Mum came tumbling down the stairs. “THERE’S A GHOST!” she cried.
Dad got up and went upstairs to investigate.
Dad came running down the stairs. “IT’S TRUE!” he cried.
I ran upstairs.
I came back down to comfort Mum and Dad.
“APRIL FOOLS!” they yelled.
“Guys, it’s December,” I said.
Yves is 16, and wrote this because he took a day off school and his dad wouldn’t get off his back until he did something creative.
Plop.
“Eat up!” said Mom.
Victor stared at his plate. Yuck. What was this slimy, moldy, mushy gunk?
“Don’t you like it?”
“Gross!” said Victor. “Is this rotten food?”
“It’s your winnings,” said Mom. “The ones you gloated about after Monopoly. Like you said, to the victor go the spoils!”
I’m happy to announce the birth of my second son, Victor! This story is for him.
“Doctor, how to such certainty can you be so sure the man was dead?”
“His brain was in a jar on a shelf at the morgue.”
“Nonetheless, could he have been alive in any way?”
“It’s possible, counselor, if he is in fact living, he’s practicing law in this courtroom.”
Gary Clifton, forty years a cop, has short fiction pieces published or pending with over 60 online sites. He has an M.S. from Abilene Christian University.
“Any questions, sir?” says the clerk.
“What are this medication’s side effects?” asks the customer.
“There are none.”
“None? Impressive. Three bottles, please.”
The customer pays and leaves.
Another clerk says, “You didn’t tell him it turns people into pathological liars?”
“I couldn’t,” says the clerk. “I’m taking it myself.”
This story was based on the prompts “side effects” and “pathological liar” at TypeTrigger.
One day Bruce Wayne brought Dick Grayson to the Gotham City Zoo.
While they were there, they got caught up in, and foiled, a mobster’s nefarious mammal-smuggling scheme.
“This city is full of animals,” said Batman.
It was that kind of writing that threatened to kill the comic book industry.
This story is based on a title suggested by @Wear_Wolf.
President Papi Kinsley rocked his wife, whispering, “You’re safe now.”
When she was asleep, Papi went downstairs. Zombie bodies were everywhere. He called Lord Zombino.
“I guess you didn’t know I’m a member of EZKIL, otherwise known as the Elite Zombie Killing International League,” Papi said. “Better luck next time.”
Nancy A. Cavanaugh is a freelance writer living in Keene, NH. You can read her flash and micro fiction at myflashywords.blogspot.com.
An ostrich, a penguin, and a barn swallow walk into a bar.
The ostrich and the penguin seem uncomfortable. “Are birds like us allowed here?” they ask nervously.
“Follow my lead,” says the barn swallow. “No one will bother you as long as you sit at the bar ‘n’ swallow.”
This story is based on a prompt suggested by @Matt_LRR.
“Ruff woof,” said Fido, wagging his tail, but Max just said, “Bad dog,” and put him out in the back yard, because Max didn’t understand the witty wordplay (barkplay?) Fido was using, which involved a canine equivalent of something like “putting the ‘toy’ in ‘toilet’,” and was really very clever.
Huddled in the muddy trenches, they dodged raindrops and warded off bullets with prayers.
“Man, this is really serious!” one soldier shouted to the other.
“Yeah, he usually writes lighthearted stories! This subject matter doesn’t really lend itself to jokes!”
“He’ll probably do some kind of meta-level cop-out with it!”
She looked left, then right, then strode purposefully out into the street.
Horns blared as drivers swerved to avoid her.
Oblivious to the mayhem around her, she reached the sidewalk, where she knelt and asked, “No, really, Ms. Chicken. What are you doing on the other side of the road?”