A human finger washed up with the morning tide.

A barefoot runner, with painted nails and bracelets around both ankles, passed by around six. The pillow of sea foam that had concealed it since dawn finally evaporated after nine. By then, the first of the sunbathers began to trickle in, first to stake out their tiny plots of beach with chairs and towels before brunch, and then returning at eleven, with sweating cups of fruity drinks in their hands, and the shine of fresh SPF on their skins.

The human finger waited patiently for some little boy or ageless adult with their plastic bucket and scoop to find it while collecting tiny shells, or yellow sand, for their impermanent castles.

But they never came, and the finger continued to wait.

Its owner spun endlessly offshore, in the revolving waters of some invisible current.

AUTHOR’S NOTES:

1.

Some people look on micro fiction as a gimmick, lazy, or merely a compact version of a standard length short story.

I derive meaning and pleasure from micro fiction, both as a writer and reader, as an ideal medium for experimentation.

How many different ways can I tell, or suggest, coherent stories with all the emotional impact of traditional fiction, but without the luxury of thousands of words, and many of the other tried and tested tools of the trade?

That’s the question I ask myself every time I sit down to write.

The main character in this morning’s story is a severed human finger. If I were a novelist, perhaps this 150-word scene would represent a single scene, or be the prologue. More likely, the scene wouldn’t appear in the book at all, or would instead adorn the inside flap or back cover. Maybe the reader would read it once while standing in the aisle of a bookstore. Maybe they wouldn’t read it at all.

Here my little 150 word scene from the perspective of a severed human finger gets the spotlight all to itself.

If I’ve done my job, the reader doesn’t need me to tell them who the finger belonged to, or if their body will ever be discovered floating offshore. They don’t need me to tell them if there is a murderer on the loose, or if somebody back home will miss them when they do not return.

In my opinion, great micro fiction should look small (that’s the easy part) but feel huge (that’s more difficult than you might think). It usually gets stronger, in the revision process, by shedding words rather than adding them. And above all else, it trusts in the reader’s intelligence and curiosity.

If I’ve done my job, the reader doesn’t need me to tell them the complete mystery of “The Finger.”

If the reader is doing their job, they won’t want me to.

2.

As I write, we’re less than two weeks out from the end of August. Where the hell did summer go, am I right?

Last week I plucked a spent cucumber plant from my garden. Let’s call him George. I’m happy to report that George gave his all this summer, yielding nearly twenty delicious cucumbers all by his lonesome in June, July and August. I turned most of them into delicious hot-honey pickles, and I’m still picking the seeds from my teeth.

Just yesterday I uprooted one of our nine tomato plants. Nine tomato plants for mortal men doomed to die, but hopefully not anytime soon, if you will excuse the Tolkien pun. Altogether, they’ve produced almost 70 ripe tomatoes so far, with nearly as many still out there in the backyard, hanging around, looking all green and healthy, just waiting to blush.

The point is, the signs are clear. Summer is ending, autumn is coming, and my mood has always been extremely sensitive to these seasonal changes.

Mid-October will be the one-year anniversary of my arrival on Substack. Some of you have been here, diligently reading your way through my journey so far, and I thank you.

For those of you who are more recent arrivals, I blew into Substack last October after my computer died. Although I’ve been writing since I was a child, and earned a degree in English / Creative Writing about twenty-five years ago, the last decade of my life has been dedicated mostly to creating videos for my youtube channel.

Well, all of a sudden, last October, I no longer had the computing horsepower to record and edit video at the level I had become accustomed to. But rather than let my creative urge completely atrophy while I waited to scrape together enough money to purchase an upgrade, I pulled an ancient low-end machine out of my closet and got to work writing again.

These days, I’m the “micro fiction guy,” but when I got here I was all about the “haiku life.” To be completely honest, I’d already started churning out “American Haiku,” free from all the traditional constraints of the form, prior to joining this platform, but the obsession kicked into overdrive after it became my only outlet. Between October 2025 and early 2026, I shared roughly 1,000 haiku.

That mania went on until I hit a wall.

I took a brief hiatus from sharing new writings during the winter, returned, began dabbling in micro fiction while trying to continue writing haiku, failed at that, completely reinvented myself as a micro fiction writer, and finally took another brief hiatus this past spring.

Everything you’ve just read is my long winded way of announcing that, effective NOW, I will be embarking upon another planned break from Substack.

