Hugh J. O'Donnell

Sometimes she wondered why she bothered.
Every week, it was the same thing. Half the books came in damaged or delayed, and she had to eat the costs. The shop was always hovering on the edge of the red. She thought about giving up and going back to the corporate grind.
Then she spotted the kid. She was about seven, staring up in awe at a display of colorful superheroes.
“Excuse me,” her dad said with a sheepish grin. “We’re here to pick up her first comic. Do you have any advice?”
And she fell in love all over again.

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The hunter stalks his quarry. He has pursued it for days. But in a larger sense, he spent years tracking the beast. He trained to deadly accuracy with the bow, learned how to walk through the forest without making a sound, and studied every sign of the creature’s passage.
He passes through a curtain of tall grass and spots it drinking from a lake. He is awestruck by the creature’s grace and beauty, limned by the rising sun. He readies his bow.
The hunter fires the arrow, aiming for a killing blow.
It bounces harmlessly off the dragon’s impenetrable scales.

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He remembered fire and heat. He dreamed of an endless desert of smoldering rocks and roiling sand under clouds of steam that rained molten flames on an endlessly burning village.
But that was impossible. He was just a man.
His memory problems came from his injuries. They told him so when he woke up in the infirmary. He was a soldier in the Sorcerer King’s army. He tried to believe it.
Until the day he found the chamber where they had conducted the summoning. And the Ifrit remembered everything.
The Sorcerer King had played with fire. And he would burn.

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She launched the little boat in the dead of night, just when the storm broke over the water. It would’ve been safer to wait for dawn, or for clear skies. But she didn’t have that luxury.
She raised the sail and lashed herself to the mast. She knew the odds were slim that she’d make it to the mainland, but all the larger boats were smashed, and the message had to get through.
War had come to her island, and someone had to warn the capital.
She looked back one last time as her home was lost in the storm.

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She was a practitioner of forbidden arts. The elders decreed combat should only be fought with tooth and claw, or perhaps the sword. Of course, such weapons would be harmless to her fellow vampires. She pursued the art of the stake.
Her fascination made her a pariah, but they always found themselves needing her services eventually. She practiced discernment in such matters, refusing to descend into politics or petty squabbles. She was an artist, not an assassin.
If she would prey on her own people, she would cull the worst to preserve the herd, as a gardener prunes a branch.

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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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