Short and Sweet

Lean Jeans and I have been playing a game.

It started out with this tragic short story by Ernest Hemmingway "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Then an anecdote about a class that was given an assignment to write an as-short-as-possible story that included romance, religion, and mystery. There was only one that received an A+: "Oh God, I'm pregnant. I wonder who the father is?"

Now we send words back and forth and try to write short-as-possible stories. I rather like them.

Something round. Suspense. Sadness:

The man gazed into the perfectly round puddle his tears had made. He thought he saw a movement in it. He looked up and–

Sunlight. A frog. Paperclips:

The research was finally complete: frogs do not enjoy swimming in detergent. "Please clip these findings together and file everything away", the lab technician asked her assistant while pondering another use for the soap.

Strawberries. Memory. Time travel. Wool. Fear:

The taste of strawberries brought the memory welling up. Her mind travelled back to time to the moment he had surged up from the table because of her silly remark that the sweater he was knitting looked like it could fit an octopus. He had been so angry she had been momentarily afraid he was going to throw the dish of strawberries at her. She laughed inwardly about the fights they used to have. They were so impetuous.

Ripple. Space. Tulip. Music:

Without warning, cosmic waves of colour rippled through the walls. The typically tinny sounding FM radio awoke to fill his ears. He was floating through space with one epiphany after another. Unbeknownst to him, the mushrooms that accompanied dinner at his local steakhouse, were magic.

Tractor. Elegance. Insider trading. Platypus:

The detective scratched his head. The damaged tractor outside, the platypus in the bathtub, the twenty pages of indecipherable notes in elegant handwriting beside the two thick volumes on insider trading left on the desk... the clues just weren't adding up.