Author: R.

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: AGE

We’ve got stories by:

• Tom
• Lizzie
• John
• Jeffrey
• Richard
• Tura Brezoianu
• Jeff
• Serendipity
• Julie
• Zackmann
• Chelsea
• Dionysis Clowes
• Norval Joe
• Danny
• Munsi
• Planet Z

The next 100 word stories weekly challenge is on the topic of LOAD…

TOM

A Well Define Relationship Part 63

“He’s coming with me,” said the doctor. Smith nodded and the door on the wagon zipped shut. “Age has made you wise Proctor.” “If you are lying Caesar I’ll personally shove you into the digestive tract of a sand worm. “And that is the age old question: Am I leading you to the tiger or the lady?” Proctor’s plan proved positive, but it had not included the possibility of prize. Now it was El Cid’s opportunity to reel out his plan. He knew the Doc knew it was a trap, but it really didn’t matter. Tamerlane was worth the risk.

LIZZIE

Being a kid has its disadvantages.

Being a teenager becomes, more often than not, a nightmare.

Yet being an adult is the worst.

It’s not only the fact that we are adults for most of our miserable lives, but also because, as old age kicks in, murmurous mondegreens tend to progressively take over our volatile certainties.

In the future, age will be irrelevant, I suppose.

I wonder if we’ll just get stuck at old age or if we’ll choose which age we’d like to be.

Oh, gosh. I just realized that we’ll all be young and breathtakingly beautiful!

How dreadful!

JOHN

My Fight Against Time

I never was okay with aging so I spent my life building a time machine.
The preliminary test project bent 2D space.
The model was a sheet of paper labelled from left to right: -10Y through 0Y: now.
A magnet made the plane curl. More force was needed to make it furl further; like a rolled up magazine-
such that the -10Y mark moved forward to the now position. Instead of a magnet, I capitalized on that
when planets’ orbits become collinear; their gravitational forces summate.
Before I could apply the device to 3D space; I learned I was terminal.

JEFFREY

Age
by Jeffrey Fischer

They say you’re only as old as you feel. Most mornings, I estimate my age at 97, give or take half a decade. My head hurts from the sinus congestion, my joints ache because I have a touch of arthritis, and my muscles ache…well, just because. But don’t pity me. By the time I get out of the shower, I’m no more than a septuagenarian. A brisk walk to the office and I’m no more than retirement age.

That’s where the trend ends, however. A couple of aggravating meetings in uncomfortable chairs later and I’m clearly ready for the old-age home. So when I tell you that this job has made me lose my mind, it’s just the metaphorical dementia setting in.

Golden Age
by Jeffrey Fischer

It was a golden age: a time before war, a time when man could live as one with nature. A time when man and woman could live in innocence, untainted by the corruption of the world we now know.

Then, abruptly, it was over. The happy Eden was gone, replaced by conflict and strife, where man and woman were at each other’s throats, where strangers bestrode the land, and nature itself was corrupt.

“Look, honey, I understand you’re not happy about my parents moving in with us, but don’t you think you’re being a little overdramatic?”

RICHARD

#1 – George’s Story – Part 66: Crash

The Landrover rattled along the zoo’s service roads and pretty soon, George was heading for the main zoo gates and the open road.

No longer feeling his age, or his bruises, he smiled broadly as the realisation dawned that he was about to realise an ambition he’d always secretly held… and, flooring the accelerator, he sped towards the gates ahead of him, hands grasping the wheel tightly.

Once again, George’s expectations – built entirely on Hollywood movie scenarios – were a little high. Rather than crashing triumphantly through, he thudded unceremoniously into the solid iron gates and came to a dead stop.

#2 – All in the mind

They say age is all in the mind and you’re only as old as the person you feel.

Well, I wish somebody would tell my body! No matter how young at heart I feel, my body tells me I’m no teenager – the whole mind over matter approach fails dismally when it comes to facing the reality of a body that is no longer as young as it once was.

Faced with the inevitability of growing older, and all it entails, one thing is certain, I’m doing it gracefully – I wish I could, but my body’s just not up to it!

