125 Happy Endings —Quasquicentennial

A buck-and-a-quarter into the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge, #125, my quasquicentennial!

And as this story goes...

Quisque was a storyteller always in search of a happy ending. He was a talented and educated raconteur, but everything he wrote he limited to exactly 125 words. He was a neurotic.

Like most writers.

Since everything he wrote was only 125 words, and since he was always in search of a happy ending, four of those words, at the minimum, had to include that happy ending, as such, "...lived happily ever after."

Thus, even such a terse conclusion left only 121 words, max, to tell his tale with a beginning, middle, and end. Including a happy ending.

And if the ending were to be more complex than merely the "...lived happily ever after," that meant even fewer words that could be used to arrive there.

On this particular day, he wrote this opening, eating up, at the outset, four words:

Once upon a time...

[This reduced his opus to 117 words which, as it turned out, was divisible by 3. Thus, he could perfectly balance the beginning, middle, and end with 39 words each.]

THE BEGINNING

...there was a man whose biography was told in allotments of 39 words. His childhood, thus, he truncated as,

Got birthed, learned to walk and talk, went to school, made mistakes, sometimes learned lessons. Sometimes, however, he did not. [39 words]

THE MIDDLE

Found a girl, made her happy, then got her pregnant, married her, made her unhappy, became a father, kept making her unhappy.

Found another girl—a secret girl—a masseuse who made happy endings, but made her unhappy, too. [39 words]

THE ENDING

His wife learned and conspired with his masseuse lover to prepare a special massage table. Prone, his face sealed one hole in the table, his genitalia another. Two can wield cutlery faster than one. They became lovers and so… [39 words]

… lived happily ever after.

And so, Quisque was successful. Another perfect 125-word story, replete with a beginning, middle, and end. And a moral, too, at that!

He was pleased, for it was the closest thing he would ever get to a happy ending without a face or genitalia.

______________

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Substitute 125 with 366, and here you have my autobiography. I'm talking about the 366-word limit on this story-a-day challenge, not the infidelity and genital mutilation.

One thing I learned in this challenge is that it's damn hard to tell a story in just 366 words--with a beginning, middle, and end, much less a happy ending. (This happy ending is debatable.)

Yet, it's been an education and has, I think, made me a better writer. To learn to be succinct but engaging, terse, and economical but still maintain flow have been very valuable lessons for me.

I took the opportunity for my quasquicentennial to make tangential connections by writing about a 125-word story within a 366-word story.

Somewhere, I know, there are 241 words running loose, and they're up for grabs. Have at them! I won't come back to collect.

__________

For Saturday, May 4, Day 125 of the Story-a-Day Challenge. May the Fourth be with you. Quasquicentennial!

366 WORDS (without A/N)

All pictures are AI-generated, but the beginnings, middles, and endings are not.

See you on my semiquincentennial (250th story)! Slated for September 6, 2024).

---

There are currently three Vocal creators still participating in the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge:

• L.C. Schäfer, challenge originator

• Rachel Deeming

• Gerard DiLeo (some other guy)

PLEASE SUPPORT THEM BY READING THEIR DAILY SUBMISSIONS