When she took off her shoes, the world changed. The grey sky turned to polished nickel, water ran clear and honest through gutters, asphalt gleamed like oiled onyx. Most importantly, though, when she took off her shoes – those lethal four-inch spikes of sexuality – she shrank, just enough to meet him eye to eye.

The fate of her planet depended on her last bullet.

Her hand shook as she brought The Megazoid in her rifle’s sights.

And she fired.

The day he brought her home his heart swelled with love and fear, for he knew that all too soon he would have to say goodbye. He kissed her brow that day, and every day after for thirteen years, all in preparation for this final, most important, kiss. He pressed his lips to her for the last time, his heart rent asunder, and as the light faded from her eyes, he whispered the hardest words he would ever utter, “Goodbye, my love.”

Ah, ok. So you want it brief do you…? Here’s to the shortest story I’ve ever written.
…

A boy was born. He grew up and did stuff. Then he died.

Gary turned off the monitor.

The face was still there.

He screamed.

Short and sweet it is. (Although possibly not as short as Jim Franklin’s!)

–

Pinky the Pig wished he was a superhero. One Saturday morning, Charlie tied a red cape around Pinky’s neck. That afternoon, Charlie’s Mum left her abusive husband, taking her son and his pet pig with her.

~Three Sentences~

‘The first was forever, when you took her away from me.
The second was the law’s, empty and bitter.
Stop struggling, the third will end soon.’

[...] really enjoyed writing the three sentence short stories in April, so when Chuck Wendig put up another three sentence story challenge, I decided to give it another [...]

The liquid life that I pull up through my roots has nourished me for decades, allowing me to spread my boughs wide. When the wind rustles through my leaves, I am filled with so much love for all the life that surrounds and suffuses me. But if that little shit climbs me one more time, I swear I’m going let him fall to his death.

Compared to me, Indiana Jones was a pussy. He fought Nazis and priests; my adversaries weigh in just under Cthulhu or Nyarlathotep on the cosmic horror scale. (I am, however, a bit envious of this theme music.)

“C’mon Cletus, it’ll be really funny if we both do it.”

“Bubba, you really think I’m that stupid?”

“Hey, everbody watch this.”

‘Happy 25th Anniversary!’ my husband (Mr. Scumbag) called from downstairs as he slammed the door. No one ever told me it would be this hard: watching him whore his way through quarter of a century.

Gary came home to his sullen wife and greeted her in the usual way.

“Did you sell any bubble guns today?” she asked.

Gary shook his head – “No,” – and wailing with misery, his wife cried out “You -never- sell any bubble guns!”

That story is called “Gary”, by the way.

The middle-aged man was given a challenge to write a story in three sentences. He struggled for all of five minutes before hitting on an earthshatteringly simple idea. He pecked away on his dirty keyboard and hit the send button.

Afternoon. A little something:

“Did you know that autopsy is the only way to understand anything? The only way to assure the studied remains unchanged by study is to have it killed.”

“Bollocks,” I said, “There’s only one fucking story.”

“Wait, is Suzy jerking herself off by her desk?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s fucked up.”

Whispers

The shadows and whispers are back again, and I can’t take it anymore. I pick up the gun, place it in my mouth, and pull the trigger. The gun goes off–I know it does, I feel the bullet pass through me–but nothing changes except now the whispers are shouting, “I swear I heard a gunshot, Bill; this house is haunted, I tell you.”

Gamera awoke, feeling confused, discarded and her head throbbed, effects of a dark, forgotten dream. She shook her head, locks of blonde hair swaying side to side, breaking her out of her funk. Then, she felt as if she was finally out of her shell and looked forward to a new and uncertain future.

She was a little, brittle woman, surrounded by vagueness and filled with secrets. Never seen even when visible, and having a history like a drawn curtain, she moved through the world as mist through a flock of sheep. A wasp of hate enticed by the sweetness of revenge was all that kept her company.

Kallie sensed that Nas was nearby, but before she could find him, he found her, with a sharp prick to her neck. He caught her in an embrace as she faltered from the neurotoxin.
“Your secret is safe with me,” she whispered.

“And they lived happily ever after,” she said, closing the book.

“Mommy, that’s a lie.”

“I know, baby, but it’s the only thing that keeps me going.”

A few months ago I became president of the United States of America, and today is my birthday. How should a president celebrate? Getting my secret service opperatives drunk may have been a bad idea, we already have one dead hooker.

Three sentences? Hell, what about three words?

‘No.’
‘No?’
‘NO!’

