“Fine, okay. I’ll give you a dollar. And half of my chicken soft taco. Just — put that filthy thing away, for Chrissakes…” **** Epilogue       “By the way. The little tiny raincoat? Nice touch.” ~finis~

Once upon a time, there lived a plodding tortoise and an excitable hare.  Now, as it happens, the two parties didn’t know each other very well—running, as they did, in different social circles—nor did they have occasion to interact in any truly substantive way, though both lived to be quite long in the tooth.  Consequently, the two never seriously debated, and so they never raced—meaning that the wisdom of a

     Early one morning, while crossing a stretch of desert on his way to visit his grandmother, Timmy came across a llama who was singing Kenny Rogers’ “The Coward of the County” while doing a load of laundry in a small wash basin beneath the shade of a desert palm.      “Gee whiz!” cried Timmy, amazed by the sight of a crooning Artiodactyla.  “I had no idea llamas could even talk, much

     “Shit.  Shoulda brought my gloves.”

     “Excuse me, waitress…?  Just what was it, exactly, that you didn’t understand about my request for NO FUCKING MAYONNAISE ON MY TURKEY FUCKING SANDWICH?” ~the end~

“Oooh.  Peanut butter!” squeaked Timmy the curious mouse, poking his curious little mouse head into the springloaded trap’s airy and inviting opening.  “Gosh, I sure do love me some pea –” SNAP! ~finis~

     The man leaned forward in his seat, scooping warm con queso dip onto a lime-tinged tortilla chip, which he shoveled rapidly into his mouth.  “Mmm,” he said, nudging his wife with an elbow.  “This is really good dip.”      “I know,” she said.  “Isn’t it awesome?”

Sounds fascinating. But were it me, I would have called it, say, “micro-“ or “nano-“ fiction. Rebel that I am. (h/t LMC)

‘Microwave on high for 4 minutes’?  Why, even I can do that, he thought. And so it happened that for the first time since she left him, the wheels of her suitcase tracing a trail of broken black scuffs to the lip of the foyer, he enjoyed a nice hot lunch—in this case, low-carb roasted turkey breast with mushroom gravy and a good-sized serving of cut green beans.

You won’t know who is who, or why any of this is happening; and the formatting is a bit off, and I haven’t italicized where appropriate…but there’s gratuitous sex and drugs.  So read it if you want to…       Three shots, maybe four, and then . . . what? All Jake knows is that he’s outside now, walking through the near-empty commons, past a boisterous snarl of shabbily-dressed, fatly-dredded teens—trying to