Rygar

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Jack?
Oh, Jack! He calls himself “Rygar” now, and he sleeps in his basement under a pile of old towels.
Until… he wakes up… senses… INTRUDER!
“Come on out, Jack,” said his landlord, nervously twiddling his keychain. “We need to talk about you tapping the Smith’s cable line.”
“RYGAR ANGRY!” shouts Jack, and he searches his towel-pile for weapons.
“I’m sure you are,” said the landlord. “We’ll discuss this when you’re ready, okay?”
The landlord sighed and reminded himself that of all his tenants, Jack paid his rent on time.
And in cash.
“Grondar Goldheart happy,” growled the landlord, chuckling.

Marching Boots

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Every moment, we grow more afraid.
Boots! Boots! Marching Boots!
I can hear them marching in the streets, the boots of the soldiers!
Not the soldiers themselves, mind you. Just their boots.
It’s an impressive sight, so many boots marching in unison, completely in step.
A fearsome sight. A scary sight.
We peer out of our windows, watching them.
Who will protect us from these boots? Who will stop this stomping menace?
The soldiers?
No, they are more afraid than we humble citizens are.
We watch the socks, drying on the clothesline.
Will they be next?
All hope is lost.

Scythe

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Fashion is so fickle, you know.
This year in Paris, all the rage is scythe.
“Scythe is the new black,” says a designer, and he pedals the grindstone faster. Sparks fly!
The blade’s edge is sharp, and the flat of it is polished mirror-like.
Trowels and rototillers are so yesterday… scythe is now! It’s hip! It’s fresh!
It’s the in thing.
The word is: scythe.
“It’s the new black,” says the model behind the stage, changing from Versace to Armani. “It goes with everything.”
She checks her hair and heads for the runway.
Watch out, world. Scythe! Scythe is here!

Bad Wine

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As I watch the sailboats slide slowly across the bay, I open our bottle of wine.
“Was it a good year?” my sister asks.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “Year’s not over yet.”
Aunt Polly used to say that good company makes up for bad wine.
We’ve been doing this for years – bad wine, stale bread, and a ratty old blanket on the shore of the bay.
“Is the sun going up or down?” my sister says.
“I’m not sure anymore,” I say. “Have a drink.”
We used to go out rowing, the three of us.
Don’t ask.
Just drink.

Weekly Challenge #59 – Reverie

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Welcome to the Fifty-ninth 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 Anji Bee: Reverie.
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 in Weekly Challenge #59?
Caleb from Black Tie Martini Club
Guy David from Sixteenth
Tom from Footnote
Daphne from Going Broke
Tamara from Going Broke
Chris from Platypus Society
Houston Keys from Tater Tots For The Masses
Laieanna from HodgePodge Point
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!


CALEB

It was one of those perfect spring days; the picnic, the wine, a light breeze that played all around us. And pretty soon we were lost in a reverie.
But my girlfriend doesn’t like being lost… not anywhere.
Pretty soon she’s nagging me to ask for directions or buy a map at a gas station and I just want her to get off my back y’know? And there goes the reverie… which means we’re not lost anymore.
I said, “Darling, let’s never fight like that again” and we kissed and made up.
And before very long… We were lost again!

GUY DAVID

She was caressing me softly. Her hand felt like the sea, rising,
rising inside me, her naked breast brushing against my belly button,
her tongue licking my nipple. My body stiffened, shock waves passing
through it, then I looked away at the single palm tree swaying in the
light breeze. The smell of sea water filled my nostrils. I breathed
it deep, savoring.
Suddenly, her tongue turned into a snake, her hands into sharp pointy
things. I screamed and screamed, then I passed out. You get some
strange reveries when stuck alone in the desert with no food and water.

TOM

Between them they shared a Dixie cup of plum wine. Unlike the reverie in the street Shema and Shoji chose to celebrate VA day seated. In the 60s they had lead the 5-mile long dragon that snaked up the broken pavement of the El Camino Real. They were knights of the Divine Wind the first pilots to land in LA after the Los Alamos disaster. Oppenheimer’s Folly one single explosion had poisoned 57 million citizens. Abandon and broken the Nippon Empire claimed California during the Honolulu Peace Treaty. Deeply reflected in shoji purple wine the red of the rising sun.

DAPHNE

Sitting on her patio, sipping a glass of wine, staring at a sunset her mind wandered into a daydream.
The sun glistened off the water as it set into the horizon; she watched as it slowly disappear.
She let the worries of the day fade with the sun as she relaxed in the reverie of her thoughts.
She let her thoughts flow through her mind as she relaxed with her glass of wine.
“Oh for the love of God! Can’t I get five minutes to write a one hundred word story without being IM’d?

