“Hur hur, Frankie Boy! How many fingers am I holding up?”
Frank groaned. “Ronald, you’re a tortoise. You don’t have any fingers.”
“C’mon, Frankie Boy! Play along!”
“Fine. Zero.”
“Ya got me!” grinned Ronald.
The aquarium was blissfully peaceful for about ten seconds. Then:
“Hey, Frankie Boy, pull my finger!”
“Ooooooooh, shiny!” Mindy picked up the loonie and was instantly surrounded by every grubby-fingered toddler on the playground. “Back, you brats!” she shouted, holding it high. “It’s MINE!”
“I’ll take that,” snapped the kindergarten teacher, snatching the loonie.
“I’ll take that,” said the principal.
“I’ll take that,” said the government.
Venus came home to chaos.
“What is going on!?”
“Hi, honey!” said her husband, Chris, standing behind a hutch with their daughter on his shoulders. “Tina and I bought a few bunnies!”
“A ‘few‘?”
“Well, we took two, but by the time we got home there were a bunch more…”
This story is based on a title suggested by @TsukiakariUsagi.
“Are we there yet?”
“No,” Mary snapped. Two of the kids started crying.
Ben ignored them.
Mary groaned. “Why do we even go for these drives? We don’t like it. The kids don’t like it. Nobody likes it.”
“Fine.” Ben turned the car around.
Beneath them, the road sighed sadly.
This story is based on a title suggested by @THatherty2.
She lay on the bed and thought about the end of their friendship. Her heart ached.
It wasn’t a clean shot through head or heart, either; it was a slow knife through the stomach, quietly releasing bile and stomach acid. A drunken car ride home. A shamed car ride back.
Blanche Case camouflages herself with a “real job” while plotting to take over the world with artistic endeavors.
“Look, Pa! A dead rat!”
“Lemme see, Gerald,” said Pa. “Ah, it’s only a skellington and a bit of skin. Musta died a long time ago. Funny how nice he’s sittin’, like he went out calm and peaceful. Makes you wonder, kinda.”
Deep inside Ratankhamen’s corpse, a long-preserved soul-spark flared.
I thought stasis would be like sleeping: I’d close my eyes on Earth, and open them a hundred light-years away. I thought it would be an escape.
But it was more like a dream, a slow swirl of half-reality. I spent ten years inside my own head, reliving that memory.
This story was based on the prompt “that memory” at TypeTrigger.
“One last thing, Officer Markham.”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Look out for youths wearing baggy trousers. That’s the mark of the Hooligans’ Club!”
“Yes, sir!” Markham strode off on patrol.
The Captain chuckled. Rookies were so gullible!
He felt differently later, while processing the paperwork for seventeen wrongful arrests of baggy-trousered teenagers.
This story is based on the title suggested by Nicholas Barlow.
“Halt, dragon!” called the knight.
“Who are you calling a dragon?”
“Oh, pardon me,” said the knight. “You looked like a dragon from behind.”
“How rude! I’m just big-boned!”
“I’m terribly sorry, gentle lizard. How can I make it up to you?”
“Don’t struggle,” said the dragon, and ate him.
Thirty lashes for a kiss, yet words cut deeper. Still, the sting of her travel clothes brings a smile as he pulls her aboard the boat.
Tousled by the morning tide, she spares a brief farewell to the stolid house she once called home, free now to feel his touch.
Born in the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia, J. Chris Lawrence has spent much of his life traveling. With a love for fiction, he fancies himself a writer, and hopes to convince others of the same. He currently lives in Georgia with his wife and two sons. Read his blog here.