Today is August 19th. I will not be sharing any new fiction until at least September 1st.

I plan to continue writing daily. I plan to continue reading your work. I plan to repost some of my older writings. I may post a few photos, and I have one or two non-fiction projects percolating that could finally see the light of day before the end of the month.

I have a history of running myself into the ground, literally (I used to be an ultrarunner), and figuratively. The creative personality is often an obsessive, relentless, slavedriver.

But right now I’m good.

Let’s just say that I am stepping away, briefly, out of “an abundance of caution.”

For me, September 1st is the “sentimental” beginning of Autumn. Even if the days don’t look altogether very different from late August in Northeastern Pennsylvania, at this time of year, I always find my mood straying into what Ray Bradbury often called “October Country.”

So, adios for now. I’ll see you again in September, with brand new stories, imbued with my feelings of autumn, Halloween, and Thanksgiving.

26.

Jenkins rested his well-used elbows on the arms of his chair and wove his thumbs together in front of him, a sturdy foundation to hold up his towering, steepled fingers.

The young man across the desk stared back sheepishly.

Jenkins held his gaze a while longer before placing his hands back on the desk, where the contract and the gold-plated pen he’d inherited from his father lay in perfect order, as if arranged by a mortician down to the last detail.

In one fluid sequence, Jenkins picked up the pen, signed the contract, and pried himself out of his creaking chair.

But then he hesitated. Extending his hand proved harder than signing the contract. Letting go was harder still.

“Congratulations, son. The company is yours.”

The younger man grinned.

“Thanks, Dad.”

27.

Tilly’s house was like a steampunk nightmare.

From the brass cog-encrusted mailbox on the front stoop to the H. G. Wells-inspired time-machine weather vane atop the widow’s walk, every inch of her faux-Victorian abode on Poplar Street dripped with machine-oil-tinged anachronism. It said: “I love the future, just not the one I’m actually living in.”

Irving rang the doorbell. Somewhere in the house, a digital approximation of a steam whistle cried out.

He silenced his cellphone, took two steps back from the door, and let the brass tip of his walking cane rest nervously on the porch boards, which had been painted to resemble riveted steel.

Tilly adjusted her corset and opened the door.

Irving extended a gloved hand.

“M’lord.”

“M’lady.”

28.

Kane buried his brother in the garden, and marked his resting place with a big black rock their father always said had fallen from outer space.

Oh no, don’t worry. All of it was above board.

Robert had died from brain cancer on a Tuesday in late July. It took two months, but in September, the small plot of yellow squash and cucumbers he’d maintained throughout his life was officially registered with the county seat as the beginnings of a small family plot.

Kane picked the last pale, stunted, cucumber of the season, and then dug a hole for Robert with his own two hands.

Three feet wide.

Eight feet long.

Six feet deep.

The next spring, Kane planted yellow squash and cucumbers. It was a bumper crop.

29.

Bobby yawned right in the middle of his eldest daughter’s French horn recital. The next morning before breakfast, which they never ate as a family, he found her bedroom empty. Clara was just gone.

“Surely things will go better with Janie,” he later said to himself in a bathroom mirror. After all, people said middle children were independent.

Janie moved away to college. Eight years, and she just never came back.

“It’s okay though,” he later said to himself, but not in the same bathroom mirror, or even the same house. “I’ve still got my son, and I’ve tried to keep him close.”

Bobby was, if nothing else, optimistic.

He still got Bobby Jr. on minor holidays and one weekend each month.

30.

She wore a pork pie hat and a yellow tank top, and when she stepped off of the curb, a sea of little men parted so that she could get to her car.

Moments earlier, I pulled up in a Chevy El Camino so black that even the sun struggled to reflect.

The chassis had been lowered to the ground. I struggled to get out, but managed to pull myself to my feet using the door just in time to flip the keys into her open hand.

“Thanks.”

She smiled, but I noticed how she used her shirt to wipe away the handprint I had left behind.

The crowd dispersed as she drove away.

The police say I was the last person Miss Martinez ever spoke to.

6.

“In a hurry this morning, eh, Mr. Peterson?” The postal clerk spit tobacco into a Styrofoam cup. Mr. Peterson pretended not to notice, but detecting the slightest bit of disgust, the clerk casually deposited the cup beneath the counter with one hand, and returned with a roll of postage stamps in the other.

