Archive for July 2009

In her retirement, the Flower Goddess fills her days by arranging the stones in her Zen garden.

“Where are the flowers?” asks a visiting priest.

“In my memory,” she says, and she picks up the rake.

Concentric circles, weaving patterns. Lines without end.

Her sister, the former Goddess of Dance, sits on a bench and watches the sand.

“In my youth, I would have found inspiration from this,” she said. “But instead of useless motion, I merely observe and appreciate the stillness.”

The Flower Goddess nods, and summons afternoon tea.

She plucks hibiscus blooms from memory to boil in it.

flowergoddess.mp3

It’s midnight, and I’ve locked myself out of my house.

I take a pen-knife out of my pocket, cut my palms, and rub my hands together while reciting the chant of The Locksmith.

From the shadows, a robed figure emerges, reaching into a large burlap sack.

His pale hand pokes from the sleeve of his robe, a shiny key in its fingers.

The Locksmith nods and unlocks the door.

“Thank you,” I say, reaching for my wallet.

The Locksmith shakes his head, holds my wrist, and his tongue licks my bloody palm.

“Delicious,” it croaks, and returns to the shadows.

thelocksmith.mp3

Arthur had an irrational hate for anything made using ancient adobe architecture.

Mud, clay, water, and straw were a recipe for rage in Arthur’s brain, and he’d been arrested many times for smashing at ruddy brown walls with a hammer or smashing bulldozers into them.

His mother sighed and said Arthur’s older brother had covered him with mud and straw, then left him in the sun to bake and harden.

“At least it wasn’t cake,” said the doctor.

“Who the fuck makes houses out of cake?” Arthur’s mother replied.

The doctor stroked his beard and grunted. “I wish I knew.”

thebrickhater.mp3

Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Sixty-Nine, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
The topic this week was... was.... um...
It's That's not thunder, it's....
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
VOTING

Which were the best stories this week?
Jeffrey from http://GreatHites.blogspot.com
Toni
Dale from http://daleinnis.wordpress.com/
Norval Joe from http://norvalsoutlook.blogspot.com
Lewis from http://lewismoten.com/
Guy David from http://www.guydavid.com
TJ from http://tjaman.libsyn.com/
Justin from http://www.thespaceturtle.com/
Lynda from http://sisterpepperspray.blogspot.com/
Danny from http://dannymachal.com/
Anima from http://zabbadabba.com
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):


Jeffrey

"I can't there is just too much noise here, and if it does not stop, ill"
"You'll what? Come on Jack, get me out," said the harp "it is just thunder, which is a by product of the electrical discharge between the ground and the clouds you see. The electrical potential of one gets high while the other stays the same, then there is a discharge to even things out. The discharge is so hot it burns up the air and thunder is the sound of air rushing in to fill up the vacuum."
"But that is not thunder it's."

Toni

The city commissioners of Valparaiso met with attorneys today in an executive session closed to the public that for once did not violate Florida’s Sunshine Law. Val-P resident Fred sat next to FWB resident Bob at a bar discussing Valparaiso’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Air Force regarding the BRAC decision to base F-35’s out of Eglin AFB, and the countersuit against Valparaiso by the city of Fort Walton Beach.
“That wasn’t thunder, was it?” Bob asked.
“No, that was just the Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit detonating a bomb. If it had been the F-35 Lightening II Joint Strike Fighter, Val-P wouldn’t have commissioners or lawyers anymore.” Fred replied.

Dale

That wasn't thunder.
That was a barrel rumbling rough down a concrete ramp.
That was the surf, two blocks over.
It was march music playing on an old stereo,
the window half-open to the evening air.
It was an explosion, big and slow, off in the anonymous distance.
But it wasn't thunder.
Thunder would mean rain,
and rain would drive them separately inside, out of the
big dim world, out of the lot beside the basketball court.
And that would mean another day gone, another week nearly gone,
the whole summer, impossibly, nearly gone.
And he still hasn't kissed her.

