👽 5 Short Sci-fi Stories For Snack-Sized Reading — Week 1
Go ahead. Use these for your own beautiful worlds
“What’re you doing with your life?” I glance in the rearview mirror.
Rev the engine, then cut my beat-up navy blue Taco off. It coughs. Rattles hard. Hopefully, it’ll start again.
I open the door and step out.
“You want fixin’ or not?”
I look down. A yellow-spotted leprechaun with a heavy Texan accent is pointing to a sign:
STAY IN VEHICLE to get help with yuh dead-end life
“Y-you don’t exist.”
“Well, ain’t you all hat and no cattle? Look around.”
I do.
Leprechauns are everywhere, polishing small cars way nicer than mine. Nice clothes, too.
“How — ” I jump back in and grab the door handle. Yank it.
It disappears before hitting the leprechaun.
“Ungrateful human. This is where all y’all come to fix yer lives.” He shakes his head. “Yuh been here dozens of times. Why you keep forgettin’?”
“We’ve seen things.”
I gulp. “What kinds of things?”
“The horrid kind. The unspeakable kind.”
I stare at the light blue wallpaper. Wipe a red-covered finger on the walls.
Ask them, “Who will you tell?”
My walls don’t answer; their dark chuckles echo in my head.
“And then what happened?”
“Well, a tiny boy jumped five feet in the air.”
“And then what happened?”
“A woman weighed only 38 lbs.”
“And then what happened?”
“All cats live six years.”
“And then what happ — these aren’t wild tales.”
“Why not?”
“You’re a Martian crater! These are normal stories.”
“Not on your planet. Wild is relative.”
“I should’ve never asked for the secrets you hold.”
“I’m glad you did. It gets lonely here.”
Ba-dum, ba-dum.
The woman looks to her right.
Her heart hangs from a cord nailed to a wall.
She looks down.
The golden slice of pie protrudes from her chest, silent.
She sighs. The scent of pecans fills her nose.
“Why didn’t they make it bigger?”
He shields it from the sun as it slithers on the ground.
One-foot long. Gray, white, orange.
Scaly little cutie. A newborn.
So small now. The snake’ll reach 42 feet long.
“Titanoboa cerrejonensis.” He draws out each letter, enjoying how the words feel in his mouth.
He runs his finger along its back. Soft scales.
Nicks himself at its middle.
Hard scales on an infant? Weird.
He shrugs. Smiles.
And fifteen legs appear from every angle of it.
The… thing shakes. A tiny voice speaks in his mind,
“Hello, Max. Thank you for registering.”
“Uh-”
“Tell me, what better food is there than kindness?”
Feel free to use these microstories to create longer works, variations, etc. Credit is nice but optional. In education, use them with attribution.
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