Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Two, 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 selected by Steven the Nuclear Man.
It’s Nightingale.
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
VOTING
Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):
DAPHNE
We don’t hear many birds down here but we can hear the nightingales. Their song comes through the sewer grates and is the only music we have. The children can whistle their tune. Lovers dance to the sound. It is something that reminds us of life on the surface, before it happened. When the nightingales stop singing we begin to worry. Did something frightened them away? Was it a cat? A larger bird? Or worse. We hold our breaths, keep silent and wait…
STEVEN
Cherry blossoms perfume the air, decorating it with the fall of their
petals. I stand before her, my katana soiled with the blood of her
enemies. Her rescued family is my wedding offering.
I have read the tales of heroes. I fashioned my armor, my habits, my
life in imitation of them. I completed their trials, their feats. I
am the greatest of them.
I smile at her. I have read the tales of heroes, and I know how this will end.
She turns, walking away under the cherry blossoms.
As in all the tales of heroes, a nightingale sings.
TOM
Arnesto was tempted to open the book, but he wasn”t ready for that level of Pandoraic possibility. Maria had no qualms about messing with the timeline.
“Look, It has your name on the inside cover.”
Cervantes took a timid peek. Zounds. The author was Arnesto Arroway. Maria”s laughter echoed down the empty halls.
“Looks like I”m a great grand ma. It”s kind of comforting.”
“No it makes me dizzy.” Growled Arnesto closing the cover without read any of the passages.
“What”s this?” said Maria pointing on the writing on the wall.
“Its Quatermain”s nightingale!” Life in the sewers indeed Allan.
TERRY
Josh ran into the ship’s med section, using the last of his strength, he pressed his hand against the biometric scanner, the hatch opened.
He quickly climbed into the Nightingale, Mk IV., careful not to shift the cloth that kept the blood from gushing out of his leg.
It was foresight that Space Command included the automated med machine, without it he would be dead.
It would take the Nightingale at least two weeks to regenerate the large chuck of flesh that was missing. Then he would take care of that little red beast that had tried to eat him.
ANIMA
Le Rossignol was the best of the cat burglars. He could be in and out of a building in seconds, never setting off an alarm. He never did it for monetary gain. No, it was always for singing.
He’d intone Gregorian chants in marble bathrooms, and trill arias on grand staircases. Once, he even broke into Cathedrale Notre-Dame to sing Mozart’s Requiem by himself.
However, Rossi lost an early morning challenge to Le Coq, who thought the Eiffel Tower should be his personal roost.
Shamed, he jumped the Big Pond.
Americanized, “The Nightingale” now busks in Grand Central Station.
GUY DAVID
The record was spinning endlessly, caught in the groove. It was obvious she wasn’t coming. He just set there feeling like a fool. A sudden wave of anger swept over him. He was getting used to this, it has happened too many times. He got up swiftly, half knocking down his chair. He opened the door and left, slamming it behind him. He wasn’t going to wait any longer. Behind him, the chair fell over the table that held the old fashioned gramophone, and the stylus jumped over. The voice of Julee Cruise singing The Nightingale filled the room again.
CRAIG
Some years ago while reading architectural digest I saw reference to nightingale floors, but no accompanying definition and promptly forgot about it.
Later while laying the wood floors in our mountain cabin I was amazed to find that the boards had unique and nuanced sounds as they rubbed against each other.
With a bit of ingenuity in fastening the wood you can create a magical ongoing conversation with the house.
Going room to room at times seems like dancing on a xylophone.
You skate from board to board creating warm enticing tones that will resonate in your memory forever.
TERRENCE
Long shadows fell across the witherhunch as Raoul looked out across the vast landscape. A grassy meadow with the occasional tree spread out before him. He stood under one such tree, the witherhunch had found safety next to a good sized rock. Raoul loved the night, watching the dark shadows dancing.
A soft song rose, started from his right and spread out across the land; he heard a loving sigh in the distance. Raoul reached up, picking the nightingale off the branch. He looked deep into its eyes and it sang to him as her squeezed the life from it.
PLANET X-RAY
Jack gazed dreamingly at the singing women on the stage. He could understand why the theater had billed them as the Nightingale Sisters, their voices where as beautiful as any real Nightingale could sing.
They were also the loveliest ladies Jack had seen in a long time, Jack was going to enjoy this evening. He had sent them a red rose and a promise to dance till dawn.
They had all accepted his invitation, eager to dance so lightly across the floor in their gay dresses to the sound of the stringed instruments, to be merry until the next dawn.
But Jack had darker plans, as the sharp blades in his pocket would attest. By dawn, the nightingales would no longer sing, but would croak instead, and the rose he had given them wouldn’t be the only thing running red.
And the nightingales sang on.
SOUGENT
It’s after midnight and I can’t sleep, I mustn’t sleep, if I sleep they will find me and then….
No! I can’t think of that.
I cautiously move through the dark forest, I hear the song of a nightingale in the distance and a feeling of dread comes over me.
Is it really a nightingale, or is it a signal from one of *them*?
I look around nervously.
Two wizened little men approach a motionless form on the ground, one of them pokes it with a stick and snorts, “sleeping eh?”.
The song of a nightingale fills the forest.
WILL ROSS
Gail Winters. They called her Nightingale, the stripper who could sing. Tonight I just call her the victim. We’ve been here before, but, If you tell my wife that I’ll deny it. The Station boys visit after work, drink a beer and watch her dance. She’ll sing, “My Funny Valentine” or “Fever” before she strips down to her dainties and hustles the rubes. Tonight she’s in a pool of O-Positive, all because she tried to break up a fight and took a beer bottle behind the ear. Station boys arn’t happy. Killer’s in for a rough night.
PLANET Z
Y’all knows Colonel Harlan Sanders, but what abouts Lieutenant Yancy Ottercott?
Two reasons why, son:
He warn’t talented with a pressure cooker as his neighbor, and one day while cooking up a bird, the lid blew off and stove in his fool skull.
The other reason was that he warn’t cookin up chicken. He was frying up nightingale.
Didn’t bother pluckin them. Left the feathers right on, dipped and breaded those suckers whole.
Crunchy, sure, but Harlan’s chicken couldn’t be beat.
As for the mashed potatoes, well, Harlan swiped that recipe from Yancy.
Not that he’d be needin it anymore.