It was torturous sensory overload.
All the colours of the rainbow (along with a few nonconformist hues) strobed across a brightly illuminated screen. Dissonant, detuned tones blared and shrieked on powerful speakers.
He’d been told he was disabled, ineffective, useless. But the deaf, blind secret agent knew: ignorance is bliss.
He sprang awake, stifling a scream.
“It was just a dream!” he panted. “I’m not standing in front of the classroom in my underwear!”
“Keith, wake up!” shouted the teacher.
His eyes flew open and he blushed as the class laughed.
That was how Keith discovered his embarrassment-induced, false-awakening narcolepsy.
She looked left, then right, then strode purposefully out into the street.
Horns blared as drivers swerved to avoid her.
Oblivious to the mayhem around her, she reached the sidewalk, where she knelt and asked, “No, really, Ms. Chicken. What are you doing on the other side of the road?”
George and Geoffrey Giraffe, those rascally brothers, were bored one day, so they decided to “borrow” a helicopter.
“We’ll have a whale of a time!” they told each other. “Let’s tie a net to the chopper and dredge up an orca!”
But they’d forgotten that their necks were so long.
This story was based on a call for two mammals and a vehicle. @BlameWizards provided giraffe, whale, and helicopter.
“Ten… Nine… Eight… Seven…”
“Ha! Poor seven. Gone before its time.”
“What?”
“You said nine ate seven!”
“…That’s really juvenile.”
“Oh, lighten up! Why is everyone always so serious around here? It’s not like we’re performing heart surgery or anything.”
“No. We’re just launching manned space flights.”
“Those are real?”
Chester “Chatterbox” Paolo struggled against his bonds. “Let me go! I swear I didn’t say nothin’ to nobody!”
“Tell it to the fishes, rat!” said his assailant, pushing him off the bridge.
Chatterbox plunged. As the icy water filled his lungs, he began to regret his choice of gangster nickname.
Matthew Holman is a student of English Literature who finds it easier to write fifty-word stories than to finish his dissertation.
A glowing box with a door poofed into the middle of the world’s first patent office with an electric flash. A haggard man burst out of it.
“Sir, quickly! I’ve come from the past to claim a patent!”
“Certainly,” said the patent officer. “On what?”
“I call it Chewing Gum!”
“So are you in?” asked Janice, brandishing a stack of brand new business cards.
“I like your enthusiasm,” said the investor, “but…”
Janice frowned. “But what?”
“I’m not sure the world really needs a Leviathan Tamer.”
He felt differently in the morning, in a sort of slobbery, lifeless, half-digested way.
This story was based on a title suggested by @MisterFiendZero.
Head tilted to one side, the Tweet Detective listened intently.
There it was: “Caw-tweet-caw!”
“I must know what species of bird that is!” cried the Tweet Detective. “It will solve the entire murder!”
He thought for a moment, then withdrew his iPhone, opened Twitter, and asked the internet for help.
This story was based on a title suggested by @Beryllium.
It stepped gingerly from floor tile to floor tile, peering through the panes of glass with eyes widened by wonder and awe.
“Why ya gettin’ all googly-eyed?” asked a child. “Ain’tcha never seen a candy store before?”
It hadn’t. And its translator was broken.
It felt threatened. It reacted poorly.
This story was based on a title suggested by @Keab42.