If You’re Going to Be Caught [Narrated]
Make sure it’s for something that mattered.
I came across this old-school meme on Facebook and couldn’t resist. You know the kind—pick your birth month, day, and the first letter of your name to generate a weird sentence.
Mine? I killed + My best friend + To Kill Time
Instead of sharing the sentence, I followed the feeling. The result? A short flash fiction piece:
(Spoiler: there’s cereal, a peanut, and a fan that thinks too much.)
Want to play? Look below, grab your sentence, and turn it into something weird and wonderful. Drop it in the comments if you're up for the challenge.
If You’re Going to Be Caught
Some people knit when they’re bored.
Trevor bought a kazoo. I counted ceiling cracks like clues. We were twenty, broke, and restless. Summer had nowhere to go—and neither did we.
“Let’s do something,” he said one afternoon, his mouth half full of dry cereal. “Something they’ll remember.”
He always talked like that—like he wanted someone to quote him in the retelling. I didn’t answer. Just watched milk inch toward the counter’s edge. The fan flicked overhead, irregular. Like it was stalling on a thought.
We’d run out of distractions—Sharknado marathons, expired pudding, reshaped into nothing. Even the jokes felt like reruns.
Then he said it: “I’d die of boredom.”
He grinned, threw a peanut at my chest, then picked up the kazoo and hummed something off-key. I didn’t flinch. Just watched it roll off my shirt and hit the floor. It sounded louder than it should have.
Outside, a lawn mower started up—someone else’s summer.
I don’t remember standing. Just the fridge’s hum. Air, suddenly too thin. My fingers curled against the counter. The knife drying by the sink. The clock stuck at 2:57.
Three minutes to spare.
They called it a slip. I nodded. That’s the story they needed.
The ceiling’s still cracked in the same places. The kazoo disappeared.
He wanted to leave a mark.
I made sure he did.
I killed my best friend. To kill time.
Most days, I get away with it. But around three o’clock, the silence starts to hum again.
And it sounds almost like music.
Hey there fellow Pisces. oooh… love this game. i wanna play! (nice shock at the end even knowing the sentence that made the story).
I killed my teacher because I hate that.
Not her, exactly. Just that.
The way she says "interesting" when she means "wrong."
The way her chalk always screeches at the exact moment you're finally understanding something.
The way she makes every question sound rhetorical even when she actually wants an answer.
The way she tilts her head and says, "Let's unpack that," when I'd rather leave it zipped, buried, and forgotten in the psychological landfill that is my mind.
So I did something about it.
I sharpened my pencil into a proper stake. it’s yellow wood whittled to a fine point.
Doodled sigils in my textbook margins, little symbols that looked like angry geometry.
Whispered "die of boredom" under my breath like it was an actual spell, which maybe it was.
She looked up mid-sentence.
Paused.
Sniffed the air like she could smell my rebellion.
Maybe she sensed it coming.
Maybe she wanted to be free too.
When the dismissal bell rang, she just... vanished.
Not dramatically—no flash of light or dramatic gasp.
Just poof, like the last puff of air from a deflating balloon.
Her chalk clattered to the floor. Her coffee mug sat steaming on the desk.
No one else noticed.
Except me.
Now her voice echoes from the old AV cart in the corner.
When I'm alone and plug it in during detention, the speakers crackle to life: "Let's unpack that."
I unplug it.
Pack up my things.
Lock the classroom door behind me.
I killed my teacher because I hate that.
But apparently, that doesn't die easy.