“Man, you’re SUCH a bummer.”
“I am? I didn’t realize… I thought you invited me on this live animal capturing expedition because you enjoyed my company.”
“I do! But, see, when I tag the animals, I shoot the dart into their shoulders… Why do you keep aiming for their rumps?”
This story was based on the prompt “bummed out” at TypeTrigger.
“I love snowpeas,” she said, piling the green smiles into her bowl.
“I wonder how they feel about you.”
“What?”
“I wonder if the remaining pods are fuming over the destruction of their brothers and planning a Guy Fawkes-style vendetta evenas we speak.”
“So… How’s that therapy going?”
“Fine, why?”
Corinne currently resides in Ohio, where she derives most of her inspiration from urban decay, an alarm clock, and her bathroom mirror.
“I know how pretty I am,” she crooned. “Tell me something else about myself.”
“Ah,” I said. “You’re just so… attractive, really.”
“No, something else!” she insisted.
“You’re… pleasing to my eyes?”
She glared.
“Statuesque?”
She softened, but was not yet appeased.
I wish my next attempt hadn’t been “pulchritudinous.”
This story was based on the prompt “something else” at TypeTrigger.
The corked bottle sat on the highest shelf in the pantry for thirty years, gathering decades of dust.
I took it down on what would have been her fifty-fifth birthday, worked the cork out gently, and unfolded the yellowing paper.
On it, she’d written, “I knew you’d look eventually. -Helen”
This story was based on the prompt “corked bottle” at TypeTrigger.
“You shall suffer my wrath, puny one!”
“Perhaps I shall, but you, too, shall suffer it, I think.”
“Indeed I won’t. My own wrathfulness amuses me.”
“Yet does it not also give you heartburn?”
“It has not done so before.”
“Nuts. What shall I do with all this Tums, then?”
“Once AGAIN, I remind you that NO ANIMALS are allowed in the classroom during an examination.”
Jeremy patted the enormous grizzly bear’s head. “Why not?”
“He might, er, help you cheat.”
“Barry would NEVER do that,” said Jeremy, surreptitiously hiding his exam paper, on which he’d written “Grrr, grroowl, roooaarr.”
This story was based on the prompt “once again” at TypeTrigger.
“I really messed that up, didn’t I?” he asked, laughing.
She smiled, tossed her hair, and laughed too.
“Let’s start over,” she said. “Like we’ve never met.”
“Alright. I’m John. I work in construction.”
“No,” she pouted. “Romanticize your life. Make something up!”
He answered only by straightening his face.
Miranda Mann is an aspiring author from Utah. Follow her on Twitter @mirandamann.
The candygram had seen better days. “Do… Do you want me to me to sing?” she said, awkwardly adjusting the French maid outfit to better show off her desiccated cleavage.
I grabbed a blanket, draped it over her shoulders. “Let me make you some soup,” I whispered as she wept.
Chris Puzak lives near Philadelphia.
There was a man who lived on a mountain. It was a stormy place, and the sounds kept him awake each night.
Fed up, the man challenged the storm to a duel.
It responded by spitting lightning bolts and shouting thunder.
Bemused, he caught the lightning and threw it back.
Sean Quigley also goes by “Posh Platypus.” Follow him on Twitter: @PoshPlatypus.
Home alone, almost asleep, she freezes at the sound. Wide awake now, eyes straining in the dark, holding her breath, she listens. The faint rustling grows closer, an alarming noise: intruder!
She reaches for her pistol. Heart pounding, hands shaking, she rounds the corner, aims, and nearly shoots the cockroach.
Lauren McBride’s work has appeared in various science fiction, horror, nature and children’s publications including Scifaikuest (featured poet, August 2010) and The Drabbler (honorable mention twice). She shares a love of laughter, science and the ocean with her husband and two children.
This story was previously printed in Boston Literary Magazine, Fall 2008, under the pseudonym Elizabeth L. Collins.