Seventeen Short Stories About Swiss Army Knives

In mid-2004, Giltsharp celebrated the arrival of the Swissmemory (the Swiss Army Knife equipped with a removable USB memory stick) with a writing competition, challenging writers and bloggers to pen a short story involving a Swiss Army Knife.

Authors of winning entries in Round One were awarded a brand new Swissmemory each. Winners in Round Two were each awarded a brand new SwissMemory and a Swiss Card Quattro. Authors of all of the additional entries you see below (hosted here or at the author's own weblog/website) were also awarded a Swiss Card Quattro.

We thank all of our entrants for their many and varied stories, and we hope you enjoy reading them as much as we did.

(Click on any title to read that story. Stories hosted on external sites open in a new window. Please also note that we judged our authors on the basis of imagination, not punctuation. Only basic formatting changes have been made to the submitted stories that are hosted here. Copyright remains with the respective authors.)

In Round One, the winners were:

McFee by Alistair Coleman: David McFee was no spy, he was certain of that. He was a consultant who worked for rather pressing employers, for whom access to information was rather important. Not government, not corporate, more a bit of both. People who claimed to run the world. It's just, McFee reflected, that they made such a bad job if it that they had to employ people such as himself to go in to hot, sticky, corrupt hell-holes to sort out there messes for them. Neither spy nor mercenary. Fixer. Emergency repair man...

The Anniversary Present by Lesley Kelly: Savouring the moment, Karen shook the box gently. Matt was biting his lip in anticipation of her delight at his gift. The contents of the box rattled slightly. A bracelet perhaps? The box was the right size: four inches long and two inches wide. She ripped off the bow and the paper. She lifted the lid of the box to reveal the present her lover, the man of her dreams had bought her. It was, it was… it was a Swiss Army knife...

In Round Two, the winning entries were as follows:

Swissmemory Services by Jason Nou: The news of the FBI presence at the school was the talk of Louis’ morning class. Some students sitting in front of him were talking about a murder in the building. Others said someone was trying to hack into the government’s database. As Louis was sitting there listening to everyone’s conversations, his friend, Sean came and sat in the empty seat next to him and asked Louis if he heard about what happened. Already knowing what Sean was talking about Louis replied that he didn’t. Sean explained that one of the computer engineer professors was arrested and was taken to the Santa Cruz county jail. Louis was surprised and before he could say anything, the class began as the teacher entered the room avoiding the topic on everyone’s mind. When class got out Sean asked if Louis wanted to study later that night. Louis shoved his hands into his pockets and before he could reply he felt a cold lump of steel in his pocket. It was the Swiss Army knife he found last night. He was going to show it off to all his friends, but forgot all about it because of the commotion in the morning. And at this moment, he just realized that he was in the computer engineering building last night...

Swiss Army Life by Tom Phillips:The afternoon my youth ended, and I found out my true purpose in this world, I had been fixing the shelves in my parents cottage, in a village near the shores of Lake Geneva. It was a hot day in late summer, and my fingers were worn numb from screwing the planks together. I took a much-needed break, and opened a bottle of beer with my teeth...

My Swiss Army Knife by Paul Burroughes: Anyway, there we were, whizzing down the pit and up the other side, and as usual going over the big hump in the middle I took off, and predictably, came down on the front wheel first. Handlebars sideways and Newton’s laws kicked in and I carried on whilst the bike stopped. Landing headfirst, again predictably, into a large gorse bush. Starting to untangle myself I saw bits of other ripped cloth on the bush a testimony to others landing in it, then my eye was drawn to a small patch of red colouration, half buried in the detritus under the bush...

Runners-Up (listed alphabetically by author):

Gold Rush by AJ: The objective was to secure the bank holding a large sum of gold that the Axis were intending to smuggle out and use to finance their war effort. The secondary objective was to secure a tank and cut off any and all supply routes through this small town. Without the supplies and gold this town would provide the Axis forces in this region will have to pull back...

Getting Through by Wendy Barbe:
She stared at the knife with the blood on the blade
And knew there was trouble ahead.
She was anxious, and thought she should call for some help
But she decided to go on instead...

Knife Story by Doug Curry: You would have never guessed that buying a Swiss Army knife would end up in marriage, but here is how it happened...

