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Category: Speculative

Microstory: The break-in

Microstory: The break-in

He just appeared! Right there in the bank vault. He hadn’t been there before. I know, I was standing right there, looking between the metal bars at the piles of safety deposit boxes, ready to close up for the evening. If he’d appeared a few seconds later, he would never have been seen. Why couldn’t he have appeared a few seconds later? That would have saved me all this grief. What do I do now? Call the police, tell them…

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Into the monkey’s mouth

Into the monkey’s mouth

The monkey pulled on his jaws and dislocated his mouth. “In you go,” he said, although it was hard to understand now that his jaw didn’t move up and down. The humanoid, no taller than a typical vase, stepped onto the tongue in the monkey’s mouth and threw a grappling hook down the monkey’s throat. “Okay, off I go,” the humanoid said. As soon as he was down his throat, the monkey grabbed his jaw and pushed it back into…

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A letter from God

A letter from God

I created the universe 14,000,000,000 years ago. It was a trivial thing. It took me barely a click of my finger. I created a singularity, you see, and then everything flowed from that. I am a patient being. I have existed forever, but only created the universe when I did on a whim. The readers of this document don’t need to know why. Nor what I was doing before. That’s part of my wonderful mystery. Go about your business, do…

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The negative spiral

The negative spiral

As the rain pattered against his hood, he hunched his shoulders, hoping to stop the icy rain from hitting his face. The coat was old and wasn’t as good at keeping out the rain as it had once been. The tired seams were more relaxed and the fabric itself was thinner. As he walked through the gloomy weather, along a street from-which the rain had sapped all the joy and life, he came across a woman. She smiled kindly, and…

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Surrounding forest

Surrounding forest

No-one had ever left the town before. All the people knew that the forest was too thick. Once a generation or so, a brave person would strike out into the dense canopy seeking to find another part of the world – literally anything other than the town and the surrounding forest. Some had returned, turning around when they had under half of their rations left. They returned, but their stories were boring: The forest was the same for as far…

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