This Month’s Theme: 100
By David M. Fitzpatrick

This month marks the 100th issue of The Cud.

We’ll start with “100 Seconds… of 100-Word Tales”—seven flash-fiction stories, each 100 words long, the entire bit readable in 100 seconds. The theme: magical items, for that’s what The Cud truly is. (Let’s see if that gets my contract renewed for another year.) Plus, for those who think the flash fiction here isn’t flash enough (even the 200-word stories last year), perhaps this will fill the bill.

Then, in honor of The Cud’s monthly publication schedule, we’ll have a story consisting of 12 monthly mini-chapters: “100 Years Never Known.”

“100 Seconds… of 100-Word Tales”
by David M. Fitzpatrick

“Apprentice’s Wand”
The wizard killed woodland animals with his fireball-launching magic wand. His apprentice watched, horrified.

“One day you’ll learn this power, wretch,” said the wizard.

Later, the wizard beat and raped the lad for hours, like usual. Then he lay naked on his stomach.

“You’ll one day master the wand,” he said, “but now you’ll pleasure me with yours.”

But the boy slid something else inside him. He shouted the command word, and the magic wand launched a fireball inside the wizard, who hadn’t even time to scream.

“Abuse me,” the weary boy said to the corpse, “but not helpless animals.”

“Love Potion”
She really liked him, so she slipped him a potion.

He fell in love with her sister. The next potion had him fall in love with her mother. The third, her best friend. The fourth, a woman on the street. It wasn’t going well.

Finally, Potion #9 worked: He fell for her. They kissed, hugged, fondled.

“I thought I’d never get you,” she said.

“It’s strange,” he said. “I’ve been falling in love with women everywhere.”

“I’m sure that’s normal,” she said.

“Sure it is—I’m gay.”

She sighed. “I guess magic spells shouldn’t stand in for real magic moments.”

“Necro Comicon”
The necromancer had finally found this particular Book of the Dead. He held it before him. “It’s mine!” he cried. “I can feel its power!”

In many ways, it was like any other such book, but the necromancer knew this one was special. There were a few others like it—bound in human skin, words and illustrations inked in human blood—but none were in such perfect condition.

He beheld the stunning masterpiece. Saturated with the souls of the damned, bathed in death magic, bound in human skin, inked in human blood: Action Comics #1, the first appearance of Superman.

“Ring of Sow Ron”
He knew the ring’s magic allowed him to be tracked. He tried to escape, but he couldn’t. It began to glow a fierce blue when he was at the bar with the guys, watching the game. It grew brighter, and he knew he’d been found.

“Where have you been?” Veronica screamed. She was furious, with burning eyes and wild hair, and flaring nostrils that made her look like an angry pig.

“Please, ‘Ron,” he begged. “Not here.”

She launched into more screaming. He hated that the spell had again allowed her to track him. Damn enchanted wedding band, he thought.

“Swordbringer”
He was cursed to wield the sword. As always, he empathically knew its desires.

He felt its power as it glowed red in his hands. He moved through the midnight castle, pushed open the oak door, and entered. The glow brightened as he headed for the sword’s quarry. The blade became a beacon of power, bathing the room in bloody light, and vibrated eagerly in his hands.

“You see?” he cried. “It isn’t like you. It’s just for decoration!”

On the kitchen wall hung a decorative spoon the size of a shovel, gleaming silver.

Mentally, he felt the sword’s frustration.

“Winter Hat”
The hat the kids had stolen from the magician brought their snowman to life, but Frosty was a foul-mouthed, beer-guzzling, kid-slapping bastard.

Luckily, the magician showed up in time to reclaim the hat from Frosty’s head, rendering him immobile.

“Stupid kids,” he said, producing a new hat. “You need a hat that doesn’t turn a snowman into an arrogant, miserable jerk.”

He tossed a different hat on Frosty, who reanimated—as a wonderfully happy, kid-loving snowman. And he looked good wearing the Boston Red Sox cap.

