Weekly Challenge #61: Bowling

7865858

Welcome to the sixty-first Weekly Challenge, 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 selected by Chris of Platypus Society: Bowling.
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
Go ahead and listen to them by clicking on the grammophone thingy there in the left column and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):

Which were the best stories of Weekly Challenge #61?
Tom from Footnote
Houston Keys from Tater Tots For The Masses
Guy David of The Sixteenth
Elisson from blog d’Elisson
Rocky Torok from YP.com
Laieanna at Hodgepodge Point
Terrence from Never Was
Caleb from Black Tie Martini Club Oddcast
Chris from Platypus Society
The Mad Bard From Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

WE GOTS PRIZES:
I will be sending the winner a prize… it’s refrigerator magnets for the podcast. Massive amounts of fridge magnets were mailed out in the past week… watch your mail, and let me know if I’ve missed you.
It is your voting that determines who wins. So listen, vote, and tune in next week to find out who won!

TOM

I heard they have dwarf bowling
down in Australia.
I wonder how that works?
Do you actually roll the dwarf?
If so does the dwarf have to maintain
a tucked profile or do you have restrains
to maintain an assemblance of roundness.
Do you use standard bowling lanes.
Damn that’s got to be hell on gutter balls
err I mean gutter dwarfs.
Do you have to rent two pairs of shoes?
If you get three strikes in a row
do you need a new dwarf?
How does a spilt work?
Is it the pins or
is it the dwarf?

HOUSTON KEYS

Good evening and welcome to the Loserville Bowling Alley “Singles Night.”
Because our lanes are very clean you must wash your balls if you want to use them… WHAT?
Pets are not allowed in the bowling alley so please do not roll gerbil balls down the lanes.
The McKinney wedding will be at two this afternoon, so please be sure to pick up your cups and plates in lane seven beforehand. Thank you.
As mentioned last week, parties of three or more cannot declare themselves a nudist colony, so lane eleven, PUT YOUR CLOTHES BACK ON!
Thank you for your cooperation.

GUY DAVID

We used to go bowling, me and my grandson. They use armadillos as balls and giraffes as pins, but the game is the same. You throw the armadillo and try to knock down as many giraffes as you can.
My grandson loved this game. He would turn to me and proudly say “Grandma Shunra, this is the best durn giraffe knocking we have done yet”.
There was this kid from around the block though, always got in the way. Used to go around the runaway, running over the armadillos and making funny noises, so, I turned him into a frog.

ELISSON

Few people know that the modern game of bowling traces its origins to the steppes of Central Asia. To the very court of Genghis Khan, in fact.
His Mongol hordes wreaked cruelty, death and destruction on all who resisted their sweep across Asia. It was after they leveled a particularly recalcitrant village that Genghis took the head of its chieftain – now detached from its body – and, holding it by the mouth and eye sockets, rolled it down a dusty alley, knocking over a pile of villagers’ bones.
But it was his grandson Kublai who invented the Bowling Shirt.

ROCKY

Bob Landy had always suffered from Dyslexia..
It’s his love of the English language that kept him going, pen in hand, and he
knew one day that he would make a difference in the world.
One evening, He decided to write a song.
He wrote about his love of his favorite sport. He fine tuned and perfect every
note and lyric. Unfortunately, spellchecking wasn’t an option in those days.
Does anyone know what song Bob penned that day? A simple song about a blue
collar sport that would change the face of popular music?
The answer, my friend, is “bowling in the wind” The answer is “bowling in the
wind”..

LAIEANNA

For being deaf and blind, Hoarse has a wonderful sense of his
surroundings. He displayed his masterful skills with the ninth strike
since we began. Despite my careful etchings on the scorecard, he
could tell I was cheating and gave me a silent warning. Then he
stretched his arms in a gesture for needed assistance.
“Oh very well, you win.” I grumbled taking my marker to a new surface.
“I’ll help you find a suitable head.” I picked up the ball with a
drawn menacing face and dropped it on the horseman’s shoulders. His
anger started our eternal chase again.

TERRENCE

The twins cried in the corner: the older of the two with festering
wounds and pale skin, threw up into a pail beside him; the younger
looked to be little more than skin and bones. Across the room the
oldest brother, who made the youngest twin look over weight, was the
source of the twins’ terror. He flicked the lights on, and then off
again. Raoul’s fourth brother, who was a mass of muscle, picked up
the nearest object he could find and threw it at the oldest brother.
Raoul couldn’t understand how people mistook this disaster as Angels
bowling.

