Two rectangular prongs and one round prong. Perfection.
Joe had worked at Hob’s Hardware long enough to know that, at least. These three prongs were the holy triumvirate, the electron bearers, the voltage senders, the ohm inducers.
In these troubled days, that was all he was truly certain of anymore.
The mobster had many fancy rings. His fingers were all the same size, due to a meat-packing factory accident, so he frequently rearranged his rings in patterns.
Sometimes he sent messages to his CIA handler using ring-based codes, but mostly he tried to distract people from his freaky-weird breakfast-sausage-shaped digits.
“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.
Would you do what I did if you knew what I know?
You’d like to think you would. Heck, I’d like to think you would, too. But I know you. I know a lot of things. I doubt you would have followed through.
Sick puppies make messes that scar psyches.
Scrib scrub, scrib scrub…
Inch by inch, the tiled floor returned to its original lustre.
The scrubber had mixed feelings about the procedure. On the one hand, it was a tedious chore. But on the other hand, it was a pain in the butt.
Actually, his feelings were pretty consistent.
“Flip you for it,” he challenged.
“You’re on,” she assented.
“Heads,” he said.
“I’ll go tails.”
He did a twisting somersault-and-a-half, landing on his head.
She scoffed and triple-flipped backwards, coming to rest on her strong, poofy tail.
“You win,” he said. “Nice tail! Grow it yourself?”
“Nope. Plastic surgery.”
“My life is so mundane,” she complained.
“You’re right,” he agreed. “Maybe you need to spice things up a bit.”
“Yeah! I’m just missing that little ‘je ne sais caliente’!”
“A little ‘I don’t know hot’?”
“Yeah! Like a European boyfriend!”
“That almost makes sense,” he said. “But not quite.”
Critics and laymen shared exclamations of delight as they wandered in awe through the halls of Fallo’s gallery.
“The texture!” they said. “The movement! The tone! The pizzazz!”
Everyone wanted to know Fallo’s secret.
He told them, “My tools are my heart and my toothbrush,” and flashed a paint-stained smile.
Ten minutes later, Jon was still staring into the open refrigerator.
“I thought you weren’t hungry,” Stephanie said.
“I’m not,” Jon replied, closing the door. “Ever wonder if it gets lonely?”
“The fridge?” she asked.
Jon nodded.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
The fridge tried not to cry.
Ryan Hall is a computer programming graduate student at the University at Buffalo in NY, hoping to go into game design. He started writing microfiction to deal with stress from programming projects.
It was like a real-world logic puzzle.
Bobby Blowfish should sit with Angela Angelfish, but he and Tommy Tuna don’t get along.
The Seahorse family should be near the dessert table, but keep them away from the punch bowl!
And no one wanted another “who let the orcas in” fiasco.
This story is based on a title suggested by @klancashire.