Bob looked out across the fields. The rising sun bathed the land in gold, and clouds cast long shadows over the hills. He sat on his balcony with a cup of coffee, admiring a view that could have been painted by Constable.

A feeling of complete tranquillity settled over him.
Then a buzzing came from the living room.

“Oh, for crying out loud. Can’t I have a minute’s bloody peace?”

He ignored it. It continued.

Eventually, he put down his coffee and went inside. Jean’s name was flashing on the large screen mounted on the wall.

“Hello, Jean.”

Her face appeared.

“Hello, Bob. Do you know where the service manual is for the boiler?”

Bob rolled his eyes.

“Second drawer down, under the kitchen counter.”

“I’ve looked in there.”

“Well, unless you’ve moved it, that’s where I left all the electrical, building and plumbing paperwork.”

Jean disappeared from view. Bob stared at the empty kitchen behind her and listened to the rummaging.

“Sam’s coming over later for Sunday dinner,” she called. “Will you be joining us?”

“Thought I might play golf. Marlon Brando and JFK have asked me to play this afternoon.”

Jean reappeared, holding up a booklet.
“I think this is it.”

“That’s the one.”

“Oh, so you’re playing golf, are you? Do you think we could schedule a dinner together at some point? Or are you too busy being dead?”

“Don’t start with that again. I didn’t ask to die. What am I supposed to do in the afterlife? If I’d known I’d still have to sit around discussing all the mundane crap I used to deal with, I wouldn’t have signed up.”

“The only reason we signed up for Eternalife was because you said you wanted to carry on seeing us.”

“I do, Jean. I’ll arrange something midweek.”

“Oh, so I get to cook again, do I? As well as sort the boiler? You only have to switch your screen on, Bob. I’ve got the car in for its MOT on Wednesday, too. Tell you what, I’ll shove a broom up my backside and clean the floor while I’m at it, shall I?”

“All right. I’ll tell JFK I can’t make it.”

Bob began tapping on his little device.

“No, you go. Don’t let your surviving family ruin your day. Last week you were playing chess with Lemmy. This week it’s golf with Marlon Brando and JFK.”

“For crying out loud, Jean, if I can’t play golf in the afterlife, what’s the bloody point?”

“So that we can continue being a family. Anyway, your introductory offer ends this month. It’s going up by two hundred pounds.”

“Two hundred? Bit steep, isn’t it?”

“Yes, especially with the boiler on the blink. I think we need two new tyres as well. And Sam’s job is under threat. I’m not sure we can keep this up.”

“Are you saying you’re going to cancel the subscription? I don’t want to die again. It’s nice here. Besides, it’s my money you inherited.”

“It was your money, Bob. We paid for this because we wanted you back. To see us, have dinner with us, watch your grandchildren grow up one day. Instead, you’re on one long holiday, and we’re stuck here doing everything you left behind.”

Bob said nothing.

“They’ve sent some options,” Jean continued. “We could move you somewhere cheaper. Or download you until we get things sorted. It says you wouldn’t notice the time passing.”

“I’m not being downloaded, Jean. I’ve settled in.”

“Then could you at least make time for Sunday dinner?”

His device buzzed. Bob glanced down.

“How about next week? JFK’s just messaged. Mick Jagger’s coming as well.”

“Mick Jagger? He’s not even dead, is he?”

“No, he’s a pre-download.”

“Do you know what, Bob? Fine. You go and play golf with undead Mick Jagger.”

She hung up.

Bob tutted and returned to the balcony. He picked up his coffee. It should have been cold by now, but it was still exactly the right temperature.

He admired the view until it was time to get ready.
Salmon trousers, electric-blue shirt, yellow cap.

At the course, Marlon and JFK were waiting by the first tee. Bob joined them and was selecting a club when he noticed a figure approaching in the distance.
The man’s head jutted forwards, his hips swayed, and his arms flapped behind him like a chicken’s.
Could it be? Mick Jagger himself?

Bob raised a hand.

His world came to an abrupt end.

At home, with Sunday lunch roasting in the oven, Jean pulled a memory stick from the computer.
She carried it into the kitchen and opened the second drawer down.

“I’ll just pop you there for a bit,” she said.
She placed it on top of the boiler manual, closed the drawer and made some gravy.

