Higgs Boson’s adventures in space: Episode 37 (250=1)

Higgs Boson’s adventures in space: Episode 37:

With a single tentacle-slap, Zith-Gar had managed to disarm Higgs.

The situation looked bleak.

“The situation looks bleak,” Higgs said to Zith-Gar, “But I’m not worried.”

“How can you NOT worry, Higgs?” asked Zith-Gar incredulously. “You are unarmed. I have three of my feet on your throat.  Your precious Earth 2.0 is already 50% disintegrated! And you and I know, Higgs, that there is no coming back from that level of disintegration.”

“You’re going to stop all this, and release me,” Higgs said.

“I… never!  Why would I ever do that?!” demanded Zith-Gar.

“Because,” Higgs said, “You’ll never kill your son-in-law.”

Zith-Gar looked down, all three of his eyes goggling. Both mouths gaped in awe.

“You DIDN’T!” it said.

“Look at my hand,” Higgs said. “No, the other one.  You’ll see the wedding ring right there.”

“But, I thought… we’re not even the same species… and anyway, our mating rituals,” Zith-Gar muttered, warily looking down with his focusing eye at Higgs’ left hand. “It would kill you…”

There was no ring.

Zith-Gar straightened back up and saw that he was staring at the business end of a ray gun pointed directly at his central life organs.  It looked powerful enough to pierce his pneumothorax.

“How…” it said.

“Simple,” Higgs said. “I’m Higgs Boson.” And he blasted Zith-Gar into trillions of pieces which somehow missed hitting him and left his uniform spotless.  “And you never had a daughter,” he told the remnants of Zith-Gar.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It was in the 1950s that Richard Nixon said "you won't have any stories that are exactly 250 words long counting the title to kick around anymore," but he was wrong.  WAY wrong, because 250=1 stories are JUST THAT.  So there, 1950s Richard... hey, what's that strange glow? How are you teleporting in here, 1950s Richard Nixon? Why are there so many of you? AIEEEEE!!!!! HELP ME...

Or just read more 250=1 stories like this one by clicking here to get a complete list of all of them.

Some Zombie Stories, 6 (250=1)

Some Zombie Stories, 6:

At the zombie carnival, every spring, nobody eats anyone’s brains, nobody shuffles in a horrifying manner while moaning, and almost nobody pushes their hands up through the dirt in a terrifying metaphor or prelude to the next film.

Instead, there are games of chance and skill. Zombies toss their hands, fingers circled into an "O", and try to land them on pegs to win withered stuffed animals, or throw an eyeball into a set of goldfish bowls containing zombie goldfish, the fish circling lazily and occasionally blowing bubbles. The bubbles are not breath. They are escaping gases from the decomposing tiny pets that will not (unlike the ones you bring home) die the next day.  They are already dead.

There are rides, too, and though they are assembled by zombie carnies and not very safe, the zombies ride them without fear.  Once, the Zoomer Coaster collapsed but it didn’t make headlines; the 20 zombies just calmly put themselves back together and went to get some cotton candy. 

The cotton candy is fresh.

We all go watch the zombie carnival. We can’t get in. There’s a sign out front says "You Must Be This Dead To Enter," so we just look, and wonder what it’d be like to hang out with the zombies and watch them guess our weights through mouths with almost no teeth left, to go through the Funny House with them and watch the mirrors make them look alive again, for just a moment.
____________________________________________________________________________________

In 250=1 I write stories that are exactly 250 words long, including the title. Here's a list of all of them.  

DO YOU LIKE TO WRITE? INDIE WRITERS MONTHLY IS SEEKING STORIES ABOUT TIME TRAVEL FOR ITS ANTHOLOGY.  THERE'S PRIZES. CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS.

What Happens When The Symbolism Of McDonald’s Cheeseburgers Is Questioned. (250=1)

What Happens When The Symbolism Of McDonald’s Cheeseburgers Is Questioned.

AJ is afraid all the time but not in an overtly-crippling way.  AJ fears he is too happy about some things, and not happy enough about others.  He confides this one day to Tiana.  Tiana serves (in her mind) as a de facto therapist but stands (in AJ’s mind) as a potential love interest in the story that would be his life if AJ ever gets around to writing that autobiography.

“An autobiography of nothing,” Tiana thinks, taking  AJ’s coupon from him.  AJ has a coupon every day.

