[John Whitworth]

Ah! Prose again. I could try boiling down something by O Henry, I suppose. Would that be cheating? Or just the old O level skill of precis?

NO. 2816: LET’S TWIST

You are invited to submit a short story of up to 150 words with an ingenious twist at the end. Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 18 September.

[John Whitworth]

Well, how about this?

The Day of Doom

Death’s the rootstock, who’s the bloom?
Death’s the webster, who’s the loom?
Death’s the bride, but who’s the groom?

In a souk of old Khartoum, far beneath the traffic’s boom (all its cheerful vroom-a-vroom), in the inspissated gloom of the silent catacomb, stinking with a strange perfume, offspring of a dreadful womb slither pallid from the tomb, seeking someone.
Ah, but whom?
In a pretty English coomb (wild dog-roses, shoots of broom), trembling from his heart’s simoom, Whitworth cowers in his room, waiting for the Day of Doom.
‘Mr Whitworth, I presume?’
‘No, that’s just my nom-de-plume.’
‘Mr Whitworth, I presume?’
(Freeze frame. Into close-up. Zoom.) ‘MR WHITWORTH, I PRESUME?’
‘No indeed. My name's McGough.’
‘Really? Sorry, I’ll be off.’

[John Whitworth]

And another:

Soup

The Cook was making soup. His brother, the other cook, came into the kitchen, tasted the brew, and added a number of new ingredients. The soup bubbled away. The Cooks's wife gettting back from the shopping, tasted, raised her fine eyebrows, and added two items from her shopping bags. The soup bubbled away. The Cook's mother, interfering old biddy, came in, tasted and added something from her capacious pockets. The Cooks' father, the boss, came in, tasted, added something nobody else had ever heard of. The soup bubbled away. A street urchin ran in, tasted the broth and yelled out, 'This soup is piss!' The cook and his brother winked at each other and threw the unfortunate lad head first into the soup, which bubbled away. The result was voted scrumptious by everybody concerned, except the child of course.

Moral: A family's joy is the broth of a boy.

[Adrian Fry]

I've been wracking my brains over this one all weekend without success. I think this the most deceptively simple assignment since the occasion in the 199s when Jaspistos asked for descriptions of a perfect crime and declared none of the entries good enough to win.

[Orwn Acra]

It was all a dream.