Two Tiger Flash Fictions by Ben Raker

50 Word A Boy, A Cat, A Lifeboat Saga (Joseph Campbell Style)

The wave knocked the boy from the raft sometime during the storm. He was glad then to have taught his pet tiger both to swim and retrieve. Returning exhausted, they flopped awkwardly up onto the loose boards—safe. The raft was a flimsy thing, but for now it was home.

A Boy, A Cat, A Lifeboat Saga (freestyle)

The tiger was used to tight spaces and knew how to pace to stay fit. The boy, who hadn’t grown up in a zoo, was less fortunate; their time adrift hadn’t been good for his figure. The tiger thought of telling the boy to go easier on the sea-turtle soup.

---

Note on the text: While at Seattle Book Fest, Ben Raker was in an audience challenged to submit a tiger and life boat story to help with the ongoing effort to make this an open-source narrative form, the "Hansel and Gretel" of our age. That same day, for business school, he received the assignment to write a 50-word (exactly) saga using Joseph Campbell's famous hero's journey which features, departure, trials, return.

Ben Raker is a writer, editor, and MBA student in Seattle.