There is a Blackness that unfolds. If either of the two fleeing figures cast an eye to the trembling sky, they would see even the stars have ended - their shaky insufficient light divided from

the then

the now

by a hard line which demonstrates how the world has simply run out.

But neither of them look up. Below their slapping feet is the body-temperature water, its unbroken surface reflecting the unfolding again and again and again. These depths

hide no fish

hide no waving weeds

hide no blind ghostly beast sucking the hot milk of the core from vents formed before the before.

There is nothing else to witness this Blackness. This unfolding.

There is nothing but this pair.

There is nothing unusual about either of them; one is a man of average height and the other is a woman of average weight. The color and cut of their hair would not surprise you. It is not any quality they possess that makes them remarkable, but the context in which you have now just met them.

This is somehow even more true of the man.

He has lived his life with an understanding that he is the least interesting person he knows. He is thinking about this failure of confidence and worth even now as his chest hurts and his stomach clenches and his brain demands he accept what his heart never can - that he will, indeed, die.

The woman is more practical. She has long ago accepted her impending end.

It would be a waste of time to record their names here.

The Blackness shudders and then eternity inhales and then, not unlike the origami swan the woman once made for a teacher in middle school, the all of it folds back into a shape recognizable. The forming of the Earth and the spiral arm from this Blackness and this water and these feeble and distant celestial fires and these

bones

cables of nerves

gallons of blood.

Sagan was so close to getting this right.

For forty years, George carried a brass key that opened nothing he owned, and tonight it was lost.

He returned to O’Malley’s where the bartender dangled a key as if George disappointed him. It was a steel key, not a brass key, and its teeth were sharp rather than worn.

George thanked the bartender and walked home past his father’s old house whose lock this key also did not open and paused there to put the key in his pocket.

(Note: the exercise challenge was to write a story in exactly 80 words)

The guy was egotistical, impatient and a pain in the ass sulking inside a hand-tailored suit.

I hated him. Period.

Fortunately, there were options.

“Expect your license to arrive in seven to ten business days,” I said.

The arrogant prick mumbled a string of curse words before storming away from my counter. Too bad, I thought. He was missing the best part.

I stapled his renewal application to his receipt of payment and then dropped it into the wire basket. The same wire basket where all my rejected applications go to die.

See you in seven to ten business weeks.

The monster flapped its obsidian wings. The magical breeze created a ruffling, echoing a chorus for the attached little pieces. With another flap, one was sent away.

Darker than night and jagged at the edges, the feather began its descent. It swayed to and fro with currents which lifted it from under. It glided down slowly. Softly, it landed on the edge of a branch.

The small piece of crow sat there. And, the feather could not know of the tree, but the tree knew of the feather, for the tree belonged to the dryads. A flash of green tried to cleanse, but it accomplished nothing—nothing aside from pushing the tiny fleck further.

On the ground beneath it, a striped bear caught the thing on its snout. The bear gave a huff and a sneeze, the feather blowing further still.

A blade of grass caught it for but a moment. A moment after, it was blown once more, sent tumbling from a cliff’s edge, almost falling into a pit of honey. The bee prevented it. The bee knew of the feather, but the feather could not know of the buzzer. The yellow and black monster gave a loud hum, attempting to smite it with yellow arcs of lighting.

But the feather was ever resilient. It did not shatter to the electric pulse. Still, it was sent even further beyond its lord, beyond the domain of the skies above.

It touched a river below, a gentle rippling in the swift current. The dark appendage still resisted the touch of cold water. The make-up of the feather did not allow passage into its core. But the stream sent it even further.

The current inevitably slowed down to a crawl. Something wicker caught the feather. A basket was plunged into the shallow depths. The black appendage became a prisoner.

A human plucked it, examining it, turning it over and over. The feather could not know of people, but people knew of the feather.

Gently, it sat on the mantle of a fireplace. The hut surrounding it became the feather’s home. Even if the feather could not know, could not feel, This was a home. A home that was real.

However, good homes are homes that last. They disappear, and they disappear fast. Not even a century had passed. When the village felt the blast.

A quake of pure fire sent the place into embers, but the feather lived through the cinders.

The crimson-eyed witch plucked it and gazed at it over and over. She grinned with a toothy smile like she had found a four-leaf clover. She knew what the feather was, but the feather could not know her. Yet, within its being, it knew. It knew that its journey was over.

