Moments before Lily Mason burst into flames, she set her husband on fire.
Then her kitchen. And after that, her house. And her neighbor’s house.
There wasn’t much room between houses, so the fire jumped from house to house quickly.
The whole neighborhood was a raging inferno by the time the fire department arrived.
There was nothing they could do but watch and keep people back.
The fire burned for hours, until the whole neighborhood was nothing but embers and ashes.
“Should have paid her fire bill,” said the crew chief. “Too bad.”
They rolled up their hoses and left.
Author: R.
Slippery When Lard
Usually, The Girl Scouts sell cookies to fund their troops and overhead costs.
But the boxes of cookies don’t offer much of a profit margin, and sometimes people flake out on their orders.
Meagan, who has an Entrepreneurship badge, suggested that her troop sell something with much greater profit potential.
So, they did the market research and came up with a plan to sell titanium hip replacements to the residents of the nearby nursing home.
“Installation not included,” she said with a wink.
The troop giggled with her, and they went back to wiping the floors down with slippery Crisco.
Air Force None
No, it’s not true that any aircraft that The President is on receives the designation of Air Force One. It’s the designation of any Air Force airplane.
For instance, the helicopter that ferries him from The White House to Andrews Air Force Base is Marine One.
And the hot air balloon that Professor Moriarty uses to take The President off to his hot tub and Texas Hold ’em weekends is just a hot air balloon.
The President’s a lousy gambler, and he usually ends up handing over a lot of money.
But he can never hand over Air Force One.
After Brown
After Encyclopedia Brown went off to college, the next kid to become the town know-it-all was Glossary Jones.
This kid knew a whole bunch of obscure terms and jargon, but he kept them to himself until the other kids would solve the mystery.
Then there was Footnote Martin. Every now and then, he’d make a comment about something, or provide some obscure reference that nobody had time to look up.
Finally, there was Almanac Lewis. He was always blithering useless trivia and weather tables.
“Just call the goddamned police,” people say now. “They’re incompetent, but at least they’re not annoying.”
The Empties
Every container full of stuff they send here, we have to ship back so they can send us more stuff.
Some, we fill with trash for recycling.
Others, we put coal or other raw materials.
And with the rest of the empties?
They call it human trafficking.
Fifty to a container.
Thousands of containers on a ship.
Sex slaves?
Organ donors?
Cheap labor?
No. Hardly.
They feed them to the Trakha.
It’s part of the peace treaty.
They give up technology. Chemical formulas.
And what do they do with it?
Make stuff. To sell to us.
Just for the empties.
She Lived Seven Days
Our baby lived seven days.
She never breathed on her own.
Seven days of tubes. And wires. And beeps.
So many beeps. And then.
She never breathed on her own.
When they asked us if we wanted to hold her, we just sat there. We said nothing.
They opened the glass door, pulled out the tubes, pulled off the tape, unhooked the wires, and took her away.
We watched without watching.
The Sisters Of Mercy came, and they asked us if we needed anything. Do we need anything, they asked.
We just sat there. We said nothing.
Just seven days
Weekly Challenge #519 – Library
Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at oneadayuntilthedayidie.com.
This is the Weekly Challenge, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
We’ve got stories by:
Munsi
Bookmobile
By Christopher Munroe
My town’s library system is bringing back the bookmobile!
I mean, they’re calling it “The Book Truck” now, rather than Bookmobile, which is NOT a good name, but that’s fine. It’s not FOR me, it’s for children in neighborhoods lacking easy library access, and I totally get that they don’t have to run the name by me for approval.
And anyway: Bookmobile! For the first time since 1991! Fun times, and a very useful service to the communities it will serve.
Mayor Nenshi is, once again, crushing it.
No punchline this week, gang, I’m just excited that it’s back.
Bookmobile!
Jeffrey
The Street Library
by Jeffrey Fischer
I passed the bum every afternoon. He rattled a cup of change with one hand while keeping guard of a huge box with the other. One day, curiosity got the better of me. “I’ll give you five bucks if you tell me what’s so important in the box.”
