I Can't Possibly Be Wrong All the Time

It’s the first of December 2025, so I went through my social media feeds and grabbed all of the MicroStories I’d tweeted* during the month of November. (Full Disclosure: I didn’t tweet any of these to Twitter/X because Don’t Feed Fascism, but I still like using the word tweet as a synonym for posting.)

As a reminder, these represent story-essences composed using no more than 289 characters (so I could post them with the hashtag #MicroStory – following the character limit imposed by the social media site BlueSky.)

Usually, I only post Science Fiction and Fantasy #MicroStories. November was no exception.

For really great Flash Fiction, I recommend people follow the @MicroSFF.com account on BlueSky (they were formerly @MicroSFF on the site formerly known as Twitter before it became the Musk cesspool X.) Their microstories are excellent, mine are okay.

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Cousin Billy was the first of the Thanksgiving travelers to arrive.

“I hope Grandpa doesn’t bring his new companion-bot,” Billy said awkwardly – desperately hoping that his grandfather would bring that new sex-bot.
#MicroStory

“Our android companions look too lifelike; we should give them an nonhuman skin color, like blue, and remove concerns.”
“Dan Simmons will sue us.”
“How about unnatural hair colors? Blue, green, pink?”
“Those are popular dyes.”
“If people choose to be mistaken for robots, that’s on them.”
#MicroStory

It dawned on him.
Dragons were insatiable, wealth-hoarding monsters. When disturbed, they were likely to rampage and ruin their surroundings. They often required the sacrifice of innocents to maintain their calm.

There’s no difference between dragons and billionaires, George thought.
#MicroStory

“You shouldn’t have cursed them with plagues if you didn’t want them to leave you,” the river god observed.

The god of the lowlands recognized that truth, but still – “A lowlander’s soul belongs to me.”

The god of the highlands laughed at that.
#MicroStory

“Mordrugh, this tribunal is not here to listen to your views on the benefits of necromancy -“
“Living beings require too much land and effort directed to their existence! My laboring dead are so much more productive. Can’t you see?”
“We are here to judge you for poisoning the wells.”
#MicroStory

The dark zone wasn’t exactly a Dyson Sphere, a theoretical structure built around a star. It was a senses-shatteringly huge structure built around a black hole.
#MicroStory

The old peasant had two skills: stone-working and knowing not to report to work when the monarch’s secretive projects were nearing their completion dates.
#MicroStory

The hillman swung his battle axe, and the wizard’s head flew through the air.
Across the chamber – trying to stay inconspicuous in the shadows – the wizard’s 20-foot python thought Holy Shit! Who’s gonna feed me now?
#MicroStory

The road was dark and ran through the woods.

Ahead was a bridge spanning a creek, and as I expected, a woman in white was standing on my side of that bridge. She was going to ask me to help her look for her baby.

Part of me wanted to stay in my car, but this had to play out.
#MicroStory

“For Galactic to honor our exclusive mineral rights in the system, we’ll have to compensate the existing sentient species a suitable level of tech.”
“We’ll give it to the right group of sentients.”

Years later, armored dolphins rose from the depths with lasers and bombs, nets and hooks.
#MicroStory

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Thank you to everyone who reads and enjoys my small stories. I used to tweet flash-fiction at irregular (VERY IRREGULAR) intervals on my Twitter account, @patman23. I’m taking a break from posting on Twitter though, until things dramatically change for the better there. I now use the BlueSky site to compose my “tweets” but I’ll also post them on Facebook, and Mastodon. The X site won’t be getting any content from me.

Should you want to follow me on BlueSky and Mastodon, I’m @patman.bsky.social and @sponaugle@mastodon.world respectively. (I don’t feel a need to promote my Facebook account.)

Header image is a picture I took from Thanksgiving, where two cooks made two different turkeys, ending up using two platters (one platter bigger than the other – this feels like its own MicroStory.) Feel free to share the picture for non-commercial use.

Want to read my earlier MicroStory collections? I have my first three years’ worth of stories HERE and the second three years’ worth of stories HERE – I might need to put together another X year’s worth of microstories soon (hopefully.) My output has dropped off pretty sharply over the years, so it might take many years of collections to match the size of my early stuff.

In general, I’m fine with anyone using the text of my MicroStories for non-commercial use. (Look how cute I am, thinking someone wants to make a t-shirt from one of my flash fiction bits. I say cute, but you can substitute in some other, more appropriate, adjective. I’m not the boss of you.)

I am not fine with any of my text being used to train up any Artificial Intelligence Large Language Models or equivalent technologies without compensation to me. I consider that commercial use.

© Patrick Sponaugle 2025 Some Rights Reserved