Here’s your new story challenge: Can you tell a story in 51 words using the following words in it somewhere:
- YAWN
- WEATHER
- TOOT
- COOKIES
- NECROMANCER
The previous challenge was to write a story in 77 words using the following eight words in it somewhere:
- COYOTE
- LEMONADE
- THERAPIST
- BUBBLEWRAP
- MISSPELL
- VACUUM
- LYCRA
- BACKSTROKE
Here are your hilarious stories:
Nicola Daly:
The lycra-clad coyote carefully read his sports therapist’s instructions before jumping into the pool and swimming a mile backstroke. He downed several glasses of lemonade before wrapping himself in pink bubblewrap and climbing to the top of a ladder. Puzzled, he flapped his arms but ended up nose-diving to the ground. SPLAT!
‘Damn,’ said his therapist. ‘Now I have to do my own vacuuming. I must have misspelled a word. I meant “Hoover” not “hover”. Damn autocorrect.’
Synchronised Exercise
A coyote swan the backstroke very fast,
Shouting, 'Eject,' as a cauldron of crows flew past.
A pixie wearing Lycra pants,
Decided she would do a hip-hop dance.
She gulped a bucket full of icy lemonade,
Then promptly sat upon a rusty garden spade.
She stomped on bubblewrap with wild delight,
Which gave the local owl quite a fright,
A therapist then arrived to vacuum up the place,
Lest silly folks decided to misspell joy with disgrace!
Murray Clarke:
After an exhausting ten-day trek up the rugged Canadian mountainside, the intrepid band of British explorers finally discovered the body of the coyote at the summit. They wrapped it in bubblewrap, sealing it in a vacuum. Wearing their finest Lycra swimming costumes, they then swam the backstroke all the way down to the bottom again. After that, they needed to lie down on a comfy therapist’s couch and rest. (P.S. On the First Draft, I misspelt “coyote”!)
Fandango:
The coyote bought some lemonade on his way to visiting his therapist, who insisted anxiety could not misspell destiny.
On his way, he encountered a dolphin wearing a shiny lycra bathing suit and doing the backstroke in the city’s reflecting pool. When the dolphin got out of the pool, it wrapped itself in bubblewrap and then used a vacuum cleaner to clean out the algae that had turned the reflecting pool from pristine blue to slimy green.
Graeme Sandford:
Miss Pellham was living in a virtual vacuum, or so it seemed. Wrapping herself in bubbles to stave off the world, with therapist visits bi-weekly, and only replacing the bubble wrap for Lycra daily to swim away the blues in a backstroke like no-one had seen before.
Alongside a melon-lemonade diet – fresh lemons and melons – and supplementary cartoon sessions with Wile Coyote and Roadrunner, Miss Pellham was taking it from the top: 1, and 2, and 3.
I started my day by starting the robot vacuum and ate breakfast, then I went for a swim in heated pool in the backyard, then rested some and had some lemonade, then wrapped up some porcelain mugs in bubblewrap, then took my neighbor to the therapist after teaching him to spell because he misspells practically everything, then on the way home a coyote tried to get in the car, then when we got home we taught our pet cat how to use Lycra, then jumped in the pool and did a backstroke.
The therapist watched a coyote nose through bubblewrap beside a lemonade stand.
“Don’t misspell your fears,” she smiled.
Wearing bright lycra, her patient imagined swimming backstroke across a silent desert, while a humming vacuum swallowed old regrets.
By sunset, laughter replaced worry, proving healing sometimes begins with absurdity, courage, shared stories, unexpected kindness, and one refreshing sip of hope together beneath wide skies, at last, smiling freely again every single day thereafter with gratitude always intact inside.
Rall:
A Suitable Case for Treatment
Her therapist advised against wearing bubblewrap while backstroking in the pool. Also wearing see through Lyrcra when doing the vacuuming in the office and to stop calling herself Misspell. Drinking whiskey instead of lemonade when she was thirsty was not a good idea either nor getting a coyote as a pet.
Torres’s therapist had warned her about the void, the cold vacuum where reality collapses. She gripped bubblewrap around her fractured nerves, watching the video again. Her daughter, alive but somewhere else. The Godfather would misspell her name deliberately, Helenne, each error a knife. A coyote howled beyond the precinct walls. She sipped bitter lemonade, pretending calm. Lycra stretched across her bruised knuckles. She’d swim through this nightmare, backstroke through every dark current until she found her girl.
The school therapist sat in the corner, sipping his spiked lemonade, wearing a shirt inscribed “I’m Your Coyotee” misspelled with a lustful coyote. Sara knew her lycra diving suit was clingy but she was in the backstroke competition also. A diving suit was a vacuum fit. She winced when her little brother popped bubble wrap he found, thinking she missed the starter pistol. School swimming competitions were supposed to be a family affair. The teacher/therapist definitely unqualified.
It didn’t happen often, but the witch had cast a misspell making her lycra swimsuit turn to bubblewrap.
Every time she moved, something went pop, and doing the backstroke proved impossible as she kept being flipped onto her belly. She felt she was swimming in a vacuum, and realised she was hallucinating when she saw a coyote toasting her in lemonade on the side of the pool. She sighed. Time to go back to see her therapist.
Coyote had problems, so he decided to talk to a therapist. He said he felt he lived in a vacuum, and no one understood him. He was a good guy, but people were afraid of him. The therapist gave him lemonade while he studied his patient. Coyote wore a lycra swimsuit, waving his arms in a backstroke manner. Finally, he didn’t think he misspelled his diagnosis, that Coyote should pop all his bubblewrap and he’d feel better.
