Teeny Tiny Tales #20
“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations. 3.5.25 through 3.11.25
Spring is springing, and melting all the snow!
This is where I present my daily microfiction stories, mostly based on the past week’s prompts from The Fiction Dealer. By posting my humble tales - the good, bad, silly, and indifferent - I hope to inspire others to allow their creativity to come out and play.
Teeny Tiny Tales #1 - Teeny Tiny Tales #2 - Teeny Tiny Tales #3 - Teeny Tiny Tales #4 - Teeny Tiny Tales #5 -Teeny Tiny Tales #6 - Teeny Tiny Tales #7 - Teeny Tiny Tales #8 - Teeny Tiny Tales #9 - Teeny Tiny Tales #10 - Teeny Tiny Tales #11 - Teeny Tiny Tales #12 - Teeny Tiny Tales #13 - Teeny Tiny Tales #14 - Teeny Tiny Tales #15 - Teeny Tiny Tales #16 - Teeny Tiny Tales #17 - Teeny Tiny Tales #18 - Teeny Tiny Tales #19
March 5, 2025
Microdosing - 60 mg of a Castle
“Jess?Jess!” Jessie awoke to see her math tutor, scowling at the fanciful doodles on her worksheet. The blissful joy slowly dissipated as her daydreams melted away, dumping her back into boring real life.
“You can't live in your castles in the air forever,” her tutor remonstrated.
“But it’s always there for a little R&R,” Jessie sighed, resuming her math work.
March 6, 2025
Microdosing - 80 mg of an Astronaut
The joys of being an astronaut, flying and soaring free,
But I can't be an astronaut, I know it cannot be.
My fingers dig deep within the soil,
My mind's created for earthly toil.
If you declare that I must fly,
I must reply that I must hie,
Towards the fields of earth,
Returning to green lands of my birth.
"Just try it out, it's so much fun," my friends all say,
But I never could, with feet of clay.
March 7, 2025
Microdosing - 50 mg of Footsteps
Featured in The Batch of Micro-Fiction #40 🤗
Creeping footsteps in my house.
Far too loud to be a mouse,
And much too soft to be my spouse.
I wish I could these footsteps douse;
Instead I just lie here and grouse.
Creaking just loud enough for me to rouse.
I'm plagued by blasted footsteps through my house.
March 8, 2025
Microdosing - 60 mg of a Beach
Jess desperately wanted a beach trip, but Granddad couldn’t travel anymore.
After she left for school, Granddad called some friends. By afternoon, they’d created a miniature beach in the backyard, complete with a ton of sand, a stock tank of water, and a tiny wave machine.
Jess spent the rest of the summer happily building sand castles with her grandfather.
March 9, 2025
Microdosing - Unlimited mg of Sourdough
Note: I already used “Sourdough" as a personal prompt for my February 20th entry in Teeny Tiny Tales #18, but suggested another irresistible (microscopic) angle…
BioTech Utopia
I got bored during the pandemic, so like zillions of others, I decided that baking my own sourdough bread could be a relaxing and productive pastime. I ordered a culture from Amazon, which was produced by a company called BioTech Utopia: It was cheap, but had gotten great reviews, so I figured, why not?
I have to say, it was a great culture. Using the recipe provided by BPU, I baked loaf after loaf of beautiful, Instagram perfect bread. Eventually the pandemic slowed down and we were finally allowed to go back to our normal lives. As I threw myself back into my usual activities, the bread baking hobby was forgotten, and my sourdough culture languished on the back shelf of my refrigerator.
One weekend, while cleaning out the ‘fridge, I came upon the Mason jar of sadly discolored culture. I could have thrown it in the trash, or rinsed it down the sink, or tucked it into the freezer for long term storage, or even revived it, but instead - God help me - I stupidly dumped it into the compost heap.
A few nights later, I looked out the window and saw something out back, over near the compost bin, glowing in weird phosphorescent colors. I was too nervous to check it out by myself in the dark, so I waited until morning to go see what was up. Then I saw that the entire surface of the compost pile was covered in some sort of spreading fungus, something very similar to slime mold. It had been a very hot and humid summer, so the presence of slime mold wasn’t that shocking, but what was odd was that the surface of the mold-like substance was merrily bubbling away... in a way that reminded me very much of a well fed sourdough culture.
After the strange discovery, we had several days of torrential rain. When I next wandered down to check the compost, I noticed that the spreading mold had produced hundreds of fruiting bodies, sort of like miniature puffballs. I was foolish enough to pick one up for a closer look. As I examined it, it suddenly exploded, covering my face in black spores.
I rushed indoors to wash off the gunk, but I knew that it was already too late. When I awoke the next morning, all I could smell was the tangy odor of sourdough, everywhere. Bringing my hand up to my nose, I took a big whiff and realized that *I* was the source of the smell. Over the course of the day, I noticed that everything I ate smelled of sourdough, everything smelled of sourdough, even my urine and feces. Apparently, my body had been completely colonized by the mutant culture.
There is no pandemic anymore, but still I sit inside, alone in isolation, just in case. I order in groceries and other necessities, paying by credit card and have the delivery folk leave the parcels on the doorstep. I don’t want to infect anyone else until I know, so I am waiting... waiting to see if the microscopic community which has become an integral part of my being is symbiotic or parasitic. I feel healthier than I ever have before, but I don’t know if the increased vigor is a sort of “rent" the little beasties are paying in return for my allowing them to use me as living quarters, or if it’s just the result them upkeeping my body as a sort of living brood chamber. But at any rate, I fear that my precautions might be in vain, for as I watch through my window, I can see that the glowing, bubbling fungal mass has already spread across the dooryard, the fruiting masses ripe and heavy with spores, awaiting the windstorms which will soon deliver the biotech utopia throughout the earth.
March 10, 2025
Microdosing - 100 mg of a Willow
Pépère wanted to make Mémère a rocking chair, where she could sit and nurse their babies. He went down to the river, choosing the best branches from the ancient willow tree, and used them to weave a sturdy seat and bottom for the maple chair he’d built for her. Mémère rocked my mother and aunts and uncles in this chair, and later rocked me there too, letting the motion lull me to sleep. When Mémère and Pépère died, they left the chair to me, so I could rock my own children, while remembering and dreaming of their century old love.
March 11, 2025
Microdosing - 70 mg of a Sign
(Overdose, I was having too much fun!)
Once a miser walked through a meadow and came upon a sign set in a beautiful bed of flowers: “Pick one, but only one, and your wish will come true.” So he picked a flower and wished for a million golden coins - the flower disappeared and a huge mound of gold lay at his feet.
He spent the rest of the day trundling all his new wealth home to his storeroom and all night counting it and gloating over his good fortune. But he would not be content, he wanted more. The next morning, he set off for the magical flowerbed and, ignoring the sign, picked another bloom - it instantly crumbled to dust. With a grave sense of foreboding, he rushed home, but it was too late. All his newly acquired wealth was gone, banished by his greed
You had me at Sourdough! 😋
I love this recurring theme of your newsletter. It reminds me I should try to participate in the microdosing. It is an awesome creative exercise. Enjoy your thaw. Temperatures in the 70s in Minnesota today. Hooray.