Category: Weekly Challenge

• Richard
• Lizzie
• Lisa
• Serendipidy
• Tom
• Norval Joe
• Planet Z

The topic of the next weekly challenge is Stand

RICHARD

Alan

Alan always had to be right.

What do you want to go to the rainforest for? You won’t enjoy it?’

That’s putting it mildly: I’d hated every second of the trip.

You’ll almost certainly get lost!’

Right, again. I’d never been more lost in my life.

You probably won’t make it back.’

Unfortunately, that was certainly beginning to look like a real possibility.

It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity that’ll kill you.’

Almost right. The moisture that filled the air, made it hard to breathe; but, it wouldn’t kill me.

However the snake bite would.

Not always right, Alan!

LISA

A Thermos Flask Borrowed off Nanna

It’s 1982. The car journey from Leicester to Dad’s mate’s caravan in Cornwall takes roughly 400 years. We go every year. My younger brother is exploring the moist contents of his nostrils, and on the other side of me the older one is reading a well illustrated book about insects.

At the services we stare at a poster for iced coke while a cup of tea, that tastes more of plastic cup than tea, is passed around. A big lorry rumbles past and the thermos falls off the dashboard and smashes.

It proves to be the highlight of the holiday.

LIZZIE

Plants need a lot of moisture. So, he bought an industrial moisturizing machine for his greenhouse. The plants were happy. Their growth was impressive, he had to admit. At some point, he thought about removing the moisturizer but he went on vacation and forgot about it completely. When he got back, the roof of the greenhouse had burst open. Everything was of an industrial size, the plants, some birds that flew inside, even the ants. He should’ve suspected. That’s why the damn moisturizer was so cheap. It was all over the news. Industrial contamination was turning everything into giants, people included.

SERENDIPIDY

The car might have been abandoned, but the ticking of the engine as it cooled, and the occasional, almost imperceptible rocking on its suspension told me it was just parked up.

Not many cars made it this deep into the forest.

I approached cautiously.

A film of moisture obscured the inside of the windows; they were clearly enjoying themselves, and were completely oblivious to my presence.

Hand, resting lightly on the door handle, I wondered if they’d plead for mercy, or run for their lives.

Either way, it would be good sport.

And I was the one holding the shotgun.

TOM

Not Happy

If you come from Chicago or New York, you think your pretty much humidity badass. Heat – wet got that covered. Power through, get the job done, wring out your shirt, flip on the AC. I had no idea there was a place on earth that excelled in full impact Moisture. In Florida I met my match. It’s bad enough your body is coat 24 -7 multiple layers of perpetual film, but every centimeter of your lungs are drowning in wet. Actually, film would be a kind description, goo would be more accurate. Give me phoenix where moisture work in your favor.

NORVAL JOE

Billbert took a hand of each of the girl’s in his and jumped into the air. None of them went anywhere and the teenage knights were running their direction. Moisture breaking out across his forehead, he tried again. And again, they remained firmly on the spongy forest soil.
Linoliamanda dropped Billbert’s hand. “Take Sabrina. They don’t really want me. I’ll be okay.”
Sabrina’s eyes lit up. “You heard the girl. Let’s go.”
“No!” To Sabrina’s shock, he shook off her grip and then grasped Linoliamanda’s hand again.
Sabrina looked like she would cry, until Billbert said, “Now, take Linoliamanda’s hand.”

PLANET Z

It rained last night.
I’d gotten my car washed.
The guy with the sticker scanner asked about the paint scrape on the left side.
Where I’d hit the pole at the electric charger.
“We can buff that out,” he said.
The scrape was down to the primer, no way they could do that.
Needed to go to the dealer for a new panel.
I didn’t respond, I just drove up to the car wash track, put it in neutral.
After the wash, I drove home and parked out in the lot.
No cover. No trees.
And it rained last night.

• Richard
• Lizzie
• Tom
• Norval Joe
• Planet Z

The topic of the next weekly challenge is Moisture

RICHARD

First Responders

We watched him.

Watched him as he toppled from the ledge, falling four storeys, until the concrete path below arrested his descent.

