Spoiler! :
The Puppeteer
"Hey, I know you," I said to the puppet slumped drunkenly on the barstool beside me. "You were on the cover of some magazine a while ago."
The puppet nodded, picked up its glass, and proceeded to spill the contents into its mouth. The glass then dropped and shattered on the floor.
"You look so handsome," he was saying, "with your strings all straight, and your paint so new and colorful. I wish I could be like you; being human is so...limiting."
Swaying slightly, I looked down at myself. My paint was chipped, faded. My strings looped and knotted their way to the ceiling, where the bartender sat, contentedly directing his orchestra. I glanced back over at the man. My wooden lips opened. "You're stupid," I slurred.
He looked up at me—for he had shrunk on his barstool to half my size at this point—and nodded. He took out a needle from his pocket and began puncturing tiny holes along his arm.
The puppet, seeing what I was doing, took a string from the pile lying on the counter and handed one end to me, attaching the other end to itself. I began weaving the string through the bloody mess of my arm, through the scattered holes that lined it.
I pulled a string and, looking up—or down, depending on which way one looks at it—saw the puppet hand the man another string end, saw the man weave it through his other arm, then his leg, then, inhaling sharply, wrench it straight through his heart and out his back. Drenched in blood, he fell from the barstool. He was dead, and still hadn't ordered his drink.
I tugged at another string, and both the puppet and the man's hands came up. The man really had done a superb job. In reward, I dropped a free glass to each of them—empty, of course.
Spoiler! :
Choosing Teams
Each year the children would gather in the school playground to determine their teams. It was an elegant process—very organized, very systematic—and it dated back all the way to the very year that their dilapidated mud-brick school had first been erected some fifty years ago. Everyone would wear their most attractive clothing to the event—once, not two years ago, a girl had gone out in nothing but underclothes. By that year, tradition had established itself quite well, and the children first divided themselves into two groups—one of boys, and one of girls—and arranged themselves in a circle, boys on one side, girls on the other. They did this without exchanging a single word, save for the rare grunt or muttered commentary; it was a solemn occasion.
Choosing captains was easy that day; it usually was. All the attention was directed towards the half-naked girl with the athletic body on the girls' side, and towards the tall, black-haired boy on the boys' side. They would be the first to speak, for they would be the ones to choose their teams.
Boys, by tradition, chose first. The black-haired boy scanned the half-circle of boys lined stiffly before him. Some were shifting uncomfortably, or trying—with little success—to hide behind the faces of their peers. Finally, the black-haired boy lifted his hand and pointed.
"You," he said.
The group's gaze shifted almost imperceptibly towards the subject of the black-haired boy's attention—a scrawny child wearing a cracked pair of black-rimmed glasses. The shock had only just begun to register on the boy's face when the half-naked girl, clearly having already made her choice, opened her mouth and let her voice ring out across the playground.
She had chosen a chubby girl with a bright pink dress, and a flowery bow perched atop her head. It took but a few seconds before the tears began to well up in the girl's eyes, began to trickle down her freckled cheek. She held her hands to her face and, sniffling, went with the scrawny boy to the center of the circle, where she sat down and wept, leaving the scrawny boy to stand awkwardly at her side.
Time passed, and the black-haired boy and the half-naked girl eventually accumulated a small mass of boys and girls. The last to be chosen was a tiny Indian girl who only knew three words in English—"sun," "rainbow," and "daffodil." She wandered uncomprehendingly to the center, hardly realizing the shame of her position.
"What...what do we do with them?" wondered the black-haired boy.
"I have some trash bags," a pale boy called out, waving his hand in the air.
"That'll do," replied the black-haired boy, taking the bags. Opening one widely, he called, "Let's go, into the bag."
Four of the chosen children strode over to the bag and climbed in, after which the black-haired boy pulled it shut and tossed it onto the dirt. The half-naked girl, the pale boy, and a few others helped him rally up the rest. The last to be thrown in was the chubby girl with the pink dress, who sat on the ground, bawling harder than ever. At long last, the bags were deposited in the trash cans that lined the sidewalk in front of the school. Tomorrow morning the garbage truck would pull up, pick up the bags, and crush each one of them.
It was customary for, afterwards, the boy and the girl captain to walk home together. Thus the black haired boy took the half-naked girl's hand in his and departed the playground. As they were leaving, the half naked girl shivered, muttering,
"It sure is cold here."
Spoiler! :
The Traveler
"Where are we?" asked the traveler.
"Wherever you wish to be," she replied. "You need only take a step forward."
The traveler did this, and found himself standing before a dark forest, whose boundaries seemed to extend endlessly on each side.
"I cannot enter that!" cried the traveler. "I would surely lose myself."
"There are worse things to lose," she said, and vanished into the fog.
The traveler sighed, and began walking. He was soon lost in darkness.
And yes, that is most certainly a compliment. 
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