Sean King

Jay Knowles

Benjamin Chandler

Jacob Sherman

TurtleGameMaster WhyWon'tItLetMeNotHaveALastName???

Sam Becker

English

I crossed the bridge into Philly as the sun rose. I’d been driving all night. I had a vintage computer wrapped in a blanket, and an eager buyer on South Street. The sale would hopefully fund the rest of my trip, and be enough to get me started once I arrived.

“You got the fresh 96s?” “Yeah it’s right here,” I slammed the monitor on the car roof. “Now that’s antique, five dollars.” “Five dollars? I was expecting a little more.” “Nah five dollars, take it or leave it.” “Alright, fine.” Next someone walked up to me, and offered a bridge.

"Like over a river?" The guy shook his head, "No, a bridge in a song." This intrigued me. My wife wanted a serenade for her birthday & I had written a couple of nice romantic verses, but I had no bridge to shake up the mood. "Lemme hear your bridge," I said. He cleared his throat

aggressively. “Ol’ Man River,” he began, “keeps on riverin’.” I joined in. “Ol’ Man River, keeps on riverin!” The mood began to lighten. “Oh, Ol’ Man River, shiver me timber, lah di dah…” People looked at us like we were crazy, but we simply didn’t care.

We kept singing all throughout the night, no matter who or what tried to interfere. Thirty more people had joined us by the next morning, and none had even thought about leaving the merriment as we sang song after song. This carried on week after week, endlessly singing until the

the magical mead ran out and everyone settled into sobriety for the first time since the festival began. As the commotion died down I noticed what should have been obvious: everyone was naked except for red and green body paint. Then, over the loudspeaker: “assemble into tribes!”

City of Meaderly Love

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Phil Harwell

Damaskox

Chris Baroody

Sunny Anomaly

The Wordplayer

“Are you of the intelligent sort? I suppose not.” “Well, I can assure you that I am a distinguished gentleman and scholar.” “Is that so? What, then, is the sum of the numbers nine and ten?” Why, that’s an elementary question! I spent no time figuring it out and loudly proclaimed,

“The sum isn’t what’s important! It’s the constituent parts. We mustn’t forget where we—“
“Admit it. You don’t know.”
I sighed. “Nine, then ten?” I uttered at last. “That’s easy. The next one is eleven.”
My interlocutor facepalmed. “No, you idiot. The answer is

22! We use base 5 in my culture. You count on one hand, while the other hand holds your tool. Or your sword! We’re lots of fun at parties.

Tools & swords. Ha! We also love to use innuendo—if you know what I mean—like going to a basketball game & yelling about guys playing with their big orange balls. Haha! Cracks me up even thinking about it. There was a time, though, that a little TWSS moment got me into hot water.

Innuendo? Well there’s a real pane in the glass in yo window! Anyways, I digress. I was in the shower and a naughty thought intruded into my mind. Maybe I should play with the handle a bit? Would be kind of funny. And that was when the shower sprayed hot water on me. Kind of hot.

I gotta be careful with the handle or it will burn me reeal good. Or badly? Grabbing the sponge, adding some soap, maybe croaking a song while at it? The water feels good on the skin...scrub here, scrub a little of there...but the naughty feeling lingered. What to do, how to...?

It babbles and coos, even in the deep private of its mind. I, less dense than steam; thinner than air - I am at my leisure always and at all times, to hear, see, whisper. Scene: human animal in soap, slick with it. Bloat toad, pet, I carry needles for shame and nooses for guilt.

And then, I woke up. That was sure a weird dream. As I struggled to remember what I even dreamed about, I got ready for the day like any other. I can't help but wonder what that was all about.

Halfway through putting my shoes on, my alarm went off, and I snapped my eyes open to find that I was still in bed. I had only dreamed I’d woken up. Now the dream was buried two dreams deep, and even harder to recall. I cursed and turned off my alarm, then closed my eyes again.

21ception

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Lana Johnson

Emily J

Chris Dodds

Marta P

Mason Howard was a dentist who loved the library. He would always read books and check as many books as possible.

