Suprise Me

The Pixies Three by
50
(87 Stories)

Prompted By Concerts

/ Stories

The drab, cavernous room reeked of sweat and hormones. Then the DJ mounted the steps to the stage.
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TAPS by
10
(19 Stories)

Prompted By War & Remembrance

/ Stories

Grace's bugle will shatter the silent spring with piercing streams of silver. Four notes will hold up the sky while they echo through the cemetery, layered like too many tears on a little girl’s cheek.
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An Up and Down Year by
200
(355 Stories)

Prompted By 1968

/ Stories

The radio alarm woke me the morning of June 6, 1968. I listened to the news, silently wept and pulled the covers over my head. I couldn’t get out of bed. After some time, my mother came in to see why I wasn’t up yet. “They got Bobby”, was all I could get out between…
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Protected: Bedtime Stories RetroFlash by
100
(198 Stories)

Prompted By Sleepy Time

/ Stories

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Escape from Pimps by
10
(23 Stories)

/ Stories

A snaky escape from forbidden sites in old Taipei.
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Protected: You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby… by
100
(198 Stories)

Prompted By Baby Books

/ Stories

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Assembly Isn’t the Problem by
25
(25 Stories)

/ Stories

The problem is not the assembly. It’s the document purporting to be assembly instructions that makes the process maddening. Originally written in an obscure language, it’s been clumsily translated into English, rendering it completely opaque. The consumer vents her frustration by throwing the directions away and pursuing an intuitive approach, based on a no-doubt misleading…
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No Marketable Skills by
50
(87 Stories)

/ Stories

“What are you going to do?” they asked. “You’re an academic!"
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The Parking Lot Seniority List by
200
(285 Stories)

Prompted By Parking

/ Stories

For many years until I retired I worked as the librarian at Jane Addams,   a small,  inner-city vocational high school in the infamous south Bronx.   True,  the neighborhood was sketchy,   and the local bank where many of us cashed our monthly paychecks was robbed a couple of times,  but our school was…
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Why must I be-e a teen-A-ger in love? by
200
(303 Stories)

Prompted By Teenager in Love

/ Stories

Every time I have seen the phrase “teenager in love” – starting with the first time this prompt appeared in Retrospect two years ago – I have read it as teen-A-ger, with the accent on the second syllable, rather than TEEN-ager, the usual pronunciation, with the accent on the first syllable. In contrast, if the…
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