Introduction
Thank you for your baffling decision to purchase this anthology. As the title suggests, this anthology was actually, literally written in one hour. At 2 PM on a Saturday, a group of writers in the Western United States got together with firm resolve to eat snacks and produce flash fiction. A list of themes were created from an online random word generator, and the writers each paired themselves to one of the themes as they consumed corn chips. From 3 PM to 4 PM, in a room filled with the sounds of typing, eight short stories evolved from the state of utter nonexistence into being art. In terms of quality, they are somewhere between characters randomly selected by a monkey on a typewriter (just one monkey, in one hour) and the works of William Shakespeare.
In This Anthology was Written in an Hour, most of the names are pseudonyms, as the writers saw it fit to hide their identities for some reason. Some of the author names are real. It is up to you to figure out which ones are which. The stories range from comedies to thrillers to just downright quirky, although all of them ended up with science fiction or fantasy elements.
The one thing they all have in common--and I cannot overemphasize this point--is that they were all written in exactly one hour. You will see typos, grammatical errors, and even incomplete thoughts. Even the cover art for the anthology was created in the same hour. After the hour was up, the stories and cover were set in stone, never to be altered again. Now, they are immortalized forever on the Internet.
If you read these stories and find them woefully inadequate, take comfort in the fact that the anthology, including this introduction, is about 9,000 words, so it won't take you very long to read. If you love these stories, and take part with us in enjoying this literary experiment, then rejoice in the thought that as long as there are corn chips and sandwich cookies in this world, there will be temptation to do more things like this.
As a final note, the writers of this anthology would like to send their best regards to their mothers, whom they assume to be the majority of the readership of this work.
Three-Dollar Bill
by Stone Erekson
“Here’s your change,” the cashier said, handing him one bill and a couple of coins.
Ben looked at the cash register, which showed $6.85 in glowing green letters. He had paid with a ten. The dime and nickel in his hand took it up to seven, so she had shorted him by two dollars. He was about to quote Better Off Dead to her and say, “I want my two dollars,” when he realized she hadn’t given him a one-dollar bill. He looked more closely. It looked like U.S. currency, but the number in the corners was a three. “Umm… this is a three dollar bill,” he said.
The cashier smiled brightly back at him. “Yes, your change was three dollars and fifteen cents.”
“But there’s no such thing as a three-dollar bill,” Ben said.
“Sure there is,” she replied. “I just gave you one.”
“No, I mean the U.S. government doesn’t print three-dollar bills. Haven’t you heard the saying ‘phony as a three-dollar bill’?”
She frowned. “I thought it was ‘phony as a two-dollar bill.’”
“No, two-dollar bills exist. I think.” Ben looked down at the bill, suddenly wondering if maybe he had the saying wrong. The face of Herbert Hoover was engraved on the front. Herbert Hoover? There was no way that was real. It had to be a joke someone had printed up, and this cashier had probably been ditzy enough to take it from a prior customer. It felt right, like real money, between his fingers. Whoever had made it had gone to a lot of effort to create something that could pass for real – except for that three dollars part.
It was actually kind of a cool prank, and Ben didn’t really need his three dollars in change. “Never mind,” he said, slipping the three-dollar bill into his wallet. “This’ll do fine.”
#
When Ben got home, he decided to see how widespread the prank was, so he Googled “three dollar bill.” The first result was a Wikipedia page, so he clicked on it.
The United States three-dollar bill ($3) is a current denomination of US currency. Former President Herbert Hoover is featured on the obverse of the note, in commemoration of his introduction of the bill as a way to increase wealth during the Great Depression. The swapping of three-dollar bills for all one-dollar bills, nicknamed the “Triple Play” by Hoover in a nationally broadcast radio speech, is generally credited with saving his re-election campaign against New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt.
Ben frowned. That was ridiculous. Whoever had created this three-dollar bill had obviously put up a fake article on Wikipedia to support it. Just how far had they taken this? He clicked on the Herbert Hoover link, where he read all about Herbert Hoover’s second term, in which he ended the Depression, and his third, fourth, fifth, and sixth terms, in which he stood strong during the dark days after the surprise bombing of New York by Nazi German and led the nation to victory in the Second World War (against the Nazis) and the Third World War (against the Soviets).
Every article Ben clicked on seemed to support this version of history. He double-checked that he was on the real Wikipedia. He was. He checked other sites: Britannica.com, CNN.com, and various others. All said the same thing.
