'How was school?'
'They canceled class after Tommy said a bad word.'
'That's extreme. What did he say?'
'I can't say it.'
'Just say the first letter. A? S? F?'
'It sounded like angels dying. When he said it, the walls turned to smoke, a portal opened, and demons crawled through.'

“Thank you all for coming to my mystery murder party!”
“Don’t you mean murder mystery?”
“No, in a murder mystery the enigma is the killer’s identity. But I am tonight’s murderer. The puzzle is how everyone will die.”
“Wait, if we’re all victims, who solves it?”
“Ideally, no one.”

He died, then he was born again, a baby in his mother’s arms. He was going to live his old life over again. With all he knew now, he could fix so many things, like...like what? He couldn't remember a thing.
——
“Why is he crying?”
“It’s normal for babies to cry when they're born.”

“If it’s any consolation,” said a man who hadn’t been there a moonbeam earlier, “If I were a brain in a jar, imagining a world as I went, I would have made the same choices.”
“I’m sorry?” I said, staring at his lemon-yellow eyes.
“Exactly!” He laughed. “You couldn’t have known.”

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There are still onomancers whose magic comes from the true names of things.
But the art of finding names was lost long ago. Much of our modern world is anonymous.
Until tonight. A bargain is made, and Alice smiles as withered lips whisper in her ear the true name of the internet.

This week on Party of One, Jesse Stanchak from Micro Flash Fiction📖 and I explore the world after Ragnarok in Colin Le Sueur's RUNECAIRN: WARDENSAGA!

You'll dig this episode if you like: Dark Souls, Viking fantasy, weird ghosts, lovable scoundrels

Get it where you get your podcasts!

“Please?”
“But of course.”
“Thank you!”
“You're welcome.”
“You're too kind.”
“Not at all.”
“It was nothing.”
“I'm much obliged.”
“You needn't bother.”
“I insist.”
“Don’t go to any trouble.”
“It’s no trouble.”
“I can't accept.”
“You simply must.”
“War it is then?”
“War it is.”

In the future, we skip writing long works of literature, criticism, and scholarship and just write their Wikipedia summaries instead. No one acknowledges this. We all pretend to have read books that never existed.
Future scholars mourn the loss of a phantom Library of Alexandria.

“You should talk to a therapist about that.”
“You should talk to a doctor.”
“You should talk to a lawyer.”
“You should talk to my friend.”
“You should talk NASA.”
“You should talk to the Pentagon.”
“You should talk to the Visitors.”
“…You should talk to a therapist about that.”

Pull a sword from the water: Warrior of legend, or a child at the beach.
Pull a sword from the fire: Warrior of legend, or a blacksmith.
Pull a sword from the air: Warrior of legend, or a stage magician.
Pull a sword from the stone: Warrior of legend, or an archeologist.

There is a person out there for whom knowledge of your existence would be a profound relief. They may not love you or even like you. But the sure and certain knowledge that you are possible and you have come this far would send a great many demons howling back into the darkness.

All that survived the apocalypse were mutated border collies that had become photosynthetic.
They spread out over the world, nose to tail, covering the planet in a perfect blanket of fur.
Intelligent beings came from across the universe to gently stroke the fluffy earth.

'Welcome to Hell! There's the boiling pool, the flaying zone, the unraveler—'
'What will you do to me?'
'You'll watch.'
'What?'
'Hell is...disorganized. Someone with your efficiency obsession is sure to spy ways to improve it.'
'You want me to fix Hell?'
'That's not what I said.'

'Sometimes a person seems weird until you realize they've been shaped by their past.'
'Like when you can tell a building used to be a Pizza Hut?'
'What? No.'
'How's it different?'
'I don't know how to respond to that.'
'It's OK. I love you even though you used to be a Pizza Hut.'

Ice grows more confident as it ages.
The longer it sits on your bottom step, the more certain it is that it has always been there. Maybe this step just formed under the ice. So what gives you the right to walk here?
Given time, this is how glaciers carve lakes into the earth.

Paradise is between corruptibility and incorruptibility— immortality without the baggage, the sense it all could fall apart at any moment, only the moment never comes, and the edge of expectation never dulls.
It is my hand in yours and the wonder and terror of what we might do.

Paradise is between corruptibility and incorruptibility— immortality without the baggage, the sense it all could fall apart at any moment, only the moment never comes, and the edge of expectation never dulls.
It is my hand in yours and the wonder and terror of what we might do.