Hugh J. O'Donnell

After the sea rose and the island sank, a memorial was built to all that was lost beneath the water.
The monument was a recreation of a simple pedestrian crossing. It was erected in what was once the heart of a great city, and children would climb the steps and imagine looking out at a labyrinth of skyscrapers.
It was a bridge to nowhere from nowhere, set in an expanse of empty sea that was as still and clear as glass.
And yet somehow that didn’t prevent boats that were too tall to pass under from getting stuck beneath it.

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The haunted doll had the misfortune of being made in the ‘80s. The other monstrous playthings had real hair with tragic backstories, or porcelain skin fired from graveyard dirt. She had injection molded plastic and a pull string.
While there was something unsettling about her, especially as the years passed and she cracked and faded, she felt like she wasn’t cursing the living to her full potential.
Still, there was always that one person who would see the ring on her back and give it a tug just to see what would happen. Curiosity and Horror went so well together.

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He was the most skilled archer in his unit. He could hit a bullseye with a longbow at a hundred paces. He could shoot a bird out of the sky, and had done so, in the forests he called home.
But here he was, thrown together on the front lines in a battered helmet and a leather jerkin, standing in a line and firing blindly into the opposing army. His talents were going fallow.
He should be sniping enemy knights. He asked his commander for a promotion. The nobleman put him on latrine duty for a month for his impertinence.

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She died young, in a tragic accident. Death took pity, and gave her a choice. She could pass on now, and face whatever came next alone, or she could wait.
She died on the eve of her marriage and was very much in love. The thought of going through eternity alone was anathema to her. She decided to stay.
She spent years alone, chained to her grave, thinking only of her love. But as the decades passed, she started to lose faith. What if they’d moved on?
Finally, they were reunited. Her bride took her hand, and they left together.

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The Artificer fashioned a clockwork spider to adorn the corner of the Witch Queen’s chambers. It spun webs of golden thread, that she wove into charms to protect her favored subjects.
The clockwork spider caught and ate time. The Witch Queen would pluck moments from the web and unwrap them. She would sprinkle them in a teacup and read the past and future.
The clockwork spider laid a thousand tiny cogs, and died. The Witch Queen gathered them in a jeweled box and sent them to the Artificer, who buried them in the earth and grew clockwork roses for her.

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I woke up to a flurry of text messages asking me if I was alright. After some confusion, I finally got a phone call, and I was able to ask what the fuss was about.
“Your house burned down!” My mother shouted.
“I’m at home. Everything’s fine.”
She sent me a link to the video. It was very realistic. I would’ve believed it myself if I wasn’t standing in the center of the alleged inferno.
The doorbell rang. I found an insurance inspector on the step, ready to put in a claim. It was going to be a long day.

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He was the second son of a minor lord, from a small holding in the north that didn’t produce much more than sheep. But he was good on a horse, and steady with a lance.
He won many honors for his family and his king on the tournament grounds. It wasn’t true warfare of course, but sportsmanship.
He’d been considered provincial at court, but answered the charge more than once on the tilting ground. But he knew that someone would unseat him someday. As he grew older, he leveraged his position in court and found management was his true calling.

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She found it in the back corner of a rusty old swap-meet on a backwater orbital station. It was her holy grail, the figurine she had been seeking for megacycles. She paid way too much for it and headed straight back to her ship.
The figure was a human male, late in his life cycle, dressed in an atmospheric suit and holding some sort of electronic device. His features implied he was in the midst of an argument.
She smiled and placed it on the stasis wall with the rest of her collection of ‘Lost Species of the Galaxy’ figures.

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The cabin stood on a desolate little island in the middle of the lake, with barely a foot or two of bare rock between the water and the walls, abandoned in the winter chill.
He’d chosen the site for its remoteness and security. He would finally be able to do his experiments without fear of interruption or espionage. If he needed to forge a few human comforts for that security, so be it.
He also thought the remoteness might delay catastrophe, if the worst should happen and the sample escaped.
It turned out he was wrong about the last part.

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The High Astrologer made a gate for her tower with all the stars and planets orbiting a glowing sun in perfect synchronicity. The magical gate was a wonder that her guests beheld with delight, and was decried as a decadent extravagance by those it kept out.
One evening, she found an angry mob of her fellow stargazers standing outside her tower. The shouted at her and pointed meaningfully at her gate, and at the night sky.
She stood on the other side and watched them through the slowly spinning celestial bodies.
“Fine,” she acquiesced at last. “I’ll put them back.”

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