George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Until a radioactive spider bit him.
George spent three days in his bunk, shivering and fevering, only getting up to throw up and go back to bed.
After three days, George didn’t climb the walls or shoot webs from his hands.
Nor did he put on a red and blue costume and fight crime.
No, George was dying from radiation sickness.
All of his hair fell out, he threw up a lot more, and he lost a lot of weight.
And then he died.
His crewmates threw him overboard.
Weekly Challenge #907 – Mustard Yellow
LISA
A Mustard Yellow Hoodie in the Charity Shop
He was just an ordinary man dropping a bag of clothes off at the Charity Shop. Sally, the student volunteer on the till, sniffed the air trying to identify a familiar smell. Realisation made her retch before she opened the bag. It was tied tight. Her fingers frantically worked the double knot loose.
She recognised the clothes with a plummeting heart, felt about in the pockets, then shrieked as she pulled out her pal’s student ID. One trembling hand still clutched the hoodie as she called the police.
“…Yeah! It’s definitely the one she was wearing the night she disappeared…”
RICHARD
Off-Colour
“Which do you prefer,” she asked “the mustard yellow, saffron, corn cob or honey?”
“It’s just yellow,” I protested “not a restaurant menu! Look, I’ve told you before, men only understand a windows 3.1 palette – 256 colours! It’s all yellow to me! You choose what you like, and I’ll do the painting. Deal?”
She gave me one of ‘those’ looks, but she knew I was talking sense.
In the end, she chose the mustard yellow.
Three days of hard work later, the kitchen was resplendent in its new colour.
“I don’t like the shade” she complained “it’s far too brown”.
LIZZIE
#FFDB58
That was it. A color reduced to a strange combination of letters and numbers.
The universe is made of numbers, his Math teacher told him, that’s the universal language.
And he hated that because he wanted the universe to be made of words. He wanted the universe to be made of stories. He loved stories!
When a fellow student asked the teacher how we could communicate with aliens, the teacher said “With numbers”.
He yelled and said “No, no! They’ll want to know our stories!”
The Math teacher looked at him and said “But we already know your stories”.
SERENDIPIDY
I love the pretty colours and how they change and blossom over time.
The first flush of pink, becoming mottled, angry crimson, then gradually darkening to dark indigo, fringed with dull violets.
Then, glorious hues of mustard yellow, blooming like flowers, petals fringed with black.
Bruising is so beautiful.
I am the artist. Your body: my canvas. My fists: the tools of my artistry.
But that colourful expression is so transient, and passes all too soon.
And it is but a short time before you lie unblemished before me again: A fresh blank canvas.
Pain becomes painted, all over again.
TOM
My first Car
In days of old one could after much search come upon a vehicle which was yours for a mere $100. This auto was long in the tooth and often had structural imperfections or at the least cosmetic ones. The Ford I found had turn over its odometer but on inspection no signs of Bondo or countersunk pry hole. It has been will maintained by a navy guy. The reason it was still on lot was our navy guy’s choice of colors. It wasn’t so much confection yellow as mustard yellow. Actually, it was French’s mustard on a hot dog yellow.
NORVAL JOE
The three hulking teenagers with the mustard yellow teeth appeared frozen in place, confusion drawn across their collective faces.
Mr. Withybothom joined his daughter to point. “Aren’t you going to arrest them?”
The cop stammered, “I can’t…”
The teenageres turned and lumbered into the trees.
Linoliamanda turned her empty stare on Billbert. “Aren’t you going to do something?”
“Me?” Billbert asked.
“Him?” Mr. Withybothom and the cop asked.
Throwing caution to the wind, Billbert grabbed the cop by the shoulders and flew him over the trees. The officer screamed until Billbert landed him next to the van by the highway.
PLANET Z
There’s all kinds of mustards out there.
I really like stone ground mustard, but dijon is pretty good too.
The plain yellow mustard, the kind you get in stadiums and packets, that stuff is kinda boring.
