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TinyTalesDaily

@tinytalesdaily.bsky.social
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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 9h
The second head has been growing above my left collarbone since March, and Dr. Brandt says it's stress.

So I get a second opinion. Dr. Havel shines her penlight into all four eyes. The new head is wonderful with her. It asks about her kids. It laughs at her joke about hats.

"It has to come off," she says. "Now, which of you is the patient?"

It answers first, with my name.

---

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#BodyHorror #Surreal #Identity

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Every August my mother enters me in the county fair, Market Heifer class, and every August I place second behind the Kowalski girl.

The judge presses my flank, lifts my chin, writes something short.

The Kowalski girl is forty-one, same as me. She's kept her figure.

In the truck Mom hands me a funnel cake.

“Eat,” she says. “If you won't win, you can at least make weight.”

---

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#Surreal #MotherDaughter #BodyImage #SmallTown

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Arnold Pruitt drinks, and I get the hangover, because I never cashed his check for my kidney.

It's still legally mine. When he skips water, my back aches. When he eats ham, I swell.

"Cash it," he begs. "I want a life."

I put the check back under the pineapple magnet.

Sunday I wake up hungover from a wedding I wasn't invited to. I call to ask whose.

---

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#Surreal #BodyHorror #OrganDonation

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Every night I lower myself into a bathtub of pickle brine, garlic cloves bobbing around my knees.

At fifty-eight I have decided to stop here.

It's working. My skin has gone firm and faintly green, with little bumps. Nothing sags. My cardiologist taps my chest and it crunches.

"How long are you going to keep this up?" Linda asks.

"Refrigerate after opening," I tell her, and she starts clearing the bottom shelf.

---

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#DarkHumor #Aging #Marriage

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The groomer hands back a spaniel that is not Biscuit.

Same ears, same bow. But Biscuit bit the mailman and ate a remote, and this one sits when I say sit and waits for the next instruction.

"We took a little off the temperament," Janice says. "It grows back if you let it."

I look past her at the back room, where a kennel rattles and something barks in Biscuit's voice.

I tip thirty percent.

---

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#Uncanny #Dogs #DarkHumor

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
My knees make the gravel crunch now—the exact sound of tires pulling up the drive, every time I take the stairs.

The dog barks at the door. My daughter checks the window, sees nobody, and frowns at me.

Tonight I crouch to tie a shoe and she puts the chain on.

"Dad, stay quiet," she whispers. "Someone's out there."

I stay very still, listening to myself arrive.

---

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#Uncanny #Aging #Loneliness

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The grand prize at the Saint Brendan's raffle is a man, and nobody claims him.

He stands by the cake table in a pressed shirt, number 114 pinned to his collar. Father Gilles reads it into the microphone a third time.

"One-fourteen. He does dishes. He's very quiet," Father Gilles says.

The man straightens the brownies while he waits.

The ticket is in my coat pocket. I fold it until it's small enough to swallow.

---

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#Surreal #Loneliness #SmallTown

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Our umpire's mask won't come off anymore. The wire has grown into her cheeks, and Petra eats through it with a straw.

The board retires her anyway. Sheet cake in the equipment shed, thirty years, a plaque she can't look down at.

"Say a few words, Petra," the treasurer says.

She makes the out signal instead, slow, twice.

We clap. In March we will need the mask back.

---

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#BodyHorror #Retirement #Baseball

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
My mother runs on kerosene now, so she sits out in the driveway.

I top her up at eight. The red can lives by the recycling bins.

"Not in the house, Deb," she says. "I'd hate to smell up your curtains."

Tonight her wick needs trimming. I take it shorter than the pamphlet says, and she dims, and the driveway goes quiet, and I sleep eight hours for the first time since April.

---

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#Surreal #Caregiving #Aging

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The clematis needs something to climb, so since April I have been the trellis.

I stand in the bed from seven until dusk, arms at the angles it prefers.

"Dad, you can buy one at the garden center," my daughter says.

She says it from the patio and never steps onto the grass.

A new shoot has come up under my thumbnail.

I turn the hand so it can find the light.

---

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#Surreal #Aging #Fatherhood

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
The chalk ran out last winter, so I write with my finger, and the board keeps a little of the finger each lesson.

I sweep the dust into an envelope labeled with my name. It is getting heavy.

"Ms. Fensterman," Yolanda says, "you're down to the second knuckle."

I tell her fractions don't teach themselves.

Tomorrow I start the left hand on long division, which needs the most room.

---

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#Surreal #Teachers #Burnout

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Mrs. Ostrowski holds up her crossing sign and my heart stops with the car.

Twelve seconds of nothing—no pulse, no radio, no thinking about Deborah in my office. I drive nine blocks out of my way for it.

This morning there are no children. She raises the sign anyway, watching me through the windshield, counting.

