High And Dry

The manatee looked down upon us with regal wisdom. The deep folds in its weathered skin, some natural, some long forgotten scars of a life lived in perpetual danger, lent an aura of hidden knowledge. This Manatee was here to teach us, or warn us, or provide one last chance to mend our ways.

The audience continued to grow throughout the day. Most people heard the shrill calls and attributed some positive environmental message. To me, they sounded like shrieks of fear.

Scientists were never able to satisfactorily explain how a manatee got stuck at the top of that tree.

The Thaumaturge

Every morning, the dirty children that wandered the streets in search of easily obtained coin and crumb gathered. They did their best to stay out of sight, hiding behind shadows and around corners in the nearly empty lane. The neighborhood denizens prized the hour as the quietest of the day.

Griffin used the mornings to fashion that day's inventions. Afterwards, when the hard work at his forge was complete, and he had only to worry about entertaining his customers, the shop bustled, and the street outside resembled any other.

It was a dangerous thing, to watch a miracle being wrought.

In The Hall Of Magi

In the Hall of Magi, ballots were being counted. Never, in countless centuries of magical practice, had attendance been so high. The last hundred years, however, had been the worst. Spells, once isolated to nomadic shamans, were unstable in the growing metropolises. Magic, by nature, was exceptional, and it thoroughly resisted regulation. Even without some dark lord, how many villages were regularly lost to innocent prodigies of pyrokinesis? Families to inadvertently summoned demons?

The final vote was tallied; the expected result announced. Unanimously, the gathered had voted to break their staves. And so, by consensus, magic disappeared from the world.

The Shockingly True Exploits Of The Boy Who Panicked A Nation

When they built the dam, they said it would hold all the water. They said no one would ever be thirsty again. And they said it would never break.

Tommy was standing on the observation deck, thinking about dinosaur bones. All those dinosaur bones that would never be discovered because they lay at the bottom of the world's largest reservoir.

The crack occurred right behind him. He turned, and water was already starting to seep through. Tommy instinctively placed his finger over the crack.

The papers would later report Tommy decided dinosaur bones were more real to him than strangers.

The Calculated Slant Of An Eyebrow

Jamie had the most expressive eyebrows of this or any other generation. They were eyebrows that could communicate what sculptor's stone and painter's easel have lamely attempted for centuries. When Jamie raised them, doors flung open.

While one can refute even the most carefully constructed argument, there's no arguing against the calculated slant of an eyebrow. At a nuanced protragalation from just one of Jamie's bushy caterpillars, fleets would unfurl their sails, old wives would once again see their husbands as young men, and whole economies would lose their composure.

So more is the shame that Jamie was a woman.

The Shoemaker

I was walking through my lawn when a choleric little gnome asked, “Why don't you have shoes on?”

I replied, “I’m going back inside in a sec. There’s no need for me to put on shoes.”

“I can make shoes, ya know,” the gnome said, and with a stamp of the foot added, “I will make shoes for you tonight!” I smiled and nodded.

When I checked my mousetraps in the morning, I discovered the gnome’s body strewn about my kitchen floor with but a strip of leather as a reminder of the shoe he had promised would be mine.

From Guest Contributor, Anthony Tao

The Leprechaun Hunter

Every Leprechaun I've ever known's nothing more than a ruddy thief. All that 'gold' they keep at the end of the rainbow, that's ill-gotten pillage, buried where they think no one will ever find it.

People, especially the lasses, get nostalgic when I tell them I'm a Leprechaun hunter. But their ain't nothing romantic about it. They're shifty bastards, and if you turn your eye for one second, they'll bite you in your nuts and abscond with your daughter.

Being half Leprechaun meself, I reckon their luck don't work against me. Leastways, I've killed more Leprechauns than raindrops in Winter.

Middle Management

Alan Alanwich preferred to leave the details to his subordinates. That's what he paid them for after all. He was much too busy to worry over moon landings or oxygen to nitrogen ratios.

But someone had failed to inform him that when the rocket detached, more than half his employees would be left behind. He did not regret their deaths, but who the hell was going to oversee the transition?

Someday, his tombstone would beg the question of how a man who spectacularly failed as a the CEO of his own company managed to build the world's first interplanetary skyscraper.

The Ides Of March

Caesar was warned.

The first emperor of Rome, the ruler of Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa, the man who had broken the Republic, simply scoffed.

The old man had not been cowed in his presence, and Caesar, having grown accustomed to instilling fear, awe, and respect in even his closest associates, was vexed. Who would dare lay hands on Caesar? He derisively dismissed the warnings.

That evening, Caesar saw the old man on his way to the theater. "Well, the Ides of March have come," he remarked.

The old man, still defiant, responded, "Aye, but they are not yet gone."

Arthur

On the thirty-fourth floor of the Alan Alanwich Tower, Arthur sat between cabinets of yellowing paperwork. Had he been near a window, he still would not have noticed as the Tower crested the troposphere.

While the calculus of rocket trajectories was not terribly different from the calculus of financial modeling, the transition resulted in a couple of irregularities, putting Arthur behind schedule. Arthur always felt nauseous when he fell behind schedule.

As stage two of the tower detached, dropping the accounting department and mail-room back towards Earth, Arthur sighed. He would miss the company picnics. He had always enjoyed those.