Five of the Best: Microfiction
by Rob Haines

For Having Been Broken

On the eighty-third day, we find the giant, ramshackle and shattered.

Its bones arise like ancient stone columns, its moss-crowned skull a slip-shod hillside. And for the first time since we set out, as I gaze upon its devastation I doubt our course.

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Submerse

She left them music in a bottle, wax-sealed against the waves.

Now she runs through the night, puddles splashing beneath footfall. It’s been a while since she’s had feet to tap, fingers to play, breath to spare. But she feels the feedback whine in the air, the low thrum of bass, the comforting rhythm of kick and snare.

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The Distance That Remains

They face each other across a hundred yards of ocean, colossal feet anchored amidst the silt a fathom below.

They’ve crossed forest and mountain, forded the great rivers and stood astride vast cities on their way, drawn by the gravity of previous acquaintance.

And now they’re here, face to face at last, and neither know how to cross the distance that remains.

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While We Run

The Millennium Hounds are on our trail, and reality collapses in their wake.

All they do is hunt, through metaphysical space and digital bolthole, and all we can do is flee.

But while we run - while we cling on to those dear to us so none become misplaced along these liminal routes - we tell oral histories of what brought us here.

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What Warmth We Have / Within Icebound Hearts

We reach the End of the World half-frozen, snow-blind, the chasms in our fellowship torn wide and treacherous.

We lack the heart to raise our voices above the snowbound crunch of feet. There’s nothing left to say that’s worth fighting the gale which tears words from our lips, the wind a predator in the icefields, howling as it flenses our flesh and leaves our hope to die in the wastes.

Once, we five shared a vision; now, all we will share is an icy grave.

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If you enjoyed these, click here to see the full list of my microfiction so far!