The 100 Word Stories Podcast

My grandfather was 19 when he enlisted for the war the night before he shipped out, he married my grandmother and promised that he’d come back. But he never did. This plane went down, killing the whole crew. My grandmother was in the middle of writing him a letter letting him know she was pregnant when they knocked on her door back then you couldn’t end things like you can now, so our family pulled together. My father’s first word was daddy. My grandmother had never used that word or mentioned her husband around the baby. Maybe he saw ghosts?

• Richard
• Lizzie
• Lisa
• Norval Joe
• Serendipidy
• Tom
• Planet Z

The next topic is PICK TWO
Poetry
Pancreas
Freakshow
Frankenfood
Postage stamp

RICHARD

From Butthole to Rabbit Hole
Take it from me, calling yourself ‘Fluffy Butthole’ at a romantic meal is a sure fire way to prompt an embarrassed silence.
She looked at me sympathetically. “You’re not very good at this sort of thing, are you?’
I have to admit, she had me there. We hadn’t really got off to a great start with the whole porn star thing, and I was struggling to reconcile the fact she was my boss, and this whole evening could only lead me down a rabbit hole I really didn’t want to pursue.
I sipped my wine, and quietly planned my escape.

LIZZIE

Silence. She was teaching meditation now. Breathe in, breathe out. The group followed her lead. Suddenly, someone at the back moved out of sync. Breathe in, breathe out. Another one out of sync. She stood up and walked to the back of the room. Now, one in the front row. Stop! What is going on? Everyone shrugged. OK, back to breathing. In sync again. For a few seconds only… She squinted. A corpse-pale specter kept pushing her students. She rolled her mattress and swung it. The specter looked shocked. Breathe in, breathe out, she said, a smirk on her face.

LISA

The Quiet One
Sandra hadn’t heard the sound of silence at home for a while so the house felt disorientating. The clock with the noisy tick was still on the floor. Smashed. Broken. Never to make a noise again.
She crept upstairs to surprise her family; after years of trying not to wake babies she automatically avoided the creaky steps.
Nobody was up there. She knew that before she climbed the stairs.
Her phone shattered the silence, the hospital calling.
Her husband was awake. She should come in immediately. No mention of the children and she couldn’t ask, for now she could pretend.

NORVAL JOE

The three sat in the back seat while Billbert’s mother drove home. She made eye contact with him in the rear-view mirror, raised an eyebrow, and nodded her head.

He wasn’t sure what that signal meant, so he broke the silence. “Look, Sabrina. We’re all tired. We’re all stressed. And we’re confused. That’s still no reason to be mean to Mandi. You should apologize.”

To Billbert’s surprise, Sabrina said, “You’re right. I am tired and stressed.” She looked out the window. “I’m sorry, Mandi.”

Sabrina’s shoulders shook.

Billbert couldn’t see her face, but he thought Sabrina must be crying again.

SERENDIPIDY

Timmy called me to discuss details of a contract he’d like me to consider.
He feels that Tom has been victimising him and it’s about time someone put a stop to it. Permanently.
Sounds right up my street, and I guess it works in my favour too… taking out some competition, if you know what I mean?
So, I’ve drawn up the details. All I need is Timmy’s signature, and the deposit up front, and then everything’s in place to silence Tom, for good.
Unless, Tom, you have a counter-offer to take out Timmy?
Business is business, after all.

PLANET Z

By the time Harmony and Melody’s parents were told that their twin daughters were deaf, it was too late to change their names.
They got cochlear implants young, but preferred to shut them off and chat with each other.
Their grades sucked, but they were pretty, and they ended up on the pole together, feeling the beat of the music through their hands and feet as they twisted and writhed on the stage.
On days off, they were models by day and escorts by night.
Saving and investing until they could ditch the heels and makeup and never perform again.

The Coca-Cola company invented the modern image of Santa, with his red fur clothes with white trim. For years he’s been advertising the beverage. When Coke left Nazi Germany, the Nazis developed Fanta in its absence. And the motto “Santa drinks Fanta” caught on, despite the regime’s insistence on a religion of the state instead of traditional religion. After the war, when the brand was reabsorbed into Coca-Cola, an effort was made to denazify Germany. Including rebuilding association of Santa with Coca-Cola, burning advertising posters, and coloring books in piles along with Mein Kampf while driving their peppy BMW convertibles.

Kris Kringle the Thirty-Seventh was homeschooled. His dad insisted on it. Back in the old days, helper elves and Santas got along. But modern society changed that. Whispers of labor unions and socialism and rebellion. And if the elves couldn’t get to Santa, the things they told their kids, well, that put little Kris in danger. They had talked about sending him to boarding school like his father, but the bullying there had been worse when they found out what he was. So the only option was homeschooling. At least Kris would graduate at the top of his class.

Gary didn’t have a basement or a storm cellar. So he heard the tornado siren, and calmly walked to the central bath, got in the tub, and waited. He set his phone to play the local weather alerts, sitting in the tub and patiently waiting for the storm to pass. The rain pounded on the roof, and the winds shook the trees in the yard. Sometimes, the neighbors’ patio furniture slammed against the wall, thud. When the storm died down, and the all clear was given, Gary turned off the alert station and got out of the tub, and yawned.

Louis’ travel agency hit hard times. Online portals and aggregators wiped out his airline business, cruise packages, and safari tours. So he started offering tickets to fame, fortune, stardom, and other ephemeral concepts. And they sold like hotcakes, as fast as he could print them out. When his customers didn’t realize their desires, Louis had packed up and vanished. Nobody knew where he went. Some say he had actual tickets to fame, Fortune, and glory, gave out Xerox copies of those, and then use the originals for himself. People dumb enough to believe Louis believed that idiotic explanation as well.

The most important advice Jim ever got before going to prison was to keep his nose clean. However, it was really hard to get beauty products from the commissary, so he had to have them smuggled in. The warden and the guards at first would intercept and confiscate this contraband, but because Jim was trying to keep his nose clean, and Jim doing special favors, eventually, they let him have his way. Jim had the cleanest nose in the prison. Even his nose hairs were perfectly trimmed. Still, he got shivved during lunch and bled out while waiting for guards.

Danny had a pretty long commute, so he’d load Audiobooks on his phone and play them through his speakers. And he really enjoyed having the storytelling companion without getting too distracted from his drive. However, over time software developers love to add features to everything. Piling on bells and whistles while the core technology fails. Danny had to restart the audiobook applications multiple times during his drive, which was distracting. Danny tried to listen to music and talk radio instead, but those kept fading and failing, and he crashed his car. At least in the hospital, the crappy television worked.