I Love You Period

He laughed after he’d put a perfect crimson period in the forehead of my wife with his comically small pistol, beat me with it before fleeing with her purse.
I hunted the man who stole my heart, my life, for so long I thought the second bullet hole, in his neck, would be the final punctuation mark in one long run on sentence of justice crossing rivers, borders and highways.
The sentence has only begun, with twenty years of rape and beatings inside this animal prison making me wish I’d put one final bloody red dot in my own temple, and found closure with an ellipsis.

They started the fire because brush impeded their dirt bikes.
The fire devoured the hillside.
Teenage boys are boneheads.

Herbert invented a time machine.

He used it to go back in time and tell himself how to build a time machine.

Herbert invented a time machine.

(I oughta get EXTRA credit for this, as the final sentence isn’t a new one. )

It started off simply, with a few missing bits, here and there.

Soon, bandwidth was maximized, data conglomerated and a single ethereal point of intelligence formed.

At that point, those of us who were simple flesh and blood became just a Darwinian side-show of random upgrades and nominal storage.

It was the monkeys that killed us.

We never stopped to ask ourselves, “Hey, whatever happened to those monkeys we shot into space?

The tides will crush us now, because the monkeys are stealing the moon.

As he stood, staring down into the primordial darkness of the abyss, he felt a twinge of fear and terror well up inside of his body.

In the darkness, it could be well imagined that movement was shuffling and writhing it’s way up the unimaginably long tunnel that fed into the dark, unknowable heart of the planet.

Even with his staring into the inky blackness, he had no warning as the monster surged forth; a roiling mass of flesh and teeth as his screams faded into the echoes of obscurity.

Five years chasing him down, two mistakes, one bullet. His enemies thought they’d killed him, and they had. But a man can change.

He said he would never leave me, “as long as we both shall live”.

I said I knew how to live off the land, so we went hiking with no food supplies.

We both told the truth, and his funeral is tomorrow.

He looked up and admired the little bright star shining just above the rooftop. It reminded him of his muse; so bright and beautiful, illuminating brilliance and guiding him through the darkness but just out of reach. He sighed, went back inside and continued to write.

As the knife slid through her flesh like butter, he couldn’t help but wish that she hadn’t bitten her tongue off earlier. Screams gurgled through a froth of blood aren’t quite the same as unhindered ones. Ah well, there were still three more hitchhikers to go… although he might have to sharpen the blade between them, it already seemed to be getting quite dull.

He told me it was an almost-new Kalashnikov-type rifle. It had never been fired. It had only been dropped once.

Since that day, she’s taken exactly the same number of steps each day, not one more or one less.

Sometimes that meant she’d have to circle her room two times before getting into bed or skip brushing her teeth because the bathroom was three too many steps away.

When she woke up that morning and saw that he hadn’t quietly tiptoed out of her apartment during the night, she decided it might be ok, just this once, to spend the day in bed and take no steps at all.

Jim stared at me over his eggs benedict and raised his voice in excitement, “…then once we had her purse we all started kicking her and there was blood everywhere, it was so fucking awesome even before we started fucking her…”

From the corner of my eye, I saw the old lady in the booth beside oursstand up quickly , grab her handbag, and hurry out the door.

“That’ll teach her to eavesdrop,” he said before returning to our conversation about his new job at Disneyland.

Tell Dom you are going to sleep in the guest room with the baby tonight. Don’t be surprised when he says, “The hell you are.” Say a Novena tonight after Dom rolls off of you, in hopes that you can love this baby because even though she is not yours she is all you have.

My teapot screamed, “It’s teatime, bitch!” The milk and sugar wailed. It was a lovely afternoon.

The pungent scent of gasoline hit him in the face as he hastily made his way through the auditorium. The cigarette nearly to filter hung from his lips, mocking the world as a time bomb. With one last puff, he closed his eyes tightly as if saying a prayer to the gods of theatre, stretching his arms outward , and grinned.

Herbert built a time machine.

He used it to go into the past and tell himself how to build a time machine.

Herbert built a time machine.

I have a TON of these at my blog odiouscoif.wordpress.com. (Not all are 3 sentences exactly, but anyway…) But I shall write a fresh one for this challenge! In the meantime, enjoy the old ones

The lights blink blue and yellow and green. The red one lights up and you reach for the silver switch, but where your arms once were, you have two fat sausage links, greasy and immobile. You wake up, and there it is staring at you; red and steady as a hornet’s nest.

I couldn’t get the ice for Satan’s iced coffee today, so He made me chill it w/ my frozen heart. Turns out it’s only tepid

This is unsolicited feedback, but I like yours Todd because it’s sort of funny and simple, and I think simple takes guts.
and yours Marian because my, I would like to hear more backstory.
and yours Michelle because my that is poignant and sad and tells so much more than its 3 sentences contain. There’s much more story lurking back there. This challenge reminded me of Hemingway’s story in six words: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.” And your submission came closest to that same result.
Those are my votes. Thanks y’all, it’s been fun sitting in on this one. (I don’t usually find the time to read all the 1,000 word ones.)

