When Nancy and Tom divorced, the little cottage by the lakeside was the one thing they argued over. A compromise was found once they figured out he loved the house, while she loved the place. She kept the land. They could afford to convert the holiday home to a houseboat for him to take away.
“What’s the opposite of boot?”
“Sandal?”
“No, entirely different –”
“Hat!“
“Nooo, what you do with a computer.”
“Oh. Um. Crash?”
“I’d think that’s something the computer does… I mean what you do before switching it off normally, anyway.”
“I think that’s ’shut down’.”
“That’s all?”
“Can’t think of anything else.”
“Bah. Thanks, anyway.”
Elsa looked around scornfully.
The lab was a big clicé, full of dark wood and leather props, candles stuck on skulls chipping highlights off inlaid runes. At least they had a pickled dragon embryo rather than the old stuffed alligator…
She finally got the joke when she saw the familiar.
Nobody expected a sun conure.
Stories of 55 words? Well, ’s better than the 140 characters minus the “#microfiction” tag on Twitter…
Stretching Limits
They had called him mad, but he had proved them wrong by creating a being that they had considered impossible, showing that not a natural law, but merely habit had dictated the humanoid shape of golems so far.
He loved it when learning about his tortoise-shaped mobile home gave people new ideas.