The magician took the New York Yankees cap back to his shop for safekeeping.

“Wish Bottle”
When the genie appeared from the bottle and granted him three wishes, he knew he wouldn’t make the usual mistakes: ask for a 12-inch penis and get a foot-high pianist; ask to be rich and have a ton of gold land on his head; ask for infinite wishes and lose them all.

So he asked for all the powers of a genie without having to be stuck in a bottle or otherwise enslaved.

She did, and he was able to grant wishes—but none for himself.

Worse yet, he still had a stubby penis and was still broke… for eternity.

**************************

“100 Years Never Known”
Science Fiction
By David M. Fitzpatrick

JANUARY
Midnight had just rung in the New Year. Drunken revelers cheered and smooched and danced as “Auld Lang Syne” played. As Kayla broke the kiss with her boyfriend, Mark, she noticed the old man for the first time. He was across the room, smiling contentedly, and looking right at her through the crowd. He was completely out of place in a bar full of twentysomethings.

“Who’s that?” Kayla asked Mark.

“Who?” he said, more interested in fondling her breasts.

She shoved his hands down. It was all he thought about. “The old guy by the bar.”

But when she looked back, the old man was gone.

“I don’t see anyone,” Mark said.

She went back to the kissing and the groping, the old man mostly forgotten.

FEBRUARY
Kayla broke up with Mark the week after Valentine’s Day. No candy, flowers, or card, and not even an “I love you.” And then there was the blonde she’d caught him hitting on.  It was the end of eight months of frustration.

An hour later, while walking through downtown to her hair appointment, she saw the old man again. He was across the street, with the same contented smile, and looking right at her, just as before. She slowed her pace, locking gazes with him.

He was creepy, as if she had an octogenarian stalker. She stopped, stared back at him, and was considering whether to cross the street to talk with him when a city bus passed between them.

When it finished passing, he was nowhere to be found.

MARCH
She met Jason at a St. Patrick’s Day party in the park a few weeks later. She was inclined to go home with the handsome hunk, but she knew she needed to stop the random hookups—maybe then she wouldn’t end up with idiots like Mark and all the others in her life.

But Jason—oh, he was gorgeous. The sexual animal in her growled, trying to convince her. And as he held her hand and told her how beautiful she was, and as he told the bartender to bring her another shot, she was nearly lost in his dark eyes…

And then she saw the old man. Right there, in the park, by a tree. Staring at her. Smiling.

She broke free of Jason’s grip, telling him she’d be right back. She hurried through the throngs of people, across the grass, never taking her eyes off him, and finally stood before him.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“That boy is wrong for you,” he said, smiling sweetly. He had old eyes, but they were the strangest blue-green like she’d never seen.

“What?” she said, confused.

“All wrong,” he said, and suddenly he was gone—vanished, as if a TV had been snapped off.

Kayla was left staring at a tree, wondering if she were losing her mind.

She didn’t go home with Jason that night. Or any night.

APRIL
She was back at the same park to volunteer with the annual Easter Egg Hunt. The park was swarming with kids and their parents—and their grandparents, so there were many old folks. That made it difficult, because Kayla was looking for the old man. She expected to see him; she didn’t know why. And she was right.

He stood in the middle of the field as laughing children ran all around him, grabbing up colored eggs hidden in bushes and under benches. She ran to him, determined to not take her eyes off him.

“Why are you following me?” she asked.

“Because you’re all that matters,” he said with those unique blue-green eyes and that contented smile.

“What does that mean?”

He reached out and took her hand in both of his, and she let him. “It means that I love you,” he said.

This time when he vanished, she felt his hands disappear from around hers.

MAY
She looked for him everywhere she went. Mostly, it bugged her because she knew he wasn’t lying. Somehow, he wasn’t a crazy old man; he really did love her. She’d seen it in his blue-green eyes, felt it in his warm, wrinkled hands. It had been more overpowering than any feeling of love she’d ever felt. But how could she love a man old enough to be her grandfather?