CALEB

I used to go bowling every Friday night but then the pins banded together and formed a union. Seems they were tired of the constant abuse being hurled at them night after night and they refused to lie down any longer. Well, pretty soon the word got round and they started hurling the balls back at us. The whole thing got so ugly they had to shut down main street and call up the national guard. I’ve learned my lesson though about oppression; I aint abusing helpless pins anymore. On Fridays now, I go to a nice peaceable cockfight instead..

CHRIS

I always knew the church bowling league was competitive, but I never thought anyone would get killed over it. Turns out Brother Jarvis of the Southside Church of Christ bowling team had seen Pastor Willis of the First Lutheran Church of Springfield footfault one too many times during the league championship on Tuesday. He was gonna let it slide, but when Pastor Willis faulted on that spare in the tenth to win the match, well that just set Brother Jarvis off.
Instead of shaking his hand, Brother Jarvis tackled Pastor Willis and beat him to death with a rented shoe.

PLANET Z

No, I’m not smuggling a midget in my pants. I have elephantiasis of the testicles: Gigantic Ball Syndrome.
Doctor says I can get them removed and go on hormones, but I can’t afford that. I’m just a working guy.
I used to be an orderly at an insane asylum, but pranksters would call in asking how we kept our nuts in.
Then I worked for Planters Nuts. People were always calling me asking how big my nuts were.
Now I work in a bowling alley.
What could possibly go wrong?
Hey, can you hold on a second? The phone’s ringing.

Thanks to everyone for sending in their stories, and I look forward to what you’ve got to write (and say) next week.
The theme for next week’s Weekly Challenge will be posted shortly.

Party Girl

636182

Another night, another boring party.
Josie walked out into the hall, picked up her cell phone and dialed her answering machine.
One ring.
Two rings.
Three rings.
She was already starting to sweat.
Click.
How exciting.
Her message played in her ear. Same message she’d had on there since the day she bought it.
After the beep, she whispered the filthiest, most depraved phone sex message in the history of mankind.
Hanging up, she headed back to the bar.
Drank herself stiff.
When she came to in the morning, there was a message on the machine.
She played it.
Perfect.

Now

636188

When I visited Karen in the hospital for the last few months, Karen would catch me looking at my watch.
“Am I really so boring to be with?” she’d ask.
“I’m sorry,” I replied. “It’s just a habit.”
And I’d take off my watch.
After Karen died, another watch arrived in the mail.
It was Karen’s.
It doesn’t have hands or a battery or anything in it.
Just the word “NOW” written on it.
At first, I found myself looking at it out of habit, but in time, I looked at it to remember.
I haven’t taken it off yet.

Martian Attack

636197

I’d tell you all about the time I fought the Martians to save the world, but it’s a long story and I don’t have time to tell it right now.
Let’s just say that without me, the humanity would be doomed.
Well, doomed to slavery and genocide under the rule of the Martians.
As opposed to the doom it is facing now.
So, my solution was a bit drastic. But it’s not every day you get to pulverize two planets with a single asteroid strike.
If you look carefully at the sky, you’ll see Mars is gone.
And, soon – us.

Sleep Like A Baby

636189

I’ve been having trouble sleeping recently.
I used to get seven or eight hours of sleep, but now… well, none at all.
While watching television one night – or was it morning – I saw a commercial.
It was for a new sleeping pill. It promised me that I could sleep like a baby.
So, I talked to my doctor, and I started taking the pills.
I’ve been sleeping like a baby. Quite literally, sleeping like a baby.
I wake up three times a night, call my parents on the phone, and cry for no reason.
Oh, and I’m constantly shitting myself.

Pancakes

636180

The Oracle of Omaha breakfasts at the same diner I go to every day.
There’s always a crowd there because folks are always wanting to ask him for advice.
Me, I’ve never asked him anything.
Why? Because everybody asks the same things over and over.
And nothing about how he’s doing and such. It’s always folks looking to get rich.
So, one day, he gets fed up and tells everyone: “Buy waffles, sell high.”
Weird, huh?
Problem is, the media got hold of this advice, and the entire economy collapsed overnight.
Me, I didn’t fall for it.
I bought pancakes.

Malone

636178

Word on the street is that Malone is back in town.
Malone’s got a file on him.
It’s a big file. Really big.
Takes up a whole building. Twenty cops working around the clock on that file.
The Feds took an interest in Malone a while back, and they wanted a copy of the file.
We laughed. They came down to see what we were laughing at.
When they saw it, they laughed too, and lost interest in Malone really quick.
Chief says we move on Malone tonight.
Good. We need the building.
It’ll make more room for Casey’s file.

