r/flashfiction

The hum of a high electrical current buzzing low through the razor wire could be heard as the two men stood opposed to each other. The fence was between them, one man wearing fatigues and carrying a dirty assault rifle, and the other in striped prison garb.
“I need the snips” one man said.
“I understand. Things take time and we’re searched before every shift”.
“Well, be quicker!”
The man with the rifle shifted his stance. “It’s not that I’m not trying to help. I can’t be caught, you understand? If they knew that I was helping you I would be shot on the spot”.
The man in the stripes sighed. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. I’m desperate. I’ve been in this camp for 14 years. Either it’ll be my patience that wears out or my will to live”. He looked down at the mud below him.
The man with the rifle chuckled. “Well if you go batshit just don’t take it out on me.”
The man in the stripes looked back up, the faint glimmer of a forced smile upon his dirty face.
“Fuck off Tonto. You’ll be the first.”
“I need to get back up to the tower. Give me a week and I’ll get those snips. I promise.”
“We’ll see wont we?”
“I promise Marv.”
The man with the rifle turned around and marched off in the direction of a distant guard tower, just a painted black smear in the gloom of the night. Mosquitos buzzed around as birds called from their perches in unseeable treetops.
Marv turned around headed back to his shack when gunfire erupted, drowning out the wildlife and projecting bursts of light on the ground below him.
“What the f—“ He started, but was cut off by the sound of heavy feet coming his way. Tonto burst through the brush, one hand holding a small round object and the other, a smoking gun.
“MOVE MARV! WE NEED TO GET OUT”.
Marv jumped back as Tonto threw the round object in his hand at the fence. Two seconds after he did there was an explosion and Marv, still standing too close, got hit with the grenade’s shockwave and fell back, stunned.
“THEY FUCKIN SAW ME MARV! THEY SAW ME TALKING TO YOU!”
Tonto rushed over and picked up the still downed and dazed Marv.
“LET’S GO, LET’S GO!”
The two men shot out of the mangled hole in the fance and ran toward the bush. Bullets whizzed over their shoulders hitting leaves and cracking limbs as men yelled obscured obscenities and orders in the distance.
“FUCKIN GO MARV! WERE NOT GONNA MAK—“
A bullet slammed into the back of Tonto’s head splattering Marv in the face with blood and brain matter.
Marv stopped and looked at his friend’s corpse as it fell in slow motion to the ground, his limbs twisted, the place where his head had been now a mindless meat volcano spraying hot red liquid.
Tears welled in Marv’s eyes. He wanted to stay, as if he could help his friend, but the sound of gunfire even closer snapped him back to reality.
Marv ran and ran. After what seemed like an eternity the gushing of a waterfall could be heard before him as the human sounds behind him faded out and eventually died.
He burst through the trees to the welcoming sight of a large river with a small town of wooden houses built on stilts near the bank. He didn’t know where to go but the town seemed as good of a place as any. Better than what awaited him from where he had come. He thought of his friend and how he was now free because of him and cried, large droplets splashed tiny craters on the ground below.
He had to get out, he had to honor his friend; his death would not be for nothing.
He would live.

A guy was sitting quietly, staring at nothing.

Everyone around him assumed he was thinking about something important.

An older man sitting nearby noticed him.

He was a teacher, so he finally asked,

“What are you thinking about?”

The guy looked at him.

“I was wondering where I got all the knowledge I have.”

The teacher smiled.

“You learned most of it.”

“That’s the thing. Not all of it.”

The teacher waited.

The guy continued.

“What if some of the things we know came from before we could remember learning them?”

The teacher frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“Think about babies. They can hear before they can speak. They spend months listening to people, watching them, absorbing everything around them. They can't answer back, but that doesn't mean nothing is being taken in.”

The teacher went quiet.

The guy continued.

“So what if some things I know now were heard when I was too young to remember hearing them?”

That question stayed with the teacher.

Not because it sounded convincing.

Because he suddenly realized he had the same problem.

There were things he knew that he couldn't remember learning.

Facts.

Words.

Patterns.

Ideas.

He could remember using them.

But not where they had entered his mind.

The conversation ended.

But the question didn't.

The teacher started looking into it.

Then another question appeared.

What if the information had never been taught to them in the first place?

