FALL 2025, SHORT STORY, 2800 WORDS
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1. Progress
The giant turtles walked out of the sea, clambering onto the dock’s wooden slats. “We will survive on land, we will survive on land,” they chanted in their distinct language, the turtle tongue. “We will, we will, we will.”
The turtles did not like the sea any longer. “How salty!” they cried in disgust. “How terribly wet!” They figured themselves far too wonderful to be in the sea any longer. They wanted to feel the sun warm their shells always. They wanted humans to stare in awe at their magnificence, for they were the grandest of sea creatures, and feed them their meats and cheeses and green beans. They wanted to be feared; they wanted to be loved.
Yet some were afraid. “The ocean is all we know,” they protested. And so the ambitious turtles began the chant to soothe the frightened ones.
“We will survive on land—only on land! We will survive on land—only on land! We will, we will, we will!”
And so the turtles walked grandly to the end of the dock, where sand met wood.
2. Small Doses
“What are you hungry for?”
“Anything, really,” the woman said, scratching her flaking elbows. “I haven’t eaten in a while.” She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, slightly self-conscious.
The manager of Green Beans ’N’ Foodstuffs, Inc. #10,302 smiled. “We have a fine selection of samples today. Green beans, dried jerky, potato soup.”
The woman glanced at the sign to the right of the manager’s desk. “Only in small doses,” she read softly to herself.
“I’m sorry,” the manager said, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “Seems everyone’s hungry for something these days. We only have so much to go around.”
The woman scratched more urgently at her elbows. “I understand. I’d like a green bean, please.”
The manager turned promptly from the desk and went into the shadowy back of the room. The woman heard rummaging. When the manager came back, she held a single green bean in her hand. She offered it to the woman.
The woman took the bean with trembling fingers. “Just a morsel,” she said to herself. “Just a little bean. But it’s enough.” She looked up at the manager as if for affirmation.
“Yes,” replied the manager automatically. “It’s enough. It’s enough for every one of our customers. And it’s only a half-ration, after all.”
The woman’s lower lip quivered. “Only half? Is that enough?”
“Yes. It’s enough for everyone if you’re strong-willed enough.”
The woman nodded and tore the green bean in half. She dutifully handed one piece back to the manager, then nibbled the other.
“Is it good?”
“Yes. Very.” The woman shook all over. She nibbled and nibbled and nibbled.
“I’m glad. We’re all glad. Another satisfied customer,” the manager murmured, writing something down on her clipboard. She then smiled brightly at the woman. “Next, please.”
The woman, holding the green bean tightly, shuffled on her way and out the door. There was a long line ahead, every single person wanting for something. Always wanting.
The manager asked once more, “What are you hungry for?”
The little girl just blinked her eyes at the manager. “For,” she said, tasting the word. She savored it like it was food. Like it was a green bean.
3. Sherri and the Matron
The girl’s name was Sherri. She had very sharp teeth. These teeth were very good for swallowing others’ words. Sherri swallowed these words because she was mute and had none of her own. Sharp teeth were the best at swallowing words because the fine tips could snag the ends of them as they passed by. Sherri hated the sound of others’ voices, but she loved their words. There were so many of them it made her salivate. When Sherri swallowed words, they trumpeted back up her throat like half-chewed music notes, springing into the air, thin and melodious. The words didn’t taste of anything, but Sherri’d feel a tingle in the back of her mouth when she caught one or two. Sometimes she was lucky to catch a whole sentence, if it was short. She’d usually only catch the last word of a sentence, as those were the slowest to disappear. The words were small and wispy, soft as silk.
When she didn’t hear anyone’s voices, or was too tired to catch any words, Sherri’s throat grew unbearably sore and parched. It was a thirst no water could quench, and for that Sherri sometimes hated her strange talent of swallowing words. They were tasteless, but it was wonderful to feel them slide smoothly off her tongue.
Sherri lived in a crumbling house. The matron who owned the place was always wanting potato soup and green beans, so “potato soup” and “green beans” were common phrases Sherri repeated. The matron didn’t mind Sherri’s muteness as long as she wiped the mud off her feet coming in from the rain, watched out for “the horrible turtles,” and went to bed on time.
4. Celebration of Humanity
Every day the robots worked in Town #0003. It was an unconscious kind of work. They cleaned their houses, dusted the windowsills, and made the beds. They peeped out windows and said, “Hello, how are you?” to each other. They went to offices and drank oil out of steaming mugs and waited for assignments. When they received assignments, they completed them in a timely manner. They swallowed dinners of nuts and bolts in the shape of green beans and drank wineglasses of greasy black oil. They kept streetlights up and working. They did everything right. Every morning was the same as the last. The sun rose, the sun set, again and again and again. The robots worked every day. They never rested. They were smooth and efficient and flawless.