On Mother’s Day, she was driving to her parents’ house with a card and flowers, when he appeared right there in the back seat. It should have stunned her, but it didn’t.

“Please tell me who you are,” she pleaded as she drove, looking at him in the rearview. “How do you come to me? Where do you go when you vanish?”

“I’ve known you nearly all my life,” he said. “When I turned one hundred twenty-two, I’d known you for one hundred years. I’m from the future.”

She laughed.

“I know it’s hard to believe, but I’ll prove it: Your mother won’t be able to enjoy the card and flowers.”

Then he was gone, vanished into thin air again.

Kayla was confused until she got to her mother’s house and saw the ambulance in the driveway. Heart attack. She’d gone quickly.

JUNE
Holidays. Special days. That was when he came. So it was no surprise when he showed up on Father’s Day, when she was in a Walmart getting her dad a card. She felt her blood cool in her veins when she saw the smiling man with the blue-green eyes in the aisle with her.

“Is my dad next?” she said, voice quavering.

“I’m not the angel of death,” he said. “I just wanted you to know that I’m the real thing. I told you something that was about to happen.”

She leaned on the card rack. “So you’re a time traveler?”

“Yes, but my equipment can’t project me here for long. As you’ve seen, I get yanked back pretty quickly.”

“Why do you come?”

“To see you,” he said, and his blue-green eyes were wet and full of sorrow that overrode the gentle smile on his face. “Always just to see you.”

Then he was gone. And, once again, she felt as if she were losing her mind—because she believed every ridiculous word.

JULY
Fourth of July. No sign of him.

She went to her special place, where she’d gone since she was a little girl. It was an abandoned woodlot down an old dirt road. She’d ridden her bike there as a kid, hiked the woods around it as a teenager, and come there for quiet contemplation as an adult. She never brought boys there—never told anyone. It was her place.

Yet she wasn’t surprised when she got out of her car in the clearing and saw the old man sitting there on a log. She sat on the log with him.

“Why do you come?” she asked.

“I’m in love with you,” he said. “Our lifetime together…”

He looked so sad.

“I died, didn’t I?” she asked.

He hung his head. “Just two weeks ago, to me. I’ve been using the time-traveling equipment every day since then.”

“Aren’t you worried you’ll change the past—make me not meet you?”

He laughed. “Not at all. Time may be malleable, but our love isn’t.”

“If I died, our time is over,” she said. “Why are you trying to make it happen again?”

“Because I can’t bear to live without you,” he said, and then he was gone.

AUGUST
She expected him on her birthday, and she sat at home waiting for him, eager for him. He appeared, as if being teleported, into her living room. She wasted no time, going to him and hugging him.

“It’s insane, but it’s all true—I know it is,” she said. His old, weary arms felt so good holding her. “How is it you’re time traveling?”

“I shouldn’t tell you too much,” he said.

“I think you’ve blown that.”

He chuckled and squeezed her. “Ah, Kayla, but it won’t be long now. I’m dying. I don’t have long. I just needed to see you these last times before I go. I was supposed to be the one to go first.”

And then he was gone again.

SEPTEMBER
He came around special days—but what was special in September? Kayla couldn’t imagine when it would be. It ended up being September 19th.

“Today is our wedding anniversary,” the old man said, his blue-green eyes welling with tears.

Emotion washed over her. “You’re here for more than just to see me, aren’t you?”

He nodded as a tear streamed down his ancient face.

“When will we marry?” she asked.

“In ninety-five years,” he said.

She stopped short. “What?”

“We didn’t marry until very late in life,” he said. “We had terrible lives before that. Failed marriages. Thankless and hateful children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. We wasted all our years until we met after retirement. We had a wonderful five years together, and we always knew we should have met when we were younger.”

