Your assignment, should you chose to accept it, will be to write the very worst short story, between 750 and 1000 words, you can. Must contain at least three of the following words: putrefy, jewellery, encephalogram, aardvark, banana, and zombie. Extra points for using all of them.
Cliches are nearly required, as are excessive use of adverbs, sentence fragments, run on sentences... Extra points if you include the opening phrase "It was a dark and stormy night..."
The Tale of the Zombie Aardvark, a Children's Story
It was a dark and stormy night when Mama buried Fluffy, our pet aardvark. Her silver jewellry flashed a beacon at me as she dug under a light in the backyard. Actually, the storm was just heat lightning, but to my six-year-old imagination, it seemed to be a sign of great importance on this auspicious occasion of a beloved pet's death and subsequent burial.
Fluffy had passed away, the victim of a vicious neighborhood Rottweiler. We had taken Fluffy to the vet, but the when the encephalogram showed no brain life, we brought our pet home. Now, though buried, his poor body would still putrefy in the oppressive summer heat.
I was fascinated by the entire process. After all, what was death to a six-year-old?
A day later, I was playing with my older sister, Jenny, in the backyard near the burial site. She was swinging on the swing, while I nibbled on a banana left over from lunch. As she swung higher and higher, I stared at the grave.
"Hey Jenny. Let's dig up Fluffy!"
"Ewww. You're disgusting! I'm telling Mama!" Jenny ran toward the back door and disappeared inside the house.
I squatted beside the gravesite and poked it with a stick. The dirt was soft and squishy, how I imagined Fluffy's body would be. I wondered how deep the grave was. It couldn't be too deep; Mama hadn't been out there very long that night.
I decided to wait.
The next night, when everyone was asleep, I crept out to the backyard. There, in the faint moonlight, stood the silent grave. I shivered a bit, even though the night air was still warm from the heat of the day.
"Now I'm going to poke you with a stick," I thought as I dug through the softened dirt. I dug for what seemed a good long while, but never found anything. Sighing, I turned away from the grave toward the house. I decided to go back to bed before anyone found out I was missing.
Just then, I heard a shuffling noise from behind me-from the grave. I wet my pants and a shiver ran down my spine as a soft breath whispered along my neck.
I didn't turn around, but instead ran straight for the back door. I quietly went inside the house and took the stairs two at a time. I huddled under the blankets of the bed all night long. I didn't even bother to change my wet nightclothes.
"What's wrong with you?" Mama asked me the next morning as we ate breakfast.
"Uh, nothing," I mumbled, taking a huge bite of pancakes drizzled with "real maple" syrup. How does a big boy of six tell his mama that a zombie aardvark made him wet his pants in the middle of the night?
He doesn't. And he doesn't go poking at gravesites anymore, either.
