Stories on the Go: 101 Very Short Stories by 101 Authors

by Hugh Howey

  I come out, I step back, and everyone is looking at me, the doctors, the nurses, the guards, the colonel, the boy, the woman…

  And I say her name.

  Samuel Peralta

  is a physicist and storyteller. He has been recognized with awards from the BBC, UK Poetry Society, Digital Literature Institute, Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, and shortlists for the League of Canadian Poets, Elgin Award, ARC Poem of the Year, and Goodreads Best Small Press Books and Chapbooks.

  He has produced and supported scores of crowd-sourced films, including projects based on Daniel H. Wilson’s The Nostalgist, and Stephen King’s Big Driver and Rest Stop. The titles in his Semaphore series – Sonata Vampirica, Sonnets from the Labrador, How More Beautiful You Are, Tango Desolado, and War and Ablution – all topped the Amazon Kindle Hot New Releases charts, and ranked at the top of the Bestseller lists, for poetry. More recently, the short stories set in his Labyrinth world – including Trauma Room, Hereafter (anthologized in Synchronic), Liberty (anthologized in Help Fund My Robot Army), and Humanity (anthologized in The Robot Chronicles) – have begun to gain popular attention.

  Samuel Peralta’s Website

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  Fantasy

  Final Exam

  Daniel R. Marvello

  Some days I wish I had never met that woman.

  I knew Lissy meant well, but tasking me with creating a lycanthropy potion for my alchemy final exam seemed unnecessarily cruel. She knew I had a bad history relating to a lycanthropy potion gone wrong, and I still had misgivings about creating one.

  Nevertheless, here I was, setting up my equipment in the middle of the night at the edge of Castle Tarn. The waters of the small lake were absolutely still, reflecting the bright stars above and the jagged shapes of the surrounding peaks. The full moon was high in the sky and nearly bright enough to work by, although I augmented its illumination with a lantern on either side of my small work bench.

  I checked the potion recipe one more time to make sure I had everything I needed. If I’d forgotten anything, I could always run back to the Archives Castle behind me and retrieve it, but once I started the potion, that wouldn’t be an option.

  When I determined that the moon would soon be directly above me, I picked up a thin metal rod from the bench. Lissy had loaned me her personal spark stick, and I used it now to light the oil burner under the crucible that was partially filled with oil.

  This was it. Once I started enchanting the ingredients for the potion, there would be no turning back. A thin breeze caused the burner’s flame to waver, and I silently asked the spirits to keep the air still.

  Unable to delay any longer, I placed the first ingredient into the bowl of the enchanting press and pushed down with the curved lid. I channeled vaetra into the press and spoke the matching runephrase of the incantation. I then poured the newly enchanted ingredient into the heating crucible and started on the next one.

  I hesitated when I got to the vial of crushed wolf bone. It was the one ingredient that was unique to a lycanthropy potion. I could have used hair or teeth instead, but my research indicated that bone was the most effective.

  When the final ingredient was all that remained and the concoction was starting to bubble, I looked up to see how well I had anticipated the moon’s progress across the sky. I smiled when I saw the white orb directly above me. I enchanted the final ingredient and added it to the crucible while speaking the runephrase that would fuse the potion. The crucible emitted a loud “tong” sound, and I let out a breath I’d been unaware of holding.

  “That looked promising,” said a female voice from behind me. I started when she spoke, and it was a good thing I had just let go of the crucible’s handle or all my work might have ended up in a puddle on the ground.

  I turned to find Lissy standing a few steps behind me. Her dark hair framed a pale face that seemed to glow in contrast.

  “Yes, and you nearly ruined it by scaring the life out of me,” I responded.

  She nodded toward the workbench. “You could be in for quite an experience,” she commented.

  I froze as her words sunk in. I took a step toward her and looked directly into her eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

  She raised her eyebrows and grinned. “It’s customary for a Novice to demonstrate the product of his final exam before being granted Apprentice status. Surely you knew that.”