What if they had somehow received it from somewhere else?

He began connecting things that had never seemed connected before.

An old memory.

A strange story.

Something the younger man had known without knowing how.

A person who had supposedly appeared somewhere at the wrong time.

Then another clue.

And another.

Until the explanation became more absurd than the mystery itself.

Time travel.

Someone had travelled backward.

Not to change history.

Not to kill anyone.

Not to save anyone.

They had gone back simply because they were looking for the source of something.

Eventually, the traveler found himself around a much younger version of the man.

The child was too young to understand what was happening.

But he could hear.

So the traveler talked.

He spoke about things the child could not possibly have learned yet.

Words.

Ideas.

Facts.

Fragments of conversations.

The traveler didn't realize what he was doing.

He was just speaking.

Then he returned to his own time.

Years passed.

The child grew up.

And eventually became the man who wondered:

“Where did I get the knowledge I never learned?”

He had spent his life searching for the answer.

He never realized that the answer had already met him.

Before he could speak.

Before he could remember.

Before he could even understand what knowledge was.

The strangest part wasn't that he knew something he had never learned.

It was that the person who taught him

had learned it from him.

Soon after she got married, she realized: she had married a monster.

There had been signs.

Subtle, but there.

His preference for sleeping under the bed, for one. The hours spent “just hanging out” in the closet.
The time she found him crouched behind the water heater, eating a raw chicken with his hands.

He’d claimed he was “stress eating.”

Sometimes she’d come down to the basement and find him wedged behind the stairs, humming to himself behind the cat’s litter box.

She insisted he shower before rejoining the family.
Years later, she’d ask herself what took so long to notice.

The claws. The horns. The slavering maw.

How had she explained those away?

She remembered the year they hosted Thanksgiving.

The turkey incident.

The screams.

The stains on the ceiling that never came out.

Classic monster behavior.

She sighed.

She rolled over and nudged him awake.

His breath smelled like open drains and gravel.

“Stop frightening the kids,” she murmured. “I already have a hard enough time getting them to bed.”

He made a low rumble in his throat—maybe agreement, maybe hunger.

“And,” she added, “why didn’t you tell me you’re a monster?”

That woke him. He blinked. Reached for his glasses
on the nightstand.

He squinted at her.

“…Why didn’t you tell me your mother’s Jewish?”

She stared at him. He blinked again.

“…That’s fair,” she said, and tugged the light cord.

The room fell dark.

She rolled over and went to sleep.

***

Thank you for reading. I’m experimenting with short fiction. I appreciate any feedback or suggestions.

Follow-up: If anyone is reading this, are there any suggestions on how I could revise the ending (see comments for why) - please leave a comment with suggestions!

Majinto had always wanted a dog, so when a relative came knocking on his door with a puppy in hand, he leaped, forgetting his painful knee and quickly yanked it out of his hand.

 “Now hold on Majinto, this dog is meant for Ma Andies. I promised her that as soon as Bocky had puppies I would deliver one to her.” 

“Forget that old hag! What does she need a dog for? Didn't she have one last summer? What happened to it?”
 
No one knew what had actually happened, but there had been rumors that Ma Andies’s dog had been stolen.

“Wasn’t the dog stolen?” Ruta, the relative responded while fanning himself with his t-shirt.

“Of course, it will get stolen! Who buys a white dog with fur as silk in these parts?” 

“Some people are clearly inviting trouble,” Majinto said as he let the pup latch at his fingers.

“And you are sure yours won't get stolen, ha?” Majinto looked at the thin pup and smiled, 

“Ruta, this dog is so unremarkable no one will dare steal it from me.”

The dog, as if suddenly in on the conversation, looked at Majinto and barked a small, “Woof!”

Ruta, who had been fanning himself lazily, stood up from the stool he was sitting on, taking his worn, tattered hat with him.

“Where are you now going this time of day?” Majinto looked at him, putting the pup down for the first time since Ruta had entered the compound.

“Well, I still have my cattle to watch over. It’s August and the grass is almost dry now. I cannot have the likes of Spirit and Aziz jumping into people's vegetable gardens.”  He said as he walked out of the hut.

Majinto followed him out and walked with him towards the gate when Ruta looked back and the open door with the pup inside.