They made amiable small talk and held deep, scholarly discussions of philosophy and the meaning of life. All the deep discussions were shallow, them being robots, but they tried their best anyway. Everything was nicely done. Every weather forecast was accurate due to advanced technology, though there wasn’t any weather variation at all, so this was quite an easy feat. Every shop window went unmarred by the touch of human fingers. The streets were empty of all litter. Everything was done with a sense of punctuality. The television broadcast spectacular TV programs at all the convenient times of day. The robots were very good actors.
Books were solidly written, though none of them were classics in any sense of the word.
The robots worked and worked and worked until time turned everything to rubble, and all was perfect.
5. Companionship
“Goodbye!” the girl screamed to her parents from outside the crude little shack, leaning on the tips of her toes into the doorway. Her parents were very hard of hearing, almost deaf, because they had forgotten their SoundSomething Ear Things when everything happened, before she’d been born. Thankfully, they’d been far away when it happened—others were not so lucky.
Beside her floated a little gray box in the shape of a radio, tethered to her wrist by a thin colorless string. It crackled and hummed softly. The box had a scratched label on it that read MADE BY NEW ’N’ IMPROVED ELECTRONIX #2,3000.
The girl left, walking down the long gravel slope of her driveway, sidestepping piles of ash and mangled pieces of furniture. When she leapt over a rotted leg of a queen-sized bed, the box bounced joyously beside her. The air was silent; it rolled over the girl and her companion in thick, sulfurous bursts. The girl wrinkled her nose at the smell. “What is that?” she asked.
The box paused before answering in a cool, pleasant female voice, “That information is restricted.”
The girl pursed her mouth and rolled her eyes. They continued on their way. The girl stopped after a few moments to jab a finger at the gray, ashy sky. “Look at that,” she demanded of her box. “Look at that! Smoke rings!”
The box didn’t answer, just crackled quietly. The girl, disappointed, kept walking, yanking the box hard behind her.
“How are you doing?” asked the box serenely after a while.
“Okay,” groused the girl, kicking at a piece of burnt wood.
“What was that?”
“Never mind.”
At one point they happened upon the crumbled half of a building. The girl inspected the ruin meticulously, squinting, making faces at the bits of smoldering debris, the box drifting ever close. “Another piece of junk,” the girl announced after she was finished. Then she turned to her companion. “What was this place?”
“A house,” said the box simply.
“Duh. Did people live here?”
“Yes. Two people.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “What were their names?”
“Sheryl Winbatt and Ariel Swanson.” The box’s voice was calm as ever, but the girl paced back and forth, newly invigorated.
“Okay,” she murmured. “That’s good for a start. What happened to them?”
The box didn’t answer. It hummed fuzzily.
“Answer me, you,” said the girl. She grabbed the box from its perch in the air and shook it.
“Zzzzt,” said the box. “That information is restricted.”
The girl’s face reddened. She muttered unintelligibly under her breath, kicked a chunk of a half-melted can of green bean mush, and left the house, dragging the box sullenly behind her.
The girl walked farther and farther. Occasionally she stopped to pluck pebbles out of the soles of her feet. “You know,” she remarked after an hour of unbroken silence, “I feel like you hardly listen to me.”
“You feel I don’t listen to you?”
“Yes,” said the girl impatiently. “That’s what I just said. I feel like you just don’t listen at all. I know my parents didn’t put too many responses in you, but still. You’re supposed to listen to me. That’s what you’re for.” She kicked at the ground for emphasis. She was doing a lot of kicking today.
“I do listen to you,” said the box calmly.
“You’re so stupid!” burst the girl, whirling on the bobbing box in a rage. “I ought to smash you! You’re useless! You don’t tell me anything! Anything I want to know!”
The box sizzled tonelessly.
The girl’s eyes glimmered. She kept walking, looking down at the ground. “I don’t like you anymore,” she muttered insolently, face an unattractive scarlet. “I try to talk and ask questions and you don’t answer me, you don’t answer me at all. I don’t want you anymore. You’re no help.” Her lips puckered, face crumbling. “You’re not even a good friend.”
The box said, “I will do better.”
“You can’t. You’re a machine.”
“I will do better. I will—“
“You know, I have a little rock stuck in my foot.” The girl’s eyes were filled with trembling upset. Her heart throbbed. She couldn’t catch her breath. The rock stung badly.
“It’s stabbing at my heel and you didn’t even know!” the girl shouted shrilly into the empty, gray air, eyes wild. “You’re supposed to know! That’s what you’re for! That’s why you’re here! You’re supposed to know what’s wrong!” She began to blubber, eyes wetly streaming. “I ask you every day! Every day! And you don’t help me, you don’t even know how! You’re supposed to know, but you don’t! You’re broken!”