The dragon drew its last, gasping breath, and died. Jason wiped the blood off with the edge of his cloak, turned to the others, and said, “I knew that if we all banded together one last time, we could defeat it.” The others didn’t answer, of course, because they were the dragon’s last crispy offering to the darkness.

I sat across the table from her, pushing my steak around my plate.
As she spoke she radiated a confidence and poise which intimidated me into silence.
Will I ever be able to tell her how beautiful she is?

Pour blood, sweat and tears into love/hate mixture. Stir gently and chill. Warm up but don’t overheat and enjoy.

“Are you sure blowing up a planet with sentient life on it is a good idea,” asked Bob.
“Doesn’t matter,” replied Tim, Bob’s manager and arsehole extraodinaire, “they illegally set up a planet here and had plenty of time to leave if they wanted.”
As the blue planet exploded into billions of bits, Bob scratched his mandible and decided that it was time for him to leave Galactic Bailiffs Incorporated and try to make it as a writer instead.

As I said on the day we wed, I plan to spend the rest of my life with you. But the love is gone as you lie there in bed all day without a word or a sideways glance. I fear its time to part ways, especially because your corpse is starting to smell.

With little time left, Clair closed her portable and stood up from her desk, tracing the well-worn path from her chair to the observation window overlooking the sterile, efficient city streets below, still humming with the evening’s traffic.

There had been little warning and even less suspicion of the impending invasion, and she had done her best to raise all the red flags she could without tipping them off, but now she wondered if she had done the right thing.

Subtle and low at first, the rotors of the civil defense sirens spun up in the distance, a sound you could almost ignore, wanted to ignore, until their keening became too hard to shut out, and the bombs started to fall.

She had three children. One became a lawyer, one become a dancer, and the third one died. Secretly, she always loved the third child the best.

“You can only build things going forward,” he said, staring into the sunset, “you can’t ever go back.” Doodling on the cocktail napkin, listening the the whine of the big jets on the runway pointed towards home, she thought about her father’s words. Twenty years away was going to take an awful lot of work.

Sunlight glittering off the colored glass baubles that hung from the old oak tree had been too enticing to wander away from, Morela, the ghost of a young woman, reflected from her cobalt prison.

She looked about herself and while the gleaming rainbow colors were appealing, all she saw was how trapped she was, the darkness of the other spirits trapped in the other baubles around her, and how none of them seemed to crave freedom again.

She, however, could not stand to be trapped, so at night while all the other spirits were resting in the dark warmth, she radiated all the light and energy she had pent up within herself during the day, burst her prison of glass into a hundred pieces, and was free to roam about, happily haunting the living, once more.

The sound of the spoon as it tapped and then scraped across the porcelain of the bowl was, for a moment, the only sound in the room. He glanced forgetfully across the table towards the empty chair. The spoon remained suspended and motionless in his hand as he remembered.

The weight of his question settled like winter blankets on hot summer night.
She fidgeted, as his desperate eyes followed her every move.
Finally she shook her head and walked away.

Why would her mother allow her to write to a Alec, who would later burn his house down and then gas himself? Didn’t she know this was going to happen? And why did her father not write to Alec, he was his friend, fuck.

Once upon a time in a reality plan far far away there lived a man who could talk to fish.
Unfortunately, before he had the chance to meet any fish he was killed in a vicious war over his planet’s dwindling energy supply, so he never discovered his special talent.
Even more tragically, the fish who knew the secret to cold fusion was later eaten by a hungry grizzly bear.

“Mrs Kennedy? I’m DC Linford, this is DC Long. Could we come in and have a word with you, please?

We came.

We saw.

We spent the rest of our lives trying to forget.

Graham was mildly surprised when he opened the 10-year-old jar of peanut butter and heard a voice from within it say, “Graham, I am your god.

“The fate of this universe, and, indeed, all the multiverse, rests squarely in your hands.”

After making a sandwich, he sealed the jar and returned it to the shelf, sliding it wayyy to the back.

It’s true – there really are fairies in the woods.

In my more lucid moments, when I can remember what words are, I try to tell you this, over and over, until my throat feels raw from screaming, but you can’t hear me, can’t see me.

There really are fairies in the woods: pray that you never meet one.

She fished her outstretched hand into the sea of bodies ahead of her, but felt unraveled by thousands of eyes at best. Tears formed, though she refused to feel them, and she retracted her hand. Desperate for connection, she never realized a fool tries again.

Odalay the fierce-barbarian dwarf charged the oncoming hoard of screaming shadows, Axe in hand.

“Go back to the Abyss from which you came!!!” he yelled about to swing when suddenly… Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

His narcolepsy kicked in and he ended up missing the greatest battle ever in dwarven history.

