It was his favorite trail. It wound into deep empty woods. They walked silently for an hour. He spoke. “I’m glad you suggested this. It is so peaceful.”

“I know you love it,” she said.

“I am so happy to be here with you.”

“Let’s go look at the marsh flowers,” she suggested. He smiled and walked a way off the trail. She followed. He sat down on a large rock at the side of marsh. She raised the gun and shot him in the head. She stared at the gun. She sighed. Was it time to end herself too?

Maria Von Monitor took a selfie. Her luminescent face shone against the snow-capped Alpine peaks behind her.Then she spied her new boyfriend running towards her..

“DRIVE! DAMN IT!,” he shouted at her.

Maria fumbled for her keys. She opened the door and got in. She put the key in the ignition and turned it a single click.

James Bond jumped into the passenger seat. “Why aren’t we going?,” he spat at her.

“Glowplugs need to warm up! It’s a diesel!” She cried through tears of panic.

Then the hail of gunfire rained down on them from Blofeld’s henchmen.

** - Your Maximum Leader had to update the title and one word of this short story due his own screw up. For some reason, over the course of his whole life, your Maximum Leader has called glowplugs (a part found in a diesel engine) “glowtubes.” He doesn’t know why he does this. But he does. He’s been school by mechanics including his own father-in-law as to the proper term. In the case of this post, he was not schooled by his father-in-law, or a mechanic, but his best buddy Kevin. Thanks for the edit. It was needed.

He feels shame…

He sipped his coffee as he stood on the porch watching his dog leave a shit in the yard. He surveyed the yard and marvelled at the number of acorns that had fallen from the oaks. “The desire to continue life,” he thought to himself. How many acorns were there? More than hundreds. Thousands? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? It would be a sisyphean task to count them. And where the fuck were the squirrels? Weren’t they supposed to be hoarding them for winter? There wasn’t a damned squirrel to be seen anywhere.

But lots of acorns.

Ron walked around town for his health, and because he could get everywhere he needed to go by walking. Every morning he went to get a coffee. His path took him by the town cemetery. He looked at the stones as he passed. He memorized their order. He saw many familiar names. These were the parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents of people he knew. He wondered how many of his friends would occupy this corner of earth one day. The thought that he would like to occupy a small patch there one day as well. It was comforting.

Eli sat on the toilet as he always did approximately 90 minutes after eating a meal.

Breakfast at 7am, poop about 9:30am.

Lunch at 12:30pm, poop about 2pm.

Dinner at 7pm, poop about 9:30pm.

Today as he sat he wondered, did his body hold the poop in his body until it needed room for the meal he’d just eaten? If he skipped a meal, would the poop still come?

These were the cosmic questions his 12 year old brain contemplated.

Ron Baker and his dog Max lived in the deep woods. Ron moved there to live a solitary life and walk the back roads.

One gravel road lead into what appeared to be the darkest, deepest, woods.

One day, Ron started down the dark road. Max wouldn’t follow. Ron dropped the leash and walked on. Max whined and barked but didn’t follow.

Days later the Sheriff drove by. Max was still waiting. The Sheriff coaxed Max into the car. The Sheriff got into the car and drove on. He knew what lay at the end of the road was evil.

I regarded the bartender. He was young, perhaps 25, but there was a world-weariness in his countenance that spoke to a short lifetime of difficulties. Those difficulties were etched into his body. His tattooed arms and chest were a canvas of Celtic symbols, plants, and zombies. His earlobes had been cut and were distended, looking like three fleshy icicles.

Then there was the tremble. The boy’s hands shook, ever so slightly. But they constantly shook.

I wondered about his short past and his story, as I sipped the most delightful cocktail he concocted for me on the spot.

In youth, the voice was nothing more than an occasional whisper on the wind; a noise so faint and nearly imperceptible that is passed into unconsciousness. As a young adult the voice changed into a distant sound in the background of other sounds in the mind. In maturity the voice was a nearby whisper in the ear of the mind, if not the body itself. In decrepitude the voice was a raging scream that echoed constantly and had to be shouted out in vain attempts to silence it.

It had been a difficult year for Harry. Work was a drag. Ginny hadn’t been herself. He was at a low point. He wondered how he could get out of the doldrums. Then it came to him. Harry arranged a “work” trip to Hogwarts. Using his invisibility cloak, he snuck through the castle to the Room of Requirement. When he got there he found a chair and waited. He started to nod off when it happened. Two lovely, frisky, French girls appeared. After a few hours his requirements were met.

I remember my grandfather and I planting the tree. He looked over the farm towards the Shenandoah and said, “This land was fought over by Federals and Rebels. One day this tree will bear lead fruit.”

It was crazy, of course. But when I looked at the tree I thought “lead fruit.”

65 years later a nor’easter blew threw. Knocked down that tree. I went and looked at it before they came to cut it and take it away. There tangled in the mass of roots and dirt were bullets from the Civil War.

“I’ll be damned. Lead fruit.”

We met at Comi-Con. She was the hottest babe wearing a metal bikini. Every guy there wanted to do unspeakable things to her.

I got to.

She was weird. She said her people were coming and they were going to change things.

One day after sex she said it was done. I asked what. She smiled. I thought she meant us, but she didn’t.

I came home a month later and found her. She was squatting, rubbing herself and making sex noises.

Then she screamed and passed an egg.

A huge fucking egg.

She says its “ours.”

King Rodrigo looked upon his mighty host. His knights glinted in the sun. His peasant levies & archers stood in ordered rows. They had new shields, new polearms and pikes.

The king gazed across the field. King Ferdinand’s knight’s armor looked dull and tried. No colorful pennants snapped in the breeze. Ferdinand’s levies stood together in loose bands and looked dirty.

Years of peace in Rodrigo’s demesne allowed him to stockpile arms, supplies and money. Ferdinand fought many wars over the years. It was time to dispatch Ferdinand.

Bloody battle ensued.

Here is a 100 Below story for your reading pleasure. Inspired by recent interweb stories.

“A cup is missing.”

“What master?”

“We’re short one cup in the cabinet. Why?”

“Remember those guys in the upper room? When they left, I cleaned up the room and there was one guy there. He took a cup with him. A few days later he came back with the cup. It had dried blood on it. So I broke it and threw it into the trash pile. I’m sorry if I did wrong.”

“No,” the master said. “If it touched blood it was unclean. I’ll get another. It’s a pity it’ll not match.”

Albert sat with his dementia-addled grandfather, Ted, often. Ted stared out the window and told stories beginning “I once…” Most stories started, “I once had a great sandwich at a diner in Portland.” They amused Albert in their ordinariness.

Today, Ted started, “I once did a hooker in Nevada.” This caught Albert’s attention. “She tried to change the price once we were done. We argued. Her pimp crashed through the door and we fought. I killed them both. Buried them in the desert. That’s why I don’t go to Nevada anymore.”

Ted winked, then stared out the window.

Endnote from “Earth’s History,” published 2212.

The widely accepted first contact with the Silurdairians on Titan in 2157 was not in fact the first contact between the two races. The true first contact occurred in 1922 when a Silurdairian spacecraft made an emergency landing after a hyperdrive test gone awry. Had Greek sheppard Dimitrios Pereclius known that staring without blinking at a Silurdairian is considered highly aggressive behavior the history of our galaxy might have been radically different. Instead it ended with Pereclius reduced to a mass of bloody goo and the Silurdairians repairing their ship and returning home.