One morning while perusing the stacks, Mason spied a book he'd never seen before, "Lost Loves of the Bibliophile Dentist." Flipping through the pages, a slip of paper dropped from it. It was a note: 709.36 PLA. Recognizing the Dewey decimal system, he put the book under his arm &

jogged toward the section listed. Suddenly he heard a whistle. “No running in the library!”, stage-whispered the librarian, flipping out her ticket book. Second ticket this month! He had to be more careful. Third strike is a doozy:

You would think the punishment would be losing library privileges, but, no. Instead they make you re-alphabetize the ancient card catalog. He grabbed the ticket from the disapproving librarian and continued on his way to find the hovercraft schematics. There has to be a way in.

The next several hours were the longest and most maddening of his life. It turns out that “Lovecraft” has little to do with “hovercraft” and the eldritch horrors and casual racism he discovered ate away at his sanity so that he barely remembered his own name.

Seeing how corrupted he had become, he was filled with an intense hatred of the light, for it sought to expose him. He ran down the stairs and slammed the door behind him, never to come out of the basement. And his name became Anonymous, or Anon for short. He got on the computer.

He spent his days dwelling in the basement, never to see the light of day ever again. The only light emanated from his monitor screen, illuminating a silhouette of his morbidly obese figure. He enjoyed getting a rise out of others. It was his specialty. It made him feel superior.

Yes, his occupation was being an internet troll. Besides engaging in meaningless arguments with strangers, his true specialty was spreading misinformation to cause confusion. Today, he decided to stir up some rumors about British actor Boneditch Cumberland.

It took quite a while for everyone to find out that the rumors were false, but when they did it was too late. The damage had already been done. The only thing left to do was to find the source of all of this.

I knew where to look, but looking was hard and expensive. Eventually I learned that having your own university just to have a university library is prohibitively expensive. Lesson learned, time to move on to the next item. Oh yeah, the source. I think I found it online somewhere.

The mystery dentist

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Sparrow Crain

The Metapodmemes

Boris Jakovljević

Rietje Becker

Its been three days. I haven't seen a single thing all day that didn't want to kill me. I'm out of food and my compass is still broken - great. My only choice is to wander deeper into the forest. I don't want to, but I'm so lost already I don't know how things could get any worse

That's when I came upon the cliff. A sheer cliff dropping down into mists. No idea what was at the bottom, and no safe way to climb down. Across the chasm, nothing was visible. I had a choice: turn right, turn left, or go back the way I came through the deep dark woods of death.

That was when I remembered I had a flashlight. I flicked the switch on and pointed it down at the lifeless void below me. Still I could see nothing, no ground in sight. I tied a sturdy rope to a rock and my waist and began my descent down the high and mighty cliff.

I made my way down into the void, gently and slowly. I was doing fairly well, until my foot slipped, and

I quickly grabbed for one of the shimmering stones that lined the wall beside me. Of course, my hand was damp with sweat and slipped right off.

"Doggone it!" I cried. That was the second hand I'd lost that week. I watched it tumble into the abyss like a dropped glove. Where was I going to get a new hand at this hour & in this pit? The shimmering stones would have to wait. I called Doc Bierhals my prosthetics man to ask

for a pair of hands. He quickly arrived at the scene and my hands were good as new. Now time to grab the shimmering stones and complete the Million Mitten. Not as great as the Infinity Gauntlet, but it will do. I marvelled at the possibilities of what I could do.

For the first time in my life, I felt scared of my own powers. There was too much uncertainty in my future. Will people millions of years later see my actions as a blunder?

Will they hate me for my lack of control? Will people even care what I did? I couldn't find any answers because there were no books, not that I could go ask around because I was still in high school and my parents wouldn't let me leave unless there was an emergency.

My plan involved an open window, shoe box and the classroom hamster. "Hammy seems to have escaped." I pointed at the window. "I'll get him." I said, holding up the box (the Hamster was, of course, already in the box). Once home my parents hugged me. Then yelled about the hamster.

Void Homework

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Paz Waz

zeej qooj

Zoe Becker

A long time ago,
In a land called Kentucky,
There once lived a man,
Who wasn't very lucky,
And one day he fell,
Right into a well,
And his situation was very yucky.