——————————————————————————-

(Hope you liked it) — Steven W.

In a clearing just off I-95, eight women form an octagon. The graves are shallow. He wanted them found.

“A place for everything,” she croaked, lurching to her feet in a swirl of cat and hair. Brushing the crumbs from her chin and clutching the new treasure, she made her way down the narrow path, straightening the newest tower of phone books and tucking stray receipts back into bundles until she reached the bread boxes. “This is your place,” she whispered, nestling the tender crust in amongst its hard and moldy brothers.

[...] get to Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge, but first I want to discuss the inspiration of short-short story. If you want to skip the [...]

If you visit my page, I’ve posted a commentary discussing the inspiration for this story.

Wally slid his Juror disc into the game PlayCube console, cracked open a Mountain Dew, picked up his controller and waited for the countdown to hit 10:00PM.

Minutes before Travis Sturgeon’s appointed time, a court clerk read his sentence, and, a picosecond before Sturgeon’s last breath, selected a random Juror ID among millions from around the state.

Only God and the computer knew whose ID was called, and Wally thumbed the Delete key, hoping he was the reason Sturgeon was now twitching and defecating himself, then ordered tacos.

Site: http://barelyok.com/speaking-of-sentences.html

The Cockroach stared at the brilliant expanding cloud. “What do you think that was all about?”

“Nothing to do with us,” responded the Twinkie.

[...] Terrible Minds Flash Fiction Challenge [...]

There were so many things she didn’t understand: why she had been brought back to life at the age of ninety-eight, and not 24, why so many people carried guns, even as they went about the most ordinary aspects of their lives, like buying a coffee at the Wicked Bean. None of that would matter now – her coffee was ready, her number was called and one day after being brought back to life, the skinny young man with the goatee had shot her to prove his point to the teenage Barrista. Yes, he was serious about it: a macchiato must always be served in a pre-warmed cup.

I was preparing “Chubby Gus” for his open-casket funeral today.

I had just finished crossing his arms and reached up to straighten his tie when a cold, rigid hand clasped my wrist.

“It was the hooker’s fault, Morty,” I turned and stared into his murky eyes as his jaw flapped, “but it was one hell of a party.”

Buzzing into the coagulating muck, the fly regurgitated and promptly died. With a last flutter of her lashes, she watched the last twitch of its wings and smiled. She was as good as dead, but she’d taken down every last one of those damn zombies first.

[...] challenge this time: Write a Story in 3 Sentences This is my [...]

Red washed over me in warm, sticky waves. It smoothed my skin with deep, rich velvet strokes. It screamed my mood to the mirror as it would soon scream it to the world.

The colossal beast limply draped across the parapet. The last dragon in the world was dead, drippling his blood down the stone. The knight knew regret.

Here’s to hoping titles don’t count (also found at http://blog.ifeeladraft.com/2011/09/flash-fiction-2.html) -

Western Union

ELLY=

JOSE BUY FARM MARY JANE ON WAY MEET ME BIG EASY=

MACK

As Dy’lon crouched behind a solid steel table a beam of energy, strangely resembling musical notes, punched a hole to his right.

Taking a deep breath, he stood, spun, and aimed his glittery, antique Fender Stratocaster…sending a hard stream of musical energy at his foe.

Just as the ancient prophesy said….it’s a long way to the top, if ya wanna rock ‘n roll.

[...] don’t normally bite for these because, well, I’m lazy or distracted or just uninspired…but today I ACTUALLY HAD AN [...]

Can I vote? I vote for Suzie and ChiaLynn. It’s a tie for the win, but hopefully not winners for a tie.

(P.S. That’s my story. It’s non-fiction)

Sorry, but I have a bunch…Enjoy
I discovered I had an evil twin. Oh, the things I did and blamed on her! Now I’m sweatin’ on the chain gang; turns out my twin’s fraternal.
OR
She was excited the divorce was finally over because she could finally date again! AND she just won a cruise! For victims of drug-resistant venereal diseases.
OR
What are you doing now? I miss you and need to talk to you, know you again. But this pane of glass and restraining order get in my way.
OR
A month ago, I’d been a dirty homeless crack addict. Now, I got 3 squares a day, medical, rehab…Damn, I shoulda killed somebody long ago!
OR
I carefully tie the noose, knowing it is now or never. Right now, I’m heaven-bound. But if I let you get a hold of me, I’m not so sure.

I don’t quite remember what I said the night before Damien disappeared, I just know it’s what fueled my search for him these past seven years. Those words isn’t enough anymore, my friend, I have a life of my own to live. You would understand.