We ran towards him, time being of the essence, thinking that just maybe he’d survived the impact.

We reached his prone figure and I knelt down beside him, as Jack urged me to get the guy into the recovery position.

Then, with practiced efficiency, we did what we do best.

It was a good haul: We recovered his wallet, watch, mobile phone, cash and a gold tooth.

And we were out of there long before the ambulance arrived.

LIZZIE

“I’ve never felt so grounded,” he said.
She could see through him.
“Some girl I met online,” he said.
A whole lot of bravado, a cigarette hanging from his lips.
That snapshot she took of him… The ridiculous hat, the feather, the flower. Was it a rose?
Hopeless. Empty.
She still remembered the album crammed with photos of himself, only himself. Page after page, after page.
When she asked why, he grinned and mumbled some vague explanation filled with an under-layer of self-doubt he desperately tried to hide.
Grounded in his desperation, wanting to be seen for what he wasn’t.

TOM

Recovery

Hi I’m the Angle previously known as 103742 , but you can call be Bill, saves time. When I am asked, which isn’t often, why did you take place in the Great Falling? Well, I can tell you this, it had noting to do with pride. Heavens no, that’s a little gallows humor there. It was Jenny, actually Angle 8675309. She said want to go on a fall with me? What’s a fall I ask, angles don’t know shit about verbs, its that lacking free-will thing. So down we all go screaming cowabunga. Been in recovery ever since, making progress.

NORVAL JOE

When Linoliamanda finally took Billbert’s hand they quickly rose, the well and old man falling away below them. Having overshot Sabrina, Billbert made a quick recovery and returned to the girl standing by the well.
Sabrina held out her hand. “Let’s go.”
Billbert was hesitant. “I’ve never levitated two people. I don’t know if I can.”
“There they are,” one of the teens shouted as they appeared on the trail from the forest.
Sabrina shook her extended hand at Billbert. “Let’s find out, quick.”
As the group of teens ran toward them, Billbert tried to levitate the three of them.

PLANET Z

“Insert the Recovery Disk and hit ENTER.” blinked on the screen.
Erica opened her desk drawer and looked through the disks until she found one marked RECOVERY DISK.
Sliding it into the drive, the ejection tab popped out with a click.
“Here goes nothing,” said Erica, and she pressed the ENTER key.
A progress bar appeared, and a green line slowly crawled from left to right.
When it filled the bar, RECOVERED appeared on the screen.
Then it went dark, the system rebooted, and Erica waited for the familiar login screen to appear.
“I need a faster system,” she muttered.

• Lisa
• Richard
• Serendipidy
• Lizzie
• Tom
• Tura
• Norval Joe
• Planet Z

The topic of the next weekly challenge is PICK TWO: Recovery, Falling, Rotten egg, Some guy/girl I met online, Hopeless, Fog a mirror

RICHARD

Frozen

For the thousandth time since landing the job, I was questioning my sanity.

You were suffering from a special sort of madness to want to teach seven year olds, but to imagine they could be taught music put me in a whole different class of crazy.

Every day, I’d return home with an aching head, and in a foul temper: The distorted wail and crash of tortured instruments haunting my mind.

But, if the playing was bad, the singing was far worse.

Today, we attempted ‘Let it go’

Just try getting thirty, seven year olds to sing ‘Frozen’, in time!

LIZZIE

Is this what we’re supposed to see?
Is this the real face of…
Now is the time to be honest.
However, no one wants to tell the truth.
Everyone is hiding behind fake compliments.
Is this what we’re supposed to do?
Is this the real…
And that flower was so fragile. As fragile as they were, staring at it, wondering.
The two of them. Alone.
They were real. Yes, they were, together in that frozen pain of what was not, together as they had always been, mourning what could’ve happened but never did.
The two of them. Together. Always together.

LISA

An Ordinary House in an Ordinary Street

Do you want to see inside? It’s a silly question really; we won’t stop long.
Strange huh? Like an old lady house frozen in time. These are all his Mum’s things even though she died a decade ago.

Is that smell getting to you? Sorry should’ve warned you – that antiseptic does catch your throat a bit.