He must have switched to an alternate history. It was the only thing that made sense.
“I need a drink,” he said aloud.
#
Ben handed a five-dollar bill to the cashier.
She looked at it for a moment, then said, “What is this, some kind of joke?”
He stared. “What do you mean?”
She snorted and handed the bill back to him. “Like they’d really put Abraham Lincoln on money.”
Empty Wind
by Arliss Jones
It was Tun’s first Wind. The growing bluffs were off limits to children, but his naming day had been three weeks ago, and now he was with the other half-growns, ready to scamper along the nets down the sides of the cliff to retrieve the pods as they swelled in the nurturing Wind. They had to be harvested fast and pulled up by the adults for storage or the pods would burst, spilling all of the Wind’s essence into the sea.
Tun was so excited his ears were tingling. He’d been over his section of the cliff several times, trying to gauge which pods would swell first when the Wind came. He was ready.
The signal flashed over the bay. The Wind was coming. Tun tensed as the air stirred around him, pushed by the Wind as it came, and he stared hard at the pod he was sure would swell first, ready to grab it and put it in the basket. The Wind slammed into him, straining his grip on the net, but he kept his eyes focused on the pods, waiting for them to swell.
They didn’t swell.
Tun heard shouts of dismay, faintly above the rush of the wind, all along the cliffs. He pulled his attention away from the inert pods in his section and looked around at the other half-growns clinging motionlessly to the net around him. None of the pods were swelling. What was wrong?
“The Wind is empty!” Someone shouted. Tun shook his head, unable to take it in. The Wind always came, carrying the growing essence that they could use to grow their food amidst the bare rock of their village. It couldn’t be empty. It was the Wind, sent by the Woman to sustain them while they carved her temple in the unyielding stone of her birth. For generations they had carved. For generations the Wind had come, bearing the essence that fed them. And when the temple was ready, the Woman would come, and bless them for their service.
But the Wind was empty.
#
The priests argued and prayed. Was the Woman displeased with their progress? It would only be another fifty years before the temple was complete, and they’d believed she was pleased. Perhaps there was something in the construction that angered her? They sent runners over the castle, looking for flaws.
Tun sat with the other half-growns, stunned. It was going to be his first Wind. The thought echoed round and round in his mind. He’d never watch the pods swell and snatch them from their perch. They’d all die of starvation before the Wind came again. If it came again.
The priests could find nothing wrong with the temple construction. What could it mean? Why had the Woman abandoned them?
And then an asteroid came down and killed them all.
Fear
by Steve Diamond
Amy sat down on her couch with a thud. She cursed as the water in the glass she carried sloshed over onto her hand. Two red pills awaited her on the neighboring cushion.
Down they go, she thought, and swallowed them in a gulp.
It was late, and she was exhausted. The trials of having a new-born, her husband, Shawn, would tell her. Amy hadn’t slept well for…well, forever it seemed like.
Shawn was working in the home office, writing some government report as usual. Sometimes even when he was home she felt completely alone. She heard a noise from the baby’s room, just her little girl fussing.
She grabbed the video monitor from her pocket and held the power button to turn it on. Whoever invented this thing was a genius, she thought.
The screen powered on, giving her a black and white view of the interior her baby’s room. She frowned as the picture showed only a view of the door. Must have accidentally rotated the camera. She pushed the button to pan the camera to the right so she could get a view of her child’s crib.
Standing over the crib was a woman, staring down at the sleeping form of her baby.
Amy screamed and ran for the door to her baby’s room, jerking it open.
The room was empty except for the crib, and her now crying baby.
Her heart thundered in her chest, and she sank to the ground sobbing. Shawn came running from the other room. “Amy, what happened? Is everything ok?”
It was a full five minutes before she could catch her breath to answer him. “I turned on the camera, and there was someone in the room.”
“Someone was in the room?” He walked all the way in looking left and right, then walked to the room’s closet and pulled it open. “I don’t see anyone. Are you sure it wasn’t just a glitch?”
“I saw someone.” She said shaking her head. “You think I would just barge into our kid’s room screaming for the hell of it?”
“No, I—“
“She must have gone out the window or something. Check it!”
Shawn’s face was completely neutral. It was an expression she had seen hundreds of times when he was trying not to let any disbelief or anger show. He said it was easy to master the look when working for the government. He crossed the room to the window and pulled open the drapes. “The window is locked, Sweetie. You must have imagined it. You haven’t been getting enough rest latly.”
