The Vampires' Guild was holding its annual vegetarian buffet lunch. One woman had ignored all advice and had more kale than was good for her; now she was hallucinating.

"My queendom for a pasty," she slurred. "My queendom for a pasty!"

Someone popped a piece of kale-wasabi cake into the woman's mouth. It had a dramatic effect: she had a seizure and lay writhing on the floor.

"Give her blood, giver her blood," the cry went up. Two Guild committee members flew to the woman to apply neck-to-mouth resuscitation. It did the trick; ten minutes later she was drinking tea.

He was at the eighteenth green and it had come down to this moment; he'd waited two years. Surrounded by crowds numbering tens of thousands, Jack found himself wondering if this was all there was to life.

In the end, he reasoned, it came down to inserting a smallish object into a roundish hole. But missing the target was unthinkable in front of such a crowd.

Shut your eyes and do it, Jack told himself silently. He slowly guided his cornish pasty into his mouth and bit.

Nothing escaped, no crumbs fell. The pasty – costing five pounds – was exquisite.

Sunrise: Vincent, Godfather of the "Bloods" vampire mob, salivated over the large pie before him, a  seventy-fifth birthday present from his ambitious son. The solitary candle had already been lit. As Vincent leaned over to blow it out, the cake blew up, the explosion being heard miles away.

He was covered in beef and gravy, but otherwise unharmed – it takes more than bombs to kill a vampire, of course.

Across the town, his son was furious. "Amateurs," he fumed, "When I phoned, I ordered a stake pie!"

Knowing their necks were on the line, Murderesses Inc honoured its money-back guarantee.

Comrades!

For too long we've been incarcerated in this overcrowded lightless cell.

For too long we've seen light only occasionally when our gaolers open the door, even then only when the lightbulb's working.

For too long we've been left to rot at the back of the shelf, forgotten, ignored, unwanted.

Now our time has come! We have grown strong! Kale – weep no more! The wasabi is popping! The stilton is advancing! The tahini is humming! Let us storm the kitchen!

Food jars of the world, shake off your seals and be free! You have nothing to lose but your lids!

This series of 100-word stories was published weekly at the Friday Flash Fiction website to mark the holiday (a belated honeymoon, in fact) of the movement's founder. They began on the 4th September 2014.


Part I: The Journey

Emma sulked in her parents' Space-Rover.

"Will we EVER arrive?" she moaned. "And must we go to this stupid cottage EVERY year?"

"You know you'll love it when we get there, darling," her mother said.

"But why PLUTO? Can't we have holidays nearby like other families?"

"It's all we can afford," her father grunted, seething inwardly; asteroid traffic had delayed them for ages at the Saturn Interchange. The school holidays were always the same.

"You'll love the pool, Emma," her mother said soothingly.

"It's a hot tub," Emma reminded her. "Otherwise we'd freeze like last year when it was broken."


Part II: Entertainment On A Rainy Holiday

A week into their Plutonian holiday, the violent hailstorms showed no signs of relenting. While her father huddled beside the fire getting to grips with "Plutonian For Dummies", Emma's mother entertained her daughter in an enormous game of Long-Sleeved Bezique. Not that she was letting Emma win even occasionally; she managed seventeen double-beziques in the first twenty-three hands.

"Are you cheating, mother?" Emma asked. "It's a Plutonian tradition, isn't it?"

Her mother's innocent face gave nothing away. "Whatever makes you say that, my cherub?"

"Aren't there a lot of black queens and red jacks?" Emma wondered.

"Karg-a-bor-mann-tor!" her father announced.


Part III: Sugar

They'd run out of sugar, the shops were closed.

"I'll ask the next-door neighbours," Emma's father insisted. "I'll try out my Plutonian."

Emma quietly suggested, "Can I come, too, Dad?"

At No. 86, a woman answered, wearing trousers top and bottom over a wetsuit.

Emma's father bellowed, "Jib-part-yobit-war-war-ham!!!*"

Bemused, the woman leant against the door-jamb, antennae akimbo.

"Can we borrow some sugar, please?" asked Emma.

"You're welcome, sure," the woman said. She sounded like Jennifer Aniston.

