Very Short Stories

"You give me that jaw, I'll make you knives from the first two fangs." It was a high price, but very few people could work dragon teeth.

Marie deflected Fay's rather disturbing interpretations of her dreaming of squids with a simple, "Nah, I was just craving sushi."

Tara found a cure for her arachnophobia: matches. But burning spiders chased her through her nightmares.

"Congratulations! Not only do you cheat gravity, you also break the 2nd law of thermodynamics!" A stranger test result than expected.

Gabriel tried turning into a bat only once. He never could get rid of the pointed ears, and avoided getting that drunk thereafter.

Tom arranged a blind date for Nico, with a rat. She challenged his ingenuity, asking for other dates. Dismayed, he failed.

Arson got tired of having to explain that his mother liked Orson Scott Card, and had thought "creative spellings" were a good idea.

Arson's aunt picked names by sound. He found he had a lot in common with his cousin Felony. "'It's shorter than Felicity,' she said."

Tom tried to convince himself his day hadn't been all bad. He felt worse when he realised the one moment of joy had been schadenfreude.

The mermaid hovered next to her late guest, fidgeting. She kept forgetting humans had no gills. It was getting really embarrassing.

Mark read about selling credits or ensurance to recently bereaved being immoral and maybe void, and wondered why selling religion was OK.

The cat watched the mouse disappear, and wondered what being small and part of a close family was like. She felt out of place.

She couldn't slow down. The thought of one day having to tell him what she had done would freeze her. She had to save him first.

Thomas didn't look good in the vid-call. "Dude... there's a frog on your head."
"Yeah, that's Fred; he's a bit weird."

"How can you still trust anyone after so many betrayals?"
"If I assumed everybody was out to get me, I might as well be buried alive"

Angelica decided to try a different costume rental. Last year she had to pull pubic hair out of the chainmail bikini before wearing it.

When she was 14, Vickie discovered she could stop time. She used it to read until the early morning, and still sleep 10 hours a day.

Hours added up. Vickie's habit of stopping time to get more things done in a day meant that at age 30, she'd lived about 40 years.