Author’s Note:  This flash fiction story was written based on a prompt provided by certified_lover_boy_ during a livestream.  I hereby transfer all story rights to them, with the caveat that it remain posted on this blog.  If you would like your own story, stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade during one of my streams and I’ll write it for you live!

Prompt: In a secluded mansion on the outskirts of a quaint town, the eccentric Blackwood sisters guard their family secrets with unwavering devotion. When an unexpected visitor disrupts their isolated existence, the delicate balance of their mysterious world is thrown into turmoil.

Of course, you see a lot of strange things other than blackbirds on the sisters’ grounds. Nobody knows where they got all those carriages, or who used to be inside, just that the vines had taken their place.

Oh and the weather, it seems to start over their mansion, right out of the chimney sometimes. That’s why I don’t go anywhere near there. You’re not thinking of going are you? You are!? Well then, sit down, please, let me tell you a story, my treat.

On my very soul, I swear it’s all factual. You need the facts if you’re going to survive an encounter with the Blackwood sisters. Fact number one: there are two of them. Ignore the kid, she’s adopted, probably from one of those carriages.

Ode Blackwood is the eldest and the quiet one. She doesn’t warn you like her sister. If you see that look in her eye you better turn around and walk away, and it better be shameful, a tail-between-your-legs kind of walk. And I mean that, even the smart animals walk away from her like that, coyotes, mountain lions, and probably gators too if we had any of those around these parts.

Only Blackwood, the younger, seems friendly. She’s got a smile, but it’s the same way a bear trap has teeth. Trouble comes ’round on her account, though it isn’t her fault. Most people who pass through just see a pretty young woman who is not yet married and who probably has some legal claim to that giant house of theirs with the sharp black roof, and I don’t know, perhaps some of the typhoons and monsoons kept jarred in their pantry.

I know the secret, not that I’d ever tell them that, and you won’t tell anybody that I told you, right? I heard it from one of those strange blackbirds people always see passing by so amazingly fast. If you’re guessing they go fast to avoid any sudden twisters out of the chimney, it’s not that. I’ll tell you what it is, hold your horses.

Or the bird will tell you, through me. That bird’s name? We’ll call him Miles, on account of he came a lot of them just to arrive on the wrong doorstep. Out-of-towner he was, like you, and, also like you, I assume, spied Only’s gentle green eyes through a window of that house, despite them always being so dusty.

And you know what he did? He didn’t listen to all of us, though you have less of an excuse, because I now know what’s in there, waiting for you. They don’t know I know; if they did I’d be up there with the blackbirds already. Miles walked right up to that house, all his luck in the sky being clear that day, and ignored the ominous signs.

Ignored the overgrown carriages. Ignored the posted signs and all their edits, and the exclamation points hammered onto them. He told me he had a ring in his pocket, and nothing mattered more than getting it on somebody’s finger. His grandma’s ring I think. No, I’m sure that’s what he said. Family heirloom. So without a family he’d be letting them down. So Miles walks right up to that door, yanks on the bell pull, and waits, all smiles. Neither of them was ever in a door-answering mood, unless you count not shooting through it as the right mood. The worse option answered: Ode.

No actual answer, on account of her not speaking most of the time. It was up to Miles to get things going, which, again, he shouldn’t have done.

“Hello Ma’am,” he said with a tip of his hat. Yes, he told me he tipped his hat. He had enough time for all the details, on account of the numerous injuries that needed recuperatin’ in our hospitality. “I’m in need of a wife. Now I’m sure you’d make an excellent one, but a woman like you is surely taken already. I spied some green eyes in yonder window. Might I meet her?” Ode doesn’t answer, not then either, just steps aside, reveals that Only is behind her, at the bottom of the stairs, already observing.

He tips his hat again, makes the same offer, only much more directly. Miles lets himself inside, gets down on one knee and pulls out the ring. Thing is, the ring is far too small. It’s barely a speck: a wink of diamond dust. Nothing more. I don’t know how he even kept track of it. But it unnerved the sisters, because you see, it implied something. Miles already knew what they’d never told anyone.

“Where did you get that?” Only asked him, heart over her chest, trying to hide how fast it was racing. Well, why else would she do it? Pay attention to the important parts, not my creative omniscience.

“You know where,” Miles accused, bold as a bald buffalo.

“We know nothing about you,” Ode said, which should’ve been warning enough for him. I bet she hadn’t spoken a word in eight months, counting hiccups.

“Oh, truly?” he said with a sparkle in his eye no bigger than the ring he was presentin’. Then he bolted, no not away, further in! To the heart of the Blackwood mansion while the sisters practically tripped over themselves and each other trying to keep up. He knew right where to go, down to the basement.

Where he found, and I kid you not, I kid nobody ever about a topic such as this, our entire town! Hold on a minute, let me elucidate. Our entire town… in miniature. Like a village of dollhouses. This is where I tell you what I already knew before that blackbird Miles landed in the tree behind my own humble home.

You see Ode and Only once had a father, like the rest of us, and the man was no less strange, just outwardly less so. He was an expert in crafting doll houses and furniture and other such minuscules and minimals. He rarely sold or gifted his work, and I now know why, though I had to do a little connecting of dots here and there, dots crafted by Mr. Blackwood himself.

What Miles saw, aside from that tiny town, were all the tiny people strolling about. Now these weren’t miniatures of us, as I’ve never been down in that basement, but… sort of like… physical echos, you know? I think Mr. Blackwood was so accurate in his minimizing that it just filled up with little people like the big ones.

But this interaction works both ways. Whatever he and his daughters did to the little buildings and people, happened to the big ones. They pour a cup of water on that little town? Then a whole deluge comes out of their chimney as clouds and hits us after.

Miles, he was after one of those little women, not Only, that was just to get his foot in the door. And he had a little ring, so somehow his family had been there before. Maybe his grandmother escaped, and got all big outside the mansion, but the ring stayed the same and she passed it down.

He didn’t share the details of any courtship, or the little lady’s name, but I would guess tiny letters were escaping somehow, carried by cockroach courier or some other such nonsense. He was tearing up at this part, and not from those branch wounds, so I don’t know if he managed to spot her or toss the ring to her, or make his proposal miniature before the sisters kicked him out to maintain their control over the lot of us.

All they had to do was find the tiny version of Miles, pick him up, and toss him away. That meant the big Miles shot straight to the chimney and out it, and across the sky at high speed. That’s what we always thought were blackbirds, but they were just people who got a little too close to the Blackwoods’ property.

Most of them blackbirds did not survive their landing. Miles was lucky, or he’d been practicing. Has he been back? I don’t know. I’m rooting for him. But you! You stay away. Don’t get up. I’ll get you some chicken and biscuits, that’ll anchor you down proper. I’m not seeing you turned into no blackbird!

The End