  “I surely did not!” I nearly shouted. If I had known I’d have to consume the potion myself, I would have been more insistent about making something else. When I drank my potion, I would turn into a wolf for some or most of the night, depending upon how strong the elixir turned out to be.

  “Don’t worry, someone will go with you.” She looked over at the crucible and smirked as she added, “Although you may be by yourself for part of the night.”

  So, she thought the potion might be strong too. I seriously considered “accidentally” bumping the work bench and tipping over the crucible, but that would mean failing the exam. I turned back to the bench with a sigh, and decanted the potion through a filtering funnel into a waiting bottle.

  I sealed the bottle and stared at it with trepidation. I looked up at the bright, full moon again and wondered how it would appear when seen through canine eyes.

  Daniel R. Marvello

  writes fantasy adventure stories from his log home on forty acres of forest and meadow in the North Idaho panhandle. The setting for his Vaetra Chronicles fantasy adventure series was inspired by the scenic beauty of his surroundings. Daniel shares his home with his loving wife of twenty years and several wonderful animals. Visit Daniel’s blog “The Vaetra Files” at his website.

  Daniel R. Marvello’s Website

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  Humor

  Trixy Chestity goes to England

  (Chapter 7)

  John L. Monk

  Oh how I ran that night from my athletic lover Kent, high-tailing it down the darkened, foggy streets of that nameless, tiny English town the locals called Peppergrove Hampshireton. My footsteps pounded softly on the ancient cobbles that had once been trod by Napoleon himself during his bloodthirsty conquest of the British Isles so many years before… Oh how my bosom bounced as I bounded down that ancient, bloody thoroughfare of English sorrow, weeping tears of unfettered despair into the unforgiving night.

  “Damn you Kent, you bastard!” I simpered longingly, with my bosom still heaving rancorously. “Damn you to hell!”

  It was when I was shouting these profundities that a strangeness tainted the English air. Verily I slowed down and looked about in wonder, because the English fog had somehow gotten foggier than ever, and soon I couldn’t see the street nor even my bosom.

  “Misssstressss Trixy,” came a slithering voice from the foggy darkness of what used to be a nice little town, yet now was more sinister and suspicious…

  “Yes?” I asked, outwardly.

  “I am a friend, you need not fear me,” the slithery thing in the darkness said.

  “Great, can you please kill Kent for me? He needs to pay!” I cried.

  “Uh, wait, that is, sssssure, I can do that, pretty easily…but first you musssst…”

  “Yes, oh please yes, where do I sign, oh satanic envoy from the darkest reaches of the imagination?” I muttered.

  The ancient, formerly conquered cobbles of Peppergrove Hampshireton seemed to vibrate, transmitting the energy (from the vibration) through my stiletto pumps, up my surprisingly slender legs, around and about my fine ass and then up my sleek, aquiline back, where it encountered my mesmerizing rib cage and created a strange, harmonic disturbance that sent my fluffy bosom heaving and rattling around.

  Then the sinister voice in the dark asked, “How did you know I wanted you to sssssign something, lovely mistresssssss?”

  That was my biggest problem with men and evil voices in general: they seemed to forget that on top
of being pretty and mysterious and delicate, yet bold and intelligent and funny and a crack shot with a six-shooter, I was also psychic (due to women’s intuition). It was how I was able to overcome that lost tribe of barbarians that had attacked me like four chapters ago. But I digress…

  “Just give me the paper so I can kill Kent!” I opined. “Now, or I shall lose my nerve…”

  “Yes, yessss… I sssshal do that… But I wonder, lovely Trixy, why is it that you want to kill this Kent character?” the strange voice shouted.

  “Because I’m pretty sure he’ll cheat on me,” I said, and heaved my sexiest sigh that day.

