You think you understand me? What a joke. No one understands me. No one even tries.
You write me off, dismiss me. You try to diagnose me, apply your useless labels.
Open your ears! Listen, for once. “Foogledy balpadons, hormeath!”
See? You’re making that distant, absent face again… Nobody understands.
This story was based on the prompt “understand me?” 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.
“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.
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.
In the beginning, Emily was born a hunger baby, who ate anything and everything—even non-edible treats like small plastic toys.
Halfway through her life she owned a restaurant—became rich, got married, enjoyed outdoor activities—and traveled the world.
In the end, she ate all her money and died.
Devon Carey joined the National Guard in September, 2010, and is getting deployed to Kuwait in 2013. He is going to wait until after his deployment before he makes the decision to go Active duty. Right now, he writes and reads a lot, and works out on his spare time.
I fell to my knees, drained, ravenous, and blistered. I kissed the car door’s flat surface and nuzzled the chrome handles.
A mere two hours driving time took more than two weeks to hike. The Appalachian Trail had not made a man out of me; it whipped my metrosexual hiney.