Stephen L. Thompson’s Published Works

Stephen L. Thompson’s
Published Flash Fiction 2024-???


Hello. Here is a listing of all of my published flash fiction works from 2024 until ??. (I consider flash fiction to be between 100 and 1000 words.) They are listed with the most recent publications on the top and I have the work’s title, when and where it was published, and a brief blurb or history of the story. Most of these stories are on the web and I have linked to them. I hope you enjoy.









Steve’s Homepage Main Publication Page




“Stamp of Approval”

February 5, 2025 My Monthly Stories

I’m not sure where you could get such a stamp – I’m sure there are people making them – but it could be a last minute Valentine’s Day gift.

Click here to read the story.

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“Not Worth It”

January 30, 2025 Oneoveralpha’s Ramblings Blog

I almost didn’t post this story. I think the chain of events is Trump achieved glory by trying to rename the Gulf of Mexico, and then Musk posted something stupid about renaming the English Channel. I believe I read that before going to work, so at work I hammered out the basics of this story and wrote it up when I got home. I couldn’t think of a good title, so I let the story set for a couple of days to come up with a title and then give it a final polish. But in those couple of days, those two idiots did forty-seven new idiocies, and I worried nobody would remember what sparked this story. But I think this story is a reminder not to feed the trolls.

Click here to read the story.

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“A Line in the Sand”

January 23, 2025 Oneoveralpha’s Ramblings Blog

So Trump was going on about Panama, and Greenland, and Canada, and wherever, and I figured the best way those leaders could beat him would be to actually stand up to him. Hopefully, more people will do that and things will get harder for him. Because harder for him means better for us.

Click here to read the story.

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“Legacy”

January 20, 2025 My Monthly Stories

So there is this asshole billionaire who I, and many people, believe is making the world worse. Someday, he will die and he will not be remembered well. Now I don’t condone assassinating anyone, for any reason, but one day I was hoping that he would die in a stupid manor so his legacy would just be the butt of jokes. And I figured “Going to Mars” would become the slang for this embarrassing manor of death.

Click here to read the story.

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“Plans”

January 16, 2025 Oneoveralpha's Writings Blog

I had planned on spending 2025 trying to finish, basically, a novel. But I’ve set that aside to write stories as my part in pushing America back to freedom and greatness.

Click here to read the story.

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“A Noble Act”

December 27, 2024 My Monthly Stories

How sad that there was a real event that inspired this story. I don’t know if someone flipped those assholes off and got a date out of it, but we could hope.

Click here to read the story.

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“Did You Think Otherwise?”

December 19, 2024 Oneoveralpha’s Ramblings Blog

I first wrote this story back in 2011. I forget what actually prompted it (possibly some news about US troops in Iraq or Afghanistan) but the thought was how many American evangelical types just assume that Jesus will come back as an American.

Click here to read the story.

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“There’s a Cream for that”

December 16, 2024 on my Ko-fi account

I first wrote this story over a decade ago on a site that is no longer around. It was part of my Weekly Stories, where I tried to write a story a week. This week, I wasn’t that motivated to write, and jokingly wondered why they didn’t have a pill for that. So I wrote this silly story.

Click here to read the story.

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“Moving On”

November 15, 2024 on my Ko-fi account

I first wrote this story ten years ago and posted it on a site that is no longer around. I revised it and reposted it, but didn’t remember what led me to writing it. So here is what I wrote ten years ago when I first posted it.

About ten years ago, one of those mall kiosk girls talked me into buying a bottle of this special hand lotion. The reason I bought is that while I dislike hand lotion – it seems greasy to me, even the stuff advertised as non-greasy – where I worked at the time I washed my hands about twenty times a day. Normally that wasn’t a problem, but during the winter my hands would really dry up and crack. By Thursday or Friday, some of the cracks would start bleeding. So I bought this bottle to use on my really dry hands during the winter. But since I dislike the feel, I only used it when things got really bad. So ten years later, and since I don’t work at that job anymore, I still have half-a-bottle left.

Lately, I have a spot on the side of my foot that gets dry and cracked. So one night I remembered this half-a-bottle of stuff and put some on it. Unfortunately, I got too much on my hand and ended up covering my whole foot and ankle with the stuff. Since then, my quilt has the scent of it. One night as I was falling asleep with this scented quilt, I remembered my story “Tickle, Tickle” about a guy enjoying the scent of his girlfriend on his pillow. And that somehow led to this story.

Click here to read the story.

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“A Possibility?”

November 1, 2024 My Monthly Stories

I came up with this idea … probably in the summer of 2024. I set it aside because I had planned to write ten or so political stories leading up to the election. Unfortunately, too many things were going on so I only wrote a couple of the stories. This one, I decided to save to be my Monthly Story for November. Normally, I come up with the idea and write the monthly stories in that month, but I wanted to get a story out before the election on the 5th, so I wrote this one in the middle of October and just waited until it was November.

About the story itself, maybe one day I’ll do an update about how prophetic it was.

Click here to read the story.

