Author: R.

Welcome to the Fifty-seventh Weekly Challenge, 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 Mike James and Chris Carlisle: Writer’s Block and Lingering.
Eight stories were submitted this week. Oops!
We have a rookie, who is actually a podcasting veteran!
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
And, once again, some disturbing madness from the one we all knew and loved as Planet Z.
Go ahead and listen to them by clicking on the grammophone thingy there in the left column and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):

Which were the best stories of Weekly Challenge #57? (UPDATED)
	Laieanna from Hodgepodge Point
	Anji Bee of Unwind (among others)
	Caleb from Black Tie Martini Club
	Daphne from Going Broke
	Tamara from Going Broke
	Chris from Platypus Society
	Mike James from Mike Thinks
	Tom from Footnote
	Terrence form Never Was
	Planet Z
Free polls from Pollhost.com

NOTE:
If you voted before 10:00AM CDT Sunday, your vote has been erased due to the fact that Terrence’s story got caught in the same Spammonster that ate Anji and Tom’s stories.
The Supreme Court has ruled that you need to vote again, but those nine old farts leave it to me to apologize for the error.
WE GOTS PRIZES:
I will be sending the winner a prize… it’s refrigerator magnets for the podcast. (Yeah, I need to get more office envelopes… too lazy to ship them normally.
It is your voting that determines who wins. So listen, vote, and tune in next week to find out who won!

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LAIEANNA

Satan licked his pen, eyes closed in bliss, then scratched out a few more lines before pausing again.
“What now?” Sydney asked weakly.
“Tricky phrasing this part. Also need a fill up.” He stabbed the utensil into Sydney. She screamed then cried as pain lingered well past the puncture.
“Done! As promised, you’ll receive all materialistic desires and guarantee that I will not shorten your life after signing.” He handed her paper and pen.
She barely etched out her name in blood when she died.
Satan chuckled. “Damn writer’s block! The blood loss killed you just after signing the contract.”

ANJI

she was lingering over a photo of her old lover. a candid portrait, taken during an intimate moment. that was another time, another place, she was another girl… suddenly a song came on her ipod, one she’d heard many times while lingering in his warm arms. she became lost in the past, drowning voluptuously in memory, losing herself in daydreams… abruptly, she was awoken from her reverie by an insistent knock on her office door. “still having writer’s block?” straightening up and sliding the photo back into a desk drawer, she replied, “i think i just found my inspiration.”

CALEB

She knew her favorite author lived nearby so she lingered on the writer’s block hoping for… what; an autograph, a chance meeting? The one time she did see him buying pears, she had been too shy to approach him.
He had noticed her too. She was plain and yet something about her captured his eye and made his heart flutter nervously whenever he noticed her in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, he wasn’t any braver than she so they never really met.
He poured his heart out writing and dedicated his next book to her. We can only hope she reads it.

DAPHNE

Sitting there with pen in hand, lingering over the paper, she wanted to write something memorable, something to make him regret his decision. He wasn’t the first to leave and she knows he won’t be the last, but she wanted him to remember her. The voices in her head didn’t help her writer’s block.
“Good Riddance”
“So Long Sucker”
“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass”
None of that helped as she stared at the note card. She just went with her old stand by
“Good Luck with the new job”
She really hated office going away parties.

TAMARA

“No. Absolutely not. That cannot be him. I didn’t spend $120 on a new dress and a pedicure for that guy,” Rachel thought. Lingering at the bar, she tried to ignore him. It was difficult to pretend the doofus with the bouquet of cheap flowers sitting at the candle-lit table for two wasn’t waiting for her. (56)
“I’m never going on another blind date again!” she swore under her breath. At least Rachel had the foresight to make sure they met at a restaurant with a bathroom near the exit. She wouldn’t be there long; she already had an escape plan.
That’s it! If I win, I’d like the next challenge to be “truffles.”

