two-sentence stories

Sometimes, by the time I get home from a long day at work and deal with the evening routine, I have very little energy left and just can't find my way into whatever story I'm currently working on. Some of these evenings end up as lost causes. I give in and read a book or spin a record or even turn on the TV (though I'm not much of a TV watcher.) Other evenings, though, I write two-sentence stories. Not all of them are complete stories. Yet, rather sneakily, they sometimes capture a tale better than I could do with thousands of words. And sometimes they are just junk.

Here are some of my favorites:

At first he thought it was a human leg sticking out from under the log. He was wrong, though it was still the last thought he ever had.

He reached down and turned on the radio. Johnny Cash was singing.

The first time they had sex, it was awkward and not really very good. The second time wasn't any better.

There is an object with indistinct features in the corner. It might be a rag doll, but probably not.

She swore when the flashing lights started behind her as she knew she had been speeding. She obediently rolled down her window when the cop approached the car, but then the cop was no longer there.

He works really hard at his job as a sales manager for the software giant, and he knows he's damn good at what he does. The first thing he does when he gets home is look at pornography and masturbate.

The intention was to read the books that had things to teach him. But they only made him feel dumber.

I stopped because of the ghost. I continued on because of the oil leak.

He was the one who suggested the picnic. She told him no one actually went to picnics anymore.

That would ruin everything, if you were to move. The plates rattle when you put them away.

Applebees is porn without the entertainment aspect. They don't offer freshly ground pepper.

The dentist came home depressed. If his wife had been home, she would have alerted him to the camel spider on the banana.

It was the second time she dropped her keys in the last hour. He could not have seen her, even if he'd left the bar two hours and three drinks earlier.