TAMARA

With his review in fifteen minutes, Laurence wasn’t getting any work done. He sat in his cubicle daydreaming about walking into his boss’s office and finally using the .22 he kept locked in his briefcase all day. He just wanted to shoot the smug smile off that gas-bag’s face; maybe he could cut out early and go to the Astros game. Maybe he could just walk down the hall, visiting each office with his new co-workers, Messers Smith and Wesson. Maybe he should just put the cap back on the jar of rubber cement sitting open on his desk.

CHRIS

Steve dreamed of becoming a baseball player. But when his father died, he quit high school and took a job as a janitor down at the mill to help his mother pay the bills. Tomorrow marks his thirty-seventh anniversary with the company.
Occasionally you’ll catch him holding the mop handle like a bat, lost in reverie as he stares down an imaginary pitcher. He won’t say if the scenario is a memory or just a fantasy, but in thirty seven years he’s never missed a day of work, and he’s never missed smacking that hanging curveball over the centerfield fence.

HOUSTON KEYS

“An earth shattering KABOOM!” shouted Marvin in delicious ecstasy!
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.” Truth is told, I was enjoying a quiet reverie. The hustle and bustle of my day rarely added up to a few enjoyable moments, much less the time I spent with Marvin.
“I don’t think you’re serious about this,” Marvin said quietly. “Are you just using me to survive when I enslave the world?”
“Come on Marv,” I reassured him. “You know you are the only… uh, guy, who can get away with a green Roman Soldier skirt.”
“It’s NOT A SKIRT!” Marvin was so defensive.

LAIEANNA

It was the same mundane thing I had left the day before and it was
only Tuesday. I tired of my job. Actually, I was just tired. By
three each day, I was always ready for a nap. I’d stare off to think
of anything but work. My reverie would slip into sleep. As made
obvious by the head bobbing and final slam into the table. That day I
might not have got caught if I didn’t snore. Now I sit at the
unemployment office, filling out the same boring paperwork and trying
not to fall asleep while I wait.

PLANET Z

When these boring meetings get to me, my mind wanders and I start to daydream.
One time, I imagined the copier was a dragon and I was fighting it to the death.
Another time, the coffeepot was full of a magical bubbling potion that turned me into a frog.
Then there was the time I imagined that Jody, the hot chick from Sales, was giving her presentation naked.
Then I wake up and look around.
Everything’s normal again.
Such silly little daydreams.
I mean, a copier dragon? Magical coffee? Jody making a presentation?
Especially on Everybody Gets Naked Fridays.
Rawr.


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.

Woodwork

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If I seem a tad distracted, it’s because my new lathe is broken.
I bought it last month, thinking I’d do woodwork. Sure, I don’t know anything about carpentry or crafts, but Wood 2.0 is new and exciting. It’s all about social woodworking. And the marketing brochures said it was profitable, too.
All I needed was a lathe and a client base.
Technical Support tells me it’s not plugged in. Then they say I’m using glass instead of wood… that’s why my finished product is often a pile of broken glass.
I’ll just scream louder and threaten to sue them.

Baby Elephant Wank

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Little Susie wanted to learn about the birds and the bees, but Daddy liked elephants.
“When a mommy elephant and a daddy elephant love each other very much,” said Daddy, “they do something special at night and make a baby elephant.”
“What if a mommy elephant loves a mommy elephant?” asked Susie.
Daddy looked down at his hand. The ring was gone, but its impression was still fresh on his finger.
“Then the daddy elephant hires a lawyer,” he said. “And then he moves away to Pittsburgh.”
To this day, Susie always gets a bit turned on at the circus.

Pizza Time

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Okay, so my wife was making pizza the other night, and I got to chop up the veggies.
I like to use the alligator chopper thingy we have. It dices them up real good. And, it’s fun, too!
Then, I dry out the veggies and then get out some mushrooms to blot on paper towels.
My wife doesn’t like mushrooms on pizza, so I put them only on half.
She baked the thing, pulled it out of the oven, and guess which half I ate from?
Yeah, that’s right. The one without mushrooms. Her half.
I’m a bad, bad husband.

Fetch

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My dog loves to play fetch.
It’s really simple to play: I throw a stick and he runs after it.
The problem is, he keeps bringing back the wrong stick.
For example, I just threw a small tree branch, and he came back with a cedar plank.
I threw the cedar blank, and he came back with a wooden chair leg.
I have no idea where he’s getting all these different bits of wood.
So, I took him to the beach and we played with driftwood.
Same thing – he comes back with Maplewood.
How about we try tennis balls instead?

Reboots On The Ground

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Here in Army Weapons Technical Support Services, we get all kinds of calls from the field.
Usually, the solution is just to reboot the device, but the reboot switch on the Standard Assault Rifle Unit is hard to get to when the operator is in combat and wearing thermal gloves.
It used to be even more difficult to reboot the things – you had to stick a paperclip in a hole and hold it there for 5 seconds.
This is why it’s so important to hold live-fire exercises for testing these devices. Virtual simulations don’t fail quite like real hardware does.