What animated GIFs will make the best short stories?
Or, more importantly, which ones will make the worst???
You suggest your favorites, and then let’s see what happens!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we use some animated GIFs as story prompts.
Here’s the first one chat voted for:
Here’s what we wrote:
My Ordinary Life With Exploding Umbrella Spider Vol. 1
I guess you could say I wish I’d just decided to stay wet that one day.
I was walking home, after yet another day at school not saying a single word to my crush Kelly, when suddenly the clouds above cracked and poured down their disapproval all over me. Even Mother Nature was another mother who I constantly disappointed.
I ran into the nearby convenience store, hoping to pick up a cheap umbrella, but looking around they were all super overpriced. Twenty bucks for a little plastic thing! I only needed it to get home, since I had plenty of umbrellas there already. I was just too stupid to actually remember to look at the weather report and bring one. Too stupid to do a lot of things.
“Hey kid,” came a voice scratching through sandpaper windpipes from behind me. “You wanna buy an umbrella?”
I turned to see the clerk leaning over the counter, watching me intently. He wasn’t wearing the usual pristine white collared outfit that the staff usually had on, instead a ragged old plaid shirt seemed to be barely hanging onto his upper half.
Honestly he kind of creeped me out, but he was offering me a small black folding umbrella in his hand, with a round price sticker of one dollar slapped onto it.
Needless to say, I walked out of there the proud owner of a probably used umbrella, finally having a shield between me and Mother Nature’s personal vendetta against me staying dry with her tears of disappointment.
For a dollar, it seemed like a good deal at first. No tears, no holes, only a faint smell of mold. Or maybe not mold, something else a little rotten? A weird smell like an embarrassing memory that should be kept forgotten.
Whatever. That clerk might’ve been a creep, and the umbrella likely came from some corner of a basement infested with spiderwebs and used tissues, but he hawked a good deal!
For the first time in forever, I almost felt a small tug of joy at the extremities of my mouth, when bam! A heavy weight right to my stomach.
“Hey, dimbo.”
I fell to the wet concrete below, my umbrella bouncing away. Standing above me was Mason Jones, Kelly’s no-good ex-boyfriend and school bully. His beefy arm was extended out like a metal crane, my stomach still pulsting from the pain of coming into contact with it.
Mason bent over and picked up my umbrella, as I lay there soaking up all the new fresh spills from the skies. He twirled it around above him, smacking a few more raindrops right in my eyes.
“Thanks for the ‘brella,” he said. “Good luck with the rain!”
Just as Mason took one sopping step away, at first I thought I’d imagined it in a fit of rage, but then his howl of pain confirmed that it was no hallucination.
Needlike legs sprouted from the ends of the umbrella, then chomped down on Mason as if it were a giant, leathery mouth.
Before I could even scream myself, the umbrella scuttled away like a spider carrying its bleeding meal underneath its body. Both it and Mason disappeared in an alleyway, where Mason’s yells were muffled by thunder, then disappeared. The rain washed away all of the blood, and I was left there, wondering what the hell I had just seen.
The umbrella rolled out from the alley, in its compact form, right back up to my side. I stared down at it, not sure if I should run, or run really fast, but then the round “one dollar sticker” started moving. Started moving up and down like a mouth.
“Hey kid,” the umbrella spoke, as if it had just devoured a carton of cigarettes. “Don’t worry ‘bout that snot rocket no mo’. I got yo’ back from here on!”
Next, chat voted on this GIF:
Here’s what we wrote:
Why do we continually crave that which is unattainable? Why do I, the owl, perched atop my tree and safe from all the dangers around this forest lake, feel the desire blowing through my feathers to swim?
It is unnatural! Unnecessary. And yet. I stare down at all of the creatures of the lake, the turtles and the frogs, and can’t help but wonder “what if?”
Even the fish I catch from the surface of the lake, which I bring back to my branch in my claws, they wriggle and stare at me, knowing their imminent fate. But despite that, in their eyes, I see something unexpected. A glimmer of rebellion.
At least I was able to experience life in the water, it seems to say to me. You may consume my flesh, but your soul will never know my true joy.
My beak goes to work fast, more to silence the voices in my head than the rumblings in my stomach.
I should feel so grand! Soaring through the air is something so few other creatures can ever hope to experience. I have accomplished so much, hunted mice and beetles and osprey! I have flown to the extremities of the continent! Seen bears, and meese and wolves! My life is full, and I should feel full too.
And yet, something is lacking.
A call in the back of my skull. One I cannot see no matter how I rotate my head! A never-ending pinprick poking me whenever I try to sleep, try to enjoy a moment of peace.
Poke. You could be doing more.
Poke! You’re just scared you’ll fail.
Poke! All those other swimming creatures are so much better than you, you could never hope to compete!
No. I’m putting an end to this now. I’m going to swim.
I swoop down from the tree to the surface of the lake, for the first time without my talons outstretched to snatch a fish. This time, I’m holding myself proud, chest puffed, legs extended behind, ready to embrace the water and discover my true self!
The moment I splash into the cold wetness, it soaks me in regret.
There is no joy. No success. Only the viscous reality engulfing me more and more by the second as I attempt to paddle my feathers through the thick, alien puddle.
It only took mere seconds to defeat a lifetime of idolization. My wet feathers struggled to flap, but they did their job to lift me out of the lake and back into the air, up to my branch, where I belonged. Where I was happy.
As I shook myself dry, and my shame dribbled to the forest floor below, I was at least glad that I’d tried. That I wouldn’t go to my deathbed always wondering. That now, I knew it wasn’t for me.
I belonged in the sky! An owl, master of the air. Proud of what I was good at, not coveting the other animals’ domains. Now, thankfully, the pinpricks would finally….
My owl eyes spotted a snake on the ground. Slithering. Beautifully. Along the forest floor.
Poke.
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Hope to see you next time, friend!
Top image: Pakutaso