Chuck’s challenge this week:  A Story in Three Sentences.  Initially daunted by the task, I wracked my brain all weekend for the first of these stories and then, like a delicate flower, my consciousness opened and more stories started pouring out.  Enchanted with the concept, I just sort of ran with it, ending up finally with several variations on a theme.  I had a lot more fun than I thought I would with these; I’m quite proud of them.

Here, then, are Five (5!) Three-Sentence Stories that all share the same title.

Hope you enjoy!

 

Rejected, v. 1

Leonard trembled with rage as his fingers crumpled the latest rejection letter into a rumpled little teepee on his desk.  There was nothing further for it, he decided.  He loaded his mother’s pistol, telling himself again and again that those stuffed suits at McGillis would think twice before they turned down another of his novels.

 

Rejected, v. 2

Caroline sobbed into a fistful of the pages she had torn from the latest issue of Chic.  The magazine had been telling her for years that her nose was too broad, her thighs too wide, her cheeks too chubby, her hair the wrong shade of brown; from the looks on Darryl’s face during their blind date, he thought it all just the same.  Coroners the next morning ruled that the stabs and slashes all over Caroline’s body and face, originally deemed the work of a demented murderer, were self-inflicted.

 

Rejected, v. 3

“He’s not like us,” the lungs protested, as the liver, the kidneys, and the spleen listened, nodding in zealous agreement.  “He has to go,” the gallbladder burbled, peeking out from under the pancreas, “guys, you know what you have to do.”  The white blood cells did know what to do, and began their final assault against the transplanted, interloping heart.

 

Rejected, v. 4

“Not yet,” Carl thought, as he spit the dollar out once more.  It was a perfectly good dollar, of course, but he couldn’t help himself; elation flickered through him at the caress of her fingertips on his buttons, the enchanting pout on her face as she tsked in frustration, the rattle of his frame as she kicked him in what might have been his shins if he weren’t a vending machine.  He would reject her until the end of time if he could, and he buzzed in pleasure as she tried once more to buy a pack of Junior Mints.

 

Rejected, v. 5

All his life had been lived in a pile, from the pile of rocks in the depths of the earth, to the pile of his brethren in the miner’s pocket, to the delicate pile sitting on the jeweler’s desk in Ethiopia.  But the moment loomed before him now, the moment when he would leave piles behind and become the prized accoutrement on some grand lady’s dainty finger, or the dazzling accessory in a young songstress’s pouty, flaring nostril on a magazine cover.  “Imperfections,” the jeweler said simply, and tossed him into yet another pile of brothers as shattered as his dreams.