Charlie was the coolest guy in college.
Popular, smart. Everybody wanted to be Charlie.
So, Doctor Odd extracted Charlie’s DNA, made a copy of Charlie’s brain, and offered to turn everyone into Charlie.
At first, just losers and geeks lined up to become Charlie.
Word got around fast, and the lines wrapped around the building.
People walking in one door, Charlies walking out the other.
Staff, teachers, administrators, everyone became Charlie.
Nobody knew about his depression.
In their dorm rooms… behind the wheels of their cars…
Until there was one Charlie left.
Was it the real one?
Does it matter?
Author: R.
Weekly Challenge #835: Chewy
LISA
25th July 1976
I can still remember the day, I mean, I was contemplating faking my own death. I’d got chewy stuck in my hair. God knows how. I wasn’t even allowed Chewing Gum. To make things worse I’d bought it with the money for the church collection. I hadn’t gone to church. So God was after me as well as Mum and I knew my Mum would kill me. So I hid, frightened for hours. By seven I was starving so skulked home, Mum was relieved, said she thought I was dead.
She didn’t even notice the gum knotted in my hair.
LIZZIE
“I like it chewy.”
The man sitting by her side opened his eyes and sneered. “You have no teeth. How can you like it chewy?”
“I have teeth!”
“Yeah, OK, you have teeth.”
“Look.” The woman opened her mouth.
“What in the name of God is that?!”
She grinned as a set of four metal teeth slid down from inside the gum. “New thing.”
“That looks frightening.”
“But it’s very handy.” She grabbed the metal jar where a bunch of wooden spoons rested, and ripped a chunk out of it.
“Yes, handy, I bet. No more problems with cans, huh?”
RICHARD
Cordon Bleuggh!
“What do you think?” she asked as I speared a piece of something that might have been meat, and popped it into my mouth.
I gave her a look that could have been a smile or a grimace, “It doesn’t taste too bad, but it’s a little chewy.”
She looked disappointed.
“What is it?” I asked, then added, “Do I really want to know?”
“Shoe leather, and wood shavings” she muttered, then defiantly: “But I marinaded it for over a week!”
Manfully, I knuckled down to finish my meal.
My fault… I married her for her looks, not kitchen skills!
SERENDIPIDY
I’ve heard many objections to cannibalism.
Apparently, eating human flesh is morally wrong, bad for the health and a primitive custom with no place in modern society.
They also ask me why, if it tastes like chicken, don’t I simply eat chicken?
They’re wrong, of course… It tastes more like pork, and let’s be fair, everyone loves a bit of crispy bacon!
Although, I do have one objection of my own: People tend to be a bit chewy.
Then someone told me I should take the wrapper off first.
So, now I skin them, and they’re tender as can be!
NORVAL JOE
Billbert lay back in his bed with his phone to his ear. “Okay, Sabrina. If we have to meet, come by later this morning. Right now I’m going back to sleep.”
Before Billbert could power off the phone, Sabrina said, “Wait. I’m outside on the front porch right now?”
“Come back later,” Billbert growled, shut off the phone, and pulled his pillow over his head.
A moment later Billbert’s mother opened his bedroom door. “Billbert, dear. You have a visitor.”
Sabrina stepped into the room. “I brought you some left over caramel corn. It’s a bit chewy, but still tasty.”
PLANET Z
I like Rice Krispies Treats.
If you mix them right, they become chewy, and they flex and tear apart with the heat in your fingers.
If you mix them wrong, they’ll become solid bricks or brittle blocks.
Or mushy gooey blobs which stick to their wrappers.
You can try to bake them more, but they’ll become solid bricks.
Or burn.
What’s my secret? Why are mine always perfect?
I buy them prepackaged from Kellogg’s.
Then I unwrap them and put them out on the tray.
They’re so much better than those Chips Ahoy cookies you pass off as your own.
Pig ears
None of the pigs on the farm have names.
They have numbers in a database, and they’re tracked with a tag that’s punched through their ear.
When the pigs eat and drink, they’re scanned.
That ensures they’re eating and drinking enough.
When it’s time to harvest a pig, they’re scanned into the processing system and the tags are pulled out of their ear.
The tags are reprogrammed to new numbers, punched through new pigs’ ears, and the cycle begins again.
The farmer tracks everything.
Until the farmer is harvested, their ear tag removed, and it’s allocated to a new farmer.
Neighborhood garage sale
Once a year, the entire neighborhood holds a collective garage sale.
Everyone puts put all the clutter and crap they don’t want anymore.
Which makes more room for them to buy more crap which will clutter up their homes.
In the end, the clutter and crap just migrates from home to home.
Sure, some people come from outside of the neighborhood.
Which offers an exit strategy for some of the same crap in the neighborhood getting passed around.
But then, people in the neighborhood go to other neighborhood garage sales.
Importing a fresh supply of crap to keep passing around.
Springtime work from home
For a year, I’ve been working from home.
Mostly inside, since it’s either raining or too hot outside to work.
But every now and then, it’s nice out.
So, I take out my laptop and headphones, and attend a Zoom meeting from the patio.
If the meeting is boring, I sweep the leaves.
After a while, it gets too hot. Or bright. Or windy.
Or there’s too many mosquitos.
And then, the forecast calls for rain.
I go back inside.
It’s good to get a little sun now and then.
And maybe a little work done now and then too.
On my shoulder
Some people have an little angel on their shoulder, whispering things in their ear.
Others have a little devil on their shoulder, whispering other things in their ear.
Sometimes, a person has both.
