Hugh J. O'Donnell

The old thief caught the young thief snooping in her basement. The kid was good she had to admit. He got through the first three levels of her security with no problems, and she had been none the wiser. But he missed the pit trap. Nobody expects that one.
“Why did you break in here?” she asked. Some people stole for survival. Some stole for greed, and others robbed the rich out of sheer resentment.
He knew that his life balanced on the edge of his answer. “To see if I could.”
Hearing the correct answer, she lowered the rope.

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“Listen carefully, agent. This button is the oil slick, and this button raises anti-barrier spikes on the front grill,” the engineer said.
“What does this button do?” The secret agent asked, pointing to a third switch on the dashboard of his new spy car.
“Don’t ever touch that one. It—“ Her cell phone rang, interrupting the briefing. “Yes? Now? I understand.”
They sent him out into the field. But when the mission went bad, and he was chased through the streets, he hit the third switch by accident.
He lost control of the vehicle as the compartment filled with flowers.

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Charon poled his barge down the River Styx. He guided the skull-proved vessel past Skull Mountain and through the Titan’s Skull Gate. He docked his boat and tied off through a waiting skull.
He went to clock out, and the office suggestion box caught his eye. He took a piece of parchment and scrawled ‘TOO MANY SKULLS!’
The Lord of the Dead summoned Charon the next day.
“Is there a problem?” Hades asked.
He struggled to explain his feelings. “My passengers are already dead, boss. Isn’t all this just rubbing it in?”
Hades sent the psychopomp on a long-needed vacation.

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When the survey team found “The Elephant,” There was great debate among the colonists about what the discovery of the rock formation meant. Ten lightyears from Earth, the explorers split into two camps.
One group claimed it was proof that they weren’t the first humans to reach the planet. Clandestine settlers must’ve carved it as a marker or a memorial.
The others claimed it was merely pareidolia, and that wind and water flow had carved the likeness at random into the icy surface of the cliff.
Both groups fell silent when the creature shook off the ice and started walking.

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He lived under the shadow of the ring. When he looked up, he could see the blinking lights of the orbital as the elites went about their days.
He lived in a twilight wasteland. He worked in the gravel fields that had once been mountains, pulverized and mined out of materials.
Someday, he told himself, he would make it to the ring. He just had to work hard enough and be good enough. If he made the right choices and greased the right palms, he could live among the stars.
And that’s when he would bring it all crashing down.

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The strange old device was called a ‘Kismet Collapser,’ but Jim always thought it was a piece of junk. He had held onto it out of sentiment, not because he believed in magic.
But the pirates were bearing down on them, and the storm loomed ahead. The captain was dead, and Jim was open to new ideas. He closed his eyes and pressed the button.
Half a world away, Pera wandered the desert. She was sure she would die of thirst when she felt the air around her change, and the tall ship appeared through a hole in the sky.

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