A collection of short stories // ft. bad holidays, stubbed toes and lost emojis

A few weeks ago I asked my Instagram followers to give me writing prompts for me to write short stories about, and I wasn't disappointed by the responses. I haven't had the time to write all of them, but here's the ones I've done so far. I tried to free-write most of them, focusing on putting words down without giving too much thought to quality or structure, so some of these are okay and some of these are rubbish but I enjoyed writing all of them anyway.

Enjoy.

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A boy on a terrible holiday

Max is entirely done with this bullshit.

He reckons he should sue his parents for the emotional distress they have caused him ever since they left home for this absolute trainwreck of a holiday. For weeks, they had been assuring him that he was going to have the best time ever!! on their weekend stay at the seaside, and, despite his intuition that they were wrong and that this would be awful, he’d allowed himself to be partially convinced that this was not a completely terrible idea. He’d even started getting excited.

How painfully wrong he’d been.

First, he’d been stuck on a cramped, smelly, over-heated train for what felt like hours on end, and every time he’d tried to complain about it, his parents had brushed it off with some variation of this is all part of the adventure! Don’t you want to live adventures, like in your books? Then, once they’d finally gotten to the small but comfortable hotel and he’d been about to settle calmly on his bed with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, his parents had dragged him outside to the beach, which was another fresh hell. The sand stuck to the bottom of his feet and blew into his eyes and found its way into every nook and cranny of his clothes, until his whole body itched as though he was being consumed by a million tiny ants. The sun was uncomfortably hot on the back of his neck. When he cautiously dipped a toe into the sea at his dad’s insistence, it felt like an electric shock travelling up his whole leg. His parents insisted that he should be having fun, but Max is beginning to suspect that this whole seaside thing is nothing but a cruel prank played on him by the entire world. There is no way that this could be fun.

And then the next day was even worse. His parents took him to his Worst Ever Nightmare, also known as a theme park. They waved away his protests with, but theme parks are wonderful! Every ten-year-old boy has a good time at a theme park!

They were wrong.

Very wrong.

After two hours of wandering around with his hands over his ears to try to block out the eardrum-wrecking-volume music, fighting throw the stifling crowds, forcing down a mouthful of that disgusting crap they call candyfloss, getting onto one of the smaller rides, throwing up the candyfloss, and fighting through the crowds some more, Max’s parents finally agreed to take him back to the hotel. Now he sits on the bed and reads Harry Potter and contemplates life. If this type of experience is what other people term a good time, that explains a lot about the rest of humanity’s levels of sanity. He would far rather sit in this darkened room and read a good book than face the lunacy going on out there.

He’s had enough “fun” to last a lifetime.

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“Open the door” “How ‘bout no?”

 “Open the door.”

“Let me think – how about no?”

“Open the door!”

“You know I can’t do that.”

Ella’s face is flushed, her whole body shaking, her eyes full of angry tears as she yells at me. “Open it! Right now! I want to leave!”

“Have you completely lost your mind?” I snap. I fold my arms, making a point of standing in front of the front door. “You know how dangerous it is out there at night. There’s no way I’m letting you out. Now, stop acting like a child and go back to your room, before I lose all patience.

“You can’t tell me what to do!

She’s beyond all reason, screaming herself hoarse without any logic to her words at all, her voice echoing off the walls of the large, gloomy hallway where we stand. I grit my teeth. She is young – she has been on this earth for barely two decades, a mere blip of time compared to the centuries that my life has spanned – and such irrationality is common among those of her age, but that does not stop it irritating me. After all I have done for her, I deserve more respect than this.

“You can’t keep me prisoner here!” she yells, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I’m sick of this! I’m sick of you and your rules and your games and this musty old house, and I’m leaving, right now!”

“I’m trying to keep you safe, you ungrateful little wretch!” I snarl, taking a step forward as my patience finally escapes me. “You know what would have happened to you if I hadn’t taken you in? You’d be dead right now. Dead and your body rotting in a shallow grave. Which is exactly what will happen if you leave this house – has your feeble mortal brain forgotten what goes on in the streets of this godforsaken city at night? If the werewolves or demons don’t get you, the vampires will. You wouldn’t survive ten seconds out there, and you know it.”

“I’d rather face them than stay here.” She lifts her chin. Her lower lip wobbles. “And I’m not afraid of monsters. After all, I’ve survived two weeks with you.

Anger flares up in me, and I hiss, advancing on her with my teeth bared. The look of panic in her eyes as she stumbles back a few steps is darkly gratifying.

“Listen to me, child,” I hiss, backing her up against the wall. “I’ve been keeping you safe in this house for the past two weeks. I’ve done it for no other reason than I owe someone a debt. But understand this – I can just as easily change my mind about your safety. There’s absolutely nothing to stop me from turning on you. So maybe you should stop testing my patience, and wasting my time with your wailing. Understand?”

She swallows. For a moment, I think she might be about to challenge me again.

But then she lowers her eyes and slips away from me. “Fine,” she mutters as she heads for the stairs. “But this isn’t over.”

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Toes

I scream.

As though everything wasn’t already bad enough, as though life hadn’t already piled enough stress on me to break, as though I wasn’t already on the brink of a meltdown, of course I’ve had to go and stub my toes.

I swear at the top of my lungs, furious, and lash out at the stupid table leg I’ve just smashed all five toes of my left foot against, before crumpling onto the hardwood floor and cradling my foot with one hand and my face with the other. I am going to cry.

