50-Word Stories

One shot is all it takes. He is dead.

Her blouse is wet with blood. Her cigarette rests between her swollen lips as she drags him through the dead leaves with a shovel in hand. She doesn’t cry until she drops his limp body in the hole.

His collar jingles.

---

Adam is a student at Rowan University and plans on graduating in December 2010. He is an avid writer, concentrating on contemporary adult fiction and concrete poetry. He is currently working on a collection of selected poems, revising and perfecting the prose. His website is adamgpoetry.tumblr.com.

Fleeing my prison, driven by the hunger, I found my victim. I struck. His blood flowed. The hunger was satiated, but then: panic.

The body was stuck on my tusks, and my flippers were too short to remove it.

The zookeepers apprehended me, ending the reign of Chumley, Vampire Walrus.

---

Josh Anderson is an amateur filmmaker and writer from Lubbock, Texas.

Our Hero stood resolute in the middle of the rain-soaked, corpse-littered asphalt.

Zombie earthworms.

They inched closer, exuding sinister inevitability, crushed, broken, bloated, wasting away, and hungry.

Our Hero calmly set a bowl of oatmeal on the ground, flavouring it with his own blood.

That should keep them. For now.

---

I asked, on Twitter, what I should write a fifty-word story about today. @dotsam wrote, “Saving the universe with a bowl of oatmeal.” @RacoonResidue wrote, “Zombie earth worms.”

With a bang, the door swung abruptly open.

She stood in the open doorway and said, ”I’m home.”

He leaned against the wall. “I missed you.”

“I know,” she said. “But I didn’t miss you.”

“I know,” he said, clutching his heart as his handgun fell from his blood-soaked fingers.

It was raining.

I had spent years dreaming of and working towards that day. My creation was blood, sweat, and tears mingled with iron, wires, hope, and steam.

I had great plans for the technology I had built. I was all set to change the world.

But it was raining.