Will you wait for me? I was distracted in the company of voices. Remembered you when I realized the time.

When you see me, your eyes smile. For you know I understand your art of pantomime.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Her fiction and poetry have recently been published online and in journals at: Nailpolish Stories, 50-Word Stories, 100 word story, A Story in 100 Words, 101 Words, From the Depths (Haunted Waters Press), ShortbreadStories, and espresso stories. Her nonfiction has appeared in flash fiction chronicles and in Wild Lands Advocate. Krystyna resides in Alberta, Canada.

At the start of every year, the Kingdom of Urbania elected a new monarch.

Farmer Putnam deposited his charges on the outskirts of the city where they would live out their remaining days. It was at this point he informed them that his transport fee was exactly one royal scepter.

They called it the monster that never sleeps. Hundreds had been killed before scientists determined it needed light to survive. The problem being, in a city as modern as Tokyo, there was always light.

All of Tokyo was destroyed.

Crystal hid from the crowds of people by darting from shadow to shadow. Luckily, everyone was too busy to notice. The tall, hairy strangers in suits and uniforms were frightening, yet nothing scared her more than the thought of returning home.

After all, once a fairy enters someone’s home, it never leaves.

The fever spread through the village so quickly, everyone was sick before the first child died. The wise one said they’d been forsaken by the gods. No one listened. They were too busy dying.

In an earlier age, the epidemic, though tragic, would have passed quietly. The village would have been swallowed by the forest and forgotten. But these days, the village sat next to a gold mine, and many of the workers had come to the village for sex, then carried the fever back to the city. Soon the entire world was infected. Sin can no longer be contained.

Paul steps to the line and takes a deep breath. Were he to sink the next two shots, he will be celebrated globally for the rest of his life. Women will worship him. Children will be named after him. Movies will be made and he’ll be the star. His legacy will be forever secure.

And to think there was a time when basketball was just a game.

The silence wrapped around us tightly, even as we fought against it. There we tears, the quiet kind, and anguished expressions. More than one person collapsed to the ground.

The sacrifices were necessary. The welfare of our entire civilization depended on them. But we each vowed this would be the last time.

In an effort to eradicate the disease carrying pigeon population from the city, the mayor signed into law an ordinance requiring all pigeons within the city limits to wear pants. His hope was that they would be forced to flee the city as they did not possess the dexterity necessary to fashion their own clothing. He underestimated the pigeons’ solidarity and the ordinance instead sparked an uproar in the garmentless pigeon community. The pigeons quit their jobs as letter carriers in protest and decided to focus their efforts solely on their cynical hobby of defecating on large man-made objects.

From Guest Contributor, Sean Franklin

Victor Coolidge often referred to himself as the glue that held the city together (the joke being the reason he was so obese was that a city of one billion people needed a lot of glue). In the end, he was the snag that lead to the city coming apart at the seams.

Georgi became the eye of the hurricane that finally destroyed Colossopolis.

Part 5

This is the treatment for a sci-fi novella. I think it’s definitely worthy of more than the 100-word treatment. Let me know what you think!

The larger an election, the greater the opportunity for corruption. In the largest city in the solar system, people assume it’s easy to manufacture tens of millions of votes. For this reason, no one believed that Victor Coolidge, mayor of Colossolopolis, was duly elected. But his grip on power hardened over the years and seemed unlikely to end in anyone’s natural lifespan.

Not many people believed Coolidge could overcome the scandal, but he knew all he needed was a scapegoat.

Part Four