There are a few parents out there who are angry over schools being closed.
Some are angry that they’re all stuck at home all day with their damn kids.
Some are angry that they can’t get a hold of free school breakfasts and lunches.
Some are angry that there’s no sports for their kids to participate in.
As if they do anything but do drugs and play videogames and jerk off.
If they miss going out and doing something, send them out to work at the grocery stores, unloading trucks and stocking shelves.
Maybe they can shoplift some toilet paper.
Kelly – Arson
She felt anew…like her world was ablaze. She shook off the ash and looked around at the burning ciders. Growth only comes from shedding the old skin. Especially when that skin was an attempt to keep her from growth. Women can bring life into the world, but sometimes those amazing creatures forget that rebirth for them is just a little arson away. Just like the phoenix, she just needs a little fire and flame to become the exact version she was always supposed to be. No trappings can keep her, unless she allows it. Burn baby burn it down!
Weekly Challenge #813 – ARSON
TURA
Arson
———
“The rich are burning the planet! Burn them!” screamed the speaker.
“Burn everyone!” someone shouted. I glanced at my partner in the unmarked truck.
“Just one crazy in the crowd,” he said. “Besides, ‘everyone’ isn’t a race. Incitement to exterminate everyone is protected speech.”
“Burn the bankers!” the speaker continued. “Burn the politicians! Burn the Americans!” The crowd enthusiastically repeated every slogan.
“Got them!” I said. “If ‘American’ counts as a people these days.”
He briefly spoke with Control over the radio. “Confirmed, incitement to genocide, they’re officially over the line. ‘Any means necessary.’”
I started warming up the flamethrowers.
RICHARD
Arsonist
Take my advice and never let yourself fall for an arsonist.
When she came into my life, she was a spark that kindled a flame, that in time turned into a blaze of passion.
My desire for her burned fiercely: A fire that only intensified as our relationship blossomed, and consumed me completely, body, heart and soul.
But, unknown to me, her passion smouldered for another.
And, at the end, the embers of desire cooled and died.
Then, she snuffed me out, leaving me, burned out, charred, blackened and broken.
Hope, love and joy: Now cold ashes to the touch.
JESSICA
NO UNIFORMS IN OUR HOOD demanded the black spray paint scrawled on the siding of the luxury student housing still under construction in the informally, lovingly, appropriately named student ghetto.
When the message got scrubbed by the city’s Office of Community Beautification, the punks turned up the heat.
When the inferno scorched the developer’s dreams, the first responders doused the Molotov cocktail’s agenda.
The complex rebuilt, more law enforcement cruisers cruised, and some punks visited the other punks serving sentences for arson.
Twenty-five years later, the student ghetto is unrecognizable under its layers of regularly maintained postage-stamp yards and Ring Cameras.
LIZZIE
The box sat on the floor. Everyone was quiet, imagining the potential level of devastation it could cause.
“I thought we were torching the place,” said one of them. “These are… well, ammunition for whatever war weapon. We don’t have that weapon, do we?”
The question made them snort.
“We could get it,” another ventured.
“It must cost a fortune.”
Everyone mumbled. Destroying the place for the insurance was far more complicated than they had anticipated.
“I don’t understand… Why don’t we torch the place? Done.”
Yep, he was done alright.
Let’s face it. Simple solutions aren’t always the most fun.
SERENDIPIDY
He used to laughingly refer to my cooking as arson, poking fun at the meals that I’d slaved over in the kitchen all day long, proudly presented to him for his evening meal.
Burnt offerings, he called them.
Before grabbing his phone and ordering pizza.
Apparently, I couldn’t hold a candle to his mother’s culinary skills, and no matter what I served, he always found fault.
Too spicy, too bland, too boring, too tasteless.
Well, maybe I couldn’t hold a candle to his mother; but I could certainly hold a candle to his bed sheets.
Perfectly cooked, to a crisp!
DUANE
It was fall of ’81 as I sat in the club office going over the books. People were starting to say disco was dead and by the numbers in front of me I had no choice but to agree.
Outside I heard the DJ spinning The Tramps, “Disco Inferno”.
Just a few years ago the club was filled every night with foxy ladies and well-dressed men, all dancing and having fun. But that was then. Tonight I’m in over my head unless I can do something drastic. The music begins to mix with my thoughts.
“Burn that mother down…”
TOM
What Could GO Possible Wrong 013
With Molly draped across his chest Ford keep a steady eye on the company. He racked his brain for the where-s and why-s he had stored away on the man. Round-head motivation was pretty simple: Round-head smash. Quick and brutal, but the guy shooting dagger at him was a bit up scale. A thinking man’s round-head: a man with a plan. Wait … this fellow would later server in Parliament. Yes, he was the mastermind for the “More Incident”. There was a famous quote about that, what was it? “With comes fire”. Arson was the name of the game. Damn.
