1.

A two-inch layer of freshly fallen snow covered the yard.

Stacey peeked outside. To most, it would have been a beautiful
sight worthy of taking a photo to put on Instagram. For Stacey,
it meant something different. The first snow of the year
brought back the witches as the fairies in the yard had to seek
shelter to avoid the cold.

2.

3.

Dave wasn't exactly sure how he had ended up in this

predicament. He ran through all the events that had lead to
this current situation and it still didn't make sense. He
wanted to spend some time to try and make sense of it all, but
he had higher priorities at the moment. The first was how to
get out of his current situation of being naked in a tree with
snow falling all around and no way for him to get down.

4.

5.

Her mom had warned her. She had been warned time and again, but
she had refused to believe her. She had done everything right
and she knew she would be rewarded for doing so with the
promotion. So when the promotion was given to her main rival,
it not only stung, it threw her belief system into disarray. It
was her first big lesson in life, but not the last.

6.

7.

It all started with a random letter. Several of those were

joined forces to create a random word. The words decided to get
together and form a random sentence. They decided not to stop
there and it wasn't long before a random paragraph had been
cobbled together. The question was whether or not they could
continue the momentum long enough to create a random short
story.
 8.

9.

She had been told time and time again that the most important
steps were the first and the last. It was something that she
carried within her in everything she did, but then he showed up
and disrupted everything. He told her that she had it wrong.
The first step wasn't the most important. The last step wasn't
the most important. It was the next step that was the most
important.

10.

11.

I guess we could discuss the implications of the phrase "meant

to be." That is if we wanted to drown ourselves in a sea of
backwardly referential semantics and other mumbo-jumbo. Maybe
such a discussion would result in the determination that "meant
to be" is exactly as meaningless a phrase as it seems to be,
and that none of us is actually meant to be doing anything at
all. But that's my existential underpants underpinnings
showing. It's the way the cookie crumbles. And now I want a
cookie.

12.

13.

The piano sat silently in the corner of the room. Nobody could
remember the last time it had been played. The little girl
walked up to it and hit a few of the keys. The sound of the
piano rang throughout the house for the first time in years. In
the upstairs room, confined to her bed, the owner of the house
had tears in her eyes.

14.

15.
They rushed out the door, grabbing anything and everything they
could think of they might need. There was no time to double-
check to make sure they weren't leaving something important
behind. Everything was thrown into the car and they sped off.
Thirty minutes later they were safe and that was when it dawned
on them that they had forgotten the most important thing of
all.

16.

17.

He heard the crack echo in the late afternoon about a mile

away. His heart started racing and he bolted into a full
sprint. "It wasn't a gunshot, it wasn't a gunshot," he repeated
under his breathlessness as he continued to sprint.

18.

19.

It was a simple green chair. There was nothing extraordinary

about it or so it seemed. It was the type of chair one would
pass without even noticing it was there, let alone what the
actual color of it was. It was due to this common and
unassuming appearance that few people actually stopped to sit
in it and discover its magical powers.

20.