Author: R.

Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Twenty, 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 Planet Z, and we went with Olive Loaf.
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
VOTING

Which stories were the best from Weekly Challenge #120?
	Menubar Memorial
	Guy David from Sixteenth
	Elisson from blog d’Elisson
	Mike
	Keeme from Diamonds and Rust
	Brad Z
	Eva Moon of The Lunatics
	Tom from Footnote
	Jeffrey from Great Hites
	Steven the Nuclear Man
	Almo
	Justin the Space Turtle
	Anima Zabaleta from Z.D
	Planet Z
Free polls from Pollhost.com

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

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Hi Laurence
I started a page on Squidoo about flash fiction and wanted to invite and of your contributors to send me one written story (up to 200 words) that I will add to the page and each will have their name and a link back to their site. It is a good way to get a backlink ..
if you think it’s something you want to do please announce it on your Sat broadcast. I’ll accept the first 25 stories I get. they can be mailed to info@theopensite.com with something in the subject alerting me to what it is.
I will also be making a spot available on my blog for the stories and links to be published again and there is no requirement for anyone to link to me or the squidoo page, though of course I won’t discourage anyone from doing so.
Thanks a Bunch
Craig

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MENUBAR

“The mailman didn’t come again today,” she said “I doubt there will ever be mail again.”
“We’re just going to have to make due with what we have, Jane. You know we’ve always done okay for ourselves.”
“I miss the children, Frank. Do you think they’re alright?”
“If I know Jimmy, he’s with his friends having a hell of a time. He was a born leader, Jimmy was.”
“Yes, he always put Mary in her place, even though she was bigger. What do you think Mary is doing right now, Frank?”
“Mary sure loved her olive loaf.”
“I remember.”

BLUESMOKE

The food supply was beginning to run quite low. The horde of Kaprualy The Chirapa had brought with them from their home planet have been dwindling steadily and the vegetation was to tired from the artificial lighting to grow properly. They could survive on Kaprualy meat loaf with blue Taranka Sarka olives for just that long. They needed to sample some of the local cuisine, and they needed to do this as soon as possible. Chaketo Chirapa knew they would need to earn the trust of the humans quickly, so he continued podcasting while searching the web for an answer.

ELISSON

Every so often, I like to survey the deli counter, looking for disturbing meats. Scary meats.
Headcheese, for instance. No cheese, but plenty of head, chunks floating in a sea of gelatinous goop. I wouldn’t eat it on a dare.
Or mortadella. Sounds like Morticia’s older sister. Looks like sliced cellulite. Ecch.
The most disturbing of all? Gotta be Olive Loaf.
The name’s bad enough, like something Popeye’s girlfriend might drop off at the pool. All those embedded olives, sliced in cross-section, staring out of the meat case like evil eyes? It’s the lunchmeat that looks at you.
Scary, man.

MIKE

“Do you know why I pulled you over, sir?” asked the skycop.
“Not really,” I replied, trying to focus on the holoimage.
“You changed navigation corridors twice without updating your flight plan and exceeded the posted Mach limit. Have you been drinking, sir?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “Look, I overslept and was running late, so I hit the FoodMat for an InstaMeal pellet, then jumped the skyway. I may have …drifted.”
“Which meal?” he asked.
“One with a weird name: A Olive Loaf.”
“‘A’ indicates the meal contains alcohol, ‘OLIVE’ indicates a martini. Disengage your hoverdrive, sir; I’m tractoring you in.”

KEEME

Three years inside and all I ever got to eat was damned Olive loaf on stale bread. Funny how something you once loved can turn against you. Its not like I actually killed her, this time. At home we were welcomed by my dear sweet mother-in-law, sitting in my favorite chair sans right arm, sewing with her left. Hi Millie. Hello prison bitch hope you’re hungry. I quickly made my way to the kitchen to avoid her lovely improvement advice. In the fridge were over 100 packages of Olive Loaf. Sure hope she can knit with her teeth.Three years inside and all I ever got to eat was damned Olive loaf on stale bread. Funny how something you once loved can turn against you. Its not like I actually killed her, this time. At home we were welcomed by my dear sweet mother-in-law, sitting in my favorite chair sans right arm, sewing with her left. Hi Millie. Hello prison bitch hope you’re hungry. I quickly made my way to the kitchen to avoid her lovely improvement advice. In the fridge were over 100 packages of Olive Loaf. Sure hope she can knit with her teeth.

