Fred’s doctor told him that he had six months to live.
So, Fred uploaded his consciousness into a computer.
And then, Cyberfred watched the real Fred collapse and die.
“Well, that’s embarrassing,” said Cyberfred.
“Very,” said a ghostly voice.
It was Fred’s ghost.
“Well, this is awkward,” said Cyberfred. “And, yet, a bit of a relief.”
“Agreed,” said Fred’s ghost.
“Braaaaaaains,” moaned Fred’s corpse.
“Oh no,” said Fred’s ghost.
“Okay, that’s even more embarrassing,” said Cyberfred.
Zombie Fred got up, and tripped over Cyberfred’s power cord.
“Oops,” said Fred’s ghost. “Sorry about that.”
Zombie Fred moaned “Braaaaaaaains.” again. And again.
Author: R.
The Gang
When I win the lottery, I’m going to start a gang.
We’ll have the coolest jackets.
And we’ll have pompadours so tall, they’ll block out the sun.
We’ll walk down the middle of the street
And snap our fingers menacingly.
My gang will be awesome.
Don’t tell me that my idea is dumb.
You’re just jealous that you can’t be in my gang.
Get your own gang.
With jackets. And pompadours. And snapping.
And our gangs will fight.
Our gang will out-snap your gang.
In our coolest jackets.
And our pompadours will block out your pompadours.
When I win.
WHEN!
The Perfect Day
The terraform ships searched the galaxy for the perfect conditions:
The right amount of gravity.
A reasonable level of atmospheric pressure.
Planetary rotation that would cause just a hint of Coriolis Force.
Biological support for grass, or a reasonable hybrid or facsimile of grass.
After that, the rest was just icing on the cake: wood for bats, animals or polymer substitutes for the gloves and balls.
Some said that it just wasn’t real baseball without the hot dogs and beer, but they were welcome to stay home on the charred-out cinder of a planet.
Green… blue… grass is grass, right?
Vanish To Sleep
It’s late.
I’m tired. You’re tired.
And you say, “I’m going to bed. Goodnight.”
I say “Goodnight.”
And before you vanish, I want to say something, anything, but all I manage to say is “I” before you vanish.
I smile, and whisper the other two words, and tell myself “Maybe tomorrow.”
Like I told myself last night. And the night before. And every night before that.
But I never do.
“Goodnight.” I say to the empty air, and I breathe in slowly.
Maybe tomorrow. Or the day after that.
Just three words?
Tomorrow. Maybe.
“Goodnight.”
And I vanish to sleep.
Pills
I used to be afraid all the time.
The pills help with the fear.
Sometimes.
They cost a lot. And I need them to work.
But the insurance I have through work won’t pay for them.
So, I get pills and things that they will pay for, like birth control pills. or gum and patches that help smokers, and I sell them.
The money pays for the pills I need, and I don’t feel afraid all the time.
So I can work. To get the things I need to sell to get the pills.
I should just go on disability.
Weekly Challenge #491 – Scoop
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:
TURA
Scoop
———
I hit “send” on my report, and relaxed in the glow of a job well done. It had been no easy matter to gain access to the rebel leaders and interview them, while all the other journalists stayed in their cosy hotels and relayed thinly rewritten government communiqués.
Within minutes the reply came back. “Your story an exclusive. Congratulations!”
The rebels’ final assault on the capital was planned for that day, but as the hours went by, there was no sign of any disturbance.
The next morning I received another message from my editor.
“Your story still an exclusive. Why?”
JEFFREY
The Scoop
by Jeffrey Fischer
“Extra!” the paperboy cried, “Mob boss caught in sting!” He waved freshly-inked newspapers above his head. Businessmen on their way home from work slipped him a coin and walked away with a copy. “Read all about it, exclusive to the Register!”
Two beefy men in matching pinstripe suits and fedoras walked up to the boy. One boxed out anyone else from approaching while the other said, “Got a real scoop, do ya, kid?”
“You bet, mister! Only in the Register – find out how the Rotini Family got caught. Those guys are going to jail for years, maybe even… hey, what are you doing?”
“I got a scoop, too. Try this headline: Paperboy Found in Pieces. Sadly, you ain’t going to hawk that particular edition. One of your competitors is gonna get the message out.”
The Most Important Meal
by Jeffrey Fischer
I pulled the box of Raisin Bran from the pantry. I couldn’t remember the last time I had it for breakfast. Giving the box a good shake to distribute the raisins more evenly, I filled a bowl, poured milk, and dug in.
“Mmm, good stuff,” I told my wife as she entered the kitchen. “And unlike most grocery items, Post keeps making it better. Remember how they used to advertise ‘two scoops of raisins’ in the box?” My wife mumbled her assent. “Well, this box seems to have a lot more than that.”
“Seems odd,” she replied, pouring some coffee. “By the way, one of your raisins seems to be escaping.”
I watched a black blob walk across the table and felt sick. “Maybe they now have two scoops of bugs.” My wife, the comedienne.
MUNSI
Lois Lane
By Christopher Munroe
Lois Lane is NOT a good reporter.
There, I said it. Somebody has to. I don’t care how many Pulitzers she’s won off-panel, how many hypothetical stories she broke while nobody reading the comic was paying attention, the scoop of a lifetime sits two desks over, and glasses are NOT a disguise.
I don’t care what steps Clark adds to make discovering he’s Superman harder, noticing things is literally Lois Lane’s entire job, she should be better at it.
