There’s 3 books of these stories available on Amazon. Put your e-mail address in the box below and I’ll send you the first one for free, as a PDF.
Not only that, you’ll get new stories as I write them. That’s about one a week, at the moment.
And they’re more fun to find in your in-box than more ‘BUY MORE STUFF!’ messages too.
In the end, it was the Salad Nicoise that did them in.
Hestia’s promised ‘legendary food’, and they succeeded on all counts. Critics adored the manticore rump. The surf and turf (delivered as a single mermaid fillet) gave Giles Coren the happiest heart attack of his life.
But it couldn’t last.
The explosion levelled the restaurant and most of the surrounding block. All that remained was a clutch of startled chicks, cheeping and looking for mother.
A lesson to all budding chefs: if you’re cooking eggs, try to ensure they’re chicken, not phoenix.
This goes double if you’re using gas.
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This one was using the prompt ‘Egg’, as suggested on the Facebook page.
This one is from the prompt ‘Gin Rummy’. It’s based (read: entirely stolen) from a Haitian folk-tale about Bouqui and Ti Malis. There’s very little on these characters on the internet, and most of what there is is in French, but I’ve enjoyed all the stories I’ve been able to read.
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The world is full of amazements, if only we’d notice.
Take Simon, for instance.
Simon has a parrot. That parrot plays Gin Rummy.
I went to his house and found them in a game, Simon staring hard at his cards, the parrot peering at the strip.
Flicking its claw, it took 5 cards into its hand and placed a meld of three kings on the table.
Simon grumbled and took the top card from the deck.
“Simon,” I said, “That’s the smartest parrot in the world.”
“Him?” Simon laughed. “Nah. We’ve played four games today, and he’s only won one.”
Back when the world was so new we hadn’t even discovered seasons, Magpie was entirely white.
He didn’t like it much.
So one night, when everyone was asleep, he covered his feathers in tree sap and rolled across the sky, until flecks of it peeled off and stuck to his body.
Back and forth, he rolled all night.
The next day, everyone was very impressed with his new plumage, and the way it went blue in the light.
It wasn’t until that night they realised where he’d got it from, but they had to admit the stars did look nice.
Some say the Apollo landings were faked, some say we really went. Turns out, they’re both right.
The story says that Chang-o stole the secret of immortality and was banished to the moon, her only companion being a rabbit who made potions.
It’s rubbish, of course. Chang-o never existed.
But there is a rabbit, and it’s hard for an era-defining moment to have gravitas when said rabbit is trying to sell Neil Armstrong a cure for baldness.
The re-recording saved the planet’s sanity.
The official report remains the only one to end: ‘now let us never speak of this again.’
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I’ve set up a Facebook page for these stories, and to get some stuff on it I’m going to do a story every other day for a couple of weeks,
This one is for Casidhe Nebulosa, and her word was ‘Rabbit’.
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On the off-chance you think this is a bit far-fetched, Buzz Aldrin did promise to watch out for Chang-o and her rabbit. TRUE FACTS. Wikipedia says so.
So what do you do, 3 days before a first-draft deadline you’re still hoping to hit?
Why, you start to rework it from scratch! That’s TOTALLY A GOOD IDEA.
Best get on.
You can get it all at Mr Johnson’s Time Emporium. Pop-books of individual seconds. Hours sealed in a can. Tanks containing whole years, if you’ve got the cash.
Time is money, Mr Johnson says.
And since he opened, I’ve never missed a deadline.
Never hit one, either. Because I can always get a couple more days, I never feel like I have to start anything.
It’s getting bad. I’ve got so much time that nothing ever gets done. I’m almost 50, but I’ve not yet had my 22nd birthday.
I’d quit, if it didn’t mean facing my credit card bill.
The park was almost empty as she whispered “I want you to be my first.”
John couldn’t believe his luck.
“When – ”
She pushed him on to the bench and began to fumble with his zip. “Right now. Let’s do it right now.”
“It’s daylight – ”
“I don’t care.”
She gripped the back of the seat and lowered herself on to him. Settling, she released her hold and raised two fingers at the unicorn watching balefully, a few metres away.
It had stalked her all her life, but in a few minutes, she’d never have to look at it again.
I was lost in the forests of northern Finland when I saw my first snowrise.
All around me, at first slowly, single flakes began drifting upwards from the floor and floating away from the spruce trees.
The air whispered and hushed as more flakes joined the swarm. Finally I was knocked to the ground as the whole white blanket rose around me, leaving green trees and bare brown earth.
The cloud of snowflakes hung there briefly, then streaked away.
It hadn’t occurred to me before that snow might migrate, but I guess everything likes to go south for the winter.
We thought they were so generous, the Sagittarians.
They gave us cold fusion reactors. Crops that doubled food production at a stroke.
We were so grateful.
And then we died.
To be honest, I’m still not sure if it was pest control or whether they just thought it was how we did things.
The reactors poisoned the air. The crops sucked all water from the land, leaving it parched.
Maybe it should have been a clue when their captain strode out of the starship and planted a flag in Hyde Park.
You know what they really gave us: smallpox blankets.
Looking back, I don’t have one regret.
I’ve got at least eleven.
Not buying Google stock in 2004, for instance. Responding to “Hey, I’ve got a spare ticket to see Led Zeppelin, want to come?” with “Nah, bit tired for that.”
But that’s not even the big one.
See, as I got older, I decided I had rather less to lose.
So I stopped worrying about offending and just told idiots they were idiots. Wore purple. Did things I was bad at, and embarrassed myself. The laughs weren’t all friendly.
That’s my biggest regret.
I should’ve done that much earlier.
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This song only occurred to me after I’d finished writing – the theme, obviously, is from Warning by Jenny Joseph – but it fits pretty well:
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The first Purple, which is nowhere near as cheerful, is in the collection of 30 stories I did last November. If by some chance you’re reading this and don’t have it already, you can get it by sticking your e-mail in the box to the right.