There's one I read somewhere and still remember. "Baby shoes for sale. Never used."

I love this story actually. Legend has it that Hemingway and a group of fellow authors were out having a drink discussing their craft and all the jazz. During said discussion, Hemingway claims that he can write a complete, moving story in just six words. All those gathered are incredulous and jeer at him, so he proceeds to bet them each a drink. Hemingway then grabs a napkin and writes out "For sale: baby shoes. Never used." and passes it around the table. In turn, each of them read the napkin and concede how dramatically wrong they had been; and big burly drunk that Hemingway was, he collects on a table full of drinks 

I had a handful of stories I had been saving up for the day this thread got started and now I can't seem to find them on my computer. So, off the top of my head:

She pressed her lips to my forehead and crawled into bed next to me. They were just as cold as the last time I buried her.

I loved First Law, but his stand-alones left me very disappointed. He obviously likes to whole character inversion thing, but a single book doesnt seem like enough time to build up a perception of a character and then flip it over on its head

Only stand alone of his I've managed to read so far is The Heroes. I read it out of sequence without knowing, but from the small bit that I took in, it did follow that character model you described, but I think it worked out slightly better than described only because the novel builds on exposition one should have collected from the First Law trilogy. I have Best Served Cold on my shelf, even though I know it should have been read before The Heroes.

As cliche as Logen Ninefingers ended up being, I want the Bloody Nine. I want broken bones and blood in the snow and single combat. I found I really enjoyed Abercrombie's small combat descriptions.

The other two POV characters from the series didn't really catch me the same way. That said, I liked Black Dow all throughout his page time

Honestly, there was such a gap that I thought Camlost had purposely made us come to our own conclusion, but would have left some type of clue upstream.

That was kind of what I was chasing after all along. I don't know that it necessarily worked out the way that I had intended, but it got a lot of attention otherwise; and they're not all wrong.

A few days later from having written this, I can see some faults, even more so than was pointed out lol. You're a forgiving, if not quiet crowd.

There are a few things I'd like to change about the post previous to your submissions, and I'll do so in time, but lots of things distract me between most posts. Eventually I'll find time to either update or repost

My last query is, where are the rest of the poor fiction submissions?

Lol, how did you guess Nazis, GJ?

Camlost, I got that he set the fire himself. But my mind went fantastic before it went historically villainous

I had thought to go occult at one point, but I've been working on something else a little longer that deals with that area. It felt too similar when I was teasing out whether it would work or not. Lol, I realize that none of you would have known, but it felt like cheating to me

When I was a child my parents used to take me to my grandparent's house on weekends. It was an old Victorian-style country home in the foothills outside Anytown, America. It had a long dirt road approaching it and an old barn behind. On two sides the property strayed off into woodlands and was bordered by a thick stream on the third. It was idyllic, the literal embodiment of the literary pastoral.

I used to lay out on their verandah playing with toy cars or trying desperately to keep my crayons between the lines while they silently finished their breakfast in the shade. They would often sit for hours afterwards drinking their tea, seldom making a sound.

In my youthful naivete I had assumed it was because they had nothing more to say to each other, that they had been together so long that they no longer had any stories to share that they didn't already know. But I grew up, and so too did my notion of that silence between them.

By the time I was in my mid-teens my parents were on the verge of divorce. It was easy to avoid the constantly raised voices and angry arguing by hiding at friends' places or the library in the evenings after school, but the approaching summer posed a different problem altogether. I found refuge at my grandparent's house. It became my escape from the domestic turmoil that had begun to characterize of my family life.

My grandfather put me to work immediately and without hesitation. He taught me how to split logs for fire, how to fire a rifle, and how to track game for food. And in the evenings my grandmother would take up the mantle and show me how to mend clothing, how to knot rope, and prepare livestock. Despite the long days, my summers seemed to vanish like the autumn sunsets.

Although, looking back on them they were full of lessons and much learning. Having grown out of my childhood obliviousness, I discovered that besides their indulgence of a long breakfast, my grandparents were rarely idle, they forever had some project that needed attending and they seemed to move in perfect concert with each other despite an apparent lack of communication.