Some people go for the honey mustard, especially with chicken nuggets, but I find it way too sweet.
I suppose there is no real favorite kind of mustard, it just depends on what you’re eating with it.
Because nobody in their right mind eats a hot dog with dijon mustard.
Every food has its mustard, my grandmother said.
Ketchup, you say?
You heathen dog.
George and the Sea Panel
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He kept a diary of his adventures, and he turned them into a webcomic.
George wasn’t very good at drawing, but thanks to templates and the creation platform, it didn’t take much to arrange the stock images and then add the text for a decent story.
Creating tavern and beach scenes was easy, but any time he tried to create a comic panel with pirate ships on the sea, the browser window crashed.
“Lousy sea panel!” grumbled George, rebooting his tablet and hoping the system had saved his work.
George is out
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was usually the first pirate to be out when the crew played Simon Says.
He’d sit on the rail and watch the birds while the other pirates kept playing.
Eventually, there’d be a winner, and the group would regather to play another round.
George would lose quickly again, and go back to watching the birds.
“You’re not very good at this, are you?” asked the captain.
“I have no idea,” said George. “I try to lose quickly so I can go back to watching birds.”
And he smiled.
George at the drycleaners
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
When the captain demanded that every pirate on his ship wear a uniform, every pirate put them on and stood out on the deck.
Except George.
“They’re too tight, so it’s hard to move and fight in them,” he said. “They’re bright colors, which make it hard for us to sneak around. And they’re dryclean only. Where the hell are we going to find a drycleaners out at sea?”
The captain yelled “KILL THAT REBEL!”
George easily outran them, escaped to Port Royal, and opened a Dry Cleaning shop.
George uses his head
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
This wasn’t for a lack of planning, though.
George made elaborate plans for everything, writing up lists and working out contingency plans should something go wrong.
Of course, if those contingency plans went wrong, he’d have backup plans to those plans, too.
Keeping all of these plans in his head at once got confusing to George, and he’d end up just standing there trying to remember what he was going to do.
“What’s that smell?” said the captain.
Oh, thought George. I was on my way to the head.
George and the Flying Dutchman
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He’d heard tales of The Flying Dutchman, but he never quite understood the concept.
“So, it was a Dutch man who could fly?” asked George.
“No,” said the captain. “It’s a ghost ship that brings bad omens.”
“The ship is a ghost, or is it full of ghosts?” asked George.
“Both,” said the captain.
“Well, can’t ghosts fly?” asked George. “So, really, if the ghosts are Dutch, they’re flying ghosts of Dutch men.”
The captain smacked George’s head with a belaying peg.
“You’re really annoying,” he said. “And stupid.”
George the Brand
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was more into branding himself as an information economy brand than as an actual provider of pirating services.
He had the logo, the website, the social media footprint, but he didn’t follow through with getting the job done.
“I have 15,000 followers and I generate a lot of likes and shares and contacts every day in my network,” said George. “Who needs results?”
The captain angrily ordered George to walk the plank.
As he walked the plank, George posted in Instagram selfie that got 92 likes and shares.
Weekly Challenge #906 – Mass
The next topic is Mustard Yellow
LISA
It’s a small unassuming word by itself.
One I’d not thought much about before.
Now it’s all I can think about. It’s taken over my life. It’s taken over my family’s life. I no longer have a work life. My son’s future potentially no longer features me.
I’m getting letters again, all from the hospital, all about this bloody mass: the arrival of the post man doesn’t thrill me like it used to. A short walk in the woods does. Coffee. Family. The sound of laughter- everyone’s very thoughtful around me but I wish they’d laugh more.
I miss normal.
RICHARD
Science Lesson
Science… I’ve no time for that nonsense.
I suffered through school science lessons. Forced to listen to rubbish about mass, atoms and chemicals, all of which went way over my head and left me completely baffled.
Although, it was fun blowing up the classroom, having failed to follow any of the teacher’s instructions.
