<p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">This is Drabbletober, the podcast of tiny fiction.</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"></p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Hello, and welcome to Drabbletober. This is episode 29, season 2, for Wednesday the twenty-ninth of October 2025. I'm Elizabeth Guilt.</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"><br></p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Your one-hundred word story for the day is:</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">It Was Meant To Be a Joke</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"><br></p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">by Elizabeth Guilt</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"><br><br></p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">---</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Typical slow Thursday, and a short man slunk up to the counter.&nbsp;</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">"I'm here about the poster."</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Great. Steven's latest hobby is designing ornate prank - obviously prank - flyers.</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">"Oh? Need a unicorn groomed, do you?"</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">"No. I want to part-exchange my kraken. Do you remove the old one when you deliver?"</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">"Seriously?"</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">"Mine's useless. Sluggish, pale, tentacles scarred to buggery."</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">"It's not..."</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">"Can't charge tourists a few grand to slay a beast that won't fight."</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">"Slay?"</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">"They all think they're Sir Galahad. None of 'em survived so far, but.."</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">"You killed..."</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">"I need a new kraken. What are your terms?"</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"><br></p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">---</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"><br></p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Recently, I was walking through Sheffield with friends and we saw a shop-window advert offering money off what the internet calls "a very well-known brand of rectangular backpack". Someone misread it, and thus the part-exchange kraken was born.</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"><br></p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">---</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"><br></p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Take care, everyone, and I'll see you tomorrow for episode 30.</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"><br></p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">https://www.elizabethguilt.com/drabbletober/s2episode29</p>