Tom and I stood in the turkey-cluttered barnyard under a weak October sun.
Loose feathers tripped in a fitful breeze.
“Forget about Ben Franklin,” said Tom, fat and happy from Farmer Brown’s hormone-enhanced feed.
“I can’t,” I said. “If people had listened to him, we’d be the national birds instead of bald eagles. Protected, instead having our throats cut to celebrate obesity.”
“You need to embrace our commonality with humans. It’s not a coincidence that as they age, their necks look increasingly like ours. And don’t forget the annual Presidential turkey pardon.”
I almost swallowed my wattle.
A parade of turkeys passed, gobbling how humans got things done. Among them, Farmer Brown carried his hoe, but it might as well have been a scythe.
My mind screamed, “How can you support your devourers?”
But when Tom offered me some leftover stuffing, I realized he’d already drunk the cranberry juice.
Richard Zwicker is a retired English teacher living in Vermont, USA, with his wife and beagle. His short stories have appeared in Stupefying Stories, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Dragon Gems, and other semi-pro markets. Two collections of his stories, Walden Planet and The Reopened Cask, are out now. A third, The Sum of its Parts, is due out soon.
In addition to reading and writing, Richard
likes to play the piano, jog, and fight the good fight against age.
Though he lived in Brazil for eight years, he is still a lousy soccer
player.
Richard first came to our attention with “Stellar Dust and Mirrors,” which appeared in the now out-of-print Stupefying Stories #5, and “Riddle Me,” which first appeared in Stupefying Stories #7. Richard was kind enough to let us reprint “Riddle Me,” so you’ll find it at this link, and you’ll find his most recent contribution to Stupefying Stories magazine, “Possession is Ten-Tenths of the Law,” in Stupefying Stories 26.
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 150 words in length that was inspired by the author’s choice of two words from this list: turkey, parade, football, fir tree, stocking, or cranberry.
Did you enjoy this story? Then check out our magazine. It’s free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers, and you can get the four most recent issues with just one click.
(Or get just one at a time, if that’s what you’d really prefer.)
No comments:
Post a Comment