“Why do you come here every day?” Tiana asks AJ.

“Would you like to go out sometime?” AJ responds.

“This isn’t even good food,” Tiana whispers back to him.

“It’s the best food,” AJ says, “In that it’s unique.  Anyone can make a burger.  Nobody can make a McDonald’s Cheeseburger except McDonald’s.”

“Why do you want to go out with me?” Tiana asks.

“I think it would make me just the right amount of happy,” AJ responds.  “And I’ve asked you out now 14 times. So you should say yes.”

“You like unique stuff, huh?” Tiana asks him.

“Yes.”

“I’m a twin, you know.”

AJ has to think about that.

“And,” Tiana says, “Every McDonald’s cheeseburger is like every other McDonald’s cheeseburger.”

AJ looks down at his tray.

“So nothing,” Tiana says, “Is less unique than a McDonald’s cheeseburger.”

AJ does not know where to fit this new idea into his life.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

There'll be new stories coming, too, but as with before, this one appeared on another blog and now is appearing here, and so you can read it again or for the first time.  250=1 stories are stories that have exactly 250 words including the title, and I've got a whole lot more of them here.

HEY WRITERS 

INDIE WRITERS MONTHLY is looking for your time-travel stories for our first ever anthology.  There are prizes, but there is also a deadline. Click here for details. 

Everyone in the world is copying me in advance. (250=1)

Everyone in the world is copying me in advance.


It made you uncomfortable to be alone with him in the subway car, not just because he was mumbling loudly enough to seem he was trying to talk to you, complaining about how everyone knew his thoughts and did the stuff before he could.

“And the waffle iron? I came up with that!” he suddenly said ferociously, and you got off the car at the next stop because that little fleck of spittle in the corner of his mouth seemed too wild to want to deal with at 3:00 in the afternoon.

The job interview didn’t go well. You were still unnerved by the whole incident, and you were pretty sure that the waffle iron was older than the subway nut. The interviewer never called.
Later on, even Gina’s encouragement (why don’t you just go ahead with that idea you had?) wasn’t enough to help you sleep and in your dreams you saw him again.

“EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD IS COPYING ME IN ADVANCE!” he yelled in your head, and it didn’t help that in the dream he was an extra on the set of Ocean Girl.

And you had to take the F train, two days later, to yet another job interview. He was there, of course, and he said “I’m going to invent an app that will scan the ears of small children and see if there is an ear infection.”

But that was your idea.

Six months ago.
______________________________________________________________________

250=1 stories are stories that are exactly 250 words long.  This one originally appeared on another blog, too. I'm just rerunning it, but if you didn't see it before, you didn't even need to know that and if you did see it before, then you already knew that.  Basically this whole paragraph was pointless.  Sorry.

Here's a list of all the 250=1 stories, ever.

Other announcements:

Don't forget that lit pays for stories. Click the "We Pay for Stories" tab up top there.

And Indie Writers Monthly needs your short time-travel stories! There's a prize and publication possible.  Details here.  

Children's Magazines Are Full Of Lies (250=1)

Children's Magazines Are Full Of Lies.

For the 74th time, on his 37th beach vacation, Kincaid walked the shore just after the tide went out. Alone on the beach, sand sifting into his sandals wetly, he shuffled along knowing he would not find what he was looking for.

Somewhere, in the past, which in his thoughts was a country he’d never visit no matter how many travelogues of it he watched, a little boy lay on the floor, a magazine spread out before him showing a glossy photo of a sea urchin and a crab in a tiny pool of water, trapped in the rocks after the tide went out. It was a private ocean, and Kincaid, like that little boy from the other country would, eventually, too, had spent his life looking for one.

Later today, he’d take Olivia to ride on roller-coasters. They would stop for pizza at that restaurant. But for now, Kincaid simply walked by himself, the taste of corn flakes on his breath. When he saw rocky outcroppings he climbed on them, carefully, watching where he put his hands and his feet, each time to no avail.

“Why do you get up so early?” Claudia asked him once on vacation. He’d shrugged. “I like to not waste time on vacation,” he’d said.