A Day In The Life Of a Penknife by Niall Daley: Ah, I see my owner has awoken. He's an interesting chap, nothing out of the ordinary and he likes to keep me with him. He seems to consider me useful for all sorts of things, but then I am his pen knife. I groan or two later and he's in the bathroom and already my first job of the day; the soap's finished and he'll need to open a new pack. A quick slice and a brand new bar sits by the sink. I do worry about him using a knife this early in the morning, but so far he's not injured himself...

George and the Dragon by Dominic: George led an unfortunate life. His earliest memory was that of him trying to extract the toothpick to impale the dragon to get the key to open the dungeon. Alas, for poor George, that was about 10 minutes ago. Our friend George, it occasionally occurred to him, suffered from memory loss. He attributed this to playing far too many videogames, which he was sure was altering his sense of reality. What had been on the breakfast menu to him several hours ago had faded into the ether – several hours ago. He’d been too busy making sure PacMan had his full quota of pills to worry about his own diet. But all he needed to know now was that a pretty large dragon was currently gnawing on his legs, and he was almost positive he was wearing a new pair of shoes...

Pen Knives Of Pen Niff: The Early Years of Orson Dongle by Sean Gray: Orson Dongle was once the business mogul behind the biggest Swiss Army Knife empire in the South of Wales. It consisted of one shop in total - in the town of Pen Niff. The shop was called 'Pen Knives of Pen Niff'. It was an unimaginatively convenient location for a pen knife shop one might think, and if I didn't know that this story were true, I myself might doubt its veracity. But of course it is true - it's just a remarkable and rather tidy coincidence...

Vicky Knox's Diary by Mike McTimoney: The bf gave me a v odd gift today. A Swiss Army knife, for goodness sake. What use is a Swiss Army knife to me? He really is frightfully odd, but terribly cute. Still, I’ll pop it in my handbag, just to keep him happy. It’s pretty teeny, so it doesn’t take up too much room in there and it has a keyring to fasten it to my keys...

Not Just For The Boys by Adrian Magson: There was a time when the one item I'd never leave home without was my travel kettle. Regular business and holiday trips around Europe have given this favoured item more air miles than I care to count, and saved me from expiring of thirst in some service-free backwaters, where the price of a mini-bar's contents is in inverse proportion to the number of ice-cubes available. But now something else has captured a corner of my travel-kit...

Graffiti by Pigslave 1: That day, there had never been so many requests to leave class, as boy after boy after boy made his way to the toilets, hoping to determine for himself exactly what the graffiti said. They were disappointed, however, as there was nothing to be seen but a freshly sanded and painted area of cubicle wall...

Balfours' Blade by John Clinton Pirtle: Tommy almost cried as the blood welled out of his Mums’ mouth and onto the floor. For nearly 10 minutes he just held her until the shaking began to subside. Then he helped her into one of the chairs, gave her a drink to wash her mouth out and wiped the blood off her face. He wanted to get her to the medical centre but she would have none of it. Said it would only make it worse, so Tommy finished cleaning up and managed to persuade her to take a sleeping tablet and go to bed. When his Mum had gone upstairs and settled in, Tommy went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea, sat down at the table and started thinking...

Take My Knife, Please by PL Potts: Thank you for your recent letter informing me that the Swiss Army Knife that was confiscated from me before my recent transpacific flight has now been deemed harmless by your Agency and can be picked up from the airport. While I certainly appreciate every opportunity to make another hour-long drive to Dulles, I'm afraid I must decline your generous offer. After my most recent adventure at the airport, I am firmly convinced that the world is a far safer place with the knife in the capable hands of the TSA...

Never Leave Home Without One by Mark Taylor: Flame, though human, had been raised by a family of trolls who, having been paid handsomely to do so, hadn't made too bad a job of it. Had Flame's father bothered to contact his son he would have found him to be an intelligent and hardworking young man. Not that his father would have cared. As far as he was concerned, Flame was a part of his father's murderous past and best forgotten. Neither Flame nor his troll family had any idea that his father had been responsible for his mother’s death. In fact, Flame often dreamed of his birth family and hoped that one day his father would return to collect him. It was these dreams that spurred our young hero. He wanted to impress his father and thought that news of his son's brave deeds would be enough to make him return. This particular quest had been the most hair-brained of them all: to save the Swiss Army Wife...