The Receipt

Monday was always wash day in Marla’s house. She sorted through the load of “darks,” mostly jeans and towels. While checking the pockets, she thought she felt a piece of paper in her husband’s jeans.

Marla found a receipt made out to her husband. It read: “Rent for the month of October 2020, paid.”

“What rent?” she thought to herself. Marla didn’t recognize the address. She began to consider the possible explanations. Was it a pied-a-terre? The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. What had the bastard done now?

Just then, her husband walked in the door.

From Guest Contributor Janice Siderius

Kingly Pursuits

Every spring, King Tolliver traveled with his retinue to the ruins. None of the official historians had an explanation of what city once stood here, all of the stories offered contradicting explanations of the calamity that brought the civilization to decrepitude.

The official justification for King Tolliver's annual sojourn was his desire to reflect on the folly of excessive hubris. This was deemed a kingly pursuit. But the truth of the matter was much more prosaic.

Tolliver's son enjoyed scrambling over the rocks looking for cracked ceramics and the occasional colored glass. More importantly, the king shared the prince's enthusiasm.

My 100-Word Secret

I am often asked by people, “How are you able to write a complete story in 100 words?”

Well, sometimes I tell them something like, “I just condense one of my unpublished novels.”

Or I say, “I write my story, not paying any attention to the word count, and my smartphone has an app that revises it into 100 words.”

They seldom believe either of my explanations.

But it usually ends the questioning, and that's really what I want to do.

I certainly don't want other people to know my secret of writing a story in exactly 100 words.

I-would-prefer-that-the-trick-I-use-to-always-make-the-story-exactly-100-words-remains-my-secret.

From Guest Contributor Kent V Anderson

When Kent isn't writing stories, he is building robots.