“Next year, maybe, we’ll go to the mountains,” Kincaid told the surf. But he knew it wasn’t true. There are 217,490 miles of coastline in the world, and he was not getting younger.
___________________________________________________________________________

Some of you may have seen this story before; it's a reprint that originally appeared on my blog Thinking The Lions.  In 250=1, I write stories that are exactly 250 words long, including the title.  Here's a link to more of them, if you liked this one.

Resolutions To The Story (A to Z Challenge) (250=1)

Resolutions To The Story.

So she shot him and walked away, leaving the stupid ring, the hot cocoa packets, and all $13 lying on his chest.

******

Their first child was born six months after the wedding, a development that was unexpected only by those who failed to perceive the slight bulge underneath her dress.

******

“No,” she said, but added, “But keep trying. Someday, I may say yes.”

******

“Why?” she asks.

“Why?” he echoes her question – not asking himself, the questioning in his voice merely wondering why she needs a reason beyond love.

“Why do you want to marry me?” she asks.

“Because it’s the only way they’ll let you onto the ship with me when it comes,” he tells her.

She stares at his face to see if he’s joking.

He’s clearly not, but that doesn’t prove anything to her.

“Prove it,” she says.

In the end, it took him showing her to his landing craft and pointing out the small glimmer of the mothership’s engines that seemed to limn the moon.

Her wedding dress was a spacesuit.

******

It was 2 a.m. when she awoke, the television late-night news softly telling of a train wreck somewhere, the wine glass knocked over on the end table, her phone devoid of any attempt to call her.  He hadn’t come over, and she never saw him again.

******

“What are you writing?” he asks.

“Things that could’ve been,” she laughs.

“Can I see them?” he wonders.

“Not the way I can,” she tells him.  

_____________________________________________________________________________

This is a 250=1 story -- a story that's exactly 250 words long, including the title. But not including the picture, because everyone knows that's worth 1,000 words.  So actually this is a 1,250 word story, and you are getting a LOT of extra value here. Here's a list of lots more stories like that.

FREE BOOK! Every day in April is free book day, and today's FREE book is Up So Down, the story of a brother and a sister in the year after the mysterious death of the sister's fiance, and the changes in their lives.  It's been compared (favorably) to Anne Tyler.  CLICK HERE to get it for FREE!

Questions (250=1)(A To Z Challenge)

Questions.

Can you shut off the alarm clock?

Do you have to play the news so loudly?

Are you going to sleep all day?

Won’t you be late for work?

Didn’t you make yourself some breakfast?

Did you hear the sound the car is making?

What time do you think you’ll be home?

Do you suppose you could stop and pick up some bread after work?

Why don’t you watch where you’re going?

Why are you late?

Can you take his call?

Didn’t you know the meeting was starting?

Did you jam up the copier?

What am I supposed to do with this?

Do you consider this acceptable?

Do you want to go to lunch today?

Do you mind if we try that new restaurant?

Have you ever been here before?

What are you going to order?

Do you want to try a little bite of mine?

Should we get a glass of wine?

Would just one drink be so bad?

Do we have to go back to the office just yet?

Do you know how cute you are when you smile like that?

Can’t you make up a sales call or something you had to go to?

Should we take separate cars?

Do you know where that hotel is?

Why don’t you make yourself comfortable?

Are you nervous?

Do you like what you see?

Does that feel good?

Where are you going?

What are you doing home already?

Are those for me?

What’s wrong?

Did you forget the bread?

__________________________________________________________________________

This is a 250=1 story, which means it's exactly 250 words long, including the title.  I've written a lot of them and you should read them all, which you can do by clicking this to go to a list of them.  DOING SO MAY WELL SAVE THE UNIVERSE.  I mean, that's possible, right? 

Other notes!

FREE BOOKS! Every day in April I'm giving away free books, and the current freebie is The Scariest Things, You CAN'T Imagine, a collection of short horror stories that will blow you away. (Not literally).  Stories like "Astrid Forever," about a guy who's dead wife keeps visiting him with one request: love me.  GET IT BY CLICKING HERE.  

Are you a writer? I want to pay you for what you write.  Click the "We Pay For Stories" tab up top there. 

Time Is A Penumbra (A To Z Challenge)(250=1)

Time Is A Penumbra.

Almost-shadow: depending on where a person stands, all or some obscuring of the light occurs.

The light is the future.  It shines all around us and over us and on us, but because we stand in the penumbra, the future is eclipsed by the present and so we do not see it.

