“Oddity”

Author’s Note: This is a Take Ten to Write story and has not been proofread for errors. If I feel inspired or if there’s interest in the story, I’ll post a revised, edited, and extended version at a later date. Happy reading!

Prompt: “I wish I could ______.”

There comes a day in everyone’s life when they believe they can do something unrealistic. That happened to me one day, when I was walking down the sidewalk with my dog.

Then again, I might’ve just been dreaming. Something seemed just slightly off, you know, like when it’s a perfect day but the birds are all singing If You’re Happy and You Know It in perfect harmony. It was like that, except it wasn’t a perfect day and the birds weren’t singing. No, they were actually being quite boring, just sitting there on their branches, staring at each other. Maybe that’s what was weird—that they weren’t singing and jumping about.

Anyway, as I was walking my dog, I noticed a giant cockroach just minding its own business as it wandered through the streets. I waved at it. It waved back.

I kept going, strolling along the sidewalk in front of my favourite stores. I stopped at a window and looked in to see a thousand snakes slithering across the floor, filling the room. No, nothing looked good in there that I wanted to purchase. And plus, I wouldn’t have been able to bring my dog into the shop.

I continued on.

The next stop just happened to be at a pier. I looked out over the water to see my best friend, Harry, waving to me with his six arms. He had a huge grin on his cheek as he called my name.

I waved back, but I couldn’t stop to talk. I needed to get to my destination.

Finally, I reached it. I practically dragged my dog up to the little cart on the street.

I looked at the toad behind the cart and said, “One plain bagel with cream cheese, please.”

The toad stared at me. “We don’t sell those here,” he croaked.

I stared at him, unable to believe my ears. All I wanted was a bagel, and he didn’t have any?!

I sighed. Never before did I so badly wish that I could wake up.

Final Comments: This one was interesting. I didn’t really have a clear idea about where this story would go when I started even though the prompt was so open-ended. However, I did enjoy getting to mess around with throwing in random things here and there while making them seem completely normal.

Overall Rating: 🤔