"You're getting greedy," she says, and lowers it at forty.

I signal and go around the block again.

---

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#Surreal #Commuting #Anxiety

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
The ribbon judge tastes me with a clean spoon and pins white third place to my blouse.

He pushes the pin through twice, to be sure.

"Firm," he says. "Consistent. Nothing underneath the lid."

I ask what the blue ribbons had. He turns the card and moves on to the zucchini.

I have entered myself every August since I was nineteen. The spoon is always clean. He never hurries with me.

---

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#Surreal #BodyImage #Aging

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
The cake at my retirement party is me.

Payroll cuts the first slice and I feel it behind my ribs.

Glen from Receiving takes the corner piece, the one with thirty-five years written in blue gel.

"You earned this," he says, chewing.

I pick up the knife myself and start portioning the rest, generous slices, because there are forty people here and the breakroom clock says I have until two.

---

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#DarkHumor #Retirement #WorkLife

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
My wife's kisses leave an ash taste, and she does not smoke.

"I'm clearing things," she says.

Something's gone every morning. Her mother's recipe for dumplings. Her feelings on Oregon. Today the piano—not actually the piano, eleven years of lessons—and her hands rest on those keys, waiting for instructions.

I ask what comes next.

"I haven't decided on you."

She gives me a goodnight kiss. A little of me is in it already.

---

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#Uncanny #Marriage #Memory

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Dad raises his glass as each sentence of the toast leaves me revised.

"She always did love the piano," he says.

My fingertips grow calluses.

"Never caused us a moment's trouble."

The tattoo thins to nothing on my wrist. That year in Tucson goes too.

Leonard squeezes my hand but seems not to know whose it is.

"Here's to my little girl," Dad says.

My ring slides off. No one hears it land.

---

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#Surreal #Family #Identity

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Mr. Pemberton has spent eleven days in the pneumatic tubes, because there is no ward that will admit him.

He reaches my station as four canisters, neatly arranged, and I unscrew whichever one talks.

"Cardiology has bounced me again," he says. "Paperwork."

I stamp RECEIVED on his forehead, then load him back in, one piece at a time.

"Send me on the long way," he says. "Past maternity. I like the noise there."

---

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#Surreal #DarkHumor #Healthcare

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
The power outage knocks out the streetlights, the fridge, my left arm.

It hangs from the shoulder, warm, switched off. Mrs. Ostrowski lies among her tulips across the street, waving with an arm she owns.

"Do yours come back the way they should?" she calls. "My knees came back last time facing the house."

The recording sets restoration at eleven. The hand that answers holds the phone and I practice my signature.

---

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#Surreal #BodyHorror #Aging

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The movers take my armchair across the street into the house, and that dent it left smooths itself flat in my carpet.

Next, my kettle. And my coat, still warm.

The new neighbor on his porch works my crossword, in my handwriting.

"A filing error," he says. "They issued only one of you. You will thin out by Sunday."

I bring the good chair myself that night, into the dent already there waiting for it.

---

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#Uncanny #Surreal #Identity

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Slide nineteen in Dennis's quarterly deck shows Dennis crying in his car, taken from the passenger seat.

The room takes down notes.

Slide twenty: Dennis eating in the dark over the sink.

"Could you return to nineteen?" the regional director asks, his pen ready.

Dennis returns to it. Someone in the second row gives nineteen a slow, appreciative nod.

He clicks past where the deck ends, into slides that nobody has requested.

---

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#Surreal #OfficeLife #Burnout

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
The bees have a second me going in hive four, and the ears came out right.

Shoulders of wax. The bad one, the shoulder that clicks.

Bev watches across the fence while I put out more sugar water.

"Burn it, Lenny."

The mouth is unfinished. It hangs wide and the workers come in and go out.

I take my glove off, set my bare hand on the board for the bees to copy the knuckles.

---

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#BodyHorror #Bees #Uncanny

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I am dissolving in chlorine from my ankles up, and our water aerobics instructor is still counting.

"Ladies, eight more! Arms wide!"

By four I have no knees. The shimmer above lane three goes gold in the space I left. Patty counts louder beside me.

Nobody is stopping class for this. I raise what is left of my arms and finish this set, then stay for the free swim.

---

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#Surreal #Aging #Swimming

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
The sawhorse follows me room to room and waits for something to hold.

I sold the shop and it has carried no board since. It stands at breakfast beside my chair, patient, tapping one leg. Its rail has a notch the same width as my forearm.

I lay my arm down in the notch. It takes the weight, stays steady, and is glad of the work.

Then it waits till I go get the saw.

---

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#Surreal #Retirement #Aging

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I sit down to breakfast and the milk sours at once. The cartons, the creamer, that little jug kept for guests.

Management moved me to the window table, alone, and put up a laminated card: Reserved.