Needless to say, I wasn’t required to attend science classes after that.
And I’m no worse off for it.
All you need to know is that the earth is flat, birds aren’t real, vapour trails spread cancer and the government is spying on you.
Who needs science?
TOM
Mass Not Weight
It takes some sideways thinking to move from weight to mass. It most like due to a limited view of reality. Basically, we are all stuck on the same rock. We don’t get to go to other rocks. And rarely do we travel between the rocks. Heavy does shift to the point we done function well. Further our scope in limited to size and how a really really large mass will cause a change in gravitation pull. If stuff orbited about us, that mass thing would be front and center. I guess density would have move friend sound to it.
SERENDIPIDY
Plague pits they call them. Vast communal graves filled to the brim with the dead. Unfortunate victims of the Black Death, laid to rest, hidden from sight, and often completely forgotten.
But that’s not all that was dumped in the ground. Festering within the mass of bodies, bacteria feasted and flourished, seeping into the soil from rotting corpses, thriving and mutating over the years.
And now, they’re digging up the roads, laying tunnels, burying pipes, disturbing the bones of the dead, and setting the ancient bacteria free.
Just a matter of time now, before they start digging new plague pits.
TURA
L’Homme Armé
———
The king has sounded his drum
And raised the armed man,
Shown him the enemy
That he is to kill.
Let all fear the armed man!
Soft as water
And hard as steel,
There is not the smallest chink in his armour.
All flee from his path
Praying he does not turn to follow.
Priests sing the Missa L’Homme Armé
That he may pass them by.
None can withstand him
Nor long outrun him.
None can reason with him
Nor sway his purpose.
The armed man will not stop
Until his enemy is dead.
Let all fear the armed man!
LIZZIE
He scribbled on a small piece of paper.
The church was dark and empty. But he didn’t feel lonely. He never felt lonely. The automatic on his back was more than enough.
He scribbled some more on the paper.
Then he placed it in his pocket. They’ll find it.
A few people started to arrive. He had 10 minutes to change his mind.
The church was dark and the voices became vaguely irritating.
One bullet was all he needed.
But the voices of joy… This annoying cheerfulness…
He did have more than one bullet.
That’s when he changed his mind.
NORVAL JOE
Linoliamanda opened her mouth to respond to her father when he suddenly looked away, across the lawn.
Billbert followed the man’s line of sight to see that a mass of bulky, yellow-toothed, teenagers had burst from the treeline and stood gawking toward them.
Linoliamanda blinked myopically and pointed. “Look Daddy. Those people kidnapped me and held me ransom until Billbert came and saved me.”
The policeman scoffed. “That’s a wild tale. I suppose next you’ll tell us you grew wings and flew away.”
Mr. Withybotham poked a massive, meaty finger at the cop. “Don’t you call my daughter a liar.”
PLANET Z
Danny took a break from college to work the independent wrestling circuit, Long Island and Pennsylvania.
Folding chairs on fire and barbed wire.
An ambulance crew waiting, one crew wasn’t enough most nights.
Atlanta saw his tapes, and Danny went to the big time.
Masks and bimbos with big racks.
When he wasn’t in the ring, Danny helped the video crew write and film promos.
Bringing out the characters, building a relationship with the audience.
Ratings went up. Toy sales skyrocketed.
The company offered him a marketing job.
Danny graduated early, and wrestled only with those bimbos in hotel rooms.
George’s Ark
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
There was the time when his ship ran across a massive wooden ark.
The pirates boarded the vessel, and this old bearded freak was yelling about God’s judgment and other nonsense.
They looked in the cargo hold, and found a zoo’s worth of animals down there.
“Oh good,” said the captain. “We’ve been running low on supplies.”
They cooked and ate the unicorns and dragons.
Around then, George up in the crow’s nest shouted “LAND HO!”
But he turned out to be wrong, so they ate the dinosaurs, too.