Let me just show you the cellar… Can you feel it? Like a chill that clasps you? It’s like a normal place but your body knows some bad shit has happened here. We’d better go: I think I heard his car pull up.

SERENDIPIDY

For hundreds of thousands of years, I was trapped beneath the icy permafrost of the Tundra: Frozen in time, a forgotten relic of the ancient past.

The earth warmed -climate change, so they say- and slowly, but surely, my icy prison released me from its bonds.

I broke free from its cruel grip and fought my way towards light, and freedom, reaching for the touch of sunlight, denied to me for millennia.

And now, I am free.

Unknown to science, immune to your modern medicines, no natural enemies, no modern remedies.

I’m back!

It’s time to take back my world!

TURA

Frozen in time
———
Since Einstein, we’ve known that the past is not gone, only frozen. The future too, though we cannot see it.

Everything that happens has always been going to, and always will have. Not one particle of all the suffering in the world will ever be extinguished, but exists for all eternity. The happiness too, but surely happiness is but a single grain of sand in a vast desert.

Each brief candle is forever being blown out.

You start by thinking about the speed of light and end up here. But you always were going to, and you always will have.

TOM

The Great ReDo
Benny felt the moment slide just out of reach. If she had been four steps closer. If the child to his right had been farther right. Then there was the sudden gunning of an engine. The light reflecting off the store front window. A single arrent piece of paper flowing across the street. One thing, a thousand. Spin the stack, put back, push forward, pause and move. Who can say it would turn out any different? It remains frozen in time. Outside the reach of the fates, furies, and fay. It remains frozen in space. Blink and it is gone.

NORVAL JOE

Billbert stared at the bottle cap and its inscription as if frozen in time. What did this mean? Then it hit him and he snapped out of his stasis. “Linoliamanda. Give me all the bottle caps.”
Once he had them in his hands, he shouted to Sabrina. “I’m throwing you some bottle caps. Spread them out away from the well.”
When the metal caps left the well, he felt his superpower return.
“Take my hand, we’re getting out of here,” he said to Linoliamanda.
She blinked. “Are you going to leave that poor old man down here?”
Billbert scoffed. “Yes.”

PLANET Z

Winterhaven doesn’t appear on any maps, but if you go looking for it, you’ll find it.
Cobblestone streets, wooden buildings.
Shops and houses around a central square with a fountain and a church.
The clock tower says five after two, it always does.
Every minute, a train rolls by the Winterhaven station.
It never stops, just rolls right on by.
Bobby uses a magnifying glass and tweezers to arrange moss and tiny trees around the church.
Little adjustments every day, something goes here, move another thing there.
When the catalog arrives, he reads through it, imagining what next to add.

• Lisa
• Richard
• Serendipidy
• Lizzie
• Tom
• Norval Joe
• Planet Z

The next weekly challenge topic is: Frozen in time

LISA

A Neatly Folded Bag for Life.

I said I’d be there about ten to pick Mum up, but you all know my timekeeping skills don’t you? And it was raining so the roads were packed. Then I got caught up in a funeral procession. It felt disrespectful somehow to overtake; I mean Mum was in no hurry was she?

It was the greenness that struck me, the jars were all green. The lady at the Crem explained its screw top before sliding Mum into a green box.

“Will you need a bag?” She asked with a smile.

That was green too.

But I’d brought my own.

RICHARD

Philatelost

Whilst cleaning out the loft, we found my great-grandfather’s stamp collection. Nobody had seen it for years, and we’d assumed it lost; a terrible shame, considering it was supposedly worth a fortune.

I remembered poring through the album as a child, which is more than great-grandfather did: He was content to simply collect and file the stamps. Only I was ever interested in them.

We sent it to be valued, only to be told it was worthless.

It would have been worth a fortune, if only the young me hadn’t ‘artistically’ altered all the designs in marker pen!

SERENDIPIDY

I needed a hobby to fill my spare time, which is why I took up taxidermy. Over the years, I’ve managed to amass quite a collection, but it’s always been difficult to source a suitable supply of subjects.

There’s only so much roadkill out there, and much of it is in no state for stuffing. So I started to improvise, and would carefully mow-down any animals unfortunate enough to cross my path, whilst out driving.

