Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Thirty-Four, 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… was…. um…
It’s Cotton Mouth!
VOTING
Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):
A.M Earley
“My mouth fells like cotton.”
“Well alcohol, mosh-pits and screaming at the top. . .”
Sheila didn’t get to finish her rant. Her brother Steven passed out on her. The concert-goers around them ignored his plight.
“He is thirty pounds heavier than me, but no one else gives a . . .” Sheila thought of mothers picking up cars, bent her knees and put Steven in a fireman carry. It was forty feet to the door and security.
Steven better be fine by the time the main act took the stage. She loved Steven, but damnit, this is rock-and roll.
Tom
As he took the podium all moisture vanished from his mouth.
A silver thread of doubt ribbonen through his puritan logic.
At first he thought it might be the absence of god.
Am I not called to duty directly by divine will.
After inspection his resolve returned.
A righteous gaze bore into the slumped head of Mistress Brown.
Ada was bound but not broken, met his gaze with defiance.
“Show her the instruments of the question.” Squeaked the preacher.
His mind may have been drenched in grace, but his palate was still parched.
Imagine that Cotton Mather a Cotton Mouther
Dave
It was the darkest, creepiest, building in the neighborhood.
Davey promises he will return tonight with his trick-or-treat bag. This will be the year he owns up for what he’s done to them in the past.
He fills his bag so much he can’t close it. Davey decides it is time to face his fears and make his last stop.
He rings the door bell, his nerves give out, he can’t talk, he has cotton mouth.
He dodges behind the bushes
as the door to Faith’s Embrace Foster Home opens.
A group of small children drag inside their annual gift.
Zackmann
Hello Hugh, I am calling about Charles, your dimension’s company representative. In our world
there are intelligent peoples who look like muppets so we are totally okay with people you
call plushophiles. Getting to the point he is in quarantine. Due to a case of what doctors here
call Cotton Mouth therefore he will stay an additional week and hopefully next time he will meet
someone from a good family and not go home with the first blue plush person he meets in a bar.
At least he knows what foreplay is. Cotton Balls takes much longer to cure.
Steven
Angie arranged the dolls around the table. “Teatime!” she yelled.
Ellie held his denim trunk still as Angie poured imaginary tea.
Bunny’s plush ears did not twitch. R.A. (Esquire) flopped his stuffed
head to the side, red yarn hair draping his shoulder.
“Raggedy.” Angie stared at R.A. “Have some tea.”
R.A. picked up the faded teacup. He glanced at Ann’s severed head in
the corner. She’d guessed wrong. He took a drink of pretend tea.
“Oolong,” he guessed, mouth dry.
Angie smiled. “Yes!”
R.A. sighed in relief.
“From what country?” Angie asked.
R.A. swore Ann’s button eyes winked in anticipation.
Katwood
Dear Sophia,
I am sorry I was unable make it to your wedding, but I was sick. I had to go to the hospital and everything. That alone should tell you how sick I was. It would have been fine, but I had a bad reaction to one of the medications they gave me. Sometime people just don’t listen, especially people who think they know everything. I’ll probably be out and back to work within in the next couple of days. I really did intend to go this time, too. But that damn cottonmouth bit me again.
From,
Your Friend
Ted
I love Thanksgiving: the parade, the sales, but most of all, the stuffing.
My first taste was Mom’s stuffed bird. True, it was pretty dry, but I was hooked.
I’d eat anything with stuffing: chicken, duck, even frog or cat, I reckon.
Midnight last Thanksgiving-Eve, the craving struck. I ate all the stuffing in the house. Every piece.
That morning was horrible. My wife was screaming, the children were crying. I left the house in shame.
I wanted to make it up to them, but how? I had been banned from every store that sold stuffed animals or upholstered furniture.
Kathleen
Thirst
What can I get you to drink?
Can’t decide
Try the water moccasin–house specialty.
Never heard of it.
It’s a girly drink, someone piped in.
What’s that you’re drinking Earl?
You know what I’m drinking.
Isn’t that a water moccasin
The one and only
So it’s a girly drink? I questioned
I’m Earl
So you own this place?
It’s a long story
This was Eve’s and Earl’s; now it’s only Earl’s
But the water moccasin?
It was Eve’s concoction.
Earl showed me his tattoo
Here’s my real baby– a cotton mouth. Isn’t she beautiful.
I’ll try that house specialty.
Norval Joe
“We’re going to make all those new toys pay,” the filthy, faded beagle barked and nervously tucked the seam together where his tail used to be.
“That’s right, No Tail,” the legless, one-eyed giraffe whined. “This will be a night the toy box will never forget. What do you think, Cotton Mouth?”
The teddy bear shoved a ball of loose padding back through his torn mouth and down his throat.
“Yes, they will all suffer, the same as us,” he said and pulled a butcher knife from beneath the bed. “Now if we could just get the stupid box open.”
TJ
Cotton-Mouth Jim didn’t get a song written about him. His brother,
Cotton-Eyed Joe, was kind of a slut. After that girl broke up with her
whiny songwriter boyfriend to be with him, he was regaled the world
over. Of course, everyone always asks about Joe, where did he come from,
where did he go, these eternal questions, but no one’s heard of the
songwriter. Cotton-Mouth Jim, he hasn’t been famous for anything since
he was 9 and he shoved two giant cotton candies in his mouth at the
county fair. That’s the kind of front-page photo that haunts a man.
Planet Z
I smoke way too much pot.
Way… way too much.
My mouth is so dry. When I drag my tongue around, little crusty bits come loose.
I spit them out. What awful colors they are.
It starts to hurt, so…
I smoke some more.
And it gets worse.
Everything stinks. I never clean in here.
Nobody wants to visit because it’s so awful here.
So, I smoke some more.
I can’t tell if it’s day or night.
The cable’s out. Phone’s out. I assume I got fired from my job.
What was my job?
Who cares?
I smoke some more.