It was during this time that I had come to alter my former belief regarding the pervasive silence in which the two of them lived. Where as before I had believed they knew each other so well they had nothing left to say, I now firmly believed it was because they knew each other so well that they needn't say anything at all. I fancied they knew each other's minds so well that words were simply wasted breath. And I held that belief for many years.

Until the day I was required to take ownership of my grandparent's property. It was many decades after those summers of which I held such fond memories. Their will had specified it be passed on to their son, and had my father not hit the bottle following the divorce and fallen into the back of a cop car or had my mother not hit an airport and fallen off the grid, then the old house and the plot on which it sat might not have fallen into my hands.

I took a summer off from work and moved into the house to get affairs in order before putting the house up for sale. Even in their absence something of that silence that had come to define them in my mind still seemed to reverberate throughout the empty house. I had initially found it warmly nostalgic, but at some point as the weeks wore on it began to unsettle me, enough to sometimes raise the hairs on the back of my neck. The feeling grew and unable to shake it, I began to hasten my efforts.

My plan was to pack up anything worth keeping, sell what I could, and donate the rest. That was until one evening I accidentally discovered a loose panel within one of the closets while I was clearing it out. Puzzled, i removed the panel to reveal a low wooden stairway that crawled up and out of sight.

The fading sunlight filtered through the wooden siding of the house in places along the stairway's length, enough that I was able to make out a track of shuffling footprints in the thick blanket of dust that otherwise covered everything else in the narrow passage. The idea that my grandparents knew of, let alone used, this passage seemed entire incongruous with the lifestyle I had come to cherish about them. Imagining my grandfather hunched low and climbing the old stairs had seemed to finally confirm the absurdity of such in my mind, so I let my bafflement grow to curiosity and made my way up the stairs.

The stars were out by the time local fire control managed to quell the fire. When they had arrived already half of the house had succumbed to the flames. Before they could even install their pump in the well, a large section of the second floor collapsed into the first leaving little worth saving. The horizon had begun to take on its own orange by the time they had finished.

All the while I sat staring blankly from the back of an ambulance, paramedic blanket around my shoulders, ruminating on that which I had found at the top of those stairs. The very notion of it all might still seem impossible if not for those journals of dreadfully familiar handwriting. I had watched the flames eat those leather bound chests filled with stacks of letters and documents before calling for help.

After that, I sat silent the rest of the night through. That silence grew in me all the while smoke obscured the stars above and the sun came to rise on ashes. It grew until there was no room left; and that is when I finally came to understand the silence that hung between my grandparents. It was the silence of things that must never be said.

(It feels a bit rough to me, disjointed in some places, but I hadn't posted in a while; feedback ought to help smooth it out a bit too)

Scientists say as rare a phenomena as it is it has happened at least two other times in our past. That's what their projections tell them, and they tell us.

Around mid afternoon, a small, or so I'm told, object composed of rock and ice entered into an impossibly narrow corridor of space between the earth and the moon. By some miracle of astronomy or chance, this object has traced a path directly between and along the moon's orbit, obstructing all but a silver halo from the sky. They're calling it a Black Moon.

When the proximity of this celestial object was first brought to public attention, doomsday prophecies abounded, despite assurances of non-collision. I have little to say on those apocalyptic ramblings and the science is mostly above me, but one thing I can attest is that there is an empty hole where I buried my dog last year and the cemetery down the road is uncharacteristically loud.

I felt like I had been watching all season to find a moment in which Mr. Robot interacts with someone other than Elliot, else it fall precisely into the same pattern as Fight Club. Now I'm not so sure though. I thought he had, but I might be wrong. On top of that, I think the second season should be quite a bit more exciting given everything that we've seen, and I feel that might be saying a bit. I think the stakes have been raised given the last episode.

I guess the only thing I'm hesitating about is
You're right though, they do make an effort to point out that Elliot experienced injury during the old home scene

Open boxes littered the room, adding more to the disarray than the organization they were meant to bestow. Sarah dragged out the last drawer of the dresser and unceremoniously poured its contents into one of the misshapen boxes she'd salvaged for moving. Old socks and ripped jeans tumbled into the tired cardboard cube with a soft thump, a lamentation for having been disturbed after long disuse. She gave the drawer one last shake and was confused to find a weathered envelope flop out on top of the pile as if it had been secreted away long ago.

