prompt - Stories

Two bored café patrons find their lives upended when recruited by Barnaby, a mysterious time-traveling capybara. Now "accidental apprentices," Leo and Sam must patch dangerous fractures in history, only to realize their recruitment was no accident—and their true mission has only just begun.

When teenage logistics clerks Leo and Julian accidentally trigger a catastrophic reality warp at work, an enigmatic, waistcoat-wearing capybara named Barnaby steps in to help them untangle the timeline. Their reality-bending adventure ultimately leads the boyfriends to unexpected corporate power and a very lavish upgrade for their favorite grumpy resident at the local zoo.

This one comes from Prompt #71.

Write a short story featuring only one character. No secondary characters at all. You might drop them in the woods and see how they fare, or come up with your own idea, but only one character is allowed.

Fraser Vogel knew it was dangerous to parachute in high winds. He wasn’t left with too many options in his Cessna 182 Skylane when its yoke seized and the engine failed.

Jump or crash? Pretty easy choice.

Aboard a storm-tossed vessel, scholars Christian and Julian pivot from deciphering a ledger left by Barnaby—a time-traveling capybara who accidentally visited their era—to test an advanced gift he left behind: a collection of protective sheaths. In their lantern-lit cabin, a clinical experiment into friction and viscosity rapidly escalates into a vigorous study of mechanical boundaries

When a time-traveling capybara named Barnaby accidentally crash-lands onto an 18th-century sailing ship, his bizarre cargo of futuristic textbooks and modern contraceptives sparks a passionate romantic awakening between two young, brilliant shipmates.

This is a collection of stories I wrote based on various prompts.

Barnaby the capybara crashes Val the penguin's romantic Antarctic birthday date with Steve the otter, accidentally warping them all back to a warm, firefly-lit Cretaceous jungle—turning a ruined evening into a perfect prehistoric getaway

Time-traveler Barnaby uses a silver fork and a piece of rutabaga to stop a rogue inventor's machine, stabilizing a frayed timeline that had displaced a penguin and a waistcoat-wearing otter into the wrong centuries

Stuck in 2026 World Cup traffic, friends Leo and Marcus are on the brink of a massive fallout over Marcus's annoying, high-energy dancing. The tension is instantly broken when Barnaby, a time-traveling capybara, accidentally teleports into their car and uses a calming temporal field to fix the radio's vibe, saving the road trip.

Barnaby, a hyper-intelligent capybara, uses a modified green suitcase to travel through time, requiring specific clothes as "temporal anchors". Despite an overstuffed packing error that triggers a chaotic singularity, he successfully warps to October 21, 1885, landing in a dusty telegraph office to save the timeline.