R E A L L Y   S H O R T   S T O R I E S

K. Johansen



A woman opens a frozen dinner and finds inside the perfectly preserved hand of a six month old baby.

Anna May Coulter, age 19, believes that God has been speaking to her on her cellular telephone. He is telling her that he has great plans for her, and she must listen carefully.

An old man has been waiting patiently to die for three years now, eating nothing, drinking nothing. He does not know that he has died every morning, only to be resurrected after dinnertime through the prayers of a Navajo woman he has never met.

She puts her hand into the bathtub, and fourteen thousand tiny black eels burrow into her skin. She smiles, my babies, I love you all.

While he is moving, he knocks over the urn bearing the ashes of his uncle Ray. When he bends over to clean it up he discovers it is actually full of cocaine and a note with a scribbled telephone number.

A sentient but invisible lifeform, desperate to breed, finds its mate in a 92-year-old woman who lives only because her family cannot bring themselves to disconnect her life support.

Every night, a screenwriter dreams a new movie which, if produced, will be the largest-grossing movie of all time, winning 12 academy awards. Every time he wakes up, the dream slips from his memory.

A child is lost in a crowd, carrying a stuffed bear loaded with plastic explosives.

A psychic runs over a man in an intersection with her Cadillac because she sees that he will someday rape and murder her sister.

He has just dropped the last vial of true love in the world on the floor of the men's room in Grand Central Station. The vial has shattered and liquid has begun to trickle toward the drain.

Tell me a story.