If you are giving a gift it is a good idea to brand it with an identifying mark in case somebody tries to steal it and later on you run into the thief in another time zone.
Grow
Mother nature doesn’t think much of you.
Trust
These days lifting oneself up by the bootstraps means performing your own medical procedures on yourself with money you had to borrow from Aunt Helen.
Roll
This is one of those cute stories where you think: Well, I guess that was cute, if you are into that sort of thing in a miniature story.
Perch
If fans could talk, they’d be all, “What’s with all the shit?”
Shine
We are all barely here for barely any longer, but that still might be a long time, like however long the dinosaurs were here, and maybe still are.
Flirt
Why do we assume that aliens will find us attractive? I don’t even find us attractive.
Stock
We can’t promise it won’t sting a little to ponder olden times when you could casually browse the bulk section of a supermarket and maybe even flirt with another human without wearing rubber gloves or having to say, “where’d you get that mask?”
Golf
Some great feelings taste great together. Some don’t. Who’s thirsty?
Lick
Trigger warning: this story gets up in your personal space.
Buy
It’s so much pressure figuring out how to spend our winnings. Good thing we’re all going to die.
Mound
There were lots of stories in our reserve tanks, but our reserve story tanks didn’t anticipate this exact hellscape, so now everything seems ill-fitting and or tone deaf. But then again , what doesn’t? This crappy endeavor is still free, so we stopped caring. But not about you. We care about you. Stay safe.
Feel
What would it feel like to feel like feeling like God?
Mutate
An epic fight between human and arachnid with potentially grave consequences for past and future sexual partners, all rendered in exactly 250 words.
Smile
Maggie Lungston is talking to her sushi again.
Smell
Isn’t it crazy that given the small amount of time we have to live we choose to spend any of it watching game shows?
Draft
We are driving toward, or at least near, a cliff, and if you were to ask this driver, some of the trucks don’t look so safe.
Kick
The person to whom we have ceded all power is emotionally stunted and in steep mental decline.
Storm
We really don’t know if, how, or when our shit is going to hit the fan, so we should probably catch up on the back log of television programs and then maybe pick up some canned goods. Maybe also one of those new shit umbrellas.
Chain
Within some brains, ideas drift like snow. Then those brains command hands shared by the same body to type these ideas into stories. And then you are stuck listening to this strange precipitation.