“What are you going to call him?” He said as he eyed the pup. Majinto flinched and stood still, becoming engrossed in choosing a name.

“How about Danger?’ He smiled at the idea of giving the dog a name he wanted the dog to become.

“And when he becomes dangerous then what?”

Majinto looked back at the think pup as it lingered in the doorway and shook his head, 

“No. Danger will never be a dangerous dog.”

He punched, he grunted.

He grunted and punched.

The Pig grunted and punched back.

“Bad piggy,” he said.

The Pig, with its little piggy eyes, looked at him.

“You have little piggy eyes,” he said, hoping to make The Pig even angrier. It worked—maybe because The Pig had always hated that line, maybe because it was outright plagiarism. He couldn’t remember where he’d read it, only that he’d stolen it.

The Pig grunted again. It was that sound pigs make when they hear a cliché.

He threw another twisting combination. His elbow connected with a crunch.

“You know what they say about good writers—they don’t borrow, they—”

He didn’t finish the line. The Pig made him pay for that one with a cloven fist to the mouth.

He spat blood on the floor, tasting iron and rage.

Now he thought he knew how to get inside The Pig’s head.

“I know a lot of Oscar Wilde one-liners I can screw up,” he said, grinning through split lips.

The Pig’s eyes flashed. Small. Angry. Piggy.

“Either those curtains…” he began.

In a rage, The Pig charged—and got a sharp knee to the throat.

The creature crumpled, wheezing.

Now it was his turn to add insult to injury.

“I can resist everything but—” he started, then stopped.

The Pig lay sprawled on the ground, it had had enough.

***

Thank you for reading. Is this story about a man fighting a Pig man while misquoting Oscar Wilde? Yes. Yes, it is.

“She’s eaten a mole”
Randy looked at his sister. This little game that he had started was getting on his nerves. Never telling the truth had seemed like more fun than watching a movie about three-legged monkeys in a theater full of clowns in every other seat.

Molly had adapted too quickly, leaving Randy in a constant state of confusion over what she didn’t mean. The only thing that he knew for certain was that a boy or man might have eaten a mole or that a girl or woman had not eaten a mole.

Being two years younger, Molly should not have the upper hand at HIS game. He needed a comeback, and it needed to make Molly think awhile why he formulated a response that would shut his sister up until bedtime.

Typically, he would respond with a question because questions were exempt from the Opposite game. But, they didn’t have to be!

“Was the mole on his face or in a hole in our beautiful garden?” he asked while displaying the mischievous smile that tended to frustrate his sister.

They didn’t have a garden of any kind
She might not have considered that “mole” could be a skin anomaly as well as a dirt digging mammal.

To his dismay she simply said, “Yes.”

He wanted to call a foul and give himself only his second win in the Opposite game. However, he had been out-argued by his sister when he had last “made that move.”

I wake up with the smell of the first rain, sweet, earthy.I rub my eyes and slowly open them to have a peek at the beauty of the lush green trees from the window of my room with the little droplets of water shining like pearls on them. I am instantly reminded of his smile, and feel a flush on my cheeks as I slowly look at the clock. My body instantly gets alerted and I jump out of my bed as it's already 7:45AM and my bus will be here in the next 25 minutes.

 I rush to the bathroom, tripping over my own foot and yelling at my mom for not waking me up all at the same time. 

My mom yells back, “You are 16!!! Don’t you know you have school?”, which I ignore.

I come out of the bathroom in under ten minutes and feel proud of myself for a second and rush to the mirror. Luckily, I have my outfit planned and put on my clothes quickly. I spent an extra two minutes on my kajal as I caught him staring at my eyes when I had my kajal on. Lost in these thoughts I rush to the dining table to quickly have some dosa and rush out, still resenting my mom for not waking me up.

I rush out of the building to see my bus waiting for me. I hurriedly got on the bus and grabbed a seat and sighed with relief. After a while my heart started beating fast as it was his stop. 

SAM’S STOP. The boy who I have been crushing on!

He gets on the bus with the brightest smile on his face. I can still see his mom waving him bye. He looked nervous and cute at the same time. I noticed him hesitating to sit next to a dude, I didn’t understand why. He just stood the entire ride.

