Progressive word-age

I decided to try an exercise inspired by a Wired article on super-short stories. Here, I increase the length of a story by one word, step by step. Let it be known that in this exercise, I use different stories each time. I could make this difficulter (heh) by trying to bulk up the same story over and over again.

ONE WORD

Reborn.

TWO WORDS

Bigfoot exists.

THREE WORDS

My exoskeleton broke.

FOUR WORDS

We both changed genders.

FIVE WORDS

A boy becomes a butterfly.
Teen Werewolf struggles with puberty.

SIX WORDS

The tornado foiled the bank heist.

SEVEN WORDS

A time-traveling Weinermobile visits the 1920s.

EIGHT WORDS

I was forced to relive my prostitution years.

NINE WORDS

He refused to date her because she used a PC.

TEN WORDS

The heat wave thawed cryogenically frozen bodies, unleashing cranky zombies.

ELEVEN WORDS

Robots take over the world and make us into their sex slaves.

TWELVE WORDS

“Is that your car?”
“Yes, it is.”
“There’s a dead body inside.”

THIRTEEN WORDS

I really couldn’t have been happier about Ms. Thompson’s newborn half-swine son.

FOURTEEN WORDS

True, it’s hard to say goodbye, but it’s even harder to say hello again.

FIFTEEN WORDS

No surprise: The record shop owner was, in fact, a vampire in his spare time.

SEVENTEEN WORDS

Jake knew the palm reader was a hack when he saw her peeking at Chinese fortune cookies.

EIGHTEEN WORDS

We stopped at a creepy-looking house and took the people inside back to our even creepier abode.

NINETEEN WORDS

Piles of sticky zombies. That’s what you get for trying to use Coke’s secret ingredient to resurrect the dead.

TWENTY WORDS

The jukebox in the diner is special. It takes you back to the era mentioned in the song you choose.

TWENTY ONE WORDS

An asteroid is coming. Society is saying its own last rites and wondering why celebrity babies are such a big deal.

TWENTY TWO WORDS

You’re stuck in a black room with no doors, only walls. Someone knocks, but there’s no door there for you to answer.

TWENTY THREE WORDS

Our love story was rather ordinary. My girlfriend was very tolerant of the fact that exposure to radiation left me with extra genitals.

TWENTY FOUR WORDS

Secret Agent 008 told me the thugs were taking over. I quickly opened up a connection with Dimension X.

TWENTY FIVE WORDS

I just got back from a lengthy time travel trip, and you’d never believe what I saw. It’s true; man really did walk with dinosaurs.

TWENTY SIX WORDS

I fell in love with a handsome street vendor. He always gave me lots of freshly cooked meats, but all he wanted was a hamburger from Burger King.

TWENTY SEVEN WORDS

P.T. Barnum had nothing on this used-car salesman. He could have sold a hearse with fresh body parts inside. And that’s exactly what he did.

TWENTY EIGHT WORDS

The pot luck wasn’t lucky at all. The food was all bad and nobody wanted any of it. One thing led to another and soon a food fight erupted.

TWENTY NINE WORDS

The year is 2078. Robots have become technologically advanced enough to help in the galaxy-wide fight against invading aliens. We’re gearing up now because the invaders are coming.

THIRTY WORDS

He spoke softly and swung his hips like they were a pendulum. He had the charm of Elvis and the style of a ’57 Chevy. Too bad I killed him.

THIRTY ONE WORDS

The couple didn’t want a normal wedding. They wanted a tacky Vegas version, complete with flying Elvi and a sketchy drive-through chapel under the neon lights. Laura’s mom went ballistic.

THIRTY TWO WORDS

Christmas was pretty ordinary. Chestnuts, open fire, you know. All of a sudden Uncle Jack tells the kids Santa isn’t real and they freak out. But Santa comes and beats his arse.

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