George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Other pirates practiced sailing and swashbuckling and other pirate skills.
George always begged out of practice and training sessions, and he got a poor reputation for it.
The truth is, George was busy taking care of his elderly mother.
He had to rush home to feed and wash her, and he would read to her until she’d go to sleep.
And then, one day, he attended a sparring session.
“Gracing us with your presence, George?” asked the trainer.
George, through his tears, ran the trainer through with his sword.
Norval Joe – Superhero
The two dark knights pushed Billbert and Sabrina into the parking lot.”
Sabrina leaned to him. “You say you’re a superhero. Why don’t you save us?”
“You’re right,” Billbert said. “Take my hand.”
As soon as her fingers touched his, Billbert leapt into the air and whisked Sabrina away to safety.
Only, they didn’t go anywhere.
The boy sneered, showing his dark yellow teeth. “We’re from the guild of the Dark Knights. You can’t use magic when we’re around.”
Billbert grumbled. “It’s not magic. It’s a super power.”
The girl scoffed. “Call it what you want. Now. Come with us.”
Weekly Challenge #876 – Superhero
The next weekly challenge topic is: Host
LISA
Death of a Super Hero
It was a Friday so we’d had fish for lunch, followed by double Maths. We were full of numbers and fish as the school doors slammed behind us.
Up the road at the petrol station a beige Ford Escort had filled up ready for a trip to the coast but we didn’t know that then, Dad read it out to Mum from the paper the next day.
Gary had put his parka hood on his head, held the arms up to the side like wings, we’d sung the batman theme as he ran out the gates straight into the car.
RICHARD
Not so super
What’s so special about superheroes?
Think about it: Every superhero has a nemesis – a force for evil they barely manage to keep in check, and it’s always touch and go whether good will win the day.
And, let’s not forget that every superhero also has a paralysing weakness. Superman has kryptonite, Green Lantern can’t cope with the colour yellow, and Aquaman loses his power away from the sea. As for Batman… Just mention his dead parents!
So, it seems that superheroes aren’t so super after all.
As for supervillains though, that’s a whole different story!
I’d be one, any day!
TOM
SuperHero
Lenny desperately wanted to be a superhero. His first foray into super-league status was days spent in the gym to build muscle mass. Didn’t work out well with that one. After get out of the hospital, he set his sights on a chemical super-power. The second stay in the hospital was a bit longer. Some say third is charmed, and it prove so for Lenny. Mind control was his ticket to the big league. Only problem is it just worked on sheep. What he could get a 1000 sheep to do, staggers the mind. And the cost of clean-up.
LIZZIE
Ding, ding, ding.
No one’s home, not even the one you’re looking for.
And who am I looking for, he thought. He didn’t know.
Ding, ding, ding.
Why isn’t anyone here? He didn’t know.
And he thought he was special.
Ding, ding, ding.
The harder he hit that bell, the angrier he got.
He was the one, he was THE one.
Ding, DING.
Anyone? Someone?
When they finally caught up with him, he was at the counter, hitting that bell with hatred in his eyes.
“Back home with you, mister.”
Ding…
Home? Superman never dresses in white. He hated home.
SERENDIPIDY
If I was a superhero, I wouldn’t work for the public good, and I’m betting you wouldn’t either.
If you had laser eyes, super strength, or the ability to fly, become invisible, or move at lightning speed, I’m sure as hell your first thoughts wouldn’t be how to use your powers to help those in distress.
Instead, you’d be figuring out schemes to rob banks, sneak unseen into people’s bedrooms and laser the shrubs in your annoying neighbour’s garden!
Just as well I’m an everyday person.
But all it takes is a radioactive insect bite… And then, you’re in trouble!
TURA
Superhero
———
Superhero Sidekick Examination: written part.
Question 1.
How can you riddle the Riddler?
Question 2.
Holy priceless collection of Etruscan snoods! Improvise three expressions of histrionic astonishment.
Question 3.
Your superhero is attempting to disarm the supervillain’s superweapon, when he exclaims, “Not only cunning, but fiendish! The entire assembly is behind a hypersensitive joggle trap! If only I had a 1N914 diode to redirect the electron field!”
How do you respond to this emergency in a way that demonstrates resourcefulness, creativity, elan, finesse, sprezzatura, and fourth wall knowingness?
The answer “I’ve not got one on me” will get zero points.
———
PLANET Z
Truth. Justice. The American Way.
Lex Luthor bought the copyright on the phrase.
“Doesn’t Superman own that?” said his attorney.
“Actually the narrator of news reels he’s in says that,” said Luthor. “The ones we just bought.”
When someone said the phrase or printed it on a shirt, Luthor demanded royalties.
Luthor tried to trademark the symbol on Superman’s chest, but that was covered by Kryptonian Law, the courts said.
Didn’t stop him from hiring fourth-world sweatshops to produce shirts for the fans of his nemesis.
It didn’t make a lot of money, but it was the principle that mattered.
George in the minor leagues
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
So, the captain optioned George to the minor leagues.
The humiliated George complained bitterly.
A professional pirate, forced to sail with rookies who wore life preserves and carried rubber swords.
Every day, the instructors put George through basic drills, and they had a weekly scrimmage battle with other minor league pirates.
And then, George got the call to come back.
“Was it my hard work and effort?” asked George.
“Nah,” said the captain. “A cannon blew up and killed Lefty.”
George had maintained that cannon…
So he kept quiet.
George the stick figure
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
You know those stickers that soccer moms put in the back windows of their minivans?
The ones with stick figure families, with stick figure kids and stick figure cats and dogs?
Sometimes, you’ll see stick figure zombies and stick figure dinosaurs eating the families.
Well, George had a stick figure on the back window of his ship.
It was a stick figure pirate.
