Author: R.

Gift Basket

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My wife is making the cats a gift basket.
The gifts include treats, new collars, and catnip.
A few toys, too. As if they don’t have enough toys already.
There’s also a lot of colored tissue paper that the cats will like to play around in.
Despite the fact that the basket is on a high shelf, the kitten’s managed to find a way up there and inside the basket.
Based on how much of a pest she is to the other two cats, I don’t think she’s trying to say she’s a gift to them.
We need more catnip.

Cookies

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My mom always made the best cookies. I have recipes, but it’s not the same.
It was so hard to resist them. They never lasted long.
When she made plates of them for others, she had to hide them, or wrap them with several layers of foil and plastic to keep the rest of us out.
She put a plate on the front bench to take to the neighbors, but the next morning all that was left was the plate.
No foil, no plastic, no cookies.
The dog had eaten them all.
Or, at least, that’s what we told her.

Regifting

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Santa slides down the chimney, opens his sack, and puts the presents under the tree.
Then he picks up the presents sitting by the fireplace and stuffs those into his sack.
Back up the chimney, into the sleigh, and the helper-elf double-checks the inventory and flight plans.
“I know that business is bad, Boss, but did you have to add regifting to your services?” asked Twinky.
“Shut up,” said Santa, watching the GPS flash a new destination. The time display next to it flashes an unjolly red. “Fucking eBay.”
He cracks his whip, and the eight miserable reindeer take flight.

Cold Feet

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The last thing you want at a wedding is for the groom to have cold feet.
Or the guests.
That’s why I keep the feet warm when I cater to cannibal weddings.
I made a special tray that keeps them at just the right temperature, but doesn’t dry them out.
I’m sure it would pass the Health Department’s inspection, if cannibalism didn’t throw up a red flag.
Or the fact that this island doesn’t have a Health Department.
Just cannibals.
Either I cater their weddings the way they want, or they will want me.
I’d rather serve than be served.

Printer

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The printer is jammed.
The printer always jams when I need it most.
Somehow, the printer knows I’m in a rush, and that’s when it chooses to jam.
Chooses. Yes, I said chooses.
In fact, I bet there’s a chip in the printer that tells it when I need it most.
It syncs up with the chip in my head. The X-ray resistant chip.
I know that you don’t believe me, but if you’d just let me open up my skull, I’d show you.
It’s not buried deep. Just a little hole, and you can peek inside.
Here’s a drill.

Weekly Challenge #189 – Smoke

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Eighty-Nine, 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 Smoke!
The excellent theme music is by Guy David.
VOTING

Which stories were the best this week?
Steven
Norval Joe
TJ
JRadimus
Justin
Lynda
Zachmann
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

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

Steven

The demons came from the campfire’s smoke. Jonah woke at Reyald’s
scream. Boyd slept until Reyald’s head bounced off his stomach.
“Last time I let Reyald stand watch,” Boyd grumbled, drawing his sword.
“You know,” Jonah said as he parried a claw, “I think that someone
wants us dead.” He thrust upward, drenching himself in demon blood.
Boyd dodged a tentacle. “Nah.” He stabbed the tentacle before it
could grab Jonah.
“Thanks,” Jonah replied, pouring holy water on a demon. “But disagree?”
Boyd sliced open the last demon’s abdomen. “Yeah.” He sat down. “I
think someone wanted these demons dead.”

Norval Joe

All Larry wanted to do after High School was join the military. He was big, strong and played on the football team until cancer took his leg.
He liked to smoke Camel no filters. He called them coffin nails. It wasn’t the cigarettes that killed him, though.
He had bi-polar depression. When he didn’t take his pills he could get pretty angry and depressed.
One day he didn’t come in to work. One of the guys went to check on him.
Larry had put a .45 through his head.
Some say he’d quit, given up.
I say he was beaten.

TJ

Winters were the worst, and the best. Sure, we had to go outside and it was cold. But the taste of crisp, frosty air firing a rich, savory mentholated Marlboro light, that was magnificent. It’s been three years, three months, and I can still taste it, the flavors, the feelings, that tingling sensation in the tips of the fingers following the first cigarette of the day, and privation giving way to a sense of instant fulfillment flooding through one’s entire being. Watching the smoke drift away and carry with it all of one’s troubles … GOD do I miss smoking.