The man replied, “It’s a lending library. Oh, you think we can’t read, just because we’re homeless? People donate books and I lend ’em out. Melville is popular, and I can’t keep Proust in stock.”
I gave the bum my five and walked on, impressed. Proust – who would have guessed?
The next bum said to me, “You met Tony? He told you about his library?” I nodded. “What a sucker! Tony is batshit crazy. Ain’t nothin’ in the box but his collection of soda cans.” I heard the bum’s mocking laughter for the next block.
Late Fee
by Jeffrey Fischer
I saw the library aide shelve the new Brad Thor novel. Excited that I wouldn’t have to wait months for the book, I grabbed the copy and tried to check it out. The librarian swiped my card and, with a stern look, said, “You have an overdue book on your account. Harriet the Spy, due June 16.” She paused. “1977.”
“Oh, come now, that was nearly forty years ago. You can’t hold me accountable for a book I checked out in seventh grade. Anyway, I’m sure I returned it.” The woman was resolute, so I went home empty-handed.
Back in my den, I selected a well-worn book from the top shelf and removed the old library card I kept as a bookmark. I began to read. “Harriet was trying to explain to Sport how to play Town….”
Richard
#1 – Community Spirit
We’ve got one of those tiny libraries at the end of our street – you know the sort of thing: It’s like a doll’s house on a pole containing a few well-thumbed trash novels and a note that reads: “To build our community spirit”.
That made me laugh – we haven’t been a community for years… But, I think it may be working.
Local drug dealers use it as a mailbox; school kids use it to stash illicit booze and smokes; and everyone likes to leave anonymous rude notes about their neighbours bad habits.
Community spirit? Yes!
Crappy books though!
#2 – Words
How many books do you reckon your local library has? A couple of hundred, a few thousand, half a million, or more?
And think of all the words between the covers of those books… Millions, upon millions of the things, pages teeming with stories, advice and a wealth of knowledge that is overwhelming in its abundance.
So many books, so many subjects, and oh so many words.
And yet, in a place so dedicated to the preservation and sharing of this wealth of words, has it ever struck you as ever so slightly odd, that you’re actively discouraged… from speaking?
Tom
More Than Words
In my youth despite having a galactic reading deficit I loved books and by proxy a love of libraries. In grammar school I volunteered to put Dewy decimal numbers on book spines. In high school I worked the circulation desk at our local community library. Throughout my college career I’ve worked at a number of university libraries. Everything from shelfing to Audio Visual. When I was on the Civil Grand Jury I wrote a number of reports dealing with unfair labor practices. One day I hope they name a library after me. Don’t think you can get Intermed in one.
Zackmann
Tried to get my kid to try LINK+, you know after I convinced him I wasn’t asking about how to use a Smash Brothers character. I said, “LINK+ is like OverDrive.”
He asked “OverDrive, the gear for a car?.”
“The website for borrowing ebooks.”
He responded “There’s a website for borrowing ebooks?”
I answered “Don’t you know anything? Who raised you? Nevermind that. You must have read about bittorrents on Boing Boing so imagine OverDrive as a legal bittorrent that works with your library card and Link+ like OverDrive for lending hard copies of things outside of local library system.”
Serendipity
There is a book – a very special book – that you won’t find listed in the library catalogue. Yet, it is there… Because that’s where I hid it.
You’d expect to find it under ‘Horror’, perhaps you might even think it should be labelled ‘fiction’, but I assure you every word is true.
You may stumble upon it amongst the autobiographies – you can’t miss it, it’s the only book bound in human skin.
And those pages, stuck tightly together?
Human blood.
It’s my life story.
And, if you like, I’ll write a whole new chapter…
All about you!
Planet Xray
The Great Library
Our cloning facility in Singapore has a wonderful library of DNA samples of people from around the world.
They’re cataloged several ways, as an example, by region.
