Chances

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Four gangsters sit at a card table in a room in an abandoned warehouse.
They pass around a revolver, each spinning the cylinder and placing it against their head before pulling the trigger.
They pass it round, sliding cash into the center of the table to up the stakes.
As if their lives weren’t stake enough.
Eventually, one of the men checks the cylinder.
“There’s no bullet in here,” he says.
He gets up, and tries to open the door.
Locked.
He pulls out his cell phone, but there’s no bars.
Then the lights go out.
And they smell… smoke.

Butt Dial

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Even though the experiment was a success, Bell and Watson needed to perfect the telephone device before heading to the patent office.
Some of their ideas were improvements on the original concept and others weren’t.
For instance, Watson rigged up a chair to the telephone that would call the other unit when someone sat down.
“Call someone else with your butt?” said Bell. “How brilliant and simple!”
After sitting down to think and calling each other over and over, they decided not to add the feature.
But today, it’s standard with cell phones.
Just put it in your back pocket.

Rafting

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We’ve had this white water rafting business for a while now.
We load up the trailer, head upriver, and then Bart and the rafters head downriver. Then, I drive back down with the trailer.
We used to work out of the cabin upstream, but folks preferred to do the road trip first.
They also like midnight runs, but they’re not safe.
Tonight, something went wrong. I got to the downstream cabin and saw the boats floating down the river.
I check with a flashlight. Nobody in them, splattered with blood.
It’s a full moon.
Howling.
As I said, not safe.

Blue Skies

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Cindy looks up at the sky and scowls at the hideous shade of green.
“Blue skies, please,” she says, and the scene vanishes for a moment before rendering again, this time with blue skies.
She brings up a catalog of clouds, cycles through her favorites, and tosses them into the sky.
“Drift,” she says, and the clouds begin to slowly roll eastward.
She got halfway through the forest before the power spike wiped out her simulation.
She checked her settings.
No auto-save.
The skies boiled red for an hour before she regained her composure.
And started again: “Blue skies, please.”

Weekly Challenge #220 – Mensa

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty, 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 Mensa!
VOTING

Which were the best stories this week?
Steven the Nuclear Man
Zackmann
Guy David
Cristina
Almo
TJ
Pods And Ends
Norval Joe
Justin
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

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

Steven the Nuclear Man

“Jonathan, you can’t talk about UFOs if you want to get into Mensa.”
Abigail ignored his tight knuckles gripping the steering wheel.
“You’re a smart guy, but they won’t get it.”
“You bet they won’t get it,” he snorted. “Smartest people in the
world and they’re UFO deniers.” He swerved into the library parking
lot. “We’re finally here.”
“Look,” Abigail said, “I’ll take you to a nice restaurant for our next date.”
As the humans walked inside, Bleargh looked up from the monitor to
Zooptif. “A brain buffet!” it said, “What a romantic date!”
The saucer landed on the roof.

Zackmann

That friend of yours, David, seems stupid and crazy. He told me that He took a class with Professor Turtledove where he learned about how the South won the US Civil War. Actually that was a joke. David is a member of Mensa but some times he gets a little weird if exposed to bad media. I think he saw the live action movie of The Last Air Bender. He should be Okay in a couple of days. He was off for about two weeks when I loaned him my copy of Moon People. Keep him away from daytime television.

Guy David

Being different was always a curse. People used to stare at me blankly when I talked and it would take me a while to register they didn’t understand a word of what I said. Through the years I learned to talk down a few levels, but it made me feel lonely, alien. That’s why my first Mensa meeting was such a life changing experience. Suddenly I was among people just like me, and I didn’t have to talk down anymore. I could talk at my own level and it was liberating. I’m not feeling cursed anymore. I almost feel blessed.

Cristina

Where do Goblins come from? They love gold is all we know.
What do they eat? Gold, I dare say, but that doesn’t seem very healthy.
Deep in the tunnels they dig, I question how dark they can be
In their burrows with such little sun!
Short and stocky these creatures are.
A mystery all the way up to their bushy eyebrows.
The myths we tell, they forge weapons for fun,
Weapons for fun! Such dangerous beings they are!
But all I know is that they love gold and their holds
That as the truth as far as I know.

Almo

The general entered the room stiffly, placed the folder on the table, addressed the small group. “We just don’t know how to stop this thing that’s coming,” he said. “We need your help, desperately.”
An eager hand shot up. “We could do a musical!” the man said. “That would relax people.” Another disagreed. “No, an operetta. That’s what we need.”
The general’s brow furrowed. “These are the dumbest suggestions I’ve heard. I thought this group was brilliant.”
“Oh,” said one of the women, suddenly understanding. “Mensa meets down the hall. This is the glee club.”

TJ

Hi! Welcome to the Sheboygan Falls Dew Drop Inn here in Sheboygan Falls,
Wisconsin! Sheboygan’s awfully fun to say, isn’t it? I’m Emma Jean
Wilkinson I’ll be your waitress this fine afternoon. Are you folks
here for the convention? There’s a Mensa convention, IQ’s in the top
2 percent smartest people in America. You seemed to have a spark of life
behind your eyes so I wondered if you were in town for that? Because
they’ve moved that. Yeah, see, they sent an advance team who … met
us. Moved the convention down to the Twin Cities. Try the pie!