CHRIS

Stephen had writer’s block. He also had diarrhea. His condition lingered for weeks, unable to get any ideas out of his head and conversely unable to stop anything coming out of his ass.
One day after his fifth trip to the toilet, Stephen had had enough! He handcuffed himself to the desk, refusing to leave until he had written something. When his intestines started gurgling, he clenched. Then an idea came to him. He wrote non-stop until he had written an entire screenplay. Amazingly, his diarrhea was gone.
And that’s how Maximum Overdrive, Stephen King’s shittiest movie ever, was born.

MIKE

Mike Sat trying to think up something
funny, witty, and poignant. 100 words
usually wasn’t enough. Today however,
it seemed too much.
Ironic that writers block was the topic.
“Is Platypus having this much difficulty?” Mike pondered.
The entire week, he had endeavored in vain.
Last weeks Steven Hawking parody had flopped.
Now, faced with the very real possibility
of an additional failure. Mike decided to
write about writer’s block when writing 100 word stories.
Immanent failure lingered like yesterdays
burrito supreme platter, and tonight,
looks like chili.

TOM

A mountain of crumbled paper surrounded Dan. The speech was in six hours. He hadn’t crafted the “Read My Lips” statement. “Frank I got monster writer’s block. I need a pithy yet nebulous phase to encapsulate and divert attention from the logical outcome of being in Iraq,” yelled the speechwriter.
“Try this,” returned Frank “We Linger Less Lefties Liberate.” “You’re telling me to create a link between terrorists and communists?” “Yup we got 80 years of drumbeat behind commie fears. Time For a little repurposing.”
Six hours later
“Is are Linger _N less Liberate_N Who the hell is Lefty?”

TERRENCE

Raoul picked the quill up and placed the tip against the beige page.
If they were going to write him out of the book; he would write his
own story. He sat there for hours, quill poised to write the great
story of his life but nothing came. He slammed the quill down on the
desk and the blank page stared up at him.
There was a rumble in his stomach and a stench filled the room. That
was a smell that was going to linger. Maybe he would have better luck
with Podcasting in a couple thousand years.

PLANET Z

The ancient abbot lingered in his dark, damp cell for years.
The monestary was warned never to bother him. He was the wisest of the wise, and he must be allowed to write his thoughts down uninterrupted.
Every night, a monk would go into his chamber and find him asleep as his desk, head down on the same stack of blank sheets of papyrus.
“Writer’s block” was the excuse they used, until… one night… the abbot was still awake when they came for his papers.
“Oh good,” he said. “You’re here. Can I have a pen and some ink, please?”

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Thanks to everyone for sending in their stories, and I look forward to what you’ve got to write (and say) next week.
The theme for next week’s Weekly Challenge will be posted shortly.

Welcome to the Fifty-sixth Weekly Challenge, 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: Baseball.
Seven stories were submitted this week. Oops!
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
And, once again, some disturbing madness from the one we all knew and loved as Planet Z.
Go ahead and listen to them by clicking on the grammophone thingy there in the left column and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):

Which were the best stories in Weekly Challenge #56?
	Mike of Mike Thinks
	Daphne Abernathy of Going Broke
	Tamara Kirshner of Going Broke
	Caleb Bullen from Black Tie Martini Club
	Tom from Footnote
	Elisson from blog d’Elisson
	Laieanna at Hodgepodge Point
	Planet Z
Free polls from Pollhost.com

WE GOTS PRIZES:
I will be sending the winner a prize… it’s a packet containing at least 1 refrigerator magnet and a CD with the archive of the entire 100 word stories podcast. (Well, minus promos and junk)
It is your voting that determines who wins. So listen, vote, and tune in next week to find out who won!

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MIKE

Thank you, Mike. I really enjoy your podcast.
Baseballs a game of computational skill.
You must calculate the acceleration of a small
spherical mass as it decelerates in a parabolic
trajectory through space time.
This task is further encumbered as the
mass is often spinning in a quantum state
not unlike a black hole. If one can successfully
determine the gravitational pull of the small spherical
mass, the earth, and the multiple other bodies in
direct interaction, you may generate a
sudden, and violent, equal and opposite force against the
small spherical mass .
With enough force, you may achieve, a single Newtonian orbit, around the
central mound.