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“Spooky Story”

October 17, 2024 Oneoveralpha’s Ramblings Blog

Originally, this was going to be my Monthly Story for October 2024, but I didn’t like the original ending, which was to be Susan typing “President Vance.” That is scary, but it lacked punch. Fortunately, I came up with the idea for “What is it?,” so I was able to do my Monthly Story. But then, just as I finished “What is it?” I came up with the better ending for this story. (Well, good for the story, bad for the nation.) Not wanting to waste it, I posted it on my blog instead.

Click here to read the story.

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“In My Day”

October 16, 2024 on my Ko-fi account

I first wrote this story almost eleven years ago after a bitter cold spell that closed schools. Even though, I remember going to school when it was colder. Anyway, this was just a fun little story of the “I had to walk to school uphill” kind set some decades from now.

Click here to read the story.

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“What is it?”

October 15, 2024 My Monthly Stories

This is a Tanya Story.

I live in a rather red part of Pennsylvania, so I usually see a couple people wearing Trump hats or whatever while I’m at work. And at this point, I just try to get them out of the store as fast as possible with the minimum amount of interaction because I just don’t want to deal with them. I used to say that there are only two types of Trump supporters, those that are part of the con, and those that are being conned. But by this point, the conned group have to be choosing to be that willfully ignorant and I don’t have the time, energy, or patient to try to break them out of it. But if I did want to interact with them, and had no fear of consequences, this is what I’d like to say to them.

Click here to read the story.

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“Other Means”

September 25, 2024 My Monthly Stories

Just to be perfectly clear, I do not support assassinating anyone. Assassinations should play no role in a democracy.

Another reason to oppose the assassination of Trump, is that the longer he is around, the worse it will be for the Republicans. Now, for the longest time my view has been that both parties suck, but in the last decade or so, the Republicans have gotten so terrible that they are now a threat to democracy and the very survival of the United States. And while a decade or so of soul-searching and repentance may bring them back to the Democrat level of suckyness, I don’t know if they deserve to come back.

Click here to read the story.

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“Flaunt It”

September 17, 2024 on my Ko-fi account

I first wrote this story ten years ago and posted it on a website that no longer exists. I came across it recently, and figured I could repost it. I think I had planned to post it in July, but then Trump was shot less than a week before I was to post it, and I figured that wasn’t a good time to do that. But since the story is “political,” I wanted to post it before the election. So I decided to post it in September. And then like two days before I was going to post it, there was a guy with a gun near where Trump was playing golf. I probably should have delayed posting it again, but I should probably save my October slot for a spooky story.

Anyway, the more interesting thing about this story, is that when I first posted it, I wrote that the story started after I “met a woman who is related to someone most people know about, but few know his name.” I spent a good half-hour trying to figure out who this woman was. I even dug out my writing notebook from then and there is some note for a story about someone related to a presidential assassin, but my handwriting is so bad even I can’t read what I wrote. But I think it’s just a note about the story, not the impetus for the story.

I can’t remember who I met that started this story. I did work with an older woman almost twenty-five years ago who said that her estranged father – who she hadn’t had contact with since she was, like, three when her mother emigrated to the US – was elected President of their home country back in the ‘70’s. But I don’t know how that could have led to this story. Not to mention, that lady told a lot of stories, and I began to question the reality of some of them.

Click here to read the story.

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“Hot Enough for Ya?”

August 20, 2024 My Monthly Stories

To do my part to save democracy, I figured I should write a horror story of a possible second Trump term. One day at work I was trying to think of what to be the central point of the story – there being so many things Trump could fuck up in a second term – when I went outside and it was one of those 90° days. And I thought, How could Trump make climate change worse? This was what I came up with, although I hate that I might have given these assholes an idea.

Click here to read the story.

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“Hot Heads”

August 15, 2024 Oneoveralpha’s Ramblings Blog

When I first wrote this over ten years ago, I thought nobody would be crazy enough to want to destroy such a feeble attempt at stopping climate change. Not that terrorists are known for well thought out arguments, but still, once you reach some point of lunacy, you pretty much become ineffective. Oh, for simpler times.

Click here to read the story.

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“Same Old Line”

August 14, 2024 on my Ko-fi account

I first wrote this story years ago as part of my 30 Stories in 30 Days Challenge in 2014. It’s pretty normal for me to think about time travel and how our past could be constantly changing without us realizing it. But I couldn’t quickly turn that into a story, until Beth’s line about “you can just ask for sex” came to mind. That was quick and dirty enough for what I needed, so I went with it.

I posted the stories from that year on a website that is no longer around. I was looking through my list of orphan stories, and I figured this one would work to repost.

Click here to read the story.

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“Sink to Their Level”

July 28, 2024 My Monthly Stories

I’m a bit like Jane in this story. This was going to be a nice, simple, “Don’t become the monsters you are fighting,” type of story. But it took too many turns, and the end of the month was coming up, so I just had to polish up what I had. In an ideal world, I’d come back to this story in a month or so and really fill it out, but that would require me to have … what’s it called, spare time? If such a thing existed.

Click here to read the story.

