Draw a red line

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I watch my daughter drawing a red line.
She started drawing on her sketchbook, but ran off of the paper, along the floor…
And right out the door.
I shouted for her to come back, but why worry? She’ll run out of ink or get tired…
One hour… two hours…
I get up and shout again.
No answer.
So, I follow the red line.
That was seventeen years and ten thousand miles ago.
You can’t see the line?
Oh, it’s there. Just too faint for you to see.
But I can.
And I will follow it until I find her.

The Candles

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When Bobby turned five, he wanted his cake decorated like that “Harry Potter” series of books he’d seen, but was too young to read or watch the movies.
“No,” his mother said.
(When you’re five, you don’t take no for an answer.)
So, his mother made a cake with a demon made out of chocolate cookies inside an icing pentagram, a candle at each star point.
At the party, all of Bobby’s friends sang, and then he blew out the candles.
“What did you wish for?” his mother asked.
The demon on the cake opened its eyes.
“That,” grinned Bobby.

Weekly Challenge #227 – Masks

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty-Seven, 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 Masks!
VOTING

Which were the best stories this week?
Abigail
Lewis
Freereed
Zackmann
Almo
Graceful
TJ
Norval Joe
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):


Abigail

Her sister was tapping on her cheek,” Hmm, not done yet.” her fingernail clicking dissatisfaction. Beneath hooded eyelids the slim view of sleeves flourishing, the sleight of hand, “Don’t move.” She had given her a light therapy kit too.”This flashing causes the molecules on your skin to scurry and bombard into each other and then they hold one another close. Wrinkle free! Smooth!” These words peeled off as thoughts of her sister telling her she was an Indian Princess, the igloos they made, and the double angels in the snow when she held on to her tight, scurried and bombarded.

Lewis

the hideous creation oozed itself
around the lab. The doctor’s
experiment was getting out of
hand. It was scary, except
it wore silly masks of
three cartoon characters. He told
one person of his experiment.
It was after he injected
her with nanites to cure
his fiance’s terminal disease. Before
their very eyes, her arm
turned a dark purple. It
later became shiny and then
started to droop as if
it were geletan. A few
days later, she was just
a mess of purple ooze
moving around, longing for revenge.
As she absorbed him through
osmosis, he turned purple too.

Freereed

“i want you to paint my wife. money’s no object.”
“Send her in next week; we’ll make a start.”
He’d never worked with anyone so sad or still.
The first five months he enjoyed the opportunity to really paint a face.
During the last month he started talking to her ~
“Signora. tell me please, why are you so sad?
“The week I came to you I lost a baby. It would’ve been my first.”
“Ohh, my sympathies…”
“My husband doesn’t know.”
“I will paint your secret into the mask of your portrait. I will never say a word.”
“Mille Grazie.”

Zackmann

Have you seen my house and if you have will you help me find it. I bought a new house cheap
but it was not in the best neighborhood and my insurance guy said I could get a fifty percent
discount if I bought a cloaking device as an anti-theft measure and it works really well as long
as the batteries don’t go dead in the remote before you memorize your address. Until I recharge
the batteries in the remote, I can not unmask my house. I may never find it since the neighbors
have cloaking devices on too.

I walked into Jen’s Wax Candle Emporium, a shop that sold candles by the scents they masked.
I saw “just ate beans”, “wet dog”, “old kitty litter”,”dirt diaper” and almost any smell you would
like to cover. She even had nosegays just in case you don”t care what other people smell.
Not finding the one I need I asked Jen if she had anything that masks the smell of tuyo. She
replied sorry so far I have found nothing to cover the smell of warmed dried fish but this sample
of “mouse stuck in furnace” might help.

Almo

John got out of the van and opened the back door. He smoothed his hands over his new blue coveralls. Stanley called from the driver’s seat, “Get the tools.”
John looked quickly through the neat stacks of equipment in the boxes.
“Make sure we have pliers,” Stanley yelled.
“What kind?” John called back, pawing through the various implements.
“Needle nose,” Stanley said. “And tape.”
“Tape?” John said.
“It masks the screams,” Stanley told his rookie assistant.
John got the tape and the pliers and closed the doors of the panel van with the “Torture Inc.” logo emblazoned on them.

