. The tavern squatted between a moldering rope-walk and a shop that sold things best not inquired about, its timber walls sweating decades of spilled wine, blood, and tears—though not necessarily in that order of frequency. It was, in fact, a definitely vile place, which only endeared it to everyone who had ever passed through its rotted and failing doors. The ale, when it could be called ale and not some unholy marriage of barley and bilge water, possessed the rare quality of being simultaneously too weak to intoxicate and too foul to drink sober. Yet men came here, drawn like moths to a particularly disreputable flame, for The Kitten and Yarn offered something more precious than good drink: absolute anonymity and the reasonable certainty that whatever sins you confessed to its beer-stained tables would be forgotten by morning, assuming you lived that long. "I see luck continues to elude you," observed the first player, a thin man whose beard appeared to have been trimmed by someone with a fundamental misunderstanding of symmetry. "Elude or elide?" the second player asked. She was a woman whose dress suggested she'd once had money but whose cards suggested she'd spent it unwisely. "Elude." "I think it's 'elide.'" "No, it's elude. Luck eludes me." "I think luck elides you." "Look, it's elude!" "I think it's elide." "Elude!" "Well how would you know?" The bearded man's mouth fell open, his arms spreading wide as if pleading to a blind, deaf, and unspeakably uncaring god. The moment stretched like taffy in summer until he finally managed to speak: "I read BOOKS!" At that precise moment, Skirf the Rat entered the tavern. Skirf was a thin young man who looked exactly like what would happen if a nervous deer had been transformed into a human by a wizard with a sense of humor and a poor understanding of mammalian anatomy. Despite his rodentine moniker, Skirf was remarkably clean and well-kept—a necessity in his profession as a messenger known throughout the county for his ability to get absolutely anywhere, hence his name. His reputation was built on the simple principle that if you needed something delivered to someone, somewhere, somehow, Skirf would find a way to make it happen, usually while looking uninterestedly terrified the entire time. Without preamble, Skirf placed an ornate wooden box in the middle of the card table while the two players watched in bemused silence. The box was the sort of container that suggested its contents were either extremely valuable or extremely dangerous—possibly both. Skirf then produced a small dodecahedron made of jet-black stone and, in the manner of someone who had memorized an official statement and feared deviating from it by so much as a syllable, rattled off: "I, Skirf of the Tower Hill Skirfs, do hereby declaim that item number three-five-seven-five-seven-five-seven-five-seven-five-seven-five-three-one-two-slash-k has been successfully delivered to The Kitten and Yarn Tavern on the fourth day of the King's month. Please say 'acknowledged.'" A long silence settled over the table like dust on forgotten furniture. The two card players stared at Skirf with the expressions of people who had expected an ordinary evening of cards and questionable ale, not whatever this was developing into. Skirf, displaying the patience of someone accustomed to dealing with civilians who didn't understand proper delivery protocols, extended one long, manicured finger and poked the bearded man slowly, as if testing whether a fat, sedentary cat was dead or was indeed simply fat and sedentary. "Abnoggled," the bearded man replied, clearly flustered. "Acknowledged," said the woman, who had evidently dealt with official messengers before. Satisfied that his professional obligations had been met, Skirf exited the tavern like an elm leaf blown by an insistent wind—there one moment, gone the next, leaving only the faint impression that something vaguely deer-like had passed through. The two players stared at the ornate box. It sat there with the sort of ominous presence that suggested opening it might be either the best or worst decision of their lives, with no apparent middle ground between those options. Finally, the woman reached out and opened it. A large, black, furry spider immediately popped out like a jack-in-the-box designed by someone with a deeply questionable sense of humor and an overabundance of spare large black furry spiders. "Thank FUCK! I'm OUT!" the spider exclaimed with the fervent relief of someone who had been trapped in a very small, very dark space for far too long. Another lengthy silence descended upon the tavern as the two players stared at the spider—a creature roughly the size of a small plate and covered in what appeared to be exceptionally well-groomed fur. The spider, for its part, stared back at them with what were probably eight eyes, though counting them seemed like the sort of activity that might lead to unfortunate consequences. "What!?" the spider demanded, apparently taking offense at their staring. The bearded man groaned with the long, miserable sound of someone who had just lost his last copper on the last horse in the last race of a losing day at the illegal races. "Not again..." "What do you mean 'again'?" asked the woman, her voice carrying the careful tone of someone trying to remain calm in increasingly absurd circumstances. "Before you ask, you incomparable numbnuts," the spider interrupted with the exasperated authority of someone accustomed to having this particular conversation, "I am NOT a talking spider! What I AM, you two outstanding wastes of a single shared brain cell, is a wizard who got turned INTO..." He paused to gasp for air, which was somewhat alarming to witness. "A FUCKING SPIDER! So. Now that we have THAT out of the way... I need you to do something for me." "No," came the immediate reply from both players simultaneously. "There's coin in it for you. Lots... and lots... of coin. Fuck it, you can have all of my coin. I swear by my eight fucking eyes, my eight fucking legs, and all that is holy and unholy in all ten reaches and the three seas!" "OK, yes," the bearded man replied with the speed of someone whose financial situation had suddenly improved his listening skills. "There are six seas," the woman pointed out with the precision of someone who had received a proper education. "THERE! ARE! THREE! GODDAM! SEAS!" the spider yelled with the fury of an arachnid who had clearly had this argument before and lost his patience with geographical ignorance several conversations