Hugh J. O'Donnell

The mall was abandoned when the sea rose to claim it. The boardwalk closed down and eventually fell into the water as life on the coast became untenable. The stores became undersea coves, as fish nibbled on designer fabric and and coral grew on ultramodern benches.
The warmer water and new environments were too much for some species, but others thrived, and evolved to do even better.
The jellyfish grew, and developed new defense mechanisms. They found they could hide beneath the crumbling mannequins, using them as camouflage. But as the years went on they also became something else: Fashion.

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The critic hated everything about the new restaurant. The menu was too limited. The space was too small. The decor was too dark. The staff weren’t attentive enough.
And this was before he even got to the cuisine, which he destroyed in a scathing review. He even hated the restaurant’s name, denouncing it as a awful pun.
SNEAK House? He wrote. STAKE house would have been better. So you could put it through my heart and end my time in this terrible establishment!
In the kitchen, the chefs, a group of retired ninjas read the review, and plotted their revenge.

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They sat on the hill and watched the rocket launch in the glow before dawn.
They watched the rocket leapt into the air on a pillar of exhaust, watching it arc upwards through the perfect dawn until it was out of sight.
“So, that’s it. He’s gone,” She said.
“Yeah,” he replied.
“How long will your dad be gone?”
“Five years by his watch, Twenty by ours. Relativistic time scales are a bitch.”
“Are you going to talk on comms?”
“My mom will, but he left. I’m done.” But for the next twenty years, he never stopped watching the stars.

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The author stared at the typewriter in front of him in an act of pure concentration. Then, slowly at first, the flesh of his face began to twist away from his skull, flowing into a set of flailing tentacles above the mechanical device.
“Hard at work… Ah!” A woman entering the office froze in the doorway, nearly dropping her tray of coffee.
She quickly recovered.
“For God’s sake, Marcel! If you’re going to type in human form, use your fingers!”
The shapeshifter looked up, his face snapping hurriedly back into place.
“I never learned to touch type,” He admitted sheepishly.

“When did symptoms first develop?”
“Maybe about three days ago? I haven’t been sleeping well. Nightmares, and oversleeping, that sort of thing. I didn’t think anything of it until yesterday when I went to temple and I just couldn’t go inside. And that’s when my neck started hurting.”
The doctor examined the mark on her neck. It was clearly a vampire bite. He brushed his hand against it, and the mark disappeared.
“I don’t see anything. Stress can sometimes cause these symptoms. I’ll proscribe you something to help you sleep, and they should clear up.”
“Oh, thank you, Dr. Acula.”

“The targets are secured,” The helmsman said.
“Excellent, we have many questions for these Earthlings, and these are high value targets!”
“Are you sure, sir?”
“Of course! Look how much land these beings are given! Earthlings equate high status to land ownership, and thus beings that live on the largest plots of land are the most important!
Informational broadcasts give their opinions more weight. Their political system favors states with more space and lower populations. These two beings were the largest in the vicinity. Therefore, they will give us the most valuable information!”
“Mooo?” The cow licked the alien’s face.

Gemma woke up to find herself both shrunken down, and trapped inside the grasshopper tank. She reached two conclusions that she had no way of testing.
One, her shrinking formula was a success, and two, somebody wanted her out of the way. She didn’t know which of her lab assistants had done it, but she guessed Dan. He seemed the most ambitious, and the least scrupulous of the crew.
He’d probably meant for the grasshoppers to devour her, but she was a scientist, and quickly made two breakthroughs: The insects were surprisingly easy to domesticate, and made for good eating.

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“Are you sure you can handle everything while I’m gone?” The cherub asked.
“Please, I am a seraph,” the taller angel said.
“But it’s the busy season…”
“Go, Have a good trip.”
Knowing a dismissal when he heard one, the cherub put on his coat and hat and fluttered out of the office.
The six-winged woman examined the tools on the cherub’s desk. The bow and heart-shaped arrows looked like they would break in her hands. Instead, she took her flaming spear from the rack by the door.
She was really going to show the world some love.

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“This was your father’s Plasma Sword. He wanted you to become a Space Cavalier, like he was. But your Uncle thought it was too dangerous.” The old man gave the boy the weapon, and with a push of a button, the blade was sheathed in crackling energy. He swung the it a few times, experimentally.
“Well, lets get started,” the old man said, readying his own weapon. “We’ll start with some light sparring.”
“What, with live blades?”
“Of course. That is the way of our order.”
“How did my father really die?” The boy asked.
“Training accident,” the hermit said.

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