Muse Paisley

I'm waiting for Mason Crawley to die. It should happen tonight, and his death will be spectacular.

My code name is Paisley, and I'm his muse. It's my job to tell my chosen creative if they should give up, but now he wants to play detective on a spaceship. Suffering through his writing is terrible enough. He's no action hero, but I'm forced to narrate and record his life, anyway.

I preferred the last person I was assigned to.

Sadly, I have to guide and narrate a creative idiot who should've been on a date with the hot elf who has been flirting with him. I'm unseen by most civilians, and usually only the select and worthy hear my spectacular voice.

"You're four planets away in your comfortable recording booth, and I don't listen to your worthless opinion," Mason said through my gold-painted speakers.

I fumbled for the crystal knobs on my computerized lounge chair.

Mason's image appeared, and it felt so real that it seemed as if I were an unseen phantom instead of in my booth.

"Will you shut up?" Mason asked me.

"But I wasn't speaking; you're not supposed to read my thoughts. You're supposed to be guided by my wisdom."

"You think too loudly, and I don't want to listen to you. The only thing I want is to survive the night." Mason Crawley peered out into the burned-out shell of a small town.

The others trying to reach safety from the remaining cultists were Mason's mother, Nurse Lace, a doctor named Zander Phall, and a dozen hungover shipmates.

An unseen business cultist raised his weapon.

"You won't survive," I whispered into my microphone.

This would be the temporary ensign's last dream, last breath, and his finale on the stage of life. Mason traded success in love, and stale kisses didn't linger on his lips because his romantic relationships were distant memories.

I made sure my microphone was off, so the losers surrounding Mason couldn't hear me. Static covered half the scene. My holographic video stream glitched. I adjusted the knobs to search for the face of the man destined to kill Mason.

Only Mason knew I was there, watching the attack unfold.

Twisted trees, rusted vehicles, and abandoned factories were the only evidence that a colony once lived there. The cultists stole everything of value, and only brokenness remained behind.

Mason ran past a charred van and could only see anything around him because dragons flying above him lit the sky with their fiery breath.

"I'm going to live," Mason said as he gasped for air.

"Mason, it's not going to happen. Your mom will miss you, but I won't," I said to him.

The less-than-gifted crew members of the flying clutch couldn't hear Muses, but they weren't creative. They weren't writers, artists, or related to a chosen one.

I don't know why I was assigned to a man who wasn't that special and waited for him to die.

Mason shoved his mother out of the way of enemy laser fire.

Why did he keep surviving? I have it right here in my file. He is a temp, and space temps always die because they are careless and unprepared.

"I don't plan on dying today." Mason rolled his sleeves down with his free hand to cover the moon-shaped freckles on his wrist.

"Come on. Theater troupes and high schools might perform productions of your sickly sweet musicals in tribute. Your funeral will be epic, and I wrote notes to record later."

"Paisley, leave me alone," Mason accidentally said out loud.

Commander Babette Nickel walked briskly behind, despite wearing an obvious back brace underneath her black uniform. Her painted lips stretched into an uneasy smile. "Who are you talking to?"

"I said the wrong cultist's name. Paisley is a traitor and a loser." Mason ducked again, and the killer missed his shot. His face twitched, his tail stiffened, and a growl warned his attackers to withdraw.

Most only hear me when I speak to them directly. My creative subjects call us Muses, intuition, narrators, gut feelings, harpies, or imposter syndrome. Well, unless they are chosen ones or have superpowers. Mason isn't special, but he hears my thoughts when I don't want him to.

'You're more pretentious each day,' Mason's thoughts screamed inside his brain. 'Backstabbers, all of them except for my mom, and I'm not so sure about Commander Nickel.'

I attempted to probe Mason's mind again, but he blocked his thoughts somehow, so I observed the commander.

Laser fire struck the temp in front of her.

The man collapsed next to Medic Lace's feet. I couldn't read his fading thoughts since he wasn't a selected subject.

Lace's shoulder-length black hair fell on her pointy fairy ears. Her tail stood stiff, freckles gleaming. When she turned full werewolf, her teeth grew. She appeared to have fewer wolf-like features and was obviously half-human.

"Why'd you send us into an ambush if you knew?" a crew member asked the commander.

"Didn't anyone but Mason read the brief? We're attempting to negotiate the surrender of the general's brother." Commander Nickel opened the med kit.

She, Lace, and Mason attended to the fallen man while the fake doctor, and secret agent, Zander, fumbled for his medical scanner and pretended he was trained on how to use it.

"Come on and help us, or are you that incompetent?" Lace asked the doctor.