This morning, I slept through my alarm, lost my bus, and was consequently ten minutes late for school, which was apparently enough for me to earn a half-hour detention. Later, in maths, I realised that I had not done my homework due in today, which resulted in my teacher lecturing me in front of the whole class. In biology, we were told that we have a mock exam next week, which sucks because I’ve been failing biology all freaking year and I know I’m going to do shit. When I got home, I tried to start doing the truckload of homework we got set today and start my revision, but my best friend had to go and call me while sobbing her eyes out to tell me that her boyfriend had just become Ex-Boyfriend Number Five – apparently he cheated on her, or something – which stretched out into a two-hour conversation because she needed support and I try to be a good friend. And then, just as I was rushing to start my homework again, my mum sent me a text reminding me that my grandparents are coming over tonight, and that I should prepare dinner for when they get here. Which is in approximately ten minutes.

And now I’ve gone and stubbed my freaking toes.

Why is the entire universe so against me today? Who have I made angry? What have I done to deserve this? Why must I be punished in this way?

I scream again. There is no-one to hear me but the kitchen walls and whatever vengeful spirit has turned today into the Worst Day Ever.

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2040

“The start of another year. Another decade.” She sighs, and leans her head against my shoulder. “I can’t believe the 2030s are nearly over.”

“I know. It’s insane.” I take a sip of champagne, then hold up the glass. “Here’s hoping this decade is as good as the last one.”

She smiles, stroking my hand. “Somehow, I doubt it will reach the same level,” she says softly.

I kiss her on the forehead, a smile playing at my own lips. “Me too. But you never know.”

We sit on the sofa in silence, curled up under a heap of blankets, watching the New Year’s countdown programme on the wrap-screen TV. The artificial fire crackles in the grate. The kids are upstairs, finally asleep. Outside, snow swirls down in a beautiful dance. The info-screen on the living room wall states that it is 11:55 PM. Five minutes until 2040.

“You feel old yet?” she asks.

“A little,” I say with a laugh, setting down the champagne glass. “I feel like it wasn’t that long ago that I was freaking out because it was going to be the 2020s. I can’t believe it’s been twenty years since then.”

“I know,” she says wistfully. “Me neither.”

“Old isn’t the main thing I’m feeling right now, though,” I say.

She always knows when I want her to take the bait. “Then what is?”

I wrap an arm around her, drawing her close. My heart feels very light. “Happy,” I murmur into her hair. “I feel happy.”

She closes her eyes. “Me too,” she whispers. “This is perfect.”

Perfect is how I would describe it as well.

The clock on the TV starts to chime midnight. I squeeze her hand. “Happy new year.”

“Happy new year, my love.”

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An emoji gets lost in Instagram

Where the hell am I?

Look, I’m used to the simple life. I have my safe, cosy place on the Emoji Keyboard, where I wait for the honour of being chosen to add to the end of a text, and dream about winning that special, coveted space on the “most-used” section (I was on it for two weeks last month!). I chat to my neighbours, the “gritted teeth” emoji and the “surprise” one, and occasionally make small talk with some of the others, when I’m not in too much of a bad mood. I’m not used to anything else. I’m certainly not used to travelling. Or hurtling through a wild, incomprehensible world of strange images and lines of texts without being able to pause or think or know where in the clickin’ Web I am.

I’m surrounded my millions and millions of photographs, all blurring past me at breakneck speed, making me dizzy: flowers and puppies and books and clothes and sunsets and teenage girls wearing scrunchies around their wrists and carrying hydroflasks, and so many, many more. The captions and comments that jump out at me are equally confusing – what the hell is a “bae” or a “hashtag” or an “A-level” or a “VSCO girl”? My user never uses words like this in her texts. Is this really what the world is like outside the safety of the Keyboard? It’s pure insanity.

Why did I have to be such a massive idiot and decide to jump out of the Keyboard? So what if I had an argument with that jerk “crying-laughing” emoji – did I really have to storm off like this? Now I’m lost and confused and I have no clue how to get home. I squeeze my eyes shut, as though that might help.

When I open them, I feel a rush of relief – there! A line of text has paused near me, and at its end is the familiar sight of a fellow emoji. I hurry towards it and jump up next to it. It’s the cowboy emoji, and it looks at me in surprise.

“Howdy there – how’d you get here?” it asks.

“I’m lost,” I tell it. “I jumped out of my Keyboard and now I can’t get back.”

“Ahh, a traveller,” it says, nodding wisely. “I’ve met one of y’all before. Brave souls.”

“You have? And how did they get home?” I ask eagerly.

“They don’t.”

“What?”

“Once you’ve decided to be a traveller, there’s no going back,” it tells me. “You turned your back on the Keyboard; now you must live with the consequences.”

“No, no, no,” I say desperately. “There has to be some way!”

“The only possible way is to wait until your user finds you and brings you back – although on a site as large as Instagram, that’s pretty hard. You’re welcome to wait here with me until that happens.”

And what choice to I have?

Soon, I will leave the safety of this comment and venture out into the wild world outside – which Cowboy informs me is called “Instagram” – in the hopes of finding a way for my user to find me more easily and bring me back to the Keyboard. But I need a rest first. It’s going to be a very long and hard journey for a small emoji like me; I need to get my strength up.

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Thoughts? Which one is your favourite?

Also, if you like my writing and you haven't already, you should check out this post about my novella and apply to be a beta reader!

Stay awesome,

>> Andrea