‘Twas a lovely spring day, with confidence I say, and the well was crumbling apart. His woman had said, “Our love is now dead,” and this statement broke the man’s heart.

It turned into fall, and she built up a wall, to keep the poor man away. He gave out a call, asked her out to the ball, he just wanted her to stay.

She was appalled, as he was completely bald, and nothing he did could hide it. That is why on the floor she was sprawled, and completely enthralled, by the shine his hairless dome could emit.

“Yes, Madam,” he said. “I am proud of my smooth shiny chrome dome. I embrace my hairless head. My secret? Moisturizing sunscreen applied four times a day.”

"Just what I wanted to hear," she said. "I'm a photographer & I have a series in mind: art's greatest sculptures reflected in a shiny bald head. It will involve lots of travel, but I'm willing to pay every expense. Will you work with me?" He nodded, sun gleaming off his noggin.

This man must be crazy! In fact she was so shocked by this proposal that she immediately accepted it, and off they went snapping photos of great works of art reflected on his shiny bald head all over the world. It went viral on social media, with many replicating the duo’s deeds.

The idea was so outlandish and funny that as originators they made millions. Before long he was spending thousands of dollars a week getting his bald head waxed and shined so that the reflections remained sharp. On the downside the skin on his scalp was now thinning.

As it thinned, the capillaries in it slowly began bursting. This initially left him looking a bit like a young Mikhail Gorbachev, but as time went on the red deepened in color and the entirety of his scalp from his eyebrows up was the color of port.

The colouration didn’t stop there. Over the following weeks it permeated downwards, the pigmentation changing colour every day. Some muted, some pastel, some lurid. Eventually, when two small circles of original skin on the balls of his feet finally closed up the process was over

Full-sheathed in kaleidoscope skin, heart throbbing painful under coils of panic, he steps forward but staggers, slips - now lands, one knee in mud. Like this, he stays. Day becomes like a flashing strobe. In time, his skin becomes keratinous and jagged, but ever more vibrant.

He sheds his crusted skin in a flurry of motion, and all at once his creamy center is exposed. He is now a squishy baby, ensconced in a slimy finish, with wide, wondering eyes, and mouth agape. His metamorphosis is complete.

The Art of the Bald Head

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Megamanisgod

Aan Oberoi

Alex Ramir

Once upon a time (which was actually 2 weeks ago) I had woken up to the sound of explosions, and I look out the windows to see someone robbing a bank!

“Everybody hands up! Get on the floor!” The scene would be so much different were it on the dancefloor. But this was no dancefloor. A masked man brandished his pistol. “Give me all your money! All of it!”

"I don't mean to be a troublemaker," said a woman in the back, "but how can we give you our money while we are laying down with our hands up?" Others slowly agreed, "Yeah! How can we do all 3 at once?" "This is bogus!" yelled a kid. "Totes bogus," agreed the woman. The robber did

curse out loud while pulling one of the captives up.
"Keep a lookout, men!" he yelled to his team of other robbers.
"Show me where the money is, do it quietly, and no funny business, or you won't be able to see how far my shotgun will make your head fly!" he threatened a captive.

The bank teller directed the robbers towards the safe. “Okay, now open it!” “I can’t, I don’t have the password! Only the guard knows the password!” “Don’t you play with me, boy! Open the safe!” Sirens blared across the hallway. Turns out someone pressed the button. “For Pete’s-”

Coffee you have some pretty serious security!”, the robber said. “Sir, this is a bank! And is that gun you’re waving a nerf toy?”, the teller asked. The robber’s eyes went wide, he cursed, and sprinted for the exit, only to find…

There was a large crowd of police outside the door, all wielding water guns. The robber was wearing his most expensive ski mask, so he surrendered immediately. At the holding cell, he was alowed to make one phone call, and the robber called...

his mother, sobbing with tears in his eyes, he exclaimed to her, “Mom you were right, I was not destined to be a robber, See Mom, I have been caught and am at the mercy of the policemen,”he lamented. He knew in his heart of hearts that his last attempt at robbery had been foiled.