“I am entirely functional. I will do better,” said that calm, smooth voice. “I will do better.”
The girl wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Then tell me what happened.”
“What happened to what?”
“What happened to—to—everything.”
The world went silent.
The box crackled, all noise and static.
“Well?” the girl snapped.
“I will do better. I will do better. I will do better,” the box buzzed. It would not stop. It was stuck. “Please. That information is restricted. Zzzzt.”
The girl went home. There was nothing left to do. She limped as she went—the pebble was still stuck in her heel.
6. A Fable from a Tattered and Sooty Children’s Textbook
There was an unduly large crow sitting in the middle of Town #40,789, and Henry, the manager at the local Green Beans ’N’ Foodstuffs, Inc. #60,889, was the only one who noticed at first simply because he often counted his money in the very same place the crow perched. The crow watched the smoky pollution in the air with its beady eyes, and Henry watched it.
The crow didn’t move much—it flapped its dark wings a little, shifted its position slightly, but overall it seemed to be concentrating on something Henry couldn’t see. He could sense the dewy bright intelligence in its eye. Henry wanted desperately to capture it.
Henry left the crow only for an instant to grab his lasso from the shed, but the moment he returned to the square a small crowd had gathered. A working-class woman had fainted dead away and was lying, still in her apron, on the floor. Her sister was gabbing away with the local judge, who was eyeing the crow severely.
“It’s going to steal our green beans!” insisted Henry in a powerful voice. “Be sensible, people! How can we let it stay?”
“Yes! We need to save the beans! And what if it pecks out the eyes of our children?” gasped the schoolteacher of P.S. #40,789.
“We have to save the green beans, yes,” said the owner of the Miscellany Shop #40,789. “Yet it’s only sitting there. Perhaps it’s just having a rest and then it will fly away.” The judge nodded in slow, measured agreement.
“Someone take a picture!” yelled a working-class housewife from the back of the crowd, and suddenly all were pushing forward to get a better glimpse.
“Stand back, everyone. I’ll get the beastie,” said the owner of New ’N’ Improved Electronix #40,789.
“Don’t hurt it!” begged his small daughter at his side, tugging on his leg. “Maybe it’s a baby bird.”
“A baby? That big?” wondered the housewife.
“I say we call the authorities,” barked her husband.
Henry pushed his way through the crowd. He readied his lasso, swirled it above his head, and let it fly around the crow’s neck. He was determined to save the green beans.
The bird’s head swiveled to look at Henry the moment the rope touched it. Simultaneously, an enormous explosion occurred in Town #3000. The townsfolk ducked, slamming their hands to the sides of their heads in agony. Blood spurted and leaked from their ears in terrible streams, pooling on the cobblestones. Henry dropped the rope in surprise and pain, collapsing to the floor. All the townsfolk died. They had all forgotten their earplugs in the middle of all the excitement.
MORAL: Disaster can occur at any time. Be prepared with SoundSoft Earplugs—“If On Dying You’re Not So Keen, Save Your Family & Green Beans!”™
7. “The Bean of Green”: A Short Soliloquy
“Green beans, green beans!” the actress screams loudly so as to reach her imagined listeners, her face white with powdery ash, the smears of artfully applied blood on her plump cheeks flaring bright. Her ears are twisted into unrecognizable lumps of flesh.
She stumbles forward on the blackened wooden board she uses for a stage, imaginary spotlight warming her many-pimpled back. She is naked, red with splotches. “Tell me, what were they like?” Her face is abominably wishful, eyes glistening poignantly at the empty landscape before her. “I cannot remember. Forgive me, it has all slipped away. Were they truly green? As green as the fields? Were they earthly things? They must be, for beans are as earthly as any of us. Grown from the soil, grown from Mother Earth, like potatoes for our soup? Were they sweet? Is it ungodly, unholy, to ponder the taste?” Her face slips smoothly into a grave, grim expression, surveying the gray landscape. “Is it ungodly?” she repeats in a thundering voice, eyes fervent.
She paces across the stage in a fit of anxiety and wonder. “I believe it is and I believe it isn’t. Who am I to dare to contemplate such things? But still, I contemplate.” Her face grows perilously soft. She straightens her back and stares at nothing.
“I can’t help myself,” she says quietly, tragically, eyes wide, face pale and waiflike as the moon. “I wonder, I wonder—” She raises her great, resounding voice to the invisible rafters and cries, rapturously, “Were they green? Green as the horrible turtles? Or—oh!—were they green as heaven?”
Erin Ulm is an undergraduate student at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon. Between classes, she writes speculative fiction short stories.