The results of the first round are in, and of the 25 top stories selected in my group, two of them are mine. This pleases me, and causes me to weep for the next generation of writers.

Starting at midnight, you can vote for your favorite Tweet Me a Story story, and I'd appreciate it if you would consider voting for mine. If you thought them worthy, of course. Or even out of misguided friendship, shameless pandering, or guilt. It all works for me.

The stories chosen were:

From my blanket, I watched the surf. "It doesn't get any better than this."
From his time machine, me from 2023 sighed. "No, it doesn't."

and

"That's it, I have to know. You've been with me and with Mike. Which one is the better man?"
I smiled. "The one who didn't have to ask."

And you can vote here. Vote early and vote often!

Self-Improvement

“Dammit, could you be a better man just once in your life?”

"Oh, sure," he laughed, lunging for her.

“Could you hurry?” she said, and fired.

Memories

From my blanket, I watched the surf. "It doesn't get any better than this."

From his time machine, me from 2023 sighed. "No, it doesn't."

Dying to Know

"That's it, I have to know. You've been with me and with Mike. Which one is the better man?"

I smiled. "The one who didn't have to ask."

I'll keep you posted on the results, because you know you're desperate to know. And here's one that didn't make the cut:

Keeping Your Spirits Up

"Are you feeling better, hon?"

"A little."

"Did the nap help?"

"No, but finding the poison you used on me and slipping it in your tea did."

"TransmogriVacations, Inc."

by C. A. Bridges (1,000 words)

“A lobster? An actual crawling around, dunk it in butter lobster?”

“It’s what we have available right now in your price range, sir. Lobster, beetle, or vulture. Live your dream, sir.”

“What kind of beetle?”

“Dung.”

Parkleman sighed and slumped in the chair. “I’m in accounting,” he muttered, looking around the travel agency. “Dealing with balls of crap ten times my size is precisely what I’m trying to get away from.”

The sign over the door read “TRANSMOGRIVACATIONS, INC.” and in smaller script underneath: “BE ALL SOMETHING ELSE CAN BE.” There was an enchanted logo next to it depicting a cartoon man changing into a lion, a dolphin, an eagle, and then a man again, over and over. Parkleman stared at it for a long moment.

“You can really change me into anything I want to be?” he asked again.

The mage behind the desk raised an eyebrow.

“Anything I can afford, I mean?”

“With but a word and a gesture, sir,” the mage said in the same memorized, seductive cadence familiar to salesbeings across the universe. Despite the flowing robes and commanding beard, he was quite obviously, in a thousand telltale ways, someone being paid on commission. “You can become any living creature you can imagine. Soar the heavens, sound the mighty deeps, hurl yourself between the trees, or experience the indescribable joy of emerging from a chrysalis as a beautiful butterfly.”

He leaned forward with a professionally earnest expression. “My customers have desperately mated while plunging through the sky toward the ground below. They have crept through the tall grass towards their prey, reveling in predatory bliss. Some have desired a time of quiet contemplation and beauty, opting for the calm dignity of tortoises or blue whales. Others have found personal glory by leading vast ant armies to victory over insurmountable odds.”

“I’m sorry,” Parkleman said. “But none of these options sound like an improvement over my current condition. I already spend my days doing mindless grunt work and being harassed by my boss and his ‘I can do anything I want to my employees as long as I don’t actually completely murder them’ attitude. How is pushing around dung, eating carrion or getting popped in a boiling pot a step up for me?”

“You say you perform drudge work. Imagine the satisfaction of completing a dung ball, knowing you have materially improved the lives of your family? And isn’t flying under your own power worth the occasional dead carcass? But we pride ourselves at knowing our customers’ minds, sir, and in you I see a need for tranquility.”

“As a lobster?”

“As a gentle creature that exists in an endlessly engaging world of color and motion. You eat, you sleep, you drift. No responsibilities, no deadlines, no pressure. A visit to the seashore, but from the other side, as it were.”

“That’s what you see for me?”

“That’s what I see for your credit rating, yes sir.”

“And the pot?”

“TransmogriVacations guarantees you will be placed far from the reach of any humans, sir. There will be no pots.”

Parkleman considered. Everyone he knew had already transmogrified at least twice. James in his office had been a silverback gorilla last year, Carl in Marketing had pictures of himself as a 20-foot python on his desk, and every summer Mr. Bruteby came back to brag about the stunningly beautiful animals he’d run down and eaten.

Mentioning his plans had been a mistake, though. Mr. Bruteby had laughed long and hard when Parkleman had put in for his vacation, and loudly congratulated him since being even the tiniest, most helpless animal had to be an improvement over being Parkleman.