Kids were easy pickings too, along with the occasional wandering tramp, and joggers, all finding their way into my collection.

Aren’t hobbies just great?

LIZZIE

He knew that the collection of plates with flowers on them was worthless.
However, his wife thought they were her ticket into a world of traveling and luxury.
When she died unexpectedly, one of her daughters lit two candles next to the plates, mentally claiming them as hers.
“No one wants these plates, right?”
Everyone said they did want them.
That’s when a family crisis started. Years of arguments ensued. Marriages. Grandchildren. Divorces.
And the damn plates were still there, sitting on the shelf.
Good thing he had hidden the gold.
Traveling was nice and luxury hotels were even better.

TOM

He who dies with the most toys wins

Every generation had its collectable collections. From Legos to Pez candy dispenser. I was too young for Match Box and too old for Hot Wheels. Have a very limited collections of 60s baseball cards, and even smaller collection of bit coins. Long ago I sold by collection of Salvador Dali and Picasso, spent a year on the beach with that moo-la. Since I have retired from the college my passion for collecting has centered around Marked Playing cards. I have eight of best produced decks in the world. My current favorite is the NOC deck, a wickedly simple binary system.

NORVAL JOE

Sabrina called from above. “Sorry. I didn’t have time to warn you. Are you okay?”
The man floated face down in the water.
“Yeah. He missed us.” Billbert turned the old man over, leaned him against the well’s wall, and slugged him in the stomach. The old coot coughed out water and began to breathe again.
“Look what I found.” Linoliamanda held out a collection of beer bottle caps.
Billbert frowned. “So?”
“Look.” She turned one over to reveal an arcane rune written inside and handed it to Billbert.
The metal was ice cold on the palm of his hand.

PLANET Z

The warehouse fire put three guys from House Sixteen in the hospital.
Bobby and Big Mike were fine, just a little smoke inhalation.
But The Kid, what a mess.
He fought. He held on.
His girl holding his hand for weeks.
We visited him, told him Big Mike’s cooking got worse, worse than hospital food.
I think he heard us, cause he smiled.
City throws a big funeral, sure. Uniforms and a march down Main Street.
But the union only does so much for a guy.
So houses from all over the city passed the boot around for his girl.

• Lisa
• Richard
• Serendipidy
• Lizzie
• Tom
• Norval Joe
• Planet Z

The next weekly challenge topic is: Collection

SCRIBBLING WREN / LISA

The sun woke an hour ago and has been nudging me ever since. I’m not ready yet to raise my concrete heavy eyelids, I’m still desperately clasping onto my evanescent evening.

Honestly? I’m face down in a pillow and can’t lift my head. It’s a struggle keeping the spit in my mouth. I need to go to work, but I probably need to go home first. I sense him next to me.

I’m not sure if it’s my age, or the head fug of satisfaction but I can’t remember his name. I’m far too sated to feel any embarrassment though.

RICHARD

Un-satisfied

According to the song, you can’t always get what you want; but, if you try sometime, you might get what you need.

But, what if, whatever it is that you need also happens to be what you want? Do they cancel themselves out, and you get something else entirely?

And, how about if you don’t try sometime, but all of the time? Do you get more than you need?

What about if you don’t try, at all… Do you get everything you want, all of the time?

It’s all too confusing, perhaps that’s why Mick Jagger couldn’t get no satisfaction.

SERENDIPIDY

Mother always used to moan at us kids, whenever we were having fun.

“Stop pulling faces!” She’d say, “One day, the wind will change, and you’ll stay that way.”

We hated her, and the resentment grew, until we decided to put her in her place.

I don’t know where my brother found the acid, but it sealed our fate.

We were at the park, pulling faces as usual, and mother trotted out her usual line.

I grabbed the acid, and as I threw it, the wind changed, blowing it back in our faces.

I’m sure mother was more than satisfied.

LIZZIE

Let the music play.
And smile.
They tell you about her.
You don’t recognize her in their words. But you smile.
They talk about what they don’t know, veiled words of criticism oozing through.
Smile. Always smile.
Because letting them know what you really think would show ungratefulness.
And you’re not ungrateful.
Let the music play.
Words turn into this vague hum.
And you try to make sense of it all. But you don’t want to, because you know all about her.
They are satisfied. They have now established themselves as better than you.
It’s OK. It’s OK…
You smile.

