My wife got me a bike for my birthday.
Three weeks later, I fell off of it, and broke my elbow.
The other day, I saw that my coworker had left his old bike out in the rain.
“I have a bike that I’m not using,” I said. “Barely used. Need it?”
“Sure,” he said.
So, we loaded the bike into my wife’s truck and drove it in to work.
“Here you go,” I told my coworker.
“Thank you,” he said, and we haven’t seen him since.
I hope that the bike didn’t kill him.
But better him than me.
Author: R.
Hero
Billy.
Joe.
Wes.
And Me.
Lost in the woods together.
Dumb.
Our phones couldn’t get signal. Even with GPS, there was no data stream for downloading maps.
My idea. Dumb.
Joe got out the straws. The one who drew the short straw would go for help.
When I drew the short straw, I wrote down the GPS coordinates on my arm with a pen, picked up my pack, and began my walk.
I found the road in an hour. Rangers found the others with my coordinates.
They called me a hero.
But I was the one who got us lost.
Bird Songs
I found a program that plays bird songs.
It is very relaxing. And it has a timer, so I can play it at night to lull me to sleep.
I could let it play all night long, but that would mean that the bird songs would play while I sleep.
And I’d dream about the birds.
Hundreds of birds.
Thousands of birds.
Millions of birds.
Birds all around me, singing.
And hungry.
Hungry for anything.
I run, but the birds are fast, and they attack me.
I wake up screaming, covered in bloody scratches.
Did I roll over the cat?
Skillset
I get a lot of endorsements and requests to connect on LinkedIn.
Most of them are for my writing skills, but some are for technical skills I don’t have. From people I’ve never met before.
Sure, I write about MySQL and Apache a lot, but it’s not like I administer and maintain those services.
Right?
This makes me wonder if I black out at night and become a Tyler Durden-like personality.
That’s when I check my PayPal balance.
Where the hell did that money come from?
And for what?
I click Transfer Balance to Bank Account.
Best not to ask.
Landing
When the stewardess asked me to turn off my electronic devices and put my tray table back up, I refused.
“I want to keep my tray table down!” I growled. “And I want all of my electronic devices on!”
So, we couldn’t land. And we stayed in the air.
After an hour, the other passengers got mad. One tried to turn my stuff off while another shoved at my tray.
“No!” I yelled. “No!”
They subdued me, and then the plane landed.
At the gate, federal agents were there to arrest me.
Which is why I didn’t want to land.
Flags
Ted “Avalanche” Jones played dirty. He was the dirtiest player in football.
Dirtier than Louie “The Freight Train” Brown, Robert “Knife To The Face” Williams, and Juan “Murder” Rodriguez.
That dirty.
He collected more flags than a lawn crew at Arlington National Cemetery after Memorial Day, and his fines ended up paying off the national debt.
He was so dirty, he was called for a late hit at his Football Hall Of Fame induction ceremony.
That’s right. He did a horse-collar tackle on his own son and threw him into the press pool.
They don’t make punters like that anymore.
Weekly Challenge #498 – “Order”
Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at oneadayuntilthedayidie.com.
This is 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
Order
By Christohper Munroe
I believe there is a fundamental order to the universe..
By which I mean that everything in the universe has a certain, specific order.
Linear time, I mean, I believe in linear time.
Yes, I’m aware that there are theories to account for the notion that time does NOT occur in a linear fashion, but while I find them fascinating to consider each in their turn, I couldn’t speak to the likelihood of any of their truth.
I don’t have the background necessary.
But I don’t begrudge said theories’ existence.
After all, in an orderly universe, everything has its place…
JEFFREY
The Verdict
by Jeffrey Fischer
The jury filed in, stone-faced. None would make eye contact with the defendant. The judge asked the forewoman, “Have you reached a unanimous verdict?” She said yes. “On the charge of capital murder, what is the decision of the jury?”
“Not guilty, Your Honor.”
The courtroom erupted. Friends of the victim shouted in disbelief, while friends of the defendant shouted in glee. “Order in the court!” demanded the bailiff, to little effect.
“You’re free to go,” the judge told the defendant.
“Thank you, Your Honor. May I say a few words?” The judge nodded.
“I want to thank the jury. Despite my obvious guilt, you bleeding hearts acquitted me so I can kill again. Thanks, suckers.”
The Natural Order of Things
by Jeffrey Fischer
I kept the car at a steady ten miles per hour over the speed limit. Lilly drummed her fingers but said nothing. “Yes?” I prompted.
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but, since you asked… Do you really need to drive that fast?”
“Not really sure, but it’s quite possible that I do. Do you have another question? I think you get three.”
“Are you going to be like this all weekend with my parents?”
“Almost assuredly. You have one more – make it a good one.”
“Why is it that you always end up driving, anyway?”
“Ah, that one I can answer. It’s the natural order of things. Man was meant to drive, woman was meant to sit in the passenger seat and complain.” I was still expounding on the theme when I lost control of the car and hit the guard rail.
CHARLIE
I placed my order on line. Using my iPad, I punched in size, toppings, extra toppings and type of crust, followed by my credit card number and address. I included the address with the cross street, and the GPS coordinates. I asked for the preferred delivery time, and the precautions that the delivery should take in my neighborhood. I mentioned the other delivery drones that work the neighborhood and the apartment complex, cautioning them about the two apartment blocks that frequently shoot down or drone-jack any delivery vehicles. The last four digits of my social security card completed the transaction.
2nd
Given the order by the office to attend to Mrs. Rummage, I was charged with attending to her personal needs as my first assignment. I was an in-home, part time, care nurse. Mrs. R. was ill, having relapsed as a recovering cancer patient. She was very polite and patient. My duties included personal care and making meals, minor cleaning, answering the phone, and snooping in her bureau drawers, refrigerator, and her medicine cabinet. We discussed a lot of personal things, and she told me that she only had one child, as dwarfism ran in the family on her husband’s side.
