The Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirrels – Rodents in a Nutshell

Rodents in a nutshell. Squirrel Power. –Michelle Liew

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“Quick, the little squirt’s catching up!” Pip the bold mind behind the squirrels’ operations, darted ahead. Behind the group of four buffoning rodents was a hapless toddler, wailing and stumbling after his stolen PB and J sandwich.

Of course, the said sandwich was already ‘mysteriously’ disappearing as the toddler sobbed his way through the branches, his hassled mother behind him: “Let it go, Tom.”

🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️ It was four tails, one task. Nutty, Hazel, Chipper and Pip were to pull off the snack theft of their lives. Their mission—to steal an unsuspecting human’s lunch and vanish. They had trained for this—in alleys, parks, in the shadows of sandwich shops. They simply couldn’t fail.

And it seemed that operation PB and J was a go—they had struck before the poor child’s lunch even hit the grass.

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I call it, “The Last lunchwich!” Chipper had whispered, just seconds before the drama unfolded.

Just as Chipper, the renaissance squirrel of the group, hung painting from a branch with his prize, the sandwich in his cheek like a bomb about to go off, a blinding ray of light surged from a nearby laboratory.

A sonic BOOM.

A throbbing pulse.

The earth started shaking.

The sky gave a loud hiccup, and the trees bowed inward, as if reminiscing on something old and forgotten.

Their world contorted. Time fractured. Something suspended the rodents midair—then drops them like ripe acorns. A ripple hit them like solidified thoughts. They fell inward—not down.
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The squirrels rose, relieved to be alive.

But they were—-different.

In essence, their bodies were the same. But their thoughts
were far from the usual.

They spoke. They reasoned. But they recalled things that were strange—-not their own. Even the trees in their park seemed—off. Too bent. Too tall.

Hazel calculated wind vectors—but had cut every class in Squirrel School she could. Chipper, of course, became the carver of tree trunks. Pip—well—he whispered coordinates that made sense to himself and noone else.

And the Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirrels were born.

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Nutty, the sensible voice of the group, declared their next mission.

“We must defend the park.”

The other squirrels shot thoughtful looks at each other, nodding in agreement.

Defense, however, meant sabotage. Something—-or someone—sliced the power lines. Garbage trucks had to reroute, and the air became dense with their suffocating stench. Cell towers sizzled, their signals swallowed in static.

To the squirrels, human tech were trespassers. Parasites. They needed to purge it. Misson parameters shifted: control, contain, cleanse.

The battle cries? Lines of nutshells, ready for a seige.

Hazel disarmed a CCTV with a satisfied smirk.

The rodents’ actions seemed like harmless mammalian play to the passersby in the park. But to the squirrels? It was DEAD serious.

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Then, even stranger things happened. The mission shifted—again.

Chipper glitched, sculpting trunks with binary, not pictures. Pip’s codes twisted into circuit diagrams. Nutty’s sentences fractured like corrupted data.

The squrrels hadn’t mutated—they were rogue AI implanted in organic hosts.

They took off, awakened.

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This story is entirely original. AI tags are coincidental. The number of words between the quote and disclaimer is 500.

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Find other great books on Amazon! Today’s great book:

Power Games by David Applegate

The Patient Part 1

Trust the doctor. -Michelle Liew

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Liam tossed and turned in his hospital bed, the medicinal odour of antiseptic burning his nose—and underneath it, something else—sharp. The walls were too white, too—sanitized, as thought they had something to hide.He couldn’t remember how he got there.

A doctor stood at the foot of his bed, combing through his charts. “Mr. Loong,”he said, his voice professionally polished but his eyes—distant. Can you remember anything from your accident?”

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Liam’s mind swam with fractured memories. Flashes of dark roads. A loud crash. A garbled, static-filled voice. Headlights, but they didn’t belong to his car. He gripped the armrest, his knuckles white.

“Your car–took the worst of it. But your injuries are…odd.”

She pulled back his blanket. No cuts. No bruises. Not even a scratch.