TOM

Heaven can Wait

Story goes my grandmother Margherita went on the grand tour in 1919. While in Florence she visited the Church of Santa Margherita. Standing in the exact spot Dante last beheld Beatrice she was struck with an overwhelming sense of sadness. As she gathered her composure in a pew an old woman gave her a paper and pen. In broken English the woman explained “Plead in writing to Beatrice to ask her to fix your love live.” Grandma placed the note in basket at her shrine. From it she took a paper that said Satisfied. She gave this totem to me.

NORVAL JOE / PHILIP CARROLL

Fortunately, the water in the well was shallow and there was no real potential for drowning.
The old man leaned over the well and in a smug satisfied voice, he said, “You’re stuck now. You’re in a magical dead zone.”
Billbert bristled. “I have a super power–not magic.”
The knight laughed. “Call it what you want. You can’t use it down in the well.”
Suddenly, with a grunt and a scream, the old man toppled over the edge of the well and splashed into the shallow water. Billbert had only a moment to step out of the falling man’s way.

PLANET Z

Thanks to the Happy Chip, everyone is satisfied with everything.
The manufacturer’s slogan is, after all, YOU WILL BE HAPPY.
Is that a statement of fact, or is it a command.
It certainly isn’t a threat… is it?
Sure, the law mandates that everyone living here has a Happy Chip installed.
There are no penalties or fines involved.
Anyone with a disabled, malfunctioning, or missing Happy Chip gets one installed.
For free. Not a single penny in co-pays or processing fees.
After the surgery, just walk through the scanner and… there’s the green light.
You’re good to go.
Satisfaction, guaranteed.

• Richard
• Lizzie
• Tom
• Serendipidy
• Tura
• Norval Joe
• Jared
• Planet Z

The next weekly challenge topic is: Satisfied

RICHARD

Strong, and black

The coffee shop can be found on the exterior rim of black hole M87. It orbits there, impossibly, ignoring the laws of physics, and doing a roaring trade in espressos and hot paninis.

I particularly recommend their chocolate muffins, which are to die for.

And, truth be told, die is what you most certainly will do.

Because, although the coffee shop, itself, seems immune to the laws of time and space, its customers most certainly are not.

But, whilst partaking of a decent coffee and chocolate muffin, at least you’ll be crushed to atoms with a smile on your face.

LIZZIE

Forward, and they stretched their arms forward.
Oblique, and they stretched their arms kind of sideways but not quite.
Black hole, and they were confused.
Stakes, and they were even more confused.
One of them mimicked a vampire being stabbed. Everyone thought that was a good idea and did the same.
“The point of this class is to open your mind. Express yourselves.”
That’s when he said “I think I’m about to relapse and start killing people again. That stakes part triggered me a bit.”
The class was canceled due to a stampede of students exiting and never coming back.

SERENDIPIDY

When you receive the videotape, you can skip the first hour or so: There’s nothing much to see, so you should fast forward to the good bit.

You’ll know you’re there, when the lights flicker on, and your family appears -a cosy scene, all huddled up on the sofa watching their favourite TV programme.

And it’s only then that you realise that your family are not the only ones watching.

I’m watching them, recording their activities, their conversations… Oh, and their rather disgusting indiscretions also.

And, unless you pay me generously.

The whole world will get to watch them too.

TOM

888

Vinny had a Plan. Make it in Guinness with the larger collection of videotapes. He had a head start with 40 years of hording. People were happy to wheel-barrow their collections to Vinny, free for the taking in. Vinny also had an ace in the whole. He had a least at Area 51, which had the largest structure in the world. When the last cassette was wedged into the ceiling the guy from Guiness got out his tape measure. When the tip touches edge the end of magnetic tape it created a monster electric field. A black hole formed, everything vanished.