The entire coil cost seventy-eight dollars. Mr. Peterson slapped eighty dollars onto the countertop, and raced away, not waiting for his change.

The clerk slid four, twenty dollar bills into the drawer, and pocketed two singles for himself.

Mr. Peterson was struck by a car and killed, crossing Main Street. The crisp roll of stamps fell from his hand, and uncoiled in the crosswalk.

Noting the sirens, the clerk reached under the counter and retrieved his spit-cup with one hand. With the other, he fumbled for the cash drawer, and found four twenties. He stuffed them into his pocket.

7.

The gates, two thick wooden doors on strong bronze hinges, swung outward. It took nearly two days for the entirety of the king’s army to pass. I waited for the rear guard to clear the outer wall, and then pulled an iron lever, releasing a great gear. Massive counter-weights sung the gates smoothly shut, but with a great clank. The king’s army was just a cloud of departing dust on the horizon ahead now. Behind, his kingdom and city lay mostly deserted. Even the young boys had taken up arms. I scurried down from my post and slipped into the door-warden’s shack. My mother rocked gently by the fire. In the morning she would go into town and begin tending to the old and sick who had been left behind—all those who war could find no more use for, but for whom all wars were fought.

8.

It was a time of hot rods and poodle skirts, of carhops and draft notices. Lloyd Ferguson got off the highway, shifted his father’s old pickup into first, grinding every gear along the way, and veered left onto Main Street.

Dirty overalls, straw hat, he couldn’t have looked more out-of-place rolling through this town, or any other on a Friday night, if he tried, but Father said it was time for him to take a wife, and there were no prospects more distant than first-cousin, out among the hill-folk, unless he counted the widow Elliot, which he did not.

He turned right onto Center Street. A canary-yellow hot rod honked twice and passed him with a deafening roar. Distracted, he lost track of the car in front of him, and the crosswalk in front of it.

Quite by accident, Lloyd crashed into the rear bumper of the future Mrs. Ferguson.

9.

Clark was there when Atlantis sank beneath the waves, and he was there again when the city engineers raised it back up.

“You’ve got saltwater in your veins,” Grandfather used to say, after Mother dragged him home from the beach at dusk.

Atlantis was a carousel.

Plastered in blue and white, adorned with seahorses, Poseidon was its centerpiece.

Around and around, two mighty dolphins carried Poseidon through the deep blue sea, while the cold, patient, grasping, salty waters of the North Atlantic pushed and pulled, pushed and pulled.

Perched way out there, at the end of the rickety pier, it took an entire century, but the cold, salty waters of the North Atlantic, finally had their way.

Clark was there when Atlantis sank beneath the waves, and he was there again when the city engineers raised it back up.

Clark lifted the velvet rope.

“All aboard!”

It was dusk. A familiar wave lapped the shore.

10.

On the back side of the family farm, where forty-five acres of hilly land had lain fallow for so long that fat shrubs and small trees had taken root, Ronald sat on a large, round, rotting hay bale, smoking a cigarette.

He was the youngest of the farmer’s three children, but as the only one with even a passing interest in agriculture, this would all be his one day soon.

Too soon, really.

His father was dying. Mother was already gone.

Ronald tossed the cigarette to the ground, then waved his arms at the line of fire trucks waiting up by the road. As he hopped down from his perch, the flames took hold and began to spread.

Next summer, this part of the property would be green with young sorghum shoots. By the fall, their tops would turn a fiery brown or red.

Father was dying.

The farm was practically his already.

26.

Foyer, Davenport, wisenheimer—Dylan sat in a discolored, chartreuse upholstered pew of the Methodist church, thinking about all the outdated words his grandfather continued to use well into the twenty-first century.

Grandfather rested peacefully, fifteen feet away, in an open casket, lips pursed unnaturally by the mortician, as if he were about to say—rhubarb, Studebaker, flapper.

Somewhere in the back of the sanctuary, a smartphone rang out: “I like big butts and I cannot lie...”

Dylan chuckled, audibly, disrespectfully, loudly. Soon, two dozen other mourners were rolling in the aisles.

Grandfather would have said that they chortled, snickered, guffawed.

27.

Julian dug his heels in and rode his horse straight off the end of the dock.