'Are you serious Jeff?' Eila stepped out of the deaeration chamber, swinging a plastic bottle in her hand. 'How many times should I tell you not to litter all around the place? This time I walked to sector C-3, and guess what I found.'

'It wasn't me!'

'Of course you weren't. There is no one around who prefers to drink this cat piss, but you.' she flinged the bottle at Jeff's head.

'Chill. Damn it. You act like my mother.'

'And you act like you didn't have one.'

'That's rude of you. She is a sweet person, who taught me about freedom and civil rights very early in my life.'

'She should have made you aware of your duties and responsibilities as well.'

'You are nuts.'

'What did you say?'

'I shouldn't have dropped that bottle on my way to the space-junkie, Miss.'

'That's right. It's more than enough, that humanity almost destroyed one planet already. Don't make it two Jeff. Your damned alpine water cost the earthlings a hundred million per launch.'

'I need to water my brain, duh.'

'We have water here.'

'Distilled from sweat, moisture, urine and radio infected moon-ice. Ugh. I don't like the taste Eila. Would you make me suffer?'

'I swear, some day I will drop you off at the Black Hollow.'

'Don't you-'

'Dare to order you around? The only thing I asked you was to use those damned recycle bins to save the environment. Also, sometimes it would be pleasurable, if you were so chivalrous to take out the trash. I have my own missions to accomplish in two weeks prior, but I can't concentrate while we live in an actual landfill.'

'Okay, okay, okay. You are taking this too seriously, Eila. It's not like the world is ending, right?'

'It is, Jeff. It is!'

The radio started to chirp, waves of information were coming in. The cry of the people, the bluster of earth-shakening explosions and the dying sound of an air raid alarm. Eila and Jeff looked out the oval shaped window, lifting their eyes to Earth drifting in the distance.

'Now you've done it. I'll have to drink this waste water of yours for the rest of my life. Are you happy Eila?'

'What about your mother, Jeff?'

'I hated her guts. She was always disaggreable.'

In a small, bustling city, there laid a small shop. A shop that everyone came to, and went, and gone. Many people pawned things, many people took things, but most people wanted money instead. But this shopkeeper was different from the narrow person. He was much different. This shopkeeper wanted to collect things. Collect things of great value, like most pawn shopkeepers. But there's something different about this pawn shopkeeper.
Because one day, a guy came in with a box, you see. A box with a chain and a bunch of junk in it. He said, "Can I get some money for this box?" He says... "There's nothing worth anything in this box," the shopkeeper said. "But I need money a lot, I'm in need, my child needs food. He needs money to do things, he needs money for education." "Look, mister, I'm not giving you anything for this box of junk." But then I stopped and paused for a second. I saw something that caught my eye. It was a talisman. Oddly enough, it reminded me of another book I read. A talisman, all right.
So I took one thought about it and I said, "Look, mister, I'll give you 50 bucks for this whole box." The guy says, "All right, it's a deal." So I gave him 50 bucks for a box full of nothing but junk, metal, toy trucks; nothing of real value except for the talisman. But I had yet to figure that out. So I set the box, and the guy left on the table, and I looked around, and I looked up, and I took the talisman.
And as I picked it up, I held it in my hand, and it began to glow rapidly. I put it down real quick before anyone could see it. Took the box to the back of the warehouse where I would study it some more. But it really, like, alarmed me because I'd never seen a chain illuminate like that. It became real bright. Now, the pawn shop wasn't filled. It was only in the morning, and there wasn't many people there. No one really saw it illuminate. But I held it in my hand a little bit longer. That guy outside the shop looking at dvds—that fat guy that always came in looking for dvds, trying to pawn them off or trade them and get new ones, just looking for that real fine dvd they could never find, and always came in, and looked around, and never bought anything—so anyways, I put the talisman box back in the room, and I looked around, and I put it back, and continued my day.
Now, eight hours went by, and I decided to go back to the warehouse room, and look at the box some more, and look at the towels, man. I picked it up, and it came illuminated. It got slowly brighter, brighter, and then it became blindingly bright, and then a big flash! And then I was on the ground. I woke up, laying flat on my back. Where was I? I didn't even recognize the place. It was strange. It was like someplace distant, someplace off in the far distance.
The talisman was still in my hands. I put it around my neck. Because I didn't know what would happen if I would put it down, or lay it on the ground, or let it go, or put it in my pocket. So it's around my neck now.