The Divine Tease

by Woody Allen

In the Hamptons he was up and dressed at 6:00 a.m. and enjoyed a walk on the cool white sand. Alone on the endless coastline, the huge dawn sky gray and moody, the vast ocean, up and back in its rhythm signifying only that time moves in one direction, naturally his thoughts turned to the eternal and from there to the religious. It was here, under these conditions, if ever God's plan was meant to become apparent, this was the setting. Staring out into the horizon he awaited some sign. When no message emerged, no sacred instructions to go along with his ineffable intuition of "something greater" materialized and God was a no-show he began to miss the city where intimations of immortality were scarce, but in trouble you could dial 911. So much for the divine tease, a hustle for suckers.

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Woody Allen is a writer, director, and actor. His six sentences are excerpted from his first novel, What's with Baum?

Deleting Granny

by Joseph Manwill

I have to delete something. My neurolink needs the space. Sorry, Granny, there is no need to remember you singing "Happy Birthday" to me at five. Still not enough. I'll remove the rest of your catalogue. I need that space for the hamburger.

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Joseph Manwill. He is no good at bios and always makes the same joke, which he just made, about being bad at writing bios. He has no links to share.

The Known Harms of Microplastics

by Julia Rajagopalan

With a surly, lip-glossed frown, the judgy grocery store cashier scans my cases of bottled water. She glares and tells me about a TikTok she watched about how microplastics appeared in 100% of semen samples. As I hand her the carton of eggs, I ask her about the health effects of microplastics, but she admits she doesn’t know. When I explain I don’t have semen, testicles, or TikTok, she rings a bell for her manager. The island-shirted man, bearded and verbose, tells me I can’t harass the cashiers with words like semen and testicles, and that “she said it first” isn’t a defense. So I get in my car and scream while pounding on my steering wheel, then drive to another store.

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Julia Rajagopalan is a writer of speculative fiction who lives just outside of Detroit, Michigan, with her husband and their very grumpy dog. For a list of her publications, check out her website. This piece was originally published in Ink in Thirds.