Land Shark

"We are gathered here to unite ..."

Peggy beamed in her white dress at her assembled friends neighbors and relations. Hah, white, she thought. If I had a dollar for every boy I let in my knickers ...

There had been Fred Hutchins. Oh what a man. But oh what a player. No sense of monogamy at all. There had been James Seymour. So charismatic. So intelligent. So RICH. But, in the end, so always working and never actually there. He'd found her dallying with another, and kicked her out.

She'd come back, crying, to her old childhood friend, Jerry Dunney. But he wouldn't take her. "If it's going to be All About You, then No. Build something interesting! Be part of something bigger than yourself!"

"But what?"

"I don't know. You like flowers? What do you think of the flowers around here?"

"Pretty poor pickings."

"So fix it! Make it better!"

And she had. They had, together. She built a little wholesale flower business, with his help. They helped build a dahlia garden for the local orphanage.

"Do you, Peggy Sheffield, take Jerry Dunney to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

"I DO," said Peggy. Look at Jerry there, grinning in his black tuxedo. If anyone should be wearing white, it should be him, my knight in shining armor.

"You may now kiss ... oh bloody hell, not again ..."

As Jerry leaned in to kiss her, a great white shark ran into the right annex behind him on eight spindly brass legs. The priest stepped backed. With a great circle of teeth, the shark chomped Jerry headfirst. There were screams. The shark ran on out the left annex and out the side door with one of Jerry's feet dangling out of its mouth. The other was still standing in its wedding shoe, orphaned, next to Peggy.

"OK ..." yelled the priest, "... I'll ask one more time, WHO'S IDEA WAS IT TO PUT MECHANICAL LIMBS ON A SHARK?!?"

Peggy stared, aghast, her white dress spattered with Jerry's red blood. Oh forget flowers, she thought. From now on I'm dedicating my life to ridding the world of the scourge of cyborg sharks.'


This was in response to a prompt on reddit.com r/WritingPrompts, "Ok.... I'll ask one more time, who's idea was it to put mechanical limbs.... on a SHARK!?"


Index of stories
Bob's web page