#3 – New age

The dawn of a new age – that’s what they said – the marvels of technology, science and engineering would transform the world into a place of leisure: labour-saving devices would turn everyday tasks and toil into pleasure, whilst new materials would revolutionise our living spaces.

Such was the optimism of the 1964 Worlds’ Fair… Well that all worked out well, didn’t it?

How foolish to think that brightly coloured melamine, self-cleaning ovens and television in every room could really improve our lot… In reality, the dawn of the new age was simply the fading light of a once golden age.

TURA

Age
——–
“Ladies and gentlemen,” proclaimed the huckster, “you have heard of the elixir of youth, but who wants to be a dumb teenager for ever? I present to you, the elixir of age! Every day you drink this, you will find yourself a day older!

“A day wiser, a day richer, you ask? That is up to you! A day is more precious than a king’s crown! Use it well, and there will be no limit to your prosperity! Use it badly, and your fortunes will decay with your body!”

It sounded like a good deal, but he had few customers.

JEFF

Age
By Jeff Hema

We love our grandma.
Grandma is in her 80’s. All her muscles hurt except her tongue.
She’ll give you a piece of her mind whether you are being nice to her or not.

Dad is 56 and will retire in a couple of years. He has to let her know whenever he needs to leave the house. When he complains about it, she says that last time she checked she was still older than he!

Once mom asked her if she wanted to take a shower so that she can help her. Grandma accused her of implying that she stunk!

SERENDIPITY

How old am I?

As old as time itself – you can trace my roots back through lifetime to lifetime, generation to generation, to ancient tribal memory and beyond.

I am the driving force of creation, the stimulus for growth, the foundation of language and the glue that binds society – without me, life is less precious, success worthless and triumph meaningless.

I am unstoppable, ignored at your peril, the stuff of nightmares and the crucible of adversity. You cannot survive without me, yet would do anything to avoid me.

Yes, you know me intimately.

And who am I?

I am fear.

JULIE

These are the days,

When the big sad rolls in,

Thundering–

With the moon’s mud tide—

Thick fog choking you, rising

In a surge.

If I could wish you up,

I would.

If I could

Save you—

I would take you with me.

These are the days,

I am reminded over tea

How we are perceived,

And see ourselves—

Rays of light.

Bits of sunshine.

Friends.

Lovers.

Mentors.

While we battle

The dark inside, and no one no knows.

You stood on your head,

And made me laugh–

What happens?

When the big sad wins?

There is no halftime show.

ZACKMANN

Did you ever lie about your age? I have once telling a bartender I was twenty one before I was. My wife is slightly older than I but looks several years younger than I do. When we were first married I told people that she was nineteen. I continued to say this lie until a friend mentioned just how wrong it was to have a nineteen year old wife with a ten year old kid.

I am comfortable with my current age whatever it is. Since I lied about it so much I don’t remember what my age really is.

CHELSEA

Our lives are a steady progression of days from the instant we take our first breath to the moment of our last. This is the inescapable fact of our biology, and at present, the average person can do nothing about that.

That fact however, really has nothing to do with our age. Age is a state of mind. We truly are, only as young or old as we feel.

Personally, I am hoping to spend the rest of my life somewhere between 21 and 30. Young enough to have all the fun and just old enough to be taken seriously!

DIONYSIUS

New Keys

His hands were shaking and he dropped the keys.

Hurry the fuck up! said one of the young men who had appeared in his garage.

He stooped as well as he could to pick them up.

This motherfucker is playin’ us, one said.

The key resisted the keyhole at first. He fumbled with making it turn.

New keys are rough and don’t fit well, he said, half to himself.

The fuck do I care, said the bigger one, shoving him. The old man stumbled into a recycling bin.

Still the keys wouldn’t work.

They kicked him, slapped him, disappeared. His wife found him there sobbing.

NORVAL JOE

“You won’t let me hang with your group because I’m black,” Ben said.
“No,” Belenda said. “It’s not just your color, it’s your age. You’re so much older than all of us.”
“I’m not, really. I just got left out in the cold. I never even had a spot on me. A single night in the chiller, and boom.”
“I’m sure you’re sweet on the inside–just as sweet as any of the girls in my bunch. Face it. We’re banana’s. You could even come from the same tree, but if we didn’t grow together, you can’t be in my bunch.”

