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

by Hugh Howey

  A slight disturbance in the nearby leaves startled Jeannie. She dreaded to look over her shoulder. “Where are we, anyway?”

  “What a question! Did you not see the sign?” asked the owl, who was now obviously annoyed.

  “I tried to read it, but it wasn’t even in English.”

  “Of course it is, you ridiculous girl. Can you not even read?”

  “Yes, I’m even in the Falcons reading group at school—”

  The owl ruffled his feathers a bit. “An inferior bird,” he mumbled. “Anyone can plainly see that the sign says ‘Welcome to Normal. Population Unknown.’”

  Jeannie squinted. “Well, no wonder. It’s written backwards.”

  “Everyone in the town of Normal reads in reverse. Only an uncultured waif such as yourself would attempt to read forwards. Clearly, you are not normal.”

  “I am so,” Jeannie protested.

  “Prove it,” the owl challenged.

  Jeannie held up a finger. “Number one, I go to school every day.”

  “Frogs never go to school,” the owl pointed out.

  “What? Oh, that’s silly. Number two, I always eat all my vegetables.”

  “Trees do not eat vegetables,” was the owl’s retort as he stifled a yawn.

  “Number three, I always mind my manners around my elders.”

  “Rocks do not need manners.”

  “Four — I, I know all my multiplication tables—”

  “Snakes do not perform arithmetic calculations.”

  Jeannie became exasperated. “And number five—” she practically shrieked.

  “My dear girl,” the owl interrupted. “Sensible, average, everyday, NORMAL girls do not engage in debates with owls in the middle of the woods!”

  “But, it’s your fault. You talked to me first,” Jeannie said helplessly.

  The owl spread his wings and laughed at her. Mocking in a voice similar to hers, he said, “But the owl talked to me first, really, he did.” Returning to his own voice, he added, “Perhaps in the future, you will reserve judgment until you know what normal really is— if, of course, anyone can know what normal really is."

  The owl rose from the pine branch. He swooshed by John, blinked his eyes, and said, “Hooooo. Hooooo.”

  As he flew out of sight, Jeannie sat down on the forest floor and cried. Now she knew why owls were indeed so wise.

  Matthew W. Grant

  is the author of several screenplays and novels in various genres including the Slaters Falls series and the Northbridge series.

  Publishers Weekly declared Matthew’s novel, Secrets Of Slaters Falls, “Tragicomic deliciousness!” noting that the “Bawdy, snappy humor catches spark right away.” PW also noted the novel’s balance between “Class-conscious dirty realism and the prurience of nighttime soap operas.”

  Secrets Of Slaters Falls achieved semifinalist status in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Matthew’s screenplay adaptation of his novel, Zach’s Secret, was a finalist in a contest sponsored by Script Magazine. His screenplay version of his thriller, The Killer Net, was a Top Honoree in the Massachusetts Film Office Screenplay Competition.

  Matthew graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Education and Mass Communications earned after his thesis, Sex On Soap Operas, raised eyebrows and pulse rates on campus. His material has appeared on numerous websites and in four newspapers.

  As a resident of New England and a fan of its spectacular fall foliage, Matthew sets many of his works in small New England towns. While they may look picture-perfect on the surface, you can be sure they are teeming with secrets underneath.

  Matthew W. Grant’s Website

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  Paranormal

  Twin Souls

  Michael Coorlim

  The last thing I said to my twin sister was “I wish you were dead.” I don’t think she heard me, but I meant it at the time.

  Lisa’s a detective, and a damn good one. I like to help her out however I can, though of course what I can actually do is limited. It’s the vestigial dynamic of our childhood. She was the outgoing, adventurous, dynamic one, and I was her sidekick. Her assistant, more than her partner.

  I’m still the Watson to her Holmes, though sometimes it feels more like the Penny to her Inspector Gadget.

  Now, watching her slink through this dirtbag’s living room, part of me hopes that he’ll pop out of the closet and put a bullet between her eyes. Does that make me a bad person? I can’t really tell anymore.