If you stay in the middle, none of the light gets through and you wander through life exactly like a person in a dark room: unsure, arms outstretched, flinching from easily-imagined collisions with endtables or walls you did not know were in front of you. But if you manage to step to the edge, glimpses of the light are possible.

A man makes his way to the edge of the occluding body, the occlusion being his own existence. He sees some of the light, catches glimpses of his future: sitting on a bus as the Navy Pier recedes, carrying a birthday cake with eleven candles flaring atop it, first clasping hands and then awkwardly hugging another man.  He experiences these things the way eyes experience a photograph: knowing that they are real while also knowing they are images.

The light is painfully bright and one must be careful not to wander too far out, for the light can blind, and make it hard to find one’s way back, so most stay in the shadow or at best stick their head out fleetingly.  Some brave, or foolish, souls go into the light and stay there. 

____________________________________________________________________________

This is one of those 250=1 stories, in which the story is exactly 250 words long including the title. No more, no less. I guess that's the meaning of the word exactly, though, so you probably got that.  I'm going to eventually write 250 of them and then publish them all in a book, and then be a gazillionaire, and then move to Hawaii, and then find a seashell and then take that seashell back to my home and put it on a shelf by the fireplace, and then probably eat dinner, I guess. I'd probably be hungry by then.

If you want to read more 250=1 stories, click here.

ARE YOU A WRITER? Probably. If so, I PAY FOR STORIES. Click the We Pay For Stories tab at the top for details. (The tab uses the royal We, because tabs are always puttin' on airs.)

I'd get that eye checked out if I were you.

FREE BOOK! The Scariest Things, You CAN'T Imagine is a collection of horror stories that will frighten the living daylights out of you. Honestly. Like The Grave-Robbers, about a family that clones little boys and has catacombs full of bodies below their small farm house. YOU WILL LOVE it, provided that you love horror stories that come in ebooks. Otherwise, you'll be indifferent to it.  CLICK HERE TO GET IT FREE AND FIND OUT HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT IT.

And, finally, the post below is an ongoing story of the alphabet: The Letter X has helped humans get an afterlife, which has resulted in other letters being angry, and in letters becoming more real.  Now, a few of them have resolved to help Diana find her dead lover, and the key to that seems to be Diana's mad sister.  It's really good and you don't have to have read the previous installments to enjoy it. Do I sound too needy? I think I sound too needy.

Naomi Does It Again, Again (A To Z Challenge)(250=1)

Naomi Does It Again, Again.

Everything in everyone’s life is a challenge. Whether you like it or not, that’s how it is.

It is.

Take Naomi’s life.  Some of her challenges are obvious.   She is, for example, training for a half-marathon.  Don’t sneer, because even though “Iron Man” competitions and those races where people zap you with tasers have upped the ante, a half-marathon is not nothing.

It isn’t.

Naomi’s other challenges include deciding whether to actually marry Alfred, who she suspects maybe isn’t worth it, getting that promotion at her job so she can have an office, not a cubicle, and trying to find a copy of a out-of-print book she read in the sixth grade and wants very much to have to pass down to her daughter, causing her to visit the second-hand book store on her lunch and sometimes be late back to work.

Another challenge for Naomi will be having a daughter but in the big scheme of things that one will not be too hard.

And right this moment

Right… now…

…Naomi’s challenge is finding a parking spot at the movie theater. She’s camping out for the next week to be the first to see the new Star Wars installment. She was first in line to see each of the first six, and (spoiler alert!) she’ll be first this time.  Second in line will be a nice guy named Stephen. She’ll recognize him from the used book store, and he’ll help overcome two other challenges.

__________________________________________________________________________

Every day for the A to Z Challenge, there's a new short story.  This was a 250=1 story -- a story that's exactly 250 words long, including the title.  If you liked it, there's a whole list of the other ones I've written here.

Every day in April I'm giving away a free book! Today's the last day to get my collection of short stories, Just Exactly How Life Looks totally free! It includes the story Thinking The Lions, originally published in The Adirondack Review, and it includes the sweeping story of an artist's attempt to recreate his mom's memories in Panorama, one of my favorite stories ever.  What've you got to lose? Click here to get it free.