DANNY

This is the day of the never ending age of insomnia. This day is beyond the age of MTV. We have our laptops, our Iphones, our Androids, our Ipads, and our digital television. We have a constant, permanent connection with the world 24 hours a day. This is the age that our childhood comic book heroes have become political hacks representing a country that no longer exists outside the fiction trapped within our delusional minds. This is the age were people we label terrorists rise up because they want food and water. This is the age of our own self destruction.

MUNSI

The Club

By Christopher Munroe

I still hit the club.

I’m not THAT old.

It’s every other week or so, but I still go. I’ll never be this young again, I deserve every moment of happiness that comes, and I can still be counted on, come last call, when I go, to be dancing.

Don’t mention that “the club” is a painstaking recreation of a bar I loved in 1998, I don’t want to remember that, but yeah, I still go.

You’re only as old as you feel.

And, at the club, I feel eighteen again.

The next day, I feel seventy.

Still, I go…

PLANET Z

There aren’t many stars left from The Golden Age of Hollywood.
They’re in the same hospital ward at the Old Actor’s Home.
Lying in their beds, surrounded with cards and flowers and wreaths.
None of them have any names on them. Just generic cards and flowers and wreaths.
Best Wishes
Get Well Soon
Thinking Of You
But no names.
And every time one of them dies, the staff divvies up their cards and flowers and wreaths to the remaining residents of the ward.
One day, there was one patient left.
They were smothered to death by wreaths, cards, and flowers.

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: MEDIA

We’ve got stories by:

• Tom
• Lizzie
• John
• Jeffrey
• Richard
• Serendipity
• Tura Brezoianu
• Munsi
• Zackmann
• Chelsea
• Dionysis Clowes
• Norval Joe
• Planet Z

The next 100 word stories weekly challenge is on the topic of MEDIA…

TOM

A Well Define Relationship Part 62

Sparky arranged the bandits and assembled the ladies of the gear guild behind them. The video feed went meg-virile in an hour. Major media plastered the image on the transverse. Cid’s Q factor temperately bumped Tarzan and Santa Claus. When Smith called in the Senate Guard the full impact of his sorry state settled in on Caesar like lormire petafrost on capulating Brolox. He called to Smith. It was time to deal. “I have something that the honorable doctor has been looking for.” “Sorry scum no deal.” As a trooper push El Cid into the wagon he yelled out, “Tamerlane.”

LIZZIE

“What do a gondola, a widow and a gun have in common?” asked Prof. Mullins while being interviewed on TV.

The anchor didn’t know.

“Mullins, of course!”

The studio crew snickered.

“So, who’s Mullins?” continued the behavioral researcher.

“The wife shot him,” replied the anchor. “No, he’s the killer; he killed a man, a husband… in a gondola!”

“Interesting,” replied the researcher. “But Mullins didn’t kill anyone, well, not directly anyway.”

“Oh?”

“Mullins is an experimental program named after its founder.”

That’s when everyone walked out of the studio.

Within the next few hours, dozens were killed all over town.

JOHN

Media
by John Musico

The book Robinson Crusoe opens with his father advising the best way for a man to lead his life;
‘Seek the middle ground son, poor men have special problems but rich men do too.”
Here’s how I make that hard to believe point:
When you’re poor and have little; you want to obtain.
But, when you’re wealthy and have it all; the same dilemma returns; you can’t get because you already have it.
The Buddhists have the same advice. So do the Chinese as depicted in the yin yang symbol.
Sadly, our commercialistic culture makes us blind to this wisdom.

JEFFREY

Media Day
by Jeffrey Fischer

Coach was starting to sound defensive. “I keep telling y’all, I don’t put much stock in those tests. On my team, we play quick and strong. Ain’t nothing any IQ test gonna tell me about that.”

The Media Day frenzy was particularly bad this year, after the team’s top draft pick, Cletus Brickyard, received a record-low score on the Wonderlic test and the results had been leaked to the press.

“Fo’ the last time, I’m telling y’all, Cletus is a guard. He’s a locomotive of aggression wrapped in 350 pounds of muscle. Don’t need no IQ test to chew up quarterbacks.” And that settled that.