Anima

“Bidoc Jackley, you’ve outdone yourself with this roast tapuc. This whole campsite really…. I was dreading trekking with you, you’re normally quite hopeless at roughing it.”
“Thankye, thankye, Dregrin; I’ve decided to improve myself. I’ve been reading this book - It’s called a Boy Scout Manual… I wonder what a boy scout is… I bought it from that crazy wizard Saruman of Isengard. I also picked up cheap this multicolored robe, for Midsummer’s Feast.”
“Aren’t you the Kali hobbit– you’d wear that frilly thing?”
“Did you hear that? I think it’s going to rain…”
“That’s not thunder~ THAT’S A DRAGON!”

Norval Joe

Keith sat behind his mother as she drove the family to the next town.
The rest of the family slept.
Keith said, "Mom. I want to leave the group. I know were a family, but I need to explore what I can do on my own."
Shirley sighed, "I know Lori has become schizophrenic and Danny is using Meth, but these are all things we can work out.
The was a rumble from the back of the Partridge families patchwork bus.
"Was that thunder?" Shirley asked.
"No, I'm sure it was just Chris again," Keith said and opened a window.

Lewis

A large rumbling sounded in the corner of the room
Jenny poked her head up and looked around
"What was that?" she asked
Her father turned to her. "It was thunder!"
"That wasn't thunder;" her mom said from the other room.
She came into the room and gave Jenny's dad a bad look.
"It was your father farting!"
Jenny went back to drawing with crayons under the end table
Later that night, Jenny’s parents found the paper and put it on the fridge.
Drawn on the paper was Jenny, her mother, and a scribbled brown cloud
of gas named Dad.

Guy David

That wasn’t thunder, that was Thor’s hummer coming down on the bus. The bus, being a patchwork bus just fell apart. “Oh well, last station” said Elvis. The passengers got off what was left of the bus and looked around them, bewildered. Hacker picked his computer and got ready to go. The tin man, being at last free after being embedded in the bus swung his ax and neatly separated each passenger into two parts. “Guess I can finish my coffee now” Said Goergy Ghost. As he drank, the coffee poured through his missing half and stained the concrete floor.

TJ

A thunderstorm had been in the forecast all week. The dusty town of Rugby, North Dakota, had almost stopped daring to hope. Two months into a drought, Jim's garden was suffering, his grass was yellowed and crunched underfoot. Sure enough, Friday's sky changed, lowering clouds scudding ahead of the stormfront.
In bed that night, Jim reveled in rain against his window, lightning flash and a satisfying crash. At daybreak, however, he saw twisted wreckage of a nearby grain elevator explosion, a pile of grain outside his house. The storm had moved to the south. They'd only caught destructive, galeforce winds.

Justin

The moon barely lit the misty landscape as Marcus drove. *
These country roads wind too much!*
He cranked the wheel to avoid, what, a giant dog? He hit his head when he
ran into the ditch. Groggy, he climbed from the car to see a miniature pony
near a broken fence. Dogs barked, a farmhouse loomed silently. Moans drifted
from the fields. Marcus saw Hungry Dead rising up. He scrambled into the car
and spun wheels uselessly. A zombie bit the pony. It kicked, shattering the
drivers window. The dead cut themselves on shards of glass as they climbed
in.
---
Marcus fumbled with the passenger handle and fell out despite zombies
grabbing at his legs. He ran into the fields. A flash of light lit the sky
and a second later the night boomed. He thought it thunder, but a glance
behind proved him wrong. Plumes of smoke rose from his smoldering car. Half
of a bumper landed beside him as his speed slowed. A few zombies shambled to
their feet near the wreckage. Traces of light punched through them and they
fell into several bleeding chunks. Metal glinted in moonlight as a towering
destroyer bot emerged from the mist.

Lynda

My father loved to tell me bullshit stories during thunderstorms.
His favorite involved dinosaurs stampeding out of a crack in the earth. I guess it was one he'd been told. He was struck by lightning three times.
Years later my uncle explained that the rumble I was freaking out over was from static electricity in the clouds. I calmed down, enjoyed the rest of the barbecue, and fell in love with science.
I told this story to the Dr. Wu when the power went out, and he laughed.
He said, "That wasn’t thunder, that was the dinosaur we cloned, escaping."