NORVAL JOE
Billbert didn’t believe Sabrina. “You say you brought us here. We came to Eureka because our house burned down. Are you saying you set the fire?”
Sabrina shook her head. “We are not into arson. We only took advantage of the situation brought on by Nuclear Fusion. She started the fire. We influenced those in command to send you here.”
“You mean, to have my parents here,” Billbert tried to clarify.
Sabrina shrugged. “Yeah. Well. You wouldn’t have come here, if your parents hadn’t been relocated to this local office. But, it’s you we need to have here, not them.”
JARED
WC 813: Arson
Unintended Consequences and Loopholes
In order to curtail witch burnings and other criminal acts of conflagration, they declared by law any intentional fire was Arson. A couple centuries later, enforcement was revived to curtail cross-burning and other racist terrorism. Recently, some crooked folks started targeting their enemies by prosecuting them for having barbecues. We added an exemption for cooking fires.
Claude’s butcher shop wasn’t doing well, so he put plates and utensils on a table outside. He used charcoal and lighter fluid to fuel the fire, and served up the inventory as it cooked. He sold the cooked meat and got the insurance payout.
€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€
WC 812 Unsure
Uncertainty Abounds
We didn’t know why she was in such pain.
They found a tumor and abdominal abscess. They started chemo.
She developed a fever. They found the abscess returned. They also found out the cancer had spread into her bones. They didn’t know why the chemo hadn’t worked, but they tried another approach.
She thought her back pain was from her improvised work-from-home-station. We bought an office chair and a portable desk. Then she thought it was her 20-year-old mattress, so we bought a new one. It persisted all the same. Now we are waiting for a kyphoplasty in three weeks.
€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€
PLANET Z
The city is beautiful and old,
But the buildings, well, they’re all replicas.
The original buildings from centuries ago were all destroyed in the war.
After the war, rubble was cleared, and new buildings were built.
All replacements of the originals, based on the original blueprints.
Well, they did make small changes to allow for indoor plumbing, and electrical outlets and conduits, and air conditioning and central heating.
But they didn’t allow for another war.
The city was leveled again.
They’d have rebuilt it again, but everyone was killed in the war, and there was nobody left to rebuild it.
The eye doctor
After working from home for a few weeks, my eyes started to bother me.
I used to wear glasses, but don’t any more.
Maybe I need to wear glasses again?
So, I made an appointment to have my eyes checked.
The doctor told me to read the chart.
I said “Ooo eee, Ooo ah ah, ting tang Walla walla, bing bang.”
I’m beginning to think he isn’t a licensed ophthalmologist.
He may be, in fact, a witch doctor.
But at least he’s in my insurance network, I don’t have to wait weeks for an appointment, and the copay is reasonable.
Lost sock
When you find a sock in the middle of the floor, you know the dog has gotten into the laundry.
Or the cat. Or the kid.
At least you can yell at a kid and you might have a hope that they learn to clean up.
Dogs take a bit more effort to train. Spray bottles and shock collars.
For kids, too. Just don’t get caught.
And cats, well, good luck. Better put locks on everything.
I don’t wear socks.
Or have kids. Or dogs.
And cats, well, I fill all the unused socks with catnip and let them play.
AM Radio
FM radio is crap.
Crooners and Doo Whop and Bubblegum.
But at night, the atmosphere changes, and AM radio spreads far and wide.
Stations from all over, and over the border.
We went to bed, but we didn’t go to sleep.
We listened to the radio and the sweet sounds carried across the country.
Blues. And Jazz. And other things.
Wolfman Jack howling across the sky.
Luring us out of our shells, breaking out, and learning the true gospel of Rock.
All night long.
The sun breaks over the horizon, and the music fades to static.
Until the night returns.
Bleach is tasty
Okay, so the president said that maybe people should be drinking and injecting bleach to cure the virus.
But he said this mockingly after reporters kept asking stupid questions.
The odd thing is, some people actually did inject and drink bleach.
And they got horribly sick and died.
Are people that blisteringly stupid and gullible?
Maybe this should be taken as an opportunity to cull those genes out of the population?
Tell people that jumping off of buildings cures the virus. Setting themselves on fire.
Or, something more productive, like not watching these ranting and hyperbolic idiots on network television.
Doctor Odd’s Mother
You can have a past, or you can have a future.
You only get one, so choose wisely.
Doctor Odd’s mother was full of regrets, and she told her son these words of wisdom.
Or warning.
Doctor Odd dedicated his life to this question.
Using a wormhole and temporal stabilizers, he engineered a pocket universe.
