Darla’s commute was awful: it took two hours to get from her downtown apartment to the wastelands, where she hunted the secret dragons.
Her friends thought she was a paralegal. They might ask uncomfortable questions if she moved to the suburbs, and it was already hard enough hiding the scars.
A mouse lived inside my walls. I tried to feed it cheese and peanut butter and other tasty things.
“I cannot take your gifts, sir,” it said. “I am afraid you will trap me!”
I convinced it I wouldn’t. We became friends.
A small problem: my rodent-phobic wife found out.
This story is based on a title suggested by @eikoandmog.
Next door, violence prowls. A storm opens dark eyes, tears falling down, down, down.
Shhh, stop crying. See that window? Open it. Breathe. Now lean outwards slowly, slowly…
SLAM! Mother enters, eyes bruised, body bruised, freshly battered from a knockdown fight.
“What are you doing? Get back in. He’s gone.”
Elizabeth Cheung, from Hong Kong, blogs at recusant-reconditus.blogspot.com.
The spiteful wind was fierce and sharp. Ted tried to escape, but it chased him, cackling, and sheared the hair right off his head.
He snuck home, frantic with embarrassment. Naturally Melanie was the first person to stop by.
“You’re bald!” she exclaimed. “I love it.”
“Darn,” cursed the wind.
This story was based on the prompt “first person” at TypeTrigger.
“I need a vacation.”
“Oh? Where to?”
“Into my own brain, I think. An imagination vacation.”
“What are you going to do while you’re there?”
“Just relax.”
“Lucky you. My imagination doesn’t let me relax. Always an adventure going on.”
“That must be difficult.”
“Actually the hardest part is escaping!”
This story is based on a title suggested by @Zzenkrad.
There is a monster in the mountains that preys on bumblebees, daffodils, and woodland creatures, swallowing them whole into its enormous belly.
Some say there’s a garden in there, a paradise where the flowers bloom and the wildlife lives on, frolicking. They’ve forgotten that the monster once swallowed a bear.
This story was based on the prompt “in the mountains” on TypeTrigger.
She transferred to four different buses at random, closed her eyes and spun in a circle, walked down a few unfamiliar side streets, and wound up right in front of her house.
Again.
There was only one explanation: Mom hadn’t been lying; her father really had been a homing pigeon.
One by one, the lights flickered into life. Olya stood speechless as they danced into shapes she didn’t have names for.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, awestruck.
It would be quite some time before she’d learn what the lights actually were, and a good while longer before she’d finally stop crying.
When he’s not struggling with University Stuff, Alex Aloneftis fights fire-breathing glitches and vile errors with his mighty sword, “The Debugger™”. In his spare time, he also writes exceedingly stuffy opinion pieces on gaming at k-code.blogspot.com.
She sang beautifully. When it ended they rose to their feet in awe and appreciation, begging for more.
“Ever heard of having too much of a good thing?” she chided them. Still they implored her: a little longer!
To prove her point, she barred the exits during her three-day encore.
She had preferred it when her table was simply empty. An empty table could some day be filled.
What could you do with a table once it had become a grave?
Stilling her only child’s dying spasms, she emptied herself of tears, filling the empty places with resentment, determination, revolution.
This story is based on a title suggested by Ryan Culley-Waters.