And, suddenly, the visit was over—like they all were: brief and fleeting, and then he was gone. Kayla collapsed to her sofa and bawled.

OCTOBER
He came next on his birthday, and she begged him to tell her, quickly, all she needed to know. He came to her, took her hands in his, and looked deep into her eyes with his blue-green orbs. “I’m here to convince you to change it all—to get together. We met once, while Christmas shopping, in just three months. We met, during a memorable event, but you were with Mark.”

She thought frantically. “Mark? The guy I was with when I first saw you?”

“Yes—that has already changed,” he said. “If you change things now, if we get together, we won’t waste our lives. We’ll spend a hundred wonderful years together—instead of just a few at the ends of our lives.”

“How?” she said. Her head was spinning.

“Just promise me you’ll be at the mall on December—“

Like a light switch, he was gone.

“No!” she screamed to her empty apartment. “I need to know when!”

NOVEMBER
Thanksgiving.

She returned from her father’s house, and he appeared to her.

“December 11,” he said. He looked tired and ashen. “Afternoon. The mall. Santa Claus.”

She ran to him, embraced him. “I thought I’d never know.”

He trembled in her arms. She pulled back, looked at him. His blue-green eyes seemed gray.

“Are you all right?”

“No,” he said, hoarse. “I’m…”

His knees buckled, his legs giving out. He dropped like a sack of potatoes, and she yelled as she tried to hold onto him, but he hit the carpet. She laid him down, carefully.

“It’s my time,” he said. “I can’t fight the illness anymore. Just be there, my love—undo the wasted lives we lived. Give us more time together.”

And as he gasped and wheezed on her carpet, suddenly she realized something.

“What’s your name?” she cried.

He gasped again. “Jeremiah…”

Then he convulsed and gurgled, and his eyes grew wide. She watched as he exhaled one final time, and as the light went out in his eyes.

And as she cried, he winked out of existence.

DECEMBER
She was at the mall at noon on December 11, and parked herself with a book on a bench near the Santa Claus display. She sat and watched the endless line of kids waiting to sit on Santa’s lap.

It was just past two when the memorable event happened: a kid ripped off Santa’s fake beard, Santa’s pants fell down when he stood up, and kid chaos ensued. Kids screamed and cried and ran around, knocking over North Pole props, chased by frantic elves. She was laughing madly at the scene when she realized the man standing next to her was laughing as well. She turned to look at him and saw his eyes.

They were the blue-green she knew so well. He saw her looking, and they locked gazes.

“Hi,” he said.

He was handsome, strong, and her age, not the ancient man he’d become. But they’d get there together—a hundred years of perfection.

“Go out with me,” she replied.

He seemed surprised. “Oh, um… sure. Wow—never been asked out like that before.”

It was him, from the eyes to the shape of his face—but so much younger. She smiled at him, knowing she’d begun the process of changing two lives for the better.

“I’m Jeremiah,” he said.

She smiled wider. “Yes, you are.”

*   *   *

After trading names and numbers and making a date for that night, Kayla headed out to her car in the parking lot. She was giddy and excited. Her life was about to begin.

She got in her car, pulled on her seat belt—and saw the form in her rearview mirror. She stifled a scream before realizing it was an old woman.

“Calm down,” the woman said, a grim look on her face. “First things first: Do not go out with that man.”

“Who are you?” Kayla cried.

“I’m you,” the woman said, and the moment she did, Kayla knew it was true. “I’ve lived a life of misery with that man because he came back and convinced you to meet early. But it doesn’t work. Whatever magic we found in the original timeline was born of the lives we’d led. It turns out much worse now.”

Kayla’s head spun. “What am I to do?”

“Don’t go out with him,” she repeated. “Screw your head on straight. Make your own life. And if it starts to go badly, change it—on your own.”

And the woman vanished from existence.

Kayla didn’t call Jeremiah.

David M. Fitzpatrick is a fiction writer in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.