ago. "There are six seas," both players said simultaneously, with the confidence of people who had learned their geography from reliable sources. A long pause followed as spider and humans stared at each other in the sort of standoff that typically ended with someone stomping off in a huff, though in this case the stomping would involve eight legs and considerably less dignity. "Ahhh... hell... where the fuck am I?" the spider asked with the weary resignation of someone who was beginning to suspect he wasn't in Kansas anymore—assuming, of course, that Kansas existed in this particular realm, which it probably didn't. "Port Salonne?" offered the woman helpfully. "Port Salonne... in... France?" the spider asked hopefully, as if the correct answer might somehow resolve all his current difficulties. "No? Illyrica?" both players replied, looking at each other with the confused expressions of people who had never heard of France and were beginning to suspect their visitor was more confused than they were. "Well, fuck," the spider said with philosophical acceptance. "You know, for a spider, you have ridiculously foul language," the woman observed with the tone of someone making a perfectly reasonable point. "Oh. F—no, no." The spider caught himself and sighed with the resignation of someone trying to reform their vocabulary mid-crisis. "OK, listen up, you two fucksticks... I need bumblefuck number one, to my left, and bumblefuck number two, to my right, to repeat after me. Are you ready?" "Maybe?" said the bearded man with the enthusiasm of someone who suspected this was about to go very badly. The spider, ignoring their obvious lack of confidence, continued: "Repeat: 'Inio undan bandi ta vio! Tü lio magot olabobs, om dom fodob lanan! Vi! Mud! Tü lio magot olabobs, om dom fodob lanan! Kodanyo iko! Kodanyo iko! Kodanyo iko!' Got that? Now GO!" The bearded man stared at him blankly. "...um..." The woman, displaying either exceptional memory or hidden magical talents, repeated the incantation verbatim without hesitation. "What the fuck, how did you—" the bearded man began, eyes wide with amazement. "GODFUCKINGDAMMIT you insatiable devourers of abject ignorance! AGAIN! GO AGAIN! Both of you this time, goddammit! Lines! Lines! GO!" the spider commanded with the authority of a director whose play was falling apart during opening night. The two players managed to stumble through the incantation together, though their pronunciation left much to be desired and their confidence even more. Suddenly, the spider began to shiver violently. "Blech... oh fuck, I'm gonna barf..." With surprising speed for something with eight legs, the spider scuttled rapidly off the table, down a leg, and onto the floor. "This sucks..." it muttered before beginning what could only be described as the most disturbing transformation either human had ever witnessed. "Horrific table manners..." observed one of the players. Before their increasingly horrified eyes, the spider grew and shifted and rearranged itself into a mid-height, very old, and comprehensively naked man. The transformation was accompanied by sounds that suggested biology was being forced into configurations it had never intended to accommodate. The three of them stared at each other in the sort of silence that followed genuinely unprecedented events. The elderly wizard—for wizard he clearly was—cupped his hands above the table and recited with ceremonial precision: "Oth pi suno nasa, ko oko mama sijelo, lipu kulupu sep ma!" The bearded man opened his mouth to speak, but the wizard immediately mumbled, "Shut-the-fuck-up." The mouth closed with an audible snap. For a moment, all three remained frozen in an oddly ceremonial tableau. Then the wizard opened his cupped hands, and gold coins from what appeared to be several different continents poured onto the table, creating a substantial pile that gleamed in the tavern's dim light. The woman calmly slid a playing card out from under the pile and placed it neatly on the deck, as if wizards transforming from spiders and producing interdimensional currency was a perfectly normal conclusion to an evening of cards. "Fucking TOLD you I wasn't a spider!" the wizard declared with vindicated satisfaction. A long pause of dead air settled over the tavern like fog over a cemetery. "Right!" he said suddenly, as if concluding an especially complicated recipe for chicken-with-beans. Another gust of dead air fell like an inert mass, a terrifying stretch of uncomfortable silence. "Well. Terribly nice to meet you. Good night." He marched toward the tavern door with the dignity of someone who had just proven an important point, nonsense words rambling from his lips. Just before he reached the exit, a pink robe and a crimson scarf materialized around his ancient, naked body with the casual efficiency of well-practiced magic. The wizard disappeared into the night, leaving behind only incomprehensible mutterings and the lingering scent of interdimensional travel. "Huh," said the bearded man after a moment. "What?" asked the woman. "That spider turned into a cranky old man." "Mm," she agreed with the sort of thoughtful sound people make when processing unusual information. "Bet it came in on a boat. Fucking foreigners," the bearded man observed. "Mm," the woman agreed again. "Rude." "Who, me?" "No. The spider." "Ah." Silence settled over them as they contemplated a newly dealt hand. "He coulda said thank you," she said, sliding a few coins out of the way of her cards. "Yeah," the man said before he picked up a large gold coin and bit it, checking for authenticity. They returned to their card game and their vile ale, while the pile of gold coins plinked and settled with the musical sound of sudden, inexplicable wealth. Outside, the night carried on as usual, blissfully unaware that somewhere in the darkness, a pink-robed wizard was walking to a random location that was certainly not located in France, muttering complaints about geography and the general incompetence of the people he met while trapped in arachnid form. The Kitten and Yarn Tavern returned to its normal atmosphere of cheerful disrepute, where the ale was terrible, the company was questionable, and occasionally wizards sprang from spiders for reasons that were probably very important to someone, somewhere, but definitely not to the people who just wanted to finish their card game and count their unexpected winnings. --- Copyright 2025 J.R. Redstone. All Rights Reserved.

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