The first short story writing prompt is here!

It was such a stupid fight. I just wanted to stop the bleeding — the accusations, the shouting, the silence between the silences. I thought if I said the right thing, it might reset us. Give us one more chance.

Then she said it.

“I slept with him.”

The world stopped. My vision blurred. I couldn’t even breathe.

And then I said it — loud, bitter, and shaking:

“I don’t care.”

A lie. Of course it was a lie. I cared so much it was eating me alive. But I thought if I could pretend, maybe I could forgive her. Maybe pretending would make it true in time.

But this wasn’t just any year.

Once every hundred years, a single lie becomes real.

And mine did.

At first, I didn’t notice. I figured I was in shock. But the next morning, when our daughter spilled cereal on the rug and burst into tears, I didn’t move. I didn’t feel annoyed. I didn’t feel compassion. I felt… nothing.

At work, I watched a man collapse at his desk. People screamed, called for help. I stood there, staring, unmoved, while someone else dialed 911.

I missed my mother’s funeral. Not out of rebellion or pain. I just didn’t see the point.

My son hit his first home run last week. He ran the bases beaming, scanning the stands for my reaction. I clapped out of habit. But inside, there was nothing.

I remember when I used to cry during old movies. When music used to gut me. When I used to lie awake at night with hope or dread or longing. Now the days pass like wind through an empty house.

All because of three words I didn’t mean. Three words that sealed me off from the world.

I lied to save my marriage.

Now I’ve lost her, the kids, myself — everything.

What’s left when nothing hurts, and nothing matters?

Not even death feels like a threat.

“All the humans of the world are my sheep.”

Was it stupid? Yes.

Was it a joke? Also yes.

Did I expect the universe to treat it like a legally binding wish? Absolutely not.

It all started during game night. My cousin Zoe was being her usual Monopoly warlord self, hoarding properties like a cartoon dragon with a mortgage license. I was losing. Badly. In a fit of dramatic defeat, I stood up on the coffee table, knocked over a Mountain Dew, and shouted:

“All the humans of the world are my sheep!”

Flash of lightning. Thunder. The lights flickered. The universe, apparently, has a flair for drama.

I woke up the next morning, ready to exact petty revenge by hiding Zoe’s snacks—but she was gone. So was my family. My neighbors. The barista who always spells my name “Brain.” Everyone.

At first I thought it was the apocalypse. I ran around shouting “HELLOOOO?” into echoey parking garages like an idiot. No reply. Just a goat chewing through the produce aisle at Trader Joe’s like it owned the place.

That’s when it hit me. The lie. The once-every-hundred-years lie. The one that becomes true.

“All the humans of the world are my sheep.”

Yeah.sheep, and a world not designed for hooves.

Like, actual sheep. Baa-ing. Grazing. Staring into my soul with those creepy rectangular pupils.

Now it’s just me, a flock of approximately 3.6 billion sheep.

Apparently, the lie picked that moment—of all moments—to become true. So now I’m the last human on Earth. King of the Woolpocalypse. Emperor of the Ewe-niverse.

One of them keeps following me around like he’s my executive assistant. I call him Greg. He’s very judgmental and eats paper. Possibly the former CEO of something.

Another broke into the Taco Bell and now lives there, covered in hot sauce packets like a crunchy, spicy warlord.

I tried to teach them how to play Uno. They ate the cards.

I held a concert just to feel something—played the kazoo for two hours straight. They headbutted the speakers and formed a mosh pit. One got a nose ring. His name is Chad now.

There’s a flock that insists on following me everywhere like I’m some sort of messed-up Disney princess with wool-based anxiety. I tried sneaking out to cry behind a dumpster once—they found me. All 200 of them. Silently watching. Judging. One coughed. It felt personal.

I even started a dating app called “Sheeple.” Don’t ask how that’s going. Let’s just say I’m emotionally unavailable and allergic to hay.

Last week I tried to run a mock United Nations. Gave tiny flags to the fluffiest sheep I could find and tried to get them to discuss global warming. One of them peed on the carpet instead. Honestly, same.

So now I live in a moderately luxurious mansion (thanks, abandoned real estate market), spend my days avoiding existential crises.

So yeah. Life is weird. The Earth is mine, apparently. And humanity? Humanity’s somewhere out there… chewing grass and pooping in public.

Do I regret it? Absolutely.

Would I take it back? In a heartbeat.

But I did finally win Monopoly.

At what cost, though?

The moral? Never joke about world domination during Monopoly.

Or do. I don’t know. I’m too busy trying to teach Greg the sheep how to microwave popcorn without starting another fire.

The heart monitor slowed like it was dragging the seconds down with it.

I wasn’t supposed to be in the room. Security had already told me once. But when her hand slipped from mine and the flatline began, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. The doctors stormed in—compression, paddles, commands yelled like war cries. I didn’t leave. Not until they tore me off her.

Savannah didn’t come back. And just like that, I wasn’t a husband anymore.

The funeral was closed casket, by request.Her mother said it was “too hard” to see her that way.But she said it looking straight at me.

Rain fell hard enough to drown the words, but not the tension. Savannah’s father stood rigid by the gravesite, jaw clenched so tight I thought his teeth might break. Her mother sobbed like her lungs were collapsing—but when I stepped forward, when I offered a hand or even just presence, she  recoiled from me.

