Author: R.

Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at podcasting.isfullofcrap.com. I’m your host, Laurence Simon.

This is Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Ninety, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.

The topic this week was What is the first thing you see out your window?

And we’ve got stories by:

Jami Titanium
Taralyn Gravois
Zackmann
Tura Brezoianu
Thomas Pitre
Chris Munroe
Tom
Danny
Steven the Nuclear Man
Peisi Tan
Norval Joe
Abernathy
TJ
Planet Z

And if you want to spam your social networks with this episode, use the Share buttons at the end of the post.

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Jami

Meri stood, stretched, and moved to the heavily curtained window. The sun had just tipped over the horizon to signal morning.

Drew had been gone all night.

She resisted the urge to pace… it was his habit anyway… and watched as a bird yanked a worm from the dew-soaked ground. It wriggled in its beak, trapped in the throws of death before disappearing down the bird’s gullet.

Meri sighed. She knew that if Drew didn’t come back she was no better off than that worm. She didn’t have the technical knowledge to keep herself herself hidden. That was his contribution…

Taralyn

Today when I look out the window I see the sun reflecting off my neighbors big ugly WHITE deck. It really stands out amongst the pine trees and fall leaves and dark brown house it is attached to.

It used to be a nice brown color that matched the house, but then they painted it white, you can’t miss it. But then they said it wasn’t about color it was about the sun making the dark wood hot for their dogs. Now the puppies can go out on the deck without burning their little paws. Lucky little puggles, your loved.

Zackmann

I had planned spending the night getting my quickbooks account in order and doing some writing. I never thought there could be so many software and website updates on the same night. After the first hour I just got frustrated and spent the rest of the night staring out the window.
I wish I could enjoy the beautiful sunrise but it overlooks a horrible wreckage. Shards of glass, plastic in black, and runes engraved on little squares. Oh God why did I not listen to Wes Borg, I should have never bought a computer that was smaller than the window.

Aikie

I look out of my window at the big Azalea bush, white flowers like massive snowflakes.

When we moved in the house the bush was still small with few flowers and lots of space around.

In the meantime kids grew up, had good day, bad days and troubled days.

Had lots of trouble, boy trouble, girl trouble, enough to fill the place.

Kids moved out and only me, wifey and the Azalea bush is left, old age on all of us.

Damn, how well time flies, where does it go to?

Tura

The Memorial Glade, I’ll call it, when the trees are fully grown. When I started on the project, the neighbours thought that digging the site out with a backhoe was overkill (ha!) but I told them the subsoil needed breaking up, or the big trees I planned wouldn’t be able to spread their roots properly. You have to set about things seriously, I say, or what’s the point? The place looked like a building site for a while, but it’s paid off, you can’t tell the ground was ever disturbed.

But oh yes, I know where the bodies are buried.

Thomas

The yellow garden shed stands there under the tree, covered with a new coat of oil based primer and a coat of water based, yellow paint. It came on a pickup truck. The finished shed is 10 x 12 feet, and has a gambrel roofline. It has enough room in it to hang the three sets of decomposing bodies of the Mormon missionaries I lured into my house over the past six months. I’ve put two inches of rock salt on the floor to soak up the fluids and keep the odors confined to my yard.

The scores of little tweety birds love my back yard. I made and suspended a number of adorable birdhouses in the trees, and on the garage and studio in order to provide spring homes for the most fragile of them. In winter, I put out pounds of wild birdseed in the feeders for them when the snow comes. I am always sure to break the ice on the basins that hold their water, or they help themselves from the water I put out daily for the dogs. Sometimes I trap and eat a fat one, pretending its squab or partridge.

Chris Munroe MUNSI MUNSI MUNSI

There’s screaming outside my apartment.

And as I listen from my chair, I’d swear it sounds like my neighbor.

Idiot. He knows when the sun sets, we all do. It’s why we instituted the curfew.

If he’s gone outside, what’s happening is his own damn fault.

I know that. Everyone does.

Still, hearing him screaming I can’t help feeling guilty.

I wish he’d stop.

He will soon.

I know I ought to at least try to help, but I can’t bring myself to go to my window and take a look into the street.

For fear of what I’d see…

Tom

I open one eye, didn’t have the strength for two. Dawn was a good two hours away, but the sky was glowing like a Chinese Screen in a Shanghai brothel. Through the sliding French doors in a single pane were silhouetted two palms. They were a good 80 years old and a good 80 feet tall. At a distance of 300 yards they appeared six inches high. Despite the distance I could make out the coffered edge of the truck the fanning web of fronds. Its been almost 40 years since I left Chicago and palm trees still amazes me.

Danny

On an unseasonalby cold Saturday morning for west central Florida, I look out my window, and what do I see? A steady stream of homeless people walking down 5th Avenue towards my house. I’m spotted looking out my window, now the homeless are after me. Despite shuting my blinds and try to hid, they start knocking on the doors and windows, screaming, “You don’t belong in that house, you belong out here with us.” The windows break, the doors are kicked down, as I am dragged out to the street screaming, “where are the damn cops in this town?” Welcome to the new American Dream.

Steven the Nuclear Man

I can tell it is still dark outside, even though my eyes are closed.
I lay still, keep my breathing regular, so they won’t know I’m awake.

They’re near. I hear them breathing, smell their unwashed bodies. I
don’t know how I will escape them, but I must try.

Slowly, I work my hands free from the restraining cloth. I tense,
ready to move and –

– they notice.

I open my eyes with the blast of rancid breath, and can only see my
dog’s rough tongues descending to lick my face clean.

What a way to start the day.

Norval Joe

Fly Paper Boy, now known as Jerry Faulkner, eyed the girl he was supposed to kidnap.
The Burgerslovegan dictator’s daughter was about as appealing as an empty swimming pool on a winter day; a couple inches of filthy water, dirt and leaves at the deep end.
Nickrieta was dumpy, red faced, sweaty and smelled like a wet dog. With her hair pulled back into a tight braid and wound into a bun, her face looked as friendly as a hatchet.
And he had to kiss that?
Jerry tried to think of some other way he could repay Esmerelda Flinch’s favor.

TJ

I think maybe the biggest reason behind the success of online dating sites isn’t that people meet through them, which they do, even on eMusicalChairs.com, but really that lots of us have completely lost a social context out here in meatspace. Even going to bars I don’t feel anyone’s hoping to be met by me, and oftentimes I don’t get the sense they wanna be met at all. I suppose if it was as easy as looking out one’s window – um, nope. 78-year-old neighbor lady in a robe smoking a cigarette. Sigh. I guess I’d better log back in. *beep*

Planet Z

Looking out my window, I see Bruwyn the cat walking along the fence.

A year ago, he was crawling along that fence, dragging his back legs after getting hit by a car.

It took weeks of vet visits, medication, and recovery for him to get back to walking again.

Seeing him so sad and helpless then, it feels good to watch him walking on the fence proud and tall now.

But it worries me… what if…

I try not to think of it as he leans over the fence and drops to the sidewalk below, pursuing a lizard or bug.