“A Change of Management” • by S. R. Kriger

We thought he was bluffing, but the butler did it, he really did.

And we weren’t being that awful to begin with. The scullery maids were giggling, and the kitchen boy might have pulled the cat’s tail. Nothing old Parker would have minded.

But the new butler said, “If you don’t stop this instant, I’m turning the manor around.”

And he did. The following morning, instead of waking up to Saturday, we found he’d turned us back to Friday. We were ever so good—nobody giggled and nothing boiled over—but the next day was Friday again too.

“Please, sir,” I said, “Sunday was supposed to be my day off.”

“And it shall be.” He showed me a spot I’d missed on the silver. “But first, practice makes perfect.”

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S. R. Kriger (she/her) is a Canadian writer of speculative fiction. You can find more about her and her work at https://srkriger.com/blog/

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The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month Pete Wood spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted, usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries, determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the winners over to Bruce Bethke, who arranges for them to be published on the Stupefying Stories web site.

You can find all the previous winners of the Pete Wood Challenge at this link.

This time the challenge was to write a flash fiction story of no more than 125 words in length that plays off that old warhorse of mystery fiction: “the butler did it.”

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Categories: The Pete Wood Challenge