Hugh J. O'Donnell

She stayed up all night with the body. It was just superstition, but her family wanted it done, and everyone else was so exhausted.
Her grandmother had surely passed the night beside her own loved ones, back in the day when wakes were held in living rooms rather than funeral homes. She sat next to the closed coffin in one of those chairs that always looked more comfortable than they felt, and wandered through memories.
The lights snapped on. The funeral director stood frozen in the doorway, cup of coffee in hand.
“How did you get in here?” he demanded.

The necromancers rode to battle on the backs of skeletal beasts of war, decked in bronze barding that shone in the morning sun.
They left their silent city and passed through the great stone doors to face the enemy in fields of black wheat.
They dismounted and conjured a legion of skeleton warriors from the ground, ordering them into perfect formation.
In the distance, the enemy waited in their ranks. The commanders laughed, for how could the living fight their constructs of tireless bone?
They heard the calls of a stampede of rushing puppies. The necromancers’ army was adorably routed.

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The light is already fading when her father arrives to take her home. The snow crunches under their boots, and they navigate the village road by the light of the incubation pods that line the road.
When her father was her age, these were cornfields, but nothing grows in the Earth anymore.
She runs up to one of the pods and rubs at the glass, curious about what’s inside. Her father takes her hand and tells her not to dawdle.
Most of these pods contain crops, but he isn’t ready for her to see the pod she was birthed in.

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My gym had just reopened, but I was already dealing with a bunch of problem guests. Now, I understand that lots of people got used to working out in their own spaces, but these guys were the worst. They were noisy, they didn’t clean up after themselves, they hogged the equipment, and they STANK.
I found the group’s apparent leader, a surprisingly scrawny guy, on the lifting bench, stepped around his groaning spotter, and took him aside.
I’m afraid you and your friend need to leave,” I said.
The necromancer looked at me with an expression that could’ve peeled paint.

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The adventurer entered the final chamber of the tomb. This was it, the resting place of the legendary sword Heartpiercer.
She pushed with all her might and heaved the lid of the sarcophagus aside. The longsword was there, unsheathed and gleaming in the torchlight. She wrenched it from the skeleton’s grip and just beheld it for a moment.
The blade was still sharp, untouched by the ravages of time. This would surely turn the tide in the battle to come.
Behind her, the tomb guardian slid downward on silent, silken threads, preparing to dispatch another thief plundering the ancient catacomb.

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When the superhero lost his powers, he went to see his doctor.
“Your powers will return in time,” she reassured him.
“How soon”
The doctor shrugged. “Maybe four weeks? Why not take a holiday?
He took her advice, and jetted off to a tropical island.
But he was back in her office less than a week later, convinced he was dying.
“It’s just a sunburn,” she said. “Rub some calamine lotion on the burn and remember to wear a hat.”
“But my powers come from sunlight,” he said.
The hero’s powers came back, but he never got over the betrayal.

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His parents were murdered when he was a child, and the case was never solved.
Bereft, he made a vow to avenge their deaths. He was eight years old.
He dedicated his life to this single goal. He trained physically and mentally. He traveled the world, learning everything he could.
As a child, he’d believed their deaths to be a part of some grand conspiracy. In reality, it was just a crime of opportunity that went wrong. The systems that had set up the tragedy couldn’t be fought with fists.
But he’d made a vow, and would see it through.

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It never snowed in the city, but it had started an hour ago. The temperature had plunged, and the misty rain had frozen first into globs of wet slush, then into solid, fat snowflakes, the kind you see digitally added to Christmas specials.
He stood on the roof and watched it fall. The grime of the city was already disappearing beneath clean, white snow. The weather machine next to him was still operating at capacity.
Far below, tires squealed and metal scraped as overconfident drivers confronted their new reality.
The city was paralyzed. Phase one of the plan was complete.

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