Category Archives: Odd

JOCELYNE GREGORY: Jellyfish

Amusing, Odd, Submissions, , , ,

I found a jellyfish washed up on the beach yesterday. It looked like an alien; a strange creature in a strange land. I got a shovel and helped it back into the water. It floated there before waving a tentacle and swam away. How strange to see one on Mars.

Jocelyne Gregory is an MFA creative writing student at the University of British Columbia. She is a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio. She also reviews children’s books and graphic novels. She lives on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, Canada.

BEC LEWIS: Wrong Room

Amusing, Odd, Submissions, Top Stories, ,

I was making notes when the doom opened. A strangler entered.

“Have a seaweed,” the leader said. “We’re all frenzied here.”

After listing to us, the strangler spoke. “Er…”

“Yesterday?”

“I wanted Fantasy Language Class. I’m Dave, by the way.”

“Hello Dave,” the Auto Correct Fan Club chorused in unicorn.

Bec Lewis lives in Kent, England, and likes short stories, micro-fiction, and chocolate. See more at beclewisfiction.com.

HANNAH WHITEOAK: Side Effects

Artistic, Odd, Submissions, , , ,

“Side effects,” says the oncologist. The priest says angels have many forms.

In my garden, the unicorn eats my red roses, dripping petals like blood. “Am I dying?” I ask. She snorts, then gallops away.

Next summer, the roses bloom white. My hair grows back curly. The unicorn doesn’t return.

Hannah Whiteoak writes speculative fiction to escape the real world. She is working on an animal-themed flash collection. Follow @HannahWhiteoak or visit hannahwhiteoak.me.

KATLINA SOMMERBERG: A Toast to Immortality

Adventure, Odd, Submissions, , , ,

The aging butler placed twin goblets down, then left with a bow.

Melissa took one with a shaking hand. Her brother’s apparition took the other; they tapped glasses.

She downed the cup in one gulp.

The ghost twisted into flesh, wine splattering his skin.

Her cup clanked to the floor.

Katlina Sommerberg lives in San Francisco, where the summer nights are colder than the winter days of her childhood. She is a cog in the machine for Big Tech, where she writes software and loves to hate her company’s perks. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in AntipodeanSF, 365tomorrows, and 101 Words.

RAN WALKER: Infinity

Amusing, Odd, Submissions, , ,

Attempting to be funny, Sherman asked our eccentric math professor what “infinity” was.

The professor smiled and took a piece of chalk and drew a line around the room fifty times, before dragging it past the classroom door, down the long corridor, to his car.

We never saw him again.

Ran Walker is the author of the forthcoming 50-word story collection THE STRANGE MUSEUM. He credits this site with inspiring him to write so many stories.

JOHN YOUNG: Gregor

Artistic, Odd, Submissions, , ,

Faded yellow letters on a flaking blue sign beside the door of a long-abandoned building read: Mrs M. Martindale, music lessons, top floor.

Gregor, a beggar, frail, toothless, and alone, spends his nights huddled by the front step. Sometimes he plays his tin whistle. Sometimes a distant piano accompanies him.

John Young is an old chap living in St. Andrews, Scotland, a ancient town with an ancient university, home of golf and, allegedly, many ghosts.

JOHN YOUNG: Bob

Odd, Submissions, Touching, , , ,

Disdainful of the traffic, Bob, my golden retriever, bounded across the road towards me. This is very strange, I thought. Bob was killed by a truck two years ago.

As he cavorted and joyfully yelped beside me, I noticed that people had clustered around someone stretched out on the pavement.

John Young is an old chap, 73, a retired Criminal Justice social work manager in Scotland (CJS roughly equivalent to English / US Probation Service) and then University Hon Lecturer lecturing in Social Work ethics. He grapples with themes of limits, longings, and the images that these create.

KENT OSWALD: Color Him Unimpressed

Amusing, Odd, Submissions, , ,

She farted the color yellow. She perspired the color blue. Her most angry thoughts created a greenish aura around her head, while both her lusty imaginings and lightning-like pangs of envy created an orange fog around her feet.

Her tinder date was color-blind. It might have worked.

It did not.

There are no answers at kentoswald.com about why it is evolutionarily preferable that males are more likely to be color blind, but there are additional words.

GRETCHEN IVERS: Hey

Artistic, Odd, Submissions, , ,

When I saw him the other day, I felt the strangest urge to strike up a conversation. Most peculiar, seeing as we’ve hardly been close. But the moment passed and I saw it wasn’t him, remembered it couldn’t be so.

A curiosity indeed that we’re always friendlier towards the dead.

Gretchen wants to make being out of place her comfort zone, so she’s going to keep on sharing her thoughts.

JERI QUINZIO: Subway Sightings

Amusing, Odd, Submissions, , , , ,

The sign says “If you see something, say something.”

Today, on the subway in Boston, I saw a man wearing a black sombrero with a live parrot sitting quietly on his shoulder. No one paid the slightest attention to either one of them.

How I love living in the city.

Jeri Quinzio is the author of Dessert: A Tale of Happy Endings.