Category: Weekly Challenge

• 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.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Whenever he saw another pirate with a hook hand or pegleg, he’d cringe at the thought of getting hurt that badly.
He kept a first aid kit with him, and if he got as much as a paper cut, he’d spray Bactine on it, slather on antibiotic, and then cover it with a Band Aid.
Not a small one either. One of the big ones.
Then he’d wrap it all in medical tape.
His crewmates liked to pull the bandages off of George slowly, just to watch him wince.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
When he rowed his boat, he didn’t row it gently down the stream.
Nor did he row it merrily. He was usually quite angry when he rowed his boat.
Usually, because his shipmates had put him in the rowboat while he slept, cut the mooring line, and sailed off.
George rowed as hard as he could, and then he’d get out his spyglass and try to locate the ship.
That’s when George would wake up from the dream…
And he was still in the boat, exhausted, dying of exposure.