And, if you're interested, the next post is ALSO an A To Z Post, an ongoing story of turmoil in the alphabet that is far more philosophical and weird than even that sounds:

A Single Moment Of Red (A To Z)(250=1)

This is one of those days when I feel why bother? Not many new visitors from the A to Z challenge, so should I keep explaining? OH FINE.

1. There are TWO A to Z posts here, folks. This one and the next: a 250-word short story and a serialized story about the alphabet.

2. BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT:  Andrew Leon has published a short work, "The Magic Cookies," which features a great story that's something of a change of pace for him -- despite the title, there's no magic here -- and the book, available for 99 cents, has an extra story in it from ME, so it's quite a deal. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO.

3.  Free Books! Or, book: every day, a free book from me. The current free book is my collection of short stories Just Exactly How Life Looks, which has (among other amazing stories) the first short story I ever wrote, "Thinking The Lions," about a couple (maybe?) on safari. CLICK HERE to get it free!

And now, your 250-word short story:

A Single Moment Of Red.

Mars had been coming up on the Earth, orbit-wise, when it exploded. Some people thought that gave us a chance, to outrace the fragments before they hit us.

Cal knew better. It felt too right: his life bookended by meteorite strikes.  The moment he’d heard it on the news he knew that a piece of Mars was going to hit Earth and blow it up.

I was born in a meteor shower: it made a great story at parties and the capper was that a meteorite had actually struck his family’s house while his mom waited for the ambulance to get there (his dad off on the rig) so that fire engines, red and gleaming, followed closely after the paramedics, arrived to a half-collapsed, half exploded house finding his mom sitting on the front lawn holding him wrapped in a Pittsburgh Steelers beach towel.

Videos now online– why were people still posting things online? Probably hope – showed the piece that hit Venus and showed asteroids exploding when they collided with chunks of Mars.

And then one piece had the right angle,  was caught by Earth’s gravity, and Cal’s grim certainty was proven right. The piece glowed in the sky for a week, larger, redder, each day.  On the final day it was a second sunrise sped up impossibly fast. Cal, who had quit his job seven weeks before, was out walking in the woods, trying not to tell himself this would make an excellent story. 

_________________________________________________________________________

Meat (250=1)

QUICK ANNOUNCEMENTS:

1.  There are TWO A To Z posts, as always: this 250-word short story (down below the picture) and the longer one below about the alphabet becoming gods to humans. YAY DOUBLE POSTS.

2. FREE BOOK! Every day in April, get one of my books free.  Right now it's the short story collection "Just Exactly How Life Looks," and I'd tell you what's in it but it's FREE so you could click here to download it, see if you like it, and if you don't, delete it and you are out NOTHING. EVERYBODY WINS. Wait, how does everybody win if... never mind. Just download it!

And now, your 250-word short story, which only ostensibly is about time and is much much more about AWESOMENESS:

_________________________________________________________________________

Meat

“Why…” he panted “Would a dinosaur need a gun?”

“Just keep running,” she whispered back over her shoulder “And quit talking.”

A crack! A whiizzzz and they both ducked instinctively even though ducking after you hear the rifle is useless.

She zigged.

He zagged.

They were separated by ten feet and he could see her, slightly ahead of him still.  She looked over at him.

Was that reproach in her eyes?

Or excitement?

There was crashing behind them.

“We can go to any era of history, find out anything you’d want to know!” he’d told her. “You can see what dinosaurs were really like!”

He slowed now to get behind her again. She was falling behind. If anyone was not making it back to the machine, it was him, not her.

EMERGENCY PLAN: the folder read and it told how to set the machine to go back to ten minutes before they left and stop them from going, and while he could do that it was not foolproof enough for him to want to risk her life.  And anyway, he couldn’t live with himself knowing that she’d been turned into a burger at some dinosaur’s tailgate party.

They heard the roaring, gnashing sound of one dinosaur calling to the other. Their tracks had been spotted.  More bullets whizzed through the trees. Fierce predators, indeed, but lousy shots, he thought, and tried to stop laughing so he could keep running.

Crack! Another shot.

This was one anniversary they’d remember. Hopefully.

______________________________________________________________________

Like this? There's more 250-word stories in this list here.

Don't forget! I publish your stories and PAY YOU FOR THEM! THAT is how everybody wins? See, I knew it made sense. Click the "We Pay For Stories" tab up top there.

