13
The stories in this chapter are a collaborative writing experiment. Each story is told in one sentence that grew from a kernel as seen in the story’s title. Multiple anonymous writers expanded on that kernel in a shared Google Doc, and these stories are the result. Some are 25-word sentences, some are 50-word sentences, and some are 100-word sentences.
It Stopped Raining
It stopped raining ash on the 41st day after Mount Edda’s first eruption, but no one was counting; no one was left to keep count.
It Stopped Raining
The survivors, the few, stared at the sky in shock: it stopped raining, but the rainbow remained brightly innocent as they registered the flood’s devastation.
It Stopped Raining
A few drops for five minutes was better than no drops in five months, but the shower still curled and writhed under the impossible throb of the sun’s blistering rays; why, dear God, had it stopped raining, or was it just to torture my hopes that it started at all?
They Understood
As the courtroom hushed, with only the wind whipping outside the leaded-glass windows, they understood the decision was final, there was no room for appeal, all pretense was lost, and it was time to start telling the truth about Bob DeWitt’s dog — Sir Robert himself, Scourge of the Kibbled Sea.
They Understood
They thought they understood, but they did not yet, for they forgave the world even now while they resented every aspect of it, waxing more effusive with each cup of wine, draining every drop eagerly to read the words engraved in the bottom of every golden goblet: IN VINO VERITAS.
They Understood
They understood what the news reports told them, the answers that the scientists provided by way of explanation, but it was still hard to believe, impossible to believe really, and so the little girl’s whisper seemed very loud there in the silence of the woods, a deafening roar of desperate words in that quiet place where no birds were chirping, not anymore, as she asked her grandmother in a small, hesitant voice, hoping that the old woman could tell her something more, something good, something to make everything alright again, “But, Grandma, do you think the birds will come back?”
She Smiled
Seeing the lovely people come to visit her, she smiled, even though it hurt to disjoint her jaw, and then watched as the polite smiles of the people slowly dropped and then morphed into open-mouthed horror as they emitted shrieks of terror at the sight of her own gaping maw, lined with teeth sharp as jagged glass, gleaming… and reaching — because of course her guests never suspected that the oh-so-elegant invitation carefully penned in red cursive which they received to this particular dinner party had been written in blood, although admittedly the menu made a lot more sense now.
She Smiled
She smiled as ribbons of gold light filtered through the sprite-laden branches around her, frayed threads of magic sparkling at the corners of her vision like lightning bugs, and she remembered the words to the incantation — AMORE MORE ORE RE — words of love and being, voice and reality, which she murmured softly, slowly, first with her eyes open, and then again with her eyes closed, hoping — AMORE MORE ORE RE — hoping that the magical powers of these ancient human words might turn her back into a bird again, able to soar once more into the blue.
She Smiled
The leaves rustled wearily, sighing to one another in the late summer breeze — and then, she smiled, as if her pain didn’t exist behind her pearly-white gatekeeping, a smile of simultaneous hello and no-thank-you, leaving the leafy strangers in her path slightly off balance long after she was gone.
The Spaceship Landed
As the spaceship landed, the earth and its cataclysm appeared as a mere speck in the distance while they — Elon, Grimes, and XÆA-12 — began assembling their new IKEA furniture, puzzling over instructions, and realizing that they were on their own now, boldly having gone where no billionaires had gone before.
The Spaceship Landed
The spaceship sat alone, rusting, half-submerged in a hill that rose up like a grassy bubble in the boundless prairie, sitting there as it had been sitting for millennia, its once shiny exterior emblazoned with the symbols of some other civilization now covered over with the green life of this planet, but the tiny laser beacon kept pulsing, pulsing until finally a flock of Canada geese landed in a wide circle around it, honking absently yet intentionally, using a language unknown to earthling birds but very familiar to the alien birds they knew were inside the ship, “Sorry we’re late!”
The Spaceship Landed
Just as Ben finished heaving the trash bags into the dumpster and turned back around to go inside the ramen restaurant, the spaceship landed in the parking lot, although at first he wasn’t sure whether he was more distracted by the sweet smell of sriracha sesame-and-mango sauce purging out of the restaurant or by the bone-shaking vibrations that penetrated his body from the tumult of the air as the noiseless ship settled down in the center of the crumbling asphalt, its lights blinking a random rhythm, a rhythm that Ben never expected he would feel again, not on this planet.
