“Will she be faithful? I must find out.”
“I can divine the future from anything you own – pass me that jug from your breakfast table.”
“Whoops! Sorry! Thought it was empty…”
“Idiot! Your fate cannot now be foreseen.”
“Why?”
“All men know: there’s no use scrying over spilled milk.”
Nick Johns lives in Sandhurst, UK. A retired cat wrestler, he now breeds mongrel flash fictions for release into the wild.
“How will the end begin?” my daughter asked me one night. “And I don’t want you make any jokes about the letters ‘T’ and ‘H’ or tell me I’ll find out when I’m older or change the subject!”
Just then, a billion trumpets sounded.
“Whoa,” she said. “Never mind, daddy.”
This story is based on a title suggested by @stealingzen.
She stood at my door
one black glove, one red
and a lacy half-veil
Good evening, ma’am
icily
I didn’t want what she was selling
but my kids did
Of course, they hadn’t heard
the asking price
the surcharges
the cost-to-benefit ratios
Just the allure
the affect
I’ve been there
This story is based on the prompt “one black glove, one red,” suggested by @big_poppa_G.
Editor’s Note: for clearest interpretation, read affect as a noun, which has been, lately, one of my favourite words.
Sunsy was a real chirp flirt. He went after anyone who had wings and a beak and laid eggs.
The dove turned him down gently.
The owl lectured him on Breed Loyalty.
The eagle just stared imperiously until he went away.
The peahen merely scoffed.
And then the pigeon attacked.
This story is based on a title suggested by @Vigafray and a prompt offered by @NekoDaimyo.
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.
“Look at that!” says Bandylegs.
“I know. Children don’t believe anymore and now the grownups are melting us down and squeezing us into those!” Pinknose says, pointing to a bottle. “And look, they’ve even put our names in plain view!”
Next to the sink is a bottle of Fairy Liquid.
Martin Shone is a cleaner who is getting very close to being fifty, but he’s only twenty-eight, really.
A final luxury granted to the condemned: “How would you like to go?”
He contemplated deeply, finally requesting the warm numbness of hypothermia.
In this land of sun and sand, his choice spoke to a greatness of spirit that moved the tribunal’s hearts.
But it didn’t move them that far.
Today’s story is based on a title suggested by @stealingzen.
There were no keys to the city, boisterous parades, Nobel prizes, or television interviews for the man who conquered friction. (His call-in to local radio was unrelated.)
Hal Miller’s millstones, which once kept the whole neighbourhood awake, were now silent, and also completely ineffectual.
Too bad NASA never followed up.
This story was based on a title suggested by @ecocd.
She knocked on the door, then nocked an arrow.
“Greetings, homeowner,” she said. “Would you like to sign our anti-longbow petition?”
“Uh, sure,” said the citizen. He signed. Then she shot him in the leg.
“Thanks,” she said. “Register your assault charge with the police to help advance our cause!”
Life on the river held steamboats, catfish, bluegrass, and plenty of other Tom Sawyerisms, too. But flash floods, sunburns, and Aunt May’s colon-clogging cornbread made life difficult for Franklin Waters.
He solved the third problem by tossing her into the first, but never got a handle on the second one.