Parkleman felt his face heating up again as he remembered the pitying look Miss Dabishy had given him as he skulked out. Even if he spent two weeks as whatever lived underneath dung beetle dung, it would be worth it to get away from Mr. Bruteby.

“I’ll take it,” he said firmly, and he realized with a start that he was actually looking forward to it.

“You won’t regret this, sir,” the mage said. “What’s a vacation for, if not for doing what you can’t do the rest of the year?”

There was paperwork. There were rituals involving chalklines, powders, and rare unguents. There were gods to be appeased. There was a final waiver. There was a flash of light.

And he was a lobster.

And it was everything the mage said it would be.

Parkleman almost forgot to be amazed that he was breathing water and had somehow misplaced 98% of his body mass. Secure in a small cave under an outcropping with plenty of easily accessible food, he sat and simply stared at the brilliant colors and vivid patterns of the fish as they swooped past in endless variety.

The sea was so full! Vast cities of coral reefs and sponges dotted the ocean floor creating intricate labyrinths he could explore for hours. He spent an entire afternoon watching the mesmerizing undulations of a clump of kelp, fascinated, as sunlight dappled down from the surface far above.

And the constant movement of the ocean itself was incredibly calming. He felt nearly weightless, floating in the all-encompassing embrace of the water, intimately connected to everything around him for miles.

There is a freedom to be found by giving yourself over to something far more powerful than yourself, and he gave himself utterly.

No responsibilities, no deadlines, no pressure.

Parkleman was completely at peace.

A lasting, soul-deep peace, one he would take with him back to a new and better life, he could tell. Already the petty office politics seemed so–

KLOMP!

Fish scattered as Mr. Bruteby swam past, crunching a last few bits of Parkleman in his powerful teeth and reveling in the feel of unstoppable force. What’s a vacation for, he thought happily, if not for doing what you can’t do the rest of the year?

And the shark charged off into the deep, reveling in predatory bliss.

————————————————————————————

Here's the story I did for the first challenge, where I came in 5th by what I choose to believe was a very narrow margin.

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Put Not Your Trust in Banks

by C. A. Bridges

He heard the terrible crashing sound, and the screams, and the rapidly approaching clatter.

Nestled deep in the darkness, the old stagecoach breathed a deep sigh and waited for the inevitable, which arrived moments later in a sudden slice of harsh white light.

“C-coach?” came the voice, sweet, high and shaking.

“Go away.”

The pig pushed her way into the closet and past the luggage to find him. “Coach! You have to help us!” She spun around to look behind her, making a noise like… there is no noise quite like a full piggy bank. She sloshed, metallically.

“It’s Christmas time, this is what happens,” he grumbled, and began to roll backwards to hide behind the shoes. “I’d advise closing your eyes. It’ll be over faster.”

“They killed Bugs! They… they broke him open and then they… they laughed, and…”

“Well, what the hell did you expect,” he asked scornfully. “I been their daddy’s bank all his life, and his daddy’s before him, and it’s always the same. They fill you up, little by little, and then one day they want something more than they want you, and—“ The pig stepped aside. Behind her was a baby piglet, barely big enough to hold a dollar in change, visibly shivering with terror.

The first pig said, quietly, “And yet you’re still here. Well, I want to be an old bank, too, even if I have to be a mean bastard like you. Show me how. We’re not leaving until you do.”

The stagecoach closed his eyes. He counted to ten. He opened his eyes. The pigs stood silently, tears rolling down both their faces.

“Fine. Go away. Far from here, where they won’t find you, or can’t reach you. When their parents get home they’ll get the money out of you without breaking anything. All you have to do is hold out for a few hours.”

The problem became apparent immediately. The larger pig simply couldn’t move quietly. Every tread clinked, every movement rattled. The smaller one could move across the floor in careful silence but the larger one’s daintiest step still sounded like someone throwing handfuls of coins into a coffee cup.

The stagecoach thought about the children opening his closet door to find the three of them, brimming with cash. And he thought about the hammers.

“Dammit,” he said. “Get on.”

Inside their room the younger children were still digging through drawers and looking under beds, hunting for their missing piggy banks with understandable confusion while the older child mocked them and counted his newly reacquired coins. The stagecoach eased silently past with the larger pig balanced on top. She was holding herself as still as possible, which helped when they rolled past the older boy’s open door and saw the broken Bugs.

He was still recognizable as a rabbit, but only barely. His body was shattered beyond repair. A massive crack split his face, which, horribly, still grinned. Porcelain clinked loudly as the pig began to shake.

