Molly slipped into the icy water, her eyes closing with a steely resolve.
No more would they bully or call her names. She’d had enough.
A note and her diary sat on the counter.
Her parents turned her sad tale into a bestselling novel. It’s true: money heals all wounds.
Nancy A. Cavanaugh is a freelance writer living in Keene, NH. You can read her flash and micro fiction at myflashywords.blogspot.com.
There are 50 unitalicized words in this story, not including line numbers. The italicized words are instructions: you may choose one option and go to the appropriate line to continue your adventure!
Have fun!
1.You’re in a boat.
Line 2: Jump out.
Line 3: Eat lunch.
Line 4: Raise pirate flag.
2. You’re swimming.
Line 1: Get in the boat.
Line 5: Eat lunch.
Line 6: Dive.
3. Yum! Now you’re full.
Go to Line 1.
4. You’re in a fearsome pirate boat.
Line 2: Jump out.
Line 7: Attack a freighter.
5. Soggy food! Yuck.
Go to Line 2.
6. You’re on the ocean floor.
Line 2: Swim upwards.
Line 8: Attack a freighter.
Line 9: Explore.
7. A lubber lops off your hand.
Line 10: Staunch the bleeding.
Line 11: Shoot the lubber.
8. You are chopped up by the freighter’s propeller.
The End
9. You drown.
The End
10. While bandaging yourself, you are shot.
The End
11. You bleed to death.
The End
“Grapplin’ hooks, skeleton keys, guard uniforms… I got everythin’ you need, man.”
“You charge a lot, Skivvy.”
“It ain’t easy to get stuff like this into my cell.”
“True dat.”
“But let me tell you, gettin’ nabbed for murder’s the most profitable thing I ever done. I’m makin’ a killing!”
An apple and a pear fell in love.
They knew it was unusual, but they wanted to make it work, and the wise old hummingbird knew how they could.
They scattered their seeds all around the orchard, and when the trees grew they grafted branches onto one another and lived forever.
He’d killed his first outlaw after drinking bourbon for breakfast; it had become part of his routine.
For similar reasons, he drank saké for supper and lemonade for lunch, though he didn’t much advertise the latter.
One time he swallowed mud at midnight, so he let the train robbers go.
This story is based on a title suggested by the ever profuse @MisterFiendZero.
“Sink or swim” was not a particularly relevant idiom for Nelson the narcoleptic turtle. He floated, and good thing, too, or he’d probably fall asleep, sink, and die. Instead he just bobbed along on the surface, snoring softly.
One day Nelson floated ashore and fell asleep there.
Narcolepsy is boring.
This story is based on a title suggested by @Vanguard1219.
Because I am an angel, you said you believed in them, and so I believed in you.
Yet here at the door of death who should come for you but Him.
The light of your love for me outshone the darkness in your soul.
And for that we are doomed.
Editor’s Note: This story grows on me a little more each time I read it, as I start to tease out more meaning from each sentence. At first it was an enigma, and now I find it appealingly haunting. I recommend coming back for a repeated read later, so you have time to explore and digest it.
Tammy’s poem “Twas the Night Before Blood Moon” will be published in Pill Hill Press’s Leap Year Edition of Daily Flash 2012: 366 Days of Flash Fiction, and she is a proud mother whose son is the joy and light of her life.
Thrashing through the midnight darkness,
he stumbled
but did not cry out.
Silently he lay
listening to silence.
Then he fumbled
in his pocket
for a match.
In the flame’s flickering glow, he was struck
by irony
and the traitor’s arrow.
He had assumed
he would die
by the sword.
The emperor, being in a good mood, invited a peasant to ask him any question he desired.
“What,” inquired the peasant, “is your favourite body part?”
The emperor circumspectly intoned, “My knee!”
That is why the revolutionaries severed it from his leg and mounted it here, on this pedestal, in 1747.
This story is based on a title suggested by @Graham_LRR.
Sydney the snake slid down a slippery slope.
Since getting stuck in a snare made of sticks and some string, she’d somehow succumbed to an embarrassing, sibilant stutter. She was sneakily slithering in search of a slimy, secret spot where she could sink into obscurity.
Sadly, she never found it.
This story was based on a title suggested by @danzama.