Me, I have Fred.
Fred sits on my shoulder and whispers things in my ear.
Fred’s kinda big, a lot bigger than an angel or a devil, so it’s hard to walk around with him up there.
“Mind getting off of my shoulder and walking?” I ask Fred. “You’re really heavy.”
He whispers in my ear. “Keep walking, pal.”
And I keep walking, as best I can.
Twelve stepladder
I put my alcohol and drugs on the top shelf in the pantry.
Higher than I can normally reach.
I need a stepstool to reach them.
But instead of a stepstool, I have a twelve-stepstool.
It’s a stepstool from a twelve-step program.
I get on the first step to be honest with myself: I have no control over my addiction.
With each step, I progress through the program.
Until I reach the top step and don’t need the alcohol and drugs anymore.
Then, I fall from the stepstool and break a hip.
And I’m back on those nasty painkillers again.
Heat and fire
The power is out and it’s getting dark soon.
I was reading a book by daylight, and at night, I’m reading it by candlelight.
It’s just light enough to write, though.
So I get out a notepad and I’m writing.
What will I write about?
Not having power? Heat? Light?
You should write about what you know, I guess.
I lay out the tealights in a row, and light them up.
Bright enough to read and write by.
I try to be careful with my bathrobe and blankets.
Because as much as I need heat, I don’t need a fire.
Weekly Challenge #834: FREE
LISA
Free
The hand painted sign outside said ‘Free Kittens’, an arrow pointed up towards a derelict looking house. Children passed by on their way to school and saw him standing upstairs, watching them through a broken pane. There were whispers and warnings in the town. Even if there really were kittens and everyone knew there weren’t, no one in their right mind would go in.
Except Lynn.
They found the body the next day hanging from a dressing gown belt. No one could know for sure if Lynn was anything to do with it. But no one mentioned seeing her visit.
LIZZIE
Bow and bow again. No end to the bowing. No end to not looking straight in his eyes. No soul. No tears. Just bow. Bow and scream inside, because you’re alive. You’re alive and he thinks you’re dead. He thinks you have lost your way. He thinks you are nobody. You belong to him. You’re dead. So, bow. Stretch your arms defiantly and bow, again and again until he understands. It’s no longer submission. It’s preparation. It’s knowing. It’s getting ready to jump and run. And when he finally figures it all out, yes… by then, you’ll be long gone.
RICHARD
Nothing
Nothing in life is free, apparently.
I decided to put it to the test.
I searched for ‘nothing’ on Amazon, but without success; so I tried Ebay, Etsy and those sites purporting to sell specialist items you can’t buy anywhere else.
But none of them had nothing on sale.
I took a trip to the nearest out of town shopping complex. In every store, they’d ask, “What are you looking for, Sir?”, “Nothing” I’d respond, and they’d walk away, shaking their heads.
I can’t confirm that nothing in life is free.
I can’t find any of the damn stuff!
SERENDIPIDY
I was feeling an urge to find inner peace and be at one with the universe, so I joined a new age retreat.
Free your mind’, they told me.
Easier said, than done.
But then I got the hang of it, and soon I could free my mind at will.
But I went too far.
My mind, once free, began to unravel and escape from the confines of my own consciousness. It grew in strength and power, reaching out to touch the minds of those around me.
And now, we’re all free.
A bunch of completely mindless, gibbering, happy idiots.
TOM
What Could Go Possibly Wrong 034
The Captain walked over to John. All eyes were transfixed on Red.
“Better set me free mate,” said the man with multiple pint glass lumps
on his head. “We will be playing nicely?” “I’ll bide my time.” The
Captain remove a dirk and cut the bounds. He rose slowly causing Ford to
swing toward the pair. John nodded wickedly. Ford just shook his head.
He and Arnesto made their way to the gangway. They had a good idea
Bender had some connection to John. Parker half way on the gangway saw
Captain and John on the move. Not good he thought.
NORVAL JOE
Saturday morning at 8:30, Billbert’s phone rang. He had thought he would have the chance to sleep in after the late night at the weather witch’s gathering. Through bleary eyes he checked caller ID. “Sabrina,” he groaned letting it go to voicemail.
A minute later, it rang again.
“Hello?” he croaked.
“Hi Billbert.” She sounded way too cheerful. “I can come by to make contact, if you’re free.”
He sighed. “I’m not free, but I am cheap.”
Sabrina sounded sufficiently confused. “What?”
“Sorry. It’s my dad’s joke. Can’t this wait until Monday at school?”
“No, silly. Daily means every day.”
PLANET Z
Sure, Lincoln freed the slaves, but did he?
Was Washington Jackson free?
He still worked on the plantation he worked on as a slave, but he was now leasing the land as a sharecropper.
He didn’t know how to read, so he couldn’t pass the test to vote.
Not that he could pay the tax.
If he went into town, he could be arrested as a vagrant and sent to a work camp to “work off his sentence.”
Where he could be whipped and even killed without consequence.
No, he wasn’t free.
And his son… and grandson wouldn’t be, either.
Transporter Accidents
Teleporters make the worst messes.
At the organic level, you can get organs out of place, vessels bursting.
At the genetic level, you can get mutants and monsters, if the person doesn’t die of cancer or some other disease.
At the molecular level, you can get a wave of organic sludge-water.
At the atomic level, you can get nuclear explosions.
Those are the worst, right?
So, my advice: keep the analysis array aligned, the power conduits monitored, the gaskets and seals firmly in place, and clear the pattern buffers after every transport.
Oh, and use a shuttle when you can.