George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Most pirates navigate by landmarks or by the stars, but George preferred a technique that he’d read in a book:
He left a trail of breadcrumbs in the water.
“We can follow them back to port,” he said.
The other pirates pointed out to George that this used up their food supply quickly and that the birds and fish ate all of the breadcrumbs, leaving the pirates without a trail.
George tore up his book of Brothers Grimm fairy tales and left a trail of shredded paper to follow.
Author: R.
George the Veteran
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
On Veterans Day, he went to the Navy base and hung out at the enlisted men’s bar, listening to war stories and other tall tales.
When it was his turn, George would tell his own stories.
Eventually, an old sailor would stop George and ask him when he served in the Navy.
“Oh, I wasn’t in the Navy,” said George. “I’m a pirate. But I fought against the Navy.”
George hightailed it out of there, running for his life.
At least he never had to pay his bar tab.
Weekly Challenge #898 – Riot Of Color
LISA
The Bully
Her bruises bloomed with a riot of colour across her face. Purple and blue blended with a jaundice tinge beneath her eyeball. What a night: it was the first time the neighbours had intervened.
The police said they didn’t get involved in domestic disputes, and left when no one needed hospital attention.
She didn’t know where they’d go from here. Changing the locks hadn’t helped previously. She wondered about leaving, but would miss the children. She looked in the mirror at her beaten up face; he’d never retaliated before. At least she only hit him where the bruises didn’t show.
RICHARD
Proud
I had no idea at the time it was my big break. The editor tasked me with covering the Gay Pride parade, mainly because I was the most junior reporter.
I wasn’t exactly impressed, but determined to make the most of it, and to be fair, it was really quite impressive with all the rainbow flags, outrageous outfits and over the top makeup.
Fun, until they ran into the Black Lives Matter parade, who thought they had right of way.
Words and blows were exchanged, and it all descended into a brawl.
Front page news.
Headline: ‘A Riot Of Colour!’
LIZZIE
Out of the blue, he jumped from behind the giant canvas. Sword swallowing. A daring exhibition. He had to practice, right? “Almost caught red-handed,” he mumbled. And when they asked him questions, he chuckled. “Oh, it wasn’t me, officer.” And they believe him, because he told them a harmless little white-lie. The officer grinned. But then he was given two days to leave the circus… Why?! Making a random passer-by swallow a sword hardly seemed a good enough reason to be fired. The said passer-by vanished into thin air, true. But still. Well, their loss. A daring exhibition no more.
SERENDIPIDY
It was entirely by accident I embarked on my new career – serial killer to contemporary artist in one simple step.
My last killing was rather messy: blood, guts, and gore everywhere, and body parts strewn all over the floor.
It hadn’t quite gone to plan.
It was supposed to be a simple throttling in a dark alleyway, but an unexpected change of plan meant it was indoors, and a little bit gory.
Thankfully, it happened in an art gallery.
Rather than clean up, I attached a small label: ‘Riot of Color’ – Unknown artist.
I sold it for a small fortune.
NORVAL JOE
Once they were at the river’s edge, and out of sight, Billbert, Loliamanda, and Sabrina joined hands and flew downstream. They crossed back to the highway passing flocks of sheep and eventually coming upon the small town of Ferndale. The main street was lined with Victorian houses. The rising sun reflected off myriad stained glass windows creating a riot of color, distracting the three from the danger waiting on the edge of town.
An elderly woman stepped into the road ahead of them, aimed a confetti cannon, and pulled the cord. A riot of color blasted them from the air.
TOM
897 Story 1
In its day Live Aid was real big deal. And it was in the day of VHS. I recorded the whole thing on a number of tapes. Each carefully labeled. Fast forward to the day I got married. Total chaos, lots to people circling in cars around a shifting center point. One of these folk was the person willing to do video. He needed a tape to record on. So somehow he got tape 15 from my Live Aid tapes. He used it to record the wedding, but the camera input failed. No wedding and a hole in Live Aid.
898 Story 2
Frank was some what normal. Job, eating habits, selection of friends, and most of his hobbies. He did have one odd habit. He loved sitting in large vats of paint. Had 16 barrels of different colors. Built a crane that lowered him into and out of each color. I took four hours. When finish Frank was a Riot of Color. His wife would wrap him in a bolt of white canvas, toss him in a wheelbarrow, tip him out at the edge of hill. One foot on the canvas, down the hill rolled rainbow Frank. Sold them for a Fortune
PLANET Z
When the Amazing Journey to Inner Space ride opened, thousands of guests boarded the conveyor of seats, showing them the journey through molecules and atoms.
After hours, the employees lit up all the projectors in a riot of color, and lit up their joints and dropped acid.
The speakers jamming the latest psychedelic rock.
The wildest ride, a trip unlike any other, true to the name of the building.
The park managers posted security guards to keep the employees from their after hours drug trips.
But the employees shared their drugs with the guards, and The Amazing Journey rolled on.
George retrained
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
“Obviously not,” said the caseworker at the unemployment office. “Your file clearly shows that you have no aptitude for piracy.”
She sent him to a job training facility, where George learned how to use computers.
After a while, George learned how to use spreadsheets, documents, and presentation software.
“I think you have a knack for this, George,” said the trainer.
That night, George loaded all the computers on a cart, and took them back to the ship.
“Think we can sell these?” asked George.
“Welcome back,” said the captain.
Georgelantis
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He collected empty bottles, stuffed them with paper, and would seal them into the bottles with corks.
Then, he’d toss them into the sea and let the tides spread them throughout the world.
Scientists collected the papers, and after careful analysis, they determined that there was an unknown continent in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.
But dozens of expeditions later, they never found the continent of Georgelantis.