  It’s hard not to feel disconnected. Nothing seems as real as it did when I was alive. Everything’s abstract. Academic. Hypothetical. Like you’re remembering it while it happens, though I guess I’m the memory. Do you know how much emotion is caused by hormones and neurotransmitters? I don’t have a body. I don’t have receptors for them. No blood to carry dopamine, adrenaline, serotonin, or anything else. I don’t get angry, or frightened, or happy. But I do get lonesome. And I can remember what feeling was like.

  That’s not entirely true. I do have that weird twin-connection with my sister. That’s persisted into death. In fact, without the conflicting signals from my own body, I think I can tune in to what Lisa feels all the more strongly. I don’t think it’s as genuine as my own living feelings were, but when I’m close to her and she’s really feeling, it’s like vivid splashes of color and life cutting through the fog of the afterlife. And it’s a hell of a lot more than what other ghosts get.

  Maybe that’s why they go crazy.

  I don’t want to go crazy, but these echoes I get from Lisa, her emotional cast-offs, sometimes they’re so intense that they remind me of what it was like when I could feel things for myself. I think the big reason why I want her dead is so they’ll stop, so I can stop, so I can let myself fade away into catatonia like so many of my deceased peers.

  The other reason is that I hope that when she does die, she’ll be here with me. And I’ll feel complete again.

  And she will die. Eventually. Everybody does. And Lisa’s life is more dangerous than most. Even for a cop. She takes a lot of chances. A lot of dumb risks.

  Maybe that’s my fault, too.

  Right now she’s come to the home of Jimmy Malone, dirtbag meth dealer accused of shooting his pregnant girlfriend. She called for backup, but she’s not going to wait for it. Lisa’s pretty sure he did it.

  She’s right. The dead girlfriend is here too, screaming at him about killing their baby. She died feeling this heady mix of hate and betrayal that will sustain her through eternity. It’s the only echo that’s hers, the only one she has left. It’s strong enough that Maria won’t fade, not in a year, not in fifty. Eventually everything else will fade until all that’s left is that hurt. She doesn’t have a twin to anchor her, to feed her a stream of fresh impressions.

  Lisa can’t see her, of course, any more than she can see me. She passes right in front of the closet that Maria is screaming at. Inside, Jimmy is biding his time, waiting for the perfect chance to jump out and shoot my sister in the back of the head.

  He’s got a good chance of making it out of here a free man. Lisa’s careless, and her backup is still a ways away.

  Something makes my sister stop, something makes her turn, something makes her draw a bead on the closet door before Jimmy can even start turning the knob. She’s a good cop. She waits until she sees the pistol in his hand before firing. It’s a good shoot.

  Later, she’ll write in her report that she heard him shifting before he opened the door. She’ll confide to her partner that it was a gut feeling that made her turn. She’s been having a lot of these gut feelings lately, and she’s learned to trust them. So much so that she’s been taking unnecessary risks.

  I blame myself. Or at least I would, if I still felt anything akin to guilt.

  Everyone else thinks my sister is lucky, and she is. Lucky that that twin-sense thing works both ways, lucky that the bond of sisterhood extends beyond death. I’m still
not sure if I’m helping her out to keep her alive, or if I’m trying to make her overconfident and careless.

  Either way, we’re finally spending some quality time together.

  Michael Coorlim

  is a teller of strange stories for stranger people. He collects them, the oddballs. The mystics and fire-spinners, the sages and tricksters. He curates their tales, combines their elements and lets them rattle around inside his rock-tumbler skull until they gleam, then spills them loose onto the page for like-minded readers to enjoy.

  He writes fast-paced stories about real people in fantastic situations, plots with just a twist of the surreal, set in worlds just a shadow’s breadth from our own. He’s the author of the Galvanic Century series of Steampunk Thrillers, the literary apocalyptic short story collection Grief, and the supernatural serial Profane Apotheosis.

