“Where are we?” grumbled Trim, rolling out of bed.
“Planet X!” enthused Portly.
“What!? Why?!”
“I dunno,” said Portly. “It’s a ‘forbidden fruit’ thing, I guess.”
“But don’t you know about the Curse?”
“What curse?” said Portly.
Trim groaned haggardly. “Now we’ll never be able to recite the alphabet again!”
This story is based on a title suggested by @keab42.
Arius had been lucky tonight. A car had grazed his leg while he was walking along a moonlit country road.
The driver likely never saw him.
His grandfather told him a full moon represented protection to those who believed in its power.
Arius stopped, raised his wolfish head, and howled.
Greg Didaleusky has written two novels. Rogue Phoenix Press published Frozen Death, a mystery-suspense novel, in 2009, and Concealed Warnings, a suspense novel published by All Things That Matter Press, is coming fall 2011.
Constable X was an enigma to Constables Murphy and McDonough.
The Captain said Constable X worked solo because he’d lost partners before.
Something didn’t feel right about that, so they did a bit of prying.
Turned out he slept in his office all day.
And donned a mask at night.
This story is based on a title suggested by @MisterFiendZero.
Uncle Carl was really irritating sometimes. He was born with two thumbs on his right hand, and he liked to pinch me with them. Man was that painful!
Then he lost one of the thumbs in an accident. I liked him better after that.
I miss him since he died.
Don (D.L.) Chance has been a lifelong voracious reader and writes fiction of all kinds.
Mister Murder Mouth cackled villainously. “If you want to live, answer this mathematical skill-testing question! Multiply my social security number by the cost of replacing my birth certificate!”
“Evil, dirty, filthy, rotten cheater!” I cried. “You’re an illegal immigrant! You have no SSN!”
“Blast,” he said, and I walked free.
This story is based on a title suggested by @metcarfre.
“Nicht vergessen!”
The key was placed underneath the worded paperweight. She placed anything of importance here. Bills rarely paid, jobs rarely done, and the key remained beneath.
I couldn’t remember the translation, so I forgot…
how to eat…
what to think…
where is she?
I forget.
I always forget.
What?
Martin Shone cleans for a living and is not long away from being fifty, although he is forever twenty-eight.
Evolution happens.
I found that out for certain the day I met a Tyrannosaurus X.
He had weak eyes, massive jaws, and stubby little arms.
He was cold-blooded. Scaly-skinned. Exclusively carnivorous.
I was intrigued. I asked for a blood sample. He roared.
He was the missing link, the old fossil.
This story was based on a title suggested by @Tally_LRR.
As the guitar crunched like gravel over the speakers, she lifted her head, squared her shoulders and crossed the room. “It’s over… This is the end of the line,” she said in sync with the lyrics.
He was struck dumb, staring after her in a stupor.
She’d always loved good timing.
Amanda Zutz based this story off of a song by The Trews called “End of the Line”.
On June 1, I’m going to be releasing a collection of short stories and flash fiction called Living and Dying. It’ll be available for $0.99 on the Kindle Store and as a pay-what-you-want download through my blog, TimSevenhuysen.com. Today I released some details about a couple of special offers that you can take advantage of; you can read about them here.
I wanted to share about this here on 50WS because it was the release of Fifty-Word Stories: Volume One that really pushed me towards releasing some of my other writing. I figured that if 50WS readers enjoy my fifty-word stories, maybe you’ll enjoy some of my longer-form writing, too.
Also, since I’m “opening” the TScom Store, I’m probably going to redirect the 50WS Store over there soon. My experiment with using a shopping plugin on this site for file downloads had some success, but mostly it turned out to be a big headache and more trouble than it was worth, so I’m going to be trying a bit of a different approach. By the time I have Fifty-Word Stories: Volume Two ready, I’ll hopefully have a better system in place for making it available.
Until Year Two of 50WS is finished (in just over a month!) and Volume Two is ready, you’ll still be getting new stories here every weekday (including two stories every weekday for the month of June), and I’ll also be releasing more short stories and flash fiction at TimSevenhuysen.com. So spread the word! Big things continue to happen here and elsewhere with my writing (and your submissions), and it’s all thanks to people like you who come to the site to read, rate, and comment. Thank you!
Most mornings, George joined the queue at the butcher’s and waited patiently. He always left with two fresh sausages, and the butcher wished more of his customers were as polite and gentlemanly.
The stray mutt, however, wished the butcher would throw him a nice bone every now and then, instead.
Bryce Main is an author and a writer of ad copy. He discovered 50-word stories recently and finds reading them immensely enjoyable. This is the first he’s written.