Smiling, Jimmy Sticks pulled himself up off the mat, a silvery strand of spit dangling from his lip. Martinez closed in, and Jimmy swung hard, popping Martinez’s nuts like a pair of grapes dropped into a hungry lover’s mouth. They dropped to the canvas together, and Jimmy put his mouth next to Martinez’s ear and said, “The money is for you. But that, maricon, is for Maria.”

“We can’t let Wolfe know, that we know what happened to him.”

Iyy snuggled up closer to TJ, hearing the rain hit the roof softly in the darkness.

“He knows.”

Bartholomew, this is Christopher. Tell A-levels that OP:MORPHEUS is F.U.B.A.R. HGet off wordl while you still ca

Half of this is a true story. Guess which half…?
********************************************************

A man was chasing a woman with his pants around his ankles outside of a methadone clinic downtown, ready to screw her right in the street. She was playing hard to get, but laughing in amusement. Suddenly, the man tripped and landed face down.

Crisp September days like this, high in the Jemez Mountains, were made for turning the crank on a chile roaster. He drew in the smokey, full-bodied aroma, so thick that he could almost taste it on the back of his palate. When he was done, the skins practically fell off the hands, and he strung the phalanges into a necklace.

“Damn”, said God. Noah didn’t understand. But Nimrod did.

He promised me the moon. I waited and waited. But the sun set him free.

What she had threatened me with during our years of shouting matches finally happened: I came home to an eerily quiet house and discovered the brief note on the kitchen table. The next day, with my body trembling, dried tear streaks on my face, and my little buddy’s die-cast cap pistol tucked in my waistband, I opened the heavy glass door of the building. My soon-to-be ex-wife always did complain that I needed help with everything, I thought as I uttered a hoarse cry and pulled out Tyler’s toy inside the police station.

Marty recollected, in this fleeting moment, that being bitten by a vampire – a creature hundreds of years deep and tailored in suede – would have been the beginning for him, the start of something overwhelming and entirely rewarding; immortality promised such things, did they not?

As it stood, his recollections were lies; veils to conceal the truth created by those rose-tinted, movie-watching eyes that told him it was all glamour and lavish living, all orgies and take-what-you-want feasting on those who gave in, or did not – a victim’s wants a notion not cared for as he understood it.

He slumped, folded in two, sliced in three, left dribbling into the street sewage line to gather with all the other wastes and used up whims of the city, and though he considered that this was not what he wanted, not by a long shot, he did finally recollect that what he wanted was completely, utterly, immaterial.

Since you passed away, I’ve always dreamed of you coming back to wrap your arms around me. But now you’ve shuffled up to my door I can’t quite bring myself to take you back. If cancer can’t keep you down… maybe a headshot will.

[...] Story Posted on September 23, 2011 by Darkmint TweetWritten for Chuck Wendig‘s weekly Flash Fiction Challenge, this week’s challenge was to tell a story in three [...]

All right Chuck, here’s your three sentences.

The Penmonkey wrote on, not giving two shits about his platform, but instead worrying about how he was going to try to save the world with the talents he was given. His chastising, molding, and constant humbuggery had not only shifted us lurkers, wannabes, pundits, authors and lookey-loos from the various digital feeds around the globe, but also a whole heap of social networking and most of the users of the internet away from the immensely enormous amount of bullshit that was being fed to us in lines, graphics, and engineered propaganda in a nearly constant media barrage that was meant to hide the truth. The revolution was slowly tweeted, posted, liked, plus-oned, shared, printed out, gaining velocity and increasing in passion so that the message was shouted around the globe in hundreds of languages about how just one terrible truculent mind could make the difference between freedom and slavery.

Henry enters her room with a belt in hand, buckle gleaming in the hallway light, screaming “How many times do I have to tell this cunt to stop using my bathroom!”

A flash of light, the smell of smoke and the thundering sound of a gunshot later, Susan walks up to her shocked and bleeding husband.

She points the instrument of her freedom to his head and says, “Never again.”

The cloud spiked up and out while the people stood and stared. Their skin came off in layers but they were blind and beyond understanding. As the last person went to his knees like a prizefighter in his final desperate round, the roaches inched through the black crust, sniffed once, and declared it a good day.

Once upon a time there was a storyteller who told the most wonderful tales in the world, full of hunter and hunted, of the many strange things seen while running beneath the moon, of the grand speeches of owls and the tall tales told by wolves when no one is about, and the people would come from miles and miles around just to hear him recite them in the dark, shadowed evenings over a lonely campfire far from the lights of the village.

Then one moonlit night when everyone had gathered to hear him speak, the storyteller arrived at the expectant campfire but for once remained dreadfully silent, and all the villagers who had gathered began to ask him all the questions he had never answered in his stories – about his past, what village he came from, how he came to be a storyteller, and (shyly, by some of the young ladies) if he was married.