If you clone someone from Germany, there’s a 75% chance they will be an engineer.
98% of our Kwik Mart stores are staffed and run by clones made from Pakistani DNA.
Our protein providers prefer clones with DNA from New York City, which we call the “Stockyards”.
There’s a blending of all the regions, which balances the tastes.
While America may be the great melting pot, New York City is our Stew Pot.
Lizzie
The books shook on the shelves. At first, they got slightly roughed up. Then, the earthquake became stronger and they all ended up on the floor. Somehow, the Classics got mixed with the Sci-Fi which generated a rather electrifying commotion. The Gothics insisted on moving to the Horror section because they had a few relatives there. And the Mystery hardbacks sulked when they were temporarily lodged with the Crime paperbacks. The only ones thrilled with the uproar were the Erotica books. They had grown tired of being ostracized for years in the stuffy corner at the back of the library.
Norval Joe
Mickey put chicken pieces into pots to marinate and headed to the front of the restaurant to see where Polecat was going. Mandy caught him by the shoulder as he passed her at the register.
“I didn’t mean to come down on you so hard,” she said, carressing his arm.
His heart stopped and his blood ran cold. Mandy could squeeze his arm till his fingers went numb and he wouldn’t stop her, but he needed to see what Polecat was doing.
“No worries,” he said, stumbling free to the front window. Across the street, Polecat slipped into the library.
Tura
Library
———
The signs are clear to a hunter’s eye. A worn, illegible spine. No classmark. Shabby. Conspicuously inconspicuous. Suddenly, I snatch the book from the shelf, flick open the front cover, and slam my “WITHDRAWN” stamp onto the flyleaf, wetted with ink made from burned books. It convulses in my hand for a moment, then lies still. The forbidden teachings remain, but the evil spirit striving to download them into an unwary reader’s mind is no more.
The library pays me well to exorcise their stacks. The Black Librarians pay even better for the volumes that my official employers believe destroyed.
Planet Z
Libraries do so much more these days.
Digital archives. All the world’s information ever.
Genetic repositories.
The flesh stacks. Great for a weekend body mod job.
Hit the fabricators for skin and clothes to fit.
Temporal projection systems.
You can look back through the harmonic impressions of atomic decay.
Every event in history ripples through the cosmos.
Justice researchers gathering evidence for trials, kids writing their term papers.
I like to watch the football.
Barbaric, sure, banned because of the brain damage.
But to watch Lynn Swann leap for a touchdown catch?
Magnificent.
Let’s go print some fluffy tails now.
Free Brochures
When I was growing up, you could order free government brochures on all kinds of subjects.
Running a business. Nutrition. Car repair.
You name it, they had it.
All you had to do was write to Pueblo, Colorado, and they’d mail them. Free.
These days, you can download them from a website.
So, I did. And I read them all.
Thanks to the government, I am now 17 trillion dollars in debt, involved in two wars and countless other international disputes, and my home is constantly invaded by illegal aliens.
But, hey: I can change the oil in my car.
Candidate
Our modern word candidate comes from the Latin word candidatus, which means white-robed.
Back in Roman times, office-seekers covered their robes in white chalk to stand out in a crowd.
It’s certainly easier than filling out hundreds of forms and gathering up thousands and thousands of signatures on petitions.
We should return to the old style of politics. Instead of suits and dresses, put every one of these fuckers in robes and cover them with chalk.
About thirty or forty tons of it.
Then, pave it over, and let the good people of this country get on with their lives.
Nightmares and Nightmares
I never have nice dreams anymore.
Instead, I have the absolute worst nightmares.
I’ve stopped with the waking up screaming. Part because I’m too exhausted to scream.
I used to be inspired by my nightmares. I could use bits and pieces of them to create my stories.
But I don’t have any of those kinds of nightmares anymore.
It’s not what I eat or drink that’s causing it.
It’s just getting worse and worse on its own.
My doctor wants me to start taking pills. What if they make things even worse?
At least it inspired me to write, yes?