Cobblestones

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Every night I mark the cobblestones with chalk.
When I wake up, the markings are scattered around the street.
Does someone wipe off the markings and add them in new places or shuffles around the stones?
I tried to set up a video camera, but it’s far too dark. No streetlamp.
I’ve also tried to sit on the steps and watch the street, but I can’t stay up as late as I used to. I fall asleep on the steps.
I wake up, and the chalk marks are gone.
And then, I see myself in the mirror… they’re on me.

Brick Fight

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Why are we throwing bricks at each other?
Because we were having a snowball fight, silly.
One guy decided to play dirty and packed a snowball around mud and threw it.
Mudballs suck.
Then, another guy packed snow around a brick.
Pretty soon, we were tossing bricks at each other.
Now that it’s May, you’d think the fight would be over because all the snow is gone.
But because we’re using bricks, the fight doesn’t have to end.
Maybe we’ll take a break and build some brickmen. Or build up our brickforts.
But that’s boring. Let’s bring on the bricks!

Grow Them Bigger

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“Close your eyes,” said the General. “And cover your ears.”
Seconds later, chunks of bloody, flaming Godzilla rained down on Tokyo.
The General uncovered his ears and opened his eyes.
And smiled.
People all over the city were cheering.
Getting the monster to eat the bomb without damaging it was a challenge.
Sticking pieces of the bomb in dead cow carcasses was the solution.
“They’re smart-assembly components,” said the General. “When they were all inside, they integrated and armed.”
After the cheering, bulldozers pushed Godzilla’s remains into the bay.
Where, slowly and painfully, they started to slide back together again…

No Miracle

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A plane crashes, and everybody dies.
Except one. A kid.
He’s badly burned, bones broken, but he’ll live.
People call it a miracle.
God doesn’t kill a hundred to spare a kid just to leave him a fucked-up, burned and battered orphan.
I see demons, laughing in the fires. It’s not a miracle.
The firefighters hose down the flames, the demons laugh… until I sprinkle the embers with holy water.
Go back to Hell.
They’re supposed to bless the de-icing compounds and the jet fuel.
Airline cutbacks. Priests are the first to go.
But, like me, the first they call.

Bug Diner

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I remember when restaurants wouldn’t put up with bugs in diners.
Those days are over, and one was taking up three seats at the counter, sitting on one and two left open because of all his arms.
He held a cup of coffee, stirring in blue packet after packet.
They used to say the red and yellow packets caused cancer, but I’m not a laboratory rat.
I just like the blue stuff.
“Leave any for me?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “Alice, another coffee.”
The waitress scowled at me, poured a fresh cup, and I twitched my antenna in gratitude.

Weekly Challenge #212 – Flagrant Disregard and Historical Inaccuracy

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twelve, 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 Flagrant Disregard and Historical Inaccuracy!
VOTING

Which were the best stories this week?
Jeffrey
Zachmann
Terry
Norval Joe
TJ
Justin
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

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

Jeffrey

“Mr. Finster. We have to talk.”
“Ok What about?”
“Well, we’re going to have to let you go.”
“What? But why? No, you can’t let me go, you need me. I am your best writer.”
“Well there have been some questions raised about your most recent work, about some historical inaccuracies.”
“But, no one writes histories like I do.”
“That is the problem Mr. Finster, no one writes them like that. You seem to have a flagrant disregard for facts. For example, when writing a fourth-grade text book you can’t call Columbus’ boats the Nina, the Kimberly and the Merciless.”

Zachmann

I was at Barnes and Nobel ordering a copy of Moon People by Dale M courtney and saw an educational audio book my teens would like. Upon listing we found it historically inaccurate and had a flagrant disregard for facts much like cable television news. The audio maps did not help me one bit. I mentioned those facts to teens who said you Know this is primarily for entertainment? Right? Considering the source, yes. The CD is Our Dumb World: The Onion’s Atlas of the Planet Earth 73 Edition. I wondered if I should have bought the 72nd Edition first.

Terry

“Have you actually read this; it is appalling?” The President dropped the book on to the desk.
“I am sorry sir; I didn’t know.” The advisor reached for the book but the President slammed his hand down on it.
“Civilian deaths, theft, rape, war crimes of all kinds.” He shook his head. “How could we allow such a thing to happen?” The President lowered himself into his chair. He paused for a moment and read the page the book had opened to. “We should have stopped it.”
“Yes sir, sorry sir.”
“This author has a flagrant disregard for historical inaccuracy.”