Danny Machal

Little Jacob took cover under his Blankey to hide from the scary noise.
“Dad?” he squeaked out.
Nothing.
A massive boom and crackle forced him to put his hands over his little ears.
'Just a bad dream. Mom says they can hurt me,' he thought.
His eyes began to burn and water. Was something on fire?
He left Blankey's protection and crawled on his knees to see if the
door was hot.
He dropped to the floor at the sound again and wept.
Jacob heard Mommy's muffled voice, “Go sleep downstairs, that is
disgusting. No more chili night.”

Planet Z

That’s not thunder, it’s just the ambassador smashing his tentacles against the ship’s hull.
I wish he’d use the intercom, but his species isn’t known for tact or sleeping soundly.
I hope the reinforcement patches hold. The hull breach alarm is really loud.
It’ll be the third ambassador we’ve lost this year.
He really should be transported in a water tanker, but he insisted on our cruiser as befitting his rank.
Just like the last two.
We can’t sleep-freeze the squid, so the best we can do is seal things up and…
Red light. Alarm.
This time, you call Earth.

Read on »

Freitag’s pen drips and leaks on the paper, making it useless as a writing device.

But if you hold it over the paper and gently dangle it, the droplets of ink spell out messages we believe are from Old Lord Freitag himself.

“I was brutally murdered with my own pen, driven into my heart,” says his spirit through the cursed writing device.

We already know that. His butler confessed to the crime, Freitag’s blood and the pen’s ink fresh on his hands.

That was over two hundred years ago, but Freitag’s ghost hasn’t stopped since.

Here. Have a pencil instead.

theleakingpen.mp3

For his three hundredth birthday, Papa Smurf wanted a pocket watch.

So, the Smurfs stole Gargamel’s pocket watch and brought it to him.

“Not only will this not fit in my pocket, but it still has the inscription from Gargamel’s mother in it,” he grumbled.

As smart as Brainy Smurf was, he couldn’t quite wrap his head around the delicate engineering necessary to make a pocket watch, and he went mad from the attempt.

The potion needed to cure him required five tongues of humans.

The tiny blue creatures armed themselves with scimitars and bags, and headed to the village.

pocketwatch.mp3

Van Helsing delivered the fatal stake to Dracula’s heart and laughed.

As he boasted at the local pub, the townsfolk reacted not in gratitude, but in shock.

“Are you saying you killed that nice old Count?” the barkeep asked.

“He paid my son’s way through college,” said an old woman. “And had the hunch in his back fixed, too.”

Before he could respond, Val Helsing’s wrists were locked in irons.

“What for?” he said.

“Murder,” said the constable.

“But Dracula was already dead!” said Van Helsing.

The excuse didn’t work with the judge either.

Van Helsing was hung at dawn.

vanhelsing.mp3

Willy Wonka became obsessed with the idea of a chocolate computer using chocolate chips for memory and processing.

“Usually, Mr. Wonka, your ideas are just goofy,” said the chief of the Oompah Loompahs. “But this one’s downright stupid. We make candy. Really good candy. And we make a lot of money making it. Computers, on the other hand, are low-margin. And the investment in material science research will cost a fortune.”

Willy just wouldn’t let the idea go, so the Oompah Loompahs locked him in his office until the ambulance arrived.

During the weirdo’s extended absence, things ran rather smoothly.

chocolatechips.mp3

It was the ancient mage’s last tooth. And it hurt like hell.

The toothache remedy potion bottle was empty, and all of the pain spells had verbal components.

His apprentice, not yet skilled in the art of Relief enchantments, was drunk at the pub when a party of adventurers overheard him complaining to the bartender.

“We can raid the tower and free this town of evil,” whispered the paladin.

The cleric and thief agreed, and made their way up the mountain.

Unfortunately for them, the mage’s wands were all point-and-shoot.

He left the cleric alive long enough to heal him.

magetoothache.mp3

Robert McNamara stood in the middle of a field, stark naked, and watched two circuses slowly moving towards each other in what would amount to a catastrophic collision.

“This is entirely too complex a situation,” he said, and he broke it up into its components: clowns, spectators, acrobats, animal acts, carnival rides, and cotton candy.

Then he streamlined the process by which each component functioned within the whole.

The ringmasters thanked him, and a single more efficient and effective circus rolled slowly across the field.

“Why dream this up at all?” he mumbled, and with that, the old man died.

mcnamara.mp3