Killing Time (A To Z Challenge)(250=1)

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

1. There are TWO A to Z posts, this one (a 250-word short story) and the one below, a serialized story about life, death, afterlife, and letters.

2.  FREE BOOK EVERY DAY OF APRIL! Today's free book is Just Exactly How Life Looks, a collection of short stories in the literary/magical realism genre, insofar as cowboys lost in the desert and God watching people and lions in Africa are magical and/or realistic and/or literary.  CLICK HERE to get it FREE! 

3.  I'll pay you for your writing! For some reason people submit stories to places that don't pay. WHY? If the choice is "make money" vs. "don't make money" my allegiance is clear: Pizza. Pizza has my loyalty. But you? You should check out the "We Pay For Stories" tab.

And now, your 250-word short story in which an abstract concept IS NOT. 

Killing Time

That was when she seriously began to want to kill time and put a plan into action to do that.

People don’t think of time as an actual thing that you can kill, she wrote in the notebook the police found later. Or was it earlier? Hard to say after she succeeded and time was no more, forcing people to assign sequences to things based on their own ideas and intuition.

But it is, she had written. Or: it was.  Time is (was) a dimension, and she knew that dimensions were things you could get outside, and anything you can get outside of is a thing that can be destroyed.  In the end, it was that easy: all the talk of entropy and superstrings and Godel’s ramblings were as ineffectual and intellectual as 8^th-grade poetry about unicorns and love. She was able to move into fourth, fifth, sixth, even the seventh dimension using nothing more than subgrade harmonics.

The best plans are simple ones, she wrote in confession/memoir, and explained how she had gotten (would get) to the place so far outside of time that time itself looked (would look) to her how a dot looks to people existing in the usual four dimensions (us). At that point, she had simply stepped on time, ground it into nothing. Revenge accomplished, she strode off, godlike in the way she paid no attention to the havoc wreaked in dimensions beneath her notice.

Meanwhile, back home, there was no more “meanwhile.”

____________________________________________________________________________

In 250=1 I write short stories that are always exactly 250 words long, including the title. There's 60+ of them, and you can find links to them all by clicking here.  Alternatively, if that's too easy, find them by projecting your astral self into a realm where all things are visible and then just look around, but I'd go with the link.

Ignatius In Hiding (A To Z Challenge)(250=1)

If you're here you're probably a blogger which means you write which means I WILL PAY YOU FOR YOUR STORIES. Write stuff, send it to me, get paid. That's the basics. There's a tab at the top of the page that has details. 

OTHER QUICK NOTES: As always, my A To Z Challenge entries have two a day: This post, a 250-word short story, and the one below it, a serialized story about X wanting to be a god and the other letters upset about it.

Don't forget you can get a  FREE BOOK!  Every five days I'll change the book up, so stop back al April.  The current book is 

the After, 

a "brilliant" (according to reviewers, not just me) book about Saoirse's life after she dies is free on Amazon, saving you $3.99.  This book is an amazing adventure that's hard to describe. Unless you use the word "brilliant," which someone did. CLICK HERE TO GET THE BOOK FREE.



AND NOW, your 250-word short story:

Ignatius In Hiding.

Ignatius has been (among others) the name of a Roman centurion guarding Caesar’s bedchambers, a merchant who introduced wheat to Turkey, three popes, one beatified young man who died of cholera in 1837, and, finally, this little boy hiding behind the big pine tree, fingers trembling on the bark of the tree, a bit of pine sap in his hair.

Is he wondering if he should climb up into the tree to hide better? 

He is.  

Has he eaten dinner? 

He has.  

Was that dinner corn-on-the-cob, a chicken drumstick deep fried and a biscuit? 

It was, but he gave one-half the biscuit to his dog, who is not named Ignatius.

Are there voices from the other yard? 

No? 

Perhaps two yards over? 

Yes, that is it.  

Are they calling for Ignatius? Or for someone else? 

It is too hard to say.  The shouts may not be for anyone in particular, or at least not for anyone here in particular. It may be that Mike Hargrove just batted in the go-ahead run in the top of the ninth. 

Are they children’s voices or grown-up voices? 

Yelling, it is hard to tell.

When will it be time?

Will he be found?

There are answers to every question everyone could ask every time someone asks.  Sometimes the answers are right there in front of your face, as close as the bole of a pine tree that is cool but sticky to a forehead.

