The 100 Word Stories Podcast

• Scribbling Wren
• Richard
• Lizzie
• Tom
• Serendipidy
• Norval Joe
• Tura
• Jared
• Planet Z

The next weekly challenge topic is: As far as the eye can see

SCRIBBLING WREN

The Blinding

In the beginning was the bird. One bird: a magpie, with an ‘oil in a puddle’ sheen across his outstretched wing. They had said a single magpie was bad luck, but then hordes arrived. A global power outage shut down all communication, if the internet still worked Hitchcock would almost certainly be trending on Twitter.

The first to be enucleated was a toddler playing on the swings. His whelps swept across the grass, met more chilling screams before horror filled the park.

With an iridescent flash, the attackers disappeared as quickly as they’d come.

But the darkness had already fallen.

RICHARD

School’s Out

I was never cut out to be a teacher, not just because I hated kids and – let’s be honest, kids tend to hate me too – but I was also horribly ill-suited to the job.

The school I taught at was so understaffed, we had to turn our hands to almost any subject. No problem for my more academically inclined colleagues, but when you’re a sports coach, teaching chemistry is, at best, hit and miss!

I made most of it up, scrawling incomprehensible, unintelligible formulae on the blackboard.

The class: blinded by pseudo-science!

Somehow, I got away with it.

TOM

Marleen Walker

Marleen Walker glided across the checked linoleum tiles towards the old brown easy-chair. A lingering hint of Old Spice and Luck Strikes brushed her cheek. She thought it was pretty funny how the scent of a person could with crystal clarity reconstruct her father’s presents. He lived the last six months in that ragged old chair. She could still mark out the decaying of his senses and towards the end the blinded of the light, both the inner and outer. Her body told her cry, but to so would be to cross a hard line. Later she said, always later.

As To the Reason for My Absence

Emuire was my cat. I taught her how to swear. And she did often. She did not care for the many other cats who would be abandon at out last house on the right below the tiny pump house on the hill. Emuire was a three legged cat and moved with a grace of motion you didn’t actually see you experienced it. Ask any owner of a three legged pet. Emuite lived to 15 and the day I had to force myself to the vet to end her pain all the stories in my head hide in a corner not available to me.

SERENDIPIDY

Do you know of anyone who actually has been blinded by looking directly at the sun? I’m pretty sure you don’t, and I’m equally sure that, at some point in your life, you’ve given it a go yourself, just for a moment, perhaps just through barely open eyelids? Right?

Did it blind you?

Maybe it hurt a little, and no doubt you were troubled by disorientating after images, but you weren’t blinded were you?

Nobody ever is.

Let me tell you why you really shouldn’t look at the sun.

Better still, take a look for yourself, a good long look!

LIZZIE

Dusk set in. The black panther remained seated on his pedestal, his back to the water, watching the humans getting ready to wrap up their day. It was that time again. They didn’t know. But that old witch had taught him well. She had showed him who to snatch and when. The next morning, they would wonder. How? Why? When? Who did this? As the morning approached, he’d go back to being a statue. A statue on his pedestal, the one they revered, the one they looked up to for protection. Dusk set in and he waited on his pedestal.

TURA

Blinded

————

Deprived of ordinary vision, the Blind Sage speaks with inner vision. Petitioners must make an arduous mountain ascent of many days to speak with him.

One asked, “How can I become rich?”

The sage answered, “Want what you have.”

He asked again, “No, I mean, how can I get lots of money?”

The sage answered, “Be of value to others.”

He protested in exasperation, “What wisdom is this? Why can’t you talk sense?” and tramped off back down the mountainside.

The sage replied to the empty air, “Because there are none so blind as those who will not see.”

————

NORVAL JOE

My twin brother was killed in a hit and run when he was riding his bicycle this morning. He rode every Saturday. I don’t know if he was blinded by the car’s headlights and run off the road, or if he was hit from behind. The details aren’t in yet.
Roger liked to laugh. He was a ventriloquist, a magician, a musician, an accountant, and he loved cats.
We ran a half marathon together last month. He said that was probably going to be his last, as he preferred to ride his bike. Looks like it was. I’ll miss him.

PLANET Z

Sometimes, Delores forgot to wear her charging mask, and she needed to wear induction loop glasses to power her eyes during the day.
The rims were thick, and a cable ran along her ear to the battery pack in her shirt pocket.
The optical system offered notifications and overlays as reminders and identification enhancements, but Delores kept those turned off.
So now and then, she’d wake up blind, fumbling for her glasses.
The first time she forgot to charge her battery pack, she told Alexa to deliver a fresh one.
She sat in the dark, waiting patiently for the doorbell.

JARED/JRADIMUS

Not by the Light

Harvey was still ecstatic. Beyond, even. Just before the end of the day, he closed on the biggest real estate deal he’d ever been part of, and he and the rest of the agents just closed out a bar on the biggest bar tab he’d ever been part of.

Walking to his car, he was jostled off the sidewalk and almost fell over. When he regained his balance, he looked up and could only see the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.

He survived, but with the injuries he sustained, the car’s lights were the last thing he would ever see.