Graceful

She logged into the online store and reviewed the products list.
Scanning the names running down her screen, she watched for the one
she had heard about.
Anger
Ball
Behind
Burn
Carnival
Catcher
Ceremonial
CPAP
Data
Death
Demon
Dennis, Rocky
Dionysus
Diving
Effect
Female
Face
Fencing
Fluid
Gas
Goalie
Groucho Marx
Halloween
Hidden
Iron
Janus
Japanese
Jung
Mardi gras
Mobile Armored Strike Kommand
Munch, Edward
Nixon
Odor
Oxygen
Polycarbonate
Tape
Welding
Zorro
Maybe she had missed it. Scrolling back she found it, and clicked.
“Pain, Masks”
Upgrading to priority mail, she would have it next time he said those words.

TJ

AHA!
They don’t show this in the comics.
My heroic alter ego, AHA!, has a knack for anticipating where the bad
guy is going to be and then getting there ahead of him. I’m assisted
by logic, vector awareness and basic math.
So when I intuit the bad guy’s escape route from the bank heist will
take him through this nice lady’s living room and I get there ahead of
time I trip her Brinks home alarm. The police pull off my mask and I’m
just Harold Feinstein, math teacher.
They got the other guy too. We’re sharing a cell. AHA!

Norval Joe

The warbling call to prayer echoed from the minarets of the city’s mosque. Those close by made their way quickly inside. Faithful believers, too far away to reach the building by the appointed hour, rolled out prayer rugs in their homes, businesses and even in the dusty cobbled streets.
A man walked quickly from his truck, away from the mosque, his hood pulled down to mask his face.
Still others, far away, gathered around a table and two cell phones, in a small stuffy room.
They awaited the word.
One phone rang.
A voice said, “You may make the call.”

Planet Z

The face of the first CPR mannequin was modeled after a beautiful woman who had drowned in the River Seine.
Her death mask was a popular addition to many homes, and one of those led to its use on the dummy.
The most important lesson one learns with the dummy is only to administer CPR to someone who is not responding.
So when the dummy turned to me and moaned “Let me rest in peace!” I fainted.
And the entire class tried to administer CPR to me.
A broken nose and three cracked ribs later, I threw out the dummy.

Child Actors

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The problem with child actors is that they eventually group up.
But if a series is popular, you want it to go on forever.
Recasting the parts is risky. Even with surgery, no two kids are alike.
We’ve tried cloning, but DNA only goes so far. The clones can be just as different as a surgically-altered double.
Computer-generated actors provide a consistent look and sound, but they’re horribly expensive to create and maintain. And they’re not as expressive as real humans.
Growth-suppression hormones are the answer. Freeze them at the age you want.
Kids love candy, you know.
Drugged candy.

Immortal

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I am immortal. And I am serving a life sentence in prison.
Sounds like a bad Twilight Zone episode, right?
It’s not. It’s my life.
And I am in prison for the rest of it.
Forever.
Maybe they’ll figure it out after a few decades,
Or, after “the organization” sends a few more guys after me.
Those knives hurt. But they can’t kill me.
Will I survive having my head cut off? Or being tossed in the furnace?
I don’t know. But they’re welcome to try.
Guilty? No. I didn’t kill her.
And I don’t want to live without her.

Your Shadow

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Sometimes
The world stinks
So much
That your shadow
Your goddamned shadow
Has to take
A long bath
To wash
It off
No matter
How much
It scrubs
And scrubs
The world’s stink
Sticks harder
And never
Washes off
Completely
Everything stinks
Around you
Cover it up
All you want
With soaps
And perfumes
It’s still there
And it never
Goes away
If your shadow
Can’t come clean,
What hope
Do you have?
None.
Pull the plug
The water
Drains out
You tried
But
That stink
Gets worse
So bad you gag
Close your eyes
And wish
It all
Away

Footprints

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Footprints in and of themselves aren’t terribly interesting.
But when you take them in context, that’s when my curiosity is piqued.
Walking to the edge of the roof…
Walking straight into a wall…
Walking in a perfect circle without beginning or end…
And then there’s the depth, which tells you how much the person weighs.
Or is carrying. A body, for instance.
There’s shoe tread, all sorts of factors there.
There’s nothing unusual about my footsteps.
Well, besides the fact that I’ve got flat feet, but that’s no crime.
What? The fact that they’re bloody?
I can explain that. Really.

Groceries

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I know, it’s not considered socially acceptable to eat something in the grocery store before you check out and actually buy it.
But there’s some situations where you just have to break from the norm.
I’m not talking about a free sample here and there, okay?
When I see parents let kids stick their grubby hands in the bulk bins or cracking open a soda bottle on a day when it’s not hot, that drives me mad.
And it distracts me from this boiling pot for the lobsters.
Got the butter melted yet, or do you need another cigarette lighter?