Sometimes, the answers are harder to find.

______________________________________________________________________________

This, for new readers, is a 250=1 story. I write lots of those, and what it means is that every story in that category has EXACTLY 250 words, no more, no less, counting the title.  Having read this one, you can now:

A. Keep reading below to get into my awesome story about the alphabet being mad at X for making humans have an afterlife, or 

B. Click here if you want a list of lots more 250=1 stories.

C. Go back to writing something to submit to me and get paid, or

D. Spin the wheel again and hope for big money! Wait, what do you mean, I'm not Pat Sajak. I have the blazer on and there's Vanna over... where's Vanna? Where'd she go? Hey, put my wheel back down! I know my rights! I'm calling the embassy!

Fences (A To Z Challenge)

QUICK NOTES: If you're here for A To Z Challenge, there's two parts: the short, 250-word story in this post and the longer serialized story in the next. Read 'em both! You'll thank yourself later. Probably by sending a nice note! You're so polite.

ALSO: FREE BOOK!  the After, a "brilliant" (according to reviewers, not just me) book about Saoirse's life after she dies is free on Amazon, saving you $3.99.  This book is an amazing adventure that's hard to describe. Unless you use the word "brilliant," which someone did. CLICK HERE TO GET THE BOOK FREE.

And not only am I giving a book away every day of the A To Z Challenge, but also remember I PAY FOR STORIES, ETC. See the tab at the top of the page!


AND NOW, your 250-word short story:

Fences

Ainsley wanted to tell his neighbor he was going to put a fence between their yards, but the first thing people ask when you tell them you want a fence is why you need a fence, as though need always equals want and vice-versa.

He didn’t need a fence. It wasn’t like Terry was an invading Mongol horde, or the Allied forces in West Berlin, or…

(Ainsley decided later on he would look up to see whether there were other famous fences in history, because what is a wall but a fence with delusions of grandeur?)

He wasn’t sure yet what kind of fence.  A picket fence did not appeal; too grandmotherly.  Picket fences meant doilies in your house and you could be bothered, after all, just be polite about it.  Nor did he want chain-link, redolent of prisons and large dog-ownership, foretelling bare patches of dirt in the backyard and an above-ground pool.

His fence must be head-high. It must be wood, with paint eventually peeling so someday when noticed that, he could plan a trip to go get new paint.

He took to walking around different neighborhoods, eyeing fences. He imagined this summer digging post holes, putting the fence up, sitting back in his plastic yard chair, a book and a Coke and a radio playing the ballgame.

“You don’t like baseball,” his wife said at that last part.  As though that was important, he thought, and told her what kind of fences he’d seen that day.

Ads From A World Not Totally Unlike Our Own, 2 (A To Z Challenge)(250=1)

A To Z Challengers! There are two entries: This post is a 250-word short story, and the one below it is an entry in a serialized story about what happened when X intervened in human affairs, resulting in alphabetic turmoil.

ALSO:  LIKE FREE BOOKS! YOU DO? THEN GET THIS: You can get my book the After TOTALLY FREE on Amazon today! Saoirse died and went to ... the After, where everything is exactly the way you want it, unless what you want is not to be there.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD IT TOTALLY FREE

And now the story:

Ads From A World Not Totally Unlike Our Own, 2:

The thing about the Fermes was it could only change your history and only in your lifetime; no going back and making your grandpapa a billionaire or like that.

Nobody knew how it worked, the most popular consumer item in history. Or “histories” because people were never content changing their autobiographies once, twice, or thirteen or a hundred times.  Once the Fermes Typewriter was discovered, people became obsessed with altering and re-altering their histories. 

Want to win the 8^th grade spelling bee? DONE. Wish you hadn’t had that third shot before you got in the car? That family now lives. Wonder what it’d be like to have asked out the redheaded friend instead of the blonde you married? Type your story this way: I turned to the redhead and said Want to go to a movie Friday? And she’s there, now, sitting across the table from you, and you remember every bit of life with her, from that night on – plus, you remember your other life, with the blonde. Bonus: you’ve lived both. As many as you want!

People could instantly have it all.  Or, have had it all. Every road not taken was taken, every decision undecided. We became a world of writers, reinventing our own lives over and again, seeing what could have been become was. It no longer mattered if we lived a life now; what mattered was making sure we remembered as many lives as possible.

