City of Smoke

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The smoke came gradually, over decades.
At first, people could go around with a wet handkerchief on their faces, but after a while we needed full facemasks and breathing filters.
Eventually, nothing but air tanks would suffice.
Travelers say the Five Cities have also been swallowed by the smoke, and it has almost reached the Sea of Sorrows.
Warlock Sturgis once kept the smoke at bay, but he and his apprentice vanished years ago.
He left his library behind, but none of the sages and scholars can comprehend his writings.
Maybe one day he’ll return.
Until then, we breathe uneasy.

A Medical Issue

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The minister’s absence was explained as a “medical issue.”
He sat in the morgue, waiting for the coroner to find a body similar to his for substitution.
“What about DNA?” asked the coroner.
The minister rolled up his sleeve. “Take blood from me now, compare it to itself when they bring you the body back.”
The coroner nodded, took a needle from the supply closet and swabbed the minister’s arm.
The minister smiled, and then his strange face went slack.
The new minister entered the room, patted the coroner on the shoulder.
“Poisoned needle?” he said.
The coroner destroyed it.

Weekly Challenge #221 – Psyche

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty-one, 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… was…. um…
It’s Psyche!
VOTING

Which were the best stories this week?
Guard13007
Steven
Zackmann
TJ
Norval Joe
Justin
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

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

Guard13007

Psyche was a beautiful princess. She was visited by Cupid at night, and became his lover. She wanted to visit him, but he told her that she shouldn’t seek him out. Psyche wondered why this was, surely the Gods should allow Cupid to visit whomever?
Then one day, after a long time without being visited by the God of love, Psyche decided to finally seek Cupid out. She must find out why he’d been gone so long.
When Psyche found Cupid, there was another women with him. “So this is why I can’t see you!?”
“You have another woman?!”

Steven

I pull off the back door of the paddywagon. A cop flies out too,
thumping hard on the concrete. The supervillain’s last henchman is
ziptied to the seat. Another officer looks back through the window.
My exoskeleton smashes through reinforced glass and cop skull alike.
“I was wonderin’ when we’d get sprung,” the henchman says.
My head swivels toward him. “Who hired your boss?” The ectoplasm
from the villain’s defeat still smears across the San Matias sky.
“Wha? I dunno.”
“Damn.” I turn to leave.
“I thought you were getting’ me out?”
“Psyche,” I say, and tear out his spleen.

Zackmann

The little one claims I am potentially damaging his psyche. Teens are so dramatic. He pleads for me to “Stop calling the dog “Laptop” because of the price of the veterinary bill when he got sick , Stop referring to his grandparents return trip to Manila as “your mother losing her parents”, Stop calling the moment the plane leaves as “the beginning of your mother’s time of mourning” Since they are not dying and although she will miss them she can use Skype to call them a couple of days after they leave. Also Stop cooking food only my brother likes.”
zackmann

TJ

Shawn: I understand you’ve been murdered
Gus: Kidnapped.
Shawn: Your wife’s been kidnapped and you clearly need our help. My name is Shawn Spencer and this is my associate, Tracksuit McBeasley.
Gus: My mother was Mrs. McBeasley.
Shawn: Gus don’t be the entire city of Cleveland, Ohio. I am a psychic detective with the Santa Barbara Police Department. As for your wife I have no idea but I thought I might run around for about 38 minutes cracking wise while various things light up and in the end she would sort of .. turn up and I would take the credit.
Gus: It’s what we do.

Norval Joe

The Psyche or Leptosia nina is a small white butterfly indigenous to Southern India. It’s flight is weak and erratic. The body of the butterfly bobs up and down as it beats its wings. This short lived creature rarely leaves ground level as it flies low over the grass.
For years, decades, (a century?) I bob my way up and down as life beats its wings against me. My psyche, my soul, my breath, struggle for flight, though my body is weak and erratic. My achievements scatter around my feet, pale and colorless like the wings of a dead butterfly.

Justin

Psyche woke up in her room to find Eros standing over her with an
arrow. Startled, he accidentally scratched himself with the arrow,
making him love her. It also made him fall in love with self-harm. Now
hes a head over heels lover practicing disfiguring body modification.
What’s worse is his mother Aphrodite is encouraging it because the
whole reason Eros was there was to cause Psyche to fall in love with
an ugly creature, because Aphrodite was jealous of Psyche’s beauty.
Psyche tried to flee it all, but she could not escape her big fat
Greek mythology soap opera.

