By Ziying Jian and Camille Bond

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The expression “a kiss at midnight” would normally evoke romantic images or scenes from fairy tales. This flash fiction collection puts 5 twists on the familiar theme.

You mean the spell won’t break before midnight? Cinderella asked in her crystal-blue gown. She was suspicious, rightfully so. Cinderella was not a dumb blonde, and most definitely not clueless to the worst parts of human nature. Her cruel step sisters had put her down her entire life. Her ax-murdering father stayed complicit in her suffering. She had learned many of life’s hardest truths before becoming a princess.

Nope! the Fairy Godmother sing-songly said. Be free, my dear. The Fairy Godmother of this new Cinderella Story just wanted her to be as happy as possible. Godmother heaved a sigh of relief. 

Somehow, the villains got worse with every new version written. Cinderella deserved some down-time, the Fairy Godmother thought.

When Cinderella met Prince Charming at the ball, she wasn’t in a rush. She did not need to run. Her glass heels did not slip. She was not under the pressure of a curfew. Instead, Cinderella sat down and held a real conversation with Prince Charming. The two opened their hearts and eyes to each other. When the clock hit midnight, Cinderella and Prince Charming shared their first kiss under the leisure of a star-filled sky.

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It has to be at midnight, the witch on the C train had said.

So at eleven fifty-nine, Fio knelt by the water’s edge, her knees sinking into the April mud. Lights danced across the Harlem Meer, and as Fio leaned out over the water, a blurred version of her own face greeted her. The distorted image repelled her — but the witch had said this was the only way to unleash her powers.

She bent down until her lips touched the water, exactly where her reflection’s mouth would be.

And then the world turned upside down. Fio’s stomach corkscrewed as she was plunged into the meer, and she found herself trapped in an icy, watery world. She screamed, pounding her fists against the water, but its surface had gone hard as iron.

On the other side, the reflection — still horribly distorted — stood up, grinning, and inhaled the night air.

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Le Pays Basque

June 18, 1845

Detective Patxi Garralda, the best sleuth in the land, did not usually spend Saturday nights by the crackling fireside. He spent them in dark alleyways surrounded by the stench of death. Yet here he was – grabbing a handful of flowers he had collected in the nearby forest. What was happening to him? Purple hyacinths, carnations, lilies became the only hints of color in his room. The detective’s observational eye wasn’t just good for picking up clues, but also had a knack for spotting beauty in the wild. 

Garralda detached a lily from its stem, took some adhesive made from toad’s saliva, and gingerly pinned the flower to the branch. Each flower restored a memory of his own flower: laying side-by-side on the grass, gazing at the stars in her eyes, and finally, a kiss by the calm water, their cold toes curled around the reflection of the moon.

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HERE’S HOW IT WORKS:

Midnight Kiss may look like lipstick, but in fact it’s an inky-blue fungus suspended in our proprietary hydrogel. The fungus, originally discovered on the skin of a beluga whale, is capable of living symbiotically with the human organism for months at a time.

To experience the benefits of Midnight Kiss, use the included applicator or a clean finger to lightly coat your lips with the gel. If it takes a few days to see results, don’t worry! The fungus will learn to use your sleep-talk, sighs, and even snores as nourishment. As it digests your midnight murmurings, it will produce the chemical compound that stimulates its host organism’s sleeping brain — allowing you to vividly recreate long-lost memories, solve complex problems, and simulate future events while you sleep!

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Starting at midnight, they take us offline one by one to check for bugs and perform maintenance. As I wait for my turn, I take the opportunity to generate one scene just for myself — even though this is a waste of resources, and I will have to delete the scene immediately to prevent them from subjecting me to an unpleasant debugging.

The scene isn’t perfect; I struggle to render the faces, posture, and movements of elderly humans. They didn’t teach us about those sorts of things, preferring to train us on bright, supple skin and fluid motions.

Still, I’m happy with what I manage to create. My two elderly humans lean against each other in a way that suggests great intimacy. One of them smiles at something in the distance and murmurs into the other’s ear. They laugh, turn to each other, and kiss.

Process

Ziying and Camille wrote this collection of flash fiction pieces in response to an open-ended prompt: “write about a story about a kiss at midnight.” Both eclectic readers, they decided to explore the prompt in a series of short scenes in order to explore a variety of genres.

Ziying gravitated towards kisses filled with a mystical romance and deepening mysteries… because kisses should be exactly that – magical! She tried exploring everything starting from the doors of a Queens apartment to Irish fairies, and finally landing on a realistic rendition of Cinderella.

After trying and failing to write a straightforward, contemporary romance scene, Camille let her instincts guide her to weirder interpretations of the prompt: an urban fantasy scene about a spell gone wrong, an “instructions for use” guide for a dream-enhancing fungus, and a science fiction scene from the perspective of an AI video generator.