This short-short story, Y2K, was written in the margins of watercolor paper as an experiment to determine whether I really needed a computer or not to write a story. Before writing the story I had thought yes, a story was impossible without a computer. This notion had kept me from writing and completing any story since 1994 which may be a good thing from where you're standing and perhaps you are hoping I will return to that former misconception for another seven-year period.

Y2K

THE little brown and white dog found herself out in the yard again. It was cold out, maybe 35 degrees. Unbeknownst to her, it was also New Year’s Day, the year 2000.

Inside, the family (such as it was, the Mother, the boyfriend, and the two younger, resentful sons) watched a TV news show. It was about the apocalyptically overestimated computer glitches that had mobilized society the entire year beforehand. Whole careers were launched as people invented new and seemingly innovative ways to prepare for digital disaster that, as they had learned just this morning, did not arrive on schedule.

The family ate cheez puffs and salted peanuts from aluminum cans. They all felt foolish, now that everything seemed to be ok, about the batteries they’d bought, the matches and firewood, the bottled water supplies. Like all of a sudden, the youngest boy laughed, on January 1, the computers would just blow up, and they’d have all moved right into the backyard and started camping.

Out in the yard, the grass was white-tipped with frost. The little dog picked her way across it toward the water bowl, which had been kicked out toward the chain-link fence. The water inside the bowl was as solid as a skating rink. The dog stuck her tongue out halfway to confirm this and, thinking better of it, closed her mouth again. She stood trembling absently for a minute, watching the family through the window, the backs of their heads in front of the TV.

Somewhere down the block, a kid lit a leftover bottle rocket from the night before. It shrieked pointlessly, having missed its moment. After a time, the little dog carefully tucked her numbed feet beneath her and lay down in the grass.

About fiction corner:
I have created random fiction corner to showcase arbitrary selections from things I have never finished, or that did not perhaps deserve to be finished. I just got sick of being a non writer and so figured some bad stories are better than no bad stories.