Giant: illustration by Arthur Rackham
When Mick was little he thought of big Gus as Shouty Man.
All he could think of while growing up was being big enough to give Gus a taste of his own medicine.
Only now, as a six footer, with Gus shrunk to a little wizened man, Mick realised what being Big truly meant.
· Flash Fiction Fifty Five, a short story of only 55 words (including title), first published on Calmgrove 9th December 2016. © C A Lovegrove
More on giants in this review here
Once upon a time there were three bears, a daddy bear, a mummy bear and a baby bear.
One day Goldilocks came to visit them and … the Three Bears promptly ate her up.
And the Three Bears lived happily ever after.
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Mary had a little lamb
(she ate it with some mint):
She’d killed it with her own fair hands;
Her heart was cold as flint.
Sing a song of sixpence,
Politicians lie,
Spouting arrant nonsense:
“Brexit, do or die!”
Jack and Jill weren’t taught to kill
but he went on to slaughter:
to have some fun he took his gun
to shoot some son or daughter.
He wished to make his country great
or maybe strong and stable;
with every breath he dealt a death
as fast as he was able.
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Image: WordPress Free Photo Library
Said the fly, “As would-be boarder,
If I could fly I’d quickly flee,
I’d rather not sit in your larder
Enquiring what’s the time for tea.”
“I’ll sit beside yer,” said Madam Spider,
(for know ye that they’re mostly ‘she’)
“It’s simply ages since I’d tried a…”
“Sorry, now I need a pee.”
“Please stick around,” said Madam Spider,
“For I’d welcome your advice
On web-design, a little programme
That I’ve long time kept on ice.”
“Sorry, really need the toilet,
Can you kindly point the way?
I truly wouldn’t want to spoil it
— what you’ve done — excuse me, pray.”
Sadly, here the conversation stopped
For that was all the fly could say,
As onto both Miss Moffat dropped
Which really spoiled for them their day.
Do not, I repeat, do not attempt to change the password.
If you do we cannot be held responsible for the consequences.
The password is holy writ. It is the epitome of all that is intransgressible.
To change the password is to permanently and irrevocably alter the paradigm.
Any alteration of the paradigm will transmute reality into any number of possibilities.
Even fracture the space-time continuum.
Negate all that has pertained up to now.
So do not change the password.
You won’t just be locked out. You will luck out too. And nothing will be as it was before.
You have been warned.
Mr Overbite, Mr Four-Eyes and Mr Follicly-Challenged were competing to see who could be the most self-deprecating.
“The perverse arrangement of my teeth gives me a weak chin, which reflects badly on my character,” asserted the first.
Determined to outdo him the second said, “Far from making me look intelligent, my spectacles only accentuate the fact that I have weak eyesight and so renders me vulnerable.”
The third scoffed, “That’s nothing, my bald pate has younger men thinking I’m older and less virile than I am and therefore a total pushover.”
The sound of the school bell interrupted their discussion and they had to jump out of the way of the crowds rushing full pelt into the playground.
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The hyena was showing the wolf around his Trophy Room.
“That’s the CEO of a global oil conglomerate,” he said, indicating the head of a startled human male displayed on the wall.
They moved on. “Careful as you step on that rug,” he said, as the wolf nearly tripped over the flayed skin of a former leader of the western world whose lips were twisted into a snarl, wispy ginger hair barely concealing a flakey scalp.
They passed an internet trillionaire in a display cabinet, his stuffed body posed in the act of taking off some virtual reality glasses, revealing an obsessive, glassy stare.
“And of course you ate them before they were displayed?” remarked the wolf conversationally.
“Good god, no,” replied the hyena, dismissing the thought with a wave of his paw, “I have herds of ordinary humans available for meat, and of course there’d be no fun in chasing them, like shooting fish in a barrel.
” No,” he declared with a burst of gleeful laughter, “I just hunt those at the top of the food chain.”
Zenrinji 