Prompt:

Your character goes to the grocery store, and on the way there meets someone/thing unexpected, which requests something that the character cannot give it. Hilarity ensues.

Story:

Two in the morning and I still couldn’t get to sleep. I sat up slightly and tried plumping my pillow for the hundredth time. It looked so plush, so much like a big, white, Hot Pocket. No wonder I can’t sleep, I thought to myself as I sat all the way up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I forgot to eat dinner!

I slipped on my slippers and made my way groggily to the kitchen. I wasn’t asleep, but I wasn’t awake yet, either. I flicked the light on in the kitchen and clenched my eyes shut against the insanely bright light. I walked over to the counter, now more awake than I had been while tossing and turning in bed, and pulled down the peanut butter. I had fresh jelly in the fridge and managed to get it out while simultaneously pulling a knife from the silverware drawer. I opened the breadbox to take out some slices to make my soon-to-be midnight sandwich.

I was out of bread.

I left everything on the counter and walked to the front door. The grocery store is open 24-hours a day, so I threw on a robe and walked out into the night. It’s a little shop down the street on the corner, about two blocks away. I’ve made midnight food runs before; apparently forgetting to eat is a habit of mine.

About halfway down the driveway I was stopped by a dog. It looked half-shaved and I could see his ribs.

“Gimme a sandwich,” the dog said, baring his teeth.

“There’s no way you just talked, I’m not that crazy”

“Gimme a sandwich,” he repeated, standing now and blocking my way down the driveway. The effort to stand was so much he wet himself and fell down again in the puddle.

“I would if I had bread,” I responded, imagining a stranger would have me committed if he saw this.

“Then take some out and gimme a sandwich”

“You don’t understand,” I started, trying to take a step towards the street at the same time.

Just then, the dog lunged at me. I was caught off guard, he could barely stand a moment ago and now he was flying towards my throat, screaming “SANDWICH!!!” at the top of his lungs.

I fell backwards and suddenly everything was dark. It was probably because I was lying on the floor in my bedroom. I reached to pull myself up on the nightstand and knocked a plate to the floor. I stood up, then bent over to retrieve my plate … and the half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich it had been holding.

I

The Earth trembled as if burdened by a sudden mass too large to be held upon its shoulders. A great trumpeting sounded forth from the forest midst as balls of fire were slung away from the tree line to collide against the city walls, setting them ablaze and blinding the archers who defended them. A mighty flood of clanking armor and ferocious cries was loosed from the underbrush and advanced towards the city gates as if directed by an invisible yet inexorable force. The soldiers poured over the measly front lines and squashed the secondary forces that were guarding the still-open drawbridge.

The first of their adversaries vanquished, the soldiers continued through the city’s entrance, shutting the barred gate behind them. The seemingly invincible battalion stormed forward into the parade grounds and stopped, as there were no forces to oppose them. A soldier looked up and screamed, not out of horror but out of the sudden realization of the inevitability of his fate. His chest instantly became a pincushion of arrows as the city’s archers began to fire down onto the soldiers.

Upon his mount in the forest, Lord Julius Antony heard the tortured screams coming from Momes. He raised then forcefully dropped his right arm, signaling the advance of the larger mass of his army. His mighty siege engines once again began to hurl crock upon crock of ‘Greek Fire’ at the city as engineers hurried from their hiding places to assemble ballistas and trebuchets along the siege lines.

Inside the city, Antony’s remaining soldiers had fought their way into the castle and had thoroughly entrenched themselves within and around its keep. Nearly half had fallen from the archers’ accurate shots, and half of the survivors had fallen to another evil, but an expected and welcomed fate; two days prior to the assault, the battalion had been separated from the remainder of the army and infected with plague out of hopes that it would shorten the coming siege.

King Marcus Packard looked out a slit in the wall of his tower apartment and saw the thickening circle of Antony’s forces. He sighed out of ignorance of Antony’s plan, in expectance of the insetting of a long siege. He went back to his chest of drawers and sighed once more. He was aware of the fact that Antony’s forces were greater than his own and knew that he would be tortured and executed as soon as his army had fallen. He removed his dagger from its sheath on his belt and placed it within the folds of cloth upon his chest. Read the rest of this story »

I woke up early this morning with a headache. My head felt like it was being held between a jackhammer and an anvil, and I had no idea why it should hurt so much. I swallowed a couple of aspirin before taking a shower and committed myself to actually getting up. Despite the pain behind my eyes, I was going to see Jackie today and the forced early start would give me an advantage.

I was ready to hit the road at just after seven o’clock in the morning. I had packed everything that I thought I would need for the weekend and changed into my gym clothes. My girlfriend, Jackie, and I were planning to head straight to the rock gym when I got to town for an early workout. I did not want to waste any of the time the two of us had together this weekend; being dressed for the gym when I got there would save the unnecessary minutes it would take to change in her apartment. That, and I wanted to use those extra minutes to make her a surprise breakfast when she woke up.

Jackie lives about a hundred and fifty miles north of me. She works at the local hospital and lives in one of the newer apartment complexes nearby. It is convenient for us because the athletic center with the rock gym completely takes up the first floor of the complex. It is one of those new space-saving architectural concepts you read about sometimes in the newspaper. I really think that should have made the rent for Jackie’s apartment more expensive, but she had negotiated a student discount with the manager. She was crafty like that.

Read the rest of this story »