“Please, Clarissa,” pleaded Sergio, “don’t leave me! I’ll make you better spaghetti, better pizza, better wine!”
“Always food with you,” said Clarissa wearily. “Always wine… Don’t you understand me? What I really want are children… and pets!”
Sergio bought her a mouse. She kept it, and got rid of him.
“Let those feelings go!” the counselor suggests. “Pour them out across the floor! It’ll help.”
I start with a single teardrop dripped onto the carpet. Then suddenly I’m on my knees flailing my fists, bang bang bang.
I’m cured. I forgive my father.
But man do I hate floors now.
This story was based on the prompt “pour it out” at TypeTrigger.
They decide to spent some time apart so they can get their priorities straight, sort out their emotions, and gain a new perspective on their situation.
It changes nothing. Within a month they’re back where they started, lying on that operating table, begging the surgeon to stitch them back together.
This story was based on the prompt “time apart” at TypeTrigger.
Chick flicks, tragedies, heartbreaking anti-romances… She couldn’t get enough. Those faces on the screen, looming large, eyes, noses, mouths puckered in anguish, terrified: “Love me! Love me! I don’t want to be alone!”
Her hard drives were filled to the brim with her obsession. She was downloading torrents of tears.
This story was based on the prompt “torrents” at TypeTrigger.
“Captain Jon was the meanest captain on the sea. He forced the sailors who disobeyed him to walk the…”
“Are you telling the girls about scary pirates again?” interrupted mother. “I don’t want you to give them bad dreams.”
“…To walk the time out deck until they cooperated,” continued father.
Abby W. is a member of Todd Battaglia’s Grade 7 Language Arts class.
This story is a finalist for the Audience Choice Award and the Grand Prize.
She heard the saw cease its whirring.
Her love stomped in, dewdrops of sweat lining his creased forehead, clutching a crude cedar carving of a heart.
He had suffered so much, and still laboured under the weight of the memories, but today, it seemed, his stomps fell a little lighter.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
This story is based on a title suggested by @PoshPlatypus.
“Eighty-six consecutive rejections. I give up.” He downed his scotch.
“Pessimist,” I scoffed.
“Just let me crawl down into my Deep Hole of Lonelitude.” His glass being already empty, he downed my scotch next.
Nearby, a withered, watery-eyed man in a wheelchair said, “Psh. Romance? Wouldn’t solve your problem, anyways.”
This story is based on a title suggested by Jeremy Quinn. It is a companion to his previous title suggestion, Unlikely Ascension.
My son told me his purple stuffed worm was alive. “I caught it sneaking out last night.”
“Where was it going?” I asked.
“To eat some tomatoes.”
I laughed, kissed him goodnight, and took my flashlight out to the garden.
Sure enough, I caught that sneaky tomato thief around midnight.
This story was based on a title suggested by @TheMoatman.
We were at some overpriced, hipsterish coffee “boutique.” Jared got a mug of frothy stuff and stuck his face right in there, giving himself a mustache.
“Lookin’ good!” I joked, so he kept the “mustache” going all evening. Ironically, he said.
Wait. That doesn’t mean he likes me, does it?
This story was based on the TypeTrigger prompt “froth.”
On Christmas Eve, a young lad wandered the streets of New York. He was well dressed, only because he knew how to care for what few possessions he had.
People asked for money and he refused politely but still earned glares.
Instead, he used his pennies for a birthday candle.
Jeremy Quinn hopes to write more in the future, but for now resigns himself to doing the occasional Pokémon fanfiction.