A whole world on a single page!
The short story morsels of One Page Worlds are flash fiction adventures of all flavors. Every Wednesday will feature a complete story in one page, or the first page of what could be a novel or novelette.
Sharing the fun and geekery is the best part of writing! Please tweet or comment with your guesses on what genre, character, and job is central to each tale. Enjoy touring new universes each week with One Page Worlds!
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“Yaaaay, Monobycus,” the kids in the crowd around me cheered. “Do eight, do eight.”
I juggled seven bowling pins between both hands almost without noticing. One contained the grenade. The other six were the kind that a hundred kids had knocked down with eight pound balls this morning. Hand-eye coordination and depth perception don’t come naturally to a circus cyclops like me. I had to earn them and protect the customers while on the job. Someone among the circus crowd tonight tainted the caramel corn with ambrosia hoping the gods’ food would impose the gods’ will on the children here. A god in the crowd could impose that will any minute now.
One eye’s all it takes to see what the gods are planning.
I flung the seventh pin at the smirking ‘parent’ in the second row. Before it struck her, the goddess of the hunt shot the pin from the air with a concealed revolver. To the side, the ringleader yelled for the spectators to leave while the goddess seized a fleeing child’s hand. “You challenge Artemis with bowling pins? Do it and I’ll mount the eyes of your relatives as trophies.”
Humans fled for the big top’s exits, and I bought them time by throwing more duds at the goddess. She reduced each pin to powder with her revolver. “Monobycus, your father couldn’t stop the humans from devouring the world and doing what they desire. You think you can stop them?”
I kept the remaining three pins airborne as easy as breathing and glared with my lone eye. “Earth needs life that reciprocates. You don’t. Goddesses with agendas don’t belong.”
She shot another pin I hurled and I shouted, “You won’t turn children into young hunters to slay your non-believers.”
Pin number six flew like a pitcher’s fastball and she shot that one too. “My godfather has endorsed me to kill gods that twist humans,” I bellowed.
Hurling the final pin, I dashed to the ring, seized the circus’s tiger in one arm and the ringleader in the other. The goddess’s weapon clicked empty and I roared, victory pumping in my veins.
I’d expected her to gape at the descending grenade-pin. Instead, she drew a blade and flung it at me as I rushed toward the tent’s exit with the beast and the ringleader.
Hot, slicing pain ripped up my neck and I dropped the animal and human. I rolled to my back, half-ignoring the pain to watch.
By the time the grenade met her face, the tiny humans were gone from the tent. Safe.