The kid’s pursuer, still some ways off, slowed. Tilted an ear. A sound - to him, like a pig’s whimper when time for butchering come. Unmistakable. Lawman hadn’t savored sound like that since ages ago. Time to hunt; time to catch. Then, time enough to make a sinner learn to shriek

until it turns to breathless silence. Lawman’s toes curled in his boots at the mere thought. Pleasure stormed his veins. His mouth twisted up into a sinister grin as he savored the imagery for another fleeting moment. And then, just as quickly, he was off.

Nerfs Up

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ayesha wells

Jim ran a hand through his hair, “Bro I’m telling you, there’s just no way any chick can say no to the Jimster”. Eric rolled his eyes so far, they almost got stuck at the back of his head. “Get that girl’s number then, and you get bragging rights and $50,” Eric pointed ahead.

Game on, thought Jim. He sauntered over to the girl in the far corner of the room. "So... you breathe oxygen?" he asks, smugly. She looks at him quizzically and swiftly turns back around to face her friends, trying desperately not to laugh. Ok, time for Plan B.

The pill? Why would he need one? It’s not like he’s going to score or anything. In addition to a rubber ravioli in his shirt pocket, he couldn’t be too careful. He downed a few beers which gave him a massive boost in confidence. He walked up to that smoking hot blonde lady again.

“So, ahhh, I’ve been thinking,” he said to her “you’re hot, I’m friendly, why don’t we get to know each other better?” She gave him a half-smile, and looked him over. Then he screwed it all up with a few simple words:

“Wanna grab some pineapple pizza with me?” “Pineapple pizza? You sick freak! Get away from me!” The poor guy should have known that pineapple does not belong anywhere on pizza. He had committed a major faux pas. In all seriousness he would have been better off asking for her age.

She stormed off, stomach turning at the thought of his offer. Maybe some sparking water would help. She ducked into a corner store & perused the aisles for something fizzy. Oh no, she thought, that jingle—"In a tizzy? Grab something fizzy, like Sofa Cola!"—now it was in her head!

She quickly took out her phone and put on some music to fend off the Sofa Cola™ earworm she found herself with. Soon the jingle was out of her head, and she was able to grab some sparkling water in peace. But little did she know, they were completely out! Now what will she drink?

Reluctantly, she opened the door to the pantry—a place she seldom visited—and a wall of Sofa Cola™ crashed over her. “You ready to rock?” she scarcely heard from a corporate Sofa Cola musician, who continued without waiting for a response, “then drink up and take a seat!”

A Hot Slice of Heartbreak

I’ve done it. I’ve secured the last Seasonal Goat Cheese Lover’s collection from the local creamery just in time for Christmas. It’s $50, but it’s worth it. At last, my spouse will know how much I still adore her and her penchant for the cheese of goats. Perhaps,

that fairy's curse won't come true after all. Maybe she understood I obliterated her home with the lawnmower purely by accident. Maybe Aunt Zoja was wrong & fairies really can be forgiving. I wrap my wife's Christmas present with a whistle, tying the bow just as she comes home.

“So, darling, what’s the best way to apologize to an angry sprite?” She tapped her cheek and thought. “Maybe an arrangement of micro greens? Or a thimble full of homemade soup? Uncle Zanzibar swore by peppercorns, but his dealings were with leprechauns.”

“No, that’s not it,” she thought long and hard. “Hmm, I’ve got it!” She put some mentos on the floor. “Here spritey spritey! Here’s candy!” The sprite approached the candy. Poor decision. She grabbed the sprite by the neck and shoved it in the freezer with the other soda bottles.

This did not work, of course, as the fridge was already completely full of Pepsi. This made the sprite so angry it literally exploded, leaving half the kitchen in ruin.

Must have been the work of Bart Simpson, who was snickering the whole time. “April Fools!” “Why you little—“ an instantly recognisable voice rang. Homer was dead set on getting him back for that one, and he wouldn’t stop until he had his hands round his neck.

TurtleGameMaster WhyWon'tItLetMeNotHaveALastName???
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TurtleGameMaster WhyWon'tItLetMeNotHaveALastName???@turtlegamemaster

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