“You were there,” she whispered once. Not to me. To someone else. Loud enough that I would hear.

Mark stood by the hearse like a man made of concrete. He didn’t cry. Didn’t speak. Just watched me the way you might watch a ticking bomb.

They grieved. Loudly. Violently. Publicly. But none of it was for me. They grieved her and blamed me. Not outright—not yet. But it was in every look that lingered too long, every polite phrase forced through clenched teeth, every silence that lasted one beat more than it should have.

“She was doing better,” someone said behind me. “She was smiling more.”

As if I’d stolen that from her. It was already starting. They didn’t believe it was an accident.

I was arrested three days later. They said I pushed her. That we argued on the balcony. That neighbors heard shouting.

No mention of the seizures. Of the way she used to black out. Of the fact that I’d been the one to call 911. Truth didn’t matter anymore. Only stories did.

My lawyer begged me not to testify.

“You’ll only make it worse,” she said, flipping through glossy photos of my ruined life. “Let me work the angles. Keep your mouth shut.”

But I had a different plan.

A desperate one.

Because I couldn’t take it anymore—the stares, the whispers, the way Savannah’s mother cried harder when I entered a room. The way Mark stayed so damn composed. Too composed. Always hovering just close enough to play the grieving brother, but never breaking. Never hurting.

Even at the hospital, before she was gone, he looked at me like he already knew how this would end.

The legend wasn’t exactly mainstream knowledge. One lie, once every hundred years, becomes true if spoken aloud with full belief.

No one knew when the hundred years reset. No one knew how the magic chose. But I believed. With everything I had left. And in that moment, it was all I had.

If I was going to be the villain, I needed someone else to take my place. And deep down, some part of me wanted it to be true. Because the truth—that no one was to blame, that it was just a seizure and a second too late—was too unbearable. I needed someone to blame. And Mark… he already looked the part.

I stood before the court, hands shaking, tongue dry as ash.

“My wife was murdered,” I said.

The room held its breath.

“And I didn’t kill her.”

The prosecutor sneered. My lawyer buried her face in her hands.

“But I know who did.”

I turned, slowly, and pointed.

“It was Mark.”

The air bent.

That’s the only way I can describe it.

Not visibly. Not even audibly. But I felt it. Like something in the fabric of the world took a breath and decided, fine, so be it.

Mark stood up fast—too fast—and knocked over his chair.

“I didn’t—” he started. But then he choked. His mouth opened, and the words tumbled out like hot coals. “She—she found the pills in my bag. Said she’d tell Mom. Said she’d ruin everything. She wasn’t supposed to fall. I didn’t mean—”

Gasps. Screams. The judge yelling.

Mark froze like he hadn’t meant to say any of it. Then he ran.

Didn’t get far.

By the time the cops tackled him, he was already sobbing. The magic had worked… I  had won.

For a while, everything was better.

Not good—you don’t get good back—but better. The charges were dropped. I went home to a quiet apartment filled with dust and silence. I stared at our wedding photo for hours.

You’d think I’d feel peace. But every time I looked into Savannah’s eyes, something felt off.

The way the light hit her face. The way her smile curved. I knew this photo. I had studied it like scripture.

But now?

Now it looked… staged.

Different.

I pulled up our vacation albums. Half the pictures were gone. The ones with Mark. My laptop crashed twice trying to open old videos.

And when I finally found one from Savannah’s last birthday—her voice was wrong. Like someone imitating her but not quite nailing it.

The magic hadn’t just rewritten his story. It had started erasing hers.

Mark’s been in prison for three years now.

He gets thinner every time I see him. Paler. Quieter. His letters—when he sends them—are full of cracks. He doesn’t beg for help. He doesn’t even ask why. I think some part of him believes it. Believes he pushed her. Believes he killed her.

Everyone else does too.

Her mother calls him a monster. Her father won’t speak his name. And when the reporters dug up old family photos, they painted a neat little arc—troubled son, perfect daughter. No one questioned it.

They built a whole new truth out of my lie. And I watch it all from the sidelines, knowing the worst part:

No one killed Savannah.

There was no fight on the balcony. No sinister confrontation. Just the seizure. The fall. The blood. The chaos. I held her hand while she slipped away.

And I couldn’t accept it.

So I made someone else responsible.

And the magic obeyed.

The world reshaped itself around a cleaner story, one where grief has a villain, and pain has a name you can lock away. Mark became that name. That villain. That ending.

But I remember. I remember the nights she couldn’t sleep. The way she’d grip the edge of the bed before the episodes hit. The scans. The doctors. The fear we lived with, always quiet, always waiting.

And I remember that day.

I remember loving her.

And I remember losing her.

Not to a crime. Not to betrayal.

To randomness. To cruel, meaningless biology.

Now that truth lives in no one’s head but mine.

Everyone else moved on. Justice served. Family healed. Narrative complete.

And me?

I can’t sleep. I can’t look at her photo without flinching. Because that smile is wrong. It’s too smooth now, too glossy—like it was added in post.

I visit Mark once a month. He never says much.

Sometimes I think about confessing. About telling him the truth.

But what would I even say?

“Hey, I told a magical lie and rewrote reality. Sorry you’re doing life for something no one ever did.”

So I just sit there.

And he just rots.

And every night, I whisper Savannah’s name like a curse.

Because in trying to save her memory,

I destroyed it.