And he bent time into a loop.
“Because time is a loop, the past is the future and the future is the past,” he told his mother.
And he put her in the pocket universe.
Which made where to send Mothers Day cards very confusing.
The drive in days
Long ago, there were so many drive-in theatres.
Drive up, tune in the radio to the special station, or take the speaker off of the post and put it in your car.
One by one, they shut down.
And then the virus came.
Wash your hands, wear masks, social distancing.
So, the drive-ins came back.
We hide in our cars, eating the bags of popcorn and drinking the sodas we brought with us.
Okay, fine. We brought beer and wine.
And we watch the old movies on the screen.
Because nobody’s making any new ones.
With the virus and all.
Weekly Challenge #812 – UNSURE
KELLY
She knew she loved him. Even though she knew from the beginning not to. He really did give her every reason to run, but the young woman wanted so badly to love him for who he was. After a long time, a child, lots of pets, oh…and that terrible time in the ICU, she still tried and tried. Giving all, but receiving nothing in return…she was left alone. Nearly 29 years of marriage and a real hit to her sanity…he left her…because he was unsure of who he was and now all is lost. Goodbye forever.
RICHARD
Unsure
Unsure: The new fragrance for men!
Do you struggle to impress women? Do you lack confidence? Do social situations make you feel awkward?
Unsure for men will change your life!
Spray it all over, and its long-lasting fragrance of despair and desperation, with subtle undertones of longing and wistfulness will make you irresistible to the fairer sex!
What woman could resist the urge to mother and smother you in the kind of affection that only pity can inspire?
How can she possibly withstand that sweet, sad, smell of helplessness?
Unsure: Because you’re not worth it, but she can’t help herself!
LIZZIE
He thought he had led a good life until someone from out of town whispered something in his ear. It wasn’t easy to upset him and yet here he was, panicking. He took the fish from the lines where it was drying and hid it in a bag. He looked at his hands and felt the need to wash them, frantically, obsessively. But he just stood there. And he wondered… He wondered if the stranger really knew what he had done, traveling through space but, above all, through time, that time he had so desperately tried to run away from.
SERENDIPIDY
I started a new business in unsurance sales.
No, you didn’t mishear that, I really did say unsurance.
You see, the problem with todays’ woke snowflake generation, is that there’s very little to worry about. There’s always an insurance policy to fall back on in case of loss, damage or theft.
There’s no risk, no sense of danger, and no element of fear.
And I’m out to change all that.
Buy one of my policies, and I can guarantee you’ll be pretty unsure about anything that might happen in the future.
Particularly, since I specialise in policies for life unsurance!
DUANE
I’m kind of unsure how I got here. I surely wasn’t smarter than anyone else. I hadn’t come from money or had any real advantages. So how did I get here? I guess it was the choices I made in life. I took years deciding what profession to pursue. Spent hours determining what wear to the interview. Choices of hair and eye color.
The receptionist hands me a form to fill out. Name? I’ll go with Martin. David. No, Joshua. Date of Birth? Should I be old or young? Thirty-five seems reasonable. Sex? “Excuse me, could we reschedule for tomorrow?”
TOM
What Could Go Possible Wrong 012
Rolling to the floor unsure of the direction of the shooter Parker tilted the table above him. To his left and right he could see his mate seeking safety. A volley again, some rattling the table top, other piecing wood impacting the floor around him. Weapon thought Parker, something, anything. All he had was the pint glass in his hand. Was the last thing he would see a blurred shadow on a glass. No, not a shadow a form. The form of a water fowl wrapped about the glass. He cocked an arm blindly and letting fly. Duck he yelled
NORVAL JOE
Not entirely clear on what a weather witch was, Billbert asked Sabrina. “Do you honestly believe you control what the weather does?”
Clearly not unsure of herself, Sabrina said, “Of course we do, among other things.”
“Other things? Like what?” Billbert asked, skeptically.
“We know things about people and we can affect them. Like you and your family. I know about you, your schedule at school, where you live. We brought you here.”
Billbert couldn’t accept this claim. “You brought us all the way from Fresno?”
She smiled and shook her head. “Don’t lie. I know you’re not from Fresno.”
PLANET Z
Most kids asked Santa for bikes or dolls or footballs.
That kind of thing.
For Christmas, Ellie wanted the truth.
“Are you sure you don’t want a puppy?” asked her parents.
Santa looked over the letter and sat back in his chair.
“You want the truth?” said Santa. “Okay. You’ll get the truth.”
So, while other kids were opening boxes with their bikes or dolls and footballs, Ellie opened a box and got the truth.
“It’s empty,” said Ellie, turning the box over and shaking it. “There’s nothing in it.”
Santa watched from the window, and vanished into the snow.