Vee wore a flimsy veil from a costume store, and Mommy’s 15-year-old prom dress.
Scottie wore 80s sunglasses and a plaid hunting cap.
As they struggled through their “vows”, my wife and I held hands behind our backs.
I smiled almost as much at that “wedding” as at my own.
This story was based on the prompt “hunting cap” at TypeTrigger.
When we met, I liked your bright rain boots and your shy little smile, so I never told you that you weren’t actually the woman the missed connections ad had been intended for. And by the time I kissed you, coffee breath and all, it no longer seemed to matter.
Karen Gilmore struggles with brevity. Her writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.
When the new girl entered, my face was covered in slugs.
I’d done it to get Kayley’s attention, and she was suitably grossed out, but as soon as I saw the new girl, Kayley didn’t matter.
By then, unfortunately, it was too late.
I live alone, now, with my slugs.
I imagine this as the origin story for some tragic antihero…
Her desk was littered with scraps of paper, each scrawled with its own collection of words, representing a thousand grasped-at memories.
It wasn’t working. They wouldn’t come back.
She stoked the fireplace and began dropping the papers in, one by one. Forget the yesterdays: time to start working on tomorrow.
This story was based on the prompt “scraps of paper” at TypeTrigger.
He gave her a wilted flower on February 15, just to see how she would react.
His friends thought it was hilarious.
She slapped him so hard she drew blood.
Ten years later, lying awake in bed, he realized he’d never met another girl who could make him really feel.
This story was based on the prompt “wilted” 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.
“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.
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.
Their emotions raged like wildfires. Their passions rumbled like earthquakes. Their fears echoed like windblown whispers through the valleys.
They whirled in their orbits, teasing each other, admiring one another’s moons, coming close and then dancing away, all the while singing to themselves, “She loves me; she loves me not.”
When I visited my blind brother, he was sharpening his shooting skills. He was so embarrassed; he couldn’t hit a thing.
I pulled my pen out and placed it in his sweaty palm. I said, “Take this pen, brother, so that you may draw targets around the holes you make.”
George S. Karagiannis was born in Thessaloniki, Greece and is currently a PhD student at the University of Toronto in Canada. He enjoys writing science-fiction (in an non-professional level, so far) in the subgenres of hard science fiction, bizzarro and apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic settings.