A space for shorter stories
A handful of flash fics, fanfics and vignettes that don't really fit anywhere else. If you like these stories, please buy me a coffee.
(Being shorter, some of these I could translate into Romanian as well.)
Microfiction
Rules of engagement
or
The trio took refuge in the space between two support columns, while outside the hangar's forcefield half a dozen alien gunships circled back for another strafing run. Glowing bolts splashed against the deck, making the metal shake under their feet.
"They're going to break through any moment!" the boy shouted. He turned towards the mystic. "Do something! Can't you wave your hands and make them explode or whatever?"
The robed man shook his head slowly, without a word.
"No, he can't," the pilot answered instead. She regarded the boy somberly. "This is supposed to be a space battle. We have to follow the rules."
"How do we do that?! Do you have a starfighter?"
She grinned at him. "I have something better. Come on!"
They ran together across a walkway as she took the lead, pressing buttons on her jumpsuit's wrist. There was a machine in the lower bay, with a cockpit that opened to meet them. It revealed two seats, one in front of the other. The machine stood.
"It's a giant robot!" exclaimed the boy.
"Told you so. Climb in, kid. I drive, you shoot."
Time shift
"So this is your time machine! Isn't it dangerous?"
"Kind of. You can always materialize in the middle of a natural disaster or something."
"No, I mean... the Earth moves. Travel just fifteen minutes into the past, the planet isn't there anymore. You end up floating in vacuum."
"Ah! You assume time and space are orthogonal. It doesn't work that way. Can't travel in time without also being dragged along to a new place. Especially not so deep in a gravity well."
Surreal
Fantasy
These older stories were subject to a little typesetting experiment:
These are really short and frankly not great:
Sci-fi
Not so short