Just posting this here for fun. I was challenged a few months ago to do a story in 250 words, so I offered a tongue-in-cheek riff on Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground. (It helps if you've read the original).

Underground Man Visits the ATM Machine

by Perspicacity

I enter a booth and join a spectacle for the impersonal masses outside. Summer heat saps my vitality. I hate the sun. The ATM machine blinks and hearkens; servant of Mammon, her rituals sicken.

I am cast into a million California Hells, sooty and soulless, asphalt gauntlets for the wretched. Wino piss molders, its stink, an acrid lance to my nose. A McDonald's bag is overturned. French fries that aren't even French lie broken. Idiots. Deposit envelopes, spoiled and debauched by vandals, scatter about like so much refuse.

A pierced harlot reeking of cheap flowers and crotch clops in. I grit my teeth. It is my turn at the machine, yet the harpy thieves of me, cutting before me.

I wait, restless. I think my liver hurts.

Oh, grievous insult, how I detest her so! Four transactions when the sign clearly says a maximum of two. Woman most foul! Immoral insect of painted nails and belt-like skirt, sweat soaked into her tight blouse...

Temptation-could I save her?

Wickedness! She answers a cell phone mid-transaction! Hangman! She's everything I detest and I hate myself now for ideating charity for one so benighted.

I will get my revenge, oh yes.

She finishes her call and I see my chance. Striding forward, I claim her personal space. The creature looks up and I glare back witheringly. She backs away and leaves. Bitter in defeat, she calls me a dickless cocksucker.

I am mighty in my retribution.