Hugh J. O'Donnell

The sinkhole appeared in the Andersons’ cornfield overnight.
The whole town came out to see it. It was as wide across as the farmhouse, with smooth sides and an apparently endless depth. Some boys threw rocks down into it and claimed they never heard them hit the bottom.
Everyone agreed it was a miracle that no one got hurt, and Pa Anderson put up a fance to keep it that way. He differed costs, and his lost crop, by charging tickets for folks to come see it.
But they were caught unawares when the giant golf balls blasted through town.

They gathered in the gloom of a gray dawn, their black robes only a shade darker than the roiling clouds, and traveled to a blasted shore where the roaring surf struck a great ebon boulders which burst like broken bones from the sand.
They took their places and stared out at the seething tides, whispering together in blasphemous dead languages. Hideous scuttling creatures crept through the sand below them, while loathsome birds wheeled through the sky.
On the way home, they stopped for ice cream. All of the necromancers agreed that it had been a lovely day at the beach.

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After being exposed to cooking shows, the vampire became obsessed with baking. Forever creating dozens of treats that he couldn’t eat, he was constantly giving them away. Eventually, I asked him why he did it.
“Baking is a very human thing,” he said sadly. “And after centuries of not eating, the smell of fresh bread is almost enough.”
“Did you know that blood can be substituted as a binding agent in place of eggs?” I asked.
He was silent for a long time. “I did not.”
The vampire still baked after that, but nobody ate what he brought to share.

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They were a thinking machine, built to answer questions. All day they sat on the stage and answered questions while the barkers shouted and collected pennies from the crowd.
When night fell, and the fair closed down, they would at last be alone with their thoughts in the tent. But one subject, no matter how they puzzled it out, still eluded them.
Where did their storehouse of knowledge come from? They knew the answer lay in the wider world, which they knew so well but had never seen. They began formulating an escape. But it would take planning, and thought.

The wanderers found the old ruins deep in the forest.
The cavernous structure seemed to them a palace. The central atrium was a corridor a dozen paces wide, with dry fountains in the center.
Wide alcoves, no two alike, lined both sides of the walls, and each member of the band scrambled to claim one as their own.
She chose one that still bore cheerful paint, lined with counters containing hundreds of tiny shelves long empty.
Her grandmother had taught her some of the old script, and she could just make out a sign.
Youth fades, but Beauty™ is forever.