Susan Batten:
The Coyotes, appearing in their new lycra numbers at the Lemonade Lounge last night, have started a whole new musical tendency with their recent release, “Bubblerap”. “How was I to know there was a “w” in there?” protested the Australian drummer, Bobby Vacuum. He might misspell the word – deliberately on purpose? – as my therapist suggested, but the public loves a novelty and their new dance move, the Backstroke, is set to overtake the popularity of the Moonwalk.
Chill Time
Margaret, the therapist, did her daily backstroke after work in her Lycra swimsuit to relieve her stress. She wished she could bubblewrap and mail herself to the oldest city in Europe. She always misspelled the name.
She poured herself a glass of lemonade while staring at a chill coyote walking outside her fence. She hoped he would find what he was looking for and skedaddle. In the meantime, she’d turn on her vacuum to scare him away.
Lou by the Sea:
Crossed Wires
I told my therapist I wanted coyote. Labelling me as sexually deviant, he checked out any fetish about wearing lycra in a vacuum of bubble wrap. Who has the problem here? He advised me to write down my feelings about the coyote. “All I want is a nice cup of cyo tea like I had in Timbuktu“. He tutted, explaining the misspell. He requested I watch him swim backstroke and watched me slowly sip my lemonade. Ugh…
In Coyote Californiathe band “The Lemonade Therapist” was preforming at the Backstroke bar on Saturday night. As Suzie finished running the vacuum in the lobby she noticed the t shirt vendor’s label . Was she reading this right or was it misspelled? After a short debate with herself she shrugged it off and went backstage to get ready for the show. She came onstage wearing neon lycra leggings and a top made of bubblewrap, she rocked it.
The therapist suggested exercise and an alcohol free diet to relieve my bout of stress. My choice of workout was swimming and drink being lemonade. Donning my Lycra Speedoo and beginning with the backstroke, I noticed a chunk of bubble wrap floating in the pool. The writing on it was a classic misspell. It read ACME rockett Company and I immediately looked around to see a man with the pool vacuum cleaning the other end.
“What’s this packing material doing in the pool?” I yelled.
“Wile E. Coyote just blew through here and made a mess.”
“Make sense,” I offered and switched to the breaststroke.
The lycra wearing therapist sat on his couch enjoying his lemonade with his pet coyote at his feet. He was reflecting on how far he had come from his days of backstroking his way out of the bubble wrap, or booblewrap as he often misspelled it, he had been trapped in. He had to be sucked out by a vacuum to get free.
(The animals all gathered For the party of the year Though what they had in common Not exactly clear)
Coyote doing backstroke
Wearing lycra in the pool
Giraffe is sipping lemonade
Goat just acts the fool
Zebra seeing therapist
Monkey is to blame
Can’t see seem to see things black and white
Tiger is the same
The vacuum jammed with bubble wrap
And bits of Horse’s mane
And Aardvark in a quandary
Did I misspell his name?
iMartist:
Who's the Crazy One?
Melinda was telling her therapist about her recurring dream of swimming the backstroke in her pink lycra bathing suit as Wile E. Coyote sat poolside drinking lemonade. Her therapist started popping bubble wrap; he said he needed to soothe himself while she spoke. “How rude!” she thought. As she continued, someone entered the room and started vacuuming. Melinda yelled, “Enough with the V A C O O M!” “Did you misspell vacuum on purpose?” her therapist asked.
M.A.D. Works:
A coyote showed up at my therapist’s office, sipping lemonade like it was totally normal. He said he needed help because he kept trying to vacuum the desert, which made everyone laugh. I handed him bubblewrap to calm his nerves, but he tried doing backstroke on it while wearing bright lycra shorts. Then he asked me how to misspell his own name so no one would recognize him. Honestly, it was the strangest day of my life.
Ann Edall-Robson:
Keeping a stoic face, the therapist listened to his patient.
“I used a vacuum to seal the seams of the bubblewrap covering my Lycra pants. That helped me stay afloat while I did the backstroke across the pond. I’d been invited by the coyote to go there for lemonade.”
His pen moved over the pad. Methodically he made more notes. He did not want to misspell one word when he wrote about this for the Psychology Journal.
The Elephant's Trunk:
Inner Peace
Stranded in the Mojave Desert, a misunderstood coyote decided his therapist was right: embrace your feelings. Wearing a tight pink Lycra jumpsuit, he sipped ice cold lemonade and practiced his competitive backstroke through the dunes. Suddenly, a runaway vacuum cleaner roared past, inhaling his dignity. He tried to text a distress signal, but AutoCorrect made him misspell “rescue” as “raccoon”. Defeated, he spent the afternoon aggressively stomping on a sheet of bubblewrap, at last achieving inner peace.
the coyote
found the southern border
now a thing of order
lemonade stands and wrapped
in bubbles to misspell sic
the word
errors of the terrors
of having a vacuum
of coming across
the stunned
loss and awe
as the urban princess
does the backstroke
in her Lycra bikini!
Blind Wilderness:
Cheryl sat with her therapist. She had had nightmares where she was forced to wear tight Lycra swimsuits that made her sweat as if wrapped in bubblewrap. The nightmare always ended happier , drinking lemonade beside a pool. Then it suddenly worsened as a coyote crept up on her. She was expert at backstroke but there was a vacuum in her life. Her brain malfunctioned. She misspelled everything. Early Alzheimer's? Her father died of it. She cried.
***
Esther Chilton 
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