JRadimus

With the sun’s rising, the chirps and calls of insects, frogs and birds rise through the forest. Collectively, the dewdrops lend the grass a velvety glow, resolving into tiny diamonds close up. The sunlight mixes with smoke hanging across the meadow; they become solid liquid vapor, and give the shadows crisp 3-dimensional shapes. A doe and fawn wander out of the forest canopy’s cover into the meadow’s openness. The sharp crack of a breaking twig snaps the silence. The doe freezes, ears swiveling and nostrils flaring, alert for the source of the danger, and the fawn bolts instinctively for cover.

Justin

In ancient Japan a young samurai warrior saw smoke upon the horizon. He ran to see what was happening. Upon arriving he discovered a Catholic monk rushing back and forth between the bubbling river and the burning trees with a bucket, extinguishing the flames. When the trees were saved, the monk said that God told him to come to Japan and preserve the certain forest from flames and burning. This happened many more times over the years in that forest. Anytime the trees burned, the monk appeared. The young samurai learned that when there is smoke there is friar.

Lynda

Don’t smoke, she told me. She doused me in gasoline, told me the next cigarette would be my last.
I put arsenic in her donuts. She locked herself in the bathroom for three days.
I offered her a truce. I’d take her out to eat if she let me take a shower.
How could I know she’d been hooking up the bathroom plumbing to a tank of acid?
As I soaked in the cooking oil she was so fond of drinking, I told her she’d have to find another man.
“Did that five months ago,” she said, lighting a match.

Zachmann

Little Betty, Your getting older but you still look good
I wish you would quit smoking.
I don’t like it when you smoke.
I spend all my money on you and I think you should not smoke.
Are you angry with me for driving too fast?
Why are you acting this way?
It’s like you have blown a gasket or something.
Little Betty, please stop smoking and take me home.
I wish you would not act like this.
I fear we will be waiting for the auto club.
Little Betty you’re my true love because
because You are my car.

Planet Z

Early robots would get trapped in Ethics Loops.
Ask them a question or give them a command that caused an unresolvable conflict, and the robot would halt, take on an odd expression, and their circuits would heat up.
If you didn’t purchase an auto-restart or a sufficient cooling system for your robot, you’d have a meltdown.
The late poet Ruby compared the smoke to a soul escaping from the body, released into eternity.
I knew it was an expensive repair. But Ruby kept blowing CPUs
Why? She liked inhaling those “robot souls.” Good for a cheap, albeit toxic buzz.

Pennies from Heaven

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Every time it rains, it rains pennies from Heaven.
Falling like bullets, they pierce umbrellas and shatter car windshields.
Dozens of people don’t make it to shelter and lay in the streets, bleeding or dead.
Birds, too.
After the storm passes, ambulances pick up the injured and dead, and we sweep up the broken glass, tow away wrecked cars, and bag dead animals.
We used to gather up the pennies and head to the bank, but now we bring them to the foundry.
They melt them down for the zinc and copper.
One day, they’ll finish the giant protective dome.

Roller Coaster Therapy

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I have this friend in the hospital that has a unique way of releasing all their frustrations and anger and fears.
They call it “roller coaster therapy.”
You get on a rollercoaster with your therapist, and you spend the next three minutes working out your problems while screaming and waving your arms and getting loop-the-looped.
By the time you get to the end of the ride, you’ve pretty much gotten everything out of your system.
Well, that’s assuming you get to the end of the ride.
Sometimes, they fall off of the sofa.
And that’s why they’re in the hospital.

Thong

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Professor Hastings began his Nobel Prize acceptance speech with a softly whispered “My thong is on backwards.”
I was all downhill from there.
Before Hastings could be subdued, he had stripped off his clothes and was dancing on the podium.
“What category did he win again?” asked a security guard.
“Chemistry, no doubt,” said a hostess, only just now realizing that it was Hastings that had offered to uncork and pour the champagne for the attendees.
Her throat felt warm. Her vision blurred.
And, like everyone else in the room, she started to worry that her thong was on backwards.

Turning Blue

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Tracey shouts that she’s going to hold her breath until she turns blue if she doesn’t get her way.
Fine, I say. Go ahead and do that.
So, she does. She holds her breath and after five minutes she turns a bright shade of blue.
She stares at me, her eyes bulging.
I stare back, sticking my tongue out at her and breathing normally.
“This air sure is delicious,” I say. “Since you’re not using any, all the more for me.”
I walk around, taking deep breaths, sighing with satisfaction.
Tracey’s passed out on the floor, turning pink again.
Dumbass.