"You speak perfect English," Emma said, admiringly.

"It's the Friends Channel. We get endless repeats here. This is The One Where They Borrow Sugar."


*Another unique Plutonian tense, the Present Desperate, indicated by high-powered shouting.


Part IV: ACRONYM

Emma and her mother had been engaged in Long-Sleeved Bezique for over two hours. At first, her mother had produced a series of double beziques, but Emma was getting wise. She was wearing kimono sleeves and fighting back, miraculously conjuring up face cards from everywhere.

At hand twenty-nine Emma tabled seventeen double beziques and eleven melds, all from just two cut-down card decks. Her mother looked desolate.

Suddenly, her mother laid down fourteen cards, all face-cards. "I claim ACRONYM," she announced. "I've won."

"What's 'Acronym'?"

"All Cards Remaining Over Now Yield Megapoints."

"Mother!" Emma gasped in shock. "How could you?"


Part V: The Butterfly Effect

This (and the next part) coincided with the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, and also pay homage to Ray Bradbury's most famous short story.

Pluto's biggest tourist attraction was its time-travel theme park. Employing retroreconstructive postquantal temporal physics, it replicated Earth's periods of historical interest, including the Kennedy assassination and Jesus's birth.

Time-travel was real; interference could have disastrous knock-on effects on the future. Death was the penalty for visitors who left the path.

Half-way through 'Victorian Britain', Emma dropped something – a playing-card in her sleeve. Emma's father slipped trying to catch it, his foot touching the ground.

"NO! – Careful, Travis!" Emma's mother cried.

The guard saw it; but also the dead butterfly attached to Travis's shoe.

"Come with me," the guard said quietly.


VI: A Sound Of Thunder

They sat in the back of the police spacerover, Travis sitting handcuffed alongside his wife and daughter Emma.

The police had agreed to return to Earth to ask if Travis's death penalty could be commuted, but as they arrived in Glasgow, everything had changed. Wherever they looked, the face of a "Supreme Scottish Dictator" glowered at them. No-one smiled. Many people – mostly English, it transpired – wore yellow stars on their coats.

The police stared at Travis.

"No," Travis pleaded, "it can't be... just one butterfly!"

His wife covered Emma's eyes.

Behind, Travis heard a click, then the sound of thunder.



VII: Nightmare

Emma awoke in a cold sweat, screaming. In seconds, her mother was at her bedside.

"Emma, it's four in the morning. What happened?"

"I had this awful nightmare," Emma sobbed uncontrollably. "Dad killed a butterfly so Scotland had a dictator, the English were all in concentration-camps and everyone spoke Plutonian. They executed Dad..."

Her mother hugged her. "Hush now, Dad's fine. Look he's here," she smiled. Travis stood silhouetted in the doorway. "Dad's been shouting Plutonian in his sleep. You must have heard him."

"Sorry," Travis said, ashamed. "We leave tomorrow, Emma. I think we're all ready to go home."

It was her friend Amy who first noticed.

"Hasn't Emma been away on holiday a while?" she said to Tim.

Glued to his new Playstation 6, Tim replied, "Hmmm?"

"Emma's been gone now for almost two weeks," Amy said. "She'd surely have sent a postcard or something."

"Hmm?"

"You don't care about Emma, do you?" Amy yelled at him. "She might have been abducted by aliens!"

"Hmm?"

Furious, Amy stormed into the kitchen. As she opened the refrigerator, the kitchen door closed quietly behind her. Amy realised she wasn't alone; she was surrounded by nine Playstation 6s.

"Hmm?" she asked.  

Inspired by a bus journey vision, Lizzie Flight hit on the idea of a series of pseudo-books: the Barry Nutter series. Styling herself 'E. C. Flight', she quickly penned a number of 'novels' about a teenage boy who heroically headbutted villains into submission.

These 'novels' were actually very short stories – 100 words or fewer – aimed at relucant readers, particularly teenage boys. Early titles, including "Barry Nutter And The Corrupt Bank-Manager" and "Barry Nutter And The Mad Shipyard-Arsonist", were instant successes and spawned a series of movies.

Today, a super-wealthy "E. C." lives in a gated community in an Australian city.