Planet Z

Carl Jung wrote extensively on the psyche and the soul, but he had a slight problem.
The German word for psyche is the same as the German word for soul.
Every time Jung tried to talk about one, his audience thought he was talking about the other.
So, he sought out a new word to represent the psyche.
Climbing the highest peak in the Alps, Carl met with an ancient guru.
And the guru told him “I’m an old fool on a cold mountain peak! What are you doing up here? Get your ass out of here!”
Carl left, dejected.

Mirror Mirror

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What?
Yes, my name is Mirror Mirror.
My parents had a sick sense of humor.
The Queen was just plain sick.
When she found out about my skill with poetry, I was dragged to the castle so that I could heap praise upon her beauty.
Well, until that beauty faded.
Then, one day, I caught a glimpse of a beautiful girl walking down the road outside the castle.
“Snow White,” the scullery maid said her name was.
I was left speechless.
The Queen asked me who the fairest of all was.
I answered, and was chained to the dungeon wall.

Keep Warm

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Winter is coming, and we watch the nearby islands raise their sails to catch the tradewinds for warmer seas.
But ours will not join them in the Great Migration.
“We stay,” says the tribal chief. “We have plenty of food, warm houses to live in.”
“But it will be cold!” the people say. “We can be warm all year round like the others.”
“Then go join them,” said the chief. “Get in your canoes and go to them.”
Many leave, but even more arrive from other islands.
“We will help you stay warm,” they say.
The chief winks and grins.

Chances

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Four gangsters sit at a card table in a room in an abandoned warehouse.
They pass around a revolver, each spinning the cylinder and placing it against their head before pulling the trigger.
They pass it round, sliding cash into the center of the table to up the stakes.
As if their lives weren’t stake enough.
Eventually, one of the men checks the cylinder.
“There’s no bullet in here,” he says.
He gets up, and tries to open the door.
Locked.
He pulls out his cell phone, but there’s no bars.
Then the lights go out.
And they smell… smoke.

Butt Dial

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Even though the experiment was a success, Bell and Watson needed to perfect the telephone device before heading to the patent office.
Some of their ideas were improvements on the original concept and others weren’t.
For instance, Watson rigged up a chair to the telephone that would call the other unit when someone sat down.
“Call someone else with your butt?” said Bell. “How brilliant and simple!”
After sitting down to think and calling each other over and over, they decided not to add the feature.
But today, it’s standard with cell phones.
Just put it in your back pocket.

Rafting

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We’ve had this white water rafting business for a while now.
We load up the trailer, head upriver, and then Bart and the rafters head downriver. Then, I drive back down with the trailer.
We used to work out of the cabin upstream, but folks preferred to do the road trip first.
They also like midnight runs, but they’re not safe.
Tonight, something went wrong. I got to the downstream cabin and saw the boats floating down the river.
I check with a flashlight. Nobody in them, splattered with blood.
It’s a full moon.
Howling.
As I said, not safe.

Blue Skies

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Cindy looks up at the sky and scowls at the hideous shade of green.
“Blue skies, please,” she says, and the scene vanishes for a moment before rendering again, this time with blue skies.
She brings up a catalog of clouds, cycles through her favorites, and tosses them into the sky.
“Drift,” she says, and the clouds begin to slowly roll eastward.
She got halfway through the forest before the power spike wiped out her simulation.
She checked her settings.
No auto-save.
The skies boiled red for an hour before she regained her composure.
And started again: “Blue skies, please.”

Weekly Challenge #220 – Mensa

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two 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… was…. um…
It’s Mensa!
VOTING

Which were the best stories this week?
Steven the Nuclear Man
Zackmann
Guy David
Cristina
Almo
TJ
Pods And Ends
Norval Joe
Justin
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

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

Steven the Nuclear Man

“Jonathan, you can’t talk about UFOs if you want to get into Mensa.”
Abigail ignored his tight knuckles gripping the steering wheel.
“You’re a smart guy, but they won’t get it.”
“You bet they won’t get it,” he snorted. “Smartest people in the
world and they’re UFO deniers.” He swerved into the library parking
lot. “We’re finally here.”
“Look,” Abigail said, “I’ll take you to a nice restaurant for our next date.”
As the humans walked inside, Bleargh looked up from the monitor to
Zooptif. “A brain buffet!” it said, “What a romantic date!”
The saucer landed on the roof.