DAPHNE

By the third date she was looking for the fatal flaw. They all had them. Some were simple and easy to overlook like leaving the toilet seat up. Others were not so simple like infidelity. She’s seen it all and knew it would be there. But he seemed perfect, so she was sure it would be small. When she got into his car to leave for the restaurant, she saw it. There in the back window prominently displayed: a baseball cap.
“So, you’re a Yankees Fan?”
This would be their last date. Some things a Red Sox fan cannot overlook.

TAMARA

Okay, here’s my story, it’s just called “Baseball.”
Ira was sickly, Manny was thick and sluggish. The two best friends hated gym class more than anything. For three weeks, they were forced to play soccer. No matter how hot it was, Mr. Fosse made them run around the field doing dribbling drills. Neither boy was very coordinated, so they spent 40 minutes chasing soccer balls that got away from them. To avoid sweating, they moved slowly; they would rather deal with Mr. Fosse’s whistle than with the other boys in the showers. If they could only have gotten into a sport that better suited their reluctance to move — baseball.
If I win, I’d like the next challenge topic to be “inconvenience.”

CALEB

You can do this, you can do this. Just relax. Relax and think about baseball, isn’t that what they all said? Can’t go off too soon but you can’t take too long either. You just have to think about baseball and… Whoops!
It’s okay, get back in there. There you go. You can do this. You just need to be cool. Relax and think about baseball. There you go… You’re ready… You just need to think about baseball… Damn!
Alright, one more try. A nice easy rhythm back and forth, there you go. just think about…
Strike Three! You’re Out!

TOM

He was 300 and likely live 300 more.
Liannana youngest of his progeny
asked that ever-constant question,
“G Pa why do we run?”
(great great great great great great great grand pa)
The old man sighed
“The priests of baseball want us dead.”
They had been killing his tribe
for the last third of a millennium.
They had killed him five or six time
even blow him up in Plexiglas box.
Didn’t work
just fueled their faith
in the vengeful God of Baseball.
He cursed that angelic voice that said,
“Go for the ball.”
He cursed the jihad of the Cubs.
But most of all he cursed being Bartman.

ELISSON

Brett Pivnick was a wee bit peeved, to put it mildly.
He had been called up from the minors in early summer, and his first two months as right fielder for the Astros had gone well.
Better than well. He had been leading the league in RBI’s until last week. That’s when things began to go wrong. Horribly wrong.
Of course it was the drugs. It had to be the drugs. What else could have caused his ass to swell to three times its normal size?
The team medic agreed. “Son, it looks like somebody handed you a Bum Steroid.”

LAIEANNA

“More exciting,” the audience demanded, so we delivered. First a flaming ball was hit, and the batter sprinted, working his way past six hundred pounds of wrestlers to first base. If the outfielders were still working their way through the field labyrinth, he could take another run to second base through beanbag shots. A good player would keep up his momentum to third plate, dodging spikes that randomly sprung from the ground. If all clear, he’d then jump the bottomless pit to home base. Truly a popular sport now. Oddly enough though, we always have employment openings in our organization.

SCHLOMO “SEVENTEEN FINGERS” PLANETZSTEINBERG

People credit Jackie Robinson for breaking baseball’s color barrier in 1947, but truth be told, that barrier was broken long before then. Twice. In the same day.
Rufus Jefferson and Cleon Washington not only broke it in 1927 with the Washington Senators, but they also broke the “two midgets posing as a single person barrier.”
Rufus and Cleon were close friends, quite often giving each other horsey-back rides.
One day, they ran the bases at Ebbets Field.
And the manager of the Senators was somewhat of a nearsighted imbecile.
No, they never played.
Couldn’t get the pants to fit.

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Thanks to everyone for sending in their stories, and I look forward to what you’ve got to write (and say) next week.
The theme for next week’s Weekly Challenge will be posted shortly.