The way she said “odd” unsettled- as if he knew more than she let on.

Liam’s throat dried up. “That’s impossible.”

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The doctor set his chart on her desk grabbed a package marked “radiology”. “Your scans came back. They’re clear…but we need to treat… something else.”

He held up a small mirror. Liam took it from him, his hands shaking. He held it up.

He wasn’t looking at himself.

At least, not the self he knew. His color was wrong. The shape—looked odd. His lips moved in the way his didn’t. A stranger returned his gaze. Watching from within.

Then, the reflection lagged, a breath behind reality.

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Liam’s chest moved up and down. “Doctor…why do I look like this?”

He didn’t respond. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a syringe filled with a viscose, black liquid. It wasn’t medicine. It pulsed, alive.

“Liam,” he cajoled, “You need to stay calm.” His smile was too professional. As if he’d done this before.

Liam’s heart pounded. His instincts told him —RUN.

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Liam’s fingers clenched into fists. The mirror slipped from his grip, shattering on the floor.

The second it broke, his mind wrenched open, and a flood of memories rushed in. Ones that didn’t belong to him.

He ran for the door.

The doctor lunged, too late.

Darkness won.

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If you like what you read, please join me on Patreon!

Check out other books on Amazon. Today’s book: The Pangean Chronicles by JP McDougall

The Final Witness

Detective Jonas Kay was the best in his field—he never left a case unsolved. The Lieutenant had an uncanny ability for unearthing dark truths, shattering iron-clad alibis, and dragging confessions from the unwilling.

There was one thing he couldn’t explain, though. How he always knew who the killer was.

“How does he know?” They whispered in the precinct coffee rooms. Officers gave up their seats for him. Criminals fled as he approached. He commanded fear and respect.

But, across the interrogation table, something felt—different. The suspect wasn’t breaking a sweat. Or making any pleas.

He was just smiling.

A slow, crooked smirk.

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Kay laid the evidence neatly on the table. The suspect on the CCTV camera footage. The victim’s blood on his shirt. The case should have been straightforward.

Except—it wasn’t. The suspect eyed Kay, without fear or doubt, but with recognition. He leaned forward, a movement so casual, that his pulse spiked. He described the details of the crime scene—details never released to the public.

He never denied them. Not one. “Detective, how did you know about the scar?” His eyes were lowered; a sneer shaped the edges of his mouth. “It comes so easy for you, doesn’t it? Like the answers were waiting for you.”

Kay’s breath caught, and his vision blurred for a second. The victim DID have a scar on his wrist. But no one had ever mentioned that. Had he seen it? Or had he just… known?

“So you do remember them. Even before the blood dries. ” ****************************************************************

Kay’s head throbbed like an erratic drumbeat. His fingers nearly tore his case notes as he ran through them. Something just wasn’t adding up. Dates mismatched. Witnesses seem coached…altered.

Then, his fingers landed on a case that took place five years earlier, involving the same crime scene. The same suspect. The same confession.

No…that was just ridiculous.

His breath became sharper…quicker. His eyes scanned another case. Another. And another. Different names, same crime. The faces were..odd. But the confessions? Exact replicas.

The suspect eyed him, amused derision lacing his eyes. “You’re catching on quickly, aren’t you? Dig a little deeper, Detective Kay. When did this case begin? The names mirrored each other. But the faces? They were different.

Kay took a quick breath and stumbled back. The cases were complete fakes. He had been solving the same crime…again. And again. No matter how many times he solved it, it never ended.

****************************************************************

The door burst open. A male nurse strode in, his eyes ominously dark. In his hands, something made of thick fabric.

“Kay,” he directed. “Sit.”

Kay stood rooted. His heart hammered his chest.

CHAIR?

He turned, and his reflection stared at him. But the interrogation room wasn’t the same. It was white. Empty. One chair. One clipboard.

The nurse pushed him onto the chair and unveiled the fabric—-part of a jacket.

The kind of jacket that locked a man in place.

The case file? There never was .