As to the reason for my absence

Just like the last Beatles single my friend, God rest his soul, lived on a long and winding road. It starts at the edge of the Upper-Upper San Francisco Bay were the lower-lower Sacramento bangs into it. It ends in the high valley plain which is my Lake County. Each end isn’t much to look at, but what is in between is the largest concentration of wineries in the world. We live in the low rent district of this corridor of wine wealth. So, we got a low rent district hospital. Here lies the problem in the time of Covid

NORVAL JOE

Once Billbert was sure Sabrina was following him to the well, he flew forward over the treetops until he came to the outer edge of a circular well. Before he landed, he dropped the old man so that the jerk hit the ground with a grunt.
Sabrina ran up to Billbert as he reached the well and looked into the black hole of darkness below.
“Linoliamanda?” he called.
“Billbert? Is that you?” A familiar voice rose from the darkness.
Without hesitation, Billbert leapt over the stone wall and jumped feet first into the cold water and the evil knight’s trap.

TURA

Forward; Oblique

———

“Forward! Oblique! À l’extérieure! Bloquez, bloquez!” My fencing master soon reverts to French in our sessions. He says that it is the language of fencing, although the Spanish and German masters I have crossed swords with in the salle said the same of their own. And I think that all of them are right, for the art takes different forms in each place. German for the sabre, heavy and brutal. Spanish for the rapier and dagger, thrusting to kill at a reach. French for the épée, for exactness in the art of death. And of course, Klingon for the betleH.

JARED/JRADIMUS

Poker? I Barely Know Her

She didn’t expect to feel like this. For all her planning and practice, all the preparations she had made for this exact scenario, she didn’t think she would feel like she just met her ultimate crush mixed with feeling like she had finished off an entire sack of Halloween candy.

Her opponent was a black hole – any useful information about his hand didn’t make it to his face.

Hesitating slightly, Simone pushed her chips into the center of the table – “I call.”

“Flush,” her foe said as he slowly fanned his cards on the table.

“Reset the simulation,” Simone barked.

PLANET Z

For years, Teddy recorded video of all kinds of wacky things happening.
He kept a journal to make sure he never sent the same thing twice.
Every week, he’d mail them out to all the television shows with the funny things people doing or happening and all that, but his was never picked.
When YouTube was created, Teddy posted all of his rejected videos there.
So many people subscribed and commented.
His share of the ad revenue was pretty good.
People sent him links to their own videos.
And he’d click Like and leave encouraging comments on all of them.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Still, he was enough of a pirate to be allowed into the Annual Pirate Talent Show.
Lefty McGinty usually won the contest, somehow managing to juggle balls and spin plates despite having a hook for a hand.
Devil’s Eye Morgan shot targets off a cabin boy’s head.
Rummy Bill played a tune by blowing empty whiskey jugs. He had a lot of those.
George folded paper into the shape of animals and things.
“I learned this in Japan,” he said.
Devil’s Eye Morgan shot each of them to bits.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Good or bad, the punishment for piracy back in Ancient Rome was crucifixion.
Soldiers stripped George, whipped him, and forced him to haul his cross to the hill where they’d execute him.
Several others were in George’s group, including a long-haired preacher who’d had his head capped in thorns.
The governor let the crowd choose one prisoner to release.
“Release Barbaras!” shouted the crowd.
George sighed relief as the soldiers took him down from his mount.
Then he mugged a guy for clothes and ran back to his ship.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was a bumbling, incompetent twit.
Which is why the captain chose him as his first mate.
Managers empowering their subordinates to be able to do their best?
Hell no.They want to stay firmly entrenched in power, and to eliminate any threats to their job.
George was the least likely of all pirates to pull off a mutiny.
George was also the least likely to stop a mutiny.
As the crew slipped the noose over the captain’s neck, George laughed.
“Know what’s really funny?” The captain whispered, “You’re next.”

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He once made a bet that he could go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
Being an untrustworthy pirate, he had a trick up his sleeve: his shipmates would seal him into a barrel, but send a duplicate empty barrel over the falls.
Then, when it was time to open the barrel, they’d switch again and open George’s barrel.
The problem was, George’s shipmates were also untrustworthy pirates.
And they were the ones that George had made the bet with.
The roar of the falls muffled George’s desperate screams.