After the season was over, when Cletus was fooled so many times that his white pants bore a permanent grass stain on the butt, Coach’s successor decided to take the Wonderlic test more seriously.

The Breakthrough
by Jeffrey Fischer

They say you can’t rush genius, and that was certainly true in Alan’s case. As a young man in the early 1970s, he had spent countless hours working out the complex mathematics of a new type of plastic, one that would revolutionize automobile design. He nearly had it, but could never get the properties just right. He consigned all his work to storage media and did other things with his life.

Then, one day in 2014, as retirement-age Alan daydreamed through a personnel meeting, he had a flash of insight into his problem from 40 years earlier. He could hardly contain his excitement during the meeting. Afterward, he raced to incorporate his new insight into his old equations. He opened a dusty file, grabbed the disk… and found himself holding an 8” single-sided floppy, capable of holding a whopping 250 kilobytes. He could only laugh.

RICHARD

#1 – George’s Story – Part 65: Newsflash

George turned the key in the ignition and the engine burst into life. Bizarrely, so did the radio on the dashboard – tuned in to a news bulletin.

Excitedly, he turned up the volume and listened incredulously to the newscaster… not a single word out of the ordinary: no mention of widespread death and destruction; nothing about fighting in the streets and not a word about the world’s impending doom.

George was baffled – if the media were oblivious to what was happening, then this whole thing was even more peculiar than he’d imagined.

He eased off the handbrake and pulled away.

#2 – The best show in town

Those clowns in foreign affairs are up to their usual tricks, falling over their feet in their haste to get a story, whilst the gossip column hacks are walking a tightrope between the truth and sensationalised facts. We’ve got TV crews tumbling and leaping through hoops for an exclusive scoop; troupes of reporters performing an intricate dance between facts and fiction, and a team of editors taming the roaring lions of legality and integrity… and all without any safety net!

Political correspondents – experts at spin, illusion and trickery – are conveniently ignoring the elephant in the room.

It’s a media circus!

#3 – 30 Megabytes

Am I the only one who regrets the demise of good old fashioned removable media?

It’s true you could hardly call a Winchester drive particularly portable, or high-capacity – but still, I miss them. What about eight-inch floppies? Now that’s a real disk – superior in every way to those five inch tiddlers that followed, and their progeny.

Now we’re saddled with memory sticks and flash micro cards – wonderful in their own way, and miracles of technology and miniaturisation, but I can’t stand them.

Those old, clunky, massively oversized media may have been awkward… but you’d never lose the buggers!

#4 Press corps

Borin Cokenshield peered nervously through the letterbox at the imposing figure at his door.

“You’re not from the press are you?”, he hissed.

The wizard, bending low, peered back through the narrow slot at the dwarf: “No, I’m a wizard”

“You sure?”, came the response, “Because if you’re one of those media guys, I’ve got nothing to say!”

“No, I want you to join my quest… rings, treasure, dragons – it’s an offer you can’t refuse!”

“I knew it!”, snarled the dwarf: “You are one of the press gang!, before poking the wizard in the eye from behind the locked door.

SERENDIPITY

The media love me – if I’m not front-page news, I’ll make the centre-spread, editorial, or a spirited debate on the letter’s pages. There will be pictures of where I was last seen, with eyewitness interviews of the people who were there. Thousands of words of newsprint, countless pieces to camera and endless newsreels on every channel.

The media love me – and i love the media.

You see, if it wasn’t for the media hype, I’d have no incentive to keep going, but as long as they keep me in the limelight…

I’m just going to keep on killing.

TURA
Media
——–
“What social media studies misses,” said the earnest young woman, “is a problematization of the marked/nonmarkedness intrinsic– actually intrinsically extrinsic– in the hegemonic thrust of unfolding immanence.”

“Does that mean,” I said, reading my scribbled notes, “Google and Facebook don’t talk about how they want all your data to sell to advertisers, and everyone knows but they don’t think about it?”

She nodded. “The superincumbence of materialisms deconstructs the mesoteric assumptions of subcultural neodiscourse!”

I took that as a yes.

Reporting for the media on a social media conference is an unpleasant job, but someone has to do it.
——–

MUNSI

Something New

By Christopher Munroe

In lieu of a story, I’ve written a speech.

