An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature
By: M.D. Smith IV
The French Quarter never sleeps. It dreams. And I walk its dreams. My paws touch the cracked cobblestones, slick with last night’s rain, each step echoing softly between shuttered doors and balconies dripping iron lace. The gas lamps above hum and hiss like watchful spirits, their yellow light bending in the fog.
Humans call me Bright Eyes. I belong to Tarantulena Tolbert, or so they think. In truth, she belongs as much to me. She is my keeper, my anchor, my shadow, and I, hers.
Tarantulena is a witch, but not the kind the storybooks warn you about. She saves her craft for the desperate. I have seen her whisper into a jar of camphor until a sick child’s lungs drew breath again, and I have watched her stroke a feather along a dying man’s limbs until his bones knit whole beneath her touch. She works quiet miracles, never seeking thanks, never leaving a trace but relief.
We live small, as witches must. Our house keeps to itself behind peeling shutters, wrapped in the Quarter’s noise, jazz rolling down the alleys, drunks spilling wine and secrets, and fortune tellers scratching cryptic patterns in chalk. The air here is thick with memory, swollen with spirits.
But peace never lingers long in New Orleans. The Quarter’s dreams are restless, and tonight, they stir with something darker.
I felt it first, before the humans, before even Tarantulena. The air changed. The rain-slick streets, usually spiced with rum, sugar, and fried dough, turned bitter, as though someone had burned sage but left the smoke soured. My whiskers twitched. My tail lashed once.
“Bright Eyes,” Tarantulena murmured from the upstairs window, her shawl pulled tight around her thin shoulders. Her voice, usually steady as the river’s flow, carried a tremor. “You feel it too.”
I blinked up at her, and in my golden eyes she saw her answer.
The Dracor clan arrived on the Mississippi, their barge creeping down like a plague. The father, Corbin Dracor, was a sorcerer from Darkwoods, Kentucky. His daughters, five of them, with hair black as crows and eyes cold as tombstones, spread through the Quarter like rot. Shopkeepers who refused their “levy” found tragedy at dawn. Explosions in kitchens, fires leaping from candles, wagons toppling into ditches. Coin bought survival. Defiance bought ruin.
Even I felt it. The Quarter’s dreams grew fevered. Dogs howled at corners where no one stood, and the air smelled of burned copper.
One night, when the moon sat thin and mean, Tarantulena stroked my back by the window. She smoked a long, scented cigarette, her eyes hard and tired.
“They’ll starve this city, Bright Eyes,” she said. “Folk are afraid, and fear feeds monsters.”
I purred, though my black tail twitch quickened. She knew what I could do, what lay hidden in the golden fire of my gaze. Anyone foolish enough to look straight into my eyes when using my power, found their will unmade, melted into wax that Tarantulena and I could shape. Rage turned soft. Malice turned meek. The mighty fell to their knees, eager to please.
But the Dracors were no common thugs.
“They’ll come here sooner or later,” Tarantulena murmured. “And when they do, we’ll need to decide to run or stand.”
I blinked at her, slow as a promise. Stand. Always.
The Dracors came at dawn three days later. I smelled them before I heard them, rot, blood, and swamp water. Corbin Dracor and daughters strode into the Quarter in a crooked line. They wore dresses like mourning veils and carried charms that hissed like snakes trapped in bottles. The shopkeepers bowed, trembling, as he barked his decree: double the levy, or double the suffering.
That night, he came to us.
Tarantulena sat calm at our table, sipping chicory coffee as if expecting company. I lay curled in her lap, my eyes half-closed.
“Madame Tolbert,” Corbin said, voice slick as oil, “you’ve lived here long enough to know the way of things. Pay your due, and perhaps your pretty little house won’t burn.”
Tarantulena flicked ash into a dish. “I pay no thieves. Not in coin, not in kind.”
One of his daughters hissed like a serpent. Another fingered a knife.
The hair on my back stood at attention.
Corbin sneered with fists clenched. “Then I’ll take your house, your bones, and your familiar. What’s a witch without her black cat?”
My tail stood straight up, tip flicking. Tarantulena smiled thin as a razor’s edge.
“Don’t look into my cat’s yellow eyes,” she warned.
But pride makes fools of people. Corbin laughed and met my gaze.
The moment his pupils touched mine, I let the sun blaze out. My eyes burned molten. I poured into him causing his fury, greed, and violence to all twist into something harmless, something soft.
His grip slackened. His shoulders sagged. When he spoke again, his voice was that of a child.
“What… what would you have me do?” he whimpered.
“Fetch the garbage can from the street,” Tarantulena said coolly. “And sweep my porch.”
And he did.
Corbin’s daughters screamed, their spells writhing, but one by one they made the same mistake. One by one, they stared into my eyes, and one by one, they became husks of their cruelty, cooing like pigeons, bowing to Tarantulena as if she were queen.
But witches know curses don’t die; they’re only redirected. Tarantulena stood, her shadow long on the wall. “You’ve poisoned the Quarter long enough. It’s time you took your rot back where you came from.”
That night, under cover of storm clouds, I padded ahead, my tail high, their puppeted bodies stumbling after me as we marched the Dracor clan to the river. The shopkeepers gathered, whispering, watching as Tarantulena raised her hand and pointed. A barge waited in the mud, ropes creaking.
She spoke in the old tongue, the one that smells like iron and lilies. The Dracors climbed aboard, docile as lambs, still under the prison of my gaze. When the last daughter stepped onto the deck, Tarantulena cut the rope.
Corbin whimpered. “Where are we going?”
“Out to sea,” Tarantulena’s thundering voice echoed. “And you’ll never come back.”
The current seized them, carrying them into the dark. The barge drifted, slower, smaller, until the Gulf swallowed it whole.
The Quarter exhaled, and air felt lighter, the dreams calmer. People cheered Tarantulena’s name, but I knew better. She glanced down at me, and I leaped to her shoulder, my soft purr against her ear.
“Good work, Bright Eyes,” she whispered. “But remember, power like yours leaves scars. Every will you break, every mind you bend, it changes the world. We saved them tonight, but someday, we may pay the price.”
I licked her cheek, and she laughed, though her eyes stayed grave.
The Quarter rested peacefully again. Yet I watched the river. Tarantulena watched my golden eyes glowing in the dark, waiting, always waiting… for the next shadow to rise.
Because shadows always do.
About the Author:
M.D. Smith of Hunstville, Alabama, writer of over 350 flash stories, has published digitally in Frontier Times, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bewilderingstories.com, and many more. Retired from running a television station, he lives with his wife of 64 years and three cats. https://mdsmithiv.com/