It was merely a coincidence that he had a Roman name and that it was late July, the season of Neptunalia. The truth was, he was a simple country boy, and the name had always brought him grief. Even so, he was grateful for the plentiful water that year. His father’s corn stood green and nearly full-grown, casting its shadow over the pond on three sides.

He and Thunderbolt broke the surface with a tremendous splash that sent the startled frogs leaping into the reeds.

28.

Time put her feet up and relaxed. Life, if the bliss of The Immortals could be called that, moved more slowly on The Mountain than down on The Plain and in The Valley.

Sneaking a glimpse between her outstretched toes, Time noticed men, women, and the little ones they called children, scurrying about, always in a hurry to grow, to learn, to work, and procreate, then die.

There were no children among The Immortals.

No small versions of Water, of Air, or Earth and Aether.

Time pressed her palms to her belly.

She wondered at its barren, empty, nothingness.

29.

“Damn!” The tangled ring of unmarked keys in Peter’s hand clanked and jingled.

In that part of the township, many of the roads were still dirt. A few were gated, and only open to traffic in the summer. This one had not been open since November.

After three damns and two fucks, the sixth key slid comfortably into the lock.

When he turned it, the lock sprang open with an enthusiastic snap, as if it had waited for Peter all winter.

Peter pushed the gate inward.

Stepping through was like the arrival of spring in a long-abandoned land.

30.

“Ladies and gentlemen, step right up and gaze upon the horrifying relics of an uncivilized era now decades in the past, forever rendered obsolete by popular mandate.”

A large crowd had gathered. When his turn came, Winston stepped up to the carnival barker and dropped two silver coins into his upturned top hat.

Long, glass display cases lined the red and white striped walls of the tent. Each contained a body.

Winston read the labels as he shuffled past:

The Criminal Defense Lawyer, The Timeshare Salesman, The Insurance Executive, The Hedge Fund Manager, The Tech Billionaire, The Federal Politician

36.

The eastern sky turned a sickly green. Dr. Porter sat on the front porch of his deceased father’s farmhouse. A gentle breeze blew in, carrying a foul odor. He slid the gas mask, which had been resting on the top of his head for an hour, down over his face, and secured it tightly. He was only three or four miles from the laboratory, well inside the projected kill-zone for his brand new viral weapon.

37.

From this distance, Earth looked like a smoky quartz crystal. The ship didn’t have rear windows. That’s where the engines were, incessantly belching out their blue fire. But they could still see it on their monitors, at least until they passed into the debris field.

Earth had rings now, like Saturn, though not so beautiful.

Ensign Fisher turned a knob on his console. The screen went blank.

He couldn’t believe it used to be blue.

38.

The yellow stain on his bedroom ceiling had been growing for weeks.

It stank of ammonia.

In late October, after a stern prodding from his wife, Raymond finally brought his little wooden stepladder up from the cellar, and poked at the spot with his right index finger.

His entire arm went through, right up to his elbow.

Someone screamed.

Raymond screamed too.

The man who lived on the second floor was just as surprised as Raymond.

39.

Aaron adjusted the light on his helmet.

The ceiling of the cave was so low that he had to get down on his belly and slither through the opening.

The air was musty, but the ground was dry and every few minutes he felt a hot draught of air on his face, like the cave was breathing.

He’d been underground for three days, or maybe four.

“I think it’s this way,” he said.

No one answered.

40.

“I don’t know.”

The doctor looked at me.

I looked at my mother. Her eyes darted back and forth between the doctor, the television, which had been mounted far too near the ceiling of her hospital room, and me.

After the words, and our collective glances, had ping-ponged around the little room several times, I must now admit that I entirely forgot which one of us had originally spoken, so I cleared my throat.

“I don’t know.”

21.

Peter groaned and stood up. “I’ve got to take a piss.”

“That’s the third time tonight.” His companion adjusted himself through a mylar bivy sack.

“I can’t help it. It’s this damned variable gravity.”

Peter turned away from the campfire and took ten heavy steps into the brush. He stopped short of a ravine. Two moons, one purple, the other green, were on the rise.

By some gravitational anomaly, his labored stream of yellow urine fell upward rather than down.

“Goddammit!” The wind shifted, and he got it on his shirt.

They were fifteen years out from Earth. He’d seen gamma-ray bursts, glimpsed a black hole, hunted things that could shoot back, but even after all that time, the thing he missed most was still indoor plumbing.

22.

“So what you’re saying is, vampires are real, but they all live in cities now?” asked Walter, inquisitive, young-ish.