Meanwhile, George wiped his ass, stuffed the dirty toilet paper in the bottle, sealed it, and tossed it into the ocean.
George the accountant
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
“Dress for success!” said the consultant, and he took George to a Saville Row tailor.
George emerged two hours later in a three-piece suit, bowler hat, and carrying an umbrella and a briefcase.
“The perfect gentleman,” said the consultant. He turned George to face the crew. “Don’t you agree?”
They laughed at George.
They stopped laughing when George started his job at a large accounting firm, worked his way through the ranks, and became wealthy and powerful.
“Okay, I admit, the hat does look a bit silly,” said George.
George’s billboard
“George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.”
The billboards with those eleven words appeared across Southern California.
A few appeared in Portland, Oregon. And others in Seattle and Austin, Texas.
Nobody knew what it meant, or who had paid for them.
People asked George, but he had no idea either.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said.
Some people guessed that he was running for President.
Others thought it was an alien conspiracy.
“Okay, maybe your guesses aren’t as good as mine.”
The billboards vanished the next day, and soon after, were completely forgotten.
George goes flying
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was nervous about flying, and he took dramamine pills to prevent air sickness.
Then, he’d have a few shots of courage at the airport bar, followed by little bottles of Jack Daniels while on the plane.
“It’s hard to build a ship in a bottle,” George told the flight attendant, “but tiny bottles? Crazy!”
The captain turned the seat belt signs back on, and George rose up and demanded a mutiny.
The air marshal tased George, and he spent the rest of the flight handcuffed to the toilet.
George takes criticism well
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
How did he know this?
Well, the captain was always telling George that he wasn’t a very good pirate.
And his crewmates kept telling him that, too.
The constant criticism annoyed George, driving him completely mad.
One day, in the middle of a dressing-down, he tossed a lit match into the powder room.
It immediately went out.
“Oh, come on!” said a passing crewmate. “That’s now how you set off the powder room and blow up the ship. Here, let me show you…”
Mercifully, the captain stopped him mid-demonstration.
Weekly Challenge #897 – Old Videos
I blew up a bit in this one… leave a comment to let the writers know if you liked their stories.
The next topic is Riot Of Color
RICHARD
Old Videos
Tucked away at the back of the wardrobe, I’ve several boxes, stuffed full of old videos.
I’ve had them boxed up for around twenty years now, and they’ve followed me through at least three house moves, carefully packed up, transported, and put away in their new home.
Why have I kept them?
Through some vague sense, of ‘I might want to watch them, one day’? Not that I’ve anything to play them on anyway.
And the fact is, I’ve not watched any of them in the last twenty years, and probably never will.
But I keep them.
Just in case.
TURA
Old Videos
———
I have a stack of VHS tapes I’ve never got around to watching. I still have a VCR, but I never have the time. I could convert them to digital files, but my video to USB converter is so old it’s not compatible with my current OS. I could replace it, but when will I find time to do the conversion? Will I ever watch them anyway?
If I put this off too long, the tapes will degrade and won’t be playable at all. Then at last I’ll be able to dump them.
Maybe I should just dump them now.
LISA
Something Nasty in the Woodshed
Me and Simon had only gone round to help Fay next door clear the attic. Her husband had died a month ago, him and Dad had been as thick as thieves. She was moving somewhere smaller.
There were boxes of old video tapes up there with dates and girls names on. We’d seen the documentaries so joked about our serial killer neighbour.
After unearthing an old player we stopped for lunch and watched a video. It was much worse than we suspected. And it looked like he buried them in their garden.
“Fuck!” said Simon “is that your Dad digging?”
SERENDIPIDY
There are old videos of life in the village: Life before the calamity.
Grainy, blurred videos in washed out colour of picnics on the village green, laughing toddlers at the playground, couples, friends, families happy and relaxed, without a care in the world.
There’s even the odd wedding video.
Good times. Nobody could ever have imagined the horror that was to come.
It was a fine spring day, late in June. The sun was shining, and people were going about their business, blissfully unaware of what was coming their way.
For that was the day I arrived at the village.
LIZZIE
“Come on. It’s starting,” I said. Old videos and popcorn!
But… I had forgotten. Our old videos don’t go with popcorn. They go with sorrow.
“Say cheese for the camera,” they would say cheerfully.
We never did, no.
“Don’t be so grumpy all the time, you two.”
We were kids. We weren’t grumpy. We weren’t stupid. We weren’t shitheads. We were just kids.
Memory is such a trickster, isn’t it? It erases everything.
And here I was, in front of the TV, a bowl full of popcorn on my lap.
I wanted to cry, but I had no tears left.
NORVAL JOE
The woman seemed surprised by Billbert’s request for a back exit. Then she smiled and led them past a rack of dusty VHS movies for rent, through a door and into what appeared to be the woman’s home. A chunky man in a sleeveless t-shirt and gray slacks, sitting at a dining table didn’t look up from his newspaper as they traipsed past.
A back door led them to a wooden porch, forty feet above the placid Matole river.
The woman nodded to some stairs. “These will take you to a trail along the river, if that’s what you want.”
PLANET Z
Old Man Pinella sits in his home theatre, watching videos of the band.
Jason on guitar, Billy on bass, Joe on keyboards, and Wally on drums.
And then there was Vicky… oh, how she could sing.
The crowd was spellbound… after every song, silence.
And then the loudest applause and cheering and shouting.
The last video ends, and Pinella sits in the dark.
Remembering the band coming backstage, roadies packing up the equipment, and Pinella handing out plane tickets.
“I’ll see you in Chicago,” Pinella said to the dark screen.
He sips his coffee, and walks out of the theatre.