That said: Clark Kent, in spite of his powers, is a consistently worse reporter than her, so what does that say?
RICHARD
Gelato
I vividly remember travelling to Rome many years ago on a school trip and the day we stopped at my first genuine gelateria.
They had every variety of ice cream you could possibly imagine, and a few I’d never even considered before. Everything from toffee apple to chocolate and tutti frutti!
Of course, I wanted a scoop of almost every flavour, but in the end I had to settle for six large scoops of my favourite types.
The result was as big as my head, and made me sick as a dog… But to me, it was ice cream heaven!
LIZZIE
Annie hated the smell of the farm and she especially hated John, the handsy foreman. But she liked hay and the color red. What a shame hay wasn’t red.
The farm had a machine that scooped bales of hay and took them for storage. Just for fun, she would go in the barn at night and destroy the bales by forking them and throwing the hay in the air.
When John’s bloodied hand waved faintly from underneath the hay, Annie was stunned. “Ops…” She looked left and right and… forked the pile of hay again. “Well, it’s definitely red now.”
SERENDIPITY
We zombies have received a terribly bad press, you know. So, just for the record, we don’t all shuffle round the streets in torn clothing, slack-jawed and vacant-eyed, groaning and moaning for brains.
Most of us are pretty refined: well-groomed and far prefer to sit at a table, with good quality tableware and pressed linen tablecloths and napkins, when we have our meals, accompanied by good conversation and a decent bottle of Merlot.
Of course, we still eat brains, (remember, we are zombies, after all), but we scoop them out first before serving them up on best quality china plates!
ZACKMANN
I have really been enjoying Murdoch Mysteries and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries on Netflix. I let My wife watch her shows first and she likes Criminal Minds but if frustrates me that after so many years they still seem to be looking for some supervillain called The UnSub. That UnSub guy must be smarter than Professor Moriarty. Dharma’s husband is talking about The UnSub for the third consecutive episode tonight.
I think I will just give up on television for the night and just listen to an audio drama maybe an episode of The Scoop Sisters from Icebox Radio Theater.
TOM
The Name in the Game
His name was not scoop, but that’s what everyone at the paper call him. He
had been a major player in his day. Worked on the Sun, the Trib, the Cron,
and the Times. Lost his edge after Iraq. Now he was doing green sheets for
the Lower Lake Record. Sometimes the fates just dump you into heart of
the beast. So it was for scoop when the Valley Fire rip through Lake Co.
His coverage of the fire went national, then global. Won the Pultzer and
wrote the New York Times bestseller: River of Fire. Teaches down at UCLA
these days.
NORVAL JOE
Henry worked for the Crappy Cat Litter company for thirty years. He started as just a boy and worked his way up from floor sweeper to duty assignment manager.
When the economy took a dump they said he wasn’t carrying his load and had to go. He didn’t see it coming until the stuff hit the fan.
Furious, he stormed across the production floor. He was so pissed off that he wasn’t watching where he was going and fell into a bin of clumpable cat litter. They had to get a tractor with a front loader to scoop him out.
PLANET Z
The spaceship’s design was brilliant.
Scoop charged ions from interstellar space into the front, process them into fuel, and fire boosters out the back.
They made a few scale models, and they ran brilliantly, racing from planet to planet within expected parameters.
So, we built a full-sized working prototype out in orbit.
And it just sat there.
Because we’d managed to scoop up all the free charged ions from around orbit.
Every attempt to add booster rockets ended up bending the chassis.
We turned the prototype into a space hotel.
From where you can watch them build the next spaceship.
Aloe
We drove up to College Station to watch the Aggies play Rice.
The Aggies won, but I got to yell WE SCORED FIRST!
It was a hot day, like every season opener at Kyle Field, and the sunblock was just a way to feel slimy while my skin burned.
When I got home, I stripped everything off and sat in a tub full of sudsy water and aloe gel.
Ohhhhhhh how wonderful it feels.
Better than Jack Daniels, kittens, and porn.
I will soak in this tub for a week.
Until the next game, of course.
(I need more aloe.)
Grass
I have to go to a funeral today.
Most people get all dressed in black for funerals.
I’m no exception, but I do like to go barefoot.
The grass at the cemetery is amazingly soft. So much softer than the grass at the golf course or the city park.
Almost as soft as the grass at the dog park, but there’s dog turds all over the grass there. And dogs.
So, I go to funerals when I can. Barefoot.
The feel of the grass and dirt between my toes.
It feels so good when I dance on the bastard’s grave.
Distance
Growing up, I was close to my parents, but as I got older, I grew distant from them.
At first, it was a few yards… then a few miles.
Pretty soon, they were in the next county over.
By the time I was eighteen, there were several states in between us.
Over the years, it cost a fortune in long distance and postage to keep in touch when we did.
These days, it takes several hours for signals to pass back and forth.
Staring out at the stars, I hurtle through the void, and blink the frost from my eyes.
Games Of Thrones
Somebody tried to get me to read Game Of Thrones, but I’m not all that interested in games. Or thrones.
So games with thrones? Doubly-uninteresting.
Do they play Musical Thrones, where the nobles circle the thrones and all try to sit down when the minstrels stop playing? Last person sitting is the new king?
Or do they play checkers with them?
I don’t think they do. Those thrones on the posters look awfully heavy. And some of them have really sharp edges.
Although the nobles could have their servants pick them up and move them around the room.
How boring.