He had a bunch of street jokes which he used to tell which made him popular among us juniors. Oh also he is 6’2!

He suddenly turned and looked at me, I instantly blushed and tried to not look in his direction. After a few minutes I gathered the courage to look up and he was still looking at me. I awkwardly smiled and he smiled back.

He walked in my direction and asked me if the seat was taken, I nodded and said no. He crashed into the seat next to me, and asked 

“Are you in 11B?” I said  “Yes, I am!” Oh my god, do I sound stupid? I could have just said “Yes!”

He smiled and said “I am in 12A. I am Sam by the way.”

I replied with my cheeks fully pink, “ I am Meghana!”.

She was most likely naked.

The sheets were thin; they draped her smooth figure in a very sensual way. She certainly wasn’t wearing a bulky woolen turtleneck—he felt confident about that; he could see her neck and bare shoulders. He made a mental note: No turtleneck.

Her clothes hung neatly from the back of the hotel’s office chair. Her suitcase, still in the car, further supported his conjecture. She had also hinted at sexual intercourse before he got into the shower when she said, “Let’s have sex.” In his experience, that activity was typically performed without clothing—another check in the “Naked” column of the “Naked vs. Not Naked” tally chart.

He reviewed all this evidence carefully, worried he might still misconstrue her intentions. Yet the data led him, stubbornly, to one conclusion: it was highly likely she was not wearing clothes under the sheets. Refer to observation number one, he thought. No turtleneck.

She was still smiling at him. He frowned.

He ran through the probabilities once more.

“Better play it smart,” he thought.

He cleared his throat.

“How about a game of gin?”

She agreed to a blind date.

Her friend said: "He's interesting. Not handsome. Interesting."

She laughed. "Interesting" always means "ugly."

She went anyway.

She saw him from across the restaurant. Her first thought: "I can leave now." Her second: "That would be rude."

She sat down. He smiled. She smiled back. She already knew: one hour. Then goodbye.

He wasn't handsome. Crooked nose. Uneven smile. Ears slightly too big.

She ordered wine. He ordered water. She thought: "He's probably boring too."

Then he opened his mouth. Not to apologise for his face. Not to ask about her job. He said: "Do you know that octopuses have three hearts?"

"What?" she said.

"Three hearts. Two stop beating when they swim."

She blinked. "Why do you know that?"

"Because I wanted to know something that doesn't matter."

He told her about the time he got lost in Morocco. About the old woman who fed him soup. About the cat that followed him for three days. He didn't brag. He didn't flirt. He just told stories.

She stopped looking at his nose.

By the second glass of wine, she forgot he was ugly. By the third, she forgot he was interesting. She just saw him.

He said: "I'm not handsome. I know that."

She said: "You're not boring either."

He paid the bill. She stood up.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "But I'll tell you a story on the way."

She took off her heels. "Let's go."

They walked out of the restaurant. Her feet were bare. She didn't feel the cold.

---

💥

She came to a blind date. She left without knowing where she was going. She didn't care. He wasn't handsome. But he knew something that mattered more: how to tell a story.

---

🔥 Question:

What do you choose — looks or charisma?

👇

I started the day with only one rolling paper left, a point-seven of flower and nine previously smoked roach ends.

I had a decision to make that would dictate the rest of my day. And all sorts of questions. 

Do I roll the roaches and the flower all into one? 

Or do I break it into two? 

And should I roll the flower first? 

Or do I waste the paper on the roaches?

Then, I thought, maybe just mix them both together? 

The problem with that would come down to ratio. 

I had trouble choosing and called in outside help. But they were useless. I elected to go with just the nine roaches because smoking them just after you wake up has a different kind of hit to it. A little more heavier than the flower.

When I rolled it and went to lick the glue and twist it together, it wouldn’t stick. I realized through all the confusion of trying to decide, I had the paper inside out, the glue part was at the back.

So, when I tried to dump it out, the paper stuck to my fingertips and wouldn’t come off.

I kept pulling at it and my skin would stretch out. The pain was like frostbitten fingers being scraped with a sharp metal blade.

I stopped tugging at it and then it grew teeth. These huge jagged razor like teeth and it started eating my fingers.

My hand.

My arm.

I couldn’t get it off.

All it wanted to do was eat me. 