“Stop it,” the stagecoach hissed. Behind them the smaller pig bravely trundled along, only glancing once at the shards.

Finally they reached the pool enclosure, where moonlight on the water threw dancing shadows on the walls. “They won’t think to come out here,” the stagecoach said, panting. “And the water’ll cover any more noises you make.”

He rolled carefully over the threshold, mindful of the rubber stopper in his belly, and immediately ducked against the wall. The pig eased herself to the ground with a loud clink. They both froze.

The sounds of child mayhem continued.

They both breathed a weary sigh.

And then the smaller pig tripped on the threshold and rolled past them, clattering across the deck. Its legs waved uselessly in the air.

“Petunia!” the pig screamed, and took off in an ear-splitting charge. The echoes of the violently jingling coins inside her bounced off the tile and reverberated, over and over, a clarion call for the greedy and murderous.

“No, dammit, they’ll—“ the stagecoach yelled, and stopped dead.

The children were at the sliding glass door.

They were looking at the piggy banks, the piglet on its side and the larger one next to it, helpless.

And they had hammers.

“How’d they get out here,” the small girl asked. She turned to the older boy. “You hid them out here, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” said the smaller boy. “Were you gonna steal our money?”

The older boy protested. There was a brief scuffle and then, honor restored, the children advanced on the piggy banks, swinging the deadly hammers in practice arcs. From where he was hiding, the old bank could plainly see the terrified looks on the pigs’ painted faces, and he saw the older boy looking around for more. It was only a matter of time before all three banks were open, permanently.

Quickly he rolled back over the threshold and felt the edge catch the rubber. And then he pushed.

The smaller girl was holding the smaller pig down, hammer raised, when the young boy gasped and pointed. There was a porcelain stagecoach skittering across the floor, spilling a river of gleaming silver dollars, far more than the contents of the other two banks combined.

The children screamed happily and ran to gather all the merrily spinning coins. The older boy picked up the stagecoach, shook it a few times to get the last few dollars out, and then set it down by the pigs.

“This is how you become an old bank,” the stagecoach told them, sadly.

The pigs beamed at him, their eyes shining. “By sacrificing yourself for others?” the larger pig asked.

And then the hammers came down, and their smiles shattered into a million painted pieces as the children reached in to take that money as well.

“No,” he said to himself. “By being a mean but easily opened bastard like me." And he rolled back, unnoticed, to his dark and quiet closet.

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993 words.

There's a bit of history here. My dad had such a stagecoach bank, although his was metal, heavy, and had actual rolling wheels. I used to sneak into his closet, dig it out and play with it. Later on I learned how to get it open (metal hatch on the bottom, key in his sock drawer) and start snitching silver dollars one by one, which got me comics and Slurpees for months. When he finally discovered his nearly empty bank he… let's say that story wouldn't be "suspense." Possibly "horror." And certainly "cautionary tale."

So all of the entrants were split into 20 groups, with a different word for each group, and we all wrote (my word was "heaven").

So the first round now has been judged, and the best 15 stories of each group have been chosen, and now everyone gets to vote on their favorites out of each group.

And of the 15 chosen in my group, 2 of them are mine.

And now it's time for you to vote. I'd appreciate it if you voted for mine (although there are some excellent competitors there). You can even vote for both of mine, if you've a mind to.

Go to the first round page and click on Group 1. Mine are the top two stories in the list, the ones by Chris Bridges. Vote!

Voting goes on till next Monday night. The writers of the 5 top stories of each group will go on to the finals, and I'd sure like to be there. I hear it's nice. Thanks!

My group got the word "HEAVEN." Here's what I submitted (titles added for fun afterward, not included in submission):

SUBMISSION #1: "Watching the Fur Fly""

"I don't think 'All Dogs Go to Heaven' was a suggestion, Bill."
"Just keep feeding me cartridges," Bill said. "This is gonna take a while."

SUBMISSION #2: "Sacrificial Yammering"

"What do you mean I can't come in," he said. "I gave up everything to get to heaven."
"Exactly," said St. Peter. "You're too boring now."

SUBMISSION #3: "Afterlife Is a Bitch, and Then You're Dead"

Listen: Sometimes Heaven and Hell swap, as a lesson to the saved and damned souls alike.
Where will you go if you die tonight? Depends…

Granted, they're more like scenes than actual beginning-middle-resolution stories, but those are a pain to cram into a tiny box.

On June 1st, 15 winning stories from each group get posted for online voting, and the winners progress to round two. I expect slavish, devoted voting for me from all of you.