Don’t Panic!

A 50 word story about Verschlimmbesserung

Photo by Christopher Burns on Unsplash

Furious peasants appeared at Count Dracula’s castle: equipped with pitchforks and torches, ready to take the vampire’s head. Igor, his servant, was calming them.

‘Don’t panic! Master doesn’t drink the blood of virgins. I mean not only theirs… He likes everybody’s blood!’

In a few minutes the castle was ablaze.

Verschlimmbesserung is a German word meaning “make a situation worse while trying to make it better”.

Thank you Bill Adler Editor for this prompt (‘Untranslatable Words’).