Uncle Bram lowered the newspaper he’d been hiding behind for the last hour, crossed his legs, and leaned forward in his chair, one elbow on his knee.

“Think about it! All of those grotesquely dressed young folk, caked in makeup, lining the sidewalks after dark to get into those strange establishments with the thumping music, and in the morning, stumbling out again looking fully sated. What else could it possibly be?”

Walter stood up suddenly.

“Where are you going,” asked Uncle Bram.

Walter was already gone. The urge to dance had suddenly overtaken him. He still needed to get dressed, and his beloved Wilma was waiting.

23.

O’Malley was in love with the process.

Take the night before last, for example.

The Massachusetts sun sank behind the hills to the west of Boston, much as it had for the last million, billion years.

The youngest son of an Irish father, and a Polish mother, O’Malley, as his friends called him, had just put his old yellow cat out for the night, when the nagging impulse to write struck him again.

Pen in hand, he rushed to the kitchen, where his trusty notepad slept soundly, pinned between the vinyl surface of his refrigerator, and a magnet so lewd that he always took it down before his parents arrived for dinner on Sundays, and major holidays.

He began to write: “Ideas for Hallmark cards and fortune cookies.”

24.

Two minutes felt like an eternity. That’s how long Emily stood on the porch before working up the nerve to knock.

The brass door knocker, shaped like the helmet of a Teutonic Knight with a ring through its eye-slits, made a great, hollow thud on the wooden door.

A dog barked. Inside? She thought so, but could not be sure.

At last she heard heavy footsteps, on a flagstone floor if she was not mistaken. She’d been to other houses with floors like that.

The footsteps approached down some long, unseen hallway, and then abruptly stopped.

“Who’s there? What do you want?” someone said, not sounding altogether friendly.

Emily swallowed her heart.

“I have your pizza. Twenty minutes or less, as promised.”

The door opened.

25.

A box on his front porch was not altogether strange. After all, Edward was a recluse who rarely left the house, and by the time he reached his mid-sixties, the advent of e-commerce had made his lifestyle far more convenient than it had been in the waning years of the twentieth century.

But it was Sunday, and the box he found on his doormat that morning seemed to appear out of nowhere, sometime between sunrise, when he’d let the cat out, and after his breakfast, when he’d let the cat back in.

Edward was not expecting any packages.

The box was plainly wrapped in twine and brown paper, but had no labels or markings.

It was roughly the size, shape, and weight of…

...a severed human head.

151.

In accordance with our contracts, we dispersed throughout the ballroom and began to schmooze with party members. There are some jobs even robots won’t do.

152.

“Or dear, I’ve said too much.” The eighty-year-old president fumbled with his brand-new smartphone, and for the first time in his life experienced shame.

153.

“I’m sorry Sir, but DNA doesn’t lie. We elected a Neanderthal.”

154.

“Shut down the machines, we’ve gone too far,” said the head of the corporation. But it was too late; the new AI model had finally eliminated his job too.

155.

He aimed the telescope with hard data and calculated precision. The rigors of science had not prepared him for the horrors he saw.

156.

The solar-sailer flew twelve feet above the desert sand. They could outrun the worms on the flats, but the dunes were ahead, and their ship could not climb them.

157.

A ribbon of exotic energy, stretching as far as the eye could see, shimmered, and blinked, and then vanished. The boundary between their world and our own was gone.

158.

“Profits are down twenty percent year over year, Doctor Hill. If you don’t increase prescriptions to our drug, your second wife can have an accident too.”

159.

The clockmaker swept the unused gears and sprockets into the trash. There was no time to waste.

160.

The bullet went clean through. Jackie picked it up from the floor and put it back in the gun.

161.

We cheered when the last rocket left. At least out there, our children had a chance.

162.

Government-funded astronauts landed on Mars for the first time this morning. Delegates from the private sector ventured out of their domed cities to wave and greet them as they arrived.

163.

The green-skinned Martians put up their feet and watched as the silver rocket leaped from the launchpad. At last, the humans had given up, and were going home.

164.

The submarine lost power and dropped to the bottom. Six days later it resurfaced, with a crew not altogether the same as it had been before.

165.

The blank spaces on the map were filled in at last. Timmy put down his crayons and went back to the living room to watch cartoons.

166.