3rd
I like to afford order to my home and studio. Things are arranged in large, plastic bins if they are large, and in old, Altoids™ tins if they are small. I have a large and multifarious collection of electronic parts, watch parts, desert dioramas and human teeth. The teeth are carefully packed in cotton, and are divided into molars, incisors, canines and premolars. Dentists have asked me for consultations, and I make a nice little income by sharing my collection and knowledge. None of my friends are amused by my collection, but dentists and tooth fetishists appreciate my unique services.
LIZZIE
“That’s not the right order,” the man repeated.
His team ignored him. They wanted to solve the puzzle of the box quickly to move on to the next task and win the TV show challenge.
“Isn’t this a team effort?” he complained.
They clicked and rotated the sides of the box randomly.
“You’ve already tried that.”
Suddenly, they heard a click. Everyone froze.
“There’s a good click and there’s a bad click. Which one do you guys think this was?”
The box slowly unfolded to reveal a bright light.
A bad click… The show was suspended. The TV station closed.
RICHARD
Linguistics
They say that English is a difficult language to learn, but I have to disagree. Having spent a good many years now learning to speak a wide variety of languages, other than my own, I can confidently say that English is pretty simple, compared to some.
There’s no complications with tonality; no clicks or whistles, and once you get the hang of the relatively straightforward grammatical rules, the only real difficulty is one of contextualising the meanings of similar sounding words.
Of course, I’m a native English speaker – for foreigners, it’s tricky to words really in the get order right!
SERENDIPITY
“Are you ready to order now?”
The waitress was obviously growing impatient. I’d been at my table for over an hour, and I hadn’t yet decided what to have. I asked her what she’d recommend.
She suggested the steak.
I ordered: Medium rare, with peppercorn sauce, onion rings, chips and vegetables.
She was right – it was a good meal, and I was glad I’d taken her advice.
After all, your last meal should be a good one.
I looked around the crowded restaurant, estimating the body count, before starting the timer on the device.
Unfortunately, no time for a coffee.
TURA
Order
———
He stands before me, anxiously proferring his papers. I make a show of inspecting them closely, dragging the moment out. Finally I defecate on his hopes.
“Your papers are not in order.”
He gabbles of his wife and children. I gesture to the soldiers to remove him. He will be handed to whatever faction’s tinpot colonel first shows up to arrest “deserters”. His wife will exhaust her money on useless bribes, then I will take her and give her children over to the men.
Here, at this shithole of a border crossing, I am God. There is no finer pleasure.
TOM
If you can’t stand the heat
In my 20s my sister got me a job working as a short order cook. It was your basic Bar and Grill fair. Sandwiches, Fries, Soup. At first I was inept. Orders backed up and I was running my ass off trying to get food ready. Not having a background in food prep I had no idea that prep is everything. When I figured that out order replaced chaos. Further I started track the different sandwiches ordered daily and group them together. Sometime like Kevin Spacy in American Beauty I long for those days working in the Bar and Grill.
NORVAL JOE
Rick Racker, owner of the Bust-a-gut 24 hr gym knocked on the door of Dergle’s van.
Dergle looked at his watch. “1:30 am. What does Rick want?”
“I’ve got some people you should meet,” Rick said when he rolled the window down. “Come back into the gym.”
Rick showed Dergle to a back room where five figures bent around a table, each wearing bike shorts, sleeveless muscle shirts, and brown hoods over their heads. They turned as one and peered through their eye holes at Dergle.
“Mr. Vander Hoont. I Introduce you to the secret order of the Unarticulated Armadillo.
PLANET Z
For a while, it looked like every show on broadcast television would be a spinoff of Law and Order, CSI, and NCIS.
Even on PBS. For a pledge, you could get coffee mugs and tote bags with Richard Belzer’s character on them.
The networks tried to revive and reboot a few old series, but the only ones that worked were Battle of the Network Stars and Celebrity Apprentice. And those ended up featuring actors from Law and Order, CSI, and NCIS.
Not that anyone noticed. By then, everyone was watching Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon.
Or sleeping. People still do that.
Apple Picking
This weekend, we’re going up to a friend’s apple orchard to pick on apples.
No, we’re not going to pick apples. He hires Mexicans to do that shit. Do we look like Mexicans?
We’re going up there to pick on apples.
Sometimes, we pick on them by walking around the orchard, saying how much we really like oranges.
After that, we’ll drink wine and say how much better it is than apple juice or cider.
Finally, we’ll use baseball bats to beat apples out of the three.
(Just gotta be careful not to hit a Mexican while they’re picking them.)
Holy Gravity
The Bible says that Jesus ascended to Heaven, but the truth is that Jesus simply gave up his attraction to the earth.
He simply ignored gravity.
Since gravity keeps people on the ground, giving up on gravity causes you to rise rapidly from the earth, until you’re left out there in the void of space, floating around.
No, he doesn’t orbit the sun, because that takes gravity. He just floats around out there, watching the earth and moon pass buy once a year.
If you look closely at the sky around Easter, you might see him.
But I doubt it.
Hangover
After years of experimentation, Dr. Odd determined that the best remedy for a hangover is not drinking as much the night before.
When he woke with the worst hangover of his life, he built a time machine and went back in time to convince himself not to drink so much.
But instead of convincing himself not to drink so much, he saw how much fun his past self was having, so he got drunk with him.
Both his selves woke up with hangovers.
Failure.
He started to build a time machine.
“Can you do it quieter?” his past self groaned.