Short story: Battery, Potato, Pocketwatch

The tribesmen heard from the radio that a humanitarian group had breached the bulwark and smuggled trucks of supplies into the rebel-controlled territories. It took them weeks to establish contact with the group and proved themselves that they were no rebels seeking to steal the supplies meant for war relief. The point of contact was…

Short story: Sprinkler, Bicycle, Nose

Two predators were chasing after one prey. The first was sitting on top of a suburban train running at top speed, with a loaded pistol in his grip. Somewhere among the skyscrapers within three kilometers radius from the first predator, the second predator–a long-range sniper–was also lying in ambush. Their prey, an unidentified mercenary, had…

Flash fiction: Never said you are…

Following a tip online, the slender Asian boy found himself at a hidden net cafe in the back of an innocuous antique store. There, he met his contact and was mildly disappointed to see a man instead of a woman. That made the both of them, two dudes offline running female profiles online. After a…

Flash fiction: Transactions are final

A short Asian girl with a black blazer and white miniskirt brought her grocery on the checkout's conveyor belt. An old Chinese woman behind the counter said something in Cantonese but the girl appeared dumbfounded. "Chinese? No?" the woman asked in English. The girl shook her head. "Japanese", she answered. The woman nodded and began…

Flash fiction: Perfectly calm people

At a certain airport, on a certain day, a woman bumped into someone who was leaving the currency exchange. Before the bearded Arab with a pink headscarf could do anything, the woman raised her voice and said: "Calm down, good sir! You're making this a bigger fuss than it is." "But I'm perfectly calm and…

Short story: “Death”, “Hat”, “Gene”

Sasaki knew nothing would change if she begged for help. She had been there. Weak kids had weak parents who would blame their own child to appease the other kid’s parents. Her parents were weak but she was not. Thus, when Sasaki broke the glass with her satchel and waved a glass fragment at the bullies,…

Short story: “Lawyer”, “A.I.”, “Wikipedia”

Percy was about to throw the papers in the bin when he got a follow-up call from the seventy-two-year-old plutocrat who owned these papers. He was warned not to take the proposal lightly, whereupon he explained the difficulty to not take these papers lightly. Following a long, two-hour dialogue, the man convinced the mayor to…

Saturday Night Out #1

Character-driven writing prompt starring the Inventor and his friend, the Ironsmith, from White Destiny novel.

Short story: “Rain”, “Bottle”, “Bookstore”

A mother and her young son sought refuge from a sudden rain in the bookstore I worked in. They were not the only ones pulled from the busy torrent of city life by the weather. Half a dozen others were standing at the porch, a few drenched to the sole of their feet; all looking…

Short story: “Swimming pool”, “Cicada”, “Airplane”

N.Jon woke up with a broken rib and a mouth full of sand. The sun was burning atop the cloudless blue sky. His throat felt dry, so dry that he could drink his own blood, had it still been flowing out from the seashell cuts on his limbs, to quench this thirst. He cried. He…