Hugh J. O'Donnell

The Bandit King knocked the young knight from his horse, and scoffed as he lay crumpled in the dust.
The knight fought to get air back into his lungs, certain that he was about to die uselessly far from home.
He thought of his mentor, the princess who trained him and sent him out to do Justice. He thought of something she’d told him once.
A knight isn’t a warrior who can’t be defeated. They’re someone who stands back up every time they’re knocked down.
He rose to his knees and struggled to his feet. He had work to do.

He enlisted in the Navy to pay for culinary school. He spent years training in a pitching galley, feeding the crew on a destroyer.
He served his time, got his degree, and started working in a professional kitchen. Eventually, he was even able to open his own gourmet restaurant.
But he felt depressed. He missed his early days in the Navy. He was never happier than when he was cooking on a boat. He closed the restaurant, and took a job on a cruise ship.
The sea was for Cookie, and that would have to be good enough for him.

The Senior Ambassador gave us our instructions before the reception with the alien dignitaries. “Whatever you do, don’t call them ‘Catgirls.’ They’re a superior technological force, and we’re representing the whole Terran League,” she said. I forgot it by my second glass of champagne.
“You know,” I said to one of the representatives, “There’s an ancient Earth culture that worshipped cats. And everybody always jokes that their monuments were built by aliens!”
“Nonsense,” he replied. The Egyptians used slave labor.” His ears went suddenly flat. “Er, or so I’ve heard.”
The subsequent negotiations took a sudden turn in Earth’s favor.

The skald overturned his bench with a shout, scattering his work. Upon his throne, Odin raised one eyebrow.
“I have shared with you the mead of poetry, which makes all people poetical. Why are you struggling?”
Odin gestured, and the scattered sheaves of paper assembled themselves in his hand.
“I see your problem,” he said after a time. “Kvasir’s mead enflames the passions and unlocks the soul. You require a different tonic now.” A valkyrie entered bearing a steaming cup of dark liquid and presented it to the bard.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Write drunk, edit sober,” the old god said.

When they heard the cry and the crash, all the Nereids came to investigate. They found a winged youth had crashed on their island.
His wings were complex, mottled in brown and white and gold, and utterly shattered. It was clear that the boy was dead.
“Is he some sort of harpy? I thought they were all women,” one said.
“No,” replied another. “Look, the wings are artificial. They’re stuck to a wooden framework with wax. I wonder where he came from.”
“Who cares where he came from. Just get him off of me,” snapped the Nereid he’d landed on.

Adam came home when he heard that the doctor was ill, and probably dying. He approached the castle late at night, eager to avoid a confrontation with the townspeople, or worse, his father’s servants.
As he approached, he wondered what he was even doing there. The old bastard wouldn’t appreciate his presence, and even after being gone for years, he had no affection for the old man. But he looked down at his scarred and twisted hands ant thought that maybe, in the end, we are responsible for our creators.
Thus it was that The Creature returned to Castle Frankenstein.

She kept a bat as a familiar. It was goth as anything, and it intimidated rubes who didn’t know better.
The bond let her favor long, black dresses, allowed her to stay up well into the night, and granted her excellent hearing.
So of course she heard all the rumors and prejudices about her choice. She paid them no mind.
She would wait for it in the quiet hours, and as the rest of the world slept, she fed it cut strawberries while it perched on her shoulder and told her the secrets that it had heard in its flights.

“So you’re completely lifelike?” The man asked. He swayed drunkenly as she led him away from the party.
“I’m human-form identical,” she said, and gave a sweet, customer service smile that didn’t reach her optical sensors. “Although, I do have some ports, in my lower back…”
“I’d like to see that,” he said, pawing at the back of her dress. The fabric tore away, exposing her angular, metallic substructure. He backed away in horror. “You’re not a servant bot, you’re military hardware!”
She acted quickly, then opened coms.
“Ops, we have a problem. I may have killed our target.”

She wore his heart on a chain. She wore it openly, brazenly, the scarlet crystal catching the light as she smoked cigarette after cigarette in the sweltering heat of the parlor.
She made sparkling conversation, gesticulating wildly, making curtains of smoke. She held the cigarettes between slim fingers tipped in perfectly manicured nails. She smiled broadly, and her perfectly straight teeth showed not a hint of a nicotine stain.
In the backroom, he lay panting and sweating, unable to draw a full breath. He didn’t mind in the least. He’d do anything for her. She had his heart, after all.