I Can't Possibly Be Wrong All the Time

It’s June, so I went through my social media feeds and grabbed all of the MicroStories I’d tweeted during the month of May.

As a reminder, these represent story-essences composed using no more than 129 characters (so I could tweet them with the hashtag #MicroStory.)

Usually, I only tweet Science Fiction and Fantasy #MicroStories. May was pretty much no exception.

For really great #MicroStory action, please follow @MicroSFF, the Twitter account that inspired me to participate in this minimalist writing exercise. That feed puts out great science fiction and fantasy MicroStories all the time.

(I want to make it clear that @MicroSFF is *not* a Twitter account of mine. Their flash-fiction tweets are excellent. Mine are okay.)

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Every city that had wizards also had a park where no one ever went. There was no official decree about that.
People just knew.
#MicroStory

The bulk of the astronaut corp was made up of farmers, obviously.
Because of the orbital gardens and undersea farms.
#MicroStory

Nomads would raid the cities for human sacrifices to the gods. The city elders did not resist, so the gods blessed them as well.
#MicroStory

Predictably, the general had a plan to force the turrets to run out of ammo.
But all of his plans required more men than we had.
#MicroStory

United Navy Starships were designed to support 1 type of lifeform, for practical reasons.
This caused no end of political issues
#MicroStory

We responded to the distress, but the [static] were methane-breathers. All we could do was drift & record their last [static]
#MicroStory

The usurper was pleased to possess the king’s throne, crown, and scepter, but failed to capture the saddle, helm, and flail.
#MicroStory

The apprentice enchanters groaned as Niko entered the tavern. He was majoring in oracular magic, and no one likes a know-it-all.
#MicroStory

The assassins made it clear: no noble should be killed by anyone of lesser status.
The Cutthroat Brotherhood objected at first.
#MicroStory

The angry unicorn stood 8 foot at the shoulder but that wasn’t the thing that gave the prince pause.
It was the new plate armor.
#MicroStory

The motorist swore that the guy had appeared out of nowhere. The cop had heard that before.
But the deceased’s id was … weird.
#MicroStory

I have to be at the school tomorrow. The chorus teacher wants the Illumini there to chant.
-You mean, the alumni to sing?
No.
#MicroStory

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Thank you to everyone who has read and enjoyed my small stories. I tweet flash-fiction at irregular intervals on my Twitter account, @patman23. At more regular intervals, I’ll be talking about my dogs, or the increasingly humid weather, or Game of Thrones. (Hodor!)

Want to read my earlier MicroStory collections? If you select the Flash Fiction category in the Categories widget on my page, you can see every monthly collection, going back to where I started in August, 2013. Should you do that, let me know. You’re my hero.

I’m not making any promises, but some of my twitter followers have suggested that I collect my monthly collections and put them into an e-book. I might just do that. I’m looking into seeing if there’s anyone who would be interested in doing some illustrations of some of the micro-stories. Not all of course, since the short text is supposed to fire up the imagination to do all that heavy lifting. But a few pictures would certainly be cool.

Image was a screenshot taken by my friend (and photographer) Andy Culhane. Andy and I played the hell out of a great MMORPG, City of Heroes, a superhero online game. That game was canceled a few years ago by literal super-villains, but a free shell of the game is available, sort of like a chat-client plus a place to fly around. This month Andy was moving around Paragon City, using his flying strongman THE.Man, and fell into a hole in the game’s geometry, letting him look up from under the map with the usual weirdness you find when you are trapped outside of reality. He was gracious enough to allow me to use the image of his character’s plight as my header picture, which is a micro-story all on its own.

© Patrick Sponaugle 2016 Some Rights Reserved