Zackmann

That friend of yours, David, seems stupid and crazy. He told me that He took a class with Professor Turtledove where he learned about how the South won the US Civil War. Actually that was a joke. David is a member of Mensa but some times he gets a little weird if exposed to bad media. I think he saw the live action movie of The Last Air Bender. He should be Okay in a couple of days. He was off for about two weeks when I loaned him my copy of Moon People. Keep him away from daytime television.

Guy David

Being different was always a curse. People used to stare at me blankly when I talked and it would take me a while to register they didn’t understand a word of what I said. Through the years I learned to talk down a few levels, but it made me feel lonely, alien. That’s why my first Mensa meeting was such a life changing experience. Suddenly I was among people just like me, and I didn’t have to talk down anymore. I could talk at my own level and it was liberating. I’m not feeling cursed anymore. I almost feel blessed.

Cristina

Where do Goblins come from? They love gold is all we know.
What do they eat? Gold, I dare say, but that doesn’t seem very healthy.
Deep in the tunnels they dig, I question how dark they can be
In their burrows with such little sun!
Short and stocky these creatures are.
A mystery all the way up to their bushy eyebrows.
The myths we tell, they forge weapons for fun,
Weapons for fun! Such dangerous beings they are!
But all I know is that they love gold and their holds
That as the truth as far as I know.

Almo

The general entered the room stiffly, placed the folder on the table, addressed the small group. “We just don’t know how to stop this thing that’s coming,” he said. “We need your help, desperately.”
An eager hand shot up. “We could do a musical!” the man said. “That would relax people.” Another disagreed. “No, an operetta. That’s what we need.”
The general’s brow furrowed. “These are the dumbest suggestions I’ve heard. I thought this group was brilliant.”
“Oh,” said one of the women, suddenly understanding. “Mensa meets down the hall. This is the glee club.”

TJ

Hi! Welcome to the Sheboygan Falls Dew Drop Inn here in Sheboygan Falls,
Wisconsin! Sheboygan’s awfully fun to say, isn’t it? I’m Emma Jean
Wilkinson I’ll be your waitress this fine afternoon. Are you folks
here for the convention? There’s a Mensa convention, IQ’s in the top
2 percent smartest people in America. You seemed to have a spark of life
behind your eyes so I wondered if you were in town for that? Because
they’ve moved that. Yeah, see, they sent an advance team who … met
us. Moved the convention down to the Twin Cities. Try the pie!

Pods And Ends

The document was slowly falling to the ground. It landed noiselessly on the dirty tiled floor. Both of them bent down at the same time and their eyes locked. It was one of these moments where you look someone in the eye just an instant too long.
“Mary, back to work!” came the voice from behind the buffet in the mensa. The woman jumped up and joined her colleague. At the door, she looked back at the man. He looked around him in disgust. Raising an eyebrow at her, he shook his head sadly before he turned around and left.

Norval Joe

The local chapter of mensa was disappointed by the lack of membership.
After they determined there just weren’t enough really smart people in their community they had a heated debate about what would be the best way to raise their numbers.
Eventually they decided to use the same method used to test the IQ’s of hundreds of historical geniuses. They nearly doubled their ranks by adding members posthumously.
Their clever scheme came crashing down when National noticed. Some wise guy thought he would be funny and added names to the roster like; George Foreman, Forest Gump, and Popeye the Sailor-man.

Justin

Wumbi, of the Pokilulu tribe of cannibals was talking with Rimboo the elder about the proper way to cook a woman.
“Young Wumbi, you must remembeh, da more you know da woman, da more effort you must put into her pweparation. Eating someone is a vereh poisernall ting!”
“Do the spices and vegetables matter?”
“Naw, nat so moich. It’s more about what you do to da meat.”
“Who was the first woman you cooked?”
“Oh, soim missionary. Oui just caught her in a twap in da jungle. ”
“How did you prepare the meat, mince it?”
“Mensa, I hardly knew her!”

Planet Z

Richard’s car broke down in the middle of nowhere.
The GPS was wired into the car, the display as dead as the engine.
So was the integrated phone.
Damn. Card-carrying genius, doing something stupid.
But not as stupid as the lumbering hulk that came up to his car, a walking cliche: overalls, shotgun and straw hat.
“You got yerself car troubles?” drawled the hillbilly.
“Yeah,” said Richard. “You have a garage somewhere?”
The hillbilly frowned. “What, you think we ain’t got cars or somethin’?”
He raised the shotgun.
Richard sighed. He was a card-carrying NRA member.
(Without his gun. Stupid.)