  In 2012 Michael wrote the pilot for the atmospheric horror transmedia web-series Sleep Study. After two years of hiatus, the series is in pre-production again under the umbrella of his own Chicago-based production company, Burning Brigid.

  Michael Coorlim’s Website

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  Literary Fiction

  Kiribati

  Maren Hayes

  It took Harvey three years to die and the roof and the garden were dying all that time, too. At first, Lavinia tried to keep it all going: house, yard, homemade soups, holiday cards. But the day her nonprofit called while she was raking the front yard to tell her that fundraising had experienced a contraction — a contraction, they called it — and her job had been cut, she put down the rake, went inside to get Harvey his painkillers, and left the outside to do what it would.

  The espaliered fruit trees in their postage stamp of a backyard didn’t produce that summer in the brutal heat wave; the vegetable patch succumbed to neglect and Harvey succumbed to the cancer one fall day when he himself was a dried stalk in a golden slant of afternoon sun through the dirty window.

  When the children offered to fly in to scatter Harvey’s ashes, Lavinia put them off and parked the urn on the mantel. She stuck an old spaghetti pot under the biggest leak in the attic and shoved the mounting stack of bills and bank notices under the bed in the guest room.

  She got her hair cut and dusted off her good suit for a couple of job interviews. With the jacket buttoned up, no one could see how the pants hung on her. No offers came. She saw the quick looks on the faces of future bosses who were her children’s ages. Briefly, she considered tattooing the number 60 on her forehead to save everyone the charade of the interview. They were jobs she could have done in her sleep—and now all she wanted to do was sleep.

  The books caught her eye. She was walking off another polite “we’ll be in touch,” contemplating whether or not to hike home across the bridge to save subway fare, and there was a battered paperback of 1984, next to an even more beat-up vintage collection of James Baldwin. The jumble of books, piled on plastic rain ponchos, in boxes and crates, pulled her into the crowded park, into the comfort of familiar titles, and she thumbed through a few dog-eared pages.

  Absently, she filed a study predicting the forced migration of the entire population of Kiribati, disappearing under rising sea levels, next to a National Geographic on the plight of polar bears. It was habit to sort Amiri Baraka with e e cummings, P.D. James with Kate Atkinson. None of the young people occupying the park acted as if there was anything odd about someone as ancient as Lavinia alphabetizing picture books, political science, romance, poetry and murder mysteries.

  The troubadours, with their Martin guitars and upside-down paint-bucket drums reminded her of her own youth. A girl with silver piercings in both eyebrows and her tongue brought Lavinia a paper plate with some very good goulash and a vegan brownie. It was nearly midnight when she left off organizing the library. The next day she went back. The day after that, she lugged a backpack and an old sleeping bag on the subway, and she stayed.

  Her skills were needed in the park. Mostly she worked in the library but she also helped out in the first-aid tent and proofed the daily newspaper. “Vinnie,” she told them. They called her “Vin.” The nights grew chillier and she went home for a sweater and a jacket to add to her jeans. From the looks of the mail, she would lose the house soon. She dumped the bank notices on the dining room table and ignored the neighbor frowning at her scrappy brown yard.

  She was almost happy to be heading back to Wall Street. Happy was good. Hope would be even better but hope was for those young people. Lavinia would take what she could get. The protest encampment was a respite; it was something to do. It wasn’t hope. She swung back into the library to find a reporter from The New York Times poking at her books and gave him her best, most eloquent words on the civilizing influence of literature. That night, a rough hand shot in through the opening of her lean-to and groped her hard between the legs.

  Lavinia’s scream scared him off and the resulting disturbance somehow made it into the Times story. Homeless thugs welcomed in peaceful occupied park. Not so peaceful. The blue sea of uniforms ringing the encampment closed in as she tended the library, the heart gone out of her. It was November. Winter was coming; the riot trucks and crane-mounted watchtowers walled off more of the outside world every day.

