“I can play guitar and trombone!”
“Ah, shaddup. I’ve learned and forgotten how to play more instruments than you know exist!”
“Like what?”
“Like Icelandic, Zulu, Narau…”
“Those aren’t instruments; they’re languages.”
“Languages? I’ve learned and forgotten how to speak more languages than you know exist! Like sitar, zither, didgeridoo…”
“So can any of you tell me the answer to five times seven?” asked Miss Flannerty. “Don’t be shy!”
Billy and Bobby and Suzie played silently with their pencils.
“Kelly, do you know the answer?”
“No,” whispered Kelly.
“That’s ok!” said Miss Flannerty. “It’s the same as my age! Twenty-three!”
“There’s something inherently comedic about hot dogs,” she mused.
“Maybe it’s their geometry,” he suggested.
“How do you mean?”
“Well,” he said, shrugging, “to put it bluntly, they’re phallic.”
“Hmm,” she said. “No, I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s because they aren’t really made from dogs at all.”
James approached the plate nervously. The pitcher was dripping in the heat.
Previous attempts had excited the audience, but they were foul.
Four pitchers and ten full Counts later, James was crowned grand champion. He just barely made it home safe from the Royal Count’s Eating Contest before throwing up.
Charlie Dunn is a college student studying abroad in Japan. He wrote this story during his daily commute. (Ed. That’s the beauty of microfiction, eh?)
“Gennardy Tranctorblade, Julioust Dunyarctle, Crandulon Unctiferal, Yip Yip Doodle Tok, Fkaisl Ipsidav, Hourly Ablutions, Wreltstle Jujjax, and Michael.
“You have all been found guilty of Second-Degree Hookie (The Playing Thereof), and will be sentenced to mandatory summer school.
“Except Crandulon Unctiferal. He, like all repeat offenders, gets the firing squad.”
“Have you been to the moon?”
“Nope.”
“Have you been to the International Space Station?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Have you been to the Hubble telescope?”
“No! What do you think I am, some kind of astronaut?”
“Well your résumé says…”
“Oh. Right. Yeah, I’ve been to all three of those.”
“Life is like pizza,” Giovanni once told me. “You can cover it with different toppings, but the core ingredients are the same. And no matter how you prepare it, some people enjoy eating it more than others.”
I thought he was so wise. Then I learned he was a cannibal.
Young Princess Emeldatine sat in her tower, surveying the kingdom she would one day inherit. “When I’m Queen, I’ll make every day my birthday!” she declared.
Nurse chuckled. “You’d get old pretty quickly!”
“I’ll also have a pet dragon,” said Emeldatine. “Like the moldy one at the window!”
Nurse fainted.
“If a tree falls in the jungle,” said my captor, “no one can hear you scream.”
I slowly loosened my bonds. “I think you’re misquoting that.”
He snorted, hacking at the tree with his axe.
He was right. I fled as the tree crushed him, and I heard no screams.
The igloos were melting.
On the one hand, the warmer temperatures meant there would be more people around. On the other hand, it meant they’d soon be staying in tents. Tents were easier to break into, Percival the Polar Bear knew, but he found that igloos kept the humans fresher.