____________________________________________________________

Like 250 word stories? There's a lot more of them here to check out by clicking this link. Reading them builds strong bones and healthy teeth!

Electricity (A To Z Challenge)

Hey, readers! For the A To Z Challenge, I'm doing Two-A-Days: Each day there's a 250-word short story in my series 250=1 (stories that are always exactly 250 words long including the title) and an installment in my serialized story about the alphabet kicking X out (or trying to.)

ALSO THERE IS A FREE BOOK EVERY DAY! Today's book is ECLIPSE, an amazing, haunting Bradbury-esque sci-fi book about an astronaut who wanted to badly to go to the stars that it might have broken his mind.  CLICK HERE TO GET IT ON AMAZON FOR FREE! 

Finally, let me point out that THIS BLOG WILL PAY YOU FOR YOUR WRITING. Click the "We Pay For Stories" tab for info.

And now, the 250 story: 

Electricity.

Electrons do not sleep. They do not dream. They do not fall in love. Or do they?

They do move in one direction, or the other.  If they move. Do they move? It’s not clear if they move. Not to them. Not to an individual electron existing in its own life, moving or not, as the case may be, in love or not, as the case may be.

Electrons are not a whole thing, except that they are. One electron on its own is not an atom, the ‘building block’ of the universe, but electrons make up atoms, so electrons are the building blocks of the building blocks.

Which is something, anyway.

A particular electron, existing, wonders about the universe in which it finds itself, whether that universe is a transistor radio in the 1950s or a supercomputer on another planet in the 2770s or simply a momentary spark of static electricity in a Woolworth’s grocery store at no particular time.

That electron wonders if his universe is infinite. If he and the electrons around him including the one he doesn’t particularly like (and the one he is infatuated with [assuming electrons do that]) are alone. If they were made or just happened.

That electron goes to work each day (do they have days?) and comes home (do they have homes?) and eats dinner (ditto?) and then goes to bed at night, questions unanswered.

Answers unquestioned, too, though. And that is something.

This is a biography, not a metaphor.

____________________________________________________________________________

Want to read more 250-word stories? Here's a complete list of all of them.

Or keep on going to the next post and read what E thinks about what X did.

How To Cook A Delicious Cake (A to Z Challenge)

A To Zers: Remember, you get TWO posts on the A To Z Challenge: This one, a 250-word story about Delicious Cake, and also my ongoing serialized story about the alphabet, which is in the post below this.  It's Friday, you've got time, so why not read 'em both.

ALSO: Free books! My book Eclipse is free on Amazon today.  Claudius is an astronaut, a young boy, an inmate in an asylum, none of those things, all of those things. It's a mind-bending scifi story! Get it free by clicking here.

Now, your 250-word short story:
____________________________________________________________________

How To Cook A Delicious Cake.

It is 8 a.m. Sunday morning. Inspiration strikes! But, it’s an amorphous kind of inspiration. It could inspire anything: paint a landscape. Sculpt the twilight of the gods in marble. You don’t have any marble. Where does marble come from? Is it an actual kind of rock you can dig out of the ground and it just is like that? 

Or is it made up of other kinds of rocks, crumbled together somehow?

It seems kind of impossible to crumble together rocks to make other rocks, but isn’t that how diamonds are made? Sure, but that’s over millions of years and with lots of pressure, etc., and the like, and people probably couldn’t do that but, then, didn’t you read in that one article a few weeks ago that they were building some kind of giant fusion reactor that was going to essentially be a star only that’s the kind of thing that probably never gets done, it’s like when you read about those movies they announce they’re going to make: STEVEN SPIELBERG IN TALKS TO PRODUCE SEQUEL TO "E.T." STARRING KRIS KRISTOFFERSEN!

If he’s still alive, that is. 

Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Who knows? It’s too early to think about that. It’s not, though, too early to think about cake, or is it? It’s 8:11 a.m. Sunday morning, which seems early, but by the time it’s done…

...go get the cake mix out. See if you have eggs. You’ll need eggs.

____________________________________________________________________________

There's a whole bunch more 250-word stories, all in a convenient list of links right here.  If I were you, I would read them ALL! RIGHT NOW. Don't worry about your boss. He's probably reading them, too!