We hit a fork in the road after about ten miles. She looked at me with a half-crescent smile but I pretended I didn’t notice. I just kept lookin’ forward, as if I knew somethin’ important was coming my way. But it wasn’t; I knew that. I knew we’d probably make a wrong turn and be walkin’ here for ten more miles. She ate the raspberries and licked her fingers and giggled. We’d been walking all day and all she could think about were her damn berries. Her hair smelled nice. Your hair smells nice, I told her. She knew.

From Guest Contributor Cara E. Schulte

At nine years old, every child in the land of Baywater was befriended by a talking animal that served as a guardian. On the eve of their birthdays, the children would wait with eager anticipation to meet their new companions, always hoping they would get one of the cooler animals, like a tiger or dinosaur.

At least it would scare away all the girls in his class.

Viking raiders would return from their numerous expeditions and invasions as conquering heroes and hope to receive a heroes’ welcome. Instead, they were generally greeted with indifference bordering on disdain.

The strongest Viking warriors in fact stayed home and forced their weaker counterparts to pay them tribute in food and gold.

Gerald stared at the twenty-foot tower and wondered what it could be.

When examined up close, it obviously wasn’t any kind of rock. The old man who was charging one dollar for admission explained. “This here is one of the last remaining stings from when the giant bees invaded. It’s lucky the Earth doesn’t have an allergy or we’d all be dead.”

He was the tiny king of the world’s smallest microdictatorship.

When they came to haul him off to the mental ward, they found that he’d appointed a rabid rottweiler as Minister of Defense.

People constantly ask me what the future will be like. They know my arrival in this time was accidental but they fear I’m actually fleeing some kind of apocalyptic future.

Yet they always accuse me of lying when I say that pretty much everything is the same, except we all travel by carrier pigeon.

Life on the desert island has not always been idyllic. There’s the sunburn and the crab bites and the constant hunger.

It was definitely worth faking the plane crash.

Dave looked at the dead body and expected a measure of remorse that never materialized. He realized the man’s death had been completely warranted.

In this case, the pile of overdue library books stacked high in the corner gave Dave all the reason he needed to kill Mr. O’Leary.

They wanted to build condominiums there, but when the construction crew arrived, Rufus scared them away.

Rufus would die before he allowed anyone to take away his field.

The Lucky 100 Bowling Plaza of Wahoo, Nebraska, always kept lane number forty-two cordoned off with a fancy red rope. On summer nights, the waiting room filled with families waiting to bowl, but lane number forty-two would always remain closed.

As it turns out, when he has the free time, God visits the Lucky 100 to get in a few frames.