This is Drabbletober, the podcast of tiny fiction.

Hello, and welcome to Drabbletober. This is episode 5, for Saturday the fifth of

October 2024, and I'm Elizabeth Guilt.

Your one-hundred word story for the day is:

It's Not The Labour, It's The Parts

I waved as he disappeared. I held my breath.

He didn't come back.

I waited a couple of hours, but still no cheerful creak as he shouldered open the door, brimming with stories.

Perhaps things weren't as predictable as we'd thought. Maybe our calculations were off.

After a year, I had to know the worst. I thrust a spade between the roots of our old oak tree, riving the ground apart until I found the metal box, rusted after a century in soil. It was stuffed with letters. He loved me, missed me, but could not repair our time machine.

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Take care, everyone, and I'll see you tomorrow for episode 6.