  “Nice ssssigh,” the sinister voice whispered, approvingly.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Well, just ssssign your name here,” the voice said, and a weird parchment/form slid across the still important cobbles. “Do you need a pen, Trixy?”

  “No, but thanks,” I said, because I appreciated the offer.

  I held up my hand in front of my mouth and bit down with my vampire teeth (because I’m also half vampire) and a thin trickle of blood oozed from the wound, glinting in the pale moonlight which streamed through a small opening in the fog. Then I dipped a long fingernail into the blood and leaned down to sign…

  Out of the darkness, through yet another opening in the fog, someone whistled.

  “Take a picture, it lasts longer!” I shouted with a smirk and a wink and a bouncy shake, which got a laugh and another whistle. Then I signed the form and slid it back toward the evil voice.

  “Foolish mortal woman!” the slithery voice said. “I have tricked you! You did not read the form! Clearly it ssssays, Any name below this line will be destroyed by SSSSatan himself!”

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a death ray shot out of the moon through the oddly circular hole in the fog. The light from the death ray scintillated madly across the exposed cleavage of my bosom, which were now wet from the condensation of the fog, and slammed into a shadowy form about twelve feet away.

  “Noooooo!” it screamed. “You have tricked me, you ssssigned MY name on the bottom of the form…!”

  “Now you know why they call me Trixy,” I said. “Your evil ways are numbered, Satan. I have finally destroyed you for good. Did you really think you could outwit a particle physicist and six time world champion chess master?”

  “Yessssss…” Satan screamed, and was never heard from again.

  Out of the darkness, in the deep gloom of that quaint little English town, which is situated on a lagoon on the upper east side of the island of England, someone hunky whistled and said, “Nice body, m’lady!”

  John L. Monk

  lives in Virginia, USA, with his wife, Dorothy. A writer with a degree in cultural anthropology, he moonlights as a systems administrator by day and Honey-do consultant on the weekends.

  John L. Monk’s Website

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  Historical Fantasy

  Einstein Stayed Here

  Hudson Owen

  My Uncle Nate told me the story back in the Seventies. He had lived in Park Slope during the late Thirties and early Forties, when these events took place. It began in the hazy, lazy summer of 1939 shortly before German tanks rolled into Poland, starting World War Two.

  It might not have been lazy, hazy in Europe, where Hitler had been in power since 1933. Einstein certainly knew what was going on. He was visiting the United States in 1933 and decided to stay, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1940. It was after his wife died and he was not yet ensconced in Princeton University that Albert Einstein lived for awhile in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

  Uncle Nate told me he encountered Einstein twice in Park Slope. Once when he was walking up Third Street, lined with sycamore and mulberry trees, toward Prospect Park, and once while walking in the park. In the first instance, the great scientist was strolling arm-in-arm with a lady down toward Seventh Avenue, the main commercial thoroughfare. Uncle Nate was a haberdasher, with shops on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side. He was a hat and suit man more than a pins and buttons kind of guy, and he always dressed sharp. On the day in question, he was wearing a linen suit and snap brim hat. The older Einstein wore a straw sun hat.

  The way my uncle told it, cool cat that he was, he touched his brim and nodded; and, amused, Einstein did the same. Moments later, the G-Man following in tow grabbed my uncle and said: “Who are you?” Showing the same calm he would later display under fire on Omaha Beach in 1944, my uncle produced a business card from his suit pocket and gave it to the government man, offering him a ten-percent discount on any item in his shops. The heavyset man grunted and released my uncle.

  Since winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, in 1921, Einstein had become world famous and was instantly recognized wherever he went.

  The second meeting, in the park, occurred in October after the outbreak of war in Europe. Einstein was walking fast, deep in thought, smoking a pipe. My uncle was drawing on a ciggy and immediately flicked it aside, feeling unequal, as he explained: “A cigarette doesn’t measure up to a pipe among serious gentlemen.” Einstein blew right past my Uncle Nate without a glimmer of recognition of their first encounter. Nate understood, of course, but he sounded hurt, the way he told it.