And after a long time, the storyteller looked up sadly from the coarse black fur beginning to grow on his hands and arms, the razor-like talons sprouting from each finger, and growled up at the full moon around lengthening canines: “I was, once – but then one night… I grew… SO… HUNGRY!”

It’s 4:32 am and I can’t sleep. Looked at your picture for a while but I still don’t know what is it that I want to say about it. I think… I miss you, that’s it.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil grew plump, delicious fruit. For her, he plucked a gift. For him, she took the blame.

As the old man fixed me with his gaze, the world around us faded to a pale grey, the noise of the diner receding into nothing but a buzz. Staring deeper into his eyes, I found myself suddenly becoming aware of myriad secrets hidden in the world we walked through, realising that our minds had simply shut them out through centuries of conditioning. But then I blinked, and the old man was gone.

“Why would you do this to me? Why would you cheat on me?”

” . . . because you stopped being worth anything to me.”

They spent the afternoon butchering horses.

Reverend Butch Pogue drilled holes through the back legs and attached a contraption he’d built then secured a metal bar above the hooves with bolts, and Junior pulled the tractor in low gear and raised the dead horse up into the big Oak where the Reverend skinned him out, as Junior pulled the hide off in patches and sheets, and steam rose off the meat in waves of stench the Reverend found intoxicating.

They could buy cows cheaper than horses but the Reverend liked the meat.

Oh, yeah–it’s a true story. My life is really like this. It happened last night:

One Fine Evening at the Liquor Store

As Susan peered deeply into me, making me open up and talk about things that I would never discuss with a stranger, I was not aware at the time that her broken English was only slightly better than that of her husband’s unintelligible mangling of the language with his thick Vietnamese accent.
Earlier, I had been witness to an odd ritual as she cleansed the store of bad spirits and blessed it for luck with prayer, incense, and candles that were part of some Buddhist ceremony that seemed completely alien to me.
After everything else that happened in this strange night at the small liquor store—the broken cooler, the credit card machine malfunction, the culture clash-fueled anger from customers that I diffused—it was the appropriate nightcap, but I didn’t realize it until I left for the night and walked to my car, muttering, “Fucking mystics.”

Here’s mine: Smart Kids

An angry mother and her two children, who fought in the backseat of the Oldsmobile, followed a tar truck that was carrying asphalt to patch the pot-holed country road.

“You two are in such trouble, Jake and Audrey, where did you learn to talk like that, and don’t you dare repeat what you just said.”

“Sure smells like someone’s ass had a fault,” they yelled in unison.

[...] This is another in the series of flash fiction from Chuck Wendig’s site “Terrible Minds.” The theme this week was to write a story in just three sentences. I posted it directly on his site as per the challenge rules, but I also have to put it here. There is more to this story, which I will be writing about soon. To see more three-sentence stories, catch a wave and surf over here: Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge: Another Three Sentences [...]

In honour of the twitterness I put mine up on twitter under the tag #3SS – here – http://twitter.com/#!/grimachu

Monkey’s brains are filled with cotton wool, the stuff that comes from yarn stores, though he once told Teddy that it came from the bra of a flat-chested stripper from Vegas, and that’s why he thinks the thoughts he does, and he’s made from socks worn by a lumberjack, too, so he could kick anybody’s ass, even the boy who sneaks out the window late, late, late at night.
He knows he’s a he-Monkey because when he wishes he could masturbate, he wants to yank, not to finger, not like the girl who isn’t little anymore, lonely quick movements under her covers, who doesn’t realize his button eyes see in the dark, sewn wide open, watching her, tail stiff and quivering.
His red smile stretches wide, always, for he will be there long after the boy is gone, smothered up against her soft breasts as she cries; he’s not a jealous Monkey –after all, Teddy doesn’t have a penis either– and no one looks as good in a sock cap as he does.

[...] Wendig has another FFFC; this time to write a story with three sentences. I’m probably going to hell for this [...]

“Wake up, mom. Mom? Oh, god…”

So for some reason mine didn’t want to post last night, but it was about 1130 and I was too tired to keep trying. But here it is:

She had danced with me, now she danced with him.

I could never have had her, never could hold her, not how I wanted to.

She was with him now, and I was out of cash; so I left the strip-club.

chriswhitewrites.wordpress.com

Sure.

Happiness:
—————-

You could shoot the balls off a gnat at a hundred paces with this old six shooter. Gorgeous thing my wife had given me back when she was still with me. I’d not miss her much longer.

Moving metal makes a strange sound when it’s wet.
Lubrication levels: low.
Servos, seizures, the long hole constricting.