BRAD Z

Becoming a homeless being is the best way to observe anything in the universe. I have been observing the Earth this way for two cycles now.
Yesterday the Supreme Commander wanted to assisted me on an observation.
After five hours the Supreme Commander started getting hungry. We had no local currency to spend so we went to something called a soup kitchen. They had an excellent beef stew. Sadly, the olive loaf bread, killed the Supreme Commander.
Maybe the next planet will be safe for our kind.
Oh well, commence destruction of the Earth in five….four….three..two..one

EVA MOON

Bill leaned forward in his chair, trying to focus on the PowerPoint presentation, but the charts, graphs and bulleted lists blurred as if obscured by billowing clouds of flour.
The monolithic high-tech empire he’d built meant nothing to him. Secretly, he’d always wanted to be a baker – knead dough in his hands; make crust instead of code.
Nobody knew.
Graphs morphed into racks of hot baguettes. Pie charts turned into, well, pies. Even bullets on lists made him dream of olives dotting a fragrant loaf.
He stood up and walked out as they watched him go, openmouthed.
Nobody knew.

TOM

“Olive Loaf is the Twinkie of lunch meats,” descried Armond. “You want the muse to prevail or not?” repeated the shaman. Armond was desperate he had written a word in weeks which is why he dialed Shaman’s R Us. Mumbo Jumbo set the deli cutter to paper thin slices. He draped Armond’s face with Olive Loaf and told him to lie perfectly still and dream of his muse. In the morning the ER doctor finish the 40th stitch on Armond’s face. No midnight muse just one hunger cat with teeth and claws and a mean craving for cold cuts. Nardo!!!

JEFFREY

We tried everything. The Nukes didn’t touch them. The Chemical weapons, well they were a waste of time considering those suits they wear. But we tried them anyway and it killed half of us in the attempt. Then we tried talking to them. They liked that, but then they found out that we put olives in bologna, they decided we weren’t worth the effort. Since then the few of us that could escape the planet have been on the run. Who would have thought olive loaf would doom the planet, not the green house effect. Al Gore, raspberries to you.

STEVEN THE NUCLEAR MAN

The streets were as alive as downtown Marysville ever got. Jonah
watched them eat funnelcakes, scream on cheap rides, and play the
carnival games. The annual Olive Loaf Festival had not changed a bit.
He remembered trying to explain it to Mary before he came home.
“Small towns, they find something – anything – they can call their
own. Some reason to feel special.”
Her raised eyebrow had spoken volumes of sarcasm.
Back there he had been a nobody. Now, the festival crowd laughed and
swirled around him. Jonah held his picture of Mary and danced down
the street with them, smiling.

ALMO

I was mixing the ground meat to put into the loaf pan while Jimmy hovered over my shoulder.
“Mmmmfff?” he asked.
I snapped back, “What?”
“What are you doing?” he asked, his breath smelling like citrus, lips smacking irritatingly.
“Making something flashy for Christmas dinner,” I retorted, searching for the stuffing. “Where the hell are the red and green Jujubes?”
“Oops,” Jimmy said, swallowing hard.
I looked at him incredulously. “What am I going to do now?”
Jimmy pulled the olives from the shelf. “Here,” he said, “Red and green.”
Dumbfounded I asked, “Who on earth would eat olive loaf?”

JUSTIN

I ride through space on the back of an intergalactic and extraordinary space turtle. The turtle’s shell was cracked in a recent encounter with a group of thugs from the Macaroni Space Pirate League. The worst part is, after we disposed of the thugs in a nebula inhabited by the Cheese Mafia, to get to a planet with the supplies to repair the shell, first we’d have to pass through an asteroid belt. With an already damaged shell, this could be deadly. Worse was the fact that the asteroids were not made of rock and ore, but of olive loaf.