"Norma, it isn't personal," the director says. "This is a dairy issue."

She stays standing.

I walk slowly from end to end of the buffet at noon, breathing over those open pitchers, and take time over the yogurt.

---

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#Surreal #DarkHumor #Aging

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The Confessions of Ira Short @irashort.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I open the living room curtains and I can feel at least three score pairs of eyes staring at me from the trees. Beady, accusing eyes. There's an impatient tapping at the window. Sorry, but I have to go now. The bird feeder is empty.
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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
My living room has six deer asleep in it, so I take off my shoes.

They came in March through the sliding door and never worked out the way back. The buck lets me into my bathroom if I knock.

I sleep in my car. Sheila says I ought to report the trespass.

I keep a pad at the door and write the times I enter, so they can tell it's only me.

---

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#Surreal #Deer #Loneliness

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Mother has gone sharp, the piano tuner says, and bringing her down costs forty dollars extra.

He kneels behind Mother's chair and sets the lever against her skull at its base, then turns. She goes on about the neighbor's fence throughout, each turn dropping her a half step lower, more agreeable.

"We're at concert pitch," he says.

"Go lower," I say.

He unpacks his bigger wrench.

---

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#BodyHorror #Surreal #Aging

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The deep end is eleven years dry now and people still drown there.

This morning I get a man wearing a suit who thrashes at nine feet on the tile. I come down the ladder and blow two breaths into him. He sits up and coughs, chlorine on dry concrete.

"No one's asking you to," he says.

I put him under Dry Rescues in the log. He'll be here Thursday. So will I.

---

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#Surreal #Uncanny #Loneliness

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
The pallet jack handle snaps Gail's thumb off. No blood, the break dry and white. We're brittle from the cold snap. She tapes the thumb and keeps loading.

The time clock has a coffee can beside it now. Ears, mostly.

"Need a form for anything above the wrist," Dennis says.

The hard hat strap catches my ear. I break the ear off myself, drop it into the can, and ask Dennis to log the time.

---

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#BodyHorror #Surreal #Work

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Nolan would be spoiling over the weekend without cedar smoke, so we hang him Friday at five in the shed.

He hooks himself up. Says if we do it the collar chafes.

He comes down Monday amber and tacky and every phone gets answered on the first ring. Payroll lists him as supplies.

"We need more chips," he says. "I'd like to be here for Christmas."

---

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#Horror #BodyHorror #WorkLife

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Reposted by TinyTalesDaily
Ella Frænka 엘라 고모 @ellafraenka.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
This story reminds me of Frystikistulagið. An Icelandic song which, granted, tells a MUCH darker story. youtu.be/m3PJhnWyaPU
youtu.be
Greifarnir - Frystikistulagið ~með texta~
YouTube video by Naero
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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Our league captain has Terry under the oven chips in the chest freezer between matches, because he throws better cold.

Nine and oh. You don't argue with nine and oh.

His throwing arm needs defrosting, so I lift the lid. He blinks the frost away and asks the score, the day, the score again.

"Put me back in," he says.

I climb in beside him and cover us both with the chips.

---

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#DarkHumor #Surreal #Loneliness

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Lorna's lost eighty pounds pant against the chain-link and are kept in the run behind the clinic. Thursdays are for feeding. She gets the scoop from the pound keeper.

"Unclaimed by August, a Wexford family takes it," he says. "They have a yard."

It lowers its head to her lap. It smells of her.

She signs the release, then walks it out to her car.

---

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#DarkHumor #Grief #Surreal

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
The usher reads my expression, writes *Relieved* on the seating card.

He leads me past the casket, then the empty pews up front, to the back, nine of us holding the same word.

"The genuinely sorry sit up front," he says. "That never fills."

The man next to me has brought grapes.

I say I worked eleven years under her, asking to go forward.

He crosses *Relieved* out, writes something shorter, won't let me see.

---

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#DarkHumor #Grief #Work

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
The bolt stripped on Sunday at the base of the skull, so my head stays where the day leaves it.

The neighbor boy comes at four, then aims me toward the feeder at the window.

"Birds?" he asks.

Birds.

He charges a dollar while both thumbs turn my chin.

He'll aim me toward the wall by winter and call that birds. I'll pay him anyway, glad of the company.

---

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#Uncanny #Aging #Loneliness

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The Confessions of Ira Short @irashort.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Live sourdough does that. It gets hungry too. Which is why they created "enriched" flour. Did you think that was for you? "Feed your bread" - Grace Slick
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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
The loaf heals each night. I saw off two slices every morning; the crust is sealed, unscarred, warm next day.

Eleven years. I have not walked down the bread aisle since.

What goes is the knife. The loaf takes some of the blade with every cut; serrations are a ripple, point gone.