Curiosity swelling, she set the drawer back in its track and retrieved the letter. She recognized the handwriting immediately, the involuntary breath of surprise leaving her chill like an old hearth left to ash. The script was long and thin and crept across the face of the envelope at a hard angle. She traced her fingers along it wistfully, turned it over in her hands, and was halted by a single dry watermark on its sealed face. A tear long forgotten. As if having found it erased all the days between, Sarah remembered that single drop of deliberation, of hardened resolve and cooled longing, before she had hidden the envelop in her bottom drawer.

She turned it over again and recited the words she had always known and dreaded may come true: Of all the things I have ever asked you in earnest or in jest, ignore them for this: Do not open this until you have forgotten what it is. She had forgotten, yet she had known as soon as she had her hands upon it. Hands that now trembled slightly at their discovery and an old wound uncovered.

The letter had been given to her by a man to which she had once been very close. Sarah had always found the notion of soulmates foolishly wishful and mathematically improbable, but for all that, he could have been one. They had shared something she had not recognized at the time and had not found since. In a way they were bound. The crumbling and dissolve of their romantic relationship had only made room for a sad friendship which neither was willing to relinquish. For years following they would find themselves falling into those familiar patterns when together and would part cursing themselves for having fallen into them and for having enjoyed it. They each made their efforts to move on, found other lovers, distanced themselves from each other, and still chance or fate would find them within each others company again.

That is, until one day Edison had arranged to meet with her and presented her the selfsame letter she now feared to open. He had seemed elsewhere and revealed that he would soon be moving elsewhere. She hadn't been able to pinpoint it then, but recalling that evening now she felt pained: not for having gone through it, but for something contained therein. She had known him better than any man before or since. She could trace the tracks of his mind and follow the paths of his heart as if they were her own, but that night she felt as if her every step had faltered. Only now, all these years later, having gone through it herself, could she recognize that pain. It was the wounded perseverance of a broken man.

Gooseflesh now prickled the back of Sarah's neck and she repressed a shudder, settling for a deep sigh of preparation as she made to open the envelope. She broke the seal and ran her thumbnail down the seam as delicately as handling a treasured artifact, for it might as well been given the history that surrounded it. She carefully removed the folded letter and placed the envelope aside, uncertain yet whether she'd want to keep it.

The letter was still as clear and crisp as it must have been the day he had written it. She found the paper strikingly white in comparison to the aged envelope and noted as she unfolded it that the creases had not been softened by time. Sarah hesitated a moment as she regarded the brief script, reminiscing of all those sweet letters he had given her before.

After an interminable moment, she shook herself from her fond memories, steadied her hands and began to read Edison's last unspoken words:
   
There is so much I shouldn't say, but for too long I've held my tongue, and while I will not say all, there are things I cannot let go unsaid. I learned more from you than you ever taught me. Because of you I've known heartbreak, and it's a beautiful thing. I discovered, too late, what it is, and how to feel passion. Yet still in the times of our meetings I cannot but feel that something is missing or yet happened. May those cold nights never find you Sarah.

   Tragically yours,
      Edison

P.S. I hope to hear from you in like kind. If I never receive a letter I'll take your silence as a salve in itself and think of you all the more bitter-sweetly.

Sarah couldn't say at what point in the letter she had stopped breathing, but having reached its conclusion she took in a breath as if drowning. Despite it, she felt empty. All these years his profession had sat collecting dust in her drawer. She felt once more her bitter resignation at his abrupt leaving, the angry determination required to overcome her unwillingness to forget him. She had forced herself to bury anything the two of them had had in a desperate attempt to move on; and here in her hands she held the truth that he had done the same, but had left her a shovel.

A single tear dropped like a feather to blot the paper between her hands, a hopeful echo to the weary mark that marred the envelope face. She couldn't have stopped it if she had tried. She smiled at the thought of that. Smiled at the thought of it all; the longing that had appeared to be ashes, but was revealed to be quiet coals. She wiped a second tear from her cheek before it could fall and gathered up the envelope and letter.

She crossed the room, opened the window, and resolutely tossed the two into the wanton breeze. After all, if she were to disappear, it simply would not do for her fiance to find them amongst her things.