Mere minutes til the results are announced. Win or lose, succeed or fail… Which will it be?
She perches on the corner of her bed, clutching her phone. It rings.
“Well?” she breathes.
“Hi, honey. It’s Mom.”
She hangs up in disgust. This is too important.
The phone rings again.
This story was based on the TypeTrigger prompt “minutes til.”
Crying, bleeding, a runny nose. Sadness, injury, sickness. Why is there this connection between trauma and the loss of bodily fluids?
I drink 10 litres of milk, apple juice, and water every day, because if liquid out is bad, then liquid in is good.
But the ceaseless urination hurts my soul.
He wants to choose a woman – not the other way around. But not being chosen infuriates him. One woman wants him, platonically. “She’s stringing me on,” says Paul.
He likes her but can’t stand her.
She can’t decide to leave the church. “She’s a nun,” adds Paul, “a great gal.”
Yveta Shanfeldová, born in Prague in 1957, is the author of two published poetry books: Night Jugular Shaft (Host, Brno, Czech Republic, 2006) and In Place of Sundays (MaPa, Brno, Czech Republic, 2008).
The rough seas thrashed against the side of the boat. The sky filled with ominous grey clouds.
Men scurried across the deck of the ship. All were dripping and soaked from the monstrous sea forcing itself on board the vessel.
The captain called out, “Cannons at the ready!”
BOOM! BOOM!
Cameron Brown is a student at Holden Lane High in Stoke-on-Trent, England.
Pirate swords almost plunging into Savannah’s side push her farther onto the plank. She turns to look at her father, tied to the mast with a pirate’s blade pressed to his neck.
She smiles at him and pats the rare gold coins in her pocket. Shedding a tear, Savannah jumps.
Gabby Q. is a member of Todd Battaglia’s Grade 7 Language Arts class.
Doubloons without number. The crown of some distant land. A necklace that once hung on the neck of a Shah’s daughter. All this and more he had buried in the sand and in the past. The map was a temptation he could ill afford.
He should burn it.
Shouldn’t he?
Ruaridh Buchanan is making his first forays into writing down the thoughts and stories that whirl through his head when he should really be concentrating on something more important like earning a living. Doubtless this will result in bankruptcy or at the very least a blog at some stage in the near future.
He crossed the ocean, filling the water with blood and the hold with gold. Ever onwards to a new horizon, ending fortunes and lives just as easily. Never satisfied and never slowing.
“What is he searching for?” the crew would whisper in the dark below deck.
He would find her.
Ruaridh Buchanan is making his first forays into writing down the thoughts and stories that whirl through his head when he should really be concentrating on something more important like earning a living. Doubtless this will result in bankruptcy or at the very least a blog at some stage in the near future.
“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.
I stepped on a spider. I felt bad, thinking I had killed him for sure, but by some luck or spider fu he found a crevice in the sole of my boot, and when I lifted my foot his legs uncurled and he scrambled off, both of us supremely happy.
Peter Schireson is a Zen Buddhist priest and writer living in the Sierra Foothills of California. His poems and prose have been published in a number of journals, both in print and online.
“Do you want to hear the good news first, or the bad news?”
“Good, please.”
“Okay. God sent His Son to earth to save you–”
“Oh, the Good News? Thanks, I’m familiar. High five, Christian buddy! What’s the bad news?”
“I, uh, ‘lost’ that ugly sweater you gave me. Sorry.”
This story was based on the TypeTrigger prompt “the good news.”