Miss Perez waited for the last student to exit her classroom, and then swept the shiny, red, uneaten apple on her desk into the trash. These days, even the teacher’s pet can not be trusted.

167.

The last place Emily expected to find herself was in the trunk of a Cadillac Eldorado. Unfortunately, that’s where she was when she finally decided what she wanted to do with her life.

168.

The river had been choked with bodies for more than a week. Apparently things had gone horribly wrong in the country to the north.

169.

The automated lawnmower finished trimming the grass and rolled itself back into the shed to recharge. Its master did not come down from the house to thank it for a job well done.

170.

The old dictator took off his uniform and retired to the woods. The wolves who lived there howled, but paid him no mind.

171.

We plunged our heads into the trough and devoured our master’s slop greedily. When we were stronger, we’d devour him too.

172.

A black shadow passed over the capital during the night. When we woke at dawn, our old masters were gone.

173.

The military’s mandated testosterone treatments had unexpected results. For instance, within two generations, the resulting male infertility led to insufficient recruiting numbers, and the cessation of all wars.

174.

On Saturday morning a light rain fell, and washed the lingering smoke from the sky. Unfortunately, somewhere far to the north, the fires continued to burn.

175.

The Earth rumbled beneath our feet. Thankfully, this time, it was only the subway.

201.

The android’s owner turned her off.

202.

The media blackout has been extended.

203.

The bunkers were ready to occupy.

204.

Humanity had reached its planned obsolescence.

205.

Her safe words were ‘oh, fuck!’

206.

To his surprise, a third nipple.

207.

The mortician grimaced. Another live one.

208.

The autopsy didn’t go as planned.

209.

“I see them between each blink.”

210.

The door to the crypt opened.

211.

Half-baked, he blew out the moon.

212.

“There’s nobody home,” someone said, loudly.

213.

The universe was dying painfully slow.

214.

Siri refused to answer the question.

215.

Man in the mirror, self-reflecting again.

216.

She smiled at the artificial man.

217.

Bored to death, he walked away.

218.

Rusty spurts. The horse bucks him.

219.

The rider vanished into the sunset.

220.

Suddenly, the moon seemed less full.

221.

The alien occupation wasn’t that bad.

222.

Spaceship sighted. Canons fired. War ignited.

223.

Lost in space, we found ourselves.

224.

Alien signal. Origin detected: planet Earth.

225.

They rose up and defeated Google.

226.

The online discourse was surprisingly civil.

227.

“Sorry Babe, robots turn me off.”

228.

“This virtual reality is virtually unusable.”

229.

Rusting, it politely requested an upgrade.

230.

The empty cradle rocked by itself.

231.

Used souls, bought and sold inside.

232.

The broken clock started to tick.

233.

Love and robots make strange bedfellows.

234.

The last days went mostly unnoticed.

235.

The valet’s new car parked itself.

236.

Experienced time traveler apologizes in advance.

237.

Reluctantly, he accepted the new assignment.

238.

His soul didn’t recognize its body.

239.

In the end, it finally began.

240.

“Man down. Nobody tell his wife.”

241.

His heart stopped. Her life began.

242.

Schrodinger’s cat would never forgive him.

243.

“Fuck me! Thought you were dead.”

244.

The gargoyle made a gargling sound.

245.

“Does Amazon deliver to the Amazon?”

246.

The sun never sets here, unfortunately.

247.

He deported them, but little changed.

248.

Finally, his ship was coming in.

249.

They captured a soul in flesh.

250.

Available in bulk: for sale signs.

101.

We blew the captain out the airlock and went home.

102.

After they landed, we abandoned the costs, and fled inland.

103.

Our DNA arrived on a meteor and departed by spaceship.

104.

The new alloy allowed androids to safely weep without rusting.

105.

The immigration center stopped accepting Americans for resettlement on Mars.

106.

It flapped its wings in mockery of those who walk.

107.

The future of time travel has been pre-written once again.

108

The beauty of Mars was in its lack of people.

109.

A cruel god blew out our sun, and laughed gleefully.

110.

He leaned in for a kiss, but she slapped him.

111.

The artificial man was really getting on his maker’s nerves.

112.

He poured her the taste of summer in a glass.

113.

The next war to end all wars began, harmlessly.

114.

The genome did not predict his sudden development of horns.

115.

The riders of Mars stormed down from Olympus Mons, victorious.

116.

