Misneach

 

“Grit! That's my name.”
“I'm sorry. Did you just yell ‘grit’ at me?”
“No. Well, yes. Sorry, miss. Only because GRIT's printed on your jacket. What a coincidence… My name is Grit too.”
“Your name is Grit?”
“In Gaelic, yes. It's Misneach.”
“So your name's not Grit. It's Misneach.”
“Which means grit. So logically…”
“Bye, Misneach.”

***

“Sir, this here a municipal courthouse. For a legal name change you gonna need to visit federal and state offices. Social Security, DMV, buncha others, I assume. We jus’ do parking tickets here. Minor stuff.”
“I don't want to change my name, good sir. Only want to add to it.”
“Add to it. Make it longer?”
“Not longer… I’d like to insert a wedge.”
“You mean, middle name.”
“Yes. A middle name. I'm Russel Culkin. My father was Russel Culkin. His father was Russel Culkin.”
“You’re Russel Culkin the Third, then.”
“That's right. A copy of a copy.”
“Interessin’.”
“I'd like a middle name. Misneach.”
“Misneach.”
“Irish for fortitude… courage, grit. Could you squeeze a capital M between Russel and Culkin in the system? Anyone asks, I can say it stands for Misneach.”
“Mr. Culkin, I can't legally edit state records. Here’s a tip. Jus’ start writin’ that M yourself. Emails, Christmas cards, whatever. Nobody gonna check.”
“I’m going to start doing that.”
***
“Who was that? The toothpick in the tweed jacket.”
“Strange guy. Sez his name’s Misneach.”
“Misneach? When I was born, that's what my old man wanted to name me.”
“Seriously?”
“Oh, yeah. Lucky for me, mom put her foot down. Then he begged her for middle name at least.”
“So what'd they do?”
“Compromised. Middle initial only. That's how I ended up Eirimiuil M. O'Malley.”

 

First Published in Illumination on August 2026.

The Well

 

Sara the Princess is peering at the multitude of nomads who just crossed the desert, sunbaked and covered with dust.

“May we drink your water?” their spokesman asks. “We’re parched, we’re exhausted.”

 

“The well is not mine,” says Sara the Princess. “It is a the public well.” Then she stares down the old man. “No, you may not drink from it.”

 

The nomads cry out as one, “What’s wrong, why don’t you let us quench our thirst?”

 

“Simple as,” says Sara the Princess, “being fully hydrated feels even better now. Also, I’m different from you but if I let you drink your fill we’d no longer remain different at all.”

 

First published in Dissident Voice on July 29, 2025

Grandpa Science

 

He’d tell us day in and day out, Canadians raise sheep, instead of chicken, because the bleating species don’t need vaccination.

“It’s the crisp Canadian air,” he’d explain to us, the uninitiated. “It has less nitrogen, more UV.”

Once I tried to challenge him. “So it’s not the ten months cold and snow? Soil conditions? Did you consider eating preferences? Also, how about the low population density?”

 

He waved. “Those are minor factors. Mostly cancel each other.”

 

Four months into the pandemic, no vaccine yet, the coronavirus slayed him. Had he moved to the Yukon in the nick of time, I imagine, he’d still be alive now.

 

🐑 🐑 🐑 🐑

 

First published in Friday Flash Fiction on July 11, 2025.

 

 

 

Outwith the Garden

Despite the horrific injuries he’d received during the Siege of Madrid, Frank, our little Iowa town’s story teller, lived to be ninety-senile.

 

He often used the word “outwith,” instead of “outside,” that he claimed to have picked up from Scottish and Yorkshire volunteers. Frank also referred to mailmen, traffic cops and other uniformed government workers as “fart-box” and “gadgie.” (For females, his Scotticist vocabulary was substantially wider.)

 

Now that the Garden is rapidly shrinking around us, and there’s no other place left to sustain life, we find ourselves saying “outwith” more and more often - anticipating where we’re going to find ourselves pretty soon.

 

First published in 50 Word Stories on July 8, 2025.