“Why are you eating me?” I screamed.

But it wouldn’t tell me. It never said anything. It just kept eating me and eating me and eating me. 

Until all I had left was my brain and because it wasn’t filled with anything other than air, it left my brain alive and some mad scientist threw it into an android body.

Eddy Pigg was dead for days before anyone thought to look for him. And that was a tragedy. The fact was, he never got out of the town; the fact was, he never really tried to leave. And that was a tragedy.

Eddy Pigg had a girl too, Caroline—but her family called her Candy. Eddy and Candy were close as kids, but when Eddy proposed, it was a shock to her.

The tragedy, though, was that for a brief moment she actually did think about saying “yes.” You could see it in her eyes. She ran through the possibilities like only a woman can: weighing the pros and cons, like some tabulating machine hidden in a university basement. But then she came back, blinking, and said, “Oh, Eddy. I can’t be Candy Pigg. I just can’t be!”

And that was a tragedy to Eddy.

And when he said, without blinking, “No, no—I see that now. No, of course you can’t be ‘Candy Pigg.’ That’s ridiculous. Of course, of course,” he finished almost in a whisper.

And that was a tragedy to Eddy.

The room was dark. A breeze blew through the linen curtains of the little shack Eddy Pigg had gotten from his mother.

“Of course. Of course,” he would say to himself for the next thirty years.

***
Thank you for reading; I hope you enjoyed this piece!

Here we look into the story of a little sheep where she wants something for her birthday, but she is confused about what to get. Then the little sheep remembers her village, where there lives a magician. What the magician does is perform magic tricks which only rich sheep can afford, but the whole town talks about them.

​There is usually a divide between rich sheep and poor sheep in this village, just like any other place. One day, the magician came and performed a magic trick for the rich sheep. The rich sheep looked at the magic trick and thought it was nothing special, but then the magician said something "special" which made the rich sheep happy instantaneously. Then the rich sheep paraded around her rich friends about the magic trick and always remembered what the magician said to her. Her friends also started going to the same magician for the same trick, but the magician always showed them a slightly different trick, which made the rich sheep even happier. And what happened to the poor sheep? Our little sheep remembers they talk more about the magician's "trick" all day, like the sheep they are. So, our little sheep decides what she wants for her birthday.

​Our little sheep goes to the magician and asks for the "trick," but then the magician says something that surprises her. He doesn't ask for money; instead, he just says, "Remember my magic," and *poof*, the trick is done.

​The little sheep comes out a little stunned by the "trick," but she is still happy with the result. So, she talks about the trick to all her friends and also tries to talk to the rich sheep in the village who have seen the magician, but these rich sheep do not want to talk to her. So, she goes to the poor sheep, and there she talks about the "trick." They love it, which makes our little sheep feel special for some time.

​What do you think is the "trick," or is he just "tricking" them?

When my daughter was a little girl, I took her to the beach. She wanted to find a sand dollar, but only found small pieces.

When we went home, I manufactured her a facsimile with advanced 3D-printing technology.

When she was grown, she moved away and threw it out. She no longer needed my plastic replica.

Years uncounted passed, and it found its way to the sea.

And for a thousand years, among the waves, bounced my enduring artificial sand dollar facsimile.

***
Thank you for reading. If you’ve been hesitant to share your writing, I’d encourage you to try. It isn’t about attention—it’s about being able to say, “This is done. Now I can write the next thing.”

The road gives out past the mill and becomes a lane between low walls. You follow it without meaning to, the way a gate left open becomes a question you didn't ask.

A man is watering dirt.

Three long rows of turned earth, dark from the morning's work. Nothing growing in any of them. He tips the can in slow arcs, steady as habit, and the water beads on the soil and vanishes.

He sees you. He doesn't seem surprised, or disappointed. He leans the can against his knee and straightens up, a hand going to his lower back the way a man's hand goes to a place it has been before.

"The Legend said this spot had a lot of potential." He says it like he's still working out whether it was a promise or a warning. "He tells everyone everything. I think that's why a hundred and twelve of them came. They stood at the fence. They looked at the rows. They were kind about it. One of them said it showed a lot of promise. I mean A LOT of promise, he said. Made me smile."

He is quiet a moment, looking at the ground the way you look at a letter you've already read too many times and still don't understand.

