It was another dark night at the Père Lachaise cemetery, still moonless, and still very cold. I didn't know it at the time these events took place, but I should point out that escapes only happen during new moons. And indeed, it had been about a month since I had met Fulgence...

In writing these few lines, I just wanted to explain the reasons for my presence in the Petit Larousse. I could have done without it, but I am old today and I do not want to die before having clearly and unambiguously related the events that took place that day...

Then it was with agonizing terror that I instantly embraced the incredible, the atrocious truth that was to annihilate the little understanding that was desperately trying to cling to my pitiful person. And yet, strange as it may seem, it is also thanks to this...

Once upon a time, too long ago and in a country now forgotten, there was a poor individual whom life had not spared. Theodebald was not handsome. He was even very ugly, so ugly that next to him, his donkey looked like an Apollo....

It was well past three in the morning when Michel heard a noise that should never have happened at that hour. His brain, although asleep, then transmitted this wake-up signal that seemed to come from the most cavernous of the lost strata of his consciousness: "Hey, Mimi, uncap..."

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, and a long, long time ago, there was a shoemaker who was really badly shod and had a very crazy paw on his one-legged leg, a very handicapped man. Despite his cleverness with his hands, he worked...

I had a revelation at dawn, upon waking, while Morpheus had gone to practice on the opposite side of the world, at the antipodes of the humus of the soil of my atavistic heritage. A teaching, stronger than the dawn and clearer than the livid radiation of our star, decidedly apathetic at the crack of dawn…

The case of the mirror has always been a source of questions, interrogations and mysteries... when you think about it a little... Finally, the mirror reflects our world even if we don't see everything in it. As much as possible, even by sticking our face in it, we never manage to...

Existence is sometimes baroque… and some places seem never to be known. You will understand it… One day, late in the day and a long time ago, it was even later than usual in the day and I got lost during a stroll that I would never have...

Barely veiled by a few opaque and graying clouds, tending towards a pale and sad blue. A blue that you have never seen… A glow too, piercing the ether and tearing softly the heavy atmosphere of this end of the world. That of the moon, surely, star...

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a magnificent three-master that anchored on a remote island far, far away. The sailors were enjoying a well-deserved rest while the captain, who was the delight of all the local merchants, accepted the usual transport missions to the neighboring islands...

A car breakdown in the middle of the countryside, at two in the morning and in thick fog on an icy road between Aillant and Le Charme, is always a bit scary... I had time to steer the car to the side of the road to avoid another accident when I came across a Volvo...

— Do not be afraid, ephemeral creature, this is not a prison. Just a reprieve, the procrastination of your paltry existence. — … — You are simply in the atonement phase… Don't you understand?...

A bland thought, so accomplished… To tell the truth, I didn’t live long. But the little I saw of the world satisfied my curiosity and my thirst for knowledge. My thirst… No, I prefer to write: “was enough for me”. It’s true, we are quickly disappointed by what we see. I had…

Monday, February 18, 2008, 08:00, McMurdo Antarctic Base. Autonomy: 100%. The mission of the CEAMARC integrated program had just ended the day before. Having left two months earlier, the scientists had positioned themselves off the coast of Adélie Land, in the Antarctic zone...

It was the dead of autumn, somewhere a little before the end of the 16th century. It was cold and all the lands affected a barren landscape. The panorama was covered by a thick morning fog of a cold sharper than the sharpest flax distaff. Jehan thought of Sleeping Beauty in this regard...

Something was wrong… I couldn’t tell what when we parked and got out of the car, but there was a lizard in the engine, water in the gas or a shadow in the picture… In short, there was a bone in the cheese! But…

Low, dark and listless, a cloudy dome was stranding itself lazily, on all sides, on the olive and halitose horizons of this autumnal biotope. Even darker clouds were also revealed, here and there, above the sodden fields that stretched as far as the eye could see. Filled with a complex marriage of water and saturated vapor...

We were the last. Not that we claimed this ultimate privilege (which, by the way, was not one), but there had to be a few like us since the exodus of the entire human population, of all nations, of the various tribes and...

Arthur Enieved set about piercing a thin opening with a metal rod lying at his feet, which was easier than he would have thought at first… A thin metal rod that he had picked up there, God knows why, at the mere sight of this notch imprinted in...

— This infant's pulse is abnormally bradycardic… In addition, I noted bilateral mydriasis! The practitioner put down his pen. He had the smirk that all practitioners have at least once in their lives: the smirk of incomprehension. He was not going to...

— STUPIDITY (nf, popular, evokes human stupidity – animals are not directly concerned by stupidity) The definite article not clearly contracted and the common noun which followed it rushed out of the mouth of the post of his...

I'm going to tell you how I destroyed the Earth. But first, I'd like to immediately put a stop to the various protests that inevitably arose when reading this first sentence...

I was at least on my umpteenth idea for a short story. It was bubbling in my head and inspirations followed projects, jostling and bustling in all directions like the Madonnas of consumption at the opening of branded shops on a Black Friday morning...

It's a fact: cats disappear by the thousands, from one day to the next, without warning. And when that happens, there are only two solutions: either they come back on their own after a more or less long time, or we never see them again. There is also the possibility that they are microchipped...

The chef brought the main course. Humble, he carefully placed it on the marble table around which the two friends were tasting the best culinary preparations on the planet. Then, reverently, he withdrew to the kitchens across the large golden room...

I have lived two lives. The first ended on December 4, 2017. I was 74 years old at the time and, for me, everything seemed already written. I am not saying that I had an exceptional first life… far from it! No, but luck would have it that I was...

I never knew what happens when we sleep, when consciousness gives way to the blindness of macroscopic cognition. To be honest, I never wanted to know. There are things that humanity must ignore, things that have no place in our world...

And there you have it! It's over... The idea had come a long way in twenty years... in only twenty years! That was the strangest thing about it. However, eliminating work had not been an easy task, and ensuring production by...

Are we alone when the light has gone out, when we go to bed and turn off all the bulbs, when there is neither moon nor stars? To check, we would just have to turn on the light, but in this case, seeing that we are indeed alone is useless, since it is in complete darkness that we would like to...

Maxime was a superhero. Unfortunately, no one will ever hear about him. Indeed, fate wanted him to be endowed with two powers that he could not use as he would have liked. He realized his first power when he was still young. How he learned it, no one knew....

Aunt Agathe had always had the art and the manner to surprise those who knew her. Because she was unexpected. And because of this, those who knew her did not know her. That was what made her charm, but it stopped there. Of course, the violence with which she...

Anyway, when the fireman came to tell me that my dog was with my wife and two children when the house exploded, I knew that my fortieth birthday was going to be a shitty day. But this much!...

Stupid deaths are the most atrocious because traditionally, they are the ones that could best be avoided. Worse: they are of no interest because they are not justified, prove nothing and leave behind only a bitter feeling of futility. Those who survive the death of a loved one are left with a feeling of sterile waste that nothing can explain, the prescience of a...

Have you ever wondered what those shadows are that you sometimes see silently prowling among the other silhouettes of the nighttime nebula in cemeteries? Some say they are stray cats, poor lost felines capable of seeing things that the human eye cannot...

It was over! Sure, Charles was going to have to read through reams of reports, court records, and other testimonies, but it was over! He was finally free of any commitment on this case. The cartel members who hadn't been killed were going to spend the rest of their lives in prison...