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A runaway trolley car is racing downhill, and I alone see the danger. If I hurry, I can switch the car to the parallel track, maybe, if the juncture is outfitted with such a switch, and if I understand switches. Sunlight brightens the shop windows along the steep avenue under a fresh spring sky as blue as painters tape, and I and my philosophical girl friend, with nothing on our agenda but coffee and petits fours and late-day lovemaking and teleological nothingness, had been strolling arm in arm to the cafe, but now this! As if I weren’t already pre-occupied with a personal ethical dilemma! If no one diverts it, the trolley will surely crash into a vanload of already blind and misguided gospel singers, but if diverted won’t it mow down the crew of work release inmates on the parallel track? Similarly, and more urgently, should I continue to deceive my girl friend about how I spend my Thursday nights, or would the consequences of coming clean dangerously disauthenticate her? In any event, I’m not sure I could reach the switch in time. The anguished pungency of deeply distressed coffee beans beckons us to the café, but what’s this I hear? The mournful strains of Motherless Child…from the felons on the parallel track! Something must be done. A fat man, startlingly fat (Is he fat enough to derail the trolley completely?) is tilting heavily forward from the curb toward the tracks. With a nudge he might save everyone. Except himself of course and whoever pushed him. For no one nudges the fat man and sleeps well afterwards. I will tell her, but probably not today. Maybe Friday. She deserves to be happy with her pastry. I bend down to loosen my too-tight laces and listen for the crash.
Original Copyright © March 15, 2007
Revised Copyright © March 17, 2026
I had been seeing her, always at the same place, always muttering to the same or similar ducks, for weeks before I ventured to speak to her. If I had not had crackers in my pocket I would never have begun our little commerce with an offer of food, but as I stretched my hand across the impossible gulf between us there they were, each a simple orange square, pierced by fork points, twinned with another by a swipe of peanut glue, six such pairs arranged in three ranks of two files each, edge to edge, back to indistinguishable lightly salted back, girdled in cellophane. They had been meant for the dogs, who watched in alarm. Think I can’t get crackers? she asked me. Thinks I can’t get crackers! Not bothering to unwrap them then, I dispensed the packet to the dogs, who tumbled over one another and crushed the crackers to crumbs. Her crew and she have burglarized my home repeatedly since, and so haphazardly I no longer lock it for fear they’ll shatter the rest of the windows as thanks. She leads them in, as she first led them to my door, and if asked why, I suspect her explanation would involve the offer of food. We curl together now, at night, the dogs and I, sometimes in bed, more often beneath it, and huddle head to tail or paw to head or hand and listen for the door. I’ve moved their bowls upstairs. They’re hungry and unwell but rarely vicious, she and those she brings. Whatever made me think I could give a little, without offering all, I regret having thought, but I’m happy when everyone gets a little something, and that the dogs and I have a bed and a home where visitors feel welcome.
Copyright ©1997
Very Short Novels 
Thank you so much, anhinga, but I wouldn't want to try it without the other 199. —David
Why, thank you, brother. It's wonderful to see you here. :) —David
All you need is 100 words to make an emotional impact. Touching.
Brilliant, brother. Just simply brilliant.
This Very Short Novel has a strong resemblance to Simple Lessons of War from almost 20 years ago, but is…