“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.
Calvin the Great set off on a voyage. He sailed his ship all the way across the lake.
On the other side, Queen Larissa the Beautiful had prepared a majestic picnic.
Calvin conquered the Queen and her sandwiches, filled his ship with captives and plunder, and returned home a hero.
He had learned the sacred ritual from his great-great-grandfather.
After leaving the reservation, he hired a skywriter to advertise his services. He wasn’t greedy: he asked farmers for a dollar an acre, but no one believed in him.
That was the summer that a statewide drought devastated the wheat crop.
Alex Markovich is a past contributor to Fifty-Word Stories. He was an editor at Consumer Reports before he retired.
What can I do with this hunger?
Feed it, when I must: satiate it, if I can, though it seems I’m never satisfied.
Ignore it, when I’m able, but it consumes me incessantly.
Surrender to it, when I can’t help but be overcome. Dance to it.
More Phil Collins, please.
This story is dedicated to Justin Boyd. It was based on the prompt “this hunger” at TypeTrigger.
Calvin the little dinosaur went looking for Adventure.
He saw Stully the old Stegasaurus. “Do you know where I can find Adventure?” asked Calvin.
“Pshaw!” said Stully. “I used to eat Adventure for breakfast every morning! But now there’s a drought.”
“Oh,” said Calvin. “Thank you.” He kept searching anyways.
You think you understand me? What a joke. No one understands me. No one even tries.
You write me off, dismiss me. You try to diagnose me, apply your useless labels.
Open your ears! Listen, for once. “Foogledy balpadons, hormeath!”
See? You’re making that distant, absent face again… Nobody understands.
This story was based on the prompt “understand me?” at TypeTrigger.
“I love snowpeas,” she said, piling the green smiles into her bowl.
“I wonder how they feel about you.”
“What?”
“I wonder if the remaining pods are fuming over the destruction of their brothers and planning a Guy Fawkes-style vendetta evenas we speak.”
“So… How’s that therapy going?”
“Fine, why?”
Corinne currently resides in Ohio, where she derives most of her inspiration from urban decay, an alarm clock, and her bathroom mirror.
“I know how pretty I am,” she crooned. “Tell me something else about myself.”
“Ah,” I said. “You’re just so… attractive, really.”
“No, something else!” she insisted.
“You’re… pleasing to my eyes?”
She glared.
“Statuesque?”
She softened, but was not yet appeased.
I wish my next attempt hadn’t been “pulchritudinous.”
This story was based on the prompt “something else” 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.
“Once AGAIN, I remind you that NO ANIMALS are allowed in the classroom during an examination.”
Jeremy patted the enormous grizzly bear’s head. “Why not?”
“He might, er, help you cheat.”
“Barry would NEVER do that,” said Jeremy, surreptitiously hiding his exam paper, on which he’d written “Grrr, grroowl, roooaarr.”
This story was based on the prompt “once again” at TypeTrigger.