Then hired a band to set the speech to music.

A technician will light the speech and set off lasers, strobes, flash pots and fog machines whilst I deliver it.

A filmmaker friend of mine will be shooting a short, surrealist piece that’ll be projected overtop me as I deliver the speech, and it will be broadcast live via webcam as I give it.

In short, it’s an over-elaborate, multimedia spectacular, and rest assured, I cannot afford the production.

Like, at all.

So a 100-word story it will have to remain…

ZACKMANN

Come here you little brats your grandpa is going to rant like a Jay Langejans Dog Days of Podcasting character. Long ago radio stations played a bigger variety of songs that often included the likes of Weird Al and Ray Stevens. They rebroadcasted Old Time Radio especially around Christmas. There was a Star Wars radio drama. Radio stations could play the best rock old and new. Since the laws changed fewer owners meant fewer songs played over and over. Talk radio was mainly at night talking to bands or about sex. Apparently talk is cheap when syndicated. Now radio sucks.”

CHELSEA

Media

She resides in there, behind that screen, behind every screen, just waiting for some one to bring them to life.

Waiting to fill our lives with images and words from as close as the next room to as far way as another planet.

Her domain is vast, touching each of us in one way or another.

So there she remains, trapped inside her domaine, inside that screen until you bring it to life, letting her into your world.

She is the soul of Media and she is waiting for each and every one of us to just let her in.

DIONYSIUS

Bubble Man

It used to mean more, being a bubble man — THE bubble man.

The presence of anyone repulsed me. Human contact. The horror. You others didn’t mind.

I put a bubble around myself to keep it out, all of it. The irony is, the media made it possible. I went years without any face-to-face. Before media you killed whoever fucked with you. I’m not a killer.

Now it’s too easy with the ueblita and you’re-not-too-smart phones, the cloud. Media are everywhere, and you’re all bubble men. Everyone is a bubble man now.

I can’t get away from you!

The Medium Is the Mensonge

My first attempt was a simple “I love you.”

Tears began to roll down her cheeks. Everybody uses those words, she sobbed. It’s not how you feel! Cliches make me so sad!

I tried poetry, flowers, romantic dinners, trips to exotic destinations, and spending all my time with her. Basketball games. Hikes into the woods. Jewelry. Taking her shopping. Romantic comedies.

She was always pleased at first. We laughed, shared,

adventured, whispered, cheered, photographed, shopped, and cried and laughed together.

But there was always the moment when she’d grow quiet, tears would well up, and she’d say, You’re such a liar!

We understand each other.

You and Me Dia

What made me decide to go was the name of the meetup: You and Me Dia.

Isn’t media taking over our lives? What can we do about it?

Dia, he said, you mean internet, television, newspaper? Have you checked in?

Exactly! I don’t use —

I mean you’re crazy, dia.

I stared at him.

It’s all media, dia. The earth itself is media. You and me, we are media, dia. That dog sleeping over there.

What are you talking about? I asked.

Media are supposed to take over our lives. Dia, those things you fear are not very good at it.

NORVAL JOE

Spheno Palatine strode into the office and saluted.
“Palatine. What did you find at the orbital cavity?” Commander Styloid asked.
“Yes. Well. Um,” Palatine hedged.
“Mucus and bile,” Ulnar Styloid cursed, recognizing her perfume before she appeared at the door.
“Media Lateral,” Styloid said, rubbing his brow ridge. “What were you doing in the orbital cavity?”
Media slunk into the room, sideways, and oozed forward to slip onto his lap. She smoothed her hand across his hairless head and winked. “If you expected me to stay in the duodenum nebula, you shouldn’t have sent Cardiac Sphincter to pilot the spaceship.”

Z

Our water has methane in it. We have to filter it.
Sometimes, you can light the gas coming out of your kitchen tap.
The thing is, the water has always had methane in it, but the anti-Fracking people ignore that part of the story.
They fly their celebrity protestors into town, and spin their bullshit stories.
When the circus leaves town, the legislators roll out the laws and bans.
I depended on that drilling lease. I have to sell my farm now.
I heard that gas is six bucks a gallon in Hollywood.
Good. I hope it keeps going up.