Norval Joe

Commander Lorantelle leaned back in a chair, stretched out his legs and smiled. He hadn’t gotten nearly as much information from the girl as he expected he would. However, this boy, Derrick, seemed to know just how to flip her switches.
“We have a flagrant disregard for individual rights and freedoms?” she asked the slender dark haired boy. Incredulity rang in her words as she continued, “It’s your people, not mine, that have perpetuated historical inaccuracies to bolster your tenuous house of cards.”
Derrick winked, “Join us, Amy. You can change us. That’s why you’re here, and you know it.”

Justin

“Who is that ruffian making a racket?”
Abe turned from the actors on the stage who were performing ‘Our American Cousin.’
He saw a man loudly sending a telegraph from his seat, the clicking and clacking drowning out the voices from the stage.
“I say, man, turn off your telegraph and watch the play!”
The man scowled.
“Screw you, high hat!”
Indignantly, Abe drew a gun and fired, but the bullet hit a pillar right by the man’s head.
The man returned fire, striking Abe in the head.
The crowd surged to capture the man, but he managed to escape.

TJ

Thomas Jefferson was born in 5185. Not the Thomas Jefferson. He was born Mark Marbury, He wasn’t the Thomas Jefferson until he’d installed Jeffmod into the 40Tb iTex fused to his cerebral cortex and set timelog for 1765, in fact creating the time anomaly that killed the Founder and his sister.
The right age and look, Marbury was able to step into his life easily, blaming “the grief” at “losing his sister” for most faux pas. The time machine itself was disguised as the dome at Monticello, the design that inspired young Marbury to start building it — 3,415 years later.

PLANET Z

My profile says that I have a flagrant disregard for policy and procedure.
I don’t care. When a job needs to get done, I get it done.
The policy says that when we come across burial grounds, we stop all excavation and demolition so that archivists can examine and catalog the remains.
That delay isn’t covered by my contract, so when I miss the deadline because this undocumented cemetery gets in the way of a freeway or an apartment complex, it kills my performance bonus.
So, doc, you’ve got a choice: sweep these corpses under the rug, or join them.

The Vampire in the Basement

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The tanks are old and need replacing. Blood is leaking from the ceiling again.
We used to have them in the basement, but hauling them upstairs during every flood became a hassle.
The Master has the strength of ten, but the patience of a child and the arrogance of a nobleman.
Nor do the members of his coven perform any lifting beyond coffin lids.
Labor is for us, his daytime servants.
The work is steady, and as long as we don’t complain, we live.
The forecast calls for rain.
At least all we have to haul up are coffins now.

The Lawyers

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Despite the number of lawyers in America, fewer are available to defendants needing representation, but without money.
So, with a low-power spirit-trap and some old State Bar registers, we’ve started summoning up the ghosts of lawyers to represent them.
They work pro bono, with few earthly needs since having left their bones behind many years ago.
And although some of them are woefully behind on their case law, few modern district attorneys can stand the withering assault of a Daniel Webster or Clarence Darrow.
I still laugh when I see a lawyer’s ghost, chasing the ambulance with his corpse inside.

The Frying Pan

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You’ve heard of the expression “Out of the frying pan and into the fire” right?
But have you heard of its opposite?
“Out of the fire and into the frying pan” may not make sense to you, but then you don’t work with elemental spirits.
This is why we do not cook over the burners here in the research dungeon. Food attracts unwelcome guests to our plane of existence, and before you know it, you’re surrounded by firedrakes and salamanders.
Well, those and cockroaches, but we have traps for those.
And you can’t stomp a firedrake as easily as cockroaches.

The Farm

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Whenever lunch at school was chicken fingers or buffalo wings, kids would make jokes about chickens with fingers and buffalo with wings.
I didn’t, because I knew the ugly truth.
Every visit to Grampa Moreau’s farm was a nightmare.
Chickens clutching at the bars of their cages.
Tiny buffalo flapping around, goring our ankles.
(You do not want to know about the baby back ribs.)
These days, I’m a vegetarian, but I need to be careful. Grampa’s long gone, but out at the farm, his crops still grow.
And that’s why I’m picking the kidney beans out of my salad.