Each piece is based on a line generated by the Magic Realism bot on Twitter (@magicrealismbot). The line becomes the plot, all the stories are written in about 15 minutes and then lightly edited. This is my first experiment for the year, enjoy!
A bat whispers to Florence Nightingale: “Don’t do it.”
“When I am no longer a memory, just a name…” Florence paused, with the weight of 90 years’ memories, and blinked away the fog of what had already been forgotten. The idea of posterity was both a given and of no interest to her. What’s posterity when you aren’t there to know it’s happening? An […]
A Babylonian woman owns a tiny crystal that allows her to destroy ancient Egypt
She doesn’t know where she found the crystal. One day she was rummaging in her closet, searching for an old handbag, one that reminds her of her youth, both the mistakes of fashion and the hopes of standing out. She doesn’t mind that she’s reached an age where standing out is a rarity. She wanted […]
An eagle can move cities with its mind
From the eyrie, it can see cities. One big, some small, it doesn’t really understand how it knows what a city is. There are trees, tops of green and brown and gold, filled with opportunities and hidden shadows. There are odd squares and rectangles, higher and lower, masking what lies beneath, though for all the […]
A flight attendant falls in love with a lake
He sees it mid-flight. During the brief respite between drink services, he rests against an exit door, talking to his fellow flight attendants as they brief each other on recurring aggravation, plans when they get home, stupid stuff other flight attendants said. Sometimes about the attendants at the other end of the plane, but on […]
During the middle of the night all the belts in Madagascar suddenly vanish
Suddenly they are gone. The late-night partiers, they noticed the loosening at their waists, the random embarrassment of skirts falling in the midst of ordering a drink, of standing up to say goodbye, of appearing like it happened on purpose, because of that look in his eyes. All the belts have disappeared. And all of […]
You will dream of a candy bar tonight. Just before you wake up, the candy bar will remember you.
She doesn’t always know what the night will bring, but she’s always excited. Anticipating dreams that take her to places that hang faintly on the pathways and structures of her real world. The street she grew up on, but greener, so green, so lush. The houses look like cardboard in the moonlight, and she doesn’t […]
A professor invents a better version of raw human emotion: Swallowing forests
Tired. That’s what she was feeling as she packed up her books and papers to head home. The gnawing persistence of responsibility and life wouldn’t let her rest, she felt her muscles weighing her down, gravity settling on her. How else are you supposed to feel when you can’t cry, she wondered. The loss of […]
The life of a high school teacher depends on one particular lettuce
She wakes up in a fog, as part of every day’s ritual of wishing she could find a school that started later, that catered to the night owls. We want to teach and get a good night’s sleep, she thinks. But she does the rote morning ritual, rolling out of bed into a warm and […]
Worlds 