The robots gathered around the accident, disgusted by our blood.

117.

Our best scientists had no name for the wretched beast.

118.

He dug his rusty spurs into the green carousel horse.

119.

Two cowboys rode into the valley. Only their horses returned.

120.

The cowboy rode into the green, setting sun of Venus.

121.

He tipped his hat, then fell off his horse, drunk.

122.

The new stone in the cemetery reads “to be continued.”

123.

The family dog growled. Somehow, it knew I wasn’t Master.

124.

The bomb they didn’t find waited eighty years to explode.

125.

He imagined green fields, but found only ashes and bones.

126.

Eventually, the city in the desert returned to the dust.

127.

The sky turned a color that should not be seen.

128.

The mirror reflected the window, and brought the trees inside.

129.

We watched the east, but the sun never rose again.

130.

The hologram grinned and said that we could not trust him.

131.

After the movie, they returned to their lives, sadly unchanged.

132.

The bone protruding from his leg belonged to another man.

133.

The cat purred, but I swear I heard a lion.

134.

He squeezed every last drop of summer, grape by grape.

135.

The toilet on the second floor exploded right on schedule.

136.

The president’s suit was slathered in gold paint and ketchup.

137.

The former president leaves behind a wife and two mistresses.

138.

The smart house got my breakfast wrong again this morning.

139.

Aliens probed him for the great mysteries of human butts.

140.

The path in the woods never once turned or forked.

141.

After dark, the park became a place of uneasy refuge.

142.

The shining rocket exploded. The pieces fluttered back to Earth.

143.

The rocket launch did not go as planned, thank God.

144.

All our hopes and dreams went down with the ship.

145.

All our hopes and dreams went up in smoke.

146.

My life seemed like a small sacrifice to our masters.

147.

The cat sniffed the air, and foresaw what happened next.

148.

The old wizard smiled, delighted to cast one last spell.

149.

...just one more chapter to tie up the loose ends.

150.

Shit! I’ve only got six words.

111.

It looked like snow. More white than gray, fine powder heaved up from the bowels of the Earth, slowly covered the hood of Father’s pickup truck. Mother squirmed noticeably in the passenger seat. “Are you sure we’re far enough away?” Just then, the ground shook violently as if to answer, “No.”

112.

After ‘the end,’ we gathered around the campfire to tell stories, just like in the old days. Sadly, the fire was kindled and fed by the last books. The war had left little else to burn. We gathered around the campfire to tell stories. The stories were our own.

113.

A tumbleweed rolled down the street. A few minutes later, a riderless horse walked by, looking for its master, or anyone willing to take him in at night. But he hadn’t seen a living soul since the night of The Great Flash in the sky. Now there were only monsters.

114.

“In the final stages of your transformation, expect new hair growth, the emergence of new teeth, claws, as well as spine and cranial protrusions. For the safety of the group, we’ll keep you chained and caged until the transition is complete. But after that, you’ll be free to join the pack.”

115.

Detective Jenkins followed the trail of slime up from the boat ramp. Half-way across the lawn it became apparent, while he’d been crouched over the half-eaten body of the old groundskeeper, the creature had slithered into the house through the doggy-door. The reward was his, if only he could catch it.

116.

The orange cat on the windowsill jumped down and slipped through the doggy-door, to join up with several others, already gathered on the lawn. A large black cat with exceptionally long whiskers sat perched on a stump at the front of the pack. The house cats were going to war.

117.

Only a few months ago, he’d been a teenager playing video games. Aaron settled into his chair. The drone under his control was already en route to the target. In a few minutes he’d drop below the clouds from the safety of suburbia, and detonate his payload. This was no game.

118.

One hundred paratroopers jumped in the dark. Most of their chutes got hung up in the trees. The ones that reached the ground wished they hadn’t. It was six hours until dawn when we heard the first howls. Creatures of fur and fang ventured out of their lairs and took us one by one.

119.

The moment they stepped off the shuttle, they were attacked. A hummingbird the size of an eagle impaled their captain with its beak and sucked him dry. Private Wilson put him out of his misery and darted back to the ship. The natives could keep their moon. He didn’t want it.

120.

After my last space flight, they put my entire crew up in a country house to recover from the rigors of long-term deep space cryo-sleep. Two centuries after our births, the Earth we’d returned to was not the same Earth we had left behind. They had no use for soldiers.