  Tourists snapped pictures as she carted books under a tarp in the rain. Sleep eluded her; the crude tents and cardboard boxes were flooded with searchlights from dusk to dawn. Some days there was nothing appetizing to eat. She could feel loss lapping at her ankles.

  “Go home,” the police told her. But where was home? Lavinia was, apparently, disposable. The tall financial towers cast shadows over the park. The mood was edgy, the music louder, the celebrities clutching microphones more shrill.

  And then, one wave of blue crashed over the tarps and tents as another swarmed through the library, tipping over cases and tables of books, tossing them in dumpsters, ripping pages and covers, destroying her careful order. By mid-morning, the island was an unoccupied ragged mess, some protesters carted off to jail, the rest rounded up and turned out. The books were gone, her sleeping bag missing, the kitchen wrecked, the celebrities no-shows. All the earnest young people with their signs moved off to march somewhere else as Lavinia trudged back over the bridge. There was Harvey to dispose of, and a few things to gather.

  “Vin,” she told herself, “you’re old and you stink. You’d better pray the hot water is still on.” And she placed one worn sneaker in front of another, a migrant now, leaving no footprints in a land entirely foreign to her.

  Maren Hayes

  renounced her claim to the throne to become a pirate, a role that suited her very well for a number of years, until she grew tired of the smelly, unlettered crew and cheap rum, sailed off in the dinghy and made landfall on a fabled island where she lives to this day, scribbling in solitude and chuckling to herself over the outrageous lies and misadventures she chronicles in her tall tales.

  Maren Hayes’s Website

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  Literary Fiction

  Showdown on Lyndale Avenue

  Tony Held

  “What, Dirk?” Dad asked me as I body blocked him.

  “You’re making me sick, that’s what!” I replied.

  I gestured towards our Chevrolet Suburban. “Can’t you see Mom sitting there crying? That’s the necklace Grandma gave her you’re trying to sell. That’s something priceless, Dad.”

  My words went in one ear and out the other.

  We were in front of a small jeweler located along Lyndale Avenue in Bloomington, Minnesota. Dad had dragged us up here to try and sell that necklace. Mom had started to cry halfway there, while my brother and I sat in the back looking like shell-shocked soldiers. The bastard had just kept driving, his eyes focused on the road. He was just fine with what he was doing.

  A sudden surge of long-suppressed anger had hit me when we pulled into the parking lot. This shit has got to stop,
I thought as he got out of the car. I followed him, and now here we were.

  “Get out of my way,” Dad ordered.

  I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “No fucking way, man.”

  My father’s face turned scarlet, but he was red-faced with anger, not embarrassment.

  “Dirk, don’t make a scene,” he said.

  I slipped the necklace out of his grasp and began to walk back to our Suburban.

  “Hey!” he shouted as he ran to get in front of me. “You knock this off!”

  I stopped, gave him a dirty look. “This is getting way out of hand, man. Enough is enough!”

  He pointed at the necklace. “We need to sell that.”

  I grimaced. “You know, you’re so unrealistic it’s disgusting! We became homeless all thanks to you, and then you claimed we would only be homeless a month because your rich Dad would buy us a house. Then you got over eleven thousand bucks out of your poppa for hotel suites — not rooms, suites — while we wandered all over the place. Then you kept driving up the price tag for a house until your old man balked.” I shook my head in disgust. “I’m not surprised you finally pulled that gun on him.”

  While we were packing up our house, my father had slipped an old, unloaded .38 that once belonged to my great-grandfather into our Suburban. When he had last met with his father they had sat in our vehicle, started arguing, and Dad had suddenly drawn it on him.

  “I just showed Dad the gun,” he lied.

  “‘Showed?’ Ha! You pulled it on him,”

  “No! I showed it!”

  “Do you know how humiliating it was to have the cops show up? Do you?” I shouted back.

  His father had called the police soon after the gun incident. That venerable .38 had been quickly confiscated when the cops came to our hotel, but my jerkweed father was not arrested. Why? The cops had not enough probable cause to arrest him, although they kept the gun.