Their first date went swimmingly. She hugged him often.
Suddenly he couldn’t find his money. He blushed and let her know. She rolled her eyes, tossed some bills on the counter, and left.
Outside she took a wallet out of her purse, removed cash and cards, then threw it away.
Katya Duft is a translator, interpreter, and language teacher, and enjoys writing short stories, poetry, and her blog, “Tales from the Bus”.
Peter came crashing through the cottage door, his shirt speckled with blood, multiple punctures on his neck, ears like cauliflowers, his left eye practically swelled shut.
“Forty-two to twenty-six!” he exclaimed triumphantly.
“Looks like a painful run,” his wife replied. “Is that a record for deer fly kills and bites?”
Norman is a writer from Ottawa who has encountered too many deer flies. He has been published in Saturday Night Reader and 101 Words.
and then they quit their jobs and burned their McMansion to the ground.
Holding hands, their smiles disappeared as she mentioned they had no toothbrushes.
He got a job first. They purchased the essentials. Then cars, iPhones, designer clothes.
After another stressful work day, they exchanged glances, and then they
Kenneth Hamner works in Atlanta, Georgia.
Allen bowed low to the beautiful girl. Straightening, he took her hand and called over the music, “May I have the next dance?”
She burst out laughing.
Dejected, Allen returned to his group. His friends patted him consolingly on the back. “Allen, Pride and Prejudice is not an instruction manual.”
Mark Farley was raised in Zimbabwe where he survived two dog maulings, a swarm of killer bees, and being run over by a horse. You can find a video of his 23-word twitter story here.
It can be difficult, deciding to abandon research, but not in this case. The experiment had produced competing clusters, no cohesive whole.
With regret, He set in motion events that would return the experiment to its starting materials; eastern light began its final crawl down the skyline of New York.
Kevin works in a lab by day and ponders various avocations by night. This is his first submission of anything, anywhere.
They slap him, drawing blood, and berate him for being male.
With stoic dignity he walks away, returning later bearing gifts. They sneer at the quality.
He lays down, exhausted. They shoo him outside.
With a sigh, Tom leaves his feline mistress and their daughters to eat the mice alone.
Hilary Nichols wrote this story.
I transferred the hook to her clumsy hand, my heart pounding in my chest. The lights in the room seemed more sinister reflected in the red glass. Maybe I shouldn’t have entrusted such a delicate operation to a toddler?!
…She did it!
The last ornament was finally on the tree.
Dave Cox is a native of the San Francisco Bay area and occasionally writes things that make sense.
I poured one for myself and one for good luck and drank them both. It was going to be a long night.
Through darkness I crept, my heart racing as I clutched the high-value cargo against my chest.
The scream came as I reached to switch on the baby monitor.
Guy is equally scared of war and parenthood. This is his second fifty word story.
“Don’t stand too close to the counter, or a spider might come bite your toe,” she tells me as I get ready to wash the dishes.
“Are you serious?”
She stops and gets that real hard thinking look in her eyes.
“Nah. If you wear sneakers you should be fine.”
Valarie Bradshaw is a nomadic mother who just graduated from college and spends her days in her pajamas writing all the stories that swim in her head. Her family is very patient.
“Thumb sucking can cause dry, irritable skin. Using a pacifier is a much healthier choice.”
“No. Pacifiers can cause speech impediments in children. Sucking thumbs is better.”
“Pacifiers can eventually be taken from the child. Thumbs cannot.”
“If a child uses a pacifier, its head may fall off.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
O.L.Humphreys is an aspiring author of humorous short fiction and a confused new father. He lives in Ealing, England. To date his only published short story can be found in Dark Lane Anthology Volume One. Keep up to date with his future publications on Facebook.