The Shadow's Loan: I pawned my shadow for a month's rent. I thought I wouldn't miss it, but the sun felt like a spotlight on a stage where I’d forgotten my lines. When I finally bought it back, it didn't fit right; it was two inches shorter and smelled of someone else’s cigarettes.
The Gravity Thief: He lived in a house where the gravity was dialled to zero. He ate his cereal with a butterfly net and slept tied to the radiator. He only came down to Earth once a week, wearing lead boots and a heavy heart, just to remember why he’d left in the first place.
The Library of Scars: Every mark on her body was a page in a book only she could read. A faint line on her thumb was a childhood summer; a jagged mark on her knee was a betrayal. When she died, her skin turned to vellum, and the village library gained its first true history of the human heart.
The Clockmaker’s Gift: He built a watch that showed how much time you had left with the person you were looking at. He gave it to a young couple. They were happy until the man looked at his wife and saw the watch display "00:05." He spent the next five minutes trying to say everything, only to realize the watch was just five minutes fast.
The Stationary Storm: A single lightning bolt froze in the middle of the sky. It stayed there for a century, a jagged sculpture of light. People built a cathedral around it, worshipping the power that refused to strike. Then, a small child touched the tip, and the thunder finally arrived, a hundred years late.
The Mirror's Secret: My bathroom mirror doesn't reflect my face; it reflects the room behind me, but fifty years in the future. I see a forest growing through the floorboards and a bird nesting in the sink. I’ve started leaving seeds on the counter, just so the future looks a little greener.
The Inkless Poet: He wrote his masterpieces with an empty pen on water. People called him a fraud until a winter frost hit, and his poems froze into the lake. Thousands gathered to skate over his stanzas, reading the wisdom of a man who knew that the best words are the ones that eventually melt.
The Replacement: I bought a robot to attend the meetings I hated. It was so charming and efficient that my boss promoted it. Now, the robot lives in the master bedroom and I live in the charging dock, finally enjoying the silence of a life I no longer have to perform.
The Last Star: The sky was empty except for one tiny light. Scientists realized it wasn't a star, but a reflection. We were looking into a giant mirror at the edge of the universe, and the "star" was just the light from our own world, finally reaching us after a billion-year journey.
For more professional-grade micro-fiction, check out the SmokeLong Quarterly archives or explore the 100 Word Story library.
Shall I proceed with batch twenty-one, or would you like to narrow the focus to a genre like Space Horror or Fairy Tales?
continue
15 minutes ago
Batch twenty-one. No outlines, just the stories.
The Debt of the Sea: Every morning, the old man walked the beach and threw a single gold coin into the waves. People called him a fool until the day a tsunami flattened the village, but stopped exactly three inches from his doorstep, the water bowing like a servant who had been paid in full.
The Shadow's Reflection: I saw my shadow in a puddle, but it was wearing a crown. I looked up, expecting to see a kingdom, but there was only the grey alleyway and the rain. When I stepped out of the puddle, the shadow stayed behind, sitting on a throne of oil and silt, refusing to follow a peasant like me.
The Memory Moth: A tiny, silver insect fluttered into the room and landed on my grandfather's forehead. It didn't bite; it inhaled. When it flew away, my grandfather looked at me and asked who I was. I chased the moth for three days, eventually catching it in a jar, where it glowed with the light of a thousand Sunday dinners.
The Clockwork Heart: The surgeon replaced the broken organ with a golden watch. "Never let it wind down," he warned. The man lived for a century, obsessed with the ticking. He finally died not because his time ran out, but because he met a woman whose beauty made him forget to turn the key for a single, breathless minute.
The Unfinished Bridge: It stretched halfway across the canyon and stopped. A community of artists lived on the edge, painting the "other side" that didn't exist. One day, a man walked off the end of the stone; he didn't fall, but kept walking on the air, supported by the sheer collective imagination of the people behind him.
The Silence Eater: She carried a velvet bag into noisy subways and crowded markets. She would open it, and the sound of screaming brakes and shouting vendors would vanish into the fabric. She’d go home to her quiet cottage and release the bag in her garden, where the flowers bloomed to the sound of a thousand muffled conversations.
The Glass Ocean: The water froze into a solid, transparent pane during the hottest summer on record. We walked for miles over the whales and shipwrecks, looking down at a world that was suddenly a photograph. I saw my lost wedding ring on a coral reef, but the ice was too thick to break and too clear to ignore.
The Weight of a Lie: In this city, lies have physical weight. A small fib is a pebble; a betrayal is a boulder. The politicians are all hunched over, dragging massive iron sleds behind them, while the children run light as feathers, having not yet learned how to anchor themselves to the earth.
The Mirror's Secret: My bathroom mirror reflects the room as it was exactly twenty years ago. I watch my younger self brush his teeth and wonder when he’ll notice the grey-haired man staring at him from the future. I want to warn him about the girl in the red dress, but the glass only allows for observation, never intervention.
The Last Star: The sun went out, and the world grew cold. We sat in the dark until we realized that if we told a story with enough passion, a small spark would ignite in the air. We are currently keeping the planet warm with a marathon of fairy tales, praying we don't run out of endings before the sun decides to wake up
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