Hugh J. O'Donnell

The mascot’s image was everywhere in the company town. Its golden face smiled down from murals, on statues, and in the signage for company stores. With its pipe-cleaner arm and Mikey Mouse gloves, it was the face Management showed to the world.
When the revolution came, the mascot bore the initial brunt of the workers’ frustrations. Murals were defaced and statues pulled down.
Management brutally punished anyone caught in the act, but it was already too late. They had promised a utopia they never intended to provide.
The boxes never contained two whole scoops of raisins, and they never would.

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A hurricane is coming, and they say this is the big one. The old man doesn’t have the time or energy to flee out of its path.
Instead, he goes out to his shed and sits among the manuscripts. They are his life’s work, consisting of thousands of poems, short stories, plays, and novels. Whatever struck his fancy.
He never shared his writing with anyone. It was his secret that he kept for himself alone.
He watches, briefly, as the winds rip down the walls and share his work with the world.
Posthumously, he is remembered as a hidden genius.

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The fortress remained sealed for centuries, keeping the evil within trapped inside. The spell was meant to hold forever. But there are always people who will do something regardless of the dangers, simply because it is forbidden.
Worse, rumors of the treasure buried in the darkness spread almost before the wards were laid. It was inevitable that someone would break that seal and sneak in, releasing ancient horrors on unsuspecting people.
Fortunately, germ theory had progressed significantly in the interval. The sages of the present were able to quickly isolate and treat the plague before it did too much harm.

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The hermit woke to voices in the Sacred Forest. By tradition, their people left them to their own devices.
Curious, the hermit threw on a cloak and stepped out of their hovel to investigate. They paused and hid when they saw the grotesque aliens.
The beings were short, squat bipeds with only two stumpy arms.
They had heard of them, a raider species obsessed with collecting resources across the galaxy. By the number of mechanical saws and other tools they carried, they intended to harm the Sacred Forest.
The hermit decided to teach these Humans the error of their ways.

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The traffic cop watched the banana peel fall from the elevated highway and land on top of a streetlamp. High above him, the roar of engines cut through the still night air. Those illegal street racers were at it again. And this time he’d have them dead to rights.
He flipped on his lights and sped up an onramp. Sure enough, there was the king’s delinquent daughter and her criminal friends.
A barrage of green shells slammed into his cop car, sending him spinning out as they all scattered.
He sighed. He had to get out of the Mushroom Kingdom.

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Yu found the bootprints and telltale groove in the sand on his morning walk along the beach. He fished into his robes and pulled out a spyglass to confirm his fears.
There was a tall ship on the horizon, sails billowing in the wind. They had pirates again.
He pulled out a whistle and piped out a sharp, distinct call to alert the other islanders. Then he turned inland and followed the trail up towards the mountain. Not for the first time, he considered blowing up that damn rock.
But then Skull Island might not get any visitors at all.

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The crew looked down at the Devil’s Road and considered their odds. The road was prime salvage if you could make it.
A line of pre-collapse automobiles that stretched for miles meant more steel and rubber than most salvagers saw in their lifetimes if you could avoid the devil.
Flanked by the skeletons of old towers, it loomed over the dead highway. Black clouds roiled with electricity, casting lightning bolts down on anyone foolish enough to get close.
They looked at each other and nodded. They just had to be fast. They revved the engines and started down the bluff.

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