The man rubbed his red and swollen eyes. "Like you know what you're doing. You're just a medic, and your son's mangy and can't pass the command test."

Lace injected the convulsing man as she glared at him. "My baby boy is not mangy! Did any of you pass medic training?" His mother punched the doctor's shoulder. "I heard strange gossip about the staff, but it's probably true that they are all mistakes in cloning experiments."

A beam appeared from the sky, dragging the injured man through the haze to the main spaceship, like in an old science fiction movie.

Agent Zander annoyed me. His incompetence impressed me.

The unlicensed doctors were beloved by the former king and hated by all medical staff, but especially pharmacists, AKA apothecaries, for their fraudulent and dangerous cures. Galactic citizens referred to them as Rag-And-Bone Alchemists.

The Rag-And-Bone Alchemist whispered to Lace, and he grabbed her arm. "We're partners. You're not still mad at me, are you?"

She lowered her voice. "Agent Zander, you need therapy."

Thoughts rattled around in Mason's head, but he hid his thoughts from me.

I yelled at him, but no one heard. "You've changed everything. Don't you realize that I hate surprises?"

'Stop spreading balderdash that only Muses are allowed to spy,' Mason thought.

"We're not spying. Muses inspire creatives and educate all harpies," I said.

Another crew member tripped and leaped up. "Why send a corpse to the ship?"

Zander's feigned ignorance melted away, and his human face transformed into a bunny. His fluffy tail popped out of a hole in his pants. "It's against regulations to abandon a crew member." He hopped to attention.

A cat woman gasped. "Gross, you're a fluffy bunny shifter and not even a cool warrior bunny. Can't you shift into anything impressive? At least Mason has the big bad wolf thing going on." Her fingers wrapped around his wrist.

"I'm a fairy and a wolf." Mason gathered the crew and rushed them to a warehouse. He shifted into a fairy man at will and back into a wolf. "I mostly stay in my wolf form."

The cat woman purred. "Shifting into a wolf isn't rare, but you're so cute. Normally, I am into taller men, but I'd make an exception for you." She touched his arm. "You feel strong. I didn't know you worked out."

"She is lying and probably working for the cult," I said. "No woman will be interested."

"Shut up," Mason whispered.

The cat woman purred. "Can we go for hot chocolate? My treat."

"Be quiet and stop flirting with my son. They might hear you," Lace said. "Lady, I know you're a cultist."

The woman yelled. "Fine, I won't date your son! You take the fun out of everything, and I was only in that cult for three weeks."

Mason said nothing and looked for the exit. His medium-sized muscles filled out his suit nicely. After all, he was wearing the child's size because his uniforms were being laundered.

"I'm not wearing a child's suit. It's custom," he whispered to me.

Zander said nothing to the crew, but his ears morphed back into a human. His fluffy cotton tail shrank.

Lace directed the crew out the back, where their large spaceship was camouflaged to look like an abandoned restaurant. "The Rag-And-Bone Alchemist's race has nothing to do with the mission. I miss working with actual physicians."

The cultist fired at the crew again, but he missed.

Mason fired back as the crew fled into the darkness. No one dared speak until they were directly in front of their ship.

"Mason has amazing luck because, like me, he uses his checklist," Commander Nickel said.

I glanced at my narration notes. A technical short straw was always hidden inside a random crew member's laser gun or shock rifle, and a specialized short straw chip was designed to draw potential enemy fire away from key personnel.

I calculated the odds, and the probability was one in fifteen that it was in a temp's laser gun, but it was in Mason's more than any other.

The chip increased any temp's chance of being hit or killed by 75% if they didn't purge their feedback daily.

"Commander Nickel warned me about the microchip when she took command four months ago, but the reason I'm alive is that I didn't party with the crew last night." Mason purged his weapon.

"That is because no one invited you," I said to him.

Laser fire missed his tail, and his head violently jerked around.

A human face with ice-cold eyes, pink hair, and a scar across his lips stared back. The middle-aged man, dressed in a business suit, raised his laser gun to Mason's head.

The villain was meant to win.

"Halt!" Mason dove out of the way and kicked the cultist in the leg.

Lace pointed in the distance. "I saw Tolbert Allen. He's wounded, but it's him."

Mason rushed into The Flying Clutch, and it maneuvered the long way around minefields and docked inside the military space carrier, the S.S. Stingray, to be debriefed.

He waited in the shadowy part of the supply room and transformed into a human-looking male with pointed ears.

A gloved hand inched toward him, dipping a rag into chemicals.

Attackers swirled around him. He slipped away and made it to the lab.