Weekly Challenge #60 – Razor

6672058

Welcome to the Sixtieth Weekly Challenge, 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 selected by Elisson: Razor.
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
Go ahead and listen to them by clicking on the grammophone thingy there in the left column and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):

Which stories were the best from Weekly Challenge #60?
Chris from Platypus Society
Tom from Footnote Podcast
Guy David of The Sixteenth
Laieanna from Hodgepodge Point
Daphne from Going Broke
Caleb from Black Tie Martini Club
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com


WE GOTS PRIZES:
I will be sending the winner a prize… it’s refrigerator magnets for the podcast. Massive amounts of fridge magnets were mailed out in the past week… watch your mail, and let me know if I’ve missed you.
It is your voting that determines who wins. So listen, vote, and tune in next week to find out who won!

CHRIS

After ten years together, Allen and Donna agreed that their love life was getting stale. So they exchanged notes one morning about what they could do for each other to spice things up again.
As instructed, Allen returned that evening with a bouquet of roses, a bottle of champagne and a new pair of silk boxers. He was very excited to see if Donna had done what he asked her to do.
When she met him at the door, her arms were scratched up and bleeding. She smacked him then handed him a razor.
“You shave the damn cat! Freak!”

TOM

My grandfather was a barber. In his basement on Sunnyside Ave. he had a professional barber chair I remember sitting in that chair feet failing to reach the footrest. On the wall was a glass shelf where the tools of his trade rested. Electric Clippers, Silver Plated Scissors, and the Straight Razor. After lathering my neck with the badger-bristle brush grandpa would take his two-foot leather strap and strop the steel blade until the edge glowed in the dark. With the deft skill of a surgeon he scraped stubble from the babyfat of his prodigy nary a drop spilled.

GUY DAVID

The night was sharp, as sharp as razors. The dark tall man stared
into her eyes, eyes that where on fire, alive and young, little red
fire dancing inside. Neither of them talked. Talking through the
razor sharp air was not necessary. They knew there was nothing to
say, but goodbye. He turned to leave, feeling her eyes burn him from
behind. There was no turning back now. The air stiffened, as if
expectant. The man opened the door and left. The razor sharp night
cut him from inside, each step bringing sharp pains into his chest.
“Exit”, he thought.

LAIEANNA

Three fainting women was a disappointment for Magnus’s show. He
dropped the trick hammer and hobbled towards the front of the stage on
a crushed foot. Taking out a bag of razors, he popped them into his
mouth one by one. When on the platform edge, he looked out at his
audience who tried to bury themselves in their chairs. Magnus let the
silence fill their space then raised his hands and bowed. He closed
the show with a bloody thank you and his tongue fell onto a tall man’s
lap. Magnus walked off stage smiling. The shrieks were stupendous.

DAPHNE

He first he noticed his fingers were numb and then he lost sight in one eye. His lost some of his long term memories too. But nothing that really bothered him so he continued blogging and podcasting with great success. Until the day he found himself going off on a rant that related otters and Middle East politics. The coroner said it was like someone took a knife to his brain, but there were no external injuries, must have been the razor sharp wit.

CALEB

LuAnn makes the best sandwiches in town. The trick is that the meat is cut so razor thin you can read through it. That’s not just some colorful expression, she really uses a razor. She spends most of her time between customers just working that leather strop keeping her razor sharp. That allows the meat to go on to your sandwich pink, tender and delicious..
So if LuAnn ever invites you up to lunch, you go, boy. You’ll never have a better meal in all your life. But I’d steer clear of her barbershop… if you know what I mean.blockquote>

Thanks to everyone for sending in their stories, and I look forward to what you’ve got to write (and say) next week.
The theme for next week’s Weekly Challenge will be posted shortly.

Creature Infinite in Scope

636198

Like every creature infinite in scope, God was a bored and lonely being.
He created the universe, then He filled it with all sorts of interesting stuff.
Including us.
What interests Him the most is our capacity for faith and gratitude in the aftermath of a disaster.
Whatever He hurls our way, we come together and seek His guidance.
So, He tests us more. You could even say He tortures us now and then.
But not for His amusement. No, it’s for some kind of reason or plan.
For a creature infinite in scope, shouldn’t He know the answer already?

Ghostwork

636195

If you have a ghost, my advice to you is to give it a job.
Ghosts can be very useful. And loyal.
A ghost will enjoy walking your dog for you while you’re busy. And they’ll prepare delicious dinner meals while saving you the chore of cleaning up afterwards.
Got landscaping to do? I’ve got one word for you: ghost. There is nothing more reliable than a ghost with a lawnmower and hedge trimmers.
I, for one, have three of them working for me.
Hold on… maybe I meant to say “Mexicans.”
Or Mexican ghosts.
Still, they do excellent work.