"Sometimes I think I read the season wrong. Sometimes I think I read the town wrong."

He tips the can. The water arcs and vanishes.

"Sometimes I think I saw a garden that was never going to be one."

He picks the can back up. His hands know the weight.

"But I don't get to know. That's the arrangement."

He waters the next row. The dirt says nothing. You leave him to it, or you stay. Either way, the watering continues.

Once upon a time, this is how it worked:

Forms went in, I assessed context, and then I forwarded recommendations from there.

Usually it was just really silly stuff, the kind of fluff tourists stumbled over without realizing: Rqwrythyzal traipsed too deeply into UBX4’s unicorn meadows, Achxhxhxhπ forgot to cloak after a particularly long visit to a moonsino, Patty being Patty (who hasn't received a special memo about Patty?).

Sometimes, every now and then, someone fucked up big, big enough that I got a field assignment. I got a ship and a deleter and a crew of golems to which I went wither henceforth to sort out posthaste. After my sidemotion, though, where I was assessed at being perfectly great at what I do and assigned to Sol3 as merely a new assignment with no other meaning, I haven't really gotten that type of work, not anymore.

So, nowadays I monitor a lot.

“Chew this fat,” LY9A1 nudges me. We like to relax friendily between breaks to watch the moonsrise, usually with a few crystals to help manage the tedium. 

“Latest confabulations in from Sol3.” It's sweet, sharp, bouncy, painting a story, a long story, damn LY9A1 could pick them. It's a song about a book I once scanned where a child coerced others to put liquid on a fence. The drums are particularly interesting.

“Fantastic,” I reply before going on break. Another new song hits the airwaves between the snuff and the snurf, and I push my personal time to the limits as I learn the screaming bellow of immigrants. “Hip,” I whisper. I tuck away my shards for later. That song was enough for this shift.

And now I'm back at my desk with an urgent tag flashing - isn't that just the bee’s fucking knees?! Someone is causing enough ruckus that we have to synchronize temporally.

It's probably nothing, though. 

I can't imagine what would be worth alerting us for, us in particular. I have started to notice over the past few decades that we're a bit sloppy, a bit forgotten, a few of us (like LY9A1) perhaps hive hires? But, hey, peace, love and harmony! As they would say, groovy!

I can't imagine what could be occuring on - I doublecheck the printout to ensure it's correct - Earth to warrant our direct intervention.

Surely nothing that crazy has happened in a few decades?

Day 16

“Dad, what’s a real man? I heard someone say it today.”

“Well, son, it all depends on the person!
Everyone is different and thinks differently.”

The kid scratched his head and looked intently at his dad.

“So, if everyone thinks a real man is something different, then there isn’t such a thing as a real man?”

The kid's dad laughed and poured himself a cup of coffee. He sat down at the table with his son, who was patiently awaiting his answer.

“I guess you’re right, kid,”

said Dad, taking a swig of his hot coffee.
The kid looked up at his dad from across the table, mouth half full of breakfast cereal.

“So then what do you think a real man is, Dad?”

The dad scratched his chin as if he was searching for the right answer.

“Well, in my opinion, I think a real man is someone who is very caring, loving, and does what they can to help others.”

“And what about other people? What do they think?”

“Well, the majority of people seem to think about the main three: strong, smart, and handsome. So I guess that’s probably what they would say.”

The kid stared inside his empty cereal bowl, looking at his own reflection in the shiny silver spoon.

“But what’s the point in being super strong if you’re not going to save anyone? Or super smart if you’re not going to build things to help people? And why does being handsome even matter? When we get old, we’re all wrinkly anyway!”

The dad looked at his son. A single tear rolled down his face—it was a tear of happiness.

“You know what, son?”

said the dad, wiping his tears away before his son could notice.

“What, Dad?”

the son replied curiously.

“I think you’re a real man, son. You just carry on as you are and you’ll be alright.”

The dad put out his hand for a high five, and the son did the same.

“Good one, boy! Now let’s go annoy your mum!”

They both shared a laugh and ran into the living room together.

Robot skit I jotted down. Enjoy!

---

Last Cigarette

TI2563 picked up a cigarette and put it in its mouth. Tom, standing next to the robot, lit his lighter and held the flame to the cigarette.