Scarecrow

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After Dorothy slew the Wicked Witch and Scarecrow was crowned as King Of Oz to rule in place of the departing Wizard, the sharpness of the tacks in his head didn’t always lead to the brightest of decisions.
Time brings rust, after all.
He was hailed when he was wise.
He was vilified for his foolish times.
So he enjoyed the times when he was hoisted on shoulders and led through Emerald City in a parade.
And he learned to hide when angry mobs wanted to burn him in effigy.
“They might mistake me for the dummy again,” he whispers.

Weekly Challenge #226 – Autumn

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty-Six, 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 Autumn!
VOTING

Which were the best stories this week?
Freereed
TJ
Zackmann
Graceful
Abigail
Norval Joe
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):


Freereed

the most famous clown in the world
no-one remembers his name
born on the spring equinox
died on the autumn equinox
came in at the beginning
with white caked face
exited at the ending
with dusty feet
he hid little children in a theatre caravan
the holocaust fires did not burn them
the clever clown was a good liar
demeter’s arms flowed over
white birds fluttered
bones to ash to snow
snow to light to flowers
flowers in the hand of a dusty clown
he blew and blossoms filled the air
each petal lit on a bright face
tears
laughing

TJ

Jay’s cubicle was gray. His monitor was monochrome and his hourly
printouts to the gray-on-gray corporate letterhead had in sixteen years
become as routine as a Thursday afternoon. The ticking clock at length
read 5:30 and he sighed, pulled on his warm but shabby slate overcoat
and took the elevator to the subway level and bumped and jostled along
the three-mile commute home. Trudging up the steps to his tiny beige
apartment he glanced up at the normally sad little tree on the corner
and was startled by a fiery, festive orange spray of foliage. Autumn had
come at last.

Zackmann

I have been to the Land of Autumn where every day is autumn. Every day is warm but not hot.
Every night is cool but not cold. The weather can suddenly change due to see breezes or fog
banks. The land has two weeks of summer but one is in July and one is in October. Having
spent most of my life in the Upper Midwest, an area of the country that has entirely too much
weather, I would have liked to have stayed in the Land of Autumn but I was unwilling to pay
South San Francisco house prices .

Graceful Aeon

It was snowing the night he told her the woman’s name. His look told
her the rest. She felt the knife penetrate her heart.
Snow gave way to lilacs. Dresses were fitted and vows were written.
She noticed his look as he addressed the invitation. She felt the
blow to her solar plexus.
They were dancing in the garden on that June day. The song changed,
followed by his look. She felt submerged in a sea of pain.
They walked through autumn chill past his favorite restaurant. He
slowed and glanced downward. She faced the look and whispered
fiercely, “Enough!”

Abigail

Mornings start blue and broody. Boots cracked stiff with old shit and spent leather
shush cross the floor. Outside hiking up her flannel nightey burrowing her hands as
thin steam rises. The ax handle always slick, “Whore Frost” she thinks, splitting
kindling. The sorrel kicks and farts, for the same hay, same crack in the ice. The
same dogs work circles round her feet, snow trickles against her calves. Kicking the
boots soft and wet by the stove, she calls him, “Coffee’s on.” The fire picks up-
the coffee slow to boil. “Put another log on the fire…” Waylon Jennings

Norval Joe

Everyone assumned she had taken fertility drugs when she bore quadruplet girls.
Born in fall, the first girl had auburn hair. They knew she must be named Autumn. The second daughter with hair, white as snow was named Winter. The third had no hair and was named Spring. The fourth daughter had hair, yellow like the sun, and was named Summer.
The neighbors found more was involved than simple fertility drugs. When Autumn cried the winds blew, when Winter pouted, the snow fell, Spring smiled and the sun shone, but when Summer passed gas, you didn’t want to be around.

Planet Z

Some tropical islands try to create snowpiles for Christmas, but that’s expensive and doesn’t last.
We get fallen leaves shipped in and then airdropped over the island.
Sure, we’ve had a few accidents, like one guy falling out of the cargo plane when it hit an air pocket, and another dropping a full bag that ended up hitting a kid.
And then there’s the mess they make. Leaves don’t melt in the sun like fake snow.
We came up with a solution. Get the kids to rake ’em up. Whoever bags the most wins a prize.
Isn’t the Fall wonderful?