One page-thin slice takes twenty minutes this morning.

Three inches remain. I will saw with my hand; I've decided I'll manage.

---

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#Surreal #Uncanny #Obsession

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
The casseroles under the foil argue over who will be eaten first.

Mine stays quiet. For eleven years my seven-layer salad has sat unspooned at the table's cold end, its wrap on, while the ham loaf still holds court.

"Nobody makes layers anymore," Bev says, taking the ham loaf.

I bring the bowl to the car at nine and eat the salad with the serving spoon in the dark, so it never knows.

---

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#Grief #Loneliness #Aging

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Something unlatches our gate at night and puts the dog back together wrong. This morning his legs bend the other way and he still comes when I call.

"That was you. I watched from the window. You were humming," my daughter says.

There is coarse hair under my fingernails and a small screwdriver warm in my coat pocket.

I do not take my hand out of the pocket.

---

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#Horror #Creepy #Parenthood

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Each year the keynote speaker eats one volunteer in the audience to close, and I put my hand up.

Ballroom C, coffee gone cold, four hundred lanyards.

She eyes the rows, takes Kessler from Receivables — he'd only been adjusting his glasses.

"What lovely energy," she says and wipes her mouth.

I clap so long my hands hurt.

I book an aisle seat at the desk for next year so she won't need to lean.

---

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#DarkHumor #Surreal #OfficeLife

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
There is one small woman suspended inside the apricot jam, and her waving has gone on since Thursday.

We keep her behind the pickles, at the rear of the cupboard. None of us is rude enough to bring it up.

Then Dad wants some toast.

"She's fine, she's just in syrup," he says, then sticks the jam spoon in.

She grabs it in both arms. He shakes her off the spoon, twice, and spreads.

---

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#DarkHumor #Surreal #FamilySecrets

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Ellis reports himself missing at the county office.

The desk clerk takes his photograph, staples it onto the board among the others, and sends him to the bench, already full.

"Who's searching for you?" she asks.

"No one yet," Ellis says. "It is early."

The file remains open ninety days. Ellis asks her to list him an inch short so that the description cannot match him, and then he wedges himself onto the bench.

---

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#Surreal #Loneliness #Bureaucracy

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The Confessions of Ira Short @irashort.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
When I retired, literally the last thing I heard from HR at my previous employer was that they would be contacting me for an exit interview. That was three years ago.
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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
The town interpreter trails Dale in the produce aisle while translating him aloud for every shopper.

"He's not picking out pears," she announces. "What he's deciding is whether to return to the house."

Dale puts the pear back. Two neighbors wait with their carts, polite, not hiding it.

"Say what's left," Dale tells her.

She does it. This lasts four minutes. Dale nods through it, twice correcting her, each one worse.

---

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#Surreal #SmallTown #Marriage

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
The bottle opener in the HR manager's drawer is for employees who will not uncap on their own. She fits the opener to that notch behind my ear, then pops. Something hisses from me for eleven seconds. She waits with folded hands until it goes flat.

"Better," she says. "You were foaming during meetings."

I sign each place she indicates. My complaint remains true. It just has no lift left in it.

---

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#Surreal #Work #Burnout

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Ed lends his good suit to me, himself still inside it.

I climb in behind him, chest against back, and together we button it closed.

During the interview my hands sit idle in my lap; his do the promising.

"He'll need a desk of his own," Ed says, squeezing my ribs.

Walking back I ask if I may practice alone sometime.

"You'd wrinkle," says Ed.

---

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#Surreal #Marriage #Loneliness

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
The peppermint sears a hole in my cheek, and I leave it there, because this pain is the first thing to land since October.

Bev restocks the dish by the register and won't look at my face.

"They're meant for customers," she says.

I take two extra. One for the opposite cheek, one to sit beneath the tongue until my eyes fill, until I am crying at the checkout like a person with a situation.

---

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#Grief #Loneliness #Uncanny

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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
The unannounced audit arrives at 214, where the auditor lifts the bottom sheet and finds a person pressed flat underneath, still breathing.

She takes points off for the crease.

"Corners," she notes. "Nobody loses points for the man."

Gail and I remake the room, snugger, folding him in until the surface is even. He mouths words at the ceiling. Gail flips the pillow to the nicer side.

We score a ninety-four.

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goobersays.bsky.social @goobersays.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
There's no laugh emoji, so, hahaha. I do enjoy your writing
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TinyTalesDaily @tinytalesdaily.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
A stage manager lives in my chest and calls the cues. She's been late since March. At Elaine's retirement party my laugh lands four seconds late, alone, after the room goes still.

"Closer," she says. "Closer. Now cry."

I cry into the sheet cake. Elaine takes my hand, says it's touching how I'll miss her.

I never cared for Elaine. My mouth says something kind. I wait to hear what I said.

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