But it wasn’t a very good stick figure pirate.
He’d peeled the decal off wrong, and it was kinda scrunched up.
George eventually scraped it off.
George’s curse
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
In desperation, he sought out a psychic to remove any curses that might be on him.
“I can determine if you’re cursed,” said the psychic,”but I’d have to refer you to a witch doctor or a witch to remove it. Or, if it’s demonic in nature, a priest.”
George was passed from charlatan to charlatan, until he had finally run out of money.
“Oh well,” said George.
He went back out to sea and hunted more treasure so he could continue his quest to resolve his frustrating curses.
George the Yoga Master
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He thought that yoga might somehow help him be a better pirate.
So, George bought a few books on yoga and a few audio tapes, but he had a hard time remembering the positions.
His crewmates had to untangle the knots he’d tied himself into.
Then, he went to classes, but the yoga teachers and students thought he was going to pillage and loot the classroom and they attacked him.
His crewmates had to untangle the knots they’d tied him into.
George insisted on keeping the skintight pastel leotard.
George the Infinite
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Still, he did what he could, and at the beginning of the day he’d stand in front of the mirror and give himself two thumbs up.
The mirror-George would give him two-thumbs up back.
George then mounted a mirror on the opposite wall so there’d be an infinite number of him giving himself an infinite number of thumbs up.
Curious about the nature of infinity, he pulled books by Cantor and Dedekind from his bookshelf while his crewmates yelled for George to bring up more ammo, God damn it.
George is…
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Is that all George is? A pirate?
Must we put so much value into our professions?
What else defines us?
Where we come from?
What we want?
What we hope to become?
How we treat others?
George may not have been a very good pirate, but he never cheated at cards.
Nor did he fight dirty. Always a clean, honest fight.
He lost a lot of fights, sure, but he came about it fairly.
“That’s why you’re not a very good pirate,” said the Captain.
George shrugged and smirked.
Weekly Challenge #875 – PICK TWO Point, Heat, Carrots, Rust, Wafer-thin, Creep
The next weekly challenge topic is: Superhero
LIZZIE
The man looked at him sideways.
“What’s up?”
The man didn’t reply and looked away while scratching the rust out of the bench with a pocket-knife.
“You new here?”
The man shrugged.
“Better be careful.”
The man had one eye. The other was white, empty of life.
“Do you have a carrot?”
“A carrot?”
The man nodded and waited.
“That’s how I lost my eye.”
“Are you looking to lose the other too?”
The man grinned a toothless grin and walked away.
“A carrot… Creep. They’ve opened the doors at the funny farm again. Hope no one dies this time.”
LISA
An Open Packet Of Wafer Thin Ham Two Months Past It’s Use By Date.
Layers of sticky grime had built up over years on the door. Lizzie added fridge to the endless list of items for the dump. As she opened the door, the smell hit her like holiday heat when you leave the airport. The whole house had an odour, unpleasant and pervasive but this was something else amid the lumpy milk, liquid carrots and inexplicably her Mum’s purse. She knelt with a bin bag, sliding the contents into it with her nose covered, remembered coming home from uni, and her joy at seeing that fridge, very much cleaner, crammed full of treats.
RICHARD
Japan: The Reality.
Wafer-thin walls and overwhelming summer heat.
That’s what I say, when people ask me about my time in Japan.
I could say more… The crazy traffic, crowded streets, awful cheese, long working hours and the barely-concealed unconscious racism towards anyone who isn’t Japanese, but none of those really bothered me. Somehow, I accepted that as part of what it meant to live in Japan.
But, some things were just too much to bear.
Oh, and haiku.
I could never master that damn thing. I’ll stick to hundred word stories!
The wafer-thin walls;
Overwhelming summer heat.
Japanese torture!
TOM
Not Providing Appropriate Adjustment
Jack was odd. Markly off centered. You could say he was missing one important thing or he was burdened with one maladaptive trait. One could say he was a wafer-thin creepy. How he entered a room, how he joined a conversation of his peers, even if was just walking pass you in a hall, you feel a sense of peril. And wasn’t just adults. Dogs and cats would go ballistic, small children would weep. I tried my best to at the least be surface friendly. That was until the day of the hard black rain. The day Timmy mysteriously disappeared.
SERENDIPIDY
I’ve never been much good at slicing vegetables; I’m always in too much of a hurry. No matter how hard I try, they always come out uneven and messy. Certainly not fit for dinner parties and entertaining.
So I bought myself a mandoline: One of those razor-sharp slicers that proper chefs use, and it revolutionised my kitchen. Now my carrots are wafer-thin, every time.
But, for my latest dinner party, I was running late, and rushing again.
I’d sliced my fingers off, down to the knuckles before I realised.
Nobody noticed the added ingredient.
And it tasted great.
NORVAL JOE
Billbert bit his lip and thought about what the girl had said. “Oh. You mean you have my friend, Linoliamanda.
The girl sneered, looking truly horrifying with hair the color of rust and teeth the color of carrots. “Call her what you want. If you don’t come with us, she’ll be called a memory.”
Sabrina tugged at his sleeve and whispered, “We should run. I think we can outrun them.”
The boy said, “You’d have to get through us first.” He grabbed Sabrina by the shoulders.
She sighed. “I guess he has a point. We probably better go with them.”
PLANET Z
The first time the Creep in the big grey hoodie walked into the grocery store and stuffed bags of baby carrots into this pockets before walking out, nobody saw it.
But after a few days of this, a guy stocking the produce section noticed him, and he got on the phone to the manager.
Too late to stop him from leaving.
Soon, hundreds of stores were reporting similar thefts.
Corporate told managers to have parking patrols watch the doors, and eventually they caught the carrot thieves.
Meanwhile, over in countless dairy sections, the real thieves had stolen all the eggs.