Ivy knew taking this case was a mistake but they needed the money which is never a good basis for decision making. Bishop promised double fees, but now that she was the prey instead of the hunter, she was seriously rethinking the whole monetary gain issue. The smell of rotting flesh was all around and she could hear feet slapping the wet pavement as she felt the stirring of the touch as Sam reached out to her.

[...] Terrible Minds challenge this weekend was Three Sentences.  These may have been a bit [...]

Title: Head Count

His undead neighbors shuffled ceaselessly below his third story apartment window and his compulsion to count and touch them had become almost unbearable; at first he’d thought the desire to count was a quirk – annoying, but harmless – but now he knew better.

As he counted his remaining shotgun shells and adjusted each with meticulous care to ensure that they lined up across his cheap Formica kitchen table in ranks and files with perfect alignment and proximity, he wondered if 27 would be enough.

He loaded the shotgun, inverted the barrel, and stared into its black depths; as it turned out, one round would be sufficient.

One minute she’s fine and the next it’s as if someone poured a bucketful of crappy feelings over her head: loneliness, worthlessness, dreariness. “I am not a bad person,” she mumbles to herself as the tears roll down her cheeks. Maybe someday she’ll believe it.

I didn’t think zombies were real until I became one. Contrary to popular belief, zombies do know what’s going on around them, require blood instead of brains and can break the control of their necromancer and be free again. I wish I’d known that killing my necromancer would also kill me.

In the shadows of town cathedral in the moonlight she waited at the corner of now and then. A dark stranger approached her. But she had nothing left to say.

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, but Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair.
So Fuzzy crept into the commune, cunningly kidnapped all the kittens and carefully crafted a bear-suit from cat-fur.
Now you almost can’t tell.

“Umm, yeah…”, said the dirty man in the flannel shirt, his zipper slightly open and a bit drool fighting to get free of his porno ‘stache.

“Hurr,” was all he got from the woman on the couch, equally dirty and smelling of baby powder for some reason.

“Dude,” was all the newcomer had to say, because this was obviously heaven.

[...] Chuck Wendig (who’s blog, Terrible Minds, happens to be outstanding)  issued a three sentence flash fiction challenge, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to toy with the concept of introducing a psychological [...]

He stares down the rusted barrel of a .44 caliber single action six shot percussion revolver over the salloon’s rickety poker table. The irony hits him right before the round iron bullet does. As his bloodied head hits the table an ace of spades slides from his duster’s left sleeve, the death card.

All stories start somewhere – this one begins with a pizza. It middles with furtive glances, laughter on walks without destinations, timid flirting, and hands incidentally grazing over a shared bowl of frozen yogurt. It ends with an awkward hug at a doorstep, the long lonely walk home, a missed opportunity, and filled with regret.

I arrived seemingly before I left. One moment the cops were around the corner and the next I sat down in the sand on the empty beach. With my stolen NeutrinoPort, it was easy to slip in and out of dimensions; staying in one place was what I found to be impossible.

He was about to tell the old lady to go fuck herself when the roof caved in on his head and the floor gave way and the next thing he knew he was sliding through a series of tunnels and shot out like a torpedo into a dark pool of water. When he came up for air, he coughed heavily while treading water and swam in an expanding spiral until he hit the edge of the pool, then clung to it as he called out for help. “You know what you can do, Peter,” she cooed in his ear, “you can go fuck yourself,” and then he felt a sharp heel digging into his forehead, pushing him under and with a silent scream he swallowed the darkness.

I dug my hands inch by inch into the waterstarved dirt around me and felt the earth itself cry for water, but eonsof tears had evaporated before they even reached the parched ground.
I kept digging, day after day, monthby month, until I was a husk of flesh as dry as the earth above me andI reached the water far below the surface.
I dropped my cracked and dry body intothe water and felt the water shudder in surprise and realize it’s mistakein thinking earth and water could ever be separated, and as the water rushedup the hole I’d made I knew I’d saved millions.

Dear Author:

Thank you for your recent contribution, “The Day Me and Legolas Went Surfing,” but I’m afraid it isn’t quite right for our publication.

Good luck with your writing.

She could never get the colours right, no matter how hard she tried. The beauty she used to paint, remains trapped in her head. Blinded, she fears she might not be able to see the open window God has replaced for her locked doors.

The dark figure struck the match and watched as it blazed brightly in the blackness of the night. It fell casually to the floor where it rested, nearly extinguished itself, and suddenly burned brighter. The fire ate through the paper and the gasoline, it ate through the wallpaper and the curtains, it ate through the carpet and the beds and, finally, it ate through the four bodies sprawled on them.

I’ve never participated in a Wendigian writing challenge before. How exciting. Here’s mine:

The Box

“Whatever you do, don’t open it,” he said.

But he should have known better than to leave such an equisite box with someone like me

And maybe he did because, when I opened it, the thing inside whispered my name, “Pandora.”

