Hole in the Wall - (Just a humorous one-page short story)

[Edorell22]

I had this idea for a short story based off of some wordplay that was running through my head. Hope you enjoy it!

“And you’re sure it was a tortoise?”

“Yes ma’am, I dun seen it meself.”

Laina frowned. As one of the princess’ royal knights, she usually left peacekeeping to the city guards. But as the guards seemed to be keeping the peace all to themselves tonight, she had stepped in to assess the commotion in the market square.

“It’s just…” she furrowed her brows. “They’re usually slower.”

“Flew right past me, he did.” Laina kept waiting for a punchline, but the shopkeeper’s blank stare suggested that none was coming.

Laina inspected the damage. Sure enough, a tortoise sized hole had been made in the wooden wall running alongside the eastern edge of the market square, and inside the hole were the remains of something that could no longer be described as a tortoise. She looked around the square. It was empty, and, but for the shopkeep, all of the commoners had returned to their tattered homes which lay just to the south. In the distance, a magic cannon fired to signal that it was now six in the evening.

She walked back to the shopkeeper, the only witness to the incident. “You’re right,” she admitted. “There really is a tortoise in there.”

“Well, more like a tortwas at this point.”

“What was that?”

“Well, i’s just that the word tortoise sounds like to be in the present tense, so I-”

“I don’t care if he tort-is or tort-isn’t, I care how he gort his way into the wall!”

“Oh, that’s easy. Torque.”

Laina stared at the shopkeeper, waiting for him to elaborate and preparing to arrest him if he didn’t.

“Well, it was spinning, see.” Said the shopkeeper matter-of-factly and Laina had no retort. She looked around at the now-empty market square, desperately hoping for anybody else who was witness to the crime. She decided that maybe the guards were right to keep the peace to themselves.

“And why… was the tortoise spinning?”

“Dunno, ma’am. All I know is t’at the tortoise went towards us, full of torque.”

When Laina had first become a royal knight, she had expected that the best part of the job would be the ceremonies, the dances, the diplomatic functions, all of the hobnobbing and fraternizing that nobles – or, in her case, the merely noble adjacent – would get to do. But in truth it was the people. The every day interactions with the common man, the opportunity to show them that there were those in positions of power who genuinely cared about there well-being, and who would stop at nothing in creating a better world. That was what she really cared for.

Except today, that is. Today, she had just about had it with the common man and his nonchalance over spinning turtles. And so, with a curt nod, and a thanks for his time, Laina left the market and made for her palace quarters to blow off some end-of-day steam.

It was only after she had returned to the palace and reflected on the days events that Laina realized the shopkeeper had said us.

Adjacent to the market square, in a run-down home with so many holes that one might not pay any attention to the new ones, a shopkeeper stuffed a magic cannon into the closet.

“I tort I told you…” he reproached his son, “not to tap the torch to the touch hole.”