Pods And Ends

The document was slowly falling to the ground. It landed noiselessly on the dirty tiled floor. Both of them bent down at the same time and their eyes locked. It was one of these moments where you look someone in the eye just an instant too long.
“Mary, back to work!” came the voice from behind the buffet in the mensa. The woman jumped up and joined her colleague. At the door, she looked back at the man. He looked around him in disgust. Raising an eyebrow at her, he shook his head sadly before he turned around and left.

Norval Joe

The local chapter of mensa was disappointed by the lack of membership.
After they determined there just weren’t enough really smart people in their community they had a heated debate about what would be the best way to raise their numbers.
Eventually they decided to use the same method used to test the IQ’s of hundreds of historical geniuses. They nearly doubled their ranks by adding members posthumously.
Their clever scheme came crashing down when National noticed. Some wise guy thought he would be funny and added names to the roster like; George Foreman, Forest Gump, and Popeye the Sailor-man.

Justin

Wumbi, of the Pokilulu tribe of cannibals was talking with Rimboo the elder about the proper way to cook a woman.
“Young Wumbi, you must remembeh, da more you know da woman, da more effort you must put into her pweparation. Eating someone is a vereh poisernall ting!”
“Do the spices and vegetables matter?”
“Naw, nat so moich. It’s more about what you do to da meat.”
“Who was the first woman you cooked?”
“Oh, soim missionary. Oui just caught her in a twap in da jungle. ”
“How did you prepare the meat, mince it?”
“Mensa, I hardly knew her!”

Planet Z

Richard’s car broke down in the middle of nowhere.
The GPS was wired into the car, the display as dead as the engine.
So was the integrated phone.
Damn. Card-carrying genius, doing something stupid.
But not as stupid as the lumbering hulk that came up to his car, a walking cliche: overalls, shotgun and straw hat.
“You got yerself car troubles?” drawled the hillbilly.
“Yeah,” said Richard. “You have a garage somewhere?”
The hillbilly frowned. “What, you think we ain’t got cars or somethin’?”
He raised the shotgun.
Richard sighed. He was a card-carrying NRA member.
(Without his gun. Stupid.)

Leviathan 2000

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Looking through the ruin and carnage, I picked up a brochure and read:
The Leviathan 2000 is the latest in automated remote divine intervention tools, complete with long-range supernatural telepresence, formidable firepower without match, and a preternaturally intelligent network system for coordinating complex maneuvers from dancing on the head of a pin to waging battles against the fires of the infernal pit.
Furthermore, this miracle of modern machinery will go where angels fear to tread, all through the Divine Will of the operator.
From the looks of things these days, blood and ashes, the angels didn’t take to downsizing well.

The Smell of Gasoline

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There’s one thing worse than the smell of gasoline, and that’s the taste.
Murloney’s boys dragged me to this warehouse and tied me to this chair so they could splash me with high-octane cologne.
“You missed behind the ears,” I said, and they punched my lights out.
I woke up to a spotlight in my face.
Laughing, glasses clinking. Groans from dozens of other guys tied to chairs.
All on top of a gigantic cake in the middle of a party.
“Happy birthday, boss!” said a goon. “Sixty years young!”
Mulroney laughed. “I’ll take my time blowing out these candles.”

Energy Drinks

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Rob watched Lisa suck down can after can of Red Bull.
“That shit will kill you,” said Rob.
Lisa’s only answer was to burp, toss the empty in the wastebin, and walk out the door.
She had a standing order to keep her supplied, but they were running late.
So, she walked to the store, bought another 5 cans, and headed home.
The brakes failed on the delivery truck, and it slammed into her as she was crossing the street.
No, I’m not pouring out this Red Bull on the curb in her memory.
I just don’t like the stuff.

Acronym

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You’ve heard of Zeus and Apollo, but have you heard of Acronym?
No?
He’s not the best-known of the Olympian gods, but where the others just putter about in the Old Gods Rest Home, Acronym is still active and involved in the affairs of man.
He whispers in the ears of the clever and the cunning, helping them find simple words into which to pack the cumbersome phrases that describe their political and social movements.
For good or evil, truth or lies – he is at their side, serving man’s desire for simplicity and catchiness.
Acronym laughs and winks, whispering more.

Yuri

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Yuri comes home tonight.
He is a cosmonaut. He is a hero.
He will be coming home from a mission tonight.
We wait at the Cosmodrome, listening to the controllers talk Yuri and his capsule down, making calculations and adjustments.
A bottle of vodka is waiting for him. Many bottles of vodka will be opened tonight in his honor.
Then, the radio goes silent. And we all watch the main screen, waiting.
A fireball, streaking across the sky, exploding into the mountain.
Some controllers stay at their consoles, working.
Others reach for the vodka.
We watch, still waiting for Yuri.