Tag Archives: flash fiction

Creativity, Fiction

The Emperor’s Exile

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 2:

The asteroid was barren, awhirr with inferior life. Not worth dominating, for him who had dominated the galaxy. Who had been the galaxy.

The ship’s doors puffed open.
“New body, new kingdom,” they snickered, forcing him out, but not noticing his hand.
He smiled. The ship left. With the laz-knife, he unbound his hands. And he stabbed himself.

They returned. But didn’t find him. Then, thin filaments shot out of the darkness, injecting him into their bodies. In time, others came looking for them. New recruits. New minds.
He had been the galaxy. He could start over as an asteroid.

The Emperor’s new clothes

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

Victims of each other’s discomfort with themselves

Leave a comment

Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 1:

The two species had long coexisted peacefully, though the amphibian Kalans resented the Jongas’ fixity, while their inconstancy unsettled their earthbound neighbors.

Tensions escalated when the Kalans proposed that the Jongas learn to adapt to different environments. The Jongas, conversely, demanded that the Kalans stick to the oceans and don’t bother them again. It became a struggle for power, each wanting enough to define, alone, the other’s reality.

Mutual hatred boiled over into an angry war, raw with resentment, which ended with Jongas sawn in half and Kalans sewn together by twos, each made whole according to the other’s conception.

Two aliens stitched together

MQS