Twelve ravens watched as the door of the farmhouse opened and a grime-smeared figure emerged.
His left leg was steel and pistons; steam whiffed out of the joints as he moved. A shotgun was mounted along his handless right forearm.
“Death, death, raawk!” croaked the ravens.
Cyborg George laughed aloud.
Harvey the hamster skidded on the hardwood floor, rounding the corner at high speed–hunting speed. Just ahead, his prey scrambled desperately towards the carpet, where Harvey’s plastic hamster-ball would lose its superior maneuverability.
Harvey ran faster. There would be no escape this time!
With a heavy thud, they collided.
The lumberjack swung his mighty axe, hewing the trunk of the towering Douglas Fir.
O! Would he ever see her again? Her plaid jacket, her ruddy cheeks, the long, luxurious, curly hair that graced her pretty head and legs?
With a heart full of longing, he cried her name: “Timber!”
A guy walks into a bar. He saunters towards a group of girls and sends a nonchalant scowl in their direction. He suavely turns his head to the nearest girl and winks.
He says to the bartender, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
The bartender says, “One Pink Lady, coming up.”
This guest story was written by Sonia Sayani. Sonia is, in her own words, “but an eternally something-to-do-searching Canadian with a computer.”
“Bad Nogard!” cried Cliven. “Bad!”
The Veterinary Cleric writhed on the ground, clutching his charred intestines.
Perching in the shattered window frame, the little dragon licked its lips with a serpentine tongue, flames hissing through its dilated nostrils.
Cliven wagged his finger. “Do you want me to get the muzzle?”
The rocking chair moved back and forth, back and forth.
It was a family heirloom, a decrepit icon of past generations that had been hidden in the attic, alone and lonely, for years.
But that night, as I laid sleeping, I heard it rocking back and forth, back and forth.
“Yaarr! Where’s me rum?!” cried Captain Chubbeard.
He looked in his hammock. He looked on the poopdeck. He looked in the treasure chests. He looked behind the bulkheads.
His rum could not be found.
He asked Mister Scurvey, who said, “I think you drunk it, Cap’n!”
And so he had.
They stood back to back, gripping their handguns nervously, surrounded by a leering ring of well-armed henchmen.
“We’re so going to die!” Thicke sputtered, his eyes clouding with tears.
“Hush!” commanded Evan Edgelow. “No one is dying tonight!”
He paused, looked around, then grinned eagerly. “Ok, I take that back.”
His face was covered in bumblebees.
“Lookit me!” he shouted. One of the bees crawled into his nasal passage. “I’m gonna be the first human honeycomb!”
I shook my head. He was really stupid sometimes. “It won’t work,” I told him. “You aren’t hollow.”
We solved that problem easily enough.
It was raining.
I had spent years dreaming of and working towards that day. My creation was blood, sweat, and tears mingled with iron, wires, hope, and steam.
I had great plans for the technology I had built. I was all set to change the world.
But it was raining.