NOVEMBER 2019 TO OCTOBER 2020
Every year’s short stories (mostly) follow a theme. For Year Seven, I would choose a writing prompt from a book, an app, or a game. Sometimes a prompt wouldn’t work out, and I’d choose another. Sometimes I “cheated” and deviated by just writing a story based on a dream or a notion (and reverse-engineering some kind of prompt from that).
Welcome to the seventh year of Storyfeather.
Below are the titles, primary genres, and taglines for each story in the order it was originally posted.
- READ button opens story post where you can read the story.
- GO TO THE END button jumps you to the bottom of the page. It’s a long way down, and depending on your device, important navigational links may be below the page or in the sidebar.
A man seeks the help of a psychic after he experiences an unusual haunting from an automated phone line.
A prideful swallow is cursed and changed into the form that she finds most abhorrent, a tree.
In life and beyond, the elephant king seeks only one aim, to protect his people from despair.
After a man stuck in the middle seat of a long flight wishes he had more room in his row, his wish comes true: his seatmates start vanishing.
Sammy receives an unusual birthday gift, a smart device with a face, a set life span, and an unrelenting imperative to help.
A family is haunted by a demon who collects the fallen baby teeth of the children, and who soon hungers for more and more teeth, even when there are none for them to offer.
The youngest of three siblings makes a wish at a mall fountain, where unseen fish supposedly live, helping people’s wishes come true.
A young mage facing a difficult homecoming finds a treasure by the side of the road, a stolen treasure whose true owner she cannot find, and whose last owner is a terrible troll.
An inexperienced crew of administrators aspiring to be field operators are assigned to a distant star system, where they encounter a sentient nebula.
The heiress of an unexpected fortune learns the cost of becoming too attached to her newfound riches after she is cursed by a magical vagabond.
A bard embarks on a quest to discover what it is that the dragons guard at the center of a maze made of the primal cosmic elements.
While authorities search for a tiger that escaped from the local zoo, a group of people take shelter in a diner, not really worried about their safety, until a stranger appears who seems to have been attacked.
Every ninth full moon, the Reptilian Vaudevillians put on a spectacular show that for one audience member is a once-in-a-lifetime event.
When her auntie died, Subira inherited three things from her: a blessing, a curse, and a quest.
A young journalist follows her latest lead into a quirky fast food place located in her dreams.
In a desperate moment, a mage casts an unpracticed spell to save himself, but instead dooms himself to an eternal cycle of death and rebirth in forms that are not his own, that are not even…human.
Three friends decide to do their science project on a forgotten novelty invention, a self-peeling banana.
A young woman finally learns the truth about what happened when her grand-aunty accepted a dare to knock on the door of a mysterious manor.
An inventor aiming to revolutionize cosmetics with her intelligent nanoparticle mechanisms, revises and refines her invention to serve a greater purpose.
A moth dreams of visiting the Moon, but is too small to fly all the way.
When unexpectedly asked about their profession, a person accustomed to remaining unnoticed until needed debates how to tell the truth—spectacularly, or mundanely.
Ah, the curious ways in which the wonders of our childhood manifest when we are older.
A nervous young job-seeker’s interview is constantly interrupted by what seem to be personal phone calls to the interviewer, but from different callers.
An expert in the field of neurological mapping is the only person qualified to enter an experimental simulation and rescue her greatest rival.
Do the voices coming from the food in my fridge and pantry want to harm me, help me, or just…be?
Longtime lovers the ogre and the elf each recall the first few days of their honeymoon a bit differently.
To help a young man seek his fortune and his purpose upon leaving home, his parents endow him with a parting gift, a basket of lemons.
Long ago, the human heart experienced an extraordinary change, all because one god wanted to find a quiet place to sleep.
The seemingly empty cardboard box that a student uses for a school project still contains something.
Something unexpected…and unnerving.
A desperate people once made a monstrous bargain with a demon, and monsters they became.
A small team of marine explorers searches for a treasure from an arcane myth, a jewel that fell from the heavens.
A restless fairy creates a restless trinket with the power to grant its bearer three wishes, but as each wish is grant, the last wish fades away.
Two friends notice a mysterious new patron at their famed local laundromat, who always uses the same machine to wash the same few clothes the same way every time.
After the laughing Sun learns a terrible lesson about the power of her radiance, she flees the sky, and her sister, Moon, ventures into the cosmos to find her.
After a young drummer commits the crime of “creativity without a license,” her bandmate discovers a way to protect her and all other unlicensed artists.
When a young man sees his reflection in a pool as he has never seen it before, he is both mesmerized and suspicious.
A man keeps waking up in a sweat, breathless, and on the verge of tears, but he can’t remember his dreams. Then one day, he wakes to find something disturbing on his hands.
A mouse narrowly escapes a cat, and is later haunted by the ghost of the cat, who believes the mouse plays a part in the “unfinished business” of the cat’s life.
When the once-inseparable children of the Rain and the Sun quarrel and go their separate ways, they set in motion dire consequences for their parents and for the world.
An urban legend about a haunting phenomenon occurring in a little beach town becomes a news story when escalating incidents lead to the beaching of what appears to be a telepathic whale.
A girl accidentally passes before a warlock who is laying a curse on someone, and wakes the next morning to find that the curse has fallen upon her instead.
The inventor of a working time machine takes her closest friend on what was meant to be a quick trip to the near future.
A reporter and camera operator expect to uncover a hoax when they investigate sightings of flying pigs, only to find themselves on the path of a much stranger story.
When one flower asks for every passing creature to help her attain the gift of motion, she finds no luck, until she meets a cat named Serendipity.
Two passengers find themselves alone just after takeoff, on a plane that seems to be floating in some substance that the passengers can only define as being green and gold.
During his first week working at a unique pizzeria, Ronnie encounters some uncanny late-night customers, who place an order for the rarest pizza on the menu.
A fearful and captive servant, who tends a menagerie of unique and captive creatures, is dazzled by the arrival of a most magnificent creature known as a hippocampus.
To save her friends and herself from being eaten, a ghost crab enters a juggling contest with a devious and possibly unbeatable opponent.
When Baron Raven discovers a rare gem in his mines, he performs his duty by making a gift of the gem to his liege, King Monkey.
Traveling on a road at night that cuts through the woods, one driver fears encountering dangers both natural and supernatural.
A group of friends venture into an abandoned tunnel against the warnings of one of them, who senses there is something in the tunnel that won’t let them get to the other side.
The unexpected demise of a witch on All Hallow’s Eve prompts her faithful assistant to seek the answer to the question, “Who killed Edith Evilez?”
Per my tradition after finishing a year of stories, I drafted a “thank you” post for the Year of Prompts.