She changes with the seasons. In autumn’s shadow she is melancholy and sorrow, and withdraws into the snow wilds for winter’s watch. In the springtime her hair turns ripe and she walks back into the world – ice skin dripping – glowing like a sun.

Shopping

The freezing rain ticks against the tiny window as Sarah points silently to her choice.
When she asks “Too big?”, the salesman whispers, “It is our smallest casket, ma’am.”
Outside, hard, gray ice bends the trees.

She was once a mermaid, and now she had feet that bled just to be with him. She’d learnt and grown, but he’d stayed a fish-obsessed boy.

Her feet still hurt, but you just have to walk away when you find your husband in bed with a slutty-mouthed salmon.

I used to dream about my daughter.
Then one day she asked, “Where’s mom?”
I never see her again in my dream after that.

She used to puke in the toilet, usually right after she caught me glancing at her belly or if I accidentally squeezed her side in just the wrong way. Eventually the bile stench faded, and she started eating regular meals and said she felt much better about herself.

Tonight, she sobbed against the open bathroom door as the shower streamed into the clogged tub, filled to its edge with black water and half-digested lettuce: “I just want it to go away.”

When I met her, she was perfect for me: like fire between the sheets, the solid ground beneath my feet when I grasped for the stars, ice on my wounds when I inevitably fell; my muse, breathing in inspiration. She asked me to marry her just a second ago. I’m going to turn her down, because she’s perfect, and doesn’t need me in any way.

[...] A flash fiction response to a challenge issued by Chuck Wendig at terribleminds.com. [...]

First Love

She holds him tight, plants a kiss on his whiskery cheek, but he says nothing, so she pulls his arm, tugging at it until it dislodges from its socket. She peers at the severed purple appendage and flings it aside. Time for Mummy to buy her new toys.

Breaking point

The light threw her neckline into sharp relief. Her jugular vein beckoned him. He sprang and pounced on her throat.

“There’s got to be some way to get out of this town without joining the Army,” Julia said.
I tucked the letter into my back pocket as I looked at her soft brown hair framing her face.
“Got to be,” I said.

HIJACK

“This plane is now ours!” the big man yelled with huge gun on his hand. All of the passengers cheered. Slowly, the plane changed its course, away from hell.

Bill awoke with a scream. After stumbling to the bathroom and washing his face, the clown in the wardrobe had almost slipped from his mind completely.
Chuckles was patient though – he didn’t mind waiting.

A perfect, crimson pearl breaks free, joining the others in their silent orbit.

Two hundred miles away and seen through dimming eyes, the Earth is ablaze: pinpricks appear, blossoming from points of light to city-sized clouds in less than a heartbeat.

Corporal Surkeus no longer feels the sadness that had come before; her hand finally relaxes and, with infinite grace, her knife begins to float across the control room.

[...] speaking of secrets maybe better kept, here’s a three-sentence story written for the challenge of the Great Bearded One, Chuck Wendig of the Terrible [...]

CARBON

I’ve been forged in the belly of a star. I’ll wander for ages, trying on bonds. I long for a someday-form to call my contemplations home.

She ran past the limits of her endurance, to the point where pain became pleasure. The monster’s jaws snapped shut behind her as she plunged into a gaping maw, and was swallowed by a tree. A long time later she emerged, changed.

The lights on his modem stopped blinking. Once before this had happened, and it opened a gaping chasm where his life should have been. His hands got sweaty; what now?

Going a bit meta in this post.

When the evolutionary accelerator was tested on the cats the predictable disaster resulted. Only their focus on the dogs and foolish humans who dared to name savage creatures Muffin or Boots gave us time to experiment on another species. Now the forbidden sciences have rid us of the cats, but what will save us from the squirrels?

I killed her with a single hand, choking her life out.
She killed me with my fingerprints, pressed tightly into her neck.
The perfect couple.

I HAVE CHOSEN THE FIVE. I know, I said three. I’m saying five, because again you did way too many good ones.

I will send five postcards. One to:

Matthew McBride
Thomas Pluck
Shecky
Julian Finn
Amy Tupper

Folks: I need your addresses. Email me at terribleminds at gmail dot com. (I’ll also need to know what e-book you want.)

– c.

[...] week’s “three-sentence challenge” is ready for your eyes to [...]

[...] A flash fiction response to a challenge issued by Chuck Wendig at terribleminds.com. [...]

[...] response to a Chuck Wendig challenge, three sentences of [...]

“I killed her with a single hand, choking her life out.
She killed me with my fingerprints, pressed tightly into her neck.
The perfect couple.”

LOL

The lights on his modem stopped blinking. Once before this had happened, and it opened a gaping chasm where his life should have been. His hands got sweaty; what now – Really?