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“Choices”

July 18, 2024 on my Ko-fi account

An ex-girlfriend never cared for me writing science fiction. She felt I should write “real” stories. When I tried to explain to her how science fiction stories could be inspiring, she waved them off. This was just me having fun with that.

I published this years ago on a website that’s no longer around. I came across it recently, and figured I should repost it.

Click here to read the story.

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“Die Trying”

June 25, 2024 My Monthly Stories

I don’t remember what exactly led to this story. It was probably just a general dislike of insurance companies and the politicians that cater to them.

Click here to read the story.

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“Ben’s Time Carriage”

June 20, 2024 Oneoveralpha’s Ramblings Blog

I first wrote this story years ago because I was tired of hearing people saying we shouldn’t do something – that often would improve the lives of countless Americans – because it wasn’t the intent of the Founding Fathers. I reposted it because it, unfortunately, seems to just be becoming more relevant.

Click here to read the story.

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“A Whale of a Tale”

June 18, 2024 on my Ko-fi account

A couple months ago, I went through my old stories that were no longer online to find stuff to repost. I saw “A Whale of a Tale,” and figured that would work just fine. Well, after I posted it, I went to write this blurb and I couldn’t remember where the idea for this story came from, so I looked at the blurb the first time I posted this, and saw it was based on a real event. So this happened, but I completely forgot about it. But it lives on only as a whale of a tale.

Click here to read the story.

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“Let That Be a Lesson”

May 29, 2024 My Monthly Stories

The sad thing is, when Why Capitalism Ultimately Failed is finally written, there will be so many people deserving to have whole chapters on them that the book will be massive. It will be like an encyclopedia set.

Click here to read the story.

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“All the Money in the World”

May 14, 2024 on my Ko-fi account

This was just a silly idea I had one night. Hopefully, it’s not prophetic.

Click here to read the story.

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“I Just Write Stories”

April 18, 2024 Oneoveralpha's Writings Blog

I first wrote this story almost ten years ago as part of one of my 30 Stories in 30 Days Challenges. Those stories were published on a site that’s no longer around, but apparently, at the time I wasn’t overly thrilled by the story, wishing I had more time to hammer it out. Yet I just did some minor changes for this version. Either I was overly harsh with myself in the past, or I’ve gotten sloppy in my old age. Probably both.

Click here to read the story.

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“When You Put it Like That”

April 17, 2024 My Monthly Stories

The hardest part about writing this story, is that I wanted to reference some “believably crazy” things a worthless politician could have said, but we have politicians saying fucking insane things.

Click here to read the story.

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“Let it Rain”

April 16, 2024 on my Ko-fi account

This story started when, after racing through the rain to my car with groceries, the rain stopped once I was in my car. It got me thinking about a rain god playing with people. At first, the story was to have a goddess getting back and an old boyfriend, but then I realized that had too much of a psycho ex-girlfriend vibe. So I changed it to a Rain Prince, which just gave it a creepy stalker vibe.

Click here to read the story.

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“Always a Catch”

March 26, 2024 My Monthly Stories

I’m not that bad.

There was a lot of stuff I had to deal with this month. None of them were really bad, there were just several things that exhausted me. As a result, for most of the month I was in a “Wish to have written” mood. I did start a story for the month, but the more I worked on it, the more I realized I needed to add more details in so the ending made sense. So I had to set it aside, and scrambled to get this out. This isn’t the greatest of stories, but for something I came up with the idea and wrote over two days, it’s not bad.

Click here to read the story.

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“Deadweight”

March 18, 2024 on my Ko-fi account

This is a Tanya Story.

I forget the exact issue, but the corporate morons where I work did something stupid, and I started wondering if the company would be better off replacing them with AI.

Click here to read the story.

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“Outstanding Merit”

February 16, 2024 My Monthly Stories

I think I had read some news article where some rich prick complained that too often rich people were portrayed as villains. That stuck in my head for a while, and I eventually came up with this little story about a rich prick getting his just deserts.

Click here to read the story.

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“How Did They Get Our Number?”

February 15, 2024 Oneoveralpha’s Ramblings Blog

I first wrote this story back in the spring of 2012. Back in those days, a never-ending stream of political ads seemed like one of the worst things politics could do to us. Oh, for a simpler age.

Click here to read the story.

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“Always Have a Strong Finish”

February 8, 2024 on my Ko-fi account

All stories need a good ending.

Click here to read the story.

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“The Price to Pay”

February 5, 2024 Draft2Digital

This was original published back in 2011 on Smashwords, which was merged, or bought or something by Draft2Digital. I haven’t really looked into the matter. But this story has a new home, so a new listing.

In some ways, this will be a dark day for scifi writers. But it would also be fantastic.

Click here to download the story.

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“Scheming”

January 17, 2024 My Monthly Stories

Wow, some writers will do anything to get people to check out there books. Oh, by the way, here’s a link to The Uncapped Pen, my collection of fifty short stories dealing with writing in some fashion.

Click here to read the story.

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“Deaf Ears”

January 11, 2024 on my Ko-fi account

This started as a microfiction story I tried to write while I was at work during a snowstorm. But it got a bit long for a micro story, so I just made a normal flash fiction story.

Click here to read the story.

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