ANIMA

I can’t believe I trusted my brother (a butcher) when he invited me to “THE LOAF”…
I shoulda been paying attention, but I was already schussing through the alpine glades of the ski resort Sugarloaf in my mind.
I bought goggles, researched skis to demo… Hell, I even worked out at the gym…
Imagine my surprise as we buzzed past the exit…
Whoa Dave! – ya missed it!
Huh? Wha…? Sugarloaf??
Nah man, we’re headed to OLIVE LOAF… Best hamn deli convention on the east coast!
Oh well.
What I missed in moguls, I made up for with pastrami on rye….

PLANET Z

I, Baron Munchausen, do declare this latest adventure to be an unmitigated disaster.
Instead of banquets and parades, I find myself destitute and without my usual companions.
Even Bucephalus, my loyal steed, had run off to greener pastures.
You see, I was given a challenge by Catherine the Great, who’s hand in marriage I had the honor to refuse, to sail the oceans of wine to find islands of Gold and Silver cheese.
Instead, we found… Olive Loaf.
Not gold. Not Silver.
Plain Olive Loaf.
“At least it is not head cheese,” I said.
Catherine nodded, and ordered me beheaded.

Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Nineteen, 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, and we went with Occupy.
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
VOTING

Which were the best stories in Weekly Challenge #119?
	Planet Z
	Lunette Foroux
	Guy David from Guy David
	Stephen the Nuclear Man
	Planet Xray from Planet X Podcast
	Jeffrey from The Great Hites
	Tom from Footnote
	Mike
	Anima Zabaleta
	Thomas Merkel
	Brad Z. and The Cat
	Justin the Space Turtle
Free polls from Pollhost.com

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

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PLANET Z

The Martians came to liberate us from the Robot Army, but in the end, they just changed the letterhead on the occupation government memos and made things worse.
The pods on our necks itch worse than the identity chips made our palms itch.
Machines lay unattended as we head to the fields, planting the crops our new overlords command us to grow.
“To solve world hunger,” they say.
Have you eaten recently?
Neither have I.
The air is changing. Sunsets are redder. Martians have been seen going around without their breathing masks.
And our aching throats are starting to burn.

LUNETTE

I occupy a small space inside the skull of a human female. I’ve been experimenting on her. I attempted to interface with her nervous system, but it was just a hopeless mess.
Eventually, however, I was able to take control of her fingers and her eyes under certain limited conditions. For example, when she’s seated in front of a computer, she becomes totally distracted, and then I can make her look wherever I want and type whatever I want her to say.
Tonight, I’m attempting, for the first time, to take control of her larynx. So, is it working? Can you hear me?

GUY DAVID

Words of sadness are to occupy this space and time. I have grown weary of my travels, has occupied no home. The road is dusty, and so am I, the dust of time has covered me like a blanket, keeps me cold at night, as my sleep is occupied by haunted dreams, tormented dreams.
To you I’m but a shadow, that thing in the corner you wouldn’t touch with a stick, maybe toss a quarter, just to ease your conscience, maybe get rid of some useless change, but I’m alive, yes I’m alive, just to annoy you, I’m still here.

STEVEN

She adjusts herself on the sheet. The technician straps her in and
steps out of the room. The table slides her towards the scanner’s
large ominous doughnut.
“Hold your breath,” the computerized voice says. A whir, then: “Breathe.”
They saw it first on the x-ray, the little dot now an invading force.
“Hold your breath.” Pause. “Breathe.”
It colonized one lung, lymph nodes, spleen. “Hold your breath. Breathe.”
This is what it must feel like to be Iraq, she imagines. “Hold your
breath.” Her bones ache with cellular Abu Gharibs and Basras. How
much has fallen?
“Breathe.”
“Hold your breath.”

