Maeve Grimsley
9 stories published
Stories by Maeve Grimsley
Checkout Line Oracle
At the grocery store, the scanner starts beeping in full sentences. "Do not buy that melon. Call your sister. Trust the dentist." Shoppers pretend not to hear, scanning quietly. One man ignores the wa...
The Negotiator Plant
A houseplant begins bartering. It releases extra oxygen in exchange for gossip. The roommates comply, spilling stories about dates and deadlines. The plant grows lush, leaves glossy with secrets. When...
Warranty for Miracles
A new service offers warranties on miracles. If your prayer glitches, file a ticket. Response time: two to three business days. One woman requests a replacement for a rain of frogs; she ordered butter...
Antique Shop of Alternate Lives
In the back of Mrs. Lee's antique shop, behind clocks frozen at moments no one remembers, sits a glass cabinet of objects with price tags that read "If: $10." Each item, when held, offers a vision of the life you would have lived had you owned it. A...
Glacier Post Office
Near the melting edge of Calder Glacier, a research station doubles as a post office for letters frozen decades ago. As ice calves, envelopes surface, sealed and stamped from eras when handwriting mattered. Dr. Elsie Tran catalogs each letter and att...
The Warranty on Reality
Reality comes with a warranty, apparently. After odd glitchesāstairs shortening, traffic lights swapping colorsāan insurance company sends adjuster Cole to investigate claims. He carries a clipboard and a scanner that beeps near anomalies. People fil...
The Neighborhood Time Bank
At first, the time bank was a chalkboard nailed to a fence. āDeposit an hour, withdraw an hour,ā someone scrawled, half joke, half dare. Most neighbors chuckled and kept walking. Then Mr. Alvarez wrote, ā+2 hours babysitting credit,ā and Mrs. Chen withdrew one, scribbling, āNeed help watching Max Th...
The Sleepwalk Detective
Detective Arun Singh didnāt sleep like other people. He slept like a case fileāopen, active, restless. Doctors called it parasomnia. Therapists called it unresolved trauma. Arun called it inconvenient until he learned to use it. In dreams, he wandered places he had never been yet recognized from blu...
The Lighthouse in the Desert
They said the desert had no need for a lighthouse. There was no sea, no ships, only dunes shifting like tides of sand. Yet there it stood: a white tower on a dune ridge, its beacon sweeping over emptiness. It had been built by a collective of wanderers decades ago, funded by donations and stubbornne...