  The lady accompanying Einstein was most likely Irma Zell, who co-founded the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. Many people knew Einstein played the violin. Few people knew who he played with. No one knew if they played duets in bed. After it became generally known that Einstein was living in Park Slope, the sightings decreased. This was likely because the G-Men, who parked in front of the house where he was staying, drove him around town in a black Buick sedan with tinted windows.

  The U.S. Government feared that Hitler might send over an assassin team to prevent Einstein from aiding the Allies should the United States enter the war. No matter how much the Nazis belittled the Jews, they respected Einstein’s brain.

  The brownstone where Einstein stayed, between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West, was grand indeed, fit for the King of Science. It had high ceilings, parquet floors, and an elegant front gate. The G-Men occasionally got out of their car and stretched their legs. They wore dark suits and fuddy duddy ties that only came down to mid-chest level. One shucked peanuts and left the shells in the street for the locals to clean up.

  The famous letter that Albert Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt in August 1939, arguably the most influential letter of the 20th century, had a return address in Long Island, where Einstein met with physicist friends to draft the document. The letter warned that the Nazis might build “extremely powerful bombs of a new type,” which set in motion our project to build the A-bomb. However, the envelope was stamped: “Brooklyn, NY.”

  It was likely, therefore, that the Cloud of White Hair finished the letter and walked down the street to the post office on Seventh Avenue and mailed it. Just like that. For years, the envelope and letter were on display in a special case in the Brooklyn Historical Society, downtown. Then they went missing — some say they were sold at a private auction.

  After the great man left our fair borough, where I live today, The Historic Landmarks Preservation Center placed a bronze plaque on the brownstone by the front entrance, stating that Albert Einstein had stayed there. The owner complained that the ornamental plaque drew too many curiosity seekers who rang the doorbell, and had it removed.

  Uncle Nate finished his work for Uncle Sam overseas, came home pretty much in one piece, and picked up where he had left off in the clothing business. He finished his days peacefully in swank Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, in the presence of his wife and four children. His proudest possession was a photo of him shaking hands with former haberdasher President Harry S. Truman, on the occasion of his being awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for services rendered on Omaha Beach.

  Now I have white hair, which I comb. Nobody seems to care about that.

  Hudson Owen

  is a published poet and writer, actor and
digital artist. Most recently, he produced The Living Legend of Peezis Rilly Here available on CD Baby. He is a wilderness canoeist and long time resident of Brooklyn, New York. Additional information is available at his website.

  Hudson Owen’s Website

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  Paranormal — Romance

  The Witch and The Wolf

  Stella Wilkinson

  My senses tingled as the two men entered my little café.

  “Smells good,” one of them said, as if surprised.

  “Sweetness charm over the door,” the other responded in a gruff tone.

  My eye twitched with annoyance. It was true, there was a sweetness charm over the door, but it was intended to make the customers happy, not to manipulate their sense of smell. The good smell was my cakes, and I was proud of them.

  I stalked through the bead curtain, my head held high, my order pad in hand.

  “Good afternoon. What can I get you gentlemen today?” I asked, fake smile in place.

  “You the witch?” The younger one asked, totally dispensing with English niceties.

  My eye twitched again.

  “The cream teas are very popular. Our scones are to die for apparently.”

  “Apparently or literally?” he sniped at me.

  I sighed. “What have I done this time?”

  The older man put down his menu and gave me a gentle look. “Someone raised a demon here. We were wondering what you knew about it?”

  “A demon?” I whispered, “in Upper Biddleworth? Are you sure?”

  “His scent is everywhere.” The younger man was still unfriendly. “Stinks like a London sewer rat. And there’s freshly dug earth in the cemetery.”

  “The cemetery should have freshly dug earth. Our church organist passed away two weeks ago and it was his funeral on Thursday.”