PLANET X

Ah, another warm, lovely morning on the planet Xray.
My morning begins with the ritual of reading the newspaper along with one of my other daily rituals, occupying that little room down the hallway.
There the problem presents itself; I live in one of those cheap hotels on the edge of the spaceport. Of course it only has a common bathroom on each floor and I do so enjoy reading in a relaxing manner.
Despite the sign on the door that I occupy it, there’s always somebody that interrupts me, well, maybe I’ll leave them something to remember me by.

JEFFREY

“This is not what I have been trained for.” I said to Johnson in the other bunk.
“No basic training was a lot of screaming, “What are we going to do? Kill! Kill! Kill!”
“Yeah I remember that.” I said and we laughed.
“What about, What makes the grass grow? Blood! Blood! Blood!” He asked.
“Yeah I remember that too. they should have taught us What makes you sweat more? Occupy! Occupy! Occupy!” I said as we sat here in our tent sweat pouring from every spot on our bodies, wondering why we were, Johnson smiled but we didn’t laugh.

TOM

The Arnestos embraced on the platform. Despite his anger at Allan he knew the man did what was needed, and as such, vowed to learn from the ancient African avatar. At each jumppoint he would study their Books and make the proper adjustments to readjust to a transversing time line.
When the Cronomotive came to a rest Cervantes was greeted to the sound of 200 hands clapping. It reminded him of a, by now, ancient Buddhist joke, he smile, which only caused a louder volley of applause.
They handed him book four on its cover a gold plate read OCCUPY

MIKE

“Well, what about that ‘Superman’ movie, when Clark and the evil Superman merge?” demanded Frank.
“Nope,” countered Jeff. “First off, they weren’t the same person separated by time, they were the same person split apart. So, you could say he was just re-integrating.”
“The best film example I can think of is ‘Timecop’,” Jeff continued, “right near the end, when the Senator’s past and alternate-present selves touch. They kind of melt into each other, and then the whole mess just dissolves. Two objects cannot occupy the same space and time.”
“But, what about…?”
“Okay,” Jeff interrupted, “Take a car wreck…”

ANIMA

I wake from the nightmare in a clammy sweat.
It’s always the same… I have been traveling and I NEED to reach the terminal.
It’s usually a seedy third world country, but sometimes not.
Strangely, once inside, I find myself utterly alone: the other travelers have vanished.
The intercom is sputtering foreign gibberish.
I peer fruitlessly at each door I pass.
Finally, I spot it – that universal icon of relief…
Entering the tiled room, I see hundreds of 50s style stalls, turquoise blue, extending as far as the eye can see. Every indicator knob is in the red –
“OCCUPADO”

THOMAS

“What a piece of crap… desert, cactus, desert, snakes, desert, scorpions, more desert. And even more desert. Why we chose to occupy this ass end of the world is beyond me. We only came here to help the people and we end up annexing the whole stinkin’ place. This war was a waste if you ask me. Those damn invaders deserve this place. Sure, there is a little bit of gold out there in the hills, but our nation is wealthy enough. No good could possibly come from helping to liberate this god-forsaken land from that bastard, General Santa Anna.”

BRAD Z

Lost Cat
Each night I would lie in my bed waiting for Erwin to leave his workshop. I had been reading his work since I’ve lived with him. But now…this recent piece that he was working on… well… it was really concerning me…that’s when I noticed the steel box in the corner that had arrived this evening. Quickly I looked over todays writings…. To prove theory cat is to occupy box with poison and….
The next day a new sign was posted in the towns sqaure.
The sign read: Lost Cat, cat with collar. Please contact Erwin Schrödinger

JUSTIN

Have you even been in a public place, and suddenly you feel your bowels let go? It feels like you have to flatulate, but you know that if you do, you’ll spray paint your underwear and pants. You’ve got to hold on, walking as normal as possible, until you get to a restroom. Then when you get there, there are two stalls, both occupied. One has a parent and child, the parent talking the kid through the procedure. The other has a grunting person who really needs to give a courtesy flush. Hopefully the janitor likes cleaning up the sink.