This is a story about an ordinary, easy-going dude and the magical skateboard that changed his life.  The story has exactly 1000 words, you can count them.  When a story only has 1000 words, it's generally called a "short story."  In that sense, this story is short.  But reading over it myself, I feel like it goes on for about forever.

   The dude whose life is changed by a skateboard has a name: Justin.  This name will come in handy during the story's dialogue - it will help you know who is speaking, and who they're speaking to.  Justin has a last name as well, but it has no use in this story, and so, for the sake of brevity, will be left unsaid.

   The story takes place mainly in Justin's backyard.  He finds the skateboard there, on accident, and as a result of the skateboard's magic, he finds it difficult to leave his backyard again.  So the backyard is the primary location of this story - but it doesn't begin there.  Instead, it begins in his kitchen.

   Justin was in his kitchen in the late afternoon of an early Autumn day.  The kitchen had tall windows that let in slanted yellow sunlight.  Justin - though generally an easy-going dude - was at this moment entirely miserable.  All around Justin were mixing bowls and measuring cups and ingredients.  The counters were caked with spilled flour and frosting and sprinkles.  Justin, for the last three hours, had been trying to bake a cake for his mother.  Justin had a plan: He would bake his mother a cake, and she would forgive him for lying to her.  Then it wouldn't be so hard to be around her.

   The plan was going badly because Justin had messed up the cake.  Instead of a double-layered vanilla and strawberry cake, he had a lump of gray dough that cemented around his wooden stirring spoon.  Now Justin had a new plan: hide the mess he had made before his mother came home.  He cleaned and dried and put away the mixing bowls and measuring cups, and he put away what was left of the ingredients.  He turned off the oven and cleaned the spilled flour off of the counter.  Finally, the kitchen looked just how it did before he began, except for a large mound of gray dough.  Justin didn't want to put it in the garbage where his mother could find it.  He carried the dough around the house, looking for a place to hide it.  Then he had an idea: He would bury it in the backyard.

   He trotted out of the house, grabbed a spade from the garden shed, and started digging a hole in a shady corner of his backyard.  The lump of dough was about the size of a soccer ball - Justin had hoped to make a very big cake.  Justin decided the hole should be at least four feet deep.  Any shallower, and there was the chance a thunderstorm or dog would reveal the dough, and Justin's mother would find it and realize her son's failure.  Then things would never be good between them.

   Justin dug until his spade hit wood. The wood was part of a magical skateboard buried in Justin's backyard.  The other parts of the skateboard were the wheels, the ball bearings, two axles, the metal pieces that attached the wheels to the wooden part, and a sandpapery layer on top.  Justin dug out the skateboard and inspected each of these parts.  They were in excellent condition.  Justin thought so: he said, "Excellent!"

   Justin put the dough where the skateboard had been and piled dirt over it.  Then he picked up the skateboard and spoke to it. He said, "How did you get under there?"

   "No idea," said the skateboard.  Justin shrieked and dropped it. The skateboard had scared him badly.

   "You can talk?" Justin whispered.

   The skateboard didn't reply at first.  Instead it glowed a brilliant violet, rose two feet into the air, and showered turqiouse sparks in all directions.  Justin stepped back from it, and spoke.  He said, "Uh..."

   The skateboard landed upside-down.  It said, "Yes, talking is something I can do."

   Justin tried to feel easy-going.  "That's cool," he said.

   "Really though," said the skateboard, as its wheels began to spin, "I can do so much more."

   "My mom's gonna be home in maybe five minutes," said Justin.

   "Forget about your mom!" said the skateboard, and 20 foot tall steel walls erupted from the ground around the perimeter of the yard.  Along the top of the walls was a coil of barbed wire.  The skateboard floated into the air again. "What can your mom offer you that I can't?"   

   "Hey, what the hell," said Justin.  He ran up to one of the walls and hit it with his fist.  The wall made a sound like this: DUNK.  The skateboard was busy making mountains of gold, sleek cars, and cheerfully yapping pets.

   "You'll like this," said the skateboard.  A monster truck drove up a mountain of gold, flying over the metal walls and screeching into the distance.

   "Oh shit," said Justin.

   "Watch this," said the skateboard, and it made a proud little loop in the air.

   "Nice," said Justin.  He was climbing up a gold pile that lay against one of the steel walls.

   "That wasn't it," said the skateboard.

   "Justin?" said a pretty girl sitting on top of the gold pile.

   "Rebecca? How did you get here?"

   "I didn't really.  I'm just a trick the skateboard is pulling on you."

   "That figures," said Justin, and he got back to climbing.

   "Do you like her? I could arrange a marriage," said the skateboard.

   Justin was at the top of the pile of gold now.  He was using his spade to pry the coiled barbed wire off of the wall. "Naw," he said, "I like Amanda more."

   "Are you kidding me? Amanda is a cow."

   Justin hopped off of the wall and broke his legs.

It's stories that are a little absurd like this that really scare me. I used to see glimpses of absurd horror when I was involved in teaching fourth grade, both in graphic art and in writing. These glimpses tugged at me and became entangled in my perception of the classroom. They served as the anchor that kept my mind from drifting off in its absentee fashion, and they reminded me that youthful inexperience wasn't innocence, and that indifference was far from benign.

This kind of spook is something that I came close to finding on several occasions in the book "John Dies at the End", but it never followed through, just described it. There is something in it that transports you to an alien standpoint outside of wrong and right, that lets you look subjectively back at how things are operating and just makes you feel awkward. It's like robbing a burning building.

You managed to recapture this feeling. Thanks.

I feel so odd. It's like that story was written by some being who isn't human, but is trying to emulate one.

Thank you both for taking the time to comment -

How surreal. I like this style, and it's conceived in a good manner.

Special "lol" note for the end.