“Why is there a manatee on the lunch room table.”
“It was the only table big enough to hold it.”
“But why…”
“We’re going to probe it with our new microscopic robots! Think of the benefits to our knowledge of marine mammal anatomy!”
“This science department has jumped the shark.”
This story was based on a prompt I received from @Charles_Mor on Twitter. He provided shark, table, and probe.
It’s Thursday. I hate Thursdays.
Thursdays are when the dames come, sobbing, pleading, and looking for a pro-bono Private Eye.
On Thursdays, I say “know” more often than a philosophy student who just learned about epistemology, but without the “k” and the “w”.
Today, I surprise myself. I say yes.
“I say,” said the English gentleman, “I sure do speak a lot, do I not?”
“Perhaps, sir, it seems as though you say more things than you actually do, since you preface each statement with the words ‘I say’.”
“I say,” said the English gentleman. “I do believe you’re correct!”
“In communist Russia, buses drive you!” said the Moscow-basedtour guide, laughing.
“That doesn’t make sense,” said a Swedish tourist.
“In communist Russia, sense makes you!” said the tour guide. “Seriously, the bus is out of gas. Everyone get in the harness and pull. I’ll steer.” He readied his whip.
He was set to become the biggest thing since the Jonas Brothers when it all went wrong.
It started with the pimples. Makeup helped at first, but soon it got out of hand.
Then his voice started cracking, so he lip-synched his concerts.
But the haircut was the final straw.
This is a fifty-word retelling of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Don’t read if you want to avoid spoilers.
There was a big war and the wizard dude and his friends were all fighting.
Meanwhile, that Frodo dude and the Gollum thingy got to the volcano. Gollum stole the magic ring and fell in the lava.
There were a bunch of weddings, and some people sailed away on boats.
This is a fifty-word retelling of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Don’t read it if you want to avoid spoilers.
That Frodo dude hooked up with a froggy dude called Gollum and made a beeline for the volcano, but they had to fight this big stupid spider, which killed Frodo, except he didn’t actually die.
The wizard dude turned out not to be dead, either, so he went to war.
This is a fifty-word retelling of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Don’t read if you want to avoid spoilers.
This little dude named Frodo got this evil magic ring, but evil horsemen were after it, so a wizard dude told him to run away with it to find some stupid elves.
The stupid elves told him to throw it in this volcano, so off he went.
The wizard died.
Call me Ishmael.
I went on a voyage with a crazy whaler named Ahab. Turned out he was looking for revenge on a big white sperm whale named Moby Dick which had eaten his leg.
We found Moby Dick, eventually, but he smashed our boat and killed everyone except me.
This story is a fifty-word retelling of Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick.
Gregor went to bed one night and woke up as a giant clumsy bug.
His family freaked out and locked him in his room. His little sister fed him garbage.
He scared some old guys and someone threw an apple at him which got stuck in his back.
He died.
This story is a microfiction treatment of Franz Kafka’s classic novella, The Metamorphosis.