“I didn’t imagine it,” she said breaking into another round of sobbing.
Shawn held out his hand to placate her. He was always trying to placate her. Sometimes it was like they weren’t even married, just two roommates in an experiment together. “Maybe the signal got crossed with one of the neighbor’s. Don’t some of them have the same monitor?”
Amy shook her head and continued crying. Her baby’s cries echoed her own. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know…”
*
Amy kept the monitor on and plugged in for the next week, hardly able to drag her eyes away from it. She got even less sleep than normal. An hour a night? 30 minutes? She just wasn’t sure anymore.
Nothing ever appeared on the monitor.
A full two weeks later she was sitting on the couch watching the television. She took her red pills ever three hours as the doctor had ordered. Her life was monotonous and boring. Shawn was on the road. It was unnerving being at home alone. She didn’t go outside. Didn’t answer the phone unless Shawn called. She didn’t want to see anyone.
Amy’s eyes snapped to the monitor, as tyhe line of lights on the bottom spiked into the red from noise. What the hell?
And then she head whispers from the monitor.
Hush little baby, don’t say a word…
She grabbed the monitor and hit the button to turn on the screen. The woman was there again, and this time she was lowering a pillow into the crib.
Amy dropped the monitor and sprinted for the room. The woman was going to suffocate her baby! She yanked the door open and was once again greeted by an empty room and a crying child. She leaned her head against the doorway and forced herself to take deep breaths. What was happening to her?
*
Shawn didn’t believe her. He never did. For two more weeks she heard lullabies being sung over the monitor, and would see the woman about to suffocate her baby. Every time she would burst into the room and find nothing. Shawn wouldn’t even check the room anymore.
“You need counseling,” he said. “All this hysteria is driving me crazy, and I need to rest just as much as you do.”
“Something is trying to get our baby,” Amy pleaded. “You have to believe me!”
“You haven’t slept at all in a week,” he replied in disgust. “You are just seeing things. How about you take a sleeping pill along with the red ones you take all the time and get some rest for once. Maybe then you won’t be a complete wreck.” He turned and walked back to his office, closing the door behind him.
Someone…something…was after her child. She wasn’t going to let it—was it a ghost? Some deviant freak?—take her child away. Shawn just didn’t understand.
She walked to the couch and grabbed a pillow, then walked quietly to her child’s room.
The door opened easily. Silently. She found herself singing the nursery rhyme, “Hush little baby, don’t say a word…”
She raised the pillow and brought it down over her child’s face, holding it there. “ They won’t take her,” she muttered. “I won’t let them.” She held the pillow there for five minutes according to the clock in the room, it bright digital display seemed to approve of her actions as every minute ticked by.
Amy pulled the pillow away and dropped it on the floor. She checked her baby’s pulse. None.
She let out a breath she’d been holding, and felt…relief.
Walking out of the room, Amy saw Shawn’s government issued sidearm sitting on the table. She pulled it from the holster, thumbed off the safety, stuck it under her chin, and pulled the trigger.
*
Shawn stared down at the unconscious form at his feet. Amy’s hand was still wrapped around the gun. Her breathing was even, but she would have a nasty bruise on her head from falling on the tile. Next time he’d have to make sure she did it on the carpet.
He flipped open his cell phone and called his boss.
“How’d it go?” his boss asked.
“Even better this time,” Shawn replied. “I’d say the experiments are attaining more and more success.”
“Did she see the future this time?”
“I believe so. Its still hard to say whether it is the future of her actions she is actually seeing, or if she is just self fulfilling some internal psychosis. Regardless, I was extremely pleased.”
“How is Amy doing?”
“Very well, “ Shawn said as he crouched next to her. “This time she imagined she shot herself after suffocating the baby. We’ll have to reset the electronics of the baby though, it wasn’t acting realistic enough. Get the tech guys to add some updates to the AI.”
“OK,” his boss replied. “When she comes to in a week or so, lets start her on the orange pills. They have a stronger dosage of the drug in them.”
“Will do, Sir.”
“Oh, Shawn, one more thing?”
“Yes, Sir?”
“Good job,” there was genuine praise in his voice. “Don’t forget to check in on the other five women in your group to see f they are having the same results. “
“No problem,” Shawn said, and then he hung up.
Just another day at the office, he thought.
Children of the Thorns
by JRR Pratchet