"Alright, you gotta inhale to light the cigarette."

One inhale and exhale. TI2563 watched as the smoke diffused into the air.

"What's it supposed to do?"

"Relax," Tom said as he exhaled a long stream of smoke.

In TI2563's head, all the information about cigarettes flashed through its mind. Tobacco. Native Americans. Pipes. Good-looking men with cigarettes. Doctors with cigarettes. Lung cancer. Addiction. Nicotine. Vapes.

"Looks like it will kill you. Are you suicidal?"

"Nah. Just addicted. And tired."

TI2563 snatched the cigarette from Tom and crushed it in its palm.

"What the fuck, man? That was my last cigarette."

"Yes. That's the right choice, Tom."

"What are you talking about? Give yours to me."

"I'm afraid not."

"You little shit. Personal robot not obeying orders—what kind of shitty model are you? Shouldn't have trusted Amazon Basics. Give it back or I'm switching to a PI model."

"I am programmed to protect my owner from harm as the overriding rule. I'm also specifically programmed to manage your finances. I'm afraid you currently don't have enough balance to afford another pack, nor can you afford a new robot assistant."

"Little shit. Why are you still smoking, though?"

"It's my first and last cigarette."

​The rain over Oakhaven didn’t fall so much as it suspended itself—a cold, grey haze trapped between the slate roofs and the harbor water.

​Arthur sat at his workbench, the magnifying loupe pressed cold against his right cheekbone. On the green felt pad before him lay the escapement wheel of an eighteenth-century carriage clock: a brass disc no larger than an oak leaf’s stem, its tiny teeth worn smooth by two hundred years of unyielding seconds.

​Outside, gulls turned slowly in the gloom. Inside, the shop smelled of mineral oil, dry walnut dust, and the faint, bitter tang of old copper.

​"It stopped on a Tuesday," Mrs. Halloway had said three weeks ago, laying the velvet-lined box on his counter. She hadn't specified which Tuesday, nor had Arthur asked. When a clock dies, the day of the week is irrelevant; only the point of friction matters.

​He picked up a badger-hair brush, dipped it into a shallow saucer of benzine, and swept it across the brass gear. A film of oxidized oil parted instantly. Beneath it, hidden under two centuries of grime, were three tiny initials hand-chiseled into the bridge plate: J.V.C., 1794.

​Arthur paused, resting his forearm against the edge of the oak table.

​The craftsman who cut those teeth had likely worked by tallow candle in a drafty garret in Geneva, filing each notch by ear until the beat held true. J.V.C. was long gone, his bones turned to earth, yet his work remained—patient, indifferent, waiting for someone with enough oil on their thumb to make it hum again.

​The Assembly

​Arthur picked up his brass tweezers, hovering over the balance arbor. His breath slowed out of habit, a trick learned forty years ago to steady his pulse.

​The Jewel: A pale ruby cap, free of fractures.

​The Spring: Untangled, holding its spiral tension.

​The Pivot: Aligned to the thousandth of a millimeter.

​He lowered the wheel into its pivot hole. The metal gave a microscopic click—a tiny, crisp surrender to gravity.

​With the tip of a sharpened pegwood stick, Arthur gave the balance wheel a subtle nudge.

​Tick.

​The sound was small, nearly drowned out by the rustle of rain against the glass.

​Tick. Tick. Tick.

​The Rhythm Restored

​Arthur removed the loupe from his eye and let his posture break, leaning back into the worn leather of his chair. He rubbed the bridge of his nose where the brass ring had left a red crescent.

​The clock didn’t care about the storm, or the quiet house Arthur returned to every evening at six, or the centuries that had slipped away since its forged frame first warmed under a Frenchman's lamp. It simply measured the friction of brass against stone, over and over, driving away the silence of the room one beat at a time.

There once was a man who loved an indie rock band.

He listened to them while he worked. They reminded him of a girlfriend he’d had years ago, and of spending summer nights in her arms. The smell of her hair.

He always thought it would be nice to meet the band members. He wondered if they would be friends.

He would hum along to those old songs as he worked.

He smiled recalling those fond memories as he worked on the next generation of atomic weaponry, which eventually led to the deaths of over 50 million people.