Jonathan had a special relationship with his shirt buttons.
You see, Jonathan was corpulent, rotund. He relied on his buttons to keep his portliness in check.
But Jonathan never said “Please” or “Thank you” to his buttons, and they got fed up.
So during an important meeting, they ran away.
This story is based on a title suggested by @kinogami.
There was a complete stranger in the house, and no one else seemed to care. Jill and Bobby even seemed to like the trespassing feline.
So Mitsy began sneezing and sniffling and mewling.
She knew how things worked: they’d never keep the new cat if it was creating allergy problems.
His flapping jaws still locked in high gear, frowning men yearned for sonic blasts from a jet squadron to maybe momentarily mute him. They wondered loud, clear, and audibly if even a city nicknamed “The Big Decibel” for its constant and deafening clamor could outdo that son of an amplifier.
Tom McDade lives in Monroe, CT, with his wife, no kids, no pets. He works as a computer programmer in the home plumbing supplies industry.
Like many other runty rodents, Gus had an entirely undeserved nickname.
“Goofy Gopher,” his mom had affectionately called him. But the weasels found out.
Gus’s father said, “Reappropriate it. Go into stand-up. Make a name for yourself. Show them up.”
But it turned out Gus’s jokes just weren’t very funny.
My brother called me a prison probability. I told the pansy, “Shut up,” shoved four candy bars down his pants.
The fat lady lurched from behind the counter, grabbed his collar, half the stash, shrieking, “Snot-nosed delinquent!”
After mom whooped him, I snuck into his room: “Hand them over, punk!”
Meg Tuite’s writing has appeared in numerous journals. She is the fiction editor of The Santa Fe Literary Review and Connotation Press. Her novel “Domestic Apparition” (2011) is available through San Francisco Bay Press. She has a monthly column “Exquisite Quartet” for Used Furniture Review. You can read her blog at http://megtuite.wordpress.com.
Mister Murder Mouth cackled villainously. “If you want to live, answer this mathematical skill-testing question! Multiply my social security number by the cost of replacing my birth certificate!”
“Evil, dirty, filthy, rotten cheater!” I cried. “You’re an illegal immigrant! You have no SSN!”
“Blast,” he said, and I walked free.
This story is based on a title suggested by @metcarfre.
Most mornings, George joined the queue at the butcher’s and waited patiently. He always left with two fresh sausages, and the butcher wished more of his customers were as polite and gentlemanly.
The stray mutt, however, wished the butcher would throw him a nice bone every now and then, instead.
Bryce Main is an author and a writer of ad copy. He discovered 50-word stories recently and finds reading them immensely enjoyable. This is the first he’s written.
Milos wanted to stand out, to be remembered.
As he wheeled the life-sized, entirely edible cake replica of himself into the room, he knew he had succeeded.
Every member of the cannibal collective oohed and aahed.
“The volunteer provides dessert, right?” Milos beamed. “Now you get to eat me twice!”
“Papa Panda! Papa Panda!”
There it went again.
“Papa Panda!”
It was incessant, unceasing, never-ending. (Synonyms were one of Papa Panda’s few pleasures.)
Papa Panda rolled over, half-opened one eye, and gestured impatiently at the annoying, agitating throng.
The tourists roared with glee.
Papa Panda found zoo life emotionally taxing.
Sunsy was a real chirp flirt. He went after anyone who had wings and a beak and laid eggs.
The dove turned him down gently.
The owl lectured him on Breed Loyalty.
The eagle just stared imperiously until he went away